Last Blog :(

Of the stories which I personally covered for the class, I found “Japan’s hot springs rethink tattoo bans for Rugby World Cup” to be especially interesting. This was the first story that I covered, and the most directly tied to how Japan is being forced to slowly change and open up its society.

In coming to Japan as a half-Japanese American with strong cultural ties to Japan, I arrived with big questions about what and who is “Japanese”. The Japanese concept of “Japaneseness” stands in particular contrast to the American concept of “Americanness”, where immigrants are mostly immediately accepted as Americans and the only barriers seem to be self-identification and a working knowledge of the de facto national language. Given the Japanese emphasis on ethnocultural purity and its history of not fully accepting half-Japanese people, did I really count as Japanese?

With these questions in mind, I arrived in Japan consciously looking to “Americanize” my concept of Japaneseness, inject flexibility into my sense of Japanese society, and uproot some of the internalized definitions of Japanese purity that I had grown up with through my mother. Seeing the massive influx of tourists for the Rugby World Cup and engaging in the first couple weeks of course material for Topics in Race, Ethnicity, and Diversity, I was glad to have an article that discussed one of the many small ways in which Japan is needing to navigate cultural dilution and social progress.

Barring tattooed customers from onsens is a nationwide custom, but this tradition is upheld on an individual basis by each onsen owner. One of the great challenges that Japan faces is collectively changing its own culture without losing its essence, and I felt that this story reflected this challenge as each onsen owner grappled with whether they should adapt to the influx of foreigners by loosening their policies (and if so, by how much).

I think a lot of the exposure I had to Japan growing up was limited to language, culture, media, history, and identity. While these are all important, I was missing a critical piece: an understanding of modern Japanese society and the pressures it faces. That made this news course particularly valuable, as it presented an opportunity to learn about many different facets of modern Japanese society and hear many different perspectives on those stories each week. In returning to the United States, I think it is critical that we all understand and appreciate Japan as a multifaceted modern society facing both common and unique challenges, and I’m glad we have this course as a way to do so!