Brandon To: Japan demands integration – Britain just debates it
Who's accountable for the results?
Brandon To is a Politics graduate from UCL and a Hong Kong BN(O) immigrant settled in Harrow.
I am writing this from Japan, where I have spent the past week rediscovering what it means to be unmistakably in someone else’s country.
The cultural signals are relentless. Bowing — so much that my back may never recover. Escalator etiquette (standing on the left, how deeply unsettling for a Briton). The absolute silence on public transport. The choreography of politeness in even the most mundane transactions.
Japan has an unshakeable confidence in its own way of doing things.
But something else struck me this time. Compared to my last visit over a decade ago, there are far more foreign faces. Not just tourists, but immigrants.
In Tokyo, I found myself speaking to a bank manager from Denmark in an izakaya (the Japanese equivalent of a pub), who was heading to his weekly onsen retreat. In Kyoto, I chatted with two Malaysian exchange students in a tea house. Convenience store workers, hotel staff, restaurant servers… many were from South or Southeast Asia.
Yet what surprised me was not their presence.
It was how unmistakably Japanese they were.
They spoke fluent Japanese (at least according to my Japanese friend). They bowed instinctively. They navigated the rituals of politeness with ease. They did not appear to be living adjacent to Japanese society; they were part of it.
And it made me reflect on a simple truth about immigration that Britain has spent years avoiding.
There is a spectrum, from tourist to student to worker to permanent resident to citizen. The duration differs. The legal status differs. But the core principle is the same: when you enter another country, adapt to it.
Integration is not an optional extra that begins after settlement. It is the starting condition of being a guest, be it two weeks or two decades.
Japan is unapologetic about this. If you wish to live and work there, you are expected to learn the language properly, respect public order, and internalise their etiquette. That expectation is not framed as hostility. It is framed as respect — both for the host country and for those who came before you.
It is, in effect, a country with faith in its own culture.
Britain once had that confidence too. We are a country famous for etiquette, from holding doors open to queuing instinctively. But more importantly, we are defined by deeper civic habits: respect for the rule of law, free speech, fairness in public life, and tolerance rooted in shared norms.
Where we faltered was not in allowing immigration. It was in losing clarity about the need for integration.
For too long, governments of different stripes treated migration primarily as an economic instrument. Integration was assumed to happen organically. Cultural cohesion …
Who's accountable for the results?
Brandon To is a Politics graduate from UCL and a Hong Kong BN(O) immigrant settled in Harrow.
I am writing this from Japan, where I have spent the past week rediscovering what it means to be unmistakably in someone else’s country.
The cultural signals are relentless. Bowing — so much that my back may never recover. Escalator etiquette (standing on the left, how deeply unsettling for a Briton). The absolute silence on public transport. The choreography of politeness in even the most mundane transactions.
Japan has an unshakeable confidence in its own way of doing things.
But something else struck me this time. Compared to my last visit over a decade ago, there are far more foreign faces. Not just tourists, but immigrants.
In Tokyo, I found myself speaking to a bank manager from Denmark in an izakaya (the Japanese equivalent of a pub), who was heading to his weekly onsen retreat. In Kyoto, I chatted with two Malaysian exchange students in a tea house. Convenience store workers, hotel staff, restaurant servers… many were from South or Southeast Asia.
Yet what surprised me was not their presence.
It was how unmistakably Japanese they were.
They spoke fluent Japanese (at least according to my Japanese friend). They bowed instinctively. They navigated the rituals of politeness with ease. They did not appear to be living adjacent to Japanese society; they were part of it.
And it made me reflect on a simple truth about immigration that Britain has spent years avoiding.
There is a spectrum, from tourist to student to worker to permanent resident to citizen. The duration differs. The legal status differs. But the core principle is the same: when you enter another country, adapt to it.
Integration is not an optional extra that begins after settlement. It is the starting condition of being a guest, be it two weeks or two decades.
Japan is unapologetic about this. If you wish to live and work there, you are expected to learn the language properly, respect public order, and internalise their etiquette. That expectation is not framed as hostility. It is framed as respect — both for the host country and for those who came before you.
It is, in effect, a country with faith in its own culture.
Britain once had that confidence too. We are a country famous for etiquette, from holding doors open to queuing instinctively. But more importantly, we are defined by deeper civic habits: respect for the rule of law, free speech, fairness in public life, and tolerance rooted in shared norms.
Where we faltered was not in allowing immigration. It was in losing clarity about the need for integration.
For too long, governments of different stripes treated migration primarily as an economic instrument. Integration was assumed to happen organically. Cultural cohesion …
Brandon To: Japan demands integration – Britain just debates it
Who's accountable for the results?
Brandon To is a Politics graduate from UCL and a Hong Kong BN(O) immigrant settled in Harrow.
I am writing this from Japan, where I have spent the past week rediscovering what it means to be unmistakably in someone else’s country.
The cultural signals are relentless. Bowing — so much that my back may never recover. Escalator etiquette (standing on the left, how deeply unsettling for a Briton). The absolute silence on public transport. The choreography of politeness in even the most mundane transactions.
Japan has an unshakeable confidence in its own way of doing things.
But something else struck me this time. Compared to my last visit over a decade ago, there are far more foreign faces. Not just tourists, but immigrants.
In Tokyo, I found myself speaking to a bank manager from Denmark in an izakaya (the Japanese equivalent of a pub), who was heading to his weekly onsen retreat. In Kyoto, I chatted with two Malaysian exchange students in a tea house. Convenience store workers, hotel staff, restaurant servers… many were from South or Southeast Asia.
Yet what surprised me was not their presence.
It was how unmistakably Japanese they were.
They spoke fluent Japanese (at least according to my Japanese friend). They bowed instinctively. They navigated the rituals of politeness with ease. They did not appear to be living adjacent to Japanese society; they were part of it.
And it made me reflect on a simple truth about immigration that Britain has spent years avoiding.
There is a spectrum, from tourist to student to worker to permanent resident to citizen. The duration differs. The legal status differs. But the core principle is the same: when you enter another country, adapt to it.
Integration is not an optional extra that begins after settlement. It is the starting condition of being a guest, be it two weeks or two decades.
Japan is unapologetic about this. If you wish to live and work there, you are expected to learn the language properly, respect public order, and internalise their etiquette. That expectation is not framed as hostility. It is framed as respect — both for the host country and for those who came before you.
It is, in effect, a country with faith in its own culture.
Britain once had that confidence too. We are a country famous for etiquette, from holding doors open to queuing instinctively. But more importantly, we are defined by deeper civic habits: respect for the rule of law, free speech, fairness in public life, and tolerance rooted in shared norms.
Where we faltered was not in allowing immigration. It was in losing clarity about the need for integration.
For too long, governments of different stripes treated migration primarily as an economic instrument. Integration was assumed to happen organically. Cultural cohesion …
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