Japan is a linguistically and culturally extremely homogenous country. Of its 127 million inhabitants about 98.5% are ethnic Japanese, 0.5% are Korean and 0.4 are Chinese – leaving a whopping 0.6% others; including yours truly. Those 0.6% “others” include about 210.000 Filipinos, mostly of Japanese descent, and 210.000 Brazilians, also mostly of Japanese descent – which means that only about 0.3% of Japan’s population are neither Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Filipino-Japanese nor Brazilian-Japanese.
I’m sure you’ve heard the term gaijin before (外 gai = outside, 人 jin = person), a short version of the term gaikokujin (外国gaikoku = foreign country, 人 jin = person). People are still arguing if it’s pejorative term, but personally I don’t like it very much, because it’s such a simple term, pushing everybody who is not Japanese to the outside – which is a precarious thing in a country where a group is still so much more important than an individual.
Integration?
Becoming a foreigner in Japan is actually an achievement by itself. Japan isn’t eager to let many people in and therefore the requirements to get a long-term visa are rather high – usually you have to have either a Bachelor’s degree or several years of work experience; in both cases an employer has to vouch for you. Other possibilities are investor visas or some kind of artist visa, but there quite a bit of cash is involved; and so is with the spousal visa… 😉
Once in the country the Japanese government couldn’t care less about you as long as you renew your visa when it expires and pay your taxes – and those are usually handled by the company you work for anyway. While there are long and public discussions about integration in European countries there is zip in Japan. Language classes and tests? Bah, humbug! On the other hand you shouldn’t expect anybody to be able to speak English anywhere, despite the huge English school industry in Japan; especially at the immigration office, where you can address the staff in English as much as you want – they’ll always reply in Japanese, even though most of the time they obviously understood what you’ve said…
But Japan in general isn’t set up for integration, probably because of the educational system. You have your childhood friends, you have your high school friends, you have your university friends and you have your work friends – usually four different groups that keep you busy for the rest of your life; with no need to make additional friends at any point; or many opportunities for that matter, like community colleges or sports clubs, both extremely popular in Germany, especially after moving to a new area. (With the result that many foreigners in Japan stick with each other, too – I don’t think I know any foreigner here who has more Japanese than foreign friends; and by that I mean friends, not Facebook acquaintances…)
Xenophobia?
With that few foreigners in the country and that strong of a national identity I am still not sure if Japan is an above average racist country or not. People are definitely more polite in general than let’s say in my home country Germany (sorry guys, but certain things really are better in Zipangu…), especially in everyday service situations like shopping, but I experienced some of the weirdest behavior here, probably because hardly any Japanese school kid has foreign co-pupils, while I went to school with people of Italian, Austrian, Indian, Pakistani, Turkish, Japanese, British, Polish and Bavarian descent – and because the average Japanese person doesn’t think that you can understand what they say.
Sometimes they most likely mean no evil (like that one time when I had a dinner date with a Japanese girl at an Indian restaurant and all of a sudden all the tables around us talked about their oversea vacations, their foreign alibi friends and how great it would be to be able to be fluent in English…), sometimes I’m not sure (remember me *not getting a hotel room after the clerk found out that I’m a foreigner*?) – and sometimes they actually do mean harm. For example that young Japanese couple and their two friends who have beaten a Nepali restaurant owner to death in January 2012; one of them were quoted afterwards “I thought the foreigner had shoved me, so I got angry and kicked him many times.” (Note the use of “foreigner”? I’m sure it was “gaijin” in the original… Not “the man”, or “the Nepali” – “the foreigner”…)
Discrimination
It’s just a completely different mindset regarding foreigners and discrimination in general – and most people don’t even question it, because to them it’s normal. Like most countries Japan has a long history of discrimination. It even went through a time when a social class system with all its downsides was officially established; during the Edo period (1603 to 1868). Back then the burakumin (a.k.a. eta, “an abundance of filth”) were the outcasts and usually connected to jobs dealing with public sanitation or death (butchers, tanners, …), but when the class system was abolished the discrimination didn’t end. More than 100 years later, in 1975, there was a huge scandal when an anti-discrimination organization found out that a company in Osaka sold copies of a handwritten 330-page book listing names and locations of former burakumin settlements. Companies bought that book to compare the listed locations with the addresses of applicants – to prevent them from hiring descendants of burakumin; some famous firms like Daihatsu, Honda, Nissan and Toyota were among those companies… Two generations later the issue finally is no more, instead the average Japanese “discriminist“ focuses on foreigners – and I am so tired of and annoyed by comments about “those dog eating Koreans” or “those Chinese comfort women who try to screw the Japanese state”… (“Comfort women” is a Japanese euphemism for the sex slaves of the Imperial Japanese military in World War 2. While some (Japanese) historians like Ikuhiko Hata claim that there were 20.000 volunteer prostitutes, others found that up to 400.000 women were hired under false pretenses or even kidnapped into “comfort stations” all over Asia; but even the “few” volunteers made a bad choice as about 75% of the comfort women died during the war due to mistreatment and diseases. Shinzo Abe, the current Japanese prime minister, claimed during his first term in 2007 that the Japanese military didn’t keep sex slaves during WW2, although the government admitted to the fact in 1993 after decades of denial!)
