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Saints and Sinners Saints and Sinners Perceptions of Filipinas in Christian religious communities in Tokyo Anna Shaw [email protected] Student Number: 10443495 Thesis for MSc Contemporary Asian Studies Graduate School of Social Sciences University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands Supervisor: Dr. Rosanne Rutten 20 June 2013 Top photo courtesy of Goodness Tokyo, Bottom photo courtesy of Maki Takahashi Table of Contents Introduction ........................................................................................................................... 3 Driving Questions .......................................................................................................................... 4 Research Setting ............................................................................................................................. 5 Research Population ..................................................................................................................... 6 Research Methodology ................................................................................................................. 8 Interviewing ............................................................................................................................................... 8 Timelines ..................................................................................................................................................... 9 Participant Observation ..................................................................................................................... 10 Facebook.................................................................................................................................................. 10 Challenges ............................................................................................................................................... 10 Incorporation and Exclusion........................................................................................... 12 Perceptions of Filipina Migrants..............................................................................................12 Resistance and Agency ...............................................................................................................13 Religious Community Building ................................................................................................15 Assertions of Modernity ................................................................................................... 17 Filipino perceptions of Japanese society ...................................................................... 17 Japan as the Asian West: “the Philippines of Tomorrow” ................................................18 Japan as an antithesis to the West ...........................................................................................24 Degrees of Difference: Catholic v. Born Again .....................................................................27 Ambivalence ..................................................................................................................................28 Conclusion .....................................................................................................................................31 Beyond the Entertainer: Japanese perceptions of Filipinas .................................... 33 Japanese Immigration System ..................................................................................................34 Images of Filipinas in Japanese society ..................................................................................36 The Entertainer ...................................................................................................................................... 37 The Pious Homemaker ........................................................................................................................ 38 The Hard Worker .................................................................................................................................. 41 Conclusion .....................................................................................................................................43 Class Clashes: Filipino’s perceptions of each other ................................................... 44 Class background of respondents ............................................................................................45 ‘Looseness’ of working class Filipinas ....................................................................................47 Degrees of Difference: Catholic v. Born Again narratives of entertainment ................49 Born Again Narratives ........................................................................................................................ 49 Catholic Narratives .............................................................................................................................. 50 Ambivalence towards stereotypes ............................................................................................54 Conclusion .....................................................................................................................................55 Religion and Resistance .................................................................................................... 56 Religion and Passivity .................................................................................................................57 Negotiation among Catholics ....................................................................................................61 Negotiation among Born Again Christians ...........................................................................65 Conclusion .....................................................................................................................................68 Conclusion ........................................................................................................................... 69 Acknowledgments .............................................................................................................. 71 Bibliography........................................................................................................................ 72 2 Introduction Over unlimited refills of coffee and an appetizer of chicken quesadillas, I ask Charlotte about Japanese immigration policy. Lowering her voice to a whisper she compares immigration rules in Japan to her perception of the ‘incompetent’ immigration system in the Philippines. As she lowers her voice I hear someone chattering in Tagalog next to us. I glance at Charlotte. She knows exactly why I'm looking at her and says in a cavalier manner, “Yes, yes. I heard them already. They are Filipino.” The women had been seated for twenty minutes before I realized they were Filipinas. What I had just discovered, Charlotte picked up on the instant she saw them sit down. She then immediately adjusted her voice to a level at which they would be unable to discern the topic of conversation. During the rest of the interview she whispered her responses to me when explaining, for example, her Japanese husband’s perception of Filipinos as parasites, her experiences in entertainment, and her perception of most Filipinas in Japan as uneducated. Charlotte’s example speaks to how attuned migrants are to perceptions and expectations emanating from their own migrant group. This aspect is one that is often neglected in studies on migrants. In the context of Japan, the majority of Filipina migrants came in the 1980s and 1990s to work in the entertainment industry, an industry in which their bodies and work was sexualized in ways pleasing to male Japanese patrons. Women in entertainment perform a variety of activities from dancing, singing, and modeling, to pouring drinks for and flirting with customers, in an effort to assuage their egos and loosen their wallets (Bedford & Hwang 2010: 88). As a result of this large-scale employment, Filipina migrants in Japan are often portrayed in sexualized manners that strip them of agency and humanity (Mackie 1996: 49). Due to the unique nature of Filipina migration to Japan, numerous scholars have documented the migration, settlement, and incorporation of Filipinas as they shifted from working in the entertainment industry, to marrying Japanese men and starting families, to occupying an increasingly diverse range of industries as teachers, IT professionals, care workers, NGO workers, academics and entrepreneurs (Amaroso 2003; Ball & Piper 2002; Faier 2007; Faier 2008; Fuess 2003; Lopez 2012; Mackie 1998; Parreñas 2006; Piper 2003; Suzuki 2000; Suzuki 2003; Suzuki 2004; Suzuki 2011; Tyner 1996). 3 What is often neglected however, is the politics of identity building and community building that occurs within migrant communities and among migrants of the same nationality. If these aspects are touched upon, they take a peripheral role to the more common focus of perceptions existing between members of the host society and members of migrant groups (see, for example, Constable 2007: 164-201; Suzuki 2003; Suzuki 2000). Central to this thesis is the question of how Filipinas perceive each other in relation to their host society and how they negotiate these perceptions. Moreover, it is possible to identify certain aspects of this process that are informed by mainstream perceptions of Filipinas in Japan, whether historical or contemporary. In this thesis I take two Christian religious communities
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