3.1 INTRODUCTION
Chapter 3 investigates the gendered nature of the foreign worker problem in Japan by reconsidering how the “beginning” of the problem was narrated in the 1980s. Specifically, it puts forth three lines of arguments. First, I argue that although female migration for sex work preceded the influx of male migrant laborers, it was not perceived as a foreign worker problem. Instead, migrant women were commonly called Japayuki-san, and their inflow was cast as the
Japayuki-san phenomenon (Japayuki-san genshō) or the Japayuki-san problem (Japayuki-san mondai) (Sellek, 2001, p. 158). This indicates that the term gaikokujin rōdōsha (foreign
workers) is not only a racialized and class-based concept but also a gendered category. Second, the mass media resorted to the moralistic language in narrating the lives of irregular female migrants. The moralistic frame in turn circumscribed the terms of understanding female migration and induced the media to represent migrant women as trafficking victims at best, but rarely as workers whose labor rights ought to be protected. Lastly, while women’s groups fought hard against the stereotypical images of female migrants as Japayuki-san, they left unchallenged the premise of the Japayuki-san discourse that posited migrant women as powerless and passive subjects. Women’s groups’ portrayal of migrant women as innocent victims certainly helped to highlight their sufferings, but at the price of constraining their agency. In other words, their
counter discourse was fraught with tensions between the goal of empowering migrant women and the strategy of stressing their victim status.
Japan’s foreign worker problem is widely believed to have cropped up in the late 1980s as the number of newcomer male migrant workers soared. But if we follow Sellek’s historical narrative, a sharp increase in male foreign workers constituted the second stage of labor migration in postwar Japan. In her account, the first wave of labor migration was marked by the inflow of Asian female sex workers from the late 1970s to the mid-1980s. As Table 3.1 shows, migrant women made up the majority of “illegal” foreign workers until 1987, although they were not labeled as such. In 1983, for example, 92.6% of foreigners apprehended for engaging in “unqualified activities” were female. Of them, Chinese, most of whom were Taiwanese, topped the list at 657, followed by Filipinos at 123, Koreans at 107, and Thais at 55 (Kawakita, 1983, p. 58). In 1985, over 90% of apprehended migrant women were found working in the sex industry (Nyūkoku Kanri Kyoku, 1987, p. 108). Their occupations comprised hostesses (83.1%), strippers (6.8%), and prostitutes (5.8%) (Nyūkoku Kanri Kyoku, 1987, p. 108).
Table 3.1: Number of Foreigners Apprehend for Immigration Law Violations (1981-1989)
Year 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 Female 1,226 1,705 2,139 4,433 4,942 5,945 7,018 5,385 4,817 Male 208 184 200 350 687 2,186 4,289 8,929 11,791 Total 1,434 1,889 2,339 4,783 5,629 8,131 11,307 14,314 16,608
Source: Immigration Bureau of the Justice Ministry, cited in Sellek, 2001, p. 32
Even though most migrant women were exploited as cheap laborers in the sex industry in the 1980s, they were not regarded as foreign workers in the media and official documents (Sellek, 2001, p. 158). The Public Policy Research Committee (Kōkyō Seisaku Chōsakai)
(1991), for instance, defined foreign workers as “those who recently came to Japan from Asia or Central and South America and engage or intend to engage in unskilled jobs in restaurants, factories, or construction sites irrespective of their visa status” (p. 190). Absent from this definition were female sex workers who still accounted for a significant portion of the foreign labor population at that time. Consequently, a public discussion about the acceptance of foreign workers was geared almost exclusively towards male manual and menial laborers. Ironically, the emergence of the foreign worker problem drew public attention away from the presence of female migrants.
This chapter probes why foreign workers were associated predominantly with male manual and menial laborers in the 1980s despite the fact that the majority of migrant workers had been women until 1987. Specific guiding questions include: 1) How were female migrants depicted in the mass media in the 1980s? and 2) how did these depictions help to shape the public images of newcomer female migrants? In addressing these two questions, I explore how political and economic forces, gender, and sex factored in framing a certain pattern of labor migration as a foreign worker problem and others as peculiar issues in sex and entertainment businesses.
My contention is that female migrants received little recognition in the “foreign worker” debate because they were both materially and symbolically disadvantaged for being women, “illegal aliens,” and sex workers. Migrant women workers occupied the lowest position within Japan’s political, economic, and social structures in the 1980s. Their subordinate status is best encapsulated by the fact that job opportunities for migrant women were limited mostly to sex- affective types of jobs during this period. The vulnerable position of female migrant workers not only subjugated them to harsh exploitation and abuse but also placed severe constraints on their
rhetorical agency. A close examination of media portrayals of migrant women workers in the 1980s, therefore, elucidates the prominence of masculinity, the prosperity of the sex industry, and the prevalence of covert racism in contemporary Japan. As Leheny (1995) puts it, “Japan, like many other countries, has witnessed an interesting conflation of nationalism and sexuality in the past century. Power relationships are frequently embedded in sexuality, and the combination of sex markets with questions of citizenship and nationality has further highlighted these” (p. 376).
As samples of media texts, I investigate articles, commentary, and editorials on newcomer migrant women in national dailies and general-interest magazines in the 1980s as indexed by the following three databases: Web Ōya-bunko, Nichigai: Magazine Plus, and
Gaikokujin Rōdōsha Mondai Bunken Shūsei (Catalogue of Literature on the Foreign Worker Problem).23 Also subject to my analysis are books for general readers that bear on the topic of migrant women. For the purpose of comparison, I perused specialized texts—in particular, articles in labor magazines and scholarly journals—that addressed the issue of female migration. While I browsed through relevant written texts published throughout the 1980s, my analysis is primarily focused on the 1987-1989 period because these three years witnessed a drastic shift in the media’s interest from the Japayuki-san phenomenon to the foreign worker problem.
23 Published by the National Diet Library of Japan and Nichigai Associates, Magazine Plus “covers 8,500 scholarly
journals in various fields and general interest periodical titles, and provides bibliographical references to 4,850,000 articles from 1975 to the present” (California Digital Library, n.d., n.p.). According to the East Asian Library of Princeton University, Web Ōya-bunko is “a useful addition to Magazine plus” as it “includes over 1.7 million journal articles since 1988, collected from 370 magazines including many minor ones” (n.d.). Gaikokujin Rōdōsha Mondai
Bunken Shūsei is a comprehensive bibliography on foreign worker problems at home and abroad compiled by the
Japan Institute of Labour in March 1995. It has an independent section on female migrants under the title of “Asian migrant laborers (‘Japayuki-san,’ ‘Japayuki-kun’).”
3.2 KARAYUKI-SAN, JAPAYUKI-SAN, AND FEMALE FOREIGN WORKERS