Japan to add language requirements for long-term visas?

FREQUENT COMMENTER MAC sent along a link to a BBC report in the comments section that was too interesting to stay buried:

Officials are investigating how a scheme adding a language requirement for long-term residency visas and work permits could be implemented.

Capital idea!

As with every question, there are of course pros and cons.

The pro:

Officials say Japan’s Foreign Minister, Komura Masahiko, has long held the view that it would be better if long-term visitor (sic) could speak Japanese. Mr Komura says…it would improve their quality of life, and society as a whole here would benefit too.

He hits the bulls-eye with the first reason.

The con:

But some here fear that requiring all foreign workers to learn Japanese before they arrive could harm Tokyo’s efforts to attract international business and to compete with other Asian cities like Singapore and Hong Kong.

Requiring language proficiency of all foreign workers would definitely cause problems for the businesses in every sector in which they are employed. It would not cause serious problems by demanding the same of long-term residents, however.

But this is the BBC, so they will find a way to cast Japan in a negative light. Here’s how they conclude their report:

Last year an opinion poll carried out for the government found that more than half the foreigners who live in areas where they mix with Japanese people would like more opportunities to interact with them. But only one in 10 of the Japanese living in the same areas wanted to talk to someone from abroad.

That raises more questions than it answers. “More than half of the foreigners”? How much more than half? This suggests that a significant percentage of foreigners don’t want any more opportunities to interact with Japanese than they already have.

If that’s the case, one has to wonder what they’re still doing here. They can’t all have been assigned to work in Japan against their wishes by their employers.

And how was that last question for Japanese worded? Were Japanese-fluent foreigners specified, or just foreigners?

If it were the latter, it would be understandable. Who wants to hang out with someone you can’t understand? (Only the adventuresome, the bored, or the inebriated.)

I doubt very much it was the former. Japanese-fluent foreigners get to talk to everybody. Most Japanese are thrilled to be able to converse with a foreigner who understands Japanese. I take a brisk, hour-long walk every morning before starting work, and I can’t count all the people I wind up talking to: The guy who runs the hardware store on the corner down the block, a young guy doing the laundry for a hotel, an old man running a bicycle shop, a young woman going to work at the supermarket, the entire track team from a local girls’ high school (and their teacher/coach), grade school kids on their way to school, and the other people out walking the same course at the same time.

And I don’t consider myself any more gregarious than the average person.

But of course, people aren’t stupid. If I were part of that category of foreigner who wasn’t interested in more interaction with Japanese, all of those people would sense it without having to talk to me.

And that just might edge them into the category of Japanese who didn’t want to talk to anyone from abroad.