Going National:
The Japanese Community in Contemporary Singapore
Essay by Eyal Ben-Ari

By some estimates there are over 600,000 Japanese expatriates around the world at this time. Unlike tourists, these people reside in their "host" countries for periods ranging from two to five years, and are overwhelmingly businessmen and their families. At the beginning of the 1990s I decided that it would be interesting to explore the dynamics of one such community since there were very few sustained studies of them. I chose the community in Singapore because I thought it would be a suitable venue for a lone anthropologist bent on examining the gamut of formal and informal Japanese organizations found overseas. I carried out my study between June 1992 and February 1994, and again between July 2001 and January 2002. Being an anthropologist, I conducted research through a combination of methods that included interviewing (with around a hundred individuals), participating in local events (such as sports days, receptions and holiday festivals) and gathering written data (historical studies, statistical information, and brochures).

An Overview
A Japanese expatriate community has been in existence in Singapore since the end of the 19th century. The post-war community, however, has developed primarily since the 1970s. Spurred by strong government support, Singapore has become a hub of business headquarters and manufacturing facilities for all Southeast Asian and in many cases South Asian countries. While the large-scale movement of Japanese business interests overseas began in the late 1960s, the move into Southeast Asia began a decade later. At its beginning, this movement was comprised mostly of production and service facilities but in the last decade and a half it has come increasingly to include banking and financial operations. This stands in contrast to London where the Japanese community developed around employees of financial companies and only later came to include substantial numbers of engineers and managers in manufacturing firms. The large corporations made the first moves into Southeast Asia as they had into other parts of the world but in recent years small and medium sized companies have come in their wake. Singapore stands at the forefront of Japan's economic expansion into Southeast and South Asia. By some estimates as much as one-fourth of Singapore's gross domestic product is generated by Japanese companies. With the economic slowdown in Japan some representatives of smaller companies have left Singapore and some large companies have slowly been decreasing their activities.

Nevertheless there is still a sizeable Japanese community on the Island. Numbering over 22,000 people, it is the second largest expatriate community in Singapore. The community is overwhelmingly comprised of managers and their families. The men, who are posted to Singapore for a period ranging between three and five years, have high educational achievements and are on the managerial track. Given Japanese corporate patterns of secondment to overseas posts, most of these men are in their late thirties and early forties. A small minority are "straw widowers" (tanshin funin) who left their families in Japan but the great majority come to Singapore with a wife and children. The composition of the community is the outcome of formal and informal policies in Japanese companies and of the policies of the Singaporean government. First, for managerial track jobs most companies continue to favor males. Second, companies often (informally) encourage these men to marry early in their careers as a sign of maturity and responsibility. Third, for many executives and engineers a posting abroad has become an expected part of career advancement. Fourth, a placement overseas does not occur at career entry but usually happens a few years later. Consequently it is married male employees (usually during the middle of their careers) who are sent overseas, taking along their families. A wife, it is still thought in many Japanese organizations, is there to support her husband and to bring up the children. Thus even if a wife had a job in Japan, overseas she is under pressure to retreat from the labor force and take up her "traditional" role. Finally, strict migration policies in Singapore make it very difficult for other types of migrants to find work there. So despite self-labeling the Japanese community in Singapore is not a "Little Japan" with a population of all ages and diverse occupations, it has a skewed population that is relatively homogeneous in its demographic and social make-up. In this respect it offers a contrast with the Japanese communities in London or Los Angeles and is more similar to the one in Dusseldorf.

Under Another Sun should be seen against this background. The video depicts the variety of Japanese expatriate experiences on the Island rather than the mainstream. My essay aims to fill in this background by depicting community organization and the patterns of life experiences of the "typical" Japanese expatriate families. I focus on two main dimensions (and the tension between them) in the lives of Japanese: careering at the workplace, and cultivating social relations with family and friends. Each of these two centers of activity is ordered by its own rhythm of long-term conduct.

From an organizational point of view, the essence of a career is that it is a predictable sequence of movements through an organization. Yet from an individual's point of view, careers are uncertain, unpredictable: given the numerical limits on promotions only some people will be able to advance. While it has become a commonplace that in the much vaunted lifetime employment system of Japan (applicable to men in large corporations) one enjoys job security, what is much less appreciated are the uncertainties over promotion that mark this system. Individuals must constantly and actively undertake strategies to assure promotion. The career path in a Japanese company takes one through a more or less regular pattern of job rotations within company headquarters and between headquarters and branch offices or other facilities.

