Global Japan: The Experience of Japan's New Immigrants and Overseas Communities

Global Japan

The Japanese have long regarded themselves as a homogenous nation, clearly separated from other nations. The present international reality of increased global population movement, however, which has resulted in the establishment both of significant Japanese communities outside Japan, and of significant non-Japanese minorities within Japan, is undermining this long-standing view, and forcing the Japanese to re-conceptualise their nationality in new and more flexible ways. This book provides a comprehensive overview of these issues, examining the context of immigration to and emigration from Japan. It includes case studies of Japanese overseas communities in Düsseldorf, Singapore, Hong Kong and Los Angeles and of Iranian, Brazilian and Peruvian minorities in Japan. Roger Goodman is a Lecturer in the Social Anthropology of Japan at the University of Oxford, specialising in the study of Japanese education and social policy. He is the author of Japan’s ‘International Youth’ (1990) and Children of the Japanese State (2000). Ceri Peach is Professor of Social Geography at the University of Oxford. He is a fellow of St Catherine’s College Oxford and associated with St Catherine’s College Institute at Kobe in Japan. His research interests are in international migration and ethnic segregation in cities. He has held Visiting Professorships at ANU, Yale, Berkeley, Harvard and UBC, and was a Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Visiting Fellow in 2001. Ayumi Takenaka is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Bryn Mawr College. During 2001–2, she was Richard Storry Junior Research Fellow at the Nissan Institute of Japanese Studies at St. Antony’s College, Oxford University. Her research interests are in international migration, racial and ethnic relations, and international comparative sociology. Paul White is a Professor in the Department of Geography, University of Sheffield. His research interests are in international migration and in comparative urban, population and social geography. He has held visiting positions at the Universities of Paris I (France), Cagliari (Italy) and Zaragoza (Spain).

Global Japan The experience of Japan’s new immigrant and overseas communities

Edited by Roger Goodman, Ceri Peach, Ayumi Takenaka and Paul White

First published 2003 by RoutledgeCurzon 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by RoutledgeCurzon 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” RoutledgeCurzon is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group © 2003 Selection and editorial matter: Roger Goodman, Ceri Peach, Ayumi Takenaka and Paul White; individual chapters: the authors All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Global Japan: the experience of Japan’s new immigrant and overseas communities / edited by Roger Goodman … [et al.]. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Japan – Emigration and immigration. 2. Japanese – Foreign countries. 3. Aliens – Japan. 4. Intercultural communication. I. Goodman, Roger, 1960– JV8721 .G58 2003 304.852–dc21 ISBN 0-203-98678-4 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0–415–29741–9 (Print Edition)

2002036794

Contents

List of figures List of tables List of contributors Acknowledgements

1 The experience of Japan’s new migrants and overseas communities in anthropological, geographical, historical and sociological perspective

vii viii x xi

1

ROGER GOODMAN, CERI PEACH, AYUMI TAKENAKA AND PAUL WHITE

PART I

Comparative context 2 Contrasts in economic growth and immigration policy in Japan, the European Union and the United States

21

23

CERI PEACH

3 The Pacific-Asian context of international migration to Japan

38

HUW JONES

4 Policy problems relating to labour migration control in Japan

57

HIROAKI MIYOSHI

PART II

Japanese overseas communities 5 The Japanese in London: from transience to settlement? PAUL WHITE

77 79

vi Contents

6 Segregation and the ethnoscape: the Japanese business community in Düsseldorf

98

GÜNTHER GLEBE

7 The Japanese in Singapore: the dynamics of an expatriate community

116

EYAL BEN-ARI

8 The Japanese community in Hong Kong in the 1990s: the diversity of strategies and intentions

131

CHIE SAKAI

9 Living in a transnational community within a multi-ethnic city: making a localised ‘Japan’ in Los Angeles

147

TAKASHI MACHIMURA

PART III

Japan’s new migrant groups

157

10 Iranian immigrant workers in Japan and their networks

159

TOYOKO MORITA

11 The lifestyles and ethnic identity of Vietnamese youth residing in Japan

165

MASAMI SHINGAKI AND SHINICHI ASANO

12 The changing perception and status of Japan’s returnee children (kikokushijo)

177

ROGER GOODMAN

13 Nikkei communities in Japan

195

DANIELA DE CARVALHO

14 Transnational strategies by Japanese-Brazilian migrants in the age of IT

209

ANGELO ISHI

15 Paradoxes of ethnicity-based immigration: Peruvian and Japanese-Peruvian migrants in Japan

222

AYUMI TAKENAKA

Index

237

Figures

2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7 3.1 4.1 4.2 5.1 5.2 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5 6.6 6.7 6.8 9.1 9.2 12.1

Origins of immigration to the United States Source and destinations of international migrations to Europe from non-EU sources in the late 1990s Japanese in Korea and Taiwan, and Koreans in Japan Net immigration in the European Union, United States and Japan Composition of labour force in Japan Comparison of the actual and projected racial and ethnic composition of the US population Immigration and ageing in the European Union, United States and Japan Major international flows of migrant workers within Eastern Asia in the 1990s Changes of the population structure in Japan Effects on household disposable income per capita Japanese residents in European countries Japanese residents in the United Kingdom Japanese in- and out-migration and population development in Düsseldorf Distribution of Japanese residents in Düsseldorf Inner-city migration flows of Japanese in Düsseldorf Distribution of Japanese residents at the neighbourhood level in Oberkassel, Niederkassel and Lörick Model of the Japanese migrant community in Düsseldorf Membership of informal groups Worries before migrating to Germany Constructs of the ‘Japanese ethnoscape’ Registered Japanese citizens in the Los Angeles area The multiple ethnic boundaries of the Japanese in Los Angeles Culturalist assumptions underlying examinations of the problems faced by kikokushijo

24 26 27 28 29 33 36 45 63 64 80 81 101 102 104 106 111 112 113 114 150 154 182

Tables

2.1

Comparison of the foreign-born populations of the United States, European Union and Japan 2.2 Foreign nationals in Japan 2.3 Trends in growth rate of output, employment, hours worked and productivity 2.4 Comparison of the contribution of labour, capital and technology to economic growth in Japan and the United States 2.5 ‘Ghettoisation’ of ethnic groups, Chicago 2.6 Percentage of the African American population of Chicago PMSA 1990 2.7 Ethnic and racial composition and predicted composition of the US population 2.8 ‘Ghettoisation’ of ethnic groups at ED level in Greater London 3.1 Selected demographic and socio-economic data for East Asian countries by overall migration status 3.2 FDI stock in Thailand from 1970 to year-end originating in Japan and Asian NICs 3.3 Number of foreigners in Japan 3.4 Overseas contract workers from Thailand processed on departure by labour authorities 3.5 Recorded data on Thai migrants to and in Japan 3.6 Destinations of male and female temporary migrants from four villages in Thailand 4.1 Skilled worker points grid in Canada 5.1 Categories of Japanese residents in the United Kingdom 5.2 Ecological indicators associated with areas of significant Japanese settlement in London 5.3 The typical Japanese company mover in London 5.4 The typical ‘ex-company’ Japanese resident in London 5.5 Independent movers in London 5.6 Attitudes to London life – company and non-company movers 6.1 Dissimilarity indices of Japanese residents in comparison with other selected nationalities

25 28 30 30 32 32 32 34 39 41 46 48 48 51 62 82 85 86 91 92 93 105

Tables ix 6.2 8.1 8.2 9.1 9.2

Segregation indices of Japanese residents Japanese expatriates Categories of Japanese transients Geographical distribution of businesses for the Japanese market, Los Angeles area Opening dates of the Japanese supermarket Yaohan, California

107 133 134 152 153

Contributors

Shinichi Asano is a Professor in the Faculty of Human Development, Kobe University. Eyal Ben-Ari is a Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Daniela de Carvalho is an Associate Professor of Social Psychology at Portucalense University, Oporto. Günther Glebe is a Professor in the Institute of Geography at Heinrich-Heine University, Düsseldorf. Roger Goodman is a Lecturer in the Social Anthropology of Japan at the University of Oxford. Angelo Ishi is a Lecturer in the Department of Sociology at Musashi University. Huw Jones is a Professor and Dean at the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, University of Dundee. Takashi Machimura is a Professor of Sociology at the Graduate School of Social Sciences, Hitotsubashi University. Hiroaki Miyoshi is Senior Economist at the Research Institute of Mitsui Knowledge Industry Co., Ltd. Toyoko Morita is a graduate student in the School of Law at Kobe University. Ceri Peach is Professor of Social Geography, University of Oxford. Chie Sakai is a graduate student at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, University of Tokyo. Masami Shingaki is a graduate student in the Graduate School of Cultural Studies and Human Science at Kobe University. Ayumi Takenaka is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Bryn Mawr College. Paul White is a Professor in the Department of Geography, University of Sheffield.

Acknowledgements

The chapters in this volume were first presented as papers at an international symposium on Immigration Policy in Japan, the European Union and North America which was held at St Catherine’s College (University of Oxford) Kobe Institute in Japan on 11–14 April 2002. The symposium was jointly convened by Ceri Peach and Roger Goodman (Oxford University) and the Kobe University Board for Immigration Symposium, in particular Nobuhiko Iwasaki and Kiyomitsu Yui (Kobe University), and it heard twenty-three papers from speakers from nine different countries. After the symposium, it was decided that two separate volumes should be published with a slightly different selection of revised and extended versions of the papers that had been presented – one in English and one in Japanese. The Japanese edition will be published in November 2002 by Showado (Kyoto) under the title Kaigai ni okeru Nipponjin, Nippon no naka no Gaikokujin (The Japanese Overseas, Foreigners in Japan) edited by Iwasaki Nobuhiro, Ceri Peach, Miyajima Takashi, Roger Goodman and Yui Kiyomitsu. We are delighted to have the opportunity to thank the very large number of people and institutions who supported the symposium in Kobe and who have directly or indirectly helped to bring this volume into being. Generous funding – which allowed the participation of so many overseas speakers as well as simultaneous interpretation during much of the symposium – was provided by the European Science Foundation, Oxford University Sasakawa Fund and St Catherine’s College, Oxford University. Excellent presentations were given by Itaru Nagasaka, Takashi Miyajima, Satoshi Okuro, Audrey Kobayashi, Robert Jiobu, Yoko Ogawa Nishiaki, Tomio Tani, Yasuo Hirota and Peter Podalko which, mainly for limitations of space, we were unfortunately unable to include in this volume. The Bursar of St Catherine’s College (University of Oxford) Kobe Institute, Saito Kaizaburo, and his team were responsible for ensuring that the workshop was one of the most comfortable and well-run that any of us had ever attended. The process of turning conference presentations into a published book has been unusually smooth due to the help of Peter Sowden at RoutledgeCurzon. We also would like to thank Jane Baker, Neil Dowden and Vincent Antony. As editors, though, we particularly want to take this opportunity of thanking all the contributors to this volume who have borne this project from start to finish with such good humour. Roger Goodman, Ceri Peach, Ayumi Takenaka and Paul White July 2002

1

The experience of Japan’s new migrants and overseas communities in anthropological, geographical, historical and sociological perspective Roger Goodman, Ceri Peach, Ayumi Takenaka and Paul White

What is unique about Japan: myth and paradox Among the major industrial countries today, Japan stands out in two ways. First, it has received a very small number of foreign workers, and second, its immigration policy has been explicitly governed by an ideology of cultural and racial homogeneity. Japan as a reluctant host of immigration As Ceri Peach points out in his opening chapter to Part I of this volume (Chapter 2), one of the exceptional features of Japanese post-war economic growth lies in the fact that, unlike post-war growth in the United States and European Union, it was not fuelled by huge migration. Post-war Japan devised a series of strategies to avoid ‘contaminating’ its population with foreigners. It could make do without importing labour because of the large number of workers repatriated from its colonies after the Second World War, and because women and the elderly provided a very flexible labour force which could be alternatively incorporated in and then excluded from the labour force without leading to social protest. Japan was so reluctant to receive foreign in-migration that it also avoided the issue by mobilising rural workers and moving production offshore. The period of the 1950s to the 1970s saw a significant rural depopulation (kaso) accompanied by a major shift in industrial structure from agriculture to manufacturing (Minami, 1967; Japan Bureau of Statistics, 1973). Further industrial shift towards services and knowledge-based economy, however, meant a reduction in the proportion of the adult population entering the labour force at a young age due to an increase in the length of education (Minami, 1994: 208). At the same time, Japan’s progressive adoption of an advanced welfare regime, albeit with corporate dimensions relating to private companies that are stronger than in many European countries (Esping-Anderson, 1994), encouraged planned withdrawal of workers from the labour force with advancing age effectively reducing the period spent in the labour force for most males to around 40– 45 years. Changes in the demographic structure of the (male) labour force in post-war Japan, accompanied by

2

Roger Goodman, Ceri Peach, Ayumi Takenaka and Paul White

a shift in industrial structure, thus exacerbated, rather than ameliorated, Japan’s issues of labour supply to fuel economic growth and while, to some extent, women still provided flexible labour, their skills remained largely under-used due to patriarchal attitudes within the employment structure (Lam, 1992; Saso, 1992; Brinton, 1993; Minami, 1994: 209). The issue of labour supply became a serious problem in Japan only in the 1980s, at-the height of Japan’s economic expansion, when more and more, generally small and medium-sized, companies found they could not complete their order books because of a lack of workers. This situation was due to a combination of a number of factors: fewer workers coming in to the labour force for demographic reasons, young Japanese feeling increasingly affluent, well-educated and unwilling to work in blue-collar positions and an apparently insatiable demand for Japanese products. Given the high value of the yen, there was no shortage of workers overseas willing to fill the vacuum. Japan, therefore, turned reluctantly to foreign labour in the 1980s, 30 years after Germany, France and the United Kingdom turned to foreign or colonial manpower to solve labour shortages in key sectors. The number of foreign migrants has grown since then, but despite much public debate over the issue, their number actually remains relatively small even today (Bartram, 2000): only 1.2 per cent of the total population (or 1.6 million), compared to 3.8 per cent (2.2 million) in the United Kingdom (or 6.8 per cent if one includes the Britishborn children of minority ethnic populations), 8.9 per cent (7.3 million) in Germany and 9.8 per cent (26 million) in the United States, although the definition of foreign population varies somewhat across countries (SOPEMI, 2000). About 40 per cent of Japan’s total foreign population, or 666,000 out of 1.6 million (in 2000), are actually permanent residents, such as Koreans, who have resided in the country for generations and would not be considered as foreigners in most other countries. Ideology of homogeneity and immigration Explanations for Japan’s lack of immigration have been combinations of the economic, the political and the cultural, subsumed under a widespread ideology of homogeneity. The then-Prime Minister Nakasone Yasuhiro made a statement, to a local party meeting in 1986, explaining US economic decline at the time in terms of the heterogeneity of its population (Nakasone, 1986). That Nakasone’s speech passed without comment in Japan – it was only commented on by a foreign journalist as worthy of news broadcasting – shows the extent to which by the mid-1980s it was taken for granted in Japan that the country’s economic growth was linked to its supposed cultural homogeneity and purity. The ideology of homogeneity has, indeed, been central to Japan’s post-war ¯ numa, 1985). Economic growth was the cornerstone of economic growth (see O the so-called Yoshida doctrine of the immediate post-war period in Japan and increasingly became associated with the idea that individuals needed to subjugate their individual desires to the national good. The post-war political rhetoric of

Japan’s new migrants and overseas communities

3

kindaika (modernisation) played heavily on ideas of self-sacrifice, the need to put the group before the individual (which in turn increasingly became associated with ideas of selfishness) and notions of Japanese homogeneity based on ideas of shared blood, language and culture. History, tradition and culture were often used to support the rhetoric: in particular, the fact that Japan had never been colonised (the American occupation of 1945–52 never being seen as such), the experience of Japan’s self-imposed two centuries of seclusion from the outside world between around 1640 and 1850, and the evidence of strong boundaries between inside and outside – such as the distinction between those who are inside a group (uchi) and outside a group (soto) – which constantly recur in Japanese ritual practices. The ideology was further strengthened at the height of Japan’s economic nationalism in the late 1970s and 1980s, and this led to emerging debate over whether Japanese homogeneity was ‘real’ or ‘invented’ (see Mouer and Sugimoto, 1986, for a good overview of these debates). In order to investigate the ‘reality’ of such claims, the government established an International Research Centre for Japanese Studies (Nichibunken) in Kyoto, staffed by physical and social anthropologists, linguists, historians and social psychologists; the education system highlighted areas of Japanese cultural uniqueness; and companies produced books which helped their employees both understand and explain to cultural outsiders the way that Japanese society operated (see Yoshino, 1992). Some social ¯ numa, Yoshio critics, generally of a left-wing theoretical background (Yasuaki O Sugimoto and Kosaku Yoshino) saw these institutions and publications not so much as helping to explain Japanese culture and social practices but more as part of their construction. During the period of economic growth, however, there was little concern for, or means of, testing the significance of cultural values such as Japanese homogeneity, since there was little apparent need for imported labour. Indeed, Japan was an exporter of labour until the mid-1970s when the last ship – taking workers to Brazil – departed. Trends were only then reversed as Asian women began to be recruited into Japan’s domestic sex industry (Douglass and Roberts, 2000). Thereafter, the inflow of these women steadily increased, from 23,844 in 1982 to 71,026 in 1988, working as ‘entertainers’, a category that still constitutes a large proportion of Japan’s visa overstayers today (Komai, 1995; Herbert, 1996, cited in Douglass and Roberts, 2000). With the advent of the mainly male migrant workers who arrived in the late 1980s and the 1990s, Japan for the first time became a net importer of foreign labour. It also faced the need to deal with the ideology of homogeneity that had been so central to the country’s post-war economic development and had served as a guiding principle for its immigration policies. To curtail inflows of foreign in-migrants, policies have been strictly enforced based on the assumption that foreigners will not be able to assimilate to Japanese society because Japanese ‘culture’ is the unique possession of the Japanese ‘race’. Due to this belief, the increase in foreigners, rising to 1.3 million in 1993 (a 62 per cent increase from 1983) in addition to an estimated 300,000 illegal workers, led to

4

Roger Goodman, Ceri Peach, Ayumi Takenaka and Paul White

a vigorous debate during the early 1990s over whether or not Japan should continue to receive (unskilled) foreign workers, referred to as the ‘kaikoku (open country) versus the sakoku (closed society) debate’. On the one hand, supporters of better treatment, and protection of the rights, of foreign workers situated their arguments in the context of what such workers could bring to Japan in terms of internationalising the society and of Japan fulfilling its international responsibilities, described in some of the more recent literature as ‘the advent of a multicultural society’ (Douglass and Roberts, 2000), ‘the age of multiculturalism’ (e.g. Hirose, 1996; Suh et al., 2000), or the dawn of a new Japan as ‘a country of immigration’ (e.g. Yoshida, 2001). On the other hand, those who spoke against their incorporation were worried about the loss of jobs for Japanese workers and the possibility that such workers would be difficult to incorporate fully into society.1 In either case, foreign presences, though negligible relative to both other industrial countries and to Japan’s total population, have stirred much debate, precisely because the country has long regarded itself, and been regarded by others, as homogeneous. The debate, thus, was intensified by the assumption that if such a ‘large’, and seemingly incessant, influx of foreigners would not undermine Japan’s cultural and racial homogeneity, it would at the very least have significant consequences for the notion of nationhood. To tackle this ‘problem’, Nikkeijin, or Japanese descendants, were brought in. The prevalent belief in homogeneity poses a major dilemma for Japan in the face of demographic and economic changes. In a country where the birth rate is falling and the population is ageing more rapidly than in any other OECD country, the dependency ratio (the ratio of those aged 65 and over, to those aged between 15 and 64) is soon to rise to the world’s highest: 32.3 by 2010 and 42.0 by 2020 in comparison to 25.0 and 30.1 for the United Kingdom, 27.7 and 30.0 for Germany and 19.2 and 25.4 for the United States, respectively (SOPEMI, 1998). To prevent its population from declining, the United Nations estimates that Japan will need to accept 17 million immigrants between 1995 and 2050 (an average of 343,000 net additions annually), while to maintain the level of its workingage population (ages from 15 to 64), it will require a total of 33.5 million immigrants during the same period (an average of 647,000 annually) (Papademetriou and Hamilton, 2000; United Nations, 2000). In the former case, by 2050, immigrants and their descendants would total almost 18 per cent of the total population of the country; in the latter case, around 30 per cent. As Hiroaki Miyoshi (Chapter 4) points out, these demographic and economic shifts, as well as their implications for immigration, are, of course, far from unique to Japan, which is not alone in struggling to balance the need to import foreign labour with the desire to control immigration. Japan nonetheless appears to face a greater dilemma than other industrial countries, precisely because of the strong ideology of homogeneity that has guided its modern nationhood. How can Japan reconcile demographic and economic realities with cultural homogeneity? How should Japan cope with immigration and deal with its sense of nationhood? An answer to these questions, that are central to Japan’s immigration debate today (Iguchi, 2001), may lie not in curtailing immigration in the name of cultural homogeneity,

Japan’s new migrants and overseas communities

5

but in recognising that migration, both into and out of Japanese territorial boundaries, has shaped, and will continue to shape the notion of Japanese homogeneity.

How ‘migrants’ have shaped Japanese society: the myth of homogeneity Despite the common perception that Japan has been isolationist, migration has always been essential for Japanese nation-building (Weiner, 1997; Amino, 1999, 2000; Lie, 2001). Aside from the fact that the Japanese themselves originated in various parts of Asia and the Pacific, Japan was historically far from a closed, homogenous society. Even during the so-called ‘period of isolation’ (sakoku jidai), from the mid-seventeenth to the mid-nineteenth centuries, often viewed as the height of Japanese xenophobia, Japan was not completely closed to the outside world. Not only were a few Dutch merchants allowed in Japan, though restricted to the artificial island of Dejima in Nagasaki harbour, but a considerable number of refugees from Ming China were received and a number achieved important positions as Confucian literati to local daimyo (feudal lords) and some, ¯ baku Zen sect in the mid-seventeenth century, including the founder of the O became important Buddhist leaders (Sansom, 1964: 82; Ching, 1979). More importantly, there was throughout the whole of this period great interest in what was going on in the outside world and many Western books were translated into Japanese. The policy of seclusion was in reality more one of political pragmatism based on the (in retrospect probably understandable) fear of the Tokugawa shogunate of the missionising influence of Christianity than reflecting any innate Japanese cultural xenophobia.

Japan and emigration Indeed, following the Tokugawa period, Japan positively embraced the outside world. In part, this reflected the awareness among the Meiji oligarchs of the need to modernise (synonymous at the time with westernise) to avoid colonisation. Missions, most significantly the Iwakura mission of 1871–73, went to America and Western Europe to pick up blueprints for the modernisation of Japan (see Jansen, 1980) and foreigners were invited to help establish these ideas in Japan (Jones, 1980). The Meiji period also saw the first recorded large-scale emigrations from the shores of Japan. Partly to alleviate domestic population problems and partly to expand economic opportunities and territories abroad, the new government began to directly sponsor sending emigrants in 1868 as a form of contract labour migration to Hawaii. Between 1868 and 1942, about 776,000 emigrated from the country, many of whom were sent by the government either directly or indirectly or else by private-run emigration companies that worked in close cooperation with the government (JICA, 1994). By 1910, there were 130,000 Japanese living in the United States, mostly on the West Coast, and large communities had also

6

Roger Goodman, Ceri Peach, Ayumi Takenaka and Paul White

begun to be established in South America, especially in Brazil and Peru. Today, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs estimates that out of 2.5 million Japanese emigrants and their descendants around the world, 1.3 million are in Brazil, 1 million are in the United States and 80,000 are in Peru. The main overseas Japanese expansion at the time, however, was in Asia. First in Korea, which was annexed in 1895 and officially colonised in 1910, and then into Manchuria, and from the late 1930s onwards, into South East Asia. According to Hoshino (1980: 113), in the 1930s there were as many as 2 million Japanese living in its colonies, the vast majority of whom were in their twenties and thirties. At the same time, large numbers of people from the colonies had been brought to Japan to work, mostly in heavy industry and coal mining. Close to a million Korean workers, for example, were conscripted to work on the Japanese archipelago between 1939 and 1945 (Weiner, 1994). Japan and immigration It is important, therefore, to put Japan’s ‘period of isolation’ in perspective. As Sansom (1951: 5, 78), with his usual lucidity, wrote at the time that the American occupation was coming to an end: The degree of Japan’s isolation can easily be overestimated if we think only in terms of the sakoku period; and if we exclude that period, we find that Japan shows a tendency to expand rather than to withdraw … The fact that Japan did not enter international society until the mid-nineteenth century is … of no great importance today; since she has now for several generations shared the experience of other modern states, and much of that experience has been new to all of them. There is no doubt, however, that the historical fact of the sakoku jidai did provide a useful, and powerful, rhetorical tool in the armoury of those who, in the postwar period, were keen to help develop the idea that Japan was an unusually homogenous society. Ever since the Meiji period and the abolition of the feudal class system in the late 1870s, state officials have continued to deny the existence of minority groups in the belief that not raising consciousness about such groups will lead to their eventual assimilation and disappearance. One result of this is that it is difficult to know exactly how large Japan’s various minorities are, or to what extent assimilation has actually taken place. Figures that are cited generally emanate from organisations which actively politicise on behalf of minorities and hence need to be treated with caution. John Lie (2001: 4) estimates that the proportion (almost 5 per cent) of non-Japanese or ethnic minorities (he uses the two terms interchangeably) living in Japan, while it is much lower than the United States, ‘is far from negligible and comparable to the 1992 figure in the United Kingdom’.2 The last 25 years have seen the arrival of, and debates about, several new migrant groups in Japan.

Japan’s new migrants and overseas communities

7

Migration and Japanese national boundaries If migration has been central to concepts of Japanese nationhood, then the crucial questions are: who controls migration and who defines Japan’s boundaries? Although scrupulous border controls were institutionalised only in recent history as a product of the development of the modern nation-state, efforts to control and defend self-defined borders from outside ‘others’ helped form Japanese national consciousness from Japan’s earliest recorded history (Murai et al., 1997; Amino, 2000; Batten, 2001). Since then, Japanese national boundaries have shifted vis-à-vis different types of ‘others’. They have expanded and contracted, both numerically and territorially, by incorporating the desirable and excluding the undesirable, depending on the country’s political and economic needs. Marginal populations, such as Koreans, Chinese, Ainu, Okinawans and Nikkeijin (Japanese descendants) have found themselves placed both inside and outside Japan’s national boundaries at different historical junctures (Wakatsuki and Suzuki, 1975; Fujisaki, 1991; Weiner, 1994; Oguma, 1995, 1998; Siddle, 1996; Ching, 2001; Vasishth, 2002). As ‘others’ have played a crucial role in defining Japanese national boundaries, today’s growing migratory flows, both into and out of Japan, are likely to have a significant consequence for Japanese nationhood. The following two sections discuss out- and in-migration, summarising the chapters in Part II (Japanese overseas communities) and Part III (Japan’s new migrant groups) of the book.

