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Aliens inside their homes
IN 1989, BEFORE THE FREE FALL OF Japan’s
bubble economy, a somewhat alarmist book entitled Our Neighbors
Tomorrow--Foreign Workers was published in Japanese. Authored
by Kawahara Yasuo and Hanami Tada, the book outlined the threat
to this “homogeneous island society” by the increased
influx of foreign workers, including Filipinos.
A decade since then, alien demography has
changed so dramatically that it behooves the authors to re-write
and re-title their book--Aliens Inside Our Homes. As an agent
of change, workers have proven themselves a lesser force to
reckon with than foreigners marrying with the Japanese. Remaining
on the fringes of mainstream society, the bulk of these “undocumented”
workers would rather toil silently than ruffle the feathers
of their Japanese neighbors, who could easily report them
to the Immigration authorities.
Marriage, however, brings a foreigner to the
very heart of this ethnocentric society. Statistics are hard
to come by, but if we take cue from Ambassador Domingo Siazon
Jr’s estimate of 5,000 to 7,000 couples a year, there
should at least be 70,000 Japanese-Filipino couples now. The
upsurge in such unions started in the 80s in the heyday of
the entertainment boom when more than 100,000 young Filipinas
were deployed to Japan every year.
A notable aspect of these marriages are the
wide disparities in age, education, economic background, culture,
religion, and language--factors generally considered important
to a lasting marital relationship. Little wonder that the
divorce rate exceeds 50%. Although no comprehensive study
has been done so far, anecdotal evidences show that latter-generation
marriages contracted in the last 15 years are more likely
to end up, if they have not yet ended, in divorce. The early-generation
marriages, or those contracted in the 70’s and earlier,
are more likely to last. But even these marriages have followed
the general trend of rising divorce rate in Japan—especially
when the husbands reach retirement age.
Lasting intermarriages point to success in
assimilation of the foreign party. But marriages that go awry
cause alarm, because the problems they engender can indeed
destabilize social harmony. A common problem is “serial”
marriages. After divorce, a Filipina hastens to re-marry to
extend her visa, arising from ignorance of an alternative
to convert it to long-term resident visa. Because it is a
“marriage of necessity,” it is likely to end up
in another divorce.
The problem becomes more complicated when
children are involved. Even in an amicable divorce, the right
of parental custody has to be designated. If the Filipina
cannot prove her “economic capability” to sustain
the child, she can easily forfeit this right in contested
cases. Oftentimes, the children are the real losers—even
if they can be financially supported by the mother, they lose
the social support of a Japanese parent especially in terms
of schoolwork and integration into society at large. Children
under the custody of a foreign parent often become targets
of bullies because of being “different.”
A foreigner can expect little in terms of
financial support for the child after divorce, especially
if she were the one who filed for the divorce. In cases mediated
by the Family Court, a process that is daunting for the foreigner
especially if she speaks little Japanese, the husband often
wrests the condition of freedom from financial responsibility
in exchange for consenting to divorce.
For Japanese who consider their son’s
marriage to a foreigner a threat to their clan solidarity,
one of the primary considerations is inheritance and wealth.
There are many cases in which parents transfer property rights
to their other children as soon as a son marries a foreigner,
to preclude the foreign spouse from claiming inheritance rights.
There are deathbed cases of either the parents or the spouse
in which the foreign wife is unknowingly made to stamp her
personal seal on a divorce paper or a legal instrument ceding
her rights of inheritance or insurance claims to the sibling
or other kin of the Japanese spouse. I am familiar with a
case in which the brother of a Japanese married to a Filipina
maneuvered to alter the beneficiary of a postal life insurance
policy from the legal spouse to his own spouse. Even by not
pressing claims because of language inability, the foreign
spouse and the children in her custody often forfeit rightful
claims to inheritance, insurance or pension.
Sadly, even when a foreigner has been let
into a Japanese home through marriage, in many cases he or
she is still an outsider, if not made to feel like one. *
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