With the expansion of a firm's operations beyond the borders of Japan, once it establishes offices and production facilities abroad an assignment overseas is built into the pattern of rotations. Such an assignment is also a sort of promotion: because facilities outside of Japan are like "daughter companies" (although their exact legal definition may vary), people who were (for example) department heads (kacho) in Japan become division heads (bucho) overseas. This point was put to me by an engineer in a small company that produces plating for semiconductors, "While in Japan I was just an engineer in charge of a small area, here I am like the head of a factory". Hence in comparison with postings to in Japan a stint abroad presents opportunities to handle greater responsibilities and more important tasks.

A tour of service out of Japan is now a normal part of most managerial careers. For example, according to a manager in the Bank of Tokyo about fifty or sixty per cent of his firm's managerial corps has been abroad. The manager of the treasury and personnel department at Sumitomo estimated that about twenty per cent of that general trading company's staff are abroad at one time. The deputy general manager at Nissho Iwai (a general trading company) observed that it is now typical for about half of the company's managers to be abroad. And a vice president of Nomura Securities observed that while the major part of the company's business is still focused on Japan itself, a sizeable number of executives are developing careers by specializing in overseas investments and transactions.

Three major themes appeared in discussions I had with Japanese managers in Singapore about the potentials and hazards of a stint abroad. Not surprisingly, all three themes directly bear upon the issue of future promotion: the skills one garners abroad, the possibilities for developing business deals, and the networks of people one cultivates. All of the men I interviewed emphasized that a tour of duty in a foreign country is an opportunity to learn new skills. A manager from Kyodo Printing put this succinctly when he said that his period in Singapore should be seen as part of "a life-long learning process in the organization: we must study till we die". Others talked either about the knowledge they gathered about the place where they they were posted (e.g. savvy regarding local or regional markets and legal environments) or about gaining general capacities such as sales and marketing skills, or about managing a large and ethnically diverse array of employees, or about becoming more fluent in English. The deputy general manager of Komatsu, an engineer by training, talked in very positive terms about how he had to learn such things as financial control, marketing, sales, and the administrative side of his company.

These are the pluses but there also are minuses. The skills and knowledge garnered abroad may be offset by diminished opportunities for gathering experience that will enable one to function more effectively within the firm in Japan, and this might hinder one's prospects for advancement. The deputy director at a large Asahi Glass factory confided that while he was learning about Singapore's legal and business environment he was not sure that this would be of "good benefit" upon his return to Japan, and that he would have to "catch up" with his colleagues who had remained there. But the main danger of staying abroad---which came up time and again throughout my interviews---is disconnection from one's network of personal supporters in Japan. For example, a manager at an equipment company mentioned "You may feel out of place after a few years, and then you can end up being sent to the edge of Japan, like Hokkaido".

Another aspect of a stint in Singapore has to do with ideas that many managers have about the uniqueness of Japanese culture (the Nihonjinron perspective). Individuals use these ideas primarily to explain intercultural encounters in the workplace. They draw a line between the Japanese part of a company and the rest of it: an invisible but significant boundary around what could be termed the "actual" company. For Japanese expatriates the real organization-the one both personally relevant and culturally shared-is the one in which Japanese people participate. When an executive of a trading company accompanied me to the door at the end of our interview, he stopped and told me to look at the employees sitting in a large hall. "You see, there are maybe eighty employees here. You can't see it, but only about ten of them belong to the real company; the Japanese belong to the real company".

Japanese culture, in his view, is so unique that only some people can participate in it. Accordingly, a central role for Japanese business people in a workplace overseas is to be cultural mediators. This notion was often phrased in humorous terms as when I was told that the primary function of Japanese managers was to translate documents or telephone messages for the local staff. The task also entails teaching Japanese customs and manners to locals. A manager at the service facility of a large manufacturer told me how uncomfortable he and his colleagues feel when addressed by family name only, without the addition of "-san". He went on to tell me how his staff has to teach each newly recruited local employee to add "-san" to Japanese names.

Another issue is that classic quality ascribed to Japanese corporate culture, group responsibility. A man who works in a financial service company said, "In Singapore I feel that there is more hierarchy. Like between locals who have finished their A levels and those who took O levels.....And this leads to people building walls around themselves and not being willing to take responsibility for anything outside their area. Very different from the Japanese". An engineer from Seiko said, "As you know, the Japanese like working in groups but Singaporeans are relatively speaking individualists. You have to change their way of thinking and to teach them how to work in groups, like we did for the new production system we brought here about three years ago."

