'The barriers of racial feeling [between Japanese and foreigners], of emotional differentiation, or language, of manners and beliefs, are likely to remain insurmountable for centuries."
So wrote the Greco-Irish Japanophile and resident of Japan Lafcadio Hearn of the great wall of misinterpretation and misapprehension that he saw towering between Japanese and non-Japanese more than 100 years ago.
In Hearn's era very few foreigners living in Japan spoke the language or took more than a globetrotter's interest in its people's true aspirations. We can safely say now that that great wall is no more than a waist-high hedge. Non-Japanese people from all countries of the world have come to live in Japan, experiencing everyday life here virtually as natives.