A restaurant in Japan with a sign that says “Sorry Japanese people only” has sparked outrage, but is this just a translation issue, underscoring the very reason for the restriction in the first place?
“Japanese People Only” Restaurants In Japan
A restaurant sign that says “Japanese only” could also indicate that the restaurant operates in Japanese, which means staff may not speak English and menus may not be translated. But a sign that says “Japanese People Only” does seem like a whole different matter.
This video has been posted all over social media and drawn intense outrage, even from many Japanese citizens in more cosmopolitan cities like Tokyo.
I’ve been to Japan 5-6 times for both leisure and business, always to Tokyo, but I would not call my knowledge or experience there extensive. I’ve also never seen anything like this, though I’ve certainly heard horror stories about Japanese racism and hatred of foreigners (and the line, “I’m not racist, I hate them all” seems to apply, so my American readers need not feel specifically slighted).
These sorts of signs more frequently appear in Okinawa, which is home to a US military installation. As one bar owner explained, who put up the sign below, “We only have one person working the dining hall, and one person in the kitchen, so we don’t have time to spare for customer interaction. We have no intent of discriminating.”
That’s the very definition of discrimination…even if the discrimination is between those who can speak Japanese and those who cannot (versus ethnic Japanese people and non-Japanese people).
I tend to think the language reason is merely a pretext for not wanting foreigners in restaurants, targeting Americans and Chinese travelers…and any group who can quickly become uncouth. But it’s hard to prove that…and I do think language barriers can present a problem for a restaurant.
On the other hand, instant transition apps and AI, now with voiceover features, really minimize the language barrier, though it is annoying to speak through a phone. I don’t think folks should be turned away for not passing a language test if Google Translate makes it possible to clearly convey orders and other wishes.
Therefore, I think those who defend these “Japanese People Only” policies do so on shaky grounds and that there are better ways via technology to overcome language barriers than to exclude people.
What do you think? Before you blanketly say, “Restaurants have the right to refuse service to anyone,” think about the ramifications of that and how such a policy was used for decades to exclude willing customers on the basis of their skin color.
Their country, their rules. Let them work it out internally as to whether it is appropriate to treat visitors that way, and we can choose whether to go or not. If I run into a sign like this, I’ll just turn around and go to another restaurant where I feel welcome. As an American I don’t like it, but we did drop atomic bombs there 80 years ago, so I’ll give them a pass.
I have seen these signs several times in Japan. They are not uncommon.
I agree, Robert, having seen more than a few of these over the years myself, particularly in tourist hot-spots like Shinjuku. I always figured it’s because there are racists in Japan just as there are racists everywhere else, except in Japan nobody has an existential crisis about being excluded, and takes themselves to a restaurant where they’re made to feel welcome. Not every racist needs to be confronted with a Rosa Parks moment.
Got a news flash for ya: “Foreigners” are not a race.
Plenty of “foreigners” (of many races) are just assholes in the view of many (not all) Japanese people, and honestly I can’t say I disagree. They don’t hate all non-Japanese people, but they’ve seen enough misbehavior from enough asshole foreigners to have formed the opinion that we are just more trouble than we are worth. If you only let in Japanese people, you know they are going to be polite, behave well, and not cause any trouble. With foreigners, it’s more of a roll of the dice – some will be fine, plenty will not. If you’ve got a line out the door anyway, why not turn away all the foreigners and be guaranteed that all your guests will behave? Makes your life easier, your Japanese guests are happier, you still have a full house, and nobody has to suffer all those foreign idiots. Sure, some perfectly decent foreigners get filtered out, too. Not their problem.
Yes, of course there’s racism and xenophobia in Japan (I’d argue no more than in the USA, and actually far less – look at all the breathtakingly racist xenophobes who comment here every day). That’s not what this is about. This is about foreign visitors to Japan who have behaved so badly for so long that now all foreign visitors have a pretty bad reputation, which in general is justified. Those of us who know how to behave have to suffer along with all the a-holes who wrecked our collective reputation, whether or not that’s fair, it’s just is how things are.
That’s why the gas pumps at home all have signs that say “prepay before pumping”, and why a million other things are the way they are. Too many people here are idiots. This is literally why we can’t have nice things.
The only people who have a problem with the sign are those who don’t believe in freedom of association. Forcing people to cater to others is a form of slavery so that’s not cool.
I don’t blame the Japanese or ant race or ethnicity from protecting its way of life which includes a homogeneous populace. We see the hell that is diversity in Canada, the U.S, and England.
Australia is also heading that way, unfortunately, although the discord is less racial and more ethnoreligious.
You don’t seem to know the commonly accepted definition of the word slavery. That’s ok, I’m not judging, just informing.
I am confused @Matthew. Was this a “lost in translation” moment where they wanted to say they only speak Japanese or else? I have been to Italy more times than I can count but in the last two years I saw something in different places that called my attention and made me feel sorry for the customers but in a different way. I was sorry for them being so ignorant and stupid. I witnessed this in 3 different places at different times. Let me emphasize these are great local restaurants that in the last few years started to be called out by “influencers” on Instagram. Note that these places have been operating for sometimes over 100 years and have always been known to be great but only locals and people that travel a lot knew about them and suddenly they became famous worldwide due to Instagram. One of them became so famous that you can only book tables online exactly 30 days before the date you want to eat and reservations are gone within 5 minutes. Crazy!!
