{"id":45301,"date":"2026-06-22T14:14:47","date_gmt":"2026-06-22T14:14:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/45301\/"},"modified":"2026-06-22T14:14:47","modified_gmt":"2026-06-22T14:14:47","slug":"reading-the-air-on-being-japanese","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/45301\/","title":{"rendered":"Reading the air on being Japanese"},"content":{"rendered":"

As birth rates fall and countries turn to immigration to address their labor shortages, a lot of countries around the world are struggling with crises of national identity. Japan is one of them. Over a decade ago, Japan began opening itself up to mass immigration<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Because Japan did this later than other rich nations, immigrants aren\u2019t yet as numerous as in Europe or the US, but the percentage is rising fast. And so discussions about what it truly means to be Japanese are starting to emerge.<\/p>\n

I thought it would be useful for my readers \u2014 most of whom live in America or other English-speaking nations that are going through their own crises of national identity right now \u2014 to get some perspective on how Japanese people think about these issues. <\/p>\n

And so I asked my friend Hiroko Yoda to write me a post about it.\u00a0Hiroko is a Japan-based entrepreneur, cultural historian, and\u00a0writer<\/a>. She\u2019s the author of a new book,\u00a0\u201cEight Million Ways to Happiness<\/a>\u201c, which is a memoir exploring Japan\u2019s modern secular-spiritual landscape. She also writes\u00a0on Substack<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In this post, she writes about how shared culture, rather than adherence to a particular religious doctrine, is what binds Japan so tightly together. Interestingly, \u201cculture\u201d is\u00a0the same answer I arrived at<\/a>\u00a0when I asked the question of what will bind America together in the future.<\/p>\n

Although I live in Japan, as a Japanese person married to an American, and who studied at American universities for my undergrad and graduate degrees, I probably pay more attention to happenings in the US than many Japanese people. <\/p>\n

One of the topics I have found most interesting is the ongoing struggle to define what an American is. The reason being, we Japanese are grappling with this issue as well.<\/p>\n

As Noah has written<\/a>, Japan is accepting more immigrants than ever before. When my husband and I moved to Tokyo in 2003, international couples were still uncommon, and we\u2019d sometimes draw stares if we walked hand in hand. <\/p>\n

These days, it\u2019s completely unremarkable. The numbers of tourists visiting Japan increase year by year, and so does the number of people taking permanent residence. I see many international families in the suburb where we live, and I don\u2019t think we are unusual, at least as regards urban centers.<\/p>\n

As Japanese are finding new ways to co-exist and live alongside non-Japanese, they are also revisiting what it means to be Japanese. As\u00a0I\u2019ve written<\/a>\u00a0in my own newsletter, the question once centered simply on ethnicity, but now many are coming to believe that shared cultural values are more important.<\/p>\n

Are you Japanese simply because of where you were born, or are you Japanese because of how you participate in society? Superficially, this resembles the arguments going on in America. Are you American because of some kind of heritage, or are you American because you embrace shared values, like those laid out in the Constitution?<\/p>\n

But there is an interesting difference, too. Japan is (or was) a country with relatively little immigration; that\u2019s why the question of who\u2019s Japanese traditionally hinges on ethnicity. On the other hand in America, an immigrant melting pot, the litmus test often seems to return to faith.<\/p>\n

It comes up again and again in American discussions about what it means to be American. Take this recent essay from\u00a0The New York Times\u00a0opinion writer Ross Douthat:<\/p>\n

One doesn\u2019t need to be a specific\u00a0kind\u00a0of religious believer to be a good believer in the Declaration [of Independence]. But if you look at the sweep of American history, it\u2019s very hard to disentangle the advance of equality from the religious belief that our rights come from God and that human beings are equal in his eyes\u2026 it has more power in a context where most Americans believe in a providential God.<\/p>\n

And then there\u2019s Derek Thompson, who in a recent conversation with religious scholar Ryan Burge, noted:<\/p>\n

There\u2019s this category of Americans who have gone into religion as if it\u2019s a foreign country, harvested certain souvenirs, and brought them back to the world of secularism. They practice yoga but have no interest in understanding its religious origins. They meditate but are not remotely interested in any Buddhist version of nirvana.<\/p>\n

To which Burge replies:<\/p>\n

They only wanted the parts of religion they liked and left the others behind\u2026<\/p>\n

You can\u2019t just pick and choose\u2026A lot of people are doing that with religion right now. They\u2019re walking down the buffet line, picking one piece, putting it on their plate, and calling it a spiritual life. That doesn\u2019t endure.<\/p>\n

