whoa. how did I miss this realization.
I've talked before about JET's "real" purpose being to encourage young foreigners to love japan and japanese culture so that when they return home, they will happily buy japanese products and gladly create economic ties with japan.
I totally missed the other possibilty for these pampered foreigners until now though. Some of them are bound to love japan enough to want to stay, and make cute little haafu babies. These people help in a very small way to combat the dropping birthrates, but more importantly, they allow japan to import carefully selected foreigners. All jets have college educations, after all. They aren't the criminal rabble that might otherwise trickle in through economic-opportunity based emi/immigration. Plus they'll all have a few years of good experience so that when it's time to really enter the workforce they won't be scared off.
This would seem to be the sort of foreigner I am.
There was a cartoon I saw over the break that featured a poor man feeding mochi to a rich man's rat out of generosity, and the rat brought him the rich man's money. Maybe there's a recurring cultural theme of providing much more nuturing circumstances for others in general as well.
1 comment:
you are mistaking my intent.
I don't believe that governments working to ensure the future economic well-being of their people is a bad thing.
I just think it's interesting that I have fallen for it hook, line and two smoking barrels. I love the place, and have committed a lot of energy to making sure I can stay for a long time. I'm aware however that whatever job I have in my japan future, it won't be nearly as nice as this one... this one is after all designed with the intent of making me love japan.
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