Consistent with this view is a danger that that came up time and again in my exchanges: the risk of losing one's Japanese essence, of appearing to have "gone native". There is a very strong and widespread conception among the expatriates that they must maintain the appearance-in demeanor, language and attire-of being Japanese. A high level executive in one of the securities firms noted that he dresses differently when meeting Singaporeans and when meeting other Japanese. "When I meet Japanese guests I always wear a suit. If I don't I will feel awkward, very uneasy. Maybe they will think that I am too localized, too relaxed." The director of Sumitomo Bank remarked that "After I returned to Japan from quite a few years abroad they thought I needed to be rehabilitated and they put me to work first in internal auditing and then running one of the Tokyo branches". And the director of a furniture company mused good-naturedly, "Last year I returned to Japan for reeducation: part of the reeducation they carry out on people who return from abroad. There was this guy in the personnel department who said there are people overseas who become a little too independent, more than in Japan. And maybe their way of thinking becomes different from that of "normal people", meaning ones who work in the main office in Japan".


Families
Other issues center on conceptions of family development. For the men I interviewed competition within the company must be balanced against what they perceive as family needs and potentials. This means three aspects of the family cycle: the educational achievements of children, the duty of caring for aged parents, and the role of women as "wives."

With regard to education, the governing conception is that the longterm success of children requires a longterm investment within Japan. If the children do not receive their schooling in Japan they may return home "too late" and lose out in Japan's very competitive educational system. It is thus not surprising to learn that the Japanese community in Singapore has its own set of schools----there is a kindergarten serving nearly 400 children, two primary schools serving about 1,900, a junior-high school enrolling 700 and high school with about 500. The language of instruction is Japanese and the curricula are the standard ones prescribed by the Japanese Ministry of Education. In addition, there are at least twelve juku, those private supplementary afternoon and evening schools that prepare children for university examinations in Japan.

All of these educational establishments are situated near "Japanese" neighborhoods with virtually all of their students being Japanese. The teachers and almost of all of the administrative staff also are Japanese nationals. The few families who have enrolled their children in international schools almost always will have them attend supplementary Japanese language classes offered by the Japanese Association on weekends. Children may be living abroad but they are still in the rigorous Japanese educational system.

A second issue is the duty of caring for aging parents. I encountered the implications of this lifecourse situation---that most expatriates are in their forties or early fifties---many times during fieldwork. The director of Tomen Corporation had come as a "straw widower" because his wife had to stay in Japan to take care of his aging parents. Another manager's wife was obliged to return to Japan to care for her father and mother after her only sister's husband was seconded to the United States.

In a small minority of families the wife's career in Japan is seen to be important enough for her husband to live on his own in Singapore with the family reuniting every few months. For most women, however, the stint in Singapore represents a career break since they find very few opportunities to work on the Island. Singapore government policy and the policies of some Japanese companies define the women as being in Singapore to support their husbands. While for many wives in Singapore being abroad offers a unique period of freedom from the social pressures of relatives and neighbors in Japan, the move to the Island nevertheless encourages a "swing" towards more conservative familial patterns.


Living in a Bubble
Expatriates all over the world create enclaves or "bubbles" to shelter themselves in the environment of the host society. Physically these bubbles are manifested in areas into which expatriates retreat to live in proximity, and within which they feel safe and comfortable. Socially, while they may interact with locals at work their social networks and leisure activities are normally monopolized by fellow expatriates. Such is the case for Japanese in Singapore.

Japanese expatriate families tend to congregate in three or four residential areas around the Island. Their relative affluence allows them to live in the more well-to-do areas of Singapore (usually upper-middle class precincts). But residential segregation is the outcome of other factors as well. First, government policy in Singapore tightly controls the housing market so that expatriates are channeled in the direction of specific housing types and areas of the city. Second, there long-term relations between Japanese companies and real-estate agents (many of the agents work for international agencies that have offices in Japan). This gives the agents a good deal of power to direct newcomers to particular neighborhoods. Third, a desire for proximity to the Japanese schools contributes to residential clustering.

The presence of a large Japanese expatriate community has spawned an extensive range of other services: supermarkets and specialty shops, restaurants and cafes, clothing stores and boutiques, book shops and hobby stores, travel agents and shipping representatives. Locally printed or produced Japanese language newspapers cater to their needs and tastes. In ways similar to what has happened in London and Los Angeles many Singaporean firms have responded by offering Japanese product lines, most evident in supermarkets and specialty shops. For many people the Japanese Association (the chief expatriate club on the Island) is the hub of their activities. The buildings of the Association offer meeting and reception halls, study rooms, a karaoke lounge, two restaurants, a library (for books, videos and DVDs), and a medical clinic. Its programs include such things as English and Mandarin language lessons, Ikebana circles and traditional Japanese poetry recitations, lectures and lessons on contemporary issues, and customary Japanese festivals and golf tourneys.