New Japanese overseas migration: how overseas experiences shape Japanese-ness While Japan has become an ‘immigrant’ receiving country, it continues to export a significant number of its people abroad. The number of Japanese abroad (zairyu hojin who reside abroad for longer than 3 months) in 2000 was 812,000, about half the number of the 1.6 million foreigners registered in Japan in the same year. If we exclude 657,000 permanent residents, mostly Koreans who have lived in Japan for generations, the figure is almost compatible, and it is considerably greater than the 155,000 foreigners who are in Japan for the purpose of work. Over half (or 57 per cent)3 of the overseas Japanese residents were company transferees, described in the chapters by Paul White (Chapter 5), Günther Glebe (Chapter 6) and Eyal Ben-Ari (Chapter 7). Many others were professional female workers, mostly single women in their twenties and thirties, who, as Chie Sakai describes in her chapter (Chapter 8), leave the country, in part because they feel restricted in their career opportunities within Japan. Other overseas migrants, as shown in Takashi Machimura’s chapter (Chapter 9), are a combination of students, young professionals and long-term residents. Exporting labour has been as crucial as importing labour in dealing with various sorts of labour force problems. Japanese out-migration, then, has been closely and necessarily connected to foreign in-migration in post-war Japan. Curiously, however, with the exception of concern over perceived difficulties in

8

Roger Goodman, Ceri Peach, Ayumi Takenaka and Paul White

the reintegration of temporary expatriate families, out-migratory flows have not drawn as much scholarly and public attention, let alone been ‘problematised’, as in-flows of foreign migration into Japan (White, 1988; Goodman, 1990). Corporate investment and migration Japanese corporate developments in manufacturing and later financial services were primarily responsible for growing out-migratory movements. Instead of importing foreign labour to work in factories in their own land, Japan exported Japanese workers to manage such factories elsewhere. The development of a Japanese branch–plant economy, of joint ventures and of tertiary and quaternary economic activities, necessitated the establishing of significant migratory flows of technical advisors, middle managers and executives, training and recruitment staff, and of various lower-level clerical staff to service the needs of these management groups (Sedgwick, 2001). These moves associated with corporate activities are, in some cases, related to Japanese pre-war emigration. Some of the major destinations of recent Japanese out-migratory flows are places that already had large Japanese communities, such as Los Angeles described by Machimura (Chapter 9). Apart from movements to the United States and Canada, however, few other destinations of earlier Japanese immigrants have witnessed significant Japanese investment in their countries. As Huw Jones (Chapter 3) points out, new Japanese corporate investment and migration have taken place within the logic of the ‘Triadic’ world system in which economic power is concentrated in the Western Pacific Rim, in North America and in Western Europe (Steven, 1996; Glebe and White, 2001). Japanese involvement in the economies of Southeast Asia (e.g. in Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia) has been claimed in part to reflect a ‘gentler’ version of the war-time vision of an East Asian ‘co-prosperity’ sphere (Pempel, 1998). However, prior Japanese involvement in Western Europe had been largely restricted to the great trading companies (sogo shosha) which were limited in their wider impact. Despite Japan’s opening to the rest of the world over the last 130 years, there were few links between the country and Europe when corporate investment started there in the 1970s, and very few Japanese people lived in Europe or had visited the continent, although it did not mean that pre-conceptions about life there did not exist (Conte-Helm, 1996). This was less true in Southeast Asia. Characteristics of overseas Japanese communities Characteristics of today’s overseas Japanese business communities relate to characteristics of Japanese society as a whole, such as the country’s self-image as ‘different’, ‘unique’ and ‘homogeneous’, together with the limited history of migration. The first characteristic concerns Japanese corporate management styles, a topic that has been much commented on elsewhere (e.g. McCormick and McCormick, 1996). Japanese companies have sent their personnel out under career structures that reflect the strongly patriarchal nature of Japanese company employment, and

Japan’s new migrants and overseas communities

9

which expect complete loyalty from those who are given a job for life. Part of the pattern has involved the ‘rotation principle’ under which most overseas placements are intentionally short-term in nature, often of 3 or 5 years. Such placements are held to minimise the danger of an employee moving away from the ethos of the company, and to maximise the likelihood of individual movers retaining a vision of the future that continues to revolve around the community of the employing company. Certainly expatriate placements from other core economies often bear witness to similar arguments and time-frames (e.g. Beaverstock, 1996) but not with the regularity that this feature occurs amongst Japanese migrant groups. Thus in each of the chapters by Eyal Ben-Ari (Chapter 7 on Singapore), Günther Glebe (Chapter 6 on Düsseldorf ) and Paul White (Chapter 5 on London) similar aspects of rotation recur. These have particular effects on the existence of Japanese ‘communities’ overseas, the individual members of which may undergo a complete turnover every few years, yet with the community infrastructure remaining in place as a conditioning element in the arrival of successive waves of migrants and their absorption into local ways of ‘performing’ as Japanese company employees that relate strongly to similar ways of operating in Japan itself. A second characteristic has to do with the lack of migratory history. Since there was no prior migration to many of the new destinations, these Japanese community infrastructures have had to be created from scratch. Incoming Japanese populations have often had very little preparation for the cultural, social and organisational aspects of a posting abroad – a fact made clear in the chapters by Glebe (Chapter 6) and White (Chapter 5). They have often not been given classes in the local language, know little about local social customs and manners, and have very little practical information at their disposal on their new destinations. Without a well-developed existing support infrastructure they would find it difficult to survive. But the organising companies’ interests are served by their involvement in the provision of such an infrastructure, for example, through company involvement (either directly or indirectly) in housing provision, support for the establishment of social clubs and organisations, or through the financing of the construction of Japanese Schools (actually run by the Japanese Ministry of Education). Without company involvement in such amenities, migrant Japanese might see their companies in a less favourable light, be persuaded to move into local social networks that are not under the surveillance of their employers, and might run the risk of becoming less focused on their laid-out career-paths. Related to this is another feature of overseas Japanese communities, as described in a number of chapters here: the encapsulation and isolation of Japanese migrants within their host cities and countries. The creation of a series of Japanese cultural and social landscapes in cities in various parts of the world enables migrants to remain within a Japanese social milieu, operating according to rules and expectations that are familiar from Tokyo, Nagoya or Osaka. It may be a feature of the globalised business world that all short-term expatriate communities have a tendency to operate within such ‘environmental bubbles’ (Cohen, 1977), but the evidence suggests that this is more true of Japanese than of other migrant groups.

10

Roger Goodman, Ceri Peach, Ayumi Takenaka and Paul White

How migration experience shapes a notion of Japanese-ness While such a tight-knit community structure has allowed some members of the community to become more aware of their Japanese-ness, migration experiences have led others to move out of the sheltering umbrella of the myth of Japanese homogeneity. Migration results in contact, even in the constrained circumstances whereby structural forces seek to minimise it. Just as the arrival of foreign migrants in Japan has brought a questioning of aspects of the identity of Japan as a whole and of Japanese society, so the experiences of Japanese migrants elsewhere have sometimes led individuals to question their own positions and to problematise their origins, assumptions and life trajectories in ways that might not have happened had they not been posted abroad.4 The concept of Japanese homogeneity is strongly shown to be a myth in Los Angeles in Machimura’s chapter (Chapter 9) where Japanese-ness is represented in a number of separate sub-communities, with different originating mechanisms and connections to Japan. As he shows, the major division is along lines of ‘class’, between the descendants of old Japanese immigrants who left the country earlier, mostly to escape from poverty, and new corporate migrants. Even where there has been considerable upward socio-economic mobility within these old Japanese communities, there is little cohesion between these two groups. Sakai, writing of Hong Kong (Chapter 8), identifies the ways in which some Japanese migrants there reject certain aspects of Japan (such as patriarchal business practices) yet have also come to recognise the resource that being Japanese gives them in the labour force, with their national identity being ‘used’ for selfadvancement (see also Befu, 2001). Evidence presented from London by White (Chapter 5) suggests an increasing interest from a number of Japanese migrants in both moving outside the company-organised systems and in adopting the diverse lifestyles of a cosmopolitan world city. Heterogeneity is being enhanced within these Japanese communities abroad. These are all cases where migration is becoming a ‘normalised’ process resulting from a spectrum of personal as well as institutional motivations. Only where institutional controls remain the prime ones, as in the German city of Düsseldorf analysed in Glebe’s chapter (Chapter 6), is Japanese migration continuing to operate largely within the ‘environmental bubble’. Befu (2001, 2002) has recognised the increasing diversity of Japanese motivations for overseas migration, and emphasised the ways in which the corporate dimension (organisational transplants) is reducing in significance. Given this diversity, overseas Japanese communities are likely to become more heterogeneous, and perhaps even polarised, along lines of class, gender, generation, as well as prior migration experience. Thus, shared nationality – ‘Japanese’ – alone may not simply be enough to hold future overseas communities together.

Japan’s new migrants and how they are shaping Japanese society While Japanese out-migration continues, foreign in-migration to Japan has also begun to increase in recent years. There is a large literature on the situation of

Japan’s new migrants and overseas communities

11

minority groups in post-war Japan, such as Ainu, Okinawans, Japanese Koreans and Burakumin, and the problems they have faced in living in a society which has officially denied their presence. These groups, of course, are not all exactly the same: the Ainu people, Okinawans and Burakumin are legally Japanese citizens, whereas not all Japanese Koreans have Japanese citizenship; all except the Burakumin are considered to be ‘ethnically’ different from the ‘Japanese’ at least in their origin, in terms of local definitions of ethnicity. What they share in common is the fact that they are all perceived as somehow ‘different’ from the mainstream and are often marginalised within society (see Weiner, 1997, for a good overview of the literature). There is, however, still a relatively limited literature, especially in English, on new migrant groups that began to arrive in the mid-1980s. Chapters in this section focus on new migrant groups and discuss how they are treated in Japan and how they are shaping, or potentially might shape, Japanese society and nationhood. Over the years, public debate over these groups has gradually shifted its emphasis from border control (how to curb inflows) to social integration (how to live together), focusing increasingly on rights (e.g. citizenship), multiculturalism (tabunka kyosei) and multiethnicity (taminzoku-shugi).5 What have also developed as a result of these debates are increasingly blurred boundaries between Japanese and non-Japanese, between citizens and settlers and between nationals and local residents (e.g. Miyajima, 2000; Takezawa, 2002). The chapters in this section show how new migrant groups have been represented in these emerging public discourses and, as a result, how they have been, or will be, able to cross Japanese boundaries. By looking at a variety of groups of diverse backgrounds – Iranians (Chapter 10), Vietnamese (Chapter 11), kikokushijo (Chapter 12), Japanese Brazilians (Chapters 13 and 14) and Peruvians (Chapter 15) – we conclude that class (or socio-economic position in Japan), rather than ethnic or cultural backgrounds, is a crucial factor for explaining how migrants are treated, as well as how they can potentially cross what were once considered rigid boundaries in Japanese society. Iranians: a visible minority The first of these new migrant groups to be discussed are Iranians who stirred much of the public debate on foreign workers due to their high visibility in Japanese society. As Toyoko Morita describes in Chapter 10, Iranians, like most other new migrants in Japan and elsewhere, fill niches at the bottom of the labour market. They began to enter the country in the late 1980s and, at the height of Japanese economic expansion at the end of 1992, their number increased to around 33,000. Prior to the arrival of Iranians, Chinese and Koreans – mostly visa overstayers – filled these positions.6 While the immigration authorities were aware of growing numbers of overstayers, a convenient blind-eye was turned to the situation in order to pacify company owners who needed such workers (see Sellek, 1994). Most of these workers physically looked like Japanese; they kept their heads down and they were invisible to most of the Japanese population. The arrival of the Iranians in 1990, however, changed the situation dramatically.

12

Roger Goodman, Ceri Peach, Ayumi Takenaka and Paul White

The sudden influx of Iranian workers owed much to the fact that visa restrictions had been waived between Japan and Iran in the early 1970s at a time when, following the oil shocks, Japan had wanted to develop warmer relations with Middle Eastern nations. It had been assumed that the visa-free courtesy would pertain only to Iranian diplomats and businessmen; at the time, there was no reason to imagine that it would one day be taken up by thousands of Iranian workers.7 By 1991, Narita airport (the tiny international airport that serves Tokyo) was virtually taken over by Iranian ‘tourists’ who had just arrived and were unsure where to go next. As Morita shows in Chapter 10, the fact that the Japanese state and employers had not set up any official channels for the illegal workers to find their way to the jobs that needed them meant that what she terms ‘public information centres’ had to be opened by the Iranians themselves in certain wellknown central parks, particularly in Tokyo. As described in Chapter 10 the sight of very large numbers of obviously foreign men gathered in these public places was a huge cognitive shock for the Japanese public which had hitherto been unused to any obviously non-Japanese face bar the occasional foreign language teacher.8 To some extent, the ‘problem’ of the Iranian undocumented workers spurred the Japanese state into producing policy for dealing with its new migrant population.9 Vietnamese: refugees Economic and political refugees from Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, often collectively known as the ‘boat people’, contributed to public debates in a different way; though visible, they were politically protected and hidden, in a way, in and around relocation camps. While the West agreed that it was unacceptable to return these Indo-Chinese refugees to the countries they had fled after they had been picked up floating in international waters, it was not clear who should take them in. In the context of increasingly bitter debates, particularly in Europe, about ‘floods’ of refugees ‘swamping’ nations and taking jobs from locals, Japan was heavily criticised for the tiny quotas it imposed on how many refugees it was prepared to accept. According to many reports in foreign media, the Japanese position was based on the belief that refugees from Southeast Asia, despite sharing some common background from Chinese culture and Buddhism, would find it impossible to assimilate into Japan’s ‘unique’ society and hence it would be more appropriate for them to be taken in by Western societies with longer histories of accepting migrants. It is far from clear how accurate this reporting of the Japanese government position ever was; most of the ‘boat people’ had set their sights on resettlement in the West and many of those who went to Japan, starting in the mid-1970s, saw it, at best, as a transit camp rather than a permanent new home. Indeed, even the much-criticised quotas were never filled.10 What is interesting, however, as pointed out by Masami Shingaki and Shinichi Asano (Chapter 11), is the extent to which those refugees from Vietnam and their families have assimilated into Japanese society with the benefit of 25 years’ of hindsight. As Shingaki and Asano show, the Vietnamese community should not

Japan’s new migrants and overseas communities

13

be seen as monolithic in terms of its adaptation; young people in the community now find themselves occupying a wide variety of social economic positions in Japan. While some face unemployment and poverty, others have drawn on their multicultural and multilingual skills to develop business ties which have given them a secure niche in Japanese society. The position, the authors conclude, of Vietnamese youth needs to be viewed more in terms of socio-economic class rather than ethnicity. This is an important conclusion and one picked up by Roger Goodman (Chapter 12) in his account of the kikokushijo (returnee schoolchildren) which follows. Kikokushijo: a high status minority Debate about kikokushijo in Japan, in many senses, paralleled that of the treatment of Vietnamese refugees. For a start, the amount of public discussion about these children was out of all proportion to the actual numbers of children involved. In the mid-1970s, there were each year about 5,000 Japanese children of schoolage returning to a Japanese education system which had, at all levels, around 25 million students. Despite this, by the early 1980s, when the number of such children had risen to around 10,000, there were whole sections in book shops dedicated to the kikokushijo mondai (returnee schoolchildren issue). As with the Vietnamese returnees, the literature emphasised that these children faced, and it was implied that they would always face, problems in returning to Japan, because of the unique nature of Japanese culture and society. The interesting feature of the case of the kikokushijo, however, was the speed with which their status changed during the 1980s as a result of the pressure that their upper-middle-class parents were able to bring to bear on the Japanese state, in particular through their colonisation of the new political rhetoric of kokusaika (internationalisation). This case study supports the argument that the social position of new groups in Japan needs to be seen in terms of class rather than ethnicity, and indeed that ethnicity may well be a rhetoric that is used in debate to legitimate rather than explain the marginalisation, and prevent the class mobility, of new migrant groups. Nikkeijin: invisible minorities The case of Nikkeijin, or Japanese descendants, discussed in the last three chapters by Daniela de Carvalho (Chapter 13), Angelo Ishi (Chapter 14) and Ayumi Takenaka (Chapter 15), also illustrates how ethnicity was used to legitimate the positions of new migrant groups. A large number of Nikkeijin, mostly from Brazil and Peru, entered Japan in response to the 1990 new Immigration and Refugee Control Act. This Act allowed Nikkeijin (up to the third generation) to enter the country under a special category, ‘settlers’ (teijusha), and made them and their spouses the only group of foreigners who were permitted to reside and engage in work (including unskilled work) without any restrictions. This preferential treatment was justified in the name of history and culture. On the one hand, Japan, as a newly-wealthy country, had a duty to repay the kindness of Latin American

14

Roger Goodman, Ceri Peach, Ayumi Takenaka and Paul White

countries, now fallen on hard economic times, for taking in large numbers of Japanese workers in the 1890s and 1910s at a time when regions of Japan faced severe poverty and Peru and Brazil were involved in massive construction and plantation projects. On the other hand, it was argued, these workers, because they had some Japanese ‘blood’ and understanding of Japanese culture – albeit many of them had never been to Japan and did not speak Japanese – would be able to fit into Japanese society more easily than workers from East, Southeast and South Asia and thereby not upset the important ideology of social homogeneity which, it was taken for granted, lay behind Japan’s economic strength. In reality, however, Nikkeijin are not treated as ‘Japanese’, but as foreigners or ‘Latin Americans’, because they are culturally different. An interesting feature of Nikkeijin migrants, therefore, is the contradictory nature inherent in the ideology of Japanese homogeneity; even though they were brought in as descendants under the rhetoric of homogeneity, they are treated as foreigners because of the same rhetoric. Nikkeijin migrants in Japan, thus, present a case in which the concepts of ethnicity, culture and ‘blood’ were used in a variety of ways to legitimate their position. Even though they were brought in as ‘co-ethnics’, many state officials, in private, were more pragmatic about their real reasons for supporting the new policy on immigration. There was no way to control how many migrants could come from neighbouring China if the gates were once opened (the image of Japan literally sinking under the weight of Chinese immigration was a popular one in such discussions), while it was known that the total Japanese-Latin American population was around 1.5 million. Not only could the ideology of homogeneity be ostensibly maintained but some sort of control over the numbers of migrants could also be imposed. Once again, culture and history proved to be very useful tools in an essentially pragmatic social policy. Today, Nikkeijin, estimated at around 300,000 (in 2000), constitute a major ‘minority’ group in Japan. They make up 18 per cent of the total foreign population or 30 per cent of new migrant groups (i.e. excluding non-permanent residents such as Koreans). It was estimated that by the early to mid-1990s, at the peak of their migration boom, around 25 per cent of the total Japanese-Brazilian population had moved to Japan for work, as well as 30 per cent of Japanese Peruvians, although press reports suggested that many of these latter were actually nonJapanese Peruvians who had purchased the birth certificates of Japanese Peruvians in order to be able to go and work in Japan. Carvalho discusses how Japanese Brazilians have formed communities and developed a distinct sense of identity in relation to the majority Japanese during the course of their 10-year migration trajectory in Japan. Ishi focuses on transnational activities of Japanese Brazilians who increasingly migrate back and forth between Japan and Brazil. Citing the case of a transnational Japanese-Brazilian business enterprise and its relations to Japanese-Brazilian migrants, he argues for the importance of transnational links in analysing the situation of Nikkeijin and of other new migrant groups in Japan. Takenaka examines the role of ethnicity and ‘blood’ in the adaptation of Japanese Peruvians and non-Japanese Peruvians by

Japan’s new migrants and overseas communities

15

examining how ‘Nikkei-ness’ (what it means to be descendants) is re-negotiated in association with their newly assigned social position in Japan. In contrast to Japanese Peruvians who are ‘trapped’ in a web of ideological contradiction, non-Japanese Peruvians tend to move more freely around Japanese society, generally speaking better Japanese. Although much of the literature on Nikkeijin attempts to explain their marginalisation on the grounds of cultural difference, she argues for the salience of class or social position, supporting the argument once again that migrants’ adaptation, as well as perceptions of Japan and the Japanese, are better explained by class and social status, rather than ethnicity and culture. In a country that has long been governed by a strong ideology of homogeneity, migrant groups have been incorporated, treated or marginalised in one way or another in the name of culture, race and ethnicity. As the case of kikokushijo most clearly shows, however, the status of these new migrant groups may change over time, especially if the transnational experiences and multicultural and multilingual skills of new generations of migrants are seen in a new positive light in ‘the age of IT’ (information technology), as Ishi puts it. Perhaps Japanese national boundaries themselves will change, as they have changed in the past, as more and more new migrant groups continue to enter Japan. Indeed, there appears to be a queuing system whereby, as new immigrant groups appear, older ones become more accepted in Japanese society. At each stage, however, the acceptance and rejection of specific groups seem to be ‘natural’ in terms of Japanese ‘culture’ and ‘history’ and it is only after a group has become accepted that the arbitrariness of the boundaries of ‘Japaneseness’ as it related to that group becomes manifest.

Conclusion: emigration, immigration and transnational migration As immigration is likely to shape the future of Japan’s nationhood, so, too, is emigration. Although immigration and emigration have often been treated separately in the literature, they are indeed closely inter-related. First, movements to and out of Japan tend to mutually stimulate each other. Whereas the cases of kikokushijo and Nikkeijin in Japan are most directly linked to prior emigration from Japan, the inflows of the Vietnamese and Iranians are also necessarily linked to some subsequent out-migratory movements either to third countries or back to their countries of origin. Second, the movements of Japanese capital and labour abroad are connected to current foreign in-migration to Japan. While moving plants offshore is used as a way to substitute for domestic labour demand, the presence of Japanese capital in areas such as Southeast Asia and China, in turn, promotes immigration from these places to Japan by creating new linkages and greater familiarity for Japanese work practices and lifestyles (Sassen, 1988). Emigration and immigration have become even more intricately connected in the context of growing circular and transnational movements. As Ishi describes in Chapter 14, migrants, such as Japanese Brazilians, increasingly lead ‘two country, double address’ lifestyles by migrating back and forth between countries with the

16

Roger Goodman, Ceri Peach, Ayumi Takenaka and Paul White

aid of technological advancement. Once emigration and immigration evoked images of permanent rupture; they were considered a one-way process in which emigrants leave their home country and become settled in the host country as immigrants. Now, as more and more migrants lead transnational lives in emerging social fields connecting two or more countries, the difference between home and host, or between a departing point and a destination, are increasingly blurred (e.g. Glick-Schiller et al., 1992; Basch et al., 1994). Equally blurred in this context is the distinction between temporality and permanence of migrants. Most of the ‘emigrants’ treated in this book are ‘temporary’ migrants, such as company transferees and their families, students and young female professional workers. Yet ‘emigrants’ who left Japan at the turn of the century were also sent on a short-term labour contract, and many of the new ‘immigrants’ discussed in the book are, in fact, contract labourers who have little intention of staying there permanently. Even though Japan admits foreigners (including Nikkeijin) only on a temporary basis and insists that it is not a country of ‘immigration’, foreign migrants have been treated and debated as if they were de facto ‘immigrants’. Treating immigration and emigration as an inter-related process raises questions about the very concepts of immigration and emigration: who is an immigrant and an emigrant, when do they become an immigrant or emigrant, and when do they stop being an immigrant or emigrant? At the same time, it raises doubts whether it is a meaningful distinction, particularly in this age of transnationalism. Yet, looking at their intersection certainly allows us to see a holistic picture of migratory dynamics today when ‘foreign workers’ problems’ or ‘immigration debates’ in Japan (and elsewhere) tend to be focused solely on ‘immigrants’ coming to their country without considering the relative balance of immigration and emigration. Similarly, so much research on foreign migrants in Japan focuses solely on Japan, as pointed out by Ishi, even though these communities are increasingly being shaped by transnational links and activities. Japan’s migrant population is becoming ever more diverse; while most may be working, ‘few came to Japan specifically to work’ (Komai, 2001). It is important, therefore, to examine migratory dynamics as a whole rather than treating emigration and immigration as separate streams of population movements.

Notes 1 See the articles in Weiner and Hanami (1998) for good overviews of these debates. 2 Gill (2001) takes Lie to task for the careless way in which he has calculated this figure and estimates that the real figure is much closer to 3 million (or 2.5 per cent) members of ethnic minorities in Japan, almost half the proportion in the United Kingdom. 3 Excluding permanent residents abroad. 4 Kerr (2001: chap. 14) argues that, as well as being posted, many of the Japanese who are living abroad are actively ‘escaping’ the extreme constraints of Japanese society. 5 For a good overview, in English, of the current state of debate on this topic, see Japan Close-Up (2001) where the argument of the ex-Director of the Economic Planning Agency, Sakaiya Taichi, that Japan should see immigrants as a source of diversity and creativity which can be incorporated and drawn on in the society is contrasted with that

Japan’s new migrants and overseas communities

6 7 8

9

10

17

of Ito Shohei that any potential labour shortage in Japan should be dealt with not by importing labour but through the employment of women and the elderly and the development of IT and that it does not matter if Japan’s overall GDP drops as long as per capita GDP remains stable. Per capita GNP in Japan in 1986 was larger than that of South Korea and China by factors of 5.5 and 45.5, respectively (Sellek, 2001: 40). Japan had similar reciprocal visa exemption agreements with Bangladesh and Pakistan which were suspended in January 1988, dramatically curtailing the flow of workers from those countries (Mori, 1997: 72). Many foreigners who lived in Japan have commented how, while up to the middle of the 1980s they would still be stared at even in big cities, by the beginning of the 1990s, this habit had largely disappeared even in quite rural areas of Japan which had become accustomed to seeing many more foreign faces than previously. The ‘problem’ was to a large extent media-manufactured. The German sociologist Herbert (1992) showed how the so-called crime wave by foreigners was ‘conjured up’ by the way the figures were used: indeed, his own analysis suggested that if one compared the official crime statistics of the foreign population with a similar section of Japanese society (males between the ages 20 and 35), then the number of crimes committed by foreigners was much lower, even though there was evidence of the police often working on the assumption that the activities of foreigners were much more likely to be illegal. In total around 10,000 Indo-chinese refugees were accepted in Japan, a process which ended in 1989 with the introduction of screening (Komai, 2001: 16). Apart from the Indo-Chinese, since Japan began accepting refugees in 1982, less than 2,200 individuals have applied for refugee status, of whom only 260 have been successful. Around half of those whose applications were unsuccessful filed appeals of whom only five were granted refugee status (Asahi Shinbun, 31 August 2001).

References Amino, Yoshihiko (1999). ‘Sekaini Hirakareta Nihon Retto: Nihonshi no naka no Gaikokujin’ (The Japanese Archipelago in the World: Foreigners in Japanese History), pp. 4–22 in Ishii, Yoneo and Yamauchi, Masayuki (eds), Nihonjin to Tabunkashugi (Japanese and Multiculturalism). Tokyo: Yamakawa Shuppan. Amino, Yoshihiko (2000). ‘Nihon’ to wa Nanika (What is ‘Japan’?). Tokyo: Kodansha. Asahi Shinbun (Internet English language edition). 2001. ‘Slow Bureaucratic Japan No Haven for World’s Refugees’, accessed at http://www.asahi.com/english/international on 31 August 2001. Bartram, David (2000). ‘Japan and Labor Migration: Theoretical and Methodological Implications of Negative Cases’. International Migration Review 34(1): 5–32. Basch, Linda, Nina Glick Schiller and Cristina Szanton Blanc (1994). Nations Unbound: Transnational Projects, Postcolonial Predicaments, and Deterritorialized NationStates. Langhorne: Gordon and Breach Publishers. Batten, Bruce (2001). Kokkyo no Tanjo: Dazaifu kara mita Nihon no Genkei (The Birth of State Boundaries: The Origins of Japan Seen from Dazaifu). Tokyo: NHK. Beaverstock, J.V. (1996). ‘Migration, Knowledge and Social Interaction: Expatriate Labour within Investment Banks’. Area 28: 459–70. Befu, H. (2001). ‘The Global Context of Japan Outside Japan’, pp. 3–22 in Befu, H. and Guichard-Anguis, S. (eds), Globalizing Japan: Ethnography of the Japanese Presence in Asia, Europe and America. London and New York: Routledge.

18

Roger Goodman, Ceri Peach, Ayumi Takenaka and Paul White

Befu, Harumi (2002). ‘Globalization and Human Dispersal: Nikkei in the World’, pp. 5–18 in Hirabayashi, Lane Ryo et al. (eds), New Worlds, New Lives: Globalization and People of Japanese Descent in the Americas and from Latin America in Japan. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Brinton, M.C. (1993). Women and the Economic Miracle: Gender and Work in Postwar Japan. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Ching, Julia (1979). ‘The Practical Learning of Chu Shun-shui’, pp. 189–229 in de Bary, W.T. and Bloom, I. (eds), Principle and Practicality: Essays in Neo-Confucianism and Practical Learning. New York: Columbia University Press. Ching, Leo, T.S. (2001). Becoming ‘Japanese’: Colonial Taiwan and the Politics of Identity Formation. London: University of California Press. Cohen, E. (1977). ‘Expatriate communities’. Current Sociology 24(3): 5–133. Conte-Helm, M. (1996). The Japanese and Europe: Economic and Cultural Encounters. London: Athlone. Douglass, Mike and Glenda S. Roberts (eds) (2000). Japan and Global Migration: Foreign Workers and the Advent of a Multicultural Society. London: Routledge. Esping-Andersen, G. (1994). After the Golden Age: The Future of the Welfare State in the New Global Order. Occasional Paper No. 7. Geneva: United Nations Research Institute for Social Development. Fujisaki, Yasuo (1991). Dekasegui Nikkei Gaikokujin Rodosha (Dekasegi Nikkei Foreign Workers). Tokyo: Akashi Shoten. Gill, Tom (2001). Review of Lie’s ‘Multiethnic Japan’. Monumenta Nipponica 56(4): 574–77. Glebe, G. and White, P. (2001). ‘Hoch qualifizierte Migranten im Prozess der Globalisierung’ (Highly-Qualified Migrants in the Globalisation Process). Geographische Rundschau (Geographical Review) 53: 38–44. Glick-Schiller, Nina, L. Basch, and Blanc-Stanton, C. (eds) (1992). Towards a Transnational Perspective on Migration: Race, Class, Ethnicity and Nationalism Reconsidered, Vol. 645. New York: Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences. Goodman, R. (1990). Japan’s ‘International Youth’: The Emergence of a New Class of Schoolchildren. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Herbert, W. (1996). Foreign Workers and Law Enforcement in Japan. London and New York: Kegan Paul International. Herbert, Wolfgang (1992). ‘Conjuring up a Crime Wave: A Rapidly Growing Crime Rate among Foreign Migrant Workers in Japan?’, Japan Forum 4(1): 109–19. Hirose, Yasuo (ed.) (1996). Tabunkashugi to Tabunka Kyoiku (Multiculturalism and Multicultural Education). Tokyo: Akashi Shoten. Hoshino, Akira (1980). ‘Kikoku Nihonjin no Seikatsu Tekio to Identity (Life Adaptation and Identity of Returnee Japanese), pp. 112–50 in Sofue (ed.), Gendai no Esprit: Culture Shock (L’esprit d’aujourd’hui: Culture Shock), No. 161. Iguchi, Yasushi (2001). Gaikokujin Rodosha Shinjidai (The New Era of Foreign Migrant Workers). Tokyo: Chikuma Shinsho. Jansen, Marius (1980). Japan and Its World: Two Centuries of Change. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Japan Bureau of Statistics (1973). Internal Migration in Japan, 1954–1971. Tokyo: Bureau of Statistics. Japan Close-Up (2001). ‘Will Japan Open its Doors to Foreign Workers?’, Feb.: 6–13. JICA (Japan International Cooperation Agency) (1994). Kaigai Iju Tokei (Emigration Statistics). Tokyo: JICA.