New Zealand Village
Despite their share of xenophobia the average Japanese seems to love to travel and is actually interested in experiencing foreign countries; especially non-Asian countries… They barely ever jump all in, backpacking all by themselves – more like group vacations with Japanese speaking travel guides. Or an even safer version: themed parks in Japan! Recently I wrote a vastly popular article about the *Chinese themed park Tenkaen*, but in spring I was able to visit the rather unknown *New Zealand Farm in Hiroshima* and the *New Zealand Village in Yamaguchi*. Even less known, and after more than a thousand words of introduction we finally get to it, is the Shikoku New Zealand Village. It was actually the first of the three I visited, but due to certain circumstances I never got to write about it. (If you missed the articles about the other two New Zealand parks I recommend reading them first for background information…)
I don’t remember how I found out about the Shikoku New Zealand Village, but I’m sure it wasn’t an urbex article, because to the best of my knowledge till that very day nobody has ever written about the place. I remember seeing a photo of the entrance to the parking lot though, with heavy machinery in the background. That was on a Thursday – worried that the place was in the process of being demolished I went there two days later, despite the facts that the weather forecast wasn’t favorable and it took me about 4 hours to get there. And except for the photo and the name I didn’t know anything about the park – not what it was, not when it was closed, not if there was security, not how to get in. You know, the risky kind of exploration…
I saw the first surprise when walking up to the parking lot – there was a rather big house right next to it, with wet laundry in the garden. The parking lot was blocked by barricades, entering via a muddy road to the side was difficult due to rusty barbed wire and lots of vegetation. After getting a decent grasp of the situation I decided to jump the blockade at the parking lot and walk right in, my heart pounding like mad. At the time I had more than 150 explorations under my belt, nevertheless I was and still am nervous exploring new and unchartered territory. As soon as I entered the place I heard motor noises… Not a big car motor, probably some gardening tool? Well, after a couple of seconds I realized that it was a model aircraft – and as soon as one landed another one started for almost all of the two and a half hours I spent at the Shikoku New Zealand Village.
Now that you’ve already seen the Tenkaen and the other two New Zealand villages the Shikoku one might not seem that exciting or spectacular, but to me it was the first themed park I ever visited, and I was all by myself, so to me it was extremely adventurous. Cautiously I progressed – first the sheep race track and the archery station, then a barn I wasn’t able to enter. From there I reached a bike race track before I walked back to the main street leading to the Oakland House; basically a restaurant and a souvenir shop. When I walked around the corner I stumbled across surprise number 2: the road in front of me was gone – a landslide washed it away! Now that’s something you don’t see every day… The rest of the park was less spectacular though. Two more barns, a long slide on a slope, a pond, a bakery and a BBQ area.
What was absolutely fantastic about the Shikoku New Zealand Village was the almost complete lack of vandalism. No broken windows, no kicked in doors, no graffiti. Sure, I wasn’t able to enter all the buildings, but that didn’t matter to me, because nothing was bolted up or destroyed – unlike at *Nara Dreamland* for example. Natural decay at its best…
(If you don’t want to miss the latest article you can *follow Abandoned Kansai on Twitter* and *like this blog on Facebook* – and of course there is the *video channel on Youtube*…)
Addendum 2016-01-13: A while after my first exploration of the Shikoku New Zealand Village I revisited this awesome location. *Here is what happened since then.*
Wow! This is very informative. You talked about things I didn’t know. Thanks for putting so much time and work into this post!
Thanks a lot for your nice feedback. Some locations give me the opportunity to write a bit more about my life in Japan to shed some life on aspects you can’t read in travel guides – another one was the *Sankei Hospital* and to some degree *Okunoshima*.
The best types of travel guides, in my opinion, are the ones where you can read about a personal account of someones life in whatever town or village.
It gives me a better look into Japan, for sure. I liked learning about their reaction to you.
Sadly most travel guides just list hotels and places to see… Inititally I wanted to write strictly about the locations only, but I guess if I was a regular reader of Abandoned Kansai, I would want to know more about the person who writes it, too – and in more than six years quite a few stories worth telling happened.
Nice piece. I enjoy learning about the cultural background behind practices in various countries. A good way to learn about this is through art. I don’t usually do this, but I would like you to read my latest post about the 1937 art exhibition in Germany. I would love a German perspective on the piece.