So, I am sitting at my table with my family and I notice a table with Asian tourists. They are photographing everything, taking selfies, etc… Waiter comes and gives them the menu. They don’t even open the menu but keep scrolling their phones. Waiter comes back to take the order and the woman starts to scroll her phone and show the waiter pictures of the food she wanted to order. No, she didn’t know the name of the plates or probably the ingredients on them but she clearly wanted to order exactly whatever influencer she was following on Instagram had ordered. Waiter doesn’t really understand but takes the order. Food comes and before they tried they took dozens and dozens of pictures of the food, selfies with them holding the food and then started to post online. It took literally 10 minutes until they even touched the food on their plate, they tried a bit but did not eat much of it. Waiter was in disbelief.
On a pastry shop in Italy, famous again for amazing pastries, a few years ago an influencer went there and posted several videos online. I know because I follow the pastry shop and the guy tagged them on his account. So I am there as an old customer and started talking to the owner and she shared her disappointment with becoming “famous”. She said her store is always full of people taking selfies of themselves in front of the pastries but people rarely buy anything. She said they get in, pose for selfies and leave with even trying anything. Anyway, sometimes I understand the reason for owners to make some rules that might not be well understood by everyone.
Maybe make a sign?
Photo permit €10 if no food purchased.
@Santastico … I found Italy to be the Easiest place to order good food … I say “buon cibo” e “vino” and I am happy .
Both Italy and Greece are very welcoming .
Wish the US and Europe had these signs as well.
Over ten years ago there was a very popular restaurant in Paris that tried something similar. They wanted to make reservations available to locals first and succeeded in doing this not through signage. (that would have been illegal ).but making it difficult to procure access to reservations. It caused quite an outrage. They served Lyonnaise cuisine which is heavy and not for everyone.
I have Japanese family and understand that there’s significant xenophobia in Japan. This is not exactly a secret. Remember when, after Covid, a plurality of Japanese wanted to keep foreigners out? Ultimately it’s not our country and as guests we’re pretty much constrained by the rules and norms of a country we choose to visit. Sometimes that means that we’re not welcome in places.
Just remember what the Yakuza did to Shinzo Abe. I’d keep walking and find somewhere else to go if I were you.
I lived in Japan for several years and have been back multiple times since I left. It’s a whole different world than the US and while something like this would never fly (and shouldn’t) here, it’s quite common in Japan. Of course, some places are a little more PC about it (like the restaurant I went into and asked in Japanese, “do you have room for a party of six?” followed by the server in the nearly empty restaurant making a cross sign with her arms and saying “no, we do not.”
Is it “right?” No. Are we guests in their country? Yes. Just move on to somewhere else.
You’re not wrong in that things are just done differently there…but I do think it’s interesting and thought-provoking that you can simply reduce this issue to “well, we are guests there,” but not serving Jews/blacks/gays would spark rabid agitation across the rest of the civilized world.
Matthew is right that there is a mix of motivations behind this practice of rejecting foreigners. I want to add that many small restaurants in large urban centers operate on a model of high turnovers especially during lunch and dinner hours. Many of them already struggle with staffing due to the ongoing demographic decline in Japan. It is increasingly common for small restaurants in Tokyo, for example, to hire kitchen staff from Southeast Asia, many of whom struggle with Japanese, let alone English. These type of establishments also rely on the clientele to know and accept what to expect from their services. No credit card payment, carryout containers, or not to linger after finishing their food, something that’s imbedded in the Japanese way of life. So, I believe it is legitimate for restaurants to be concerned with service disruption due to language barriers and mismatched expectation from customers.
On the other hand, everyone who’s invested the time and money to travel to Japan and presumably wants to experience Japanese culture should learn a few more words beyond simple greetings. You will be surprised by how much you can learn just by repeating after tapes for 20 minutes a day. And please, do read up on Japanese culture and try to copy what the locals do. Think about it as a fun cultural experiment. Everyone will be glad you did.
Very insightful comment. Thank you, Brian.
Not surprising to me having been to Japan about 15 times. Tourists still feel like a novelty. Ie locals rarely meet your eye or nod hello on a quiet street. But there are people who are definitely trying. I was staring at the boards at shinjuku station and two people offered to help with directions. I’ve never had that before!
Maybe “no tourists” is better than Japanese only. Same message but we don’t go into a moral panic. Japan is an efficient place and busy so if you need ten minutes of instructions to order a ramen I get why restaurants would rather pass.
Even in Osaka and Tokyo we’ve struggled to find one server who speaks even basic English (which is more than fine). We google translate the menu, point and nod. We don’t always get what we thought we had ordered but we smile and have a laugh and usually the locals are happy enough to have us.
On a side note my young son and I ate in a yakatori bar in Osaka last year (ended up with kidney skewers amongst other lovely dishes). The server literally ran down the street after us as we had left ten yen in change (basically 10c)
Let’s see if the hiring practice for the dishwasher or the guy who cleans out the grease trap is “Japanese Only.”
I was denied service at a restaurant in Europe this summer for being foreign. Admittedly I was quite frustrated, and it really soured me on the city. I wasn’t going to be rude or difficult.
I understand the logic of why people say “their country their rules,” but I also think it’s a sign of low intelligence. Refusing to associate with someone because they’re different than you seems antithetical to universal principles of humanity.
Not sure what country but I never experienced any issues while eating out anywhere inEurope. Now, if it is a work trip, I kind of go with the flow since I may not be controlling my schedule but if I am going on vacation, I always plan my restaurants way in advance and usually ask help from local hotels concierge to book for me.
Tonight I had an epiphany. The only experience I had in Japan that I thought was discrimination happened with the concierge at the Okura hotel. Rethinking the uncomfortable moment now , I believe it was my fault. I tried to give him an envelope to thank him for his assistance without considering ( or remembering ) the cultural differences of tipping.
LOVE, LOVE it!
We need to be able to do this in America.
Foreigners are invaders in our land and we don’t need or want them. And YES, I’m fine if they don’t want us.
Plenty of single people in America so we need to stop mixing countries!