Japan’s new migrants and overseas communities

19

Jones, Hazel J. (1980). Live Machines: Hired Foreigners and Meiji Japan. Vancouver: University of California Press. Kerr, Alex (2001). Dogs and Demons: Tales from the Dark Side of Japan. New York: Hill and Wang. Komai, H. (1995). Migrant Workers in Japan. New York: Kegan Paul International. Komai, Hiroshi (2001). Foreign Migrants in Contemporary Japan (translated by Jens Wilkinson). Melbourne: Trans Pacific Press. Lam, A.C.L. (1992). Women and Japanese Management: Discrimination and Reform. London: Routledge. Lie, John (2001). Multiethnic Japan. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press. McCormick, B. and McCormick, K. (1996). Japanese Companies, British Factories. Aldershot: Avebury. Minami, R. (1967). ‘Population Migration Away from Agriculture in Japan’, Economic Development and Cultural Change 15: 183–98. Minami, R. (1994). The Economic Development of Japan: A Quantitative Study, 2 edn, London: Macmillan. Miyajima, Takashi (ed.) (2000). Gaikokujin Shimin to Seiji Sanka (New Citizens: Foreign Residents and Political Participation). Tokyo: Yushindo. Mori, Hiromi (1997). Immigration Policy and Foreign Workers in Japan. Basingstoke: Macmillan. Mouer, Ross E. and Yoshio Sugimoto (1986). Images of Japanese Society: A Study in the Social Construction of Reality. London: Kegan Paul International. Murai, Shosuke, Yoshida Nobuyuki and Sato Makoto (eds) (1997). Kyokai no Nihonshi (History of Japanese Boundaries). Tokyo: Yamakawa Shuppansha. Nakasone, Yasuhiro (1986). ‘ “Chiteki Suijun” Koen’ (Lecture on ‘Levels of Intellect’). Chuo Koron 11: 146–62. Oguma, Eiji (1995). Tanitsu Minzoku Shinwa no Kigen (The Origins of the Myth of a Single-Race Society). Tokyo: Shinyosha. Oguma, Eiji (1998). Nihonjin no Kyokai (Japanese Boundaries). Tokyo: Shinyosha. ¯ numa, Yasuaki (1985). ‘Tanitsu Minzoku Shakai no Shinwa wo Koete (Going Beyond the O Myth of a Single-Race Society). Chuo Koron 9: 104–28. Papademetriou, Demetrios G. and Hamilton, Kimberly A. (2000). Reinventing Japan: Immigration’s Role in Shaping Japan’s Future. Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Pempel, T.J. (1998). ‘Gulliver in Lilliput: Japan and Asian Economic Regionalism’, pp. 67–80 in Beauchamp, E.R. (ed.), The Japanese Economy and Economic Issues since 1945. New York: Garland Publishing. Sansom, George, B. (1951). Japan in World History. Tokyo: Tuttle (reprinted 1981). Sansom, George, B. (1964). A History of Japan: 1615–1867. London: Cresset Press. Sassen, Saskia (1988). The Mobility of Labor and Capital: A Study in International Investment and Labor Flow. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Saso, M. (1990). Women in the Japanese Workforce. London: Hilary Shipman. Sedgwick, M.W. (2001). ‘Positioning “Globalization” at Overseas Subsidiaries of Japanese Multinational Corporations’, pp. 43–51 in Befu, H. and Guichard-Anguis, S. (eds), Globalizing Japan: Ethnography of the Japanese Presence in Asia, Europe and America. London and New York: Routledge. Sellek, Yoko (1994). ‘Illegal Foreign Migrant Workers in Japan: Change and Challenge in Japanese Society’, pp. 169–201 in Brown, Judith and Foot, Rosemary (eds), Migration: The Asian Experience. Basingstoke: Macmillan.

20

Roger Goodman, Ceri Peach, Ayumi Takenaka and Paul White

Sellek, Yoko (2001). Migrant Labour in Japan. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Siddle, Richard (1996). Race, Resistance and the Ainu of Japan. London: Routledge. SOPEMI (Systeme d’observation permanente des migrations) (1998, 2000). Trends in International Migration. Paris: OECD. Steven, R. (1996). Japan and the New World Order: Global Investments, Trade and Finance. London: Macmillan. Suh, Young-Dal, Jun Toyama and Takeshi Hashiuchi (eds) (2000). Tabunka Kyosei Shakai e no Tenbo (Symbiotic Multicultural Societies: A Perspective). Tokyo: Nihon Hyoronsha. Takezawa, Yasuko (2002). ‘Nikkeijin and Multicultural Coexistence in Japan: Kobe after the Great Earthquake’, pp. 310–30 in Hirabayashi, Lane Ryo et al. (eds), New Worlds, New Lives: Globalization and People of Japanese Descent in the Americas and from Latin America in Japan. Stanford: Stanford University Press. United Nations Population Division, (2000). Replacement Migration: Is it a Solution to Declining and Ageing Populations? New York: United Nations. Vasishth, Andrea Jean (2002). The Chinese in Japan: Japanese Attitudes and Policies Towards Chinese Residents, 1859–1924. Unpublished PhD thesis; University of Sheffield. Wakatsuki, Yasuo and Joji Suzuki (1975). Kaigai Iju Seisakushiron (The History of Japanese Emigration Policies). Tokyo: Fukumura Shuppan. White, Merry (1988). The Japanese Overseas: Can They Go Home Again? New York: Free Press. Weiner, Michael (1994). Race and Migration in Imperial Japan. New York and London: Routledge. Weiner, Michael (ed.) (1997). Japan’s Minorities: The Illusion of Homogeneity. London and New York: Routledge. Weiner, Myron and Tadashi Hanami (eds) (1998). Temporary Workers or Future Citizens? Japanese and US Migration Policies. Basingstoke: Macmillan. Yoshida, Takahiko (2001). ‘837-man no Imin ga Iru Nihon 2050-nen, Nihon Taminzoku Kokka Shian: Rodosha toshite dakedewa nai. Betsu no Kachi ga Ima Karera ni Motomerareruyoni natta. Tokushu “Imin Kokka” Sentaku no Toki ga kita’ (Japan with 8.37 million Immigrants in 2050, Possibility of Japan Becoming a ‘Multiracial Society’: Immigrants are not just Labourers, but Need to Acquire Different Values. Special Article on the Choice of an ‘Immigrant Country’). Chuo Koron 116(10): 162–69. Yoshino, Kosaku (1992). Cultural Nationalism in Contemporary Japan: A Sociological Enquiry. London: Routledge.

Part I

Comparative context

2

Contrasts in economic growth and immigration policy in Japan, the European Union and the United States Ceri Peach

Introduction The book deals with an enigma: unlike western nations, Japan has produced massive economic growth without immigration. The theme of this book is that all Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries experience a conflict between the need to import labour and the social and political rejection of immigrants. Both the United States and Europe have experienced enormous economic expansion since the end of Second World War and have produced it with massive immigration. Japan has experienced proportionally even greater economic growth, but with hardly any immigration. How has Japan done without? Can it continue without? What has happened to immigrants in Japan? What has happened to the Japanese who have been exported overseas to look after their capital investment? What has happened to the United States and the European Union as a result of immigration? This chapter outlines these issues. It raises the questions, but fuller answers are to be found in the other chapters of the book. The period since the end of Second World War has seen the longest (albeit interrupted) periods of industrial growth in history. It has also seen the creation of three great industrial blocs: the United States, the European Union and Japan. Of these, the growth of the Japanese economy has been the most spectacular, despite the severe setbacks of the 1990s and the early twenty-first century. In 1996, Japan’s GDP per caput $32,000 was higher than that of the United States ($27,000) or that of Germany ($29,000), the richest of the EU states. However, Japan’s remarkable economic growth has been produced in a radically different way from that of the United States and Europe. In both the United States and Europe the enormous economic expansion has required massive amounts of immigration. In Japan it has been achieved without immigration. In all three regions there has been a conflict between economic goals which have required immigration and social policies which have demanded restrictions on immigration. In Europe and the United States the economic demands have triumphed over the social. In Japan, the social requirements have triumphed over the economic. In the United States, the foreign born account for nearly 10 per cent of the population; in the European Union for just under 5 per cent, while in Japan, foreigners account for 1.2 per cent of the population. Even with this tiny proportion a substantial part of the foreign population is, in fact, Japanese-born.

24

Ceri Peach

Immigration to the United States Attitudes to immigration differ strongly between the three regions. The United States is a country of immigrants and their descendants. Immigration has been at the heart of nation building. Immigration has been the sine qua non of development. Between 1820 and 1998, 65 million people immigrated into the country and 45 million between 1901 and 1997 (see Figure 2.1). One can detect four great waves of ethnic dominance. From 1820 to 1920 was the period of European dominance. Between 1920 and 1960, the United States cut off foreign migration, but the demand for labour was so high that effectively turned in on itself to find a supply. This period saw a massive surge of African Americans from the south of the country to the north and west. When this supply had been exhausted, the United States turned abroad again and from the 1950s to the present it has been the period of massive Hispanic immigration. In the early twenty-first century the Latino population has overtaken the African American population as the largest minority in the United States. However, the Asian population, although only a third of the size of the Latino population is growing at an even faster rate. Thus one can see a sequence of European, Black, Hispanic and Asian populations fuelling a seemingly inexhaustible demand for labour in the United States. In the United States, the economic expansion brought massive immigration. In 2000 there were 26 million foreign-born persons living in the country. This is nearly 10 per cent of the total population. This figure does not take into account children born to those foreign-born parents. In the United States, the demand for labour has been so great that the sources of supply have changed radically from across the Atlantic to the Pacific and to south of the Rio Grande. The Hispanic population of the United States has expanded so rapidly that it has now overtaken

12,000

Other Asia Americas European

10,000 8,000 6,000 Asia 4,000 2,000

European

Americas

19 01 –1 0 19 11 –2 0 19 21 –3 0 19 31 –4 0 19 41 –5 0 19 51 –6 0 19 61 –7 0 19 71 –8 0 19 81 –9 0 19 91 –2 00 0

0

Figure 2.1 Origins of immigration to the United States 1901–2000. Source: Author’s analysis based on USA Statistical Abstract (1999) and Thernstrom and Orlov (1980: 480).

Contrasts in economic growth and immigration policy

25

the African American population as the largest minority in the country. Hispanics numbered 32 million in 2000. The Asian population, though much smaller, 10 million in 2000, is the fastest growing minority in the United States. It increased by 45 per cent between 1990 and 2000. California, which is the new front door to the United States, has become a minority–majority state. This is to say that the non-Hispanic White population is now a minority of the total. Similar changes are taking place in American cities. The consequences of the successive waves of immigration, however, are seen in the political nervousness which has accompanied the demographic shifts.

European immigration In the European Union, the picture has similarities, but is not as dramatic as in the United States. Data are not collected in a directly comparable way to the United States and differ between countries of the Union, but the foreign or ethnic minority populations of EU countries, taken as a whole, are just under 5 per cent (Table 2.1). There is, however, considerable variation between countries. On the outer perimeter of the European Union (Ireland, Italy, Greece, Portugal, Spain and Finland) it is about 1 per cent, while in the economic core it rises to between 5 and 10 per cent. Many of the foreign born come from other European countries, but increasingly immigrants are from outside Europe (Figure 2.2). Moreover, immigration has started in the peripheral states. The Mediterranean in the South and the River Oder in the East are becoming Europe’s Rio Grande (Peach, 1997). Civil wars in former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Algeria and Sri Lanka and the collapse of Communism in the East, have all contributed to the flow. However, the magnet of Europe is work. Europe’s natural increase is low, the population is ageing (Coleman, 1996). The economy is expanding. Conditions, even when the economies are slowing down, are better than in the homelands of the immigrants. There are established networks for chain migration. Thus in both the United States and the European Union there has been massive economic expansion and massive immigration which has, in turn, produced remarkable demographic changes in those areas. The consequence of economic expansion has been increased ethnic diversity as well as increased standards of living.

Table 2.1 Comparison of the foreign-born populations of the United States, European Union and Japan, c. 1997 Country/Union

Total population

Foreign born

Per cent

United States (1998) European Union (1997) Japan (1997)

272,700,000 373,140,000 126,166,000

25,906,500 16,117,580 1,482,700

9.5 4.3 1.2

Sources: US figures from www://census.gov/statab/www/part1.html; Japan figures from SOPEMI (1999: 164); EU figure calculated from SOPEMI (1999: 264) and elsewhere in this volume.

Morocco

Caribbean

Spain

Paki stan

esh

glad

Ban

India

Algeria

3.5 m

3.8 m

Tunisia

1.3 m

0.9 m

1.5 m 7.3 m

Italy

Yugoslavia

0

0

0 0.2 0.4 1.6 0.8 3.2

200 m s–1

Turkey

400 km

Note Selected West European countries of destination from non-EC Sources c. 1990.

Source: Peach (1997).

Figure 2.2 Source and destinations of international migrations to Europe from non-EU sources in the late 1990s.

Note: France data is c.1990

Other

EC

Caribbean

India

Bangladesh

Pakistan

Tunisia

Morocco

Algeria

Turkey

Yugoslavia

Origin of immigrant population

Number of people (millions)

Total immigrant population of destination country

Number of immigrants originating from specified countries c.1997 (but see note below) Number of people (millions)

Contrasts in economic growth and immigration policy

27

Japanese non-immigration While the United States and the European Union required huge inputs of immigration to sustain their economic expansion, Japan achieved much better economic performance with relatively little immigration. It is true that there have been significant historical movements of Japanese to the United States and to Latin America in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and to its Korean and Taiwanese colonies in the 1930s and 1940s. There were also important movements of Koreans and other nationalities to Japan (see Figure 2.3), but the scale, compared to the United States and European Union is small (see Jones, Chapter 3). Forced Korean labour immigration into Japan between 1940 and 1944 was the most significant of these movements, both in volume and permanence (Tanaka, 1991). Much of this population remained in Japan after the end of the war, but without Japanese citizenship. The survivors of this population and their children and descendants constitute the largest foreign minority population in the country. In 1997 they numbered 654,000 out of the total of 1.5 million foreign nationals (Table 2.2). The mystery of immigration history, however, lies in the post-1950 period. Between 1950 and 2000, the US economy grew enormously; the European economy recovered from the Second World War and grew enormously; the Japanese economy produced prodigious growth. The average annual growth of GNP for 1880–1940 was 3.4 per cent; but for 1955–70 it was 10.4 per cent (Ito, 1992) and from 1973 to 1983 it averaged 9.6 per cent (OECD, 2000: 212). Japan’s population is the richest in terms of GDP per capita, of all countries in the world. However, this growth, which continued until the 1990s was achieved without importation of labour (Figure 2.4). Indeed there was specific legislation to prevent it. The Immigration Control Act of 1952 prohibited the entry of manual migrant workers (and still does so). There had been migrant manual labour forces from previous Japanese colonies, but there was almost no entry of new migrants during the phenomenal economic growth. 2,500

Koreans in Japan Japanese in Korea Japanese in Taiwan

2,000

The National Manpower Mobilisation Act of 1938

1,500 Japan annexed the Korean Peninsula in 1910

1,000

500

0 1895

1900

1905 1910

1915

1920

1925

1930

1935

1940

1944

Figure 2.3 Japanese in Korea and Taiwan, and Koreans in Japan (thousands), 1895–1944. Source: Tanaka (1991: 9) quoted in Iida (2001).

28

Ceri Peach

Table 2.2 Foreign nationals in Japan, 1997, by country of origin Country

1997 Total

Korea China Brazil Philippines United States Other Total

654,000 252,200 233,300 93,300 43,700 214,800 1,491,300

Source: SOPEMI (1999: 164).

Thousands 1,600 1,200

Net migration in major OECD areas European Union United States Japan

800 400 0 –400 1960 62

64

66

68

70

72

74 76

78

80

82

84

86

88

90

92

94

96

98

Figure 2.4 Net immigration in the European Union, United States and Japan, 1960–98. Source: OECD (2000: 188). Note Net migration is measured as the difference between the total population on 1 January and 31 December for a given calendar year, minus the difference between births and deaths.

By the mid-1960s labour shortage had become apparent. In particular, the construction industry suffered significantly in the midst of a boom led by postwar reconstruction. Some industrial sectors started to agitate for the deregulation of the 1952 Immigration Control Act and to import manual as well as skilled labour. The Japanese Cabinet, nevertheless, rejected accepting such workers on three separate occasions in 1967, 1973 and 1976 (Sellek, 1994; Iida, 2001). The Japanese resolution of the problem of huge economic expansion and the determination not to import labour was three fold: 1 2 3

to squeeze domestic supply, especially taking the surplus out of agriculture; to increase the robotisation of manufacturing production and to increase labour productivity; to export its manufacturing industries to overseas countries, rather than importing labour from them. This is referred to as the ‘hollowing out’ of Japanese industry.

Contrasts in economic growth and immigration policy

29

Work cited by Iida (2001: 26) illustrates the rapid decrease in the percentage of the Japanese labour force engaged in the primary sector (particularly agriculture) in the period 1900–2000 (Figure 2.5). Within two decades, between 1950 and 1970, nearly 10 million persons shifted from the Japanese agricultural sector to the other industrial sectors. Labourers were relocated from the agricultural sector with low productivity, to the highly productive manufacturing sector. Industrial workers were also encouraged to continue working beyond the usual age of retirement. The second strategy was to increase labour productivity through a huge investment in robotisation and other techniques such as ‘just in time’ delivery systems, which reduced the need for storage and supervision. Table 2.3 shows that in the period 1960–70 the annual increase in production, productivity per worker and productivity per hour in the Japanese manufacturing sector increased by between nearly 9 and 11 per cent per annum. Japanese productivity also increased at more than double the rate of Germany, the United States and the United Kingdom. The contribution of technology to Japanese economic growth between 1953 and 1971, in comparison with the United States can be seen from Table 2.4. Technological improvements contributed a significantly higher proportion to Japanese growth than to that of the United States. On top of this, Japanese economic growth was double that of the United States for this period. On the contrary, US dependence on increased inputs of labour to achieve economic growth was much more pronounced than in Japan. One-third of US economic growth derived from increased inputs of labour compared to only onefifth in Japan. The dependence of the US economy on immigrant labour is apparent in these figures. The third strategy was investment in manufacturing capacity overseas rather than in Japan. In other words, exporting capital rather than importing labour. In the 1960s, Japan started intensive overseas direct investments by the establishment and extension of branch factories into East and Southeast Asia. 100 90 Tertiary

80 70 (%)

60 Secondary

50 40 30 20

Primary

10 0 1910

1920

1930

1940

1950

1960

1970

Figure 2.5 Composition of labour force in Japan, 1900–2000. Sources: Iida (2001); Japan Statistical Yearbook (2002, tables 3–7).

1980

1990

2000

30

Ceri Peach

Table 2.3 Trends in growth rate of output, employment, hours worked and productivity, 1960–70 (percentages) Output

Japan Germany United States United Kingdom

Employment

Average annual hours worked

Productivity Output per worker

Output per hour

8.8 (10.6) 4.7 (4.7) 3.4 (4.2)

0.9 (1.5) 0.6 (1.3) 2.2 (0.1)

1.2 (1.0) 1.2 (2.1) 0.5 (0.2)

7.8 (8.9) 4.1 (3.3) 1.1 (4.1)

9.1 (10.1) 5.3 (5.5) 1.6 (4.3)

3.1 (2.9)

0.1 (1.3)

1.0 (1.1)

3.0 (4.2)

4.1 (5.4)

Source: OECD Employment Outlook (1985) cited by Iida (2001). Note Figures without parenthesis relate to the whole economy; figures in parenthesis relate to the manufacturing sector.

Table 2.4 Comparison of the contribution of labour, capital and technology to economic growth in Japan and the United States Contributive factors

Labour Employment Hours Sex, age composition Education Unallocated Capital Technological progress and residuals Knowledge Improved resource allocation Scale economies Total

Proportionate contribution to the economic growth (%) Japan, 1953–71 8.8%

US, 1948–69 4.0%

21.0 12.9 2.4 1.6 3.9 0.2 23.8 55.2 22.4 10.8 22.0 100.0

32.5 29.3 5.3 2.5 10.3 0.8 19.8 47.8 29.8 7.5 10.5 100.0

Source: Ito (1993: 48) cited by Iida (2001).

However, by the 1980s and 1990s Japan was investing in manufacturing plants in Europe and the European Union, not simply in the cheap labour markets of South and Southeast Asia. In Britain, for example, Nissan built a factory in Sunderland, Toyota in Derby and Honda in Swindon. Kobe Steel had research laboratories just outside London. However, after the 1980s there were signs that the strains of a non-immigration policy were beginning to tell on the Japanese economy. Young Japanese raised in an affluent society and with higher education, avoided jobs in industries characterised

Contrasts in economic growth and immigration policy

31

as dirty, dangerous and demanding. These are the so-called ‘3Ks industries’ (Dirty  Kitanai, Dangerous  Kiken, Demanding  Kitsui). 3K industries usually represent those offering labour-intensive and manual jobs, like construction, agriculture and catering. Young people often prefer to have jobs in a larger firm, generally seen to provide higher salary, more job security and higher social status (Goodman, 1989). Therefore, small-medium sized enterprises that mainly offer such 3K jobs have been suffering from a severe shortage of labour. To some extent, these signs of labour shortage have been disguised by the bursting of the bubble economy and by the Asian financial crisis of the 1990s. Nevertheless, a series of phenomena illustrate the fact that immigration into Japan is increasing. Part of the growth is through legitimate means and part through clandestine methods. The legitimate methods are largely those of avoidance of restrictive legislation. For example, methods have been devised to bring workers into Japan as ‘trainees’. Skilled and professional workers have always been able to enter Japan, but the designation of some entertainers as professionals conceals an immigration route with a different agenda. As well as avoidance techniques, there are also techniques of evasion. Workers with legitimate entry visas often overstay their permission to remain. For many others, entry has been totally illegal (Sellek and Weiner, 1992; Sellek, 1994).

Consequences of immigration in the United States Although the size of immigration and its proportional share of the population in the United States is the greatest of the three regions with which we are concerned, its impact is, in some ways less than it is for Europe or for Japan. The United States has been created by immigration and over a comparatively short time-scale. Its institutions have been designed to accommodate influx. Its greatest demographic/political conflict has come, paradoxically, not from immigration, but from its failure to make a stable accommodation with its own black population. What we have seen happening in the United States since 1950 is a shift, I believe, from assimilationist policies to pluralist policies. Under assimilationist policies there was an attempt to meld the disparate ethnic groups into a single nation. The current position seems to be moving towards a recognition (at least for some ethnic and racial groups) of separateness. This is true for the African American population in particular. Despite its economic advances since the Kennedy/Johnson era of the 1960s, the black population remains massively concentrated in hypersegregated inner city ghettos (Massey and Denton, 1993). These ghettos are totally different in kind from the ethnic enclaves of earlier European settlers or from Chinatowns or from Latino barrios (Table 2.5). The rapid growth of the Hispanic, particularly the Mexican, population of the United States has produced stresses of a different kind. The Hispanic or Latino population has grown from 14 million in 1980 to 31 million in 2000. By 2010 it is predicted to be 41 million and to overtake (if it has not already done so) the Black population as the largest minority in the United States (Table 2.6). On the other hand, the very rapid increase of the Asian population has been relatively unproblematic (Table 2.7).

Table 2.5 ‘Ghettoisation’ of ethnic groups, Chicago, 1930 Group

Group’s city population

Group’s ‘ghetto’ population

Total ‘ghetto’ population

Percentage of group ‘ghettoised’

Group’s percentage ‘ghetto’ population

Irish German Swedish Russian Czech Italian Polish Negro

169,568 377,975 140,913 169,736 122,089 181,861 401,316 233,903

4,993 53,821 21,581 63,416 53,301 90,407 248,024 216,846

14,595 169,649 88,749 149,208 169,550 195,736 457,146 266,051

2.9 14.2 15.3 37.4 43.7 49.7 61.0 92.7

33.8 31.7 24.3 42.5 31.4 46.2 54.3 81.5

Source: Philpott (1978: 141, table 7).

Table 2.6 Percentage of the African American population of Chicago PMSA 1990, living in tracts of a given black percentage Black percentage of tract

Black population living in such tracts

Percentage of the total black population of Chicago in such tracts

100 per cent 99 per cent or more 90 per cent or more 50 per cent or more 30 per cent or more Total black population

111,804 381,347 884,725 1,087,600 1,163,969 1,330,636

8.4 28.7 66.5 81.7 87.5

Source: Author’s calculation, based on data from GeoLytics CensusCD  Maps; US Census 1990 data www.GeoLytics.com.

Table 2.7 Ethnic and racial composition (1980–2000) and predicted (2010) composition of the US population (000s) Year

White

Black

Hispanic

Asian, Pacific Islanders

American Indian

1980 1990 2000 2010

184,713 208,727 223,114 239,588

26,683 30,511 35,074 40,108

14,504 22,354 31,366 41,138

3,729 7,463 10,440 15,265

1,420 2,065 2,383 2,754

Source: Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1999. Note The Hispanic population can be of any race. In the table its different components are already included in both the white and black populations. As a guide, the white non-Hispanic population in 2000 was 197 million out of the total white number of 223 millions; so about 26 million of the 31 million Hispanics were white. The Asian, Pacific Islander group is overwhelmingly Asian.

Contrasts in economic growth and immigration policy 100

American Indian

90

Asian, Pac Islanders

80

Hispanic

70

Black

60 (%)

33

White

50 40 30 20 10 0 1980

1990

2000

2010

Figure 2.6 Comparison of the actual and projected racial and ethnic composition of the US population, 1980–2010.

Not only is the Latino population growing very rapidly, but its major concentrations are in California directly adjacent to Mexico. As a result, California is becoming a kind of extension of the Mexican cultural region, or an Hispanic annex rather than the home to an assimilating population. To summarise the US situation, immigration has fuelled the continued economic growth, but economic growth has been at the expense of social justice for some groups. Nevertheless the national strength of the United States seems capable of accommodating if not assimilating its minorities. The Black and Hispanic populations, for rather different reasons, seem to be the exceptions rather than the rule to assimilationist tendencies. The Japanese, for example, despite major vicissitudes during the 1941–45 period, are a model assimilating minority.

Consequences of immigration in Europe Despite the smaller numbers and lower percentage involved, the social versus economic conflict over immigration is much more acute in Europe than it is in the United States. It is not possible to speak of a single European situation since the sources of immigrants and their situations in the various European countries differ so considerably, but for all of the countries post-war immigration has come as a shock. One major difference within Europe lies between those countries which regard citizenship as a product of the place of birth or residence ( jus solis, of law of the soil) and those who regard it as a product of ethnic or racial descent ( jus sanguinis, law of blood). The British, the Dutch and the French lie in the birthplace/ residence camp while the Germans and the Austrians believe in blood descent. Even though the British and the French are on the same side, their attitudes to accommodation of minorities are radically different. The French believe in Francoconformism. This to say that irrespective of ethnic or racial background, minorities

34

Ceri Peach

Table 2.8 ‘Ghettoisation’ of ethnic groups at ED* level in Greater London (30 per cent cutoff )** Group

Group’s city Group’s Total ‘ghetto’ Percentage of Group’s population ‘ghetto’ population group percentage population ‘ghettoised’ of ‘ghetto’ population

Non-white 1,346,119 Black Caribbean 290,968 Black African 163,635 Black other 80,613 Indian 347,091 Pakistani 87,816 Bangladeshi 8,5,738 Chinese 56,579 Other Asian 112,807 Other other 120,872 Irish born 256,470

721,873 7,755 3,176 — 88,887 1,182 28,280 38 176 209 1,023

1,589,476 22,545 8,899 — 202,135 3,359 55,500 111 572 530 2,574

53.6 2.6 2.0 — 25.6 1.4 33.0 0.0 0.2 0.2 0.4

45.4 34.4 35.6 — 44.0 35.2 51.0 34.2 30.8 39.4 39.8

Source: Peach (1996). Notes * ED stands for ‘Enumeration District’. This is the smallest statistical unit in the British census. The average ED size in 1991 was 460 persons. ** ‘Cutoff’ refers to the arbitrary threshold at which concentration is measured, that is, any ED in which the target group forms over 30 per cent of the population.

have to adopt French culture and a French sense of identity. The British, on the other hand practice multiculturalism which believes in accepting and preserving different ethnic and cultural practices. The German patterns and practices are rather similar, then to the Japanese. There is considerable reluctance to offer citizenship to immigrants, such as the Turks, who may have lived in Germany for many generations. On the other hand, there has been a welcome accorded to ethnic Germans (Aussiedler) who have lived for generations in countries such as Russia. The parallels with Japanese attitudes to Nikkei Japanese from Latin America and Japanese attitudes to Koreans are striking. Despite these differences in attitudes to minority populations between European countries, the outcomes in terms of settlement patterns and segregation (which we may take as an index of accommodation) are broadly similar. There are no racialised ghettos on the Black American model. In London, for example, where the minority ethnic population in 1991 formed one-fifth of the capital’s total population, there were very few wards where the minority formed a majority of the local population (Table 2.8) (Peach, 1996). On the other hand, racial harassment is endemic in European countries and with the rising tide of asylum seekers and refugees.