I will have a look ASAP, but it might take me a couple of days. 1937 was part of a dark period in Germany’s history…
I some times have the feeling that meeting a foreigner is just too far outside the comfort zone of some Japanese. Even if you speak Japanese, they’ll wave you off and tell you they don’t understand, because they just can’t imagine a Japanese speaking foreigner.
Gladly that’s a minority though. Most are quite interested and kind. All in all I think it’s a lot easier to be a visible (i.e non-Asian) foreigner in Japan than say say in Austria or Germany. I’ve heard some not very nice stories from a Austrian-born Japanese friend of mine.
As in every country there’s a certain amount of racism, but overall I think Japan is doing remarkably well for its lack of contact with the outside world.
Japanese society is a lot about hiding. Hiding feelings, hiding resentments, hiding opinions. Honne and tatemae, the contrast between true thoughts and behavior in public. That transfers to racism, too. There is barely ever open violence, everything is more hidden – like the burakumin book. Like things you don’t even get in contact as a tourist. Try to rent a flat as a foreigner, try to get a credit card – so much harder just based on your name… And in those case they can act on it without direct contact or giving reasons. “The flat is already taken.” / “Application denied.” They don’t need to give reasons…
love the pics. I find your site very interesting and informative.
Thanks, much appreciated!
I tend to find that racism in Japan is pretty much like racism elsewhere: largely unacceptable, but you’re still going to find the outspoken few who think it’s big and clever to hate people for spurious reasons.
Did you ever find out what all the model aircraft were about? Was it all from the house with the wet laundry, or is there perhaps a sneaky secret society of RC aircraft fans who meet up in deserted theme parks? 😀
The model aircrafts started and landed at a model plane airport right next to the Shikoku New Zealand Village, across a hill with a bamboo forest. I could hear people talk, so I was even more cautious than usual not to make any noise…
A defunct New Zealand living history site in Japan – I think you hit the mother-load of abandoned site hunting. Kudos!
It’s a pretty awesome place – nevertheless I was surprised that there are not only one but three abandoned New Zealand parks in Japan…
Yes, talk about quirky fun. Must have been a ‘fad’ at some point that has since lost popular favor. Great find and so glad you’re sharing it.
Yeah, as far as I know most of them started with fewer visitors than *Nara Dreamland* had when it closed – but I guess maintenance and personnel cost at a New Zealand Village are much lower, too. Let alone not having to invest in big attractions like roller coasters.
Of all the odd theme parks built during the bubble years, the travel-related ones seem the strangest and most mysterious to me, although I prefer deserted buildings with more interesting things going on… Beautiful work as always (long time lurker, first time commenter).
Thanks a lot for the comment, k! Since it was rather clean and tidy the Shikoku New Zealand Village wasn’t the most spectacular location visually, but it was one of the more interesting places to explore since it is quite unique.
That burakumin book was a shocker and the time period in which it was being used was even more shocking!
The book was such a big scandal that I learned about it during Japanese History classes at university.
The photos are so interesting and I’m still a bit surprised that these parks once existed (maybe some do still?).
Thanks a lot! Sadly less and less people actually look at the photos… 😦
There is one open New Zealand Village in Tohoku – and about a dozen similar parks with different themes, for example Germany.
So is this a village in Japan meant to mimic New Zealand culture with architecture, etc. or a village of Kiwi’s located in Japan? Do you know why it’s deserted? As you say, very pristine for an abandoned location.
It was a themed park with the intention to mimic New Zealand, though I doubt its authenticity. The same company still runs a dozen similar parks and I wrote all about it *here*.
Uhh I can relate to this…
IBut experiencing “being a foreigner” in Japan made me realise what a tough time foreigners in Germany have: they, too, sometimes can’t move in a flat because the landlord doesn’t want foreigners. It’s actually allowed for German landlords to choose their tenants by nationality and discriminate while doing so…
That whole “Oh, you’re Japanese is wonderful!” thing happens in Germany 24/7 as well.
Still, experiencing it on your own is tough! I’m still thinking about whether I’d be able to live in Japan and feel accepted as the person I am. Or whether I’d always feel like a foreigner, not part of the whole…
Knowing quite a few “foreigners” in Germany, I often think they feel much more welcomed than I ever could in Japan, no matter how much I love that country.
I doubt that there are many countries in the world where being a foreigner is easy; except for maybe those where you buy yourself in, like Monaco. To me Canada always had the image of being super friendly to everybody, including foreigners – until I heard recerntly from both Canadians and foreigners how everything goes down the drain, especially in Vancouver, which is 40 or 50% Chinese by now; a fact resented by both Canadians and non-Chinese foreigners. And I feel that Japan is one of those glorified countries, too, though most people don’t know anything about Japan. Especially not what it is like to be a foreigner in Japan. That’s why I wrote about it – knowing well enough that me being German I am considered a “good foreigner” (or at least “not a horrible foreigner”), like Americans are considered good foreigners in Germany. It’s a very complicated topic… But the main difference between Germany (Europe in general…) and Japan is the fact that Japan isn’t aware that it has a racism problem – because Japan is shockingly ignorant sometimes. It’s complicated…
(And I agree with you – Germany has a history of discrimination like every other country, but it also has a history of integration and granting asylum. Japan doesn’t. That’s why I think the average foreigner in Germany is more welcome than the average foreigner in Japan.)
