"Fin-de-Siècle Berlin Stay: Immigrants / Labor / Refugees"

2020/04/10

On the morning after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States, I got off the subway passing through an immigrant neighborhood in Berlin and was hurrying toward the exit. Less than 24 hours had passed since the attacks. In Germany, along with information that the hijackers were Arab students from the Hamburg University of Technology, a sense of paranoia was spreading that the group of perpetrators might be hiding in Germany.

The scene I encountered was this: a German citizen was screaming at an Islamic immigrant, "Terrorists get out of Germany!" and glared at me, saying, "This is what happens because the number of immigrants is increasing." This incident made me realize that I was on the "hated side," and I ended up following the footsteps of the terrorist leader, Mohamed Atta. Chapter 6, "The Hijacker Mohamed Atta and His Era," is the highlight of the book.

Of Germany's total population of approximately 83 million (2018 Federal Statistical Office of Germany), 20.8 million, or one-quarter, have an immigrant background. These are people who were born without either themselves or their parents holding German citizenship. The core consists of immigrant workers and their families who supported the economic growth of East and West Germany after the war. Germans are now diversifying. In economically distressed areas and among people in financial difficulty, the number of those who cannot tolerate diversification and support xenophobic nationalism is increasing. This is the future of Japan. Such thoughts were the direct motivation for writing this book. And I wrote about the background of the immigrants who are hated in Germany and their joys and sorrows.

Japan's cabinet approved the 2018 amendment to the Immigration Control Act. A large number of immigrant workers will arrive. The flip side of a society with few births and many deaths is an immigrant society. In the future, the vague understanding that "Japanese people are those with the same blood" will no longer be valid. Japanese people with different skin colors will appear, and we will be forced to ask who a Japanese person is. We might accept Japanese people with different skin colors if they are "active and useful," but can we accept Japanese people who "have problems and are useless"? While writing this book, I thought that living with the idea that "everyone is different, and everyone is good" was the temporary solution.

"Fin-de-Siècle Berlin Stay: Immigrants / Labor / Refugees"

Jun Kato

Sairyusha

270 pages, 2,200 yen (excluding tax)

*Affiliations, job titles, etc., are as of the time of publication.