Family consumption habits expectably enough tend to reproduce a Japanese ambiance in Singapore. Many families bring futon with them and most have Japanese foodstuffs sent to them from Japan despite the fact that they can be bought on the Island. In research projects carried out by my students both at the beginning of the 1990s and again in 2001 it turned out that many families prefer to cook Japanese-style at home and occasionally go out for "exotic" local cuisine in one of Singapore's thousands of eateries. Leisure activities - overwhelmingly carried out with other Japanese nationals - become much more extensive when outside of Japan since the expatriate families have more time and more money at their disposal than they had in Japan.

Leisure pursuits include golf, tennis, swimming, Mandarin and English classes and lessons in cooking the local cuisine, lessons very often run by Japanese. Take a typical observation, this from the representative of NHK in Singapore. We were talking about golf when he said, "Here I can play once or twice a week whereas in Japan I simply could not afford to. And anyway if I didn't play golf in Singapore then things would be very boring. I play in a Japanese owned club, Hoshigaoka [located in Malaysia just across the causeway]. More than half the members are Japanese. When I'm in the club I hear Japanese spoken all of the time; and the Japanese restaurant, the clubhouse, the layout of the course and even the grass, which is imported into Malaysia, all are thoroughly Japanese."

In short, many Japanese in Singapore live in a world populated by other Japanese. Their networks and associations allow for a rich social life but that do not reach out far beyond other Japanese nationals. One may well ask, looking comparatively, whether the foreseeable future portends a change. With the growth of a Japanese resident population in such cities as London the expatriate bubble has begun to break. Japanese nationals in London are much more integrated into the wider city and involved in its cosmopolitan activities than in the past. In Singapore, however, relative segregation remains the norm for all but a few Japanese expatriates. The key factor here seems to be the continued governmental control of migration to the Island.

To conclude, as an unintended consequence of their stint in Singapore the Japanese expatriates discover their "Japanese-ness". Experiences at the work-place, in schools and in leisure pursuits seem to lead to very little "internationalization" either in the sense of creating and maintaining contacts with locals or other expatriate foreigners or in the sense of a greater awareness of the cultures of others. The expatriates in Singapore are thrown together with Japanese from other regions and workplaces in Japan, and grow much more aware of the national identity and the cultural assumptions that they share. For the majority, going overseas is not so much a process of "going international" as it is one of "going national".


Recommended Readings
Befu, Harumi and Nancy Stalker (1996): Globalization of Japan: cosmopolitanization or spread of the Japanese Village? In Harumi Befu ,ed.: Japan Engaging the World: A Century of International Encounter. Publication Number 1, Center for Japanese Studies, Teikyo Loretto Heights University, 101-20.

Ben-Ari, Eyal (forthcoming): The Japanese in Singapore: the dynamics of an expatriate community. In Roger Goodman, Ceri Peach, Ayumi Takenaka and Paul White, eds.: Global Japan: The Experience of Japan's New Immigrants and Overseas Communities. London: Curzon.

Clammer, John and Eyal Ben-Ari , eds. (2000): Japan in Singapore: Cultural Occurrences and Cultural Flows. London: Curzon.

Glebe, Guenther (1986): Segregation and intra-urban mobility of a high-status ethnic group: the case of the Japanese in Dusseldorf. Ethnic and Racial Studies 9: 461-83.

Hurdely, Louise and Paul White (1999): Japanese investment and the creation of expatriate communities. Euro-Japanese Journal 5 (2): 17-21.

Sakai, Junko (2000): Japanese Bankers in the City of London: Language, Culture and Identity in the Japanese Diaspora. London: Routledge.


Self Introduction
I am an anthropologist by training. I have carried out a number of research projects on "things Japanese": on white-collar suburbs (in the early 1980s), on early childhood education (the late 1980s), on the Japanese community in Singapore, and most recently on the contemporary Japanese Self-Defense Forces. In addition, I have conducted a few projects in Israel: on Jewish saint-worship, and on the Israeli military. I am primarily interested in the dynamics and features of a variety of organizations and on understanding them in their wider social and cultural background.