True! Germany only really started pro-integration actions when it finally realized (way too late) that people DO migrate to Germany to stay, live and die there. It took sooo much time and effort until it got to that point. I think Japan still needs to realize that… because until then, foreigners will only be seen as temporary visitors that don’t need to be considered when doing politics. And even though there are obviously many that do stay and Japanese are aware of that (especially Koreans, Brazilians, Filipinos, …), as you said, they are considered “bad foreigners” so there’s not much effort to make life easier for them. Foreigners in Japan – that’s a reality Japan doesn’t seem to want to face just yet…
Oh, and I agree with the Canada-image… I had that, too 😉 Well, Canada does have (or rather, did have) a rather interesting, open political approach towards migration to Canada, but by now politicians are already back to a more conservative approach.
I once randomly found a German ranking of “nicest countries to live in” and Japan was actually ranked #1 (for its coolness, nice weather, amazing culture, …). Well well…
Japan is an easy country to live in since it’s such a rich country and the people are indeed very friendly – which doesn’t mean that they can’t be racist at the same time. If you are a wealthy guy from France or Italy Japan is most likely heaven, if you are a poor person from a Southeast Asian country it’s more likely hell. It all depends on the circumstance… And the personal mindset. I’ve seen exchange students with fantastic scholarships leaving after a few weeks, because they couldn’t deal with the circumstances here.
Oh, and by the way – I don’t think the Japanese weather is nice. I get my first sunburn when it’s still cold in March and the summers are terribly hot and humid. But again, personal mindset…
I have heard about racism in Japan but fortunately have never been confronted with it. In fact, my experiences in Japan have been rather wonderful. I had no trouble making Japanese friends and felt very welcomed by most of the people I met.
Why was the New Zealand Park abandonded?
I think it really depends what you are doing in Japan and how long you will stay. The experience as an exchange student is quite different from those with a working visa – and language teachers usually have a different experience than those who work at traditional companies where they are the only foreigner or one of only few. Duration of stay makes a huge difference, too, because at first you tend to ignore negative things or don’t even realize them. In my experience people start to wear thin after a couple of years when bad experiences add up. It gets worse when children are involved. To the best of my memory all the foreigners with kids I know left Japan with their families before school age…
I’m happy for you that you only made good experiences and I hope it will stay that way – but I wouldn’t bet on it.
The NZ Village closed for the same reason most businesses close – not making money. Two other parks opened and closed at around the same time, only one of originally four NZ parks is still open for business.
I am a Japanese from Japan living in the U.S. and it’s not easy for me to make American friends. Most of my friends are either Japanese or other foreign-born Asians, and I am not an unusual case. I feel Americans are content with the American friends they already have – they do not need foreign friends. I am almost convinced that you have to grow up in the same country to become real friends. I have been treated by some Americans as if I were not a real human being. I got a feeling that some Americans do not/cannot see Asians as real human beings. Of course many (most?) Americans are very friendly, nice, and very aware of racism. America is probably one of the easiest countries for foreigners to live, certainly a lot easier than Japan. I have sympathy for foreigners in Japan as I have had similar experience myself.
Thanks for sharing your experiences!
I guess in the end it’s pretty much the same in every country – the majority of people is nice, especially in one on one situations, but you have stupid, ignorant, narrow-minded people everywhere. And you have “good foreigners” and “bad foreigners”. In the States good foreigners are British and most other western European countries, bad foreigners are from Asia and South America (and Africa and the Arabic world and…). In Germany good foreigners are from the States and most other western European countries, bad foreigners are from eastern European countries. In Japan good foreigners are from western European countries, bad foreigners are from other Asian countries…
Overall Japan has been good to me, no doubt about it – otherwise I woukdn’t be here for almost seven years now. The main reason I wrote this article was because Japan often gets glorified by manga, anime, video games, history, karate, koi and other nerds. And while it’s a good country to live in (and an even better one to visit!) it’s far from being perfect…
I did the sheep shows here 1991? I exported all the farm antiques and wagon, a full woolpress around there somewhere. Goddammit need to export them back to Queenstown now lol
I’m afraid you won’t be able to export them back – the Shikoku New Zealand Village has been turned into a solar farm years ago… The Hiroshima one, too. The one in Yamaguchi only has been demolished, no further use known. 😦