Discussion and conclusion In retrospect, the Japanese economic expansion without immigration still seems a mystery, but less mysterious than it was. The combination of squeezing more

Contrasts in economic growth and immigration policy

35

labour out of unproductive sectors of its domestic population, recalling retired workers back into the labour force, massively increasing mechanisation and revolutionising manufacturing practices have all contributed to Japan’s success without calling on immigration. It seems, however, that this success may be true of the first period of Japanese post-war economic growth rather than for all time. The period of large-scale transfer of agricultural workers into the manufacturing industries has passed and domestic labour reserves are limited. Other countries are replicating Japanese innovative practices. Although still small, the legal and clandestine flow of foreign labour into Japan is increasing. Judging by the experience of other countries, this may produce a ratchet effect. In spite of current economic difficulties, Japan’s foreign minority population seems likely to grow. Assuming that the current economic difficulties are temporary, the next economic leap of the economy is likely to magnify the movements that are already taking place under difficult conditions. Taking the wider picture, the OECD (2000: 197) and the UN point to the structural changes facing the European Union and Japan whose populations are ageing. The proportion of the population of working age will decline, particularly after 2010, when the baby boom generation begins to retire. Under United Nations population projections which are based on low or zero net migration flows, population of the European Union and Japan are expected to fall between 2000 and 2050 by 12 and 17 per cent respectively (OECD, 2000: 197). This is the equivalent to some 65 million people (say 44 million in the European Union and 21 million in Japan). In the United States, the overall population is set to increase, although the proportion of elderly people will also rise. The OECD suggests that contracting or slower growing populations and labour forces will impact on the living standards to such an extent that there will be a reduction of 10 per cent in US living standards (measured by GNP per capita) by 2050. The EU’s living standards will drop by 18 per cent and Japan’s by 23 per cent (OECD, 2000: 197) below the level that they might have attained, extrapolating current productivity trends with unchanged dependency ratios (my italics). A UN report (UN, 2000) has calculated that to maintain the size of working populations at the highest levels reached in the absence of immigration after 1995, would imply migration flow rather similar to those of the last decade. On the other hand, the level of net migration necessary to sustain the old-age dependency ratio at its 2000 level entails an enormous increase in all countries and regions studied and implies very large increases in the overall population (OECD, 2000: 197) (Figure 2.7). What this seems to point to is that policies of immigration restriction will have profound effects on Japanese living standards or on potential living standards over the next 50 years. Americans have accepted the necessity of immigration and seem content to live with its consequences. Each new wave of immigration has met with resistance, but in the end has been accommodated. Europe has accepted economic immigration but has been unprepared for some of the political consequences. Japan has taken the political decision to restrict immigration but is feeling the uncomfortable economic effects of the policy. If the OECD and United

36

Ceri Peach

Thousands 30,000

Sizeable immigration is required to stabilise old-age dependency ratios1

25,000 20,000 15,000 10,000 5,000 0 –5,000

2000

2005

2010

2015

2020

2025

2030

2035

2040

2045

2050

2045

2050

Implying large increases in the overall populations2

Millions 1,400 1,200 1,000 800 600 400 200 0

2000

2005

2010

2015

2020

European Union

2025

2030

2035

2040

Unites States

Japan

Figure 2.7 Immigration and ageing in the European Union, United States and Japan. Source: United Nations Population Division, Replacement Migration (2000). Note 1 Average annual net migration for 5 years ending in the years shown. 2 Total population in the year shown.

Nations projections are correct, it seems unlikely that the policy will be able to hold. If the UN predictions are correct it seems that, in the long term, Japan’s experience of economic expansion without immigration will have been an episode rather than a sustainable policy. The one remaining source of under-used labour within Japan seems to be women. To a European observer, they seem often to be used decoratively rather than functionally. Their restricted chances of career development seems to be part of the reason for the gender imbalance in Japanese settling permanently overseas (see White, Chapter 5). However, women’s traditional position in society is another aspect of the Japanese determination not to pollute its society. In other words, keeping women in their place and keeping immigrants out is part and parcel of the philosophical position. Could it be that, in the end, Japanese society will have to choose between advancing the role of women or accepting the immigration of foreigners? Even Miyoshi (Chapter 4) who argues strongly against immigration as a solution to Japan’s labour shortage and ageing population structure, envisages full incorporation of women into the labour market as the solution to Japan’s problems.

Contrasts in economic growth and immigration policy

37

Acknowledgements Grateful acknowledgement is made to the European Science Foundation for sponsoring the meeting, to the Sasakawa Foundation for additional sponsorship and funding of the translation facilities and to St Catherine’s College Oxford for overall organisation of the Kobe Seminar Series. My personal thanks are due to Mombushô for sponsoring my visit and to Dr Naomi Iida, on whose doctoral work I have drawn for Japanese data.

References Bureau of the Census (1999). Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1999. Washington, DC. Coleman, David (ed.) (1996). Europe’s Population in the 1990s. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Goodman, Roger (1989). ‘Japanese Education: A Model to Emulate?’. The Pacific Review 2(1): 24–37. Iida, Naomi (2001). Residential and Social Incorporation of Foreign Residents in Japan in the 1990s. DPhil thesis, Faculty of Anthropology and Geography, Oxford University. Ito, T. (1993). The Japanese Economy. Cambridge: MIT Press. Massey, Douglas and Denton, Nancy (1993). American Apartheid. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. OECD (1985). OECD Employment Outlook. Paris: OECD. OECD (2000). Trends in Immigration and Economic Consequences. Paris: OECD. Peach, Ceri (1996). ‘Does Britain have Ghettos?’. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 22(1): 216–35. Peach, Ceri (1997). ‘Postwar Migration to Europe: Reflux, Influx, Refuge’. Social Science Quarterly 78(2): 269–83. Philpott, T.L. (1978). The Slum and the Ghetto: Neighborhood Deterioration and Middle Class Reform. New York: Oxford University Press. Sellek, Y. (1994). ‘Illegal Foreign Migrant Workers in Japan: Change and Challenge in Japanese Society’, pp. 169–201 in Brown, J.M. and R. Foot (eds), Migration: The Asian Experience. Basingstoke: Macmillan Press. Sellek, T. and Weiner, M. (1992). ‘Migrant Workers: The Japanese Case in International Perspective’, pp. 205–28 in Hook, G. and M. Weiner (eds), The Internationalization of Japan. London: Routledge. SOPEMI (1999). Trends in International Migration: Continuous Reporting System on Migration. Paris: OECD. Statistics Bureau, Ministry of Public Management, Home Affairs, Post and Telecommunications (2002). Japan Statistical Yearbook 2002. Tokyo. Tanaka, H. (1991). ‘Gaikokujin Rodosha wo Meguru Nihon no Jokyo’ (Circumstances about Foreign Workers in Japan), pp. 112–33 in Nakaoka, S. (ed.), Nanmin, Imin, Dedekasegi (Refugees, Migrants and Guestworkers). Tokyo: Toyo Keizai Shinposha. Thernstrom, Stephan and Orlov, Ann (1980). Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

3

The Pacific-Asian context of international migration to Japan Huw Jones

This chapter differs from others in the book because its focus is not solely on Japan or the Japanese. Instead, it considers migration to Japan as an integral, though not dominant, part of an enclosed regional migration system within East and Southeast Asia (here referred to as Pacific Asia). The Indian peninsula to the west is excluded since it sends its modern labour migrants almost exclusively to the Middle East. Bangladesh, however, in recent years has become attracted into the Pacific-Asian system. The chapter is divided into four sections. The first examines the reasons behind the labour deficits in the core economies of the Asian-Pacific region, citing a combination of macroeconomic, demographic and cultural factors. The second examines the labour flows from the labour-surplus periphery to the core and argues that the flows are demographically driven. The third examines the structuring of the regional migration system, pointing particularly to the role of brokers. The chapter concludes with an illustrative case study of Thai migration to Japan.

Labour deficits in core economies Labour shortages in Japan and the newly industrialised countries (NICs) of Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan and South Korea fuelled the development of the modern international migration system of Pacific Asia. The labour shortages are a function of two factors. The first was the growth in these core economies (almost 10 per cent p.a. real GDP in the 1960s, continuing at that rate in the NICs, although not Japan, until the mid-1990s). The second factor was the declining growth in the indigenous labour force because of rapidly falling fertility (Table 3.1). While the functional dependence of fertility decline on socio-economic transformation is broadly established for Asia (Freedman, 1995), a case can be made out for quasi-autonomous fertility decline in Japan and the NICs. In Japan, despite significant industrialisation and urbanisation, the overall decline in fertility was modest until the 1950s (the crude birth rates were about 38 per 1,000 in the 1880s, 30 per 1,000 in the 1930s and 33 per 1,000 in the late 1940s). This has been explained by Taeuber (1958) in terms of the retarded pace of social as opposed to economic transformation. She cites the maintenance of

1.8 2.8 2.3 3.1 1.9 5.1 4.2 4.3 5.0 4.7 2.9 5.6 6.2 5.0 5.5 6.7

2.0 5.4 5.3 5.2 4.9 6.7 6.7

6.4

6.6 5.4 5.9 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.0 6.7

1975–80

3.7 2.7 1.8 2.5 5.9 5.2 3.8 3.3

2.0

1.4 1.7 1.1 1.7 1.7 3.4 3.2

1995–98

117 65 22 84 250 236 132 129

29

32 7 37 3 3 73 112

Projected growth (%), 15–64 population, 1995–2050

44 50 62 71 77 72 68 63

59

5 13 1 11 0 2 19

Percentage of labour force in agriculture, 1997

56 37 32 20 22 22 25 19

30

79 83 96 77 100 67 55

Percentage of population urban, 1997

1,220 1,110 860 320 400 300 — 270

2,800

37,850 10,550 25,280 — 32,940 25,090 4,680

GNP per head, US$, 1997

Sources: World Bank, World Development Report; Population Reference Bureau, World Population Data Sheet; ESCAP, Asia-Pacific in Figures; UN, The Sex and Age Distribution of the World Populations (various years).

Net labour importers Japan South Korea Hong Kong Taiwan Singapore Brunei Malaysia Labour importer/exporter Thailand Net labour exporters Philippines Indonesia China Vietnam Laos Cambodia Myanmar Bangladesh

1960–65

Total fertility rate

Table 3.1 Selected demographic and socio-economic data for East Asian countries by overall migration status

40

Huw Jones

a paternalistic labour situation and a traditional family-centred social organisation which left cultural values virtually unchanged. Japanese resistance to the smallfamily ideal finally crumbled in the 1950s, when in a single decade the crude birth rate was halved, providing the most concentrated fertility reduction ever achieved in the world. This may be interpreted as the inevitable accompaniment of further modernisation, but a special instigating factor was the desperate demographic plight of Japan immediately following the Second World War. At a time of economic chaos and national demoralisation, the country had to absorb 7 million Japanese from its lost empire and cope with a natural increase surge as the death rate reacted to medical and public health programmes. There was an immediate and widespread desire to limit family size in all social classes, and the prime means adopted was abortion, made available by the state on liberal grounds in 1948. Similarly, in all four NICs, there was strong state promotion of family planning programmes in the 1960s and early 1970s to complement, indeed consciously to hasten, the development of export-based manufacturing by reducing the ranks of dependants (40–45 per cent of the NICs’ populations in the mid-1960s were under 15 years of age). This was strictly in accord with the doctrine of Coale and Hoover (1958) that reduced fertility was a basic developmental pre-requisite to promote savings and investment and dampen consumption. Accordingly, savings as a proportion of GDP in the NICs grew from about 20 per cent in the early 1960s to 30–35 per cent in the mid-1970s (Higgins and Williamson, 1997). In this early pre-1980 growth phase, reduced fertility had not worked its way through to the labour-force entrant cohorts. Indeed, the fertility reductions permitted the increased female participation rates that were stimulated by the particular types of labour-intensive manufacturing that were being developed, especially garments and electronics. At the same time, in Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, although not in the city states of Hong Kong and Singapore, there was considerable scope for boosting the modern-sector labour force by labour transfers from a substantial agricultural sector (in Japan, 30 per cent of the labour force was still in agriculture in 1955; in Taiwan, 48 per cent in 1965; and in South Korea, 50 per cent in 1970 and even 34 per cent as late as 1980). Thus, labour shortages and the associated entry of foreign workers first emerged, among the core economies, in Singapore and Hong Kong in the late 1960s. This was in advance of the demographic downside effects on the labour force. In contrast to these micro-states, Japan, Taiwan and Korea embarked on significant labour immigration only in the late 1980s. In Korea and Taiwan, it was only from the mid-1980s that fertility falls were beginning to reduce significantly the annual growth in the labour force, and only by then had the pool of rural labour available for mobilisation into the expanding urban-industrial economy become exhausted. Japan provides the greatest enigma in explaining the timing of significant entry of foreign workers in response to demographic and economic transformation. Despite that transformation having been much earlier and deeper than in Korea and Taiwan, it began to import significant numbers of foreign workers only at the

Pacific-Asian context of international migration

41

Table 3.2 FDI stock in Thailand from 1970 to year-end originating in Japan and Asian NICs (millions of baht)

Japan NICs

1978

1987

1990

1993

4,722 2,039

21,187 11,525

82,487 53,924

115,929 110,740

Source: ESCAP (1995, table 7.2).

same time, the late 1980s.1 One might have expected an earlier investment-led restructuring of the Japanese economy, involving off-shore production and the development of intra-corporation regional divisions of labour. Yet the timing and pace of restructuring was not significantly different from the other core economies (e.g. Table 3.2). The answer lies in the particularly strong cultural resistance in Japan to immigration, feared as contaminating its self-perceived, culturally homogeneous population, coupled with an ability to bar entry through its geographical location and strong bureaucratic controls. It was only when strains in the labour market became particularly acute from the mid-1980s, in cost as well as availability, that Japan committed itself, albeit unofficially and clandestinely, to significant labour importation as well as to a greatly accelerated programme of off-shore production. There have been three major components in the flows of cheap labour into the labour-intensive, non-exportable sectors of the core economies: construction workers, production workers in smaller firms and low-grade service workers. In tight labour markets, major infra-structural projects have often required the recruitment of foreign construction workers. In manufacturing, labour shortages have been concentrated in smaller firms which have poorer information on technology options, incur greater risks in investing in automation, and often embrace some of the more unpleasant working conditions. Foreign workers in Japan have not significantly accessed larger firms like the automobile manufacturers, where indigenous workers have been attracted and retained, at least formerly, by high wages, job security and extensive benefits. Similarly, a 1993 survey of Korean industrial firms revealed a vacancy rate of 21 per cent for firms employing less than 30 workers, compared with 5 per cent for firms of over 200 workers (Abella et al., 1995); comparable survey figures for Taiwan in 1991 were 36 and 4 per cent, respectively (Tsay, 1995). The importance of poorly paid, low-productivity jobs in the service sector of advanced economies is essentially the result of labour market segmentation (Sassen, 1993). Such jobs, dependent on growing demand from increasingly affluent populations, have often been abandoned to immigrant workers through the disdain of the indigenous population. A distinctive element in the Asian NICs, particularly Singapore and Hong Kong, has been the trade in foreign maids, essentially to replace married indigenous women sucked into a tight and lucrative labour market; in Singapore, the female labour-force participation rate rose from 37 per cent in 1976 to 51 per cent in 1997 (Hui, 1998). That this has not occurred

42

Huw Jones

in Japan reflects distinctive attitudes there towards the nature of the family and childbearing in a country where foreign ‘entertainers’ are widely tolerated, but not maids. Fertility declines therefore contribute directly to supply-side labour deficits through reduced rates of labour-force growth. Yet the lagged temporal association of fertility decline with labour deficits is a complex one, which varies among the core economies. In the city states, the dominant influence is simply the restricted size of the base population; and in all the core economies a vital consideration is the balance of labour supply and demand in particular segments of the economy. In particular, substantial demands for foreign workers are generated in those segments disdained by the indigenous population. That disdain is related, indirectly, to modern fertility transitions in that smaller numbers of children enable them to be much better educated. In Japan, for example, between 1955 and 1990 the proportion of primary schoolchildren proceeding to secondary schools increased from 50 to 96 per cent, while the proportion of secondary schoolchildren going to university reached 38 per cent by 1990. It is the raised expectations associated with these education levels which particularly encourages the distaste for menial jobs. One cannot, therefore, make out a strong case for immigration into the core economies being demographically driven. More important has been the extraordinary pace of economic growth that has outstripped continuing, although reducing, growth in the indigenous labour-force cohorts and that has promoted labour demand in sectors spurned by local workers. However, the age structure of the indigenous labour force, a direct function of past fertility trends, is undoubtedly causing concern to states and employers, and will strongly influence future demand for foreign labour. While the workforce cohorts in the indigenous populations have not yet been falling (even in Japan not until 2005–10), and while the overall dependency ratio, apart from Japan, continues to be favourable, there is concern about the evolving ratio between older and younger workers, given the alleged lack of adaptability and resistance to change of older workers. Moreover, from about 2010, the passing out of the labour force of the pre-fertility decline cohorts will promote rising dependency. As a policy response, it is widely acknowledged that labour-expanding policies for the indigenous population – raising retirement age, providing incentives to attract and retain married women in the workforce, and attempting to increase fertility (as in Singapore’s explicit reversal of its population policy in 1987) – are unlikely to have much aggregate effect; in any case, they would not address the problem of disdain for manual work in affluent, educated populations. This is why, at a time when the fertility falls of the last three decades are beginning to have a major impact on size of the labour force, more of the core economy states are showing signs of following the long-established lead of Singapore in incorporating migrant labour policies as an integral part of their national economic and social planning. One illustration is the current consideration being given in Japan – the world’s fourth most ageing society in 1999, with 23 per cent of its population over 60 years of age – to importing most of the additional half million domestic carers for the elderly that are expected to be needed there within 10 years.

Pacific-Asian context of international migration

43

The labour surplus and labour export periphery Japan differs significantly from the other regional core economies in its sourcing of foreign labour. The labour needs of most of the Asian core economies have been met regionally with little difficulty, since there are appreciable intra-regional gradients in socio-economic conditions (Table 3.1), and many of the poorer countries have very large populations. Only in Japan has there been any significant labour recruitment from outside the region. This results from its attempt to protect perceived cultural homogeneity by authorising the recruitment of Japanese-descent workers in South America, especially Brazil, and granting them long-term resident status; the stock of such workers rose from 8,000 in 1988 to 250,000 in 1997 (Watanabe, 1998). Nevertheless, even in Japan, the majority of its non-Japanese residents originate within the Asia-Pacific region. The basis of labour availability in the peripheral economies has been the demographically driven expansion of their labour forces, despite widespread fertility declines which vary from early and appreciable in China and Thailand, through moderate and delayed in Indonesia, to modest and stalled in the Philippines and late in Vietnam (Table 3.1). In Indonesia, for example, while the rate of natural increase in the mid-1990s was 1.5 per cent per annum, the labour force cohorts were increasing at twice that rate, providing an annual increment of some 2.5 million workers. The pressures on employment from such growth rates in what are still dominantly rural societies has been accentuated everywhere by the displacement of agricultural workers through the adoption of outward-oriented, deregulated, market-driven economic policies. In response to these demographic pressures, several countries developed labour-export policies – initially in the Philippines and Korea for the booming Middle Eastern market from the mid-1970s, subsequently in Thailand, Indonesia and Bangladesh, and more recently – following the opening of their economies and easing of travel restrictions – in China and Vietnam (Abella, 1995). All but the Philippines have regarded labour export policies as closely complementing strong family planning programmes. Indeed, it is notable that the East Asian countries have been world leaders in both types of policy. Compared to the longer-term impact of fertility reduction, labour migration overseas is seen as immediately relieving pressure on the internal labour market and earning valuable foreign exchange through remittances. The negative aspects of labour migration, centring on compromised human rights of workers, are often rationalised officially on the basis that labour migration is a temporary, but necessary, phenomenon during the course of economic transformation. Although governments played a key pro-active role in the early stages of their labour-export policies and continue to engage in market development and (limited) worker protection negotiations, labour recruitment itself is now overwhelmingly in the hands of private agencies (Martin, 1996; Jones and Pardthaisong, 1999a). These emerged in Asia in the 1970s to meet the demands of the booming Middle-Eastern labour market. Initially the brokerage fees were paid by foreign employers desperate for labour, but by the 1990s brokerage fees were much higher and were paid by the workers themselves, amounting to 20–40 per cent of

44

Huw Jones

their first year’s earnings. The role of the agent is particularly powerful whenever, as in the Middle East, Japan and the NICs, migrant workers are prevented from settling, so that there is continual return and replenishment. The late 1980s marked a decisive turning point in the evolving regional pattern of labour exports. First, labour shortages became acute in the East Asian core economies. Second, wage differentials within the region steepened considerably following a substantial appreciation of currencies in the core economies. Third, the infra-structural construction phase of development in the Gulf states was being completed. Consequently, from that time migrant labour placements, including those from Bangladesh, began to focus more on Pacific-Asian rather than Middle-Eastern destinations.

The structuring of the regional migration system While the basis for the rapid development of the Pacific-Asian labour-migration system has been the widening demographic and economic inequalities within the region, it will be shown that the detailed geographical pattern of ensuing labour flows reflects particular macro-economic, cultural and institutional linkages that selectively channel particular types of labour to particular core economies. There is no simple equilibrating pattern of labour flows responding directly to intraregional demographic and economic disparities and being mediated by the gravitational forces of population mass and intervening distance. What then are the types of linkage that have bonded particular countries together in the East Asian migration system? Sassen (1988, 1993), in a global context, and Pang (1993) in an Asian context, argue that new patterns of economic links between countries, especially through foreign direct investment (FDI), are a key catalyst to new international labour flows. The functional role of such links in migration is that they enhance transportation and communication systems as well as inter-personal information transfer, for example, involving Japanese managers and technicians working in their firms’ car-making plants in Thailand, or Chinese engineers brought to a parent company in Singapore for benchmark training. When the countries involved in such linkages are both at relatively high and broadly comparable development levels, the ensuing population movements are likely to be dominated by highly skilled personnel on short-term postings or business visits. Thus in 1994, 681,000 persons from Taiwan entered Japan (second only among foreigners to Koreans) while 823,000 Japanese moved in the opposite direction, comprising a massive 37 per cent of all foreign entrants to Taiwan (Taiwan Statistical Data Book, 1995). However, when international economic linkages involve countries of very different development levels, they are likely to stimulate unbalanced transfers – small numbers of the highly skilled in one direction, and large numbers of semi- and un-skilled in the other. There is strong evidence for increased economic bonding in the 1980s and early 1990s of the major labour-exporting countries to Japan and the Asian NICs. This is particularly evident in FDI flows (Table 3.2) and associated trade patterns (Jones and Findlay, 1998). While the investment flows reflect the restructuring of

Pacific-Asian context of international migration

45

the core economies and the associated development of off-shore production, that restructuring has only partly been demographically driven by labour-force considerations; other motivations involve concerns over trade surpluses, access to world markets and environmental degradation. The particular geographical pattern of intra-Asian migration flows (Figure 3.1) is strongly influenced by investment in the rest of Asia from Japan and the NICs being concentrated almost exclusively in Pacific Asia. Less than 3 per cent of that investment has gone to India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, and the

Japan

South Korea

China Taiwan

Hong Kong Bangladesh

Philippines Thailand

Brunei

Sabah

Malaysia Singapore

1,000 Kms

Indonesia

Figure 3.1 Major international flows of migrant workers within Eastern Asia in the 1990s. Note Flows can only be represented notionally, because of high and variable proportions of undocumented migrants.

46

Huw Jones

pattern is similar for formal development aid (Grant, 1995). This has contributed strongly to the very real divide in labour migration streams between Southern and Eastern Asia described in the introduction, despite immense demographic pressure within Southern Asia and the strong historic migration links between India and Southeast Asia. Thus in 1994, over 95 per cent of all workers obtaining emigration clearance in India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka for contract work abroad went to the Middle East (Huguet, 1995). There is, however, recent evidence from the growing movement of Bangladeshi workers to Pacific Asia in the 1990s that the regional migration divide is beginning to break down. The increased economic bonding from the 1980s between particular Asian countries has been accompanied by increased tourism linkages, which, in turn, can stimulate labour migration. Thus between 1985 and 1992 the proportion of the foreign tourist intake originating in Japan and the NICs increased from 22 to 39 per cent in Thailand, 28 to 52 per cent in Indonesia and 35 to 42 per cent in the Philippines (World Tourism Organisation, Yearbooks of Tourism Statistics). One particular form of migration stimulated in this way is that of so-called entertainers and undocumented sex workers, especially from the Philippines and Thailand to Japan, as a reverse flow of sex tourism (Douglas, 1995; Singhanetra-Renard, 1995). There are additional institutional links between particular countries that are important in fashioning labour migration. The former imperial involvement of Japan in Korea, Formosa and Manchuria has led to just over a million Chinese and Koreans living in Japan as permanent residents, although not citizens (Table 3.3). Ethnic and linguistic bonds have been influential in labour movements Table 3.3 Number of foreigners in Japan, 1 January 1999, by nationality S/N Korea China (incl. Taiwan) Brazil Philippines Thailand Peru USA Malaysia Indonesia Iran Bangladesh Myanmar Other countries Total

699,490 315,012 220,563 144,206 52,998 51,110 42,656 16,577 14,931 14,448 11,299 9,986 170,391 1,773,867

Source: Ministry of Justice Immigration Bureau data given in Komai (2000, table 1). Note Data include overstayers, but exclude US forces stationed in Japan and their dependents, diplomats, and those who entered the country clandestinely.

Pacific-Asian context of international migration

47

from Indonesia to Malaysia, from China to Hong Kong, Korea and Taiwan, and from Mindanao, the Muslim part of the Philippines, to the Malaysian state of Sabah. An associated cultural factor in the domination of some foreign-worker labour markets by particular national origins is the stereotyping of particular national groups by employers, labour organisations and state in the core economies, what Chin (1997: 379) has termed, in relation to the recruitment of maids, ‘class-gendered-ethnonational perception’. This is why Li et al. (1998) have called for a ‘cultural economy’ perspective on the geography of international labour migration to complement the traditional ‘political economy’ approach. These are the factors that have fashioned the broad contours of the Pacific Asian international migration system (Figure 3.1) and its particular constituent flows, as illustrated by immigration data for Japan (Table 3.3).

Thai migration to Japan: an illustrative case study Many of the general features of Pacific Asia’s migrant-labour system can be illustrated by a consideration of labour migration from a major labour exporter, Thailand, to a major labour importer, Japan, although this particular migration stream does exhibit some highly distinctive elements within the overarching common framework. Extent of migration Official Thai Government data on departing labour migrants is given in Table 3.4. The overall pattern is one of considerable increase in labour migrants over the last 20 years, and a major switch from Middle-Eastern to Pacific-Asian destinations. In the mid-1990s, after a decade of rapid economic growth in Thailand when employment opportunities and wage levels were rising significantly, it seemed that labour exports would diminish and that labour imports, already at a high level from adjacent Myanmar, would accelerate. Indeed, the National Development Plan (1996–2001) no longer promoted labour migration overseas. However, the 1997–98 Asian financial crisis has brought widespread recession, unemployment and underemployment to Thailand, so that the official numbers of Thai migrant workers going abroad have increased each year from 1997. Table 3.4 suggests that the number of Thai workers going to Japan is relatively small – a mere 3–5 per cent of all Thai migrant workers. This immediately raises the problem of documentation and official recording of migrant workers, and fieldwork by the author in Thailand suggests that it is likely that Japan is the most under-recorded of all destinations for Thai migrant workers. Table 3.5 shows that the modest exit counts of Thai workers going to Japan (column 1) are considerably out of line with the more substantial numbers of Thais within Japan inferred from Japanese data (columns 2–4). A revealing comparison can be made with another labour-exporting country. The Philippines government recorded annual numbers of labour migrants to Japan at about 50,000 per year in the 1990–95 period; this is 6–7 times the Thai figure, yet the numbers of overstayers and

Table 3.4 Overseas contract workers from Thailand processed on departure by labour authorities, by countries of destination

Middle East Saudi Arabia Libya Israel Rest of Middle East Eastern Asia Singapore Brunei Hong Kong Japan Malaysia Taiwan Rest of East Asia Other countries Total

1980

1985

21,105

61,734

1,003

15 22,123

14 69,685

1989 61,442 13,215 — 13,271 7,937 11,056 8,630 6,529 3,825 611 168 717 5,850 125,314

1993

1996

1999

5,035 4,597 1,797 5,590

1,825 1,900 14,908 3,974

1,392 1,436 11,940 4,009

14,171 14,750 5,182 5,588 11,358 66,891 660 2,331 137,950

17,601 20,714 4,301 10,118 9,363 96,097 2,747 1,888 185,43

24,525 7,657 4,339 5,278 17,716 15,096 4,496 4,532 202,416

Source: Annual Reports of Government of Thailand, Department of Labour.

