Immigrant Japan

Immigrant Japan PDF Author: Gracia Liu-Farrer
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501748645
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
Immigrant Japan? Sounds like a contradiction, but as Gracia Liu-Farrer shows, millions of immigrants make their lives in Japan, dealing with the tensions between belonging and not belonging in this ethno-nationalist country. Why do people want to come to Japan? Where do immigrants with various resources and demographic profiles fit in the economic landscape? How do immigrants narrate belonging in an environment where they are "other" at a time when mobility is increasingly easy and belonging increasingly complex? Gracia Liu-Farrer illuminates the lives of these immigrants by bringing in sociological, geographical, and psychological theories—guiding the reader through life trajectories of migrants of diverse backgrounds while also going so far as to suggest that Japan is already an immigrant country.

Immigrant Japan

Immigrant Japan PDF Author: Gracia Liu-Farrer
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501748645
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
Immigrant Japan? Sounds like a contradiction, but as Gracia Liu-Farrer shows, millions of immigrants make their lives in Japan, dealing with the tensions between belonging and not belonging in this ethno-nationalist country. Why do people want to come to Japan? Where do immigrants with various resources and demographic profiles fit in the economic landscape? How do immigrants narrate belonging in an environment where they are "other" at a time when mobility is increasingly easy and belonging increasingly complex? Gracia Liu-Farrer illuminates the lives of these immigrants by bringing in sociological, geographical, and psychological theories—guiding the reader through life trajectories of migrants of diverse backgrounds while also going so far as to suggest that Japan is already an immigrant country.

Help (Not) Wanted

Help (Not) Wanted PDF Author: Michael Strausz
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438475535
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Book Description
In Help (Not) Wanted, Michael Strausz offers an original and provocative answer to a question that has long perplexed observers of Japan: Why has Japan's immigration policy remained so restrictive, especially in light of economic, demographic, and international political forces that are pushing Japan to admit more immigrants? Drawing upon insights developed during nearly two years of intensive field research in Japan, Strausz ultimately argues that Japan's immigration policy has remained restrictive for two reasons. First, Japan's labor-intensive businesses have failed to defeat anti-immigration forces within the Japanese state, particularly those in the Ministry of Justice and the Japanese Diet. Second, no influential strain of elite thought in postwar Japan exists to support the idea that significant numbers of foreign nationals have a legitimate claim to residency and citizenship. This book is particularly timely at a moment shaped by Brexit, the election of Trump, and the rise of anti-immigrant political parties and nativist rhetoric across the globe.

Immigration and Citizenship in Japan

Immigration and Citizenship in Japan PDF Author: Erin Aeran Chung
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9781107637627
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Japan is currently the only advanced industrial democracy with a fourth-generation immigrant problem. As other industrialized countries face the challenges of incorporating postwar immigrants, Japan continues to struggle with the incorporation of prewar immigrants and their descendants. Whereas others have focused on international norms, domestic institutions, and recent immigration, this book argues that contemporary immigration and citizenship politics in Japan reflect the strategic interaction between state efforts to control immigration and grassroots movements by multi-generational Korean resident activists to gain rights and recognition specifically as permanently settled foreign residents of Japan. Based on in-depth interviews and fieldwork conducted in Tokyo, Kawasaki, and Osaka, this book aims to further our understanding of democratic inclusion in Japan by analyzing how those who are formally excluded from the political process voice their interests and what factors contribute to the effective representation of those interests in public debate and policy.

Global Japan

Global Japan PDF Author: Roger Goodman
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134431449
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
The Japanese have long regarded themselves as a homogenous nation, clearly separate from other nations. However, this long-standing view is being undermined by the present international reality of increased global population movement. This has resulted in the establishment both of significant Japanese communities outside Japan, and of large non-Japanese minorities within Japan, and has forced the Japanese to re-conceptualise their nationality in new and more flexible ways. This work provides a comprehensive overview of these issues and examines the context of immigration to and emigration from Japan. It considers the development of important Japanese overseas communities in six major cities worldwide, the experiences of immigrant communities in Japan, as well as assessing the consequences for the Japanese people's view of themselves as a nation.

Japanese Immigrant Clothing in Hawaii, 1885–1941

Japanese Immigrant Clothing in Hawaii, 1885–1941 PDF Author: Barbara F. Kawakami
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 9780824817305
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
Between 1886 and 1924 thousands of Japanese journeyed to Hawaii to work the sugarcane plantations. First the men came, followed by brides, known only from their pictures, for marriages arranged by brokers. This book tells the story of two generations of plantation workers as revealed by the clothing they brought with them and the adaptations they made to it to accommodate the harsh conditions of plantation labor. Barbara Kawakami has created a vivid picture highlighted by little-known facts gleaned from extensive interviews, from study of preserved pieces of clothing and how they were constructed, and from the literature. She shows that as the cloth preferred by the immigrants shifted from kasuri (tie-dyed fabric from Japan) to palaka (heavy cotton cloth woven in a white plaid pattern on a dark blue background) so too their outlooks shifted from those of foreigners to those of Japanese Americans. Chapters on wedding and funeral attire present a cultural history of the life events at which they were worn, and the examination of work, casual, and children's clothing shows us the social fabric of the issei (first-generation Japanese). Changes that occurred in nisei (second-generation) tradition and clothing are also addressed. The book is illustrated with rare photographs of the period from family collections.

