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Yesterday Sono Ayako contributed an opinion piece to the Sankei Shimbun, “‘Tekido na kyori’ tamochi ukeire o,” that has made serious waves on Twitter and elsewhere online for fairly obvious reasons.  A rough translation is below:

Let Them In, But Maintain “Appropriate Distance”:
Labor shortages and immigrants

When viewing recent problems like the rise of the Islamic State, I can only think about how difficult it is to understand the emotional and cultural backgrounds of people from different ethnicities. In Japan, meanwhile, where younger generations make up an ever-shrinking portion of the population, we are being pressed into a need to admit immigrant laborers to maintain the nation’s labor force.

In particular, in the field of nursing care for the elderly, Japan must do away with barriers to the entry of immigrant workers, such as insisting that they obtain certain certifications or attain a certain level of language proficiency. When the job is simply caring for the elderly, there is no need for care providers to speak Japanese at some particular level or have some specialized knowledge of health issues.

Look at any country and you will commonly see a family structure where a grandchild takes care of his or her grandmother. This grandchild has no specialized healthcare skills. It is enough to be a kind, caring person.

When it comes to phrases like “Grandma, try eating this,” in Japanese, even a young woman who has never been through a language training program can learn how to say what is needed in just two or three days on the job. There are young women in nearby countries who want to come to Japan to earn a living; we have to let them come and ease the labor difficulties our nursing care sector now faces.

At the same time, though, we must create a system that strictly maintains these people’s legal status as immigrants. There is nothing inhumane about insisting that people who come to Japan to  make money abide by the terms of the contract that allows them to do so. Unless we prevent the problem of illegal immigration, no policy of increasing immigration will last for long.

Now, this may seem like it flies in the face of what I have written so far, but it is next to impossible to attain an understanding of foreigners by living alongside them.

Ever since I learned of the situation in the Republic of South Africa some 20 or 30 years ago, I have been convinced that it is best for the races to live apart from each other, as was the case for whites, Asians, and blacks in that country.

In Johannesburg there stands an apartment building that was once home to white families alone. After the discriminatory policies were done away with, however, blacks also came to live there. It did not take long for this multiunit residence to fall to pieces after that.

Black people fundamentally live in large family groups. Once the blacks purchased units in this apartment, they would call their family members to come live with them. Eventually there would be 20 to 30 people living in a single unit where an ordinary white or Asian family would live as husband, wife, and perhaps a couple children.

Now if residents choose to sleep not in their own beds, but on the floor, that is their prerogative. But water is a different matter. This apartment had only arranged a water supply that was enough for families of the expected size to use.

Soon enough, this place became a building where water never came out when you turned the faucet. It was around this time that the remaining white families all left. Now only blacks live there.

Ever since learning of this, I have said: “Humans can do many things together: business, research, and sports, to name a few. But when it comes to living, this is one area where we must remain apart.”