Table 3.5 Recorded data on Thai migrants to and in Japan, 1989–99

1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999

Labour migrants recorded by Thai government

Industrial trainees admitted a

Visa overstayers at one date in year (% female)

Deportations

3,825 4,210 6,263 6,773 5,588 8,848 8,500 10,118 10,099 10,790 5,278

4502 5075 6290 5385 4075 3718 3661 — — — —

— 11,523 (65%) 19,093 (66%) 44,354 (56%) 55,383 (54%) 50,010 (56%) 43,014 (58%) 41,280 (58%) 38,191 (58%) 37,046 30,065

1,919 2,239 5,582 7,610 12,640 10,730 — — — — —

Sources: Annual Reports of Government of Thailand, Department of Labour; Furuya (1995); Komai (2000). Notes a Initially trainees moved within multinational corporations or from subsidiary companies, but now the dominant flow is to small manufacturing firms with labour shortages. Such firms are permitted to recruit trainees – in effect, cheap, unskilled workers – for up to two years under the auspices of local governments, chambers of commerce or business co-operatives. — No data available.

Pacific-Asian context of international migration

49

deportations recorded in Japan during this period were substantially less for Filipinos than Thais. Official Japanese data (Table 3.3) record the number of Thais resident in Japan at the beginning of 1999 at 52,998 (the fifth largest group of foreigners). However, several authoritative estimates (including that of the Thai Embassy in Tokyo) put the stock of Thai workers in Japan at any one time during the mid- and late 1990s at about 100,000 (Human Rights Watch, 2000). The major cause of the disparity is not so much surreptitious, unrecorded entry to Japan, mainly by boat, as the provision by criminal syndicates of Singaporean, Malaysian and even Japanese passports to Thai nationals to facilitate their entry (see the following section). Types of migrants Two types of unskilled, unauthorised labour dominate the stream of migrant workers from Thailand to Japan. The first comprises male workers in construction and manufacturing, with so-called ‘trainee’ placements (see Table 3.5) playing a major role. Thus, in the 1997–99 period, of the 26,176 Thais officially recorded as leaving for work in Japan, 53 per cent were listed under ‘employer/trainee arrangements’, a far higher proportion than for any other major destination (e.g. 3 per cent for Taiwan, 8 per cent for Singapore). The second type, numerically more important, comprises female sexworkers. Fieldwork evidence from Thailand is reviewed below, but some of the aggregate official data is suggestive: Table 3.5 shows that the proportion of females among Thai nationals recorded as overstaying their visas in Japan was over 54 per cent in every year from 1989 to 1996, and in 2 years exceeded 65 per cent; every year from 1991 to 1995 the number of female overstayers in Japan was higher for Thai nationals than for any other national group; and, at least up to the end of 1996, Thai females have represented by far the largest group of HIV cases among foreigners in Japan (Kihara et al., 1998). Four forces underpin this largely undocumented migration stream of Thai sexworkers to Japan: 1

2

During the late 1960s there emerged a particular variant in the long history of international trade in sexual services in Japan. This took the form of organised ‘sex tours’ for Japanese men to Asian destinations, notably the Philippines, Korea, Taiwan and Thailand; closely related was the establishment of hostess clubs in cities like Bangkok that catered exclusively for Japanese clients. Growing criticism of such explicit practices by the late 1980s, coupled with the growing demand for sexual services fuelled by Japan’s economic boom at that time, led to alternative efforts to induce foreign women into Japan’s own sex industry (Douglas, 1995; SinghanetraRenard, 1995; Piper, 1997). It is widely alleged that racist stereotypes of ‘Asian’ women characterise Japanese society (Allison, 1994; Douglas, 1995). Such accounts argue that as

50

3

4

Huw Jones Japanese women have begun to challenge patriarchy, Japanese men resort to a view of submissive and sensual Asian women meeting traditional sexual needs and demands; and that this sexualises the long-established power relationship between Japan and other Asian nations. These demands for imported sexual services interact with a ready supply of prospective sexworkers in Thailand. This supply is based on the active, indigenous sex industry in Thailand. At the core of Thai sexual culture is a ‘double standard’ which permits single and married men considerable freedom in sexual relations without significant social sanctions, while young women are expected to preserve pre-marital virginity and wives to remain faithful to their husbands. Such a ‘standard’ can only be maintained by ready access of males to sexworkers, whose numbers according to the more reliable (and conservative) estimates are some 200,000–300,000. A ready supply of female sexworkers from peripheral rural areas is assured by the resources/aspirations gap associated with modernisation, and by the cultural expectation in Thai societies that daughters, much more than sons, should provide substantial material support for parents and younger siblings. Young women of little education from poor families in peripheral areas often regard sexwork – in distant urban locations and for a limited period – as a ‘short-cut’ option in meeting their family obligations (Phongphaichit, 1982; Muecke, 1992). The necessary organisational link between the Japanese demand and the Thai supply has been provided by crime syndicates, involving transnational trafficking networks that facilitate women’s migration and then force them to work under exploitative conditions. Bangkok is a major hub in such global networks (Asia Watch, 1993; Lim and Oishi, 1996; Phongpaichit et al., 1998; Human Rights Watch, 2000).

Fieldwork evidence from Thailand The nature of Thai migration to Japan is now examined further in relation to evidence from four intensive studies of Thai international migration at the level of individuals and local communities. Archavanitkul and Guest (1994) report on a complete household census in 1993 of four villages located in districts thought to have high levels of outmigration by young women. Two of the villages were in the Northern region and two in the Northeast; in all four villages farming was the main occupation. The survey results on the destinations of villagers temporarily working and residing away from home (Table 3.6) reveal remarkably different patterns of migration between the four villages and between males and females. This demonstrates, almost certainly, the paramount role of locally based social networks in channelling particular types of migrants to particular destinations. Such networks have been particularly influential in inducing to Japan young women from villages A and D; for example, in Village A, at the time of survey there were only two telephones capable of contacting foreign countries, and both were owned by returned sexworkers from Japan. Jones and Pardthaisong (1999a,b) conducted fieldwork in 1995–96 to understand better the detailed mechanisms in linking rural areas of Thailand to labour

Pacific-Asian context of international migration

51

Table 3.6 Destinations of male (M) and female (F) temporary migrants from four villages in Thailand (1993 village surveys)

Thailand Japan Other countries

A (North)

B (North)

C (Northeast)

D (Northeast)

M

F

M

F

M

F

M

F

49 0 13

67 13 10

18 2 10

19 0 6

109 0 9

65 1 2

115 1 91

103 10 3

Source: Calculated from data in Archavanitkul and Guest (1994).

markets in other Asian countries. In each of sixty-three selected villages in Northern and Northeastern Thailand, a common structured interview was conducted with a knowledgeable key-contact, usually the elected village head. The survey information was supplemented by individual biographies obtained in the same field sites from eight migration agents and twenty-two recently returned workers from Pacific-Asian countries. This fieldwork makes it clear that while most of Thailand’s migrant workers come from its poorest regions, they are not (with the exception of sexworkers – see below) from its poorest people, largely because of the high fees charged by agencies for job placement abroad. The fee differentials by country (Japan is by far the highest) largely reflect the wage differentials between countries, so that the fee is less a measure of recruitment costs than one of surplus value produced by the worker abroad. The study demonstrated that there were major systematic differences in forms of migration to work abroad, and that these differences were encapsulated in the contrast between workers going to Taiwan and those going to Japan, reflecting different mixes of public and private migration institutions to mediate the links between structures and agents. In Japan, the state has continued its exclusionist stance on unskilled migrant labour for fear of contaminating a self-perceived, culturally homogeneous society. Its exclusionist policy, operated by stringent bureaucratic controls on entry, residence and work authorisation, is inconsistent with the continuing demand for unskilled foreign labour in low-status jobs, even in the current recession, which has become a structural feature of its advanced economy. The main policy response has simply been to ‘turn a blind eye’ and tolerate illegally working foreigners. In Taiwan, on the other hand, there was formal government recognition in 1989 of the need to import skilled and unskilled labour in the construction and manufacturing sectors. From this there developed a legal basis for labour importation through the issuing to employers of foreign worker permits, the licensing of recruitment agencies, and negotiations at government level with labour-supplying countries. Accordingly, all five migrants to Taiwan interviewed in the study had migrated and worked there legally on standard 2-year contracts, had paid a similar agency fee, and earned broadly similar wages, enabling them to repay their fee within about 6 months.

52

Huw Jones

In contrast, all six of the interviewed migrants to Japan had worked there illegally, and stayed in the country illegally after the expiry of their 3-month tourist visas. They were prepared to risk arrest, deportation and unregulated working conditions for the highest wages available in Asia to unskilled workers. Two of the males had to raise agency fees which were 3–4 times their annual income in Thailand. One of them was a skilled mechanic with a good income in Thailand and savings from three work visits to the Middle East in the 1980s. The other had an uncle already working in Japan who provided a loan. His travel and work arrangements were made illegally by a woman from a nearby village married to a Japanese. Half the fee was paid initially and half after he successfully entered Japan. He returned to his wife and children after 4 years with considerable savings of some US$ 50,000. Half he dutifully gave to his parents to repay their farming debts, and half he used to set up himself and his wife in three businesses in the village. He regarded his experience as atypical, reporting that ‘others in the village couldn’t afford to go to Japan’. The experience of the third male migrant to Japan was very different. His only employment in Thailand had been on his in-law’s farm, but he was able to go to Japan without paying an agency fee by accepting much lower wages than the norm. His work was organised by a Bangkok company which illegally provided Thai labourers on short-term contracts of up to 3 months, the duration of the tourist visa. He had gone to Japan in this way five times in the last 4 years, his last contract involving loading motorcycles into containers for export. It is only the huge gulf in wages between Japan and countries like Thailand that makes such short-term contracts profitable to employers, agents and workers alike. Those who worked as sexworkers in Japan form a distinctive sub-group of migrants. The three women, all from poor rice-farming families, interviewed in the study were persuaded to go to Japan by recently returned ‘successful’ friends who introduced them to an agency in Bangkok. Two of the women were well aware that their work in Japan was to be prostitution, and the other suspected that this was the case. There was obviously some form of screening, especially for physical appearance, at the agency, since several women attending at the same time for interview were rejected. No recruitment fee was charged (a decisive consideration for women from poor backgrounds), and the transfer costs (a remarkable $30,000) were to be repaid from the considerable earnings promised in Japan. In one case a false passport was obtained, since the agency felt it would be difficult to get a passport and tourist visa for a young, uneducated village girl. In all cases the women entered Japan as tourists, and were accompanied on their flight by a member of the agency who guided them to particular officials (presumably bribed) at exit and entry points. One of the journeys was via Singapore, currently a common strategy since Singapore is now the only Asian country with which Japan retains visa-exemption arrangements. In Japan, the three women worked in bars with Thais and Filipinas, invariably under the control of a Thai ‘mamasan’ married to a Japanese man reputed to be in the Yacuza criminal fraternity. The debt bond had now been raised to about $40,000, the passports and return tickets retained or even confiscated, and the

Pacific-Asian context of international migration

53

women constantly moved from bar to bar and town to town – strategies clearly designed to disorientate and isolate the women. Police often had a tolerant attitude (through bribery?) towards their illegal status. All three women had managed to pay off their debt within a year, and returned home after about 2 years in Japan with savings of $15,000–$20,000. They all regarded their experience as ‘successful’, not simply in material terms (two had built a new house and married Japanese men who provided them with a monthly allowance to live comfortably in their home village) but also in terms of their ‘bravery’ and their duty to their parents: My friend told me I could earn lots of money in Japan if only I am brave enough. I told her that if you can do it, so can I. Japanese are not monsters, just human like you and me … I am very proud to have a new house and some money left. I just want a house, nothing more, and my parents to stay happily. I am very proud to be able to make my parents happy … In the past, the necklace I wore was very cheap, I used to look after buffaloes, and people looked down on me. But if I have money, everybody will respect me … Now I do rice farming – just for fun, but also I’m proud of it. The third fieldwork evidence (Kittisuksathit, 2001) comes from a study that assesses the quality of life of returned international migrants and their families in a part of Northeastern Thailand known to engage appreciably in temporary migration abroad as a risk-distributing and capital-accumulating strategy. In a random sample of 719 households from fourteen villages, a remarkable number, 484 (61 per cent), contained someone who had worked abroad. Of the large number of returned international workers, only four had ever worked in Japan. This seems to confirm the principal findings of the first study cited, that locally developed networks are necessary to channel migrant workers to particular destinations, especially when entry is difficult; such networks involving Japan were poorly developed in the study area. Finally, a detailed recent study of Thai sexworkers in Japan (Human Rights Watch, 2000), confirms and amplifies the information given above on this distinctive, highly exploitative form of labour migration. It confirms the crucial importance of personal links at local community level in stimulating and maintaining such migration; it details the remarkable variety of ways in which trafficking syndicates circumvent exit and entry regulations at international borders; and it emphasises that recruiters target young women from peripheral rural areas, considering them easier to deceive about debt bonds than existing sexworkers in metropolitan parts of Thailand.

Conclusion As elsewhere in the world, the traditional demographic basis of migration flows in Pacific Asia, internally and internationally, has predominantly been the differential rates of population growth between rural areas and urban areas,

54

Huw Jones

internally, and between the core economies and the periphery, internationally. Increasingly, however, the decisive generating influence is the differential age structure of populations. But, because of almost universally rapid fertility decline within the region, this will only be a temporary phenomenon. Within a single generation we are moving rapidly to demographic homogenisation within Pacific Asia, with rapid ageing being a feature of rural as well as urban areas. Thus, the demographic variety, which has been a striking feature of Pacific Asia in the last 40 years, will become subdued – barring AIDS epidemics of sub-Saharan magnitude in selective areas. The demographic foundations, therefore, of the Pacific Asian migration system are rapidly being undermined. What will maintain the system are the continuing structural inequalities between urban and rural areas, and between core and peripheral economies. Up until the 1997 Asian financial crisis, it seemed that a second wave of ‘tiger’ economies was emerging (Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia and China), narrowing the structural differences between the region’s economies. The impact of the crisis has been to retard this process and therefore to prolong the structural basis of the regional migration system.

Note 1 The substantial migration in the first half of the twentieth century from Korea, annexed by Japan in 1910, was dictated not so much by intrinsic labour deficits in Japan as by acute population pressures in the almost entirely agricultural economy of Korea coupled with the Japanese alacrity to use this potential, although ‘inferior’, labour source for menial occupations.

References Abella, M. (1995). Policies and Institutions for the Orderly Movement of Labour Abroad. Geneva: International Labour Organisation. Abella, M. et al. (1995). Adjustments to Labour Shortages and Foreign Workers in the Republic of Korea. Geneva: International Labour Organisation. Allison, A. (1994). Sexuality, Pleasure and Corporate Masculinity in a Tokyo Hostess Club. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Archavanitkul, K. and Guest, P. (1994). ‘Migration and the Commercial Sex Sector in Thailand’. Health Transition Review 4: 273–95. Asia Watch (1993). A Modern Form of Slavery: Trafficking of Burmese Women and Girls into Brothels in Thailand. New York: Human Rights Watch. Chin, C. (1997). ‘Walls of Silence and Late Twentieth Century Representations of the Foreign Female Domestic Worker’. International Migration Review 31: 353–85. Coale, A. and Hoover, E. (1958). Population Growth and Economic Development in Low-Income Countries. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Douglas, M. (1995). ‘The Singularities of International Migration of Women to Japan’. Seminar on International Female Migration and Japan, Meiji Gakuin University, Tokyo, 12–14 December (1995). ESCAP (1995). Sectoral Flows of Foreign Direct Investment in Asia and the Pacific. New York: UN.

Pacific-Asian context of international migration

55

Freedman, R. (1995). ‘Asia’s Recent Fertility Decline and Prospects for Future Demographic Change’. Asia-Pacific Population Research Reports (January). Furuya, K. (1995). ‘Labour Migration and Skill Development: Japan’s Trainee Program’. Asian Migrant 8: 4–19. Grant, R. (1995). ‘Reshaping Japanese Foreign Aid for the Post-Cold War Era’. Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie (Journal of Economic and Social Geography) 86: 235–48. Higgins, M. and Williamson, J. (1997). ‘Age Structure Dynamics in Asia and Dependence on Foreign Capital’. Population and Development Review 23: 261–93. Huguet, J. (1995). ‘Data on International Migration in Asia: 1990–94’. Asian and Pacific Migration Journal 4: 519–29. Hui, W.-T. (1998). ‘The Regional Economic Crisis and Singapore: Implications for Labour Migration’. Asian and Pacific Migration Journal 7: 187–218. Human Rights Watch (2000). Owed Justice: Thai Women Trafficked into Debt Bondage in Japan. New York: Human Rights Watch. Jones, H. and Findlay, A. (1998). ‘Regional Economic Integration and the Emergence of the Eeast Asian International Migration System’. Geoforum 29: 87–104. Jones, H. and Pardthaisong, T. (1999a). ‘The Commodification of International Migration: Findings from Thailand’. Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie (Journal of Economic and Social Geography) 99: 32–46. Jones, H. and Pardthaisong, T. (1999b). ‘The Impact of Overseas Labour Migration on Rural Thailand: Regional, Community and Individual Dimensions’. Journal of Rural Studies 15: 35–47. Kihara, M. et al. (1998). ‘Foreign Immigrants in Japan in the Context of HIV/AIDS’. 12th World AIDS Conference, Geneva, 28 June–3 July 1998. Kittisuksathit, S. (2001). International Labour Migration and its Impact on Quality of Life in Rural Thailand. Unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Dundee. Komai, H. (2000). ‘Immigrants in Japan’. Asian and Pacific Migration Journal 9: 311–26. Li, L., Findlay, A. and Jones, H. (1998). ‘A Cultural Economy Perspective on Service Sector Migration in the Global City: The Case of Hong Kong’. International Migration 36: 131–57. Lim, L. and Oishi, N. (1996). International Labour Migration of Asian Women: Distinctive Characteristics and Policy Concerns. Geneva: International Labour Organisation. Martin, P. (1996). ‘Labor Contractors: A Conceptual Overview’. Asian and Pacific Migration Journal 5: 201–18. Muecke, M. (1992). ‘Mother Sold Food, Daughter Sells Her Body: The Cultural Continuity of Prostitution’. Social Science and Medicine 35: 891–901. Pang, E.F. (1993). Regionalisation and Labour Flows in Pacific Asia. Paris: OECD. Phongpaichit, P. (1982). From Peasant Girls to Bangkok Masseuses. Geneva: International Labour Organisation. Phongpaichit, P. et al. (1998). Guns, Gambling, Ganja: Thailand’s Illegal Economy and Public Policy. Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books. Piper, N. (1997). ‘International Marriage in Japan’. Gender, Place and Culture 4: 321–38. Sassen, S. (1988). The Mobility of Labor and Capital. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sassen, S. (1993). ‘Economic Internationalization: The New Migration in Japan and the United States’. International Migration 31: 73–102.

56

Huw Jones

Singhanetra-Renard, A. (1995). ‘Networks for Female Migration between Thailand and Japan’. Seminar on International Female Migration and Japan, Meiji Gakuin University, Tokyo, 12–14 December 1995. Taeuber, I. (1958). The Population of Japan. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Tsay, C.-L. (1995). ‘Labour importers: Taiwan’. ASEAN Economic Bulletin 12: 175–90. Watanabe, S. (1998). ‘The Economic Crisis and Migrant Workers in Japan’. Asian and Pacific Migration Journal 7: 235–54.

4

Policy problems relating to labour migration control in Japan Hiroaki Miyoshi

Introduction This chapter discusses two issues: (1) a desirable admittance system of foreign workers for Japan and (2) the possible effects of immigration on Japan’s economy and population structure. It concludes that although there may be particular needs that are met by immigration, it is only a short-term solution to the ageing of the population and that immigrants themselves age. The issue of foreign workers has been hotly debated in Japan. In recent years, it has been debated more strategically than emotionally, as the country has faced the problem of ageing society. The nature of the debate, therefore, has shifted since the time of the ‘bubble’ economy when the public engaged in rather emotional debates over whether or not foreign manual labour should be accepted. Taichi Sakaiya, former Minister of the Economic Planning Agency, once reported that Japan would definitely need more people to secure the country’s economy … , and that it would be necessary to discuss whether we should accept immigrants (Keizai Kyoshitsu, the Nihon Keizai Shinbun). At the ‘Conference for the Design of Japan in the 21st Century’, organized under the former Obuchi Administration for the purpose of discussing the future of Japan, it was also mentioned that Japan would need to establish an immigration policy which makes Japan more attractive to foreigners and a specific permanent resident system to encourage foreigners to live permanently in Japan so that they could contribute to Japanese society. Foreign labour migration can change the structure of the domestic population, such as the ethnic composition and the economic positions of certain groups, in the long run. Immigration policy is designed to control these changes. The current Japanese policy admits foreigners only for restricted lengths of time and accepts only technically specialized workers and those who can bring in special skills not possessed by Japanese. Neither mid-skilled technicians nor manual labourers are admitted except for Japanese descendants. Moreover, Japan does not have a system to accept foreigners as permanent residents at the time of new entry. Yet, Japan has an extremely generous system that accepts foreign workers who meet certain qualifications regardless of domestic labour market conditions. In the report, ‘The Second Immigration Control Basic Plan’ (March 2000), the Ministry of Justice pointed out the necessity to relax qualifications in admitting

58 Hiroaki Miyoshi foreigners and to expand the range of categories for nursing-related workers. In my opinion, Japan should review the system itself to accept foreign workers and immigrants1 in considering what Japan should be like in the mid and long run.

Desirable admittance system of foreign workers Viewpoints Any system of admitting foreign workers should reflect domestic supply and demand of labour and meet requirements such as the maintenance of the right ethnic balance. At the same time, host countries must guarantee stable lives for foreigners admitted, and their systems must be transparent so that potential migrants can envision their future in their destination. Systems of immigration control must keep the balance of these two. Otherwise, various problems will arise, such as illegal stay and the unemployment of foreigners, and the rise in social costs would cause a conflict between natives and foreigners. In order to analyse prospects of Japan’s immigration policy, I would like to examine the following issues: 1

2 3 4

How other countries regulate immigration – how many foreigners are admitted to what kind of occupations at the port of new entry, and under what conditions in relation to the supply and demand of domestic labour? How other countries control the stock of admitted foreign workers? How other countries regulate foreign workers’ continuous residence? How transparent systems are to foreigners (e.g. predictability)?

Systems of each country There are three stages of immigration control (see Appendix)2: ‘new entry control with limited lengths of stay’, ‘stock control’ and ‘granting of permanent residency’. ‘New entry control with limited lengths of stay’ refers to how a country controls the number and professions of newly admitted foreign workers. At this stage, recipient countries are perfectly capable of considering the domestic necessity of foreign workers both in terms of quantity and quality. The next stage, ‘stock control’, refers to how recipient countries control the number of foreign workers who have already been admitted. A concrete technique to control the number of foreign workers is by limiting the number of times permit to stay should be extended by setting the maximum length of stay. The final stage, ‘granting of permanent residency’, is about the means/procedures of granting permanent residency to foreigners. At this stage, recipient countries are unable to control the number of foreign workers. Japanese system in comparison Next, I will compare Japan’s system of immigration control to that of other countries, and point out problems of the Japanese system in terms of the above-mentioned four aspects.

Policy problems relating to labour migration control

59

Qualitative and quantitative control of foreign workers at the time of new entry In Japan, the principle of quality control (i.e. professions) is to admit only technically specialized workers and those who possess skills not shared by Japanese. However, since there is no restriction on work for those who enter Japan on the basis of their status (e.g. Japanese descendants), there is, in reality, no profession control. For quantitative control, Japan has no systematic mechanism to consider domestic labour market conditions, and consequently, accepts all foreigners who meet certain qualifications regardless of the state of its economy. When we look at the situations of other countries, however, no country adopts such a generous system. In other countries, permissible occupational categories include mostly seasonal work, such as in agriculture, nursing occupations to care for the sick and the elderly and high-skilled work, such as specialists in the field of Information Technology (IT). In those countries that do not control immigration on the basis of occupations, permission to enter is generally decided after considering the supply and demand of domestic labour. For quantitative control, many countries set direct numerical ceilings or adopt a system to decide each case after considering domestic labour situations. For quantitative control, Singapore sets a numerical ceiling for foreign workers and changes the rate of employment tax for ‘R-pass’ holders. The Japanese system admits foreign workers solely on the basis of their qualifications, so the administrative cost of immigration control may be smaller than that of other countries. But with the current system, there is a possibility of expanding the entry of foreign labourers, even though the unemployment of domestic workers has become a serious problem.

Stock control of already admitted foreign workers In the case of Japan, permission to extend terms of residence is generally granted unless there is a special problem, for instance, if the applicant has been unemployed. Moreover, there is no limitation to the number of extensions to be granted, except for foreigners of some special statuses. And the final decision to grant extension is left up to the Justice Minister. In other words, there is no clear-cut system to control the stock of already admitted foreign workers, but when there is a necessity to control, the extension of stay may be denied by administrative discretion. In addition, as I shall note later, if a foreigner continuously resides in Japan legally for 10 years or more, then s/he acquires permanent residency. Therefore, if permission to extend terms of residence is continuously granted, a large number of foreign workers can acquire permanent residency. At this stage, controlling the number of foreign workers would be impossible. In other countries, although the role of administrative decisions is unclear (for instance, in considering domestic labour situations), most of them, unlike Japan, clearly set the maximum permissible length of stay for foreigners. By strictly

60

Hiroaki Miyoshi

observing the maximum length of stay and limiting the new entry of foreign workers, it is possible to decrease the number of foreign workers after a certain number of years without depending on administrative discretion. Switzerland stands out as an exception in adopting a system similar to Japan. In Switzerland, the maximum permissible length of stay for foreign workers is not set and permanent residency is granted to those who have resided in the country for 5 or 10 years. But as a result of the system that permitted extension of residence easily in the 1970s, 526,000 out of all 856,000 foreign workers held permanent residency at the end of 1999, and it was impossible to control the number of foreign workers.

Continuous stay of foreign workers already admitted to the country In Japan, a foreigner must meet certain conditions to be qualified as a ‘permanent resident’. For instance, they must continuously reside in Japan legally for 10 years or more. If they meet these conditions, their professional skills or the command of the Japanese language do not matter. There is no difference between a permanent resident and a citizen of Japan except for political rights. The criteria to approve temporary workers and permanent residents should be different in the first place, but in Japan, the only additional requirements for permanent residents are the history of stay, behaviour and livelihood qualifications. Many other countries set different criteria for high- and low-skilled workers. The United States and Canada adopt a system to accept permanent residents at the time of new entry. And even when foreign workers enter the countries as temporary workers, if they possess skills, they can apply for permanent residency and acquire the right to stay continuously. Singapore also has a similar system. It is rare, however, that countries grant permanent residency to low-skilled workers. In Singapore, low-skilled ‘R-pass’ holders are not permitted to apply for permanent residency. In the United States and Canada, in principle, only highskilled workers can apply for permanent residency for professional reasons. In Germany and France, permanent and long-term residency is granted to foreigners already living in the countries for a long period of time. This policy aims to integrate foreigners already in the countries, and they simultaneously limit new entries of foreign workers from outside the European Union except for certain areas.

Transparency and predictability of the system for foreign workers Finally, let me compare the system of Japan and that of other countries in terms of transparency and predictability. First, although the Japanese system is extremely generous for newly entering foreigners, there is a possibility to exercise administrative discretion to deny permission to extend terms of residence. Moreover, the length of time required to acquire permanent residency is 10 years, which is very long. For these reasons, it is very difficult for foreigners to make

Policy problems relating to labour migration control

61

a life plan, and for this reason, Japan probably looks less attractive than other countries. On the other hand, since the Japanese system does not clearly stipulate the maximum length of stay, it gives leeway to those who wish to stay long in the country. As I noted earlier, most other countries set the maximum permissible length of stay for foreign workers. High-skilled workers can apply for permanent residency right after entering the country. In any case, this kind of system makes it possible to see how long foreign workers can expect to stay in an early stage, and they can make plans accordingly. The course Japan can take So far I have pointed out problems of the Japanese system of immigration control by comparing it with that of other countries. Now, I would like to turn to a discussion of a possible scenario Japan could take in controlling immigration. First, under the current Japanese system, all foreigners who meet certain qualification at the time of new entry are admitted regardless of domestic labour market situations. And permission to extend terms of residence is easily approved with the exception of special circumstances, such as when applicants have been unemployed. Under such a system, it is possible that many foreigners continue to work in Japan, while natives are unemployed. It is possible to use administrative discretion, but based on European experiences, it is clear that controlling the stock of foreigners already in the country is extremely difficult. Although the Japanese system of immigration control at the time of new entry looks very generous from the perspective of foreign workers, permission to extend terms of residence is left to administrative discretion. Moreover, they must wait for 10 long years to acquire permanent residency. These are the factors that hinder continuous stay for talented foreign workers. Considering these aspects, the current system that is generous at the time of new entry and open to administrative discretion should be reconsidered fundamentally. The system should impose necessary regulations at the time of new entry and it should not be open to discretion once foreigners get in. To put it concretely, permanent residency should be granted to those foreigners who are considered desirable for Japan when or immediately after they enter the country for the first time in order to make their lives more stable in Japan. In granting permanent residency, the questions about how many and what kind of foreigners should be accepted may arise. In this case, criteria should be clear and transparent to both foreigners who wish to work in Japan and to citizens of Japan. The point system adopted by Canada (Table 4.1) would be a good reference. For those foreigners who would not be subjected to permanent residency, quantitative control should be implemented at the time of new entry, taking domestic labour market situations into consideration. Also, the maximum permissible length of stay for temporary residents should be clearly stipulated at the time of new entry.

