Japanese Diaspora And Migration Reconsidered

In contrast to most studies of migration, which assume that migrants arrive from less developed countries to the industrialised world, where they suffer from discrimination, poor living conditions and downward social mobility, this book examines a different sort of diaspora – descendants of Japanese migrants or "Nikkei" – in Bolivia, who, after a history of organised migration, have achieved middle-class status in a developing country, while enjoying much symbolic capital among the majority population. Based on extensive original research, the book considers the everyday lives of Nikkei and their identity, discusses how despite their relative success they remain not fully integrated into Bolivia's imperfect pluricultural society and explores how they think about, and relate to, Japan.

Japanese Diasporas examines the relationship of overseas Japanese and their descendents (Nikkei) with their home and host nations, focusing on the political, social and economic struggles of Nikkei. Frequently abandoned by their homeland, and experiencing alienation in their host nations, the diaspora have attempted to carve out lives between two worlds. Examining Nikkei communities and Japanese migration to Manchuria, China, Canada, the Philippines, Singapore and Latin America, the book compares Nikkei experiences with those of Japanese transnational migrants living abroad. The authors connect theoretical issues of ethnic identity with the Japanese and Nikkei cases, analyzing the hidden dynamics of the social construction of race, ethnicity and homeland, and suggesting some of the ways in which diasporas are transforming global society today. Presenting new perspectives on socio-political and cultural issues of transnational migrants and diaspora communities in an economically intertwined world, this book will be of great interest to scholars of diaspora studies and Japanese studies.

"Essays on Japanese migration to the United States from an international and historical perspective, considering impacts from social and political events on both sides of the Pacific"--

Economic and social difficulties at the beginning of the 20th century caused many Japanese to emigrate to Brazil. The situation was reversed in the 1980s as a result of economic downturn in Brazil and labour shortages in Japan. This book examines the construction and reconstruction of the ethnic identities of people of Japanese descent, firstly in the process of emigration to Brazil up to the 1980s, and secondly in the process of return migration to Japan in the 1990s. The closed nature of Japan's social history means that the effect of return migration' can clearly be seen. Japan is to some extent a unique sociological specimen owing to the absence of any tradition of receiving immigrants. This book is first of all about migration, but also covers the important related issues of ethnic identity and the construction of ethnic communities. It addresses the issues from the dual perspective of Japan and Brazil. The findings suggest that mutual contact has led neither to a state of conflict nor to one of peaceful coexistence, but rather to an assertion of difference. It is argued that the Nikkeijin consent strategically to the social definitions imposed upon their identities and that the issue of the Nikkeijin presence is closely related to the emerging diversity of Japanese society.

This book confronts the question of who and what is a Nikkei, that is, a person of Japanese descent, by presenting 18 case studies from throughout the Americas—including Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Paraguay, Peru, and the United States.

São Paulo, Brazil, holds the largest number of Japanese descendants outside Japan, and they have been there for six generations. Japanese immigration to Brazil started in 1908 to replace European immigrants to work in São Paulo’s expanding coffee industry. It peaked in the late 1920s and early 1930s as anti-Japanese sentiment grew in Brazil. Approximately 189,000 Japanese entered Brazil by 1942 in mandatory family units. After the war, prewar immigrants and their descendants became quickly concentrated in São Paulo City. Immigration from Japan resumed in 1952, and by 1993 some 54,000 immigrants arrived in Brazil. By 1980, the majority of Japanese Brazilians had joined the urban middle class and many had been mixed racially. In the mid-1980s, Japanese Brazilians’ “return” labor migrations to Japan began on a large scale. More than 310,000 Brazilian citizens were residing in Japan in June 2008, when the centenary of Japanese immigration was widely celebrated in Brazil. The story does not end there. The global recession that started in 2008 soon forced unemployed Brazilians in Japan and their Japanese-born children to return to Brazil. Based on her research in Brazil and Japan, Mieko Nishida challenges the essentialized categories of “the Japanese” in Brazil and “Brazilians” in Japan, with special emphasis on gender. Nishida deftly argues that Japanese Brazilian identity has never been a static, fixed set of traits that can be counted and inventoried. Rather it is about being and becoming, a process of identity in motion responding to the push-and-pull between being positioned and positioning in a historically changing world. She examines Japanese immigrants and their descendants’ historically shifting sense of identity, which comes from their experiences of historical changes in socioeconomic and political structure in both Brazil and Japan. Each chapter illustrates how their identity is perpetually in formation, across generation, across gender, across class, across race, and in the movement of people between nations. Diaspora and Identity makes an important contribution to the understanding of the historical development of ethnic, racial, and national identities; as well as construction of the Japanese diaspora in Brazil and its response to time, place, and circumstances.

This book is an exploration of media scandals in contemporary Japanese society. In shedding new light on the study of scandal in Japan, the book offers a novel view of scandal as a specific mediatized ritual which follows moral disturbances throughout Japanese history. Media and society are analyzed largely in terms of social performances, while the focus is on how Japanese transgressors talk and act when explaining their scandals to the public. A detailed analysis of three case studies is provided: the drug scandal of the popular Japanese celebrity Sakai Noriko; the donation scandal centering the heavyweight politician Ozawa Ichirō; and the Olympus accounting fraud revealed by the British CEO Michael Woodford. This book will appeal to students and scholars of Japanese culture and society, anthropology, communication and media studies.