And Thompson concludes:<\/p>\n

If you don\u2019t have that central spine of purpose, the community won\u2019t last. If your only purpose is \u201clet\u2019s get together,\u201d that\u2019s not enough. You need that higher purpose\u2014that vertical spine\u2014in order to build a truly strong horizontal community.<\/p>\n

These pundits are arguing that ideas alone \u2013 the values of the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution \u2013 aren\u2019t enough to keep Americans together, whether in communities or as a country. America\u2019s loneliness epidemic, its polarization, its young citizens\u2019 loss of hope: a big part of it can be attributed to the fact Americans don\u2019t go to church or synagogue or temple or what have you anymore.<\/p>\n

All of which makes me want to say: have you ever been to Japan?<\/p>\n

Japanese, as a nation, don\u2019t subscribe to any one faith. In fact, there\u2019s a popular saying \u201cborn Shinto, married Christian, buried Buddhist.\u201d We pick and choose, bringing what we like from various traditions \u2013 the purifications of Shinto, the pretty aspects of Christian weddings, the traditions of Buddhist funeral rites \u2013 into our secular lives. We\u2019re so flexible about it that we often answer no when people ask if we\u2019re religious. Look at this chart:<\/p>\n

\"\"\/<\/a><\/p>\n

I\u2019m going to put aside the question of how accurate this is. I actually wrote an\u00a0entire book<\/a>\u00a0on how I believe surveys like this can miss the forest for the trees. (Spoiler: it involves how one defines \u201creligion.\u201d) But Burge and others argue Americans are \u201csetting themselves up for failure\u201d in becoming less religious, or at least in not going to religious institutions.<\/p>\n

America is a flexible society that is rigid when it comes to religion; Japan is the opposite, a rigid society with a surprising flexibility when it comes to faith. There\u2019s an old phrase that sums up Japan\u2019s traditional spiritual cosmology:\u00a0yaoyorozu no kami, which means eight million deities. It isn\u2019t an accounting; it\u2019s an expression of awe at the infinite nature of the sublime in all its forms. It incorporates, absorbs, rather than draws lines. In short, it\u2019s radically inclusive.<\/p>\n

I get that America is a religious country. I was taken to Sunday school every week when I was a homestay student in Indiana in the 1990s. I recited the Pledge of Allegiance alongside the other students every day. But there\u2019s no pledge of allegiance in Japanese schools. The Japanese flag wasn\u2019t even displayed in any of my classrooms. None of my classmates ever went to anything resembling a Sunday school.<\/p>\n

But we were united in other ways. Ways that look like faith to outsiders, but just felt like everyday life to us. We made New Year\u2019s visits to shrines or temples for\u00a0hatsumode, a first prayer for the year. Many of us had Buddhist-style altars in our homes, where we kept photos of departed family members. Many of us carried\u00a0omamori, Shinto or Buddhist amulets for scholarship or travel safety on our schoolbags.<\/p>\n

But if you\u2019d asked the majority of us what our faith was, or who we were praying to, we\u2019d have reacted with utter confusion. None of us saw amulets as a replacement for studying, or looking both ways before crossing the street. They were simply cute ways to wish. If you\u2019d asked us what we\u00a0believed, I honestly don\u2019t think we would have even understood the question. We just\u00a0did.<\/p>\n

So if institutional faith is core to the communities that form a healthy society, why is Japan\u2019s so successful without it?<\/p>\n

First, let me be clear here. I don\u2019t see Japan as some kind of utopia or even a role model. I just see it as different. But the fact it is different \u2013 and not struggling in the ways many commentators seem to think America is struggling, at least regards faith as an identity \u2013 is what might make the Japanese counterpoint relevant. Let me also be clear that I believe faith can nurture a life or a community. If your personal faith nourishes you, I cheer you on.<\/p>\n

But speaking broadly, if Japan can maintain a stable society without faith, it would seem to indicate it isn\u2019t a\u00a0necessity\u00a0for a healthy society.<\/p>\n

So what\u00a0is\u00a0keeping Japan together?<\/p>\n

For a long time, Japanese could rely on clear lines to define themselves, like language (Japanese being little spoken outside the nation) and terrain (being an archipelago). But things are changing, and changing fast. It isn\u2019t particularly difficult to get to Japan anymore. More people outside Japan are learning and speaking Japanese than ever before. More want to live here than ever before.<\/p>\n