62

Hiroaki Miyoshi Table 4.1 Skilled worker points grid in Canada Factor

Maximum points

Age Education Language proficiency Work experience Arranged employment Adaptability

10 25 24 21 10 10

Notes 1 This grid is expected to be implemented on 28 June, 2002 under the proposed regulations of the new Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. 2 The pass mark is 80.

Effects of immigration on the Japanese economy and population structure3 Japan will without doubt face a situation where it will have to support a growing population of the elderly in the context of shrinking labour supply later in this century. According to an estimate of the Economic Planning Agency, the nation’s per capita burden will be 40.1 for year 2001, and it will rise to 51.4 if there is no change in the policies of health care, pension, welfare and tax. Under these circumstances, it might be wise and effectual to redress the population structure itself by accepting immigrants, for the purpose of overcoming an ageing society. Immigration is one of the most efficient and direct measures to cope with an ageing society, but is it really an effective policy for Japan? Next I estimate how Japanese household disposable income will change based on the assumption that Japan admits 500,000 immigrants per year between 2000 and 2009. The size of 500,000 indicates 40 per cent of the total number of foreigners (including students but excluding temporary visitors), 1.36 million, who entered Japan for the first time during year 2000. Change of the population structure Figure 4.1 shows the estimated dependent population index of how the population structure will change in the long run in the event that Japan admits immigrants according to the above scenario.4 As shown in Figure 4.1, incorporating this many immigrants would eventually improve the elderly dependency ratio in about 50 years time. In 2030, the dependency ratio would be as low as 4.0 per cent. This positive effect, however, will suddenly decrease with the ageing of immigrants (or the rapid decline in the total fertility rate (TFR) among the immigrant population). The share of the immigrant population5 out of the total Japanese population is estimated to be approximately 9 per cent in 100 years from now. As for the juvenile population, immigrants would occupy a larger share for a while. This is because the TFR of immigrants tends to be higher and they often enter Japan with

Policy problems relating to labour migration control

63

90 80 The dependency ratio of the Japanese group 70

The dependency ratio with immigrants The elderly dependency ratio of the Japanese group

(%)

60 50 40

The elderly dependency ratio with immigrants The juvenile dependency ratio with immigrants

30 20

The juvenile dependency ratio of the Japanese group

10 0 2000

2020

2040

2060

2080

2100

Year

Figure 4.1 Changes of the population structure in Japan. Notes 1 The elderly dependency ratio: the elderly population (65)/the working-age population (15–64). 2 The juvenile dependency ratio: the juvenile population (14)/the working-age population. 3 The dependency ratio (total): (the elderly population  the juvenile population)/the working age population.

many children. The TFR would also stay high for a while after moving to Japan. However, the TFR would eventually approach that of the Japanese, and their share of the entire population would converge. Change in per capita household disposable income Here, I simulate how the immigrant population would affect per capita household disposable income of the Japanese, considering the dynamic trends of the immigrant population in the long run.6 Methodology Household disposable income is calculated by deducting tax and social security burdens from the national income. Thus, this analysis should consider two aspects: the effect on the national income, and the effect on tax and social security burdens. The effect on tax and social security burdens would depend heavily on the age structure of the immigrant population. For instance, when no elderly population exists among immigrants, they would bear the burden of pension but would not receive it. Thus, the burden that immigrants bear would transfer to Japanese elderly. In contrast, when the juvenile population among immigrants is larger than

64

Hiroaki Miyoshi The total effects of admitting immigrants (50 years): 70.56

25

20

The effect to improve national income

: 2.93

The effect to reduce tax/social security burdens

: 67.63

Correction of Mshaped curve of female labour force participation

15

Admitting immigrants

10

5

0 2000–09

2010–19

2020–29

2030–39

2040–49

Figure 4.2 Effects on household disposable income per capita. Notes 1 Calculated as 100 for the real national income per capital as of 1995, in comparison with the case where no policy exists. 2 Calculated as 3 per cent of the capital growth rate and 0% of TFP growth. 3 Figures represent the total sum for the period.

that of Japanese, Japanese would have to bear the educational cost for immigrant youths. Next I examine these effects in the aggregate. Results I made a trial calculation of the effects on per capita household disposable income among Japanese. Figure 4.2 illustrates the comparison of this figure with the situation when the so-called M-shaped curve of female labour force participation is corrected.7 The effect of immigration would correspond to only 71 per cent of per capita national income as of 1995 for 50 years, or only 1.4 per cent per year. The effects would mainly be brought about by the reduction of tax and social security burdens, and would diminish as immigrants start ageing. The effect would prove to be only a little larger than the one that would be derived from the correction of the M-curve patterns of Japanese female labour force participation.

Conclusions In this Chapter, I have analysed the effects on the population structure and economy of Japan of a policy of foreign worker immigration, based on international comparisons.

Policy problems relating to labour migration control

65

The current Japanese system of immigration control, which is generous at the time of new entry and open to administrative discretion in extending terms of residence, needs fundamental reconsideration. Permanent residency should be granted at the time of, or immediately after, new entry to those foreigners who are considered desirable for Japan in order to make their lives more stable in Japan. For temporary workers, quantitative control should be implemented at the time of new entry, depending on domestic labour market conditions in Japan. Also, the maximum length of stay for temporary workers should be clearly stated upon their arrival. However, this does not mean that Japan should deliberately accept large numbers of immigrants every year in order to correct Japan’s ageing population. Even if Japan accepts large numbers for a certain period of time, the beneficial effect on the ageing society would diminish as immigrants start ageing. To prevent this scenario, it would be necessary to accept more immigrants. Also, the necessary, temporary effects on the economy can be made by incorporating women and the elderly into the labour market. Immigration would prove to be a short-term fix.

Acknowledgements This chapter was produced with the assistance of ‘The Project on Intergenerational Equity’, directed by the Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University. This Project is one of the Scientific Research Projects of Priority Areas, supported financially by a grant from the Ministry of Education, Science and Culture, Japan. In writing this paper, I received helpful comments from Professor Masatoshi Yorimitsu of Hitotsubashi University Graduate School of Social Sciences. I would like to express my deepest appreciation. Also, when I delivered this paper at the Oxford–Kobe Seminar in April 2001, I received comments from Professor Nobuhiko Iwasaki of Kobe University Faculty of Letters, Professor C. Peach of Oxford University and many other people. I would like to express my deep appreciation to them all. In addition, I would note that this paper express my personal views and not those of the Institute where I work.

Notes 1 Definitions: i Foreign workers: workers who do not hold permanent residency in recipient countries. ii Immigrant workers: workers who hold permanent residency in the recipient countries. iii ‘Immigrants’ or ‘foreigners’ are used when not limited to workers. 2 Data were gathered from the web site of each country’s official immigration agency (e.g. INS of the US, CIC of Canada). 3 Calculated based on previous analyses (Miyoshi, 1999, 2000) with slight modifications. 4 Preconditions are as follows: a The TFR of the immigrant population is equivalent to the average TFR of the entire Asian countries at the time of entering Japan (TFR of 3.03). But the TFR of immigrants falls to 1.61 over the course of 10 years after entering Japan. This rate is

66

Hiroaki Miyoshi

the maximum fertility rate of Japanese between 1995 and 2050 preconditioned in the estimation by medium variant of the National Institute of Population (1997). The assumption that the TFR of immigrants will suddenly decline after entering the country is based on a study of OECD (1991). The TFR of the immigrant population is assumed to stay at 1.61 after 10 years of staying in Japan until 2050. b The survival rate of immigrants is equivalent to that of Japanese. c The proportion of men to women among immigrants at the time of new entry is 50:50. d The age range of immigrants at the time of new entry is 25–34 for adult immigrants, and the structure is equal for each age group. The number of children accompanied by adult immigrants is calculated by the average birth rate and age-specific death rate in Asia. It is assumed children are accompanied by adult immigrants. The age structure is calculated based on these assumptions. e The immigrant population and Japanese are separated by marriage. f The immigrant population does not affect the native population. g The immigrant population does not return to their countries. h All figures estimated by the National Institute of Population (1997) are based on the entire population residing in Japan. For the sake of simplicity, however, they are treated as Japanese (‘Japanese group’). 5 The immigrant population includes the first generation of immigrants and their descendants. The Japanese population means present Japanese and their descendants. 6 Cobb-Douglas Production Function is used for calculation. Details are omitted. Preconditions used here in regard to the labour force rate and production rate of immigrants are as follows: a The labour force participation rate of the immigrant population is equal to that of the Japanese population of the same sex and age. b No difference in labour quality is observed between immigrants and Japanese. The average wage is equal between immigrants and Japanese for the same age and sex. c Immigrants do not possess any capital. 7 The female labour force participation rate for the age group of 20–24 was 73.4 per cent in 1997. For the age group of 25–44, which forms a valley of the M-curve, it is assumed to increase to 73.4 per cent from 2000 to 2009.

Japan Status of residence was updated and measures against illegal workers were adopted by the 1989 amendment.

Historical backgrounds Quantitative control

No quantitative Nominally, professions control despite visa under the categories of control. Basically 1 and 2 are admitted admits anyone who but there is no limit in meets qualifications. category 3 in terms of professions which means no quality control exists in reality. 1 Technically specialised workers (professor, engineer, specialist in humanities, international services, intracompany transferee, medical services, skilled labour and so forth). 2 Workers who utilise characteristics as nonJapanese (e.g. entertainer). 3 Foreigners who enter Japan based upon their status such as spouses of Japanese nationals, spouses of permanent residents, or long-time residents. Many are Japanese descendants.

Quality control (professions)

New entry control of foreign workers with restricted length of stay

Appendix Immigration control systems by country

Quality control

Quantitative control

Grant of permanent residency

(continued )

No direct quantitative No foreigners shall There is no limit to control *30,475 for year be granted as the number of times to 2000) permanent resident at extend terms of resithe time of new entry. dence except for a few statuses of residence. In Grants permanent residency to those who general, extension is meet qualifications for approved unless appliexample, cants have been unemcontinuously ployed or have a residing in Japan for 10 problem. years or more, or being However, it depends granted as long-term upon the discretion of resident and residing in the Justice Minister to Japan for 5 years or grant extension. more after being accepted as long-term resident. Reviews situations and activities of each individually.

Stock control (limitation of maximum length of stay)

Quality control (professions)

Quantitative control

New entry control of foreign workers with restricted length of stay

Switzerland Number of permits Permits to stay shall Enacted the Foreign granted shall be deterWorkers Restriction Act be granted when there mined for every year is no sufficient worker to deal with the in the country or admit- based upon the domesincrease of foreign tic economy, the birth ting foreign workers workers due to the ecorate and so forth (the would give economic nomic growth in the quota system). benefits to that area. 1950s. Seasonal permit to In the mid-1980s, the quota system was intro- stay shall be granted when industries such as duced due to the rapid travel, construction, or increase of agriculture need tempoforeign workers. rary and seasonal labour for a certain period of time during the year. Year-round residence permit to stay shall be granted according to the discretion of the Labour Minister of each state based upon each case. Profession and work sites shall be specified under the permit.

Historical backgrounds

Appendix (Continued)

Quality control

Quantitative control

Grant of permanent residency

No direct quantitative Those who have The quota system is control. resided in the country applied to permits Many were granted for 5 years or renewal. permanent residency 10 years shall be entiSeasonal permits are when the economy was renewable annually, and tled to permanent resigood. The number of dence. The necessary those who have worked foreign workers who length of stay varies seasonally for 4 years hold permanent resibased upon nationality. (with three times of dence permit at the end Foreigners with this renewal) shall be entipermit can work for any of 1999 was 526 thoutled to the year-round sands, or 61.4 % of all occupation and residence permits. foreign workers. employer, and can Year-round residence Now it is hard to change jobs. permits are renewable control the number. with strict procedures. Applicants’ conduct shall be taken into conBut it seemed not very sideration in granting difficult to renew in permanent residence. reality when the economy was good.

Stock control (limitation of maximum length of stay)

Singapore P-pass: renewable Employment of RWork passes are A restrictive immiwithout limit. pass holders is classified in P-, Qgration policy has Q-pass: maximum adjusted by the and R-pass according been enforced since length of stay is employment tax rate to qualification and the independence in 5 years. and the restrictive wages. 1965. R-pass: maximum rate of foreign P- and Q-pass shall be Levying employment length of stay is granted to high-skilled workers according to tax for foreigners 4 years. skill levels and indusworkers. started in 1987. trial needs. R-pass is the pass for Restricted employR-pass holders are unskilled workers ment rate for unable to be accompawhose monthly salary foreigners was intronied by their is under S$ 2,000 duced in 1988. families. Punishment for illegal The employment tax stay was strengthened rate and the restrictive by amendment of the rate of foreign workers immigration control shall not be applied to act in 1989. P- or Punishment for Q-pass holders. illegal working was strengthened by enacting the foreign workers amendment bill in 1995. High skilled workers are welcomed to become permanent residents. P- and Qpass holders can apply for permanent residence permits immediately after entering Singapore. To maintain the ethnic balance, the government grants nationality to foreigners with Chinese background generously.

(continued )

No direct quantitative control.

Quality control (professions) No quantitative control. There is a policy to encourage foreign workers to return to their countries, but not effective.

Quantitative control

New entry control of foreign workers with restricted length of stay

France Import of labour It had admitted other than from the EU migrant workers genercountries has been ously mainly from the strictly restricted since former colonies until 1974. the oil shock after the Scholars, senior Second World War. management workers After the oil shock and so on are excep(1974), it strictly restricted admitting new tionally granted work entry of immigrants and permits as a special case. foreign workers. The Mitterrand administration between 1981 and 1991, had taken an aggressive social integration policy for foreigners. Under the Chirac administration, punishment against illegal working was strengthened.

Historical backgrounds

Appendix (Continued)

Quality control

Quantitative control

Grant of permanent residency

No direct quantitative Those who have Temporary residence control. resided lawfully in permit is valid for 1 year. Renewal shall be France for 3 years or more with a approved unless applitemporary permit of cant has been unemstay and have met cerployed or has a tain qualifications can problem. apply for residence permit. Residence permits are good for 10 years and renewable. Those who hold this type of permit can work in any region of the country for any job.

Stock control (limitation of maximum length of stay)

Germany Employment of foreign workers abroad had been available until 1973 based upon bilateral agreements with other countries. (rotation system) Changed its policy to a more strict one after the oil shock. Annulled bilateral agreements were abrogated and enforced new work permits with strict restriction. A lot of economic refugees entered Germany after the end of the Cold War. In 1993, enforced the Protection Act and amended the German Basic Law to limit the number of refugees.

General work permit shall be granted to following workers when there is no sufficient worker in the country or EU. Project-linked employment: those registering with a company which enters into a contract with a German corporation. Germany accepts a certain number of contract workers each year with yearly quota system. Guest-worker contracts: similar to the trainee system. For the purpose of promotion of mutual exchange of young workers between Central and East European countries and Germany, and improvement of occupational skills, technology and language. Guest-worker Guest-worker contracts: maximum contracts: quota length of stay is system is introduced 18 months. (annually). Seasonal workers: no control. People from the EU countries are given priority. Staff to care for the sick and elderly: no control. People from the EU countries are the first consideration.

(continued )

No direct control. Those who have been employed lawfully and The number of continuously for 8 years unlimited work permits for year 1995 or more are granted unlimited work permits. was 933,044, which make up This system was 81.8 % of all work introduced in 1978 Project-linked Project-linked permit holders. employment: quota sys- employment: maximum based upon the idea of length of stay is 3 years. granting the same right tem is introduced as Germans to long(annually). The number term residents. shall be determined based upon the calculation considering domestic labour market situations.

On the other hand, resumed employment of foreign workers from the standpoint of supporting East Europe. In 2000, Prime Minister Schröder expressed the idea of admitting 20,000 high technology specialists from Middle and East European countries by issuing a special visa.

Historical backgrounds

Appendix (Continued)

Seasonal workers: admitted to seasonal work which cannot be done by German workers. Up to 3 months. Only in case Germans cannot fill the positions. Staff to care for sick and elderly: those who are from European countries such as nurses or other specialized jobs for nursing and who speak German shall be admitted as nursing workers by intermediation of Federal Employment Service. Other specialists such as executive officer or university professor are granted new work permits.

Quality control (professions)

Quantitative control

New entry control of foreign workers with restricted length of stay

Staff to care for the sick and elderly: no limit.

Seasonal workers: up to 3 months per year.

Stock control (limitation of maximum length of stay) Quality control

Quantitative control

Grant of permanent residency

(continued )

The United States The number of Visas are categorized Other than foreign H-1B: maximum H-1B was originally Between the latter immigrants for family workers of the NAFTA length of stay is 6 years. into: visas for family limited to 65,000 from half of the nineteenth integration was 480,000 integration, visas for region, there is a system the standpoint of proH-2A: maximum century and the annually for the fiscal to accept nontecting American work- length of stay is 3 years. employment and visas mid–twentieth century, year of 1999. for diversification. immigrant temporary H-2B: maximum ers. But, with a strong the United States had The number of length of stay is 3 years. 71% of total visas in enforced discriminatory workers. Representative request from the high immigrants for the fiscal year of 1999 category examples are technology industry to immigration policies. working purpose was are in the category of as follows. Acceptance of increase the number, (The number of immi140,000 annually for family integration. the government decided Immigrants grants was determined ● H-1B shall be the year of 1999. There are several according to ethnic granted to professional to expand it to 195,000 preferences and limits backgrounds and occupations or fashion between 2001 and based upon the 2003. national origins.) models. It was created status of applicants. H-2A: no control. In 1952, major change by the 1990 Act. ● H-2A shall be Immigrants whose H-2B: the annual in immigration policy purpose is to work are number is limited to was introduced by the granted to workers classified into five cate66,000. 1952 Act, which estabwho perform gories, and there are lished the modern agricultural labour or preferences and limits immigration system. service of temporary among those The 1965 amendment or seasonal nature. ● H-2B shall be categories. changed the system to make family granted to workers integration possible. who perform In 1986, changes to non-agricultural immigration laws were temporary labour. intended to tighten up the system. Legalized many illegal immigrants, while introducing the employersanctions programme that fines employers for hiring illegal workers.

Quality control (professions)

Canada There is no limit to Other than foreign History of immigrathe annual number of workers of the NAFTA tion to Canada started region, there is a system temporary when immigrants workers. In 1998, to accept nonarrived in Canada from 173,000 employment immigrant temporary France, England, authorization were Scotland, and Ireland in workers. issued for the seventeenth century. temporary workers.

Quantitative control

New entry control of foreign workers with restricted length of stay

Generally, temporary The 1990 Act also increased the number of work shall be granted when there are no suffiemployments based cient domestic workers visas from 54,000 to and the employment of 140,000 a year. The foreign workers will not expanded adversely affect the business-class wage and working concategories favour ditions of comparable persons who make US workers. educational, professional or financial contributions.

Historical backgrounds

Appendix (Continued)

The number of migrants admitted for legal permanent residence in the fiscal year of 1999 was 646,568. Included in this total were 244,793 aliens already living in the United States About 74% of immigrants for working purpose are adjusted status from students or temporary workers.

Quality control

Quantitative control

Grant of permanent residency

Immigrants are Canadian government Employment authorization sets the period of categorized into Family has established a longclass, Independent class term plan to move time for employment, and Business class. towards immigration generally less than 3 levels of approximately years. There is no sys1% of the total tem of renewal. population. But many non-immigrant temporary high-skilled workers have being admitted as an Independent Immigrant.

Stock control (limitation of maximum length of stay)

Generally, temporary In the latter half of the ninteenth century, the work shall be granted when there are no suffigovernment took meascient domestic workers ures to invite workers and the employment of from Europe and the foreign workers will not United States. On the adversely affect the other hand, it restricted wage and working conthe inflow of Asians at ditions of comparable low wages. Canadian workers. In 1976, the current There is no limit to the Immigration Law was kind of job, but generenacted and the discriminatory law of 1910 ally temporary work shall be admitted to was annulled. jobs which will not be fulfilled, granted that Canadian workers will be trained for 1 year. Live-in caregivers are a special category of temporary workers who are qualified to care independently for children, the elderly or people who have disabilities.

The number of The goal of population Employment authoriimmigrants for growth is being zation for live-in careachieved by family inte- family integration was givers is 55,269 in the fiscal year gration. On the other usually valid for one hand, high-skilled work- of 1998. year. But after The number of ers are under the completing at least two immigrants for skilled years of employment as independent class work was 92,480 in the immigration proa live-in caregiver, fiscal year of 1998. grammes. workers are able to The Independent apply for permanent Immigration residency in Canada. Programme was designed to promote the Acceptance of Canadian economy by Immigrants attracting educated and skilled workers to Canada. Under this programme applicants are assessed on the basis of six criteria. Each criterion is assigned a specific number of points. Generally an applicant must have at least eighty points to be selected as an Independent Immigrant.

76

Hiroaki Miyoshi

References Miyoshi, Hiroaki (1999). ‘Imin Ukeire ni yoru Waga Kuni Jinko Kozo no Henka’ (The Demographic Effects of Immigration on the Japanese Population). Kokusai Kokyo Seisaku Kenkyu (International Public Policy) 3(2): 137–52. Miyoshi, Hiroaki (2000). ‘Imin no Oyobosu Keizai teki Eikyo’ (The Economic Effects of on the Economy). Kokusai Kokyo Seisaku Kenkyu (International Public Policy) 4(2): 77–93. National Institute of Population and Social Security Research (1997). Nihon no Shorai Suikei Jinko’: Heisei 8-nen/62-nen (Population Project for Japan: 1996–2000) (January). OECD (1991). ‘Evolution of Fertility of Foreigners and Nationals in OECD Countries’, pp. 29– 41 in Migration: The Demographic Aspect. Paris: OECD.

Part II

Japanese overseas communities

5

The Japanese in London From transience to settlement? Paul White

Introduction Japanese migration exchanges with Europe have not commonly been envisaged as involving permanent or semi-permanent emigration from Japan. Movement between Japan and Europe has developed in a recent period marked by circulatory flows on a short-term basis dictated by company employers. This therefore contrasts with more ‘traditional’ patterns of the ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ moves of earlier eras, or the pattern of relocation for the duration of a working life followed by return in retirement that has been characteristic of the post-war period. Japanese movement to and from Europe has therefore been seen as a ‘transitory’ stream of migrants staying away for a few years and then moving on, or most commonly moving back to Japan. As such it has been described as a feature of globalisation and used as an example of the ways in which economic and migration processes are interlinked (Castles and Miller, 1993; Cohen, 1997). This chapter considers some of the implications of this conception of Japanese migration to Europe as transitory, focusing on movement to London. It examines how a transitory migrant stream with a significant rate of population turnover nevertheless creates certain aspects of ‘community’ within a destination location. But it also goes on to challenge some of the assumptions about the transitory nature of Japanese movement, by providing evidence that Japanese migration is now (at least in London) starting to ‘mature’. Japanese settlement in London is starting to become ‘normalised’, such that a permanent emigrant community is beginning to develop. In part this results from certain changes in the structures of employment and employment relations within which movement has taken place in the recent past. The specific context of London as a global city (Sassen, 1991) is of considerable significance. Like the other cities of Japanese settlement discussed in this book, London provides a business environment of major significance to Japanese companies expanding their overseas interests. But its size, position in global networks and significance in educational, cultural, media and other spheres create a highly diversified set of broader attractions for potential in-migrants as well as opportunities for its residents.

80

Paul White

The size and composition of migratory flows In many parts of the world it is becoming increasingly difficult to provide accurate data concerning the size and composition of foreigner or immigrant groups, of those who might claim particular ethnicities, or of migration streams. Definitions adopted by different countries (and sometimes even within countries between different agencies) often vary significantly. In the case of migration streams it is common for the countries of departure and of arrival to conceptualise and categorise the migrants in different ways, which may also differ from the selfdescriptions the migrants themselves may produce if given the opportunity to do so. Data commonly relate to a point in time (as with a census) or a particular action (such as entry to a country): longitudinal information is less often available, especially where it might indicate future intentions. Nevertheless, it is helpful to contextualise the current study of the Japanese population in London by providing a wider background on the Japanese in Europe as a whole, whilst also emphasising the particular characteristics and possible problems of the various data sets utilised here. Data published in the Japan Statistical Yearbook clearly identify Europe as a whole as being an area of transient Japanese presences (see Sakai, Chapter 8), with less than 19 per cent being labelled as ‘permanent’ in 1999. Within Europe, the Yearbook data (derived from Japanese consular records) indicate the predominance of the United Kingdom with over twice as many Japanese residents as in the next most important country, Germany; France is a close third (Figure 5.1). If we focus on the United Kingdom, we can see (Figure 5.2) how the official Japanese Government figures for Japanese residents have grown rapidly in recent years. From 800 Japanese registered with the embassy in 1960 the numbers grew to 2,800 in 1970, 10,900 in 1980 and 44,400 in 1990, and then stabilised during the following decade with the 1999 figure having risen only to 55,200. The peak year was 1996. Clearly the decade with the fastest growth rate was the 1980s

60,000 50,000 40,000 30,000 20,000 10,000

Figure 5.1 Japanese residents in European countries, 1998. Source: Japan Statistical Yearbook (2000).

Others

Greece

Denmark

Russia

Austria

Sweden

Spain

Belgium

Switzerland

Netherlands

Italy

France

Germany

United Kingdom

0

Japanese in London 81 60,000 Japanese data

UK census

50,000 40,000 30,000 20,000 10,000

1999

1996

1993

1990

1987

1984

1981

1978

1975

1972

1969

1966

1963

1960

0

Figure 5.2 Japanese residents in the United Kingdom, 1960–99. Source: Japanese Embassy in the United Kingdom – http://www.embjapan.org.uk; and UK Population Censuses (1981, 1991).

when the numbers more than quadrupled. However, Figure 5.2 also illustrates UK-derived figures for the population born in Japan (rather than those of Japanese nationality as collated by the Japanese authorities), as recorded at the population censuses of 1981 and 1991. For 1981 the two totals do not differ markedly (12,300 in the UK census, against 11,700 in the embassy data), but for 1991 the discrepancy is wide: 28,200 in the census against 48,200 in the embassy data. Such a difference is unlikely to result simply from definitional problems. There are two reasons why the Japanese embassy data may be over-estimates, both related to the voluntary nature of registration. First, there may be a failure on the part of many Japanese leaving the United Kingdom to delete their names from the consular list of UK residents. And second, this failure to de-register may in part reflect a reduction in the rigidity of the structures that have brought Japanese people to the United Kingdom, and an increase in the flexibility of migration. To put this another way, an increasing proportion of movement now occurs outside the company frameworks that used to circumscribe the whole pattern of activities of earlier migrants, and which led to a more consistent adherence to regulatory norms. However, there are also good reasons to suppose that the UK 1991 census (and doubtless that of 2001 as well) will have under-enumerated the Japanese population who did not see themselves as settled in the United Kingdom and failed to complete the survey questionnaire. The true picture of the size of the Japanese population in the United Kingdom probably lies somewhere between the figures provided by the Japanese and UK sources. Apart from these discrepancies over the size of the Japanese population of the United Kingdom, there are also differences over its distribution. The UK census enumerated 17,192 Japan-born in Greater London in 1991, or 61 per cent of the total Japanese population. Japanese embassy data for 1991 give the London

82

Paul White

figure as 24,550, or 47 per cent of those enumerated. Whichever figure is accepted, London (and its surrounding region) is by far the most important location for the Japanese in the United Kingdom. The embassy data provide one further indicator: that of the purpose of residence in Britain. These data are here combined with information on the sex ratio of Japanese residents. All the available information agrees that the Japanese population of Britain is weighted towards females. The UK 1991 census enumerated 83.5 males per 100 females, whilst the embassy data for that year gave a ratio of 98.3 to 100. By 1999 the embassy data indicated an increased imbalance at 75.5 males to 100 females. The 1991 census indicated a sex ratio of 84.2 males per 100 females in London. These figures raise interesting issues about the gendered nature of Japanese migration to Britain (see also Sakai on the case of Hong Kong, Chapter 8). They start to question the dominant discourse that Japanese migration in the United Kingdom (and in London specifically) is transient and dependent on company movers and assigned male managers. Table 5.1 displays the available evidence on who the Japanese residents in Britain might be (albeit with the need for caution, indicated earlier, over likely over-estimates of the population in the Japanese data sources). In 1991, the majority of Japanese residents were either working for private companies or comprised the families of such workers. Students, researchers and similar individuals contributed a further 25 per cent of the total. Permanent expatriates were the third largest single group, but only contributed 7 per cent. Amongst these three larger groups of Japanese residents, those associated with private companies recorded an over-representation of males, whilst student populations had a female majority, and amongst those settled in Britain permanently there was only one male for every three females.

Table 5.1 Categories of Japanese residents in the United Kingdom, 1991 and 1999

Transients Private company staff Self-employed Government Journalists Students etc. Others Permanent expatriates Total

Per cent of total, 1991

Sex ratio (males per 100 females)

Per cent of total, 1999

Sex ratio (males per 100 females)

61.2 1.1 2.1 0.8 25.2 2.7 6.9 100.0

118.3 106.1 159.5 93.5 81.5 88.2 33.1 98.3

39.5 1.5 1.6 0.8 36.8 3.8 15.9 99.9

135.1 88.5 109.9 102.8 54.0 43.6 36.8 75.5

Source: Japanese Embassy in the United Kingdom, http://www.embjapan.org.uk/ Note Dependants are classified according to the motivation of the primary migrant.