The Issei

The Issei PDF Author: Yuji Ichioka
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780029324356
Category : Japan
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
A portrait of the first Japanese immigrants, known as the Issei. Leaving behind a still-traditional, feudal society for the wide-open world of America, the Japanese were long barred from holding citizenship and regarded for many years as unassimilable. Their story is one of suffering and struggle that has produced a record of courage and perseverance.

Multiculturalism in the New Japan

Multiculturalism in the New Japan PDF Author: Nelson H. H. Graburn
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 9781845452261
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 266

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Book Description
"...a valuable addition to the increasing literature on Japanese multiculturalism which has challenged the long-held homogeneous Japan thesis...A particular contribution of this ... book is to illuminate the ground-level process where hybridities emerge and group boundaries are redrawn in a particular local context...I greatly enjoyed reading [this book] from beginning to end. My undergraduate students who encountered it in their subject reading list also enjoyed it. I would recommend it highly for both undergraduate and graduate students studying Japanese society." - Japan Studies "This book importantly seeks out the meanings behind the nooks and crannies in which peoples from different cultures are juxtaposed within Japan. However the real work of living side by side, of respecting individual and cultural differences, of embracing diversity...remains a vital challenge to both Japan, as well as to scholars who stand poised to connect the dots of this critical and evolving picture. I recommend this volume as one further step toward that undertaking." - Asia Pacific World "...a very readable volume offering through its focus on the local a vivid picture of multiculturalism in Japan. All articles are ethnographically grounded and it is here, and not in systematic and theoretically exhaustive treatment of the subject of multiculturalism." - Zeitschrift für Ethnologie Like other industrial nations, Japan is experiencing its own forms of, and problems with, internationalization and multiculturalism. This volume focuses on several aspects of this process and examines the immigrant minorities as well as their Japanese recipient communities. Multiculturalism is considered broadly, and includes topics often neglected in other works, such as: religious pluralism, domestic and international tourism, political regionalism and decentralization, sports, business styles in the post-Bubble era, and the education of immigrant minorities.

Race and Migration in Imperial Japan

Race and Migration in Imperial Japan PDF Author: Michael Weiner
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136121242
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 293

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Book Description
A high degree of cultural and racial homogeneity has long been associated with Japan, with its political discourse and with the lexicon of post-war Japanese scholarship. This book examines underlying assumptions. The author provides an analysis of racial discourse in Japan, its articulation and re-articulation over the past century, against the background of labour migration from the colonial periphery. He deconstructs the myth of a `Japanese race'. Michael Weiner pursues a second major theme of colonial migration; its causes and consequences. Rather than merely identifying the `push factors', the analysis focuses on the more dynamic `pull factors' that determined immigrant destinations. Similarly, rather than focusing upon the immigrant, the author examines the structural need for low-cost temporary labour that was filled by Korean immigrants.

Local Citizenship in Recent Countries of Immigration

Local Citizenship in Recent Countries of Immigration PDF Author: Takeyuki Tsuda
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 9780739111932
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 316

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Book Description
Because of severe domestic labor shortages, Japan has recently joined the increasing number of advanced industrialized nations that have begun importing large numbers of immigrant workers since the 1980s. Although the citizenship status of foreign workers is the most precarious in such recent countries of immigration, the national governments of these countries have become increasingly preoccupied with border enforcement, forcing local municipalities and organizations to offer basic rights and social services to the foreign residents who are settling in their local communities. This book analyzes the development of local citizenship in Japan by examining the role of local governments and NGOs as well as grass-roots political and judicial activism in the expansion of immigrant rights. In this manner, localities are emerging as important sites for the struggle for immigrant citizenship and social integration, enabling foreign workers to enjoy substantive rights even in the absence of national citizenship. The possibilities and limits of such local citizenship in Japan are then compared to three other recent countries of immigration (Italy, Spain, and South Korea).

Brokered Homeland

Brokered Homeland PDF Author: Joshua Hotaka Roth
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 9780801488085
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 180

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Book Description
Faced with an aging workforce, Japanese firms are hiring foreign workers in ever-increasing numbers. In 1990 Japan's government began encouraging the migration of Nikkeijin (overseas Japanese) who are presumed to assimilate more easily than are foreign nationals without a Japanese connection. More than 250,000 Nikkeijin, mainly from Brazil, now work in Japan. The interactions between Nikkeijin and natives, says Joshua Hotaka Roth, play a significant role in the emergence of an increasingly multicultural Japan. He uses the experiences of Japanese Brazilians in Japan to illuminate the racial, cultural, linguistic, and other criteria groups use to distinguish themselves from one another. Roth's analysis is enriched by on-site observations at festivals, in factories, and in community centers, as well as by interviews with workers, managers, employment brokers, and government officials.Considered both "essentially Japanese" and "foreign," nikkeijin benefit from preferential immigration policy, yet face economic and political strictures that marginalize them socially and deny them membership in local communities. Although the literature on immigration tends to blame native blue-collar workers for tense relations with migrants, Roth makes a compelling case for a more complex definition of the relationships among class, nativism, and foreign labor. Brokered Homeland is enlivened by Roth's own experience: in Japan, he came to think of himself as nikkeijin, rather than as Japanese-American.