And Japan is aging and shrinking. We\u2019ve \u201clost<\/a>\u201d three million citizens over the last few years alone, as deaths outpace births. The numbers of foreign visitors and permanent residents are higher than ever before. All of these factors are driving the question of what it means to be Japanese, which is playing out in online forums, TV shows, newspapers, and election contests throughout Japan.<\/p>\n

A\u00a0recent Stanford survey<\/a>\u00a0about immigration shows that race isn\u2019t a major factor in resistance to immigration. Rather, Japanese language ability is. In this chart, you can see how many more respondents chose to admit a hypothetical immigration applicant based on their ability to speak fluently.<\/p>\n

\"\"\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Now, this might seem like a no-brainer. Of course, you want to admit people who can communicate with you. But \u201cfluent\u201d is doing a lot of lifting here that might not be obvious in English.<\/p>\n

Japanese is classified as a \u201chigh-context\u201d culture, meaning that a large amount of cultural knowledge is required to speak fluently. (Other high-context cultures include China, Korea, and many Arab countries.) <\/p>\n

There\u2019s a lot of implicit communication, meaning context is often implied rather than expressed directly. Meanwhile, Americans, Germans, and Scandinavians (among others) are framed as \u201clow-context,\u201d meaning conversations tend to be explicit, with context usually spelled out.<\/p>\n

Anyone who\u2019s studied Japanese will know what I mean. We often leave pronouns and even subjects out, in casual speech. You\u2019re expected to\u00a0kuuki wo yomu\u00a0\u2013 \u201cread the air\u201d and intuit meaning. So when Japanese say they want immigrants to master Japanese, they\u2019re talking less about the linguistics of speaking than they are context \u2013 \u201cthe air,\u201d in other words.<\/p>\n

In a recent\u00a0survey<\/a>, 62% of Japanese reported that they wanted immigrants to not only follow the rules, but also \u201cetiquette and customs.\u201d Some interpret this as draconian or authoritarian, but I don\u2019t think so. <\/p>\n

If you correlate it with that Stanford survey, you can see that once Japanese fluency is achieved, locals ranked people of a wide variety of ethnic backgrounds as acceptable (the dot at far right in each graph.)<\/p>\n

\"\"\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Of course, not everyone in Japan agrees with this thinking. There are those who have a vested interest in keeping the definition of Japanese as strict as possible, who use foreigners as scapegoats for society\u2019s failings, who wish to keep the number of outsiders who immigrate here as low as possible. The\u00a0far-right party<\/a>\u00a0that rode an anti-immigrant platform to a surprising number of seats in parliament in the 2025 elections is one example. <\/p>\n

But I believe the winds are against people who think in this way. The demographics are against them. The technologies that let us cross borders physically, and share our ideas across them virtually, are against them. <\/p>\n

And most of all, I think our cultural traditions are against them. When our cosmology, so to speak, is so inclusive, it\u2019s hard to square why our society should not be. Anyone who trumpets conservative values in Japan is eventually going to run up against that conundrum.<\/p>\n

As a Japanese, it isn\u2019t my place to say who is or isn\u2019t an American. But I can say what I personally envision for my country\u2019s identity going forward. I see it in little moments all over the city today. Non-Japanese employees greeting customers in polite Japanese. Foreign folks showing respect at temples and shrines. <\/p>\n

The caucasian man and his daughter I saw commuting to kindergarten on a\u00a0mama-chari<\/a>\u00a0bike, her tiny pastel backpack slung incongruously over his big shoulders. In other words, the stuff of everyday life. To me, Japanese isn\u2019t what you look like; it\u2019s how you act. In other words, it\u2019s how you read the air.<\/p>\n

Hiroko Yoda is a Tokyo-based translator, photographer and author. She specializes in re-contextualizing Japanese culture in a fun and engaging way for English readers. Read <\/a>and subscribe<\/a> to her Substack here. <\/p>\n

This\u00a0article\u00a0was first published on Noah Smith\u2019s Noahpinion\u00a0Substack and is republished with kind permission. Become a Noahopinion\u00a0subscriber<\/a>\u00a0here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As birth rates fall and countries turn to immigration to address their labor shortages, a lot of countries…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":45302,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1871,31813,8,5245,3548,31814,17,31815],"class_list":["post-45301","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-japan","tag-block-2","tag-hiroko-yoda","tag-japan","tag-japan-culture","tag-japan-immigration","tag-japan-nationalism","tag-japanese","tag-japanese-identity"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45301","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45301"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45301\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45302"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}