Japanese in London 83 By 1999 certain important changes had occurred. Private company staff and their families, although still the biggest group, were now no longer in the majority. Those in Britain for educational reasons had grown significantly in importance, whilst the proportion of permanent Japanese settlers had more than doubled. At the same time sex ratios had also altered: movers associated with private companies were even more likely to be male than had been the case in the early 1990s. This might be taken to suggest that families less often accompanied the (predominantly male) primary migrants by the end of the decade. The female predominance amongst student visitors had strengthened further; whilst the ratio of male to female permanent settlers had remained roughly the same, despite the increase in the significance of the group. Unfortunately these data cannot be broken down in detail to distinguish residents in London from those in the rest of the country. Various UK data sources provide further evidence on Japanese arrivals and employment during the later 1990s. Clearly, many relocations of private company staff to the United Kingdom as a whole or to London involve inter-company transfers. The relevant work permit system was eased by the UK authorities in October 1991 to facilitate such movement (Dobson et al., 2001: 231), but no specific data are available on the numbers of Japanese involved in such transfers. However, throughout the 1990s long-term UK work permits issued to Japanese citizens ran at between 2,000 and 2,600 a year such that they represented the second most significant immigrant group in this category after those from the United States (Dobson et al., 2001). Data from 2000 show that Japanese arrivals in the United Kingdom for employment remained distinctive from other groups needing permits (those from the European Union did not need such documents) in terms of their occupational categorisation: 48.2 per cent were in managerial and administrative occupations, with a further 22.8 per cent classified as ‘associate professionals and technical occupations’. This total of 71 per cent in the most skilled categories compares with 56 per cent among US and Malaysian citizens, and 51 per cent amongst Australians and Canadians (Dobson et al., 2001: 242–3). However, there was evidence (backing up the Japanese-origin data in Figure 5.2) of a stagnation in Japanese numbers during the decade. This consideration of data on the aggregate characteristics of the Japanese population of the United Kingdom (and, to a more limited extent, of London) has suggested a number of important issues for further consideration. Japanese migration to Britain has generally been conceptualised as relating predominantly to patterns of inward investment (Glebe et al., 1999; Hurdley and White, 1999). Much interest in Britain has focused on the implications of such investment – its connection to regional economies, regional policies, and to styles of employment and management (e.g. Pang and Oliver, 1988; Morris et al., 1993; Taylor, 1993). Associated population movements have received relatively little attention, although the assumption can clearly be detected that they have predominantly been likely to involve financial experts, bankers, accountants, plant managers, engineers, technicians, advisers and research and development specialists. However, where focus has been on such movers it has concentrated on their role

84

Paul White

in the spread and control of investment, and of new practices in human resources management, rather than on the more social aspects of their arrival. One of the few authors to identify some of the broader and more community-orientated implications of Japanese movement to the United Kingdom has been Kotkin (1992). The inflow of Japanese migrants into Britain, taking-off in the 1980s, was clearly very different in kind from almost any other recent migration stream into the United Kingdom. In particular, migratory connections between the United Kingdom and Japan had previously been of very little significance, such that there was a negligible existing community base for expansion. Second, linguistic and cultural distinctiveness was also considerable, such that new migrants found little in the way of relevant infrastructure other than what was to be created especially for them. And third, the migration flows initially accompanied inward investment as the prime driving force, such that the structures within which movement occurred related to private Japanese companies extending their international or global reach. The combination of these factors meant that relocations within private companies were the predominant cause of migration, with employees (and their accompanying families) being assigned to the United Kingdom for relatively short periods of service before being relocated elsewhere. Throughout this process the companies maintained the driving role. This vision of Japanese migration to the United Kingdom is clearly in accord with wider discourses about Japanese overseas migration referred to in other chapters of this book. However, the recent statistics produced earlier have highlighted certain deviations from the accepted view. The majority of Japanese migrants in the United Kingdom (and in London) today are females, contradicting the pattern of male (or at least family) movement that would be expected under a company-led migration model with a gendered workforce. The significance of company movement appears to be declining, while the importance of educational movement is increasing. And the proportion of resident Japanese who are classifiable as permanent settlers overseas is growing. These indicators all suggest that the company-led migration model is of decreasing importance, and that the Japanese community in the United Kingdom is changing and losing its close relationship with Japanese companies.

The Japanese in London: sources of information The most recent data on the number and location of the Japanese population in London comes from the 1991 UK census, which defines the population on the basis of place of birth. The results from the 2001 census will not be available until mid-2003. A rough check on the distribution of the Japanese population in the period 1999–2000, using the identification of Japanese surnames and associated addresses in the London telephone directory, suggests that there have actually been relatively minor changes in the residential distribution of the population. White (1998) showed that the Japan-born, although constituting less than onethird of 1 per cent of the total population of Greater London, produced a number

Japanese in London 85 of local peak concentrations, including one neighbourhood in which they amounted to 7.7 per cent of total residents. Their residential distribution to some extent mirrored those of other high status groups in the city, but tended to be more suburban in location, particularly favouring certain districts of high-cost and high-quality housing. Table 5.2 shows the results of an ecological correlation analysis relating the significance of the Japan-born population in each census district to a variety of employment, demographic and housing indicators. The suggestions from this analysis are that areas with significant representations of a Japanese population are also likely to have high proportions of residents working in skilled and high-status occupations, and a high level of population turnover. Such areas are also likely to have a housing market that emphasises dwellings that are for rent, and that does not have a predominance of traditional London terraced property. The research reported here results from investigations carried out in 1999–2000. The two main sources for the remainder of this chapter were a series of thirteen interviews carried out with estate agents in the areas of London where the Japanese form a significant population (with both specialist Japanese agencies and general agencies interviewed); and responses from forty-two Japanese residents to an extended postal questionnaire. This survey was administered in either Japanese or English (at the choice of the respondent) and included both closed questions and open invitations for respondents to reflect on their experiences and to identify their intentions. It is the postal survey that provides the basis for what follows. In using this source it must be acknowledged that because of the way it was administered (via a random selection of households with Japanese Table 5.2 Ecological indicators associated with areas of significant Japanese settlement in London, 1991 Correlation coefficient of per cent Japan-born residents with the other variables

Other variables

0.46 0.45 0.45

% of employed males working in professional occupations % of all households renting a furnished dwelling % of the active male population in the higher socio-economic groups (A, B, C1) % of employed females working in professional occupations Population turnover rate (% per annum) of the high skilled % of the population over 16 working in banking and finance % of all households renting an unfurnished dwelling % of the active female population in the higher socio-economic groups (A, B, C1) Terraced dwellings as % of all dwellings

0.39 0.38 0.36 0.28 0.26 0.29

Source: UK 1991 Census of Population, small area statistics. Note n  758 census districts.

86

Paul White

surnames in the telephone directory) it inevitably incorporates some bias. ‘Established’ households were more likely to be included than, for example, those living in student establishments. However, given the expectation of diversity in the Japanese population of London, the postal survey method was felt to be more appropriate than using particular organisational pathways (such as community associations) to access respondents.

Migration to London, the company connection and the emergence of community facilities As was indicated earlier in this chapter, Japanese migration to London initially occurred in the context of Japanese company assignments of employees to a city where there was no existing Japanese community to be used as a source of infrastructural support. The activities of the companies in creating such infrastructure and laying down the conditions for the establishment of ‘community’ have been considerable. It is useful here to consider the processes by which company migrants have been introduced into the London scene in recent years. Table 5.3 provides a profile of the ‘typical’ Japanese company mover living in London in 1999/2000 as derived from the postal questionnaire responses. It is based on the modal or median answers from fifteen respondents who fitted the classical criteria of company movers – working for a major Japanese corporation, and with regular relocations within the company. Indeed, certain of the individuals concerned had been extremely mobile in their careers (e.g. Sydney → Milan → Düsseldorf → London; or Tokyo → Geneva → Tokyo → London). The details of this profile are generally in accord with the picture painted in other chapters of this book (e.g. Glebe, Chapter 6 and Ben-Ari, Chapter 7), Table 5.3 The typical Japanese company mover in London, 1999/2000 Male, aged 39, living in a household of three persons Arrived November 1995; expects to stay in London a further 3–5 years. He did not arrive as a result of promotion, and he does not know whether he will be promoted on leaving The rest of his family arrived after he did Lived in a hotel on arrival, and found his first property via a Japanese estate agency after searching for 2–3 weeks Rents his property from a private landlord: his rent is supported by his company Perceives his area of residence as having ‘many Japanese’ His children attend a school in the British system and play with non-Japanese friends He has more leisure contacts with Japanese than with non-Japanese, but eats in non-Japanese restaurants more than in Japanese ones His household shops weekly in specialist Japanese shops, but daily at non-Japanese shops He has ‘good’ English, but his wife speaks it less well and less often He generally uses English except with friends and at the doctor He was not given specific language training or other preparation by his company before being sent to London His experience in London has been as good as, or better than, expected Source: Postal questionnaire survey.

Japanese in London 87 although with some differences. In particular, the total likely length of stay is longer than has been reported elsewhere at up to 10 years, but there is a significant level of variation on this particular variable. Company movers have normally been introduced to the London housing market via local Japanese estate agencies, with the companies often providing hotel accommodation (sometimes in company-owned hotels) for a short period on arrival. Spouse and family generally followed later, with the husband finding a suitable property to rent before their arrival. Clearly the company movers see themselves as living in ‘Japanese’ areas of London and this facilitates their leisure contacts with other Japanese and their access to specialist Japanese food shops. However, one unexpected finding was the fact that amongst the small sample considered here the ‘norm’ was to send their child(ren) to a school in the British system, although various international schools, including the Japanese school, were also used. Gender issues of integration clearly arise where the wife speaks English less well than the husband, but there is an extensive network of female-orientated activities organised via the Japanese Women’s Association in Great Britain. The companies had generally not prepared their employees linguistically or in other ways for their transfer to London. Nevertheless, the experience of their personnel there had generally been favourable. These findings from the questionnaire survey can be extended through the use of the evidence gathered from the interviews with the estate agents who act as key gatekeepers for the Japanese community. The picture that emerges is of the close control that Japanese companies have effectively held over the development of the Japanese community in London. A first issue is the confirmation by the estate agencies of the very limited information made available to company personnel prior to assignment to London. What the migrants know, they have primarily derived from others who have returned, or from general literature, rather than from more formal sources. Second, these formal sources of information come into play only on arrival in London where, both at work and in the company accommodation provided for them, the migrants are offered advice about housing possibilities. Unlike the situation elsewhere in Europe, such as in Germany (see Glebe in Chapter 6), the housing of Japanese company movers in London has always depended almost exclusively on the private rented market for furnished property. Companies have not become property owners to any degree. This private rented market operates via the network of Japanese estate agents whose core business is the matching of private landlords with newly arriving company migrants. Such estate agents therefore play an absolutely crucial role in the settlement of Japanese migrants in London: but they cannot play that role independently of the companies. Each week the estate agents prepare lists of properties available, commonly classified by districts of London, and distribute these lists to companies who then control which lists are given to particular newly arrived employees. In 2000, there were fifteen separate Japanese estate agencies operating in London, certain of them having multiple branches such that in total there were twenty-six offices. These offices remain clustered within the zones of Japanese settlement concentration

88

Paul White

identified in the 1991 census. The system is extremely conservative: one major agency that tried to pioneer a new area in southeast London had to close its branch there when it found that the companies would not support such a development and withheld information about opportunities there. Estate agent interviewees indicated that the companies place a great deal of emphasis on access to office employment in various parts of central London. They have thereby dictated that properties should be close to stations on a limited number of Underground lines converging on the City of London – the central business district in which the bulk of Japanese company employment is concentrated. This, in large part, explains the stability of Japanese residential distributions in London. The existence of the specialist Japanese estate agencies is important in creating the circumstances whereby company migrants do not need to be involved at all in the wider housing market. The agencies are staffed by Japanese personnel (at least in terms of their contacts with clients for rented properties) although some agencies indicated that they no longer bring their staff from Japan but can now employ permanent local Japanese residents (particularly women: see Sakai in Chapter 8). Agencies take on tasks beyond those of finding property – they also arrange all repairs, provide advice on settling in London, and in some cases are linked to other businesses catering to Japanese migrant needs (such as food importers, video distributors or golf supplies). They are crucial gatekeepers to living in London for newly arriving migrants although, as we have seen, the companies partly control information about access to their services. However, the agencies have to be linked to the wider London economy (and not just the Japanese sector of it) through their need for property to let. Agencies employ local London non-Japanese labour to deal with landlords who are generally private individuals or families – many of them actually being past migrants or minority groups themselves (Poles, Indians, Maltese, Cypriots or in one of the most important areas of Japanese concentration in North London, Jews). Certain of the Japanese agencies have recently diversified their business away from simply renting property to act in the purchase of property for London-based individuals who will then let out the property through the same agency. The activities of two sets of organisations – the Japanese companies and the Japanese estate agencies – working in large part together, have been crucial in dictating the life circumstances of Japanese company migrants in London, and in maintaining the possibility of a high level of separation between Japanese and other groups (including native Londoners) living in the city. They have fostered the creation of a transient Japanese community through the limitation of opportunities to integrate more widely in London society, and through ensuring that all that is needed for Japanese autonomy is available. There is in the London housing market a relative scarcity of rented furnished property suitable in quality for the demands of Japanese tenants who are able to commit themselves to high-rent levels because their companies are aiding them. Most areas of Japanese settlement in the city have seen the establishment of facilities (beyond the estate agencies) aimed specifically at Japanese residents – food shops, restaurants, in

Japanese in London 89 one area a second-hand dealer handling items such as children’s bicycles or books that migrants do not want to ship back and forth. British firms have responded to local Japanese presences by diversifying their product lines – stocking Japanese newspapers, or in the case of one of the large supermarket chains, developing a range of Japanese foodstuffs. Higher-order services and functions for the whole community from whatever neighbourhood also exist, once again with company involvement. The Japanese school in London was established with the financial involvement of the companies although it is operated via the Ministry of Education in Tokyo. A network of school buses brings pupils in from all areas of Japanese settlement to the current premises in West Acton, and these bus routes provide another element restricting new company migrants with families to existing areas of Japanese settlement. However, a similar bussing scheme for Yaohan Plaza, the Japanese shopping mall in northwest London, proved insufficient to maintain the viability of the complex which was planned in the early 1990s when the rapid increase of Japanese numbers in London looked set to continue. In 1999, the mall was sold to a Malaysian company and converted from being exclusively Japanese commerce to a wider ‘Oriental’ image covering all East Asia. There are certain signs that Japanese community development has not been as strong in the 1990s as was expected at the end of the 1980s, for example, at the time when the school moved from crowded premises in inner North London to a more spacious site vacated by a school in the British system. This is a reflection of the elimination of major net growth in the Japanese presence in Britain as seen earlier in Figure 5.2. Nevertheless it can be seen that the role of Japanese companies remains considerable for a significant proportion of migrants.

London as a global city: opportunities beyond the companies In 2001 the Japanese School in London, providing secondary education through the Japanese educational system, had 583 pupils on its roll. As indicated earlier, even company movers do not necessarily put their children through the Japanese schooling system in London. A number of state primary schools in London have developed support programmes for Japanese children, alongside their similar programmes for children from other migrant communities. A number of secondary-age Japanese pupils are sent to the American School or to one of the other International Schools in London. This contrasts with the situation both in Singapore (Ben-Ari, Chapter 7) and Düsseldorf (Glebe, Chapter 6). The juniorhigh and high schools in Singapore together cater for 1,200 pupils from a Japanese community that is roughly similar in size to that of London. Pupil numbers in the secondary department of the Japanese School in Düsseldorf have consistently exceeded 500 since the early 1980s, fed by a Japanese population that is around one-third the size of that in London. These observations reflect partly on London’s characteristic as a major global city offering a wealth of alternative opportunities in every sphere (including

90

Paul White

educational). They may also reflect a growing interest among Japanese migrant families (even within the company structure) to improve the English-language and wider cultural attributes of their children, now that the kikokushijo are no longer constructed as such a problem (Goodman, Chapter 12) in a Japanese climate of greater openness to kokusaika (internationalisation). Certainly it is important to acknowledge the specific context of London here: probably few Japanese parents in Düsseldorf, for example, would countenance their children being educated exclusively in German, but an education in English is a different matter. There is almost certainly also a reflection of greater diversity in the Japanese population in London than elsewhere. One questionnaire respondent was very careful to distance himself from what he saw as the dominant view of the Japanese community, writing at the head of his response: I am a doctor and I’ve come here for research and training [at a specialist psychiatric unit]. I’ve got nothing to do with the companies. Earlier discussion in connection with Table 5.1 highlighted the fact that the composition of the Japanese population of Britain (and, by implication, of London) is now changing. This was shown in the answers of a number of respondents who were not related to the Japanese companies, who were not using the specific Japanese housing market, and who had rather different patterns of behaviour from the company movers. In particular, certain of their attitudes to life in London were also distinctive. The small sample size of respondents does not permit any estimation of the proportions of total Japanese residents that fall into this ‘noncompany’ group, but the questionnaire material indicates the diversity of Japanese presences in contemporary London. Consideration of the completed questionnaires indicates that there are effectively two sub-groups of those who are not company-based transients. The first consists of those who had originally been assigned to London by a company but who have chosen to stay on (sometimes through changing their employer and seeking a new work permit away from their original employer, sometimes through retirement): nine respondents fell into this sub-group. The second element consists of eighteen respondents who had come to London independently of the companies: included in this category were occupations as diverse as an artist, a violinist, the manager of a Japanese restaurant and a teacher of Japanese. Also included here were certain employees of Japanese governmental organisations who tended to be long-stayers in London because of their specific cultural expertise in operating in a British context. Table 5.4 provides a profile of the ‘typical’ ex-company mover, delineated on the basis of the same identification of modal or median characteristics as used to generate Table 5.3. There is, almost inevitably, more variation here, even given the smaller group under consideration. Almost inevitably, the ex-company movers are older than those still within the company system. Their date of arrival in London was also earlier, but they now see themselves as staying indefinitely. Respondents in this ‘ex-company’ group

Japanese in London 91 Table 5.4 The typical ‘ex-company’ Japanese resident in London, 1999/2000 Male, aged 52, living in a household of two persons Arrived October 1988 working for a company, and now expects to stay indefinitely His original housing was rented from a private landlord, with rent support from the company Perceived his original housing area as not having ‘many Japanese’ Found his current house via a non-Japanese estate agent, after 7 weeks’ search; has been living there since May 1994; owner-occupied Current housing is in an area that is perceived as ‘without many Japanese’ His children attend(ed) a school in the British system and play(ed) with non-Japanese friends Leisure contacts, clubs and restaurant use are both Japanese and non-Japanese He has ‘good’ or ‘excellent’ English: his wife speaks it as well as him or better He predominantly uses English in all contacts outside the home He was not given any specific language training or other preparation by his company before being sent to London His experience in London has been as good as expected Source: Postal questionnaire survey.

did not see their original housing in London as being in an area strongly marked by Japanese settlement (unlike the responses from company movers). This might be explained by the fact that for certain such movers (the earliest arrived in 1969) arrival took place before Japanese presences rose to the level they achieved in the early 1990s. This would also explain the fact that there was no typical entry point to the housing market for this sub-group, since the specific Japanese estate agency system was still in the course of development when some of them arrived. However, all nine respondents in this sub-group now live in owner-occupied accommodation found via a non-Japanese estate agent after a protracted search process (of between 2 and 10 weeks) that reflects a commitment of resources to ensure long-term housing satisfaction, particularly given the fact that in moving away from their company origins they have lost the rent subsidies they once received. Most currently live in areas they perceive as not being ‘Japanese’ in nature (although their addresses generally lie within the zones of Japanese residential concentration). English is the predominant means of communication, and English-language abilities are highly rated (on a self-assessment scale). One interesting issue here is that, unlike the company movers reported in Table 5.3, respondents here indicated their wives as having high linguistic competence in English. Whether the practical ability to operate in England fosters a decision to stay on or whether it develops after that decision is unknown but worthy of further investigation. It is not possible to profile the eighteen independent movers in the second sub-group in the same way, since they are too diverse in characteristics. Table 5.5 therefore consists of a number of observations rather than a profile. Here there were as many female as male respondents, and certain of these females were not living in familial settings but were on their own in London. One thing that separates this sub-group from those labelled as ‘ex-company’ residents is their future expectations. These independent movers should not all be seen as permanent settlers (although many are doubtless likely to be so): there are here a

92

Paul White

Table 5.5 Independent movers in London, 1999/2000 As many women respondents as men, with a wide age range from 26 to 62 Main arrival period was the mid-1980s, but with continuing inflow in the 1990s; predominant expectations of indefinite residence in London, but with some having shorter-term views Some intermarriage with British partners Most moved into their current properties within the last 5 years, obtained via non-Japanese estate agents; tenure is a mix of owner-occupation and renting (the latter sometimes via Japanese agents) A majority see their areas of residence as not having many Japanese present Leisure activities are predominantly in a non-Japanese environment Ability in English is ‘good’ or ‘excellent’: English is the predominant language used Most find London life as expected; some are disappointed Source: Postal questionnaire survey.

number of examples of transients – but operating outside the company systems. Some of these independent transients operate in ways that are similar to the company movers – sometimes using Japanese estate agents, living in rented property, living in neighbourhoods perceived as having ‘many Japanese’ and so on. In these ways they are using their ‘Japanese-ness’ as a resource or as a means of entry to organisational infrastructure that will smooth their process of arrival in London. On the other hand, their leisure contacts and social networks are much more likely to lie outside the Japanese community than was the case amongst company movers (Table 5.3). If we contrast the company movers dealt with earlier to the two sub-groups of those who are now without company connections or who have never had them, one particularly interesting set of findings concerns responses to an open question about life in London. Respondents were asked to indicate their feelings about their stay in London, divided between positive and negative reactions. Table 5.6 indicates the three most important issues raised under these headings (four in the case of negative feelings by company movers where two categories tied for third place). The things that different categories of Japanese migrants disliked in London were very similar – primarily what were perceived as low standards of behaviour by certain sections of London society (‘yobs/lager louts/thugs/muggers/football fans’ in the words of one respondent), and London’s public transport system, particularly the Underground. Company migrants also disliked what they saw as a high cost of living – despite the fact that the rents for their properties were subsidised by their companies. They also found standards of servicing and household repairs to be poor – again despite the fact that these services are generally organised for them by their letting agents, the Japanese estate agencies. Such complaints were less important amongst the non-company movers, who disliked what they saw as low standards of food hygiene. There are differences between the two groups in the perceived advantages of London life. Access to cultural facilities looms large in both lists. Company

Japanese in London 93 Table 5.6 Attitudes to London life – company and non-company movers, 1999/2000 Positive points Company movers (n  15) Opportunities for travel and leisure activities Environment ( parks, open spaces, housing environments etc.) Cultural opportunities (theatre, music etc.)

Non-company movers (n  27) Cultural opportunities Cosmopolitanism Freedom and individuality

Number of mentions 8

Negative points

Number of mentions

4

Personal attitudes (‘yob’ culture, discrimination etc.) Public transport

5

4

Cost of living

3

Poor quality personal services, repairs etc.

3

10 6 6

Personal attitudes Public transport Low food standards and availability

5

11 5 4

Source: Postal questionnaire survey.

movers like London’s environment (which is particularly attractive in certain of the residential suburbs that they customarily inhabit). They also see a stay in London as an opportunity to travel both within Britain and Europe and to maintain significant leisure activities such as golf and gardening (the latter being a possibility because of the availability of houses to rent, as opposed to the apartments more common on mainland Europe). It is the advantages of London as seen by those outside the company movement cycle that are the most interesting. Here there are very common citations of the city’s cosmopolitanism, and the opportunities it presents to meet different sorts of people and learn about other ways of life, alongside favourable mentions of the degree of freedom of behaviour possible in London away from the surveillance and norms of society ‘at home’ in Japan. The movers who are not associated with Japanese company cycles of transient movement show themselves as open to the wider cultural and social opportunities resulting from London’s characteristics as a global city within which a great deal of cultural hybridisation is taking place. One 42-year-old male, who was assigned to London by his company in 1988 but who has now taken a permanent position in the city and intends to remain indefinitely, cited ‘the opportunity to make friends from all over the world’ as a crucial factor in his decision. Similarly, London is a unique and attractive city because of the mixture of many different races: it’s good to live here, and managing a Japanese restaurant gives the opportunity to meet people from all over the world. (Male respondent, living in London since 1976, who owns his own house)

94

Paul White

The extra element of self-determination, outside the surveillance of traditional Japanese society, was stressed by a number of respondents: I am left to myself without any interference from neighbours. (Female respondent, aged 62, who lives alone) I can live in my own way and at my own speed. (Male artist, aged 39, who first came to London in 1989, and whose present stay started in 1997) Such sentiments are not commonly expressed by the company movers who show themselves to be keen to take advantage of certain of London’s opportunities, but who are much more selective in the aspects of London’s ‘global city’ status with which they interact. This is not surprising in view of the migratory system that brings the company movers to London. Their contacts with the London housing market are circumscribed and channelled through a Japanese sub-market. As a result they come to reside, in certain cases, in suburban areas of the city that are familial in nature and to some extent ‘protected’ from the more cosmopolitan side of London life. Lacking real training before their placements in London, they also lack certain of the practical resources needed to integrate more fully in the city – in particular the wives of many company men suffer social isolation which can most easily be overcome by the extension of contacts within (rather than outside) the Japanese community. Those moving within the company system migrate within what Cohen (1977) has defined as an ‘environmental bubble’, which should be seen as being partly permeable: it provides largely Japanese conditions on the inside but with the flow of influences from the outside into the bubble being largely controlled by the companies. It is only through acculturation and socialisation processes within London that company movers can develop the practical resources and understandings to enable them to move out into a wider pattern of integration. On the other hand, most independent movers to London come without this ‘bubble’ of protection and have to interact with London’s socio-economic system and institutions right from the start. If they choose to live in areas with a significant Japanese residential presence (and many of them do, despite their denial of this in their questionnaire responses) they do so voluntarily and because of the access that their ‘Japanese-ness’ may give them to certain amenities and opportunities. But they are also much more open to other ways of life, more critical of certain aspects of life in Japan, and demonstrate this through their mentalities.

Towards the normalisation of Japanese settlement in London The conceptualisation of Japanese migration to London as involving the continuation of the transient and circulatory migration systems of the 1980s is now

Japanese in London 95 erroneous. That phase of Japanese movement to and from London continues, but it is now supplemented by other newly developing migration systems. Some company migrants are now extending their stay in London to become (semi-) permanent expatriates. Other migrants are arriving from Japan attracted by London’s global city role and varied opportunities, some of them to settle permanently and others to stay for a few years and then move on elsewhere. As was shown at the start of this chapter, the limited data that exist indicate significant gender imbalances amongst today’s Japanese community in Britain (and by implication in London). Women are strongly in the majority amongst permanent expatriates. The Japanese women who have become local employees in the Japanese estate agencies and other firms are themselves either the offspring of company migrants who had been socialised to London life, or visiting students who stayed on or returned as soon as possible after the completion of their studies in Japan. We might here adapt Bourdieu’s (1984) concept of ‘cultural capital’ as a way of thinking about possible future change. Bourdieu defined cultural capital as the knowledge of how to operate at a particular level of society, through an understanding of the accepted norms and expectations of behaviour and the attitudes that support them. These ideas also relate to Goffman’s (1963) discussion of the roles of ‘knowledge’, rule interpretation and action in social integration. As Giddens (1984: 91) has pointed out: ‘agents whose lives are spent in one type of milieu may be more or less ignorant of what goes on in others’. If we extend these ideas to the realm of migration we can argue that certain categories of migrants may move with little intention or desire to widen their cultural capital. They stay within the rules of behaviour that they know, and they learn little of how to operate in a different social context. An alternative expression for cultural capital may be ‘practical resources’: such migrants do not develop the practical resources to be able to operate independently as free agents within the geographical locations they move to – they remain dependent on a series of surrounding institutions to provide them with the cultural context in which their existing cultural capital is of relevance and their practical resources are of use. Indeed, one could go further to suggest that organisational structures may surround certain migrant groups in ways that are designed to discourage any extension of the migrants’ cultural capital or practical resource base. To use Appadurai’s (1990) term, a culturally specific material and social ‘ethnoscape’ (see also Glebe in Chapter 6) is produced for them (not necessarily by them) to this end. Such a scenario could be argued to characterise a number of aspects of the company-led migration of Japanese workers and their families to London (and possibly to other destinations). In many ways it has been in the interests of the companies to provide a Japanese context for their employees and families and to act institutionally to ‘guide’ their arrival and absorption into selected aspects of London life. The anxieties (but also the unpredictability of outcomes) produced by the tentative development of independent migrant ‘agency’ in a new destination are reduced by institutional involvement. The circumstances of (part of) the Japanese community in London are thus explicable – its ever-changing composition at the individual level yet stability in aggregate characteristics. New company

96

Paul White

migrants are ‘processed’ in an efficient manner and in a way that produces predictable overall results. Yet this is not the only system now operating amongst the Japanese in London. There are increasing numbers of Japanese in the city who are interested in extending their cultural capital, who want to develop their practical resources and knowledge of the rules of other societies, and to live in a different (rather than a variant of their old) environment. Indeed, for some of these migrants their prime reason for coming to London is to extend their cultural horizons. Such migrants exercise their own individual powers of agency and the significance of Japanese institutions in London is much reduced: these migrants are as likely to be involved in London institutions as Japanese ones (e.g. in terms of the housing market). They make what use they want of their ‘Japanese-ness’ as a resource that gives them access to certain facilities and opportunities, but the prime reason for being in London is not related to being Japanese (as it is for those assigned by companies to carry out tasks for which only a Japanese is thought suitable). Instead their motivations are often much more outward looking, and might truly be characterised as seeking the benefits of personal kokusaika (internationalisation). Growth in the numbers of Japanese residents in London who are not part of company movement systems is leading towards what might be called the ‘normalisation’ of Japanese settlement in the city. Other migrant groups in London originating from developed world societies (such as the United States, Australia and other countries of Europe) arrive for a multiplicity of reasons and through a number of migration channels. Some come as a result of relocations by their employing organisations, but many come voluntarily and in response to aspirations that might be cultural and social as well as related to employment. Japanese movement into London is starting to take on similar characteristics to these. Yet the distinctive impact of the company movement system shows no sign of disappearing: it is just that it no longer holds the predominant position that it did 10 years ago. The unique feature of Japanese company movement to London – company control over information, guidance to employees and the existence of a separate housing sub-market – is likely to remain an important element in London well into the future.

