Hometown Foreigners

We traditionally define a “foreigner” as someone who comes from a country other than our own. But that definition is too easy. It does not fully encompass the range of people who find themselves “foreigners” in their own hometowns (that is facing exclusion and discrimination): sometimes because of the occupation they hold.

The Japanese film “Okuribito,” known among English-speaking audiences as “Departures,” explores the subtle but serious stigma that society can attach to certain lines of work. The movie, which won the 2009 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, focuses on the life of Daigo, the protagonist, who loses his job as a cellist in Tokyo and moves back to the countryside without a job. There, he accidentally ends up in an interview for a job as someone dealing with corpses, and he finds himself unable to turn the position down when his interviewer offers him the job. The film then follows Daigo as his sudden and unexpected career choice leads to serious repercussions in his life.

“Okuribito” limits its scope to the social stigma that a single character faces because of the job he finds himself in. But its significances and implications and more profound and far-reaching. Throughout Japanese history—and indeed the history of many other nations—those who deal with death in their field of work have been relegated to a position outside the main social hierarchy. In Japan’s Tokugawa Period (1603-1868), those who worked in tanning, butchery, or other occupations that dealt directly with death found themselves outside of the four-tiered government-imposed status system, which grouped people and granted them rights based on their occupations. Although the class system was dissolved in the late 19th-system and burakumin, as they were known, were integrated into society, oppression persisted. Even as official laws recognized burakumin as equal, they faced harsh discrimination in education and in the workplace. Of course, the situation has vastly improved today, but the question of burakumin remains perhaps an uncomfortable topic in Japan.

Of course, the examples of Daigo and burakumin are only two of so many across the world in which people face discrimination simply on the basis of their occupation. They illustrate nonetheless how people can be foreigners even in their own hometowns. In the case of the burakumin, it was institutionalized discrimination; in the case of Daigo, who was not a burakumin by birth, it is social stigma. In both cases, the individual surrenders his ability to participate in society fully simply because he performs a task no one else wants to perform. They are viewed as strange, as “foreign.”

Perhaps what we can glean from this juxtaposition of a fictional film with actual history is that strategies to eliminate foreignness must simultaneously address both personal attitudes and legal/administrative social structures. That is, the burakumin faced legal and political discrimination, becoming foreigners in their own lands of birth, but even after their emancipation, social forces continued to hinder their integration into society. Daigo did not face discrimination in law, but he still clearly faced a subtle form of discrimination. Thus, we see that the abolition of “foreignness” (whether we mean social exclusion against particular groups in society or the profound exclusion of non-citizens) requires both individual and institutional change.

This is no easy task, but at the very least, recognition of the inseparability of these two dimensions is crucial. A nation’s thoughts and attitudes become reified in its laws and ordinances, which in turn influence people’s thoughts and attitudes towards each other in a never-ending interplay of the individual and social structures.  The implication is that improving either half of the cycle will positively influence the other half. But one cannot fully overcome discrimination if there is not progress in both dimensions.

We see, then, how foreignness can mean so much more than simply a word on a passport or a shade of skin color. It can be expressed through law or through thought, and it can appear even in the workplace of our own hometowns.