Acknowledgements The author is very grateful to Yoko Sellek and Tomomi Takada for invaluable assistance with the Japanese-language version of the questionnaire survey.

References Appadurai, A. (1990). ‘Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy’. Theory, Culture and Society 7: 295–310. Bourdieu, P. (1984). Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

Japanese in London 97 Castles, S. and Miller, M.J. (1993). The Age of Migration: International Population Movements in the Modern World. Basingstoke: MacMillan. Cohen, E. (1977). ‘Expatriate Communities’. Current Sociology 24(3): 5–133. Cohen, R. (1997). Global Diasporas: An Introduction. London: Routledge Dobson, J. et al. (2001). International Migration and the United Kingdom: Recent Patterns and Trends. Home Office, RDS Occasional Paper No. 75. Giddens, A. (1984). The Constitution of Society. Cambridge: Polity. Glebe, G. et al. (1999). ‘Investment-led Migration and the Distribution of Japanese in Germany and Great Britain’. Espace, Populations, Sociétés 3: 425–37. Goffman, E. (1963). Behavior in Public Places. New York: Free Press. Hurdley, L. and White, P. (1999). ‘Japanese Economic Activity and Community Growth in Great Britain’. Revue Européenne des Migrations Internationales 15: 101–20. Japan Statistical Yearbook 2000. http://www.stat.go.jp/english/1431-02.htm [accessed December 2001]. Kotkin, J. (1992). Tribes: How Race, Religion and Identity Determine Success in the New Global Economy. New York: Random House. Morris, J., Munday, M. and Wilkinson, B. (1993). Working for the Japanese: The Economic and Social Consequences of Japanese Investment in Wales. London: Athlone. Pang, K.K. and Oliver, N. (1988). ‘Personnel Strategy in Eleven Japanese Manufacturing Subsidiaries in the UK’. Personnel Review 17: 16–21. Sassen, S. (1991). The Global City: New York, London, Tokyo. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Taylor, J. (1993). ‘An Analysis of the Factors Determining the Geographical Distribution of Japanese Manufacturing Investment in the UK, 1984–1991’. Urban Studies 30: 1209–24. White, P. (1998). ‘The Settlement Patterns of Developed World Migrants in London’. Urban Studies 35: 1725–44.

6

Segregation and the ethnoscape The Japanese business community in Düsseldorf Günther Glebe

Introduction Recent decades have seen a rapid expansion in the numbers of Japanese working abroad. These expatriate migration flows are mainly a result of corporate location decisions enmeshed in the process of rapid globalisation. This process has required that the main players of the expanding world economy, the transnational corporations (TNCs), adapt their market strategies to the demands of the globalising economy with its three core regions (often known as the ‘triad’ – North America, Western Europe and the Pacific Rim focused on Japan). One consequence was the shift from export-based strategies of the early stage of internationalisation to strategies based on overseas direct investments. The aim of these new global location strategies was to create and maintain sustainable competitive advantages in global markets. Since the 1980s, the flow of foreign direct investment (FDI) has grown at a faster rate than the export flow of goods. This growth of FDI – with Japanese corporations being among the main contributors – led to a significant increase of Japanese expatriate migration to major urban centres. These are the nodal points of the global business network and control the globalisation process, and have been labelled by Sassen (1991, 1994) as ‘global cities’. Within this process of globalisation, and with the emergence of the triadic system, the markets of Western Europe became one of the main targets of Japanese economic activity. Japanese expatriate settlement in European cities is closely related to corporate activities but also results from a specific corporate philosophy among Japanese multinationals. At least until the 1990s, Japanese companies – more than those of other national origins – followed a strong ethnocentric corporate management philosophy by predominantly utilising their own national personnel for important controlling functions relating to their operations abroad, thus ensuring the maintenance of close internal links with the parent enterprises. Within Japanese companies, internal decision-making processes and business procedures involving relationships between parent companies and subsidiaries are based on a specific ‘human network’ management style which requires internal knowledge of the Japanese corporate system and its associated network of human connections (Watanabe, 1993). One consequence of the specific Japanese management style

Japanese business community in Düsseldorf

99

and its organisational demands was an increasing flow of expatriate labour. With the expansion of economic globalisation, more and more Japanese expatriate business people and their families were sent abroad in a short-term rotation system operating within the corporate internal labour markets and became the core of Japanese settlement in the new urban business destinations abroad. However, corporate-controlled expatriation is not only related to business. Expatriation also means exchanging a familiar physical, economic, social and cultural environment for an unknown or unfamiliar global environment. In this sense, globalisation is therefore multifaceted and also experienced differently by those involved. Going abroad, even for a short period and being accompanied by family members, also involves social and cultural aspects (Ben-Ari, 2000). In contrast to semi-skilled low-status labour migrants of earlier immigrant waves whose settlement behaviour has been intensely researched, there have been relatively few studies of the residential and segregation patterns of high-status migrants like the Japanese, originating from advanced industrial countries (see Glebe, 1986, 1998; White, 1988, 1998; Freund, 1998). Due to the distinctiveness of their socio-economic profiles, it can be assumed that at their destinations these high-status migrants will differ in their residential location preferences and their housing choice from lower-status labour migrant populations and that different geographies of settlement and segregation will occur. Ethnic research has demonstrated that the built environment, and in particular the housing market in relation to the social geography of a city, exercise a significant influence on residential choice. Traditional views of urban segregation have argued that the choice of a specific type of housing and environment, and the chances of successfully gaining access to what is desired, is highly determined by socio-economic status and rent-paying ability, and by discrimination practices by the controlling agents of the host society. In view of their socio-economic profile and relatively high incomes, Japanese expatriate migrants do not face economic constraints on housing choice. These factors, and that of their privileged social status, also mean that they are not discriminated against at their destinations by landlords or real-estate agents. In Düsseldorf, there seems to be mutual acceptance and appreciation between the host society and the Japanese expatriate community, although interaction has remained more institutionally determined than individually based. Extensive media coverage about the economic advantages to the city and the region resulting from the Japanese living and working in Düsseldorf has greatly influenced their public acceptance. Japanese restaurants, which have expanded in numbers over recent decades, not only cater for their Japanese clientele but also often act as a kind of entry point to Japanese culture for Germans. Amongst the many foreigner groups recognised by the German public as living in the city, the Japanese hold a high position on the sympathy scale. A number of activities have contributed to the esteem in which the Japanese are held by host society: cultural events such as summer vacation festivals organised by the Japanese school; Japanese Club activities such as the periodical organisation of a ‘Japanese Year’ with 12 months of cultural events sponsored by government agencies; or the

100 Günther Glebe creation of a Japanese garden financed and maintained by donations from the Japanese business community. A recently built Japanese Buddhist temple set in a beautifully designed traditional Japanese garden environment has become an urban landscape symbol of the Japanese presence but also a visual indicator of the cultural and ethnic pluralism of the city. The temple is also a Buddhist research centre, and offers seminars aimed at the spread of Buddhism, but it also offers courses on traditional Japanese handicrafts such as ikebana, origami or calligraphy and in these ways it also contributes to the transmission of Japanese culture to a wider German audience. All these events and urban landmarks of Japanese culture have the dual role of spreading Japanese culture, whilst also simultaneously marketing Japan abroad. The main objectives of this chapter are, first, to analyse how the expatriate Japanese migrants have settled and organised themselves in a culturally strange environment; second, to investigate how they fit into the urban social and ethnic geography of a German city which has become one of their main European destinations; and third, to analyse the role of culture in the formation of a Japanese community and settlement in Düsseldorf by applying Appadurai’s (1990) concept of the ‘ethnoscape’ as an explanatory tool for Japanese ‘trade diasporas’ (Cohen, 1997). The analysis is based on long-term annual population and migration data since 1976 and a survey of Japanese households conducted in 1999.

Population development and migration With a Japanese population of 4,600 in the city itself and a further 2,300 living in suburban towns just outside the city boundary, Düsseldorf is the dominant centre within the urban hierarchy of Japanese economic activities and population in Germany. On the European scale the city ranks second in importance after London. It achieved this outstanding role only after the Second World War, when Berlin and Hamburg lost their positions as traditional Japanese trade centres as a result of the partition of Germany. Japanese businesses started moving in during the late 1950s, leading to the gradual establishment of a Japanese community in the city. During the 1980s, globalisation accelerated the influx of Japanese companies and with it the number of expatriate migrants (Figure 6.1). In the early 1990s the downturn of the Japanese economy led for the first time to a negative migration balance with more Japanese expatriate families returning to Japan than being sent to Düsseldorf. A number of Japanese TNCs closed or amalgamated offices, and others reduced their staff or replaced Japanese employees by German personnel in functions which were no longer considered as vital for maintaining corporate internal links with the parent company. These changes also signalled a certain shift in the management culture of Japanese TNCs from a dominantly ethnocentric management strategy towards a more open global-oriented corporate policy. The effect on human resource management was that fewer overseas assignments were necessary. The second half of the 1990s saw in- and out-migration figures again balanced, but at a much lower level. As a result of these changes the local Japanese expatriate community in the city decreased by more than 10 per cent. But even with their

Japanese business community in Düsseldorf 6,000

101 2,000

5,500

4,500

1,500 Migration

Population

5,000

4,000 3,500 Population 3,000

1,000

In-migration 2,500 2,000

Out-migration

1,500

500 75

77

79

81

83

85

87

89

91

93

95

97

99

Figure 6.1 Japanese in- and out-migration 1981–98 and population development 1975–99 in Düsseldorf. Source: Amt für Statistik und Wahlen, Landeshauptstadt Düsseldorf.

reduced numbers, the Japanese community still composes a significant element in the ethnic mosaic and culture of the city.

Settlement pattern and segregation In traditional theoretical approaches to urban social and ethnic segregation, it is assumed that groups not confronted with racial prejudice and economic constraints in the search for housing should display low levels of segregation, with their residential patterns mirroring the distribution of the middle-and high-status segments of the host population. Evidence of the main Japanese housing areas (Figure 6.2) shows that the Japanese only partially accord with this assumption. A study carried out in the early 1980s (Glebe, 1986) revealed that the Japanese then living in Düsseldorf were not randomly distributed in urban space but displayed a unique settlement pattern congregating in a limited number of high-status neighbourhoods. Their residential distribution in 1999 shows a distinctive pattern of four main clusters, all characterised by significant over-representation of Japanese residents. Two of these clusters are located in high-status residential neighbourhoods stretching out in a wedge-like form from the northern and north-eastern fringe of the inner city. The third and largest cluster on the western side of the river Rhine houses important social infrastructure such as the Japanese school, two kindergartens and the Buddhist temple. All these neighbourhoods share similar social and environmental qualities and a mixed housing stock with some modernised high-quality pre-war properties as well as new up-market housing intermixed with some single family homes, all within the upper price band of the rental market. As in all German cities, rented housing prevails in these high-status neighbourhoods, with some condominiums and owner-occupied housing mixed in. Locally, three and four bedroom apartments of more recent construction are much sought after by Japanese families.

5 km

No Japanese residents

0.01–0.99

1.0–2.0

2.01–3.0

Location quotient >3.0

Figure 6.2 Distribution of Japanese residents in Düsseldorf, 1976 and 1999.

Computer cartography: Cl. Dehling. Source: Amt für Statistik u. Wahlen. Landeshauptstadt Düsseldorf.

0

1999

1976

Japanese business community in Düsseldorf

103

It is interesting to compare the two maps in Figure 6.2, contrasting the residential situation at an early stage of the globalisation process with more recent settlement patterns. Right from the earliest stage of the establishment of the Japanese community, large areas of the city, including nearly the whole of the south, have been neglected in the search for housing. Specific neighbourhoods in the west, particularly along the Rhine, and a high-quality residential sector in the east stretching out from the inner city are particularly favoured. Most of the south, where labour-class neighbourhoods predominate with higher proportions of social housing, does not represent the type of social and housing environment sought after by highly skilled Japanese migrants. The comparison between 1976 and 1999 reveals that over nearly 25 years the basic outline of the residential pattern, with high concentrations in a limited number of neighbourhoods, has hardly changed. With the growth in the size of the Japanese community some diffusion has taken place into districts adjoining the original clusters. Additionally, a Japanese housing area stretching northwards along the eastern shore of the Rhine has developed into unique cluster, where in 1976 only a small number of Japanese lived scattered among a few districts. Besides the environmental attractiveness of the Rhine, the construction of new up-market rental housing and the location of an international school may have contributed to the emergence of this new cluster since the 1980s. Of particular interest, however, is the fourth cluster located at the eastern fringe of the CBD near the Japanese business centre. This is an area close to the main railway station featuring a number of hotels, and therefore contrasts with the prestigious neighbourhoods so far discussed and which are most preferred by Japanese families. The city centre residential area is the smallest in terms of the total number of Japanese residents living there. Its uniqueness results not only from its CBD location but also from its role in the migration and settlement process of Japanese expatriates when moving to Düsseldorf. Japanese companies who cannot themselves supply housing for their newly transferred expatriates have contracts with a number of inner-city hotels to accommodate these employees before they have found their own rental flat or house. Therefore most of the Japanese migrants in the CBD cluster live in temporary accommodation for a limited number of weeks. Fifty-nine per cent of the primary migrant respondents to a Japanese household survey had lived in a hotel after their arrival in Düsseldorf, 71 per cent for about 4 weeks, and another 18 per cent for up to 8 weeks before they were successful in their search for appropriate housing. Only 6 per cent of the respondents had already started their search process while still in Japan. When a Japanese employee is transferred to Düsseldorf, housing provision determines whether the migration process takes place in either one or two steps. If, upon arrival, housing is provided from the company’s housing stock – either long-term leased or owned – or if they are able to take over a predecessor’s flat, then the arriving migrant generally moves straight from Japan or another overseas transfer location into one of the prestigious neighbourhoods of the city. If, however, a Japanese expatriate has to search for his own housing (and the majority have to do this), the first step after arrival is to take up temporary accommodation in the

104

Günther Glebe

inner-city close to the office enabling the migrant to search for adequate housing for the family left behind. The CBD cluster therefore fulfils a transitory function within the migration system and settlement process of Japanese expatriates. This also explains a high rate of population turnover within this central cluster, significantly higher than in other neighbourhoods where the Japanese live. The map (Figure 6.3) of the intra-urban migratory movements of Japanese residents confirms that the central residential cluster is tightly bound into the wider urban Japanese migration network.

Number of migrants 2–5 6–11 >=12

Boundary of CBD

0 5 km Computer cartography: Cl. Dehling. Source: Amt für Statistik u. Wahlen, Landeshauptstadt Düsseldorf.

Figure 6.3 Inner-city migration flows of Japanese in Düsseldorf, 1997/1998.

Japanese business community in Düsseldorf

105

Another important aspect of Japanese migration which affects communitybuilding and residential behaviour is the transitory character of their stay. Japanese expatriates remain on average between 3 and 5 years in one destination. Then they will be either transferred back to their headquarters in Japan or to another destination abroad. Some stay an even shorter period if they are sent on a special assignment. Not surprisingly, the generally short-term character of their migration results in a rate of population turnover which is the highest of all ethnic minority groups in the city. Mobility intensity calculated as in- and out-migration plus intra-urban migration in relation to the total Japanese population reaches an annual turnover level as high as 60 per cent, which is more than double the turnover of lower-status labour migrant groups of guestworker origin such as the Turks or Greeks. This high rate of population turnover has not changed significantly over the last 20 years, suggesting that so far there are no signs of a tendency towards more permanent settlement in Düsseldorf as observed for the Japanese in London (White in Chapter 5). The reason for this is probably to be found in the size and labour market differences between the two cities. Düsseldorf is too small to offer a diversity of job opportunities outside the local Japanese labour market, which would be a pre-condition for a more permanent stay. The residential pattern of the Japanese migrant population has become a very distinctive element of the ethnic geography of the city and has contributed to the complexity of its social and ethnic space. As has been mentioned earlier in this chapter, the socio-economic profile and freedom of housing choice of the Japanese in Düsseldorf might lead to an assumption that their segregation rates should be low both from the host population and from foreign populations of similar status. However, the indices of dissimilarity of the Japanese living in Düsseldorf, shown in Table 6.1, must be regarded as relatively high, even by international standards, and they are certainly much higher than expected. The Japanese actually display the highest segregation values of all ethnic populations in Düsseldorf, much higher than those of labour migrants of guestworker origin. Whereas the dissimilarity indices between the Japanese and the Mediterranean labour migrant populations can be considered as being in line with theoretical expectations, the high dissimilarity value between Germans and Japanese is

Table 6.1 Dissimilarity indices of Japanese residents in comparison with other selected nationalities, Düsseldorf, 1999

Japanese French British USA German Turkish

French

British

USA

German

Turkish

Greek

59.3

58.9 36.0

58.4 46.7 39.7

64.7 38.8 35.5 50.7

78.6 57.4 57.3 70.5 45.0

74.8 48.6 49.3 65.1 40.8 35.7

Note n  455 voting districts.

106

Günther Glebe

contradictory. The same is also true with regard to other migrant populations from advanced countries with similar socio-economic profiles. Although the dissimilarity values are slightly lower between the Japanese and the latter groups, they nevertheless show that even among these higher-status ethnic groups some sorting takes place. This indicates quite clearly that social class and income are obviously not the only factors influencing ethnic segregation. This observation can be further enhanced through the analysis of distribution patterns and segregation values at the micro-scale level of street-blocks in the Oberkassel and Niederkassel residential area, the high-status neighbourhoods west of the Rhine most preferred by the Japanese (see Figure 6.4 and Table 6.2). Some unexpected and puzzling results show up. This residential cluster includes three well-to-do neighbourhoods and has the largest Japanese population in the city. Contrary to expectations, even here they are not evenly distributed but again show distinctive concentration patterns, particularly in the Niederkassel neighbourhood where most of the Japanese social infrastructure is located (and which results in this district being most preferred by Japanese families with young children, because of its proximity to the Japanese school and kindergartens).

Rh

ine

Location quotient : >3.0 1.51–3.0 1.0–1.5 0.01–0.99 No Japanese residents 0

500 m

Computer cartography: Cl.Dehlin. Source: Amt für Statistik u. Wahlen, Landeshauptstadt Düsseldorf.

Figure 6.4 Distribution of Japanese residents at the neighbourhood level in Oberkassel, Niederkassel and Lörick 1999.

Japanese business community in Düsseldorf

107

Table 6.2 Segregation indices of Japanese residents, 1976–99 – Düsseldorf and neighbourhood; Oberkassel/Niederkassel/ Lörick Year

Düsseldorf a

Oberkassel/Niederkassel/Lörickb

1976 1981 1986 1990 1994 1997 1999

60.7 61.2 64.7 63.5 63.7 64.3 64.9

53.1 54.1 53.2 53.2 52.0 55.9 58.6

Notes a n  455 voting districts. b n  118 street blocks.

Here the segregation values are, as might be expected, slightly lower. This indicates that, compared with the whole city, the Japanese in this high-status neighbourhood are somewhat more dispersed. However, the index is still high, showing that even in these high-status neighbourhoods the Japanese show a strong clustering tendency despite the fact that their socio-economic situation and their level of social acceptance are such that they should have access to all local housing. This sorting along ethnic lines is determined by the Japanese group’s own choice. The findings of the household survey carried out in 1999 indicate that within this social environment the controlling factors on spatial sorting are not social but, to a significant degree, related to housing age, type and quality. The Japanese are less present in those parts of the neighbourhood where older pre-war housing (although of high quality) or single-family homes are predominant. The results of this survey further revealed that Japanese expatriate migrants search in a specific housing market partially managed by Japanese companies but overwhelmingly controlled by specialist real estate agents. A number of Japanese companies either operate as proprietors or as intermediaries by letting company-owned or long-term rented dwellings to their newly arriving employees. Of the household survey respondents 17 per cent were living in company-owned or rented housing. However, the Japanese companies also influence the allocation process indirectly by assisting incoming employees in their search for suitable accommodation utilising long-established business links with local real estate agents, either of German or Japanese origin. According to the household survey, 32 per cent of the respondents had used the services of a real estate agent of Japanese origin and 11 per cent a German agent in their housing search process. Through their activities on the Japanese housing market and their socio-spatial perception of where Japanese want to live or should live in the city, both Japanese companies and real estate agents must be seen as important influences in establishing and sustaining the pattern of Japanese residence and segregation in the city. Table 6.2 also demonstrates that the segregation levels of the Japanese minority have displayed an astonishing stability over a nearly 25-year period. There is a slight increase of the values in the early stage between 1976 and 1986. This was

108

Günther Glebe

a period of continuing global expansion of the Japanese economy, such that the number of local companies and the resultant Japanese expatriate community were still growing and producing an intensification of the concentration process. The later persistence of high segregation values confirms that since then very little dispersal has taken place from original settlement areas. It also indicates the stability of the Japanese housing market in the city. This local continuity of the Japanese presence has also left its imprint on the ethnic mental map of the Düsseldorf population which views the wider Oberkassel/Niederkassel/Lörick neighbourhood, with its diverse Japanese social infrastructure, as a kind of ‘little Tokyo’, although only 6.5 per cent of the total population in these three neighbourhoods is Japanese. The closest to reality that such a description comes is in the smaller neighbourhood of Niederkassel where most of the Japanese social infrastructure including the Japanese Buddhist temple is located and where the Japanese make up one-fifth of the residential population. The puzzling residential behaviour of the Japanese business community in Düsseldorf raises a number of questions which obviously cannot be fully answered by following traditional views on the causes of segregation. One of the central issues concerns why the Japanese deviate so much from other minorities in their spatial concentration and segregation, and what are the forces determining this behaviour. White (1998) has argued from the case of the Japanese in London, that class and economic factors are obviously important but cannot be the only determinants influencing their spatial residential behaviour in their destinations abroad. In terms of other explanations, it can be assumed that most Japanese migrants who come to Düsseldorf have hardly any knowledge of the social and housing geography of the city and they usually arrive relatively poorly informed. According to our survey, nearly a third of the respondents had no preparation by the company before being transferred to Düsseldorf. Just 40 per cent had attended job- and language-related seminars and only 22 per cent were offered seminars to provide them with some knowledge about living circumstances abroad. Such seminars did not generally include information about housing situations in the specific cities to which they were about to be sent. More important in the preparation stage were informal information channels. Consultation with returning migrants and friends with experience abroad turned out to be the most frequentlyused means of collecting information, followed by books or videos. The rotation principle of migration, as an aspect of Japanese corporate internal labour markets, also has a stabilising effect on the residential pattern once it has become established, particularly if corporate-owned or long-term rented housing is involved. Additionally, within this system returning migrants who act as communicators about the living conditions abroad definitely also have a channelling effect. This points to a number of company-related ethnospecific forces influencing the development and persistence of the spatial Japanese community pattern abroad. A further aspect of an explanation could be that the group-internal preferences of the Japanese for certain housing areas might be related to culturally-controlled ethnocentric behaviour. Such behaviour may result from a group’s endeavours to

Japanese business community in Düsseldorf

109

cultivate their ethnic-cultural lifestyle in a temporary diaspora situation. In the case of the Japanese, the cultural factor definitely plays an important role in ensuring contentment during a short period abroad. In this context group-specific social and economic infrastructure plays an important role, for example, as in the availability of an established Japanese educational infrastructure to allow Japanese children to maintain close links with the Japanese educational system. In this context, Peach’s (1998) assumption in his study of Bangladeshis in London that cultural factors have a behavioural impact in the process of housing search and thus the creation of residential concentrations similarly applies to high-status temporary Japanese residents in Düsseldorf. This raises the question as to why cultural factors have such an influence in the Japanese case.

The Japanese ‘ethnoscape’, or ‘re-territorialising Nippon’ abroad Cultural ties and values of the home country are best sustained in an ethnic environment termed by Appadurai (1990) as an ‘ethnoscape’ that provides an appropriate framework for the continuation of the lifestyle of the home country under diaspora conditions. In his five-dimensional model of cultural global flows and their spatial and structural effects, Appadurai (1990) has proposed the ‘ethnoscape’ as a construct to understand the flows of ethnic migrants and their settlement abroad. He defines it as the ‘landscape of persons who constitute a shifting world in which we live’. According to Appadurai, the ‘ethnoscape’ results from the movement and mobility of people, and multinationals are important actors in the creation of ethnic formations in urban space. The model has been previously discussed as an analytical concept to explain overseas Japanese communities from an anthropological perspective by Befu and Stalker (1996). In expatriate migration, the internal labour markets of Japanese multinationals operate as the main transfer channels, but they also act as cultural links between the home country and the destination abroad during the period of temporary migration. They do this by sustaining the circular migration system and by supporting their employees during the process of relocation. At the destinations they exert a stabilising effect on the settlement process and the emerging Japanese ‘ethnoscape’ which develops around the business community. The ‘ethnoscape’ not only relates to the spatial and structural pattern of an ethnic community but is also constituted and sustained by group-internal social and cultural networks. To understand the ethnic settlement pattern as part of the ‘ethnoscape’ one has to investigate the internal networks of the diasporic business community (Cohen, 1997). The group-internal and spatial structure of the Japanese ‘ethnoscape’ in Düsseldorf is determined by a number of actors connected by different social and economic networks closely tied into the culture of the home country. As such, the Japanese expatriate business community appears as a kind of replica of Japanese society and culture in a diaspora situation. A very influential factor determining the social and spatial behaviour and interests of the Japanese is certainly the transient character of their stay. This means that life abroad is organised in many Japanese households with the perspective of

110

Günther Glebe

a return ‘home’ after a few years abroad. Hence, the migrants remain deeply rooted in the cultural and social context of their home county. As the ‘mobile elite’ of international corporations, they are not dependent on social and cultural integration. Their ties to the host society remain loose and may sometimes be reduced to cultural events institutionally staged to promote some level of interrelations. They also do not challenge the social system of the host society in the ways that other ethnic groups of labour migrant background are supposed to do. As a result of this non-conflictual relationship, Japanese migrants do not face discrimination from host society. Within this specific migratory context the Japanese expatriate community tends to live in a kind of self-imposed highly privileged exclusion in a ‘re-territorialised Nippon’ abroad. In destinations such as Düsseldorf, with the increase of Japanese multinational companies, a more or less self-contained community emerged with businesses and services covering daily life demands which allow migrants to live in a re-territorialised Japanese environment (Befu and Stalker, 1996), a Japanese cultural diaspora. In a similar way to processes in other major cities with a high influx of Japanese expatriates (Befu, 2001; Ben-Ari in Chapter 7; White in Chapter 5), the Japanese business community which has emerged in Düsseldorf over recent decades is by no means homogeneous but consists of different mobile groups linked together in complex internal relationships (Figure 6.5). Expatriate employees of multinational companies with their families constitute the core. With the growth of this expatriate community, Japanese businesses recognised the new market opportunities and supermarkets, bookshops, hairdressers, real estate agents, restaurants and karaoke bars emerged catering for the well-paid employees of the multinational companies and their families. Simultaneously, social, cultural and leisure-time infrastructure was established with a school, kindergartens, social club, chamber of commerce and Japanese golf club offering all the vital services for a diasporic ethnic society, and thus strengthening an exclusionary way of life. Also tied into the Japanese community are three smaller sub-groups of different origin and migratory intentions. The first consists of Japanese students, some of whom work part-time for Japanese companies: compared with London their number is very small in Düsseldorf. Second, there are the Japanese involved in international marriages, mostly women, many of whom have become members of the local Japanese business network as secretaries, tour-guides, translators or by starting their own businesses such as Kumon schools or working in self-employed capacities as real estate or relocating agents for Japanese clients. Over the last decade a third sub-group has emerged, as an offshoot of the transient expatriate community. Some former employees of Japanese multinationals who resigned from their companies have started their own businesses as consultants for Japanese and German companies, or by running their own import–export firms. With this transition the migration status of these ex-company movers has changed too, from transient to a more permanent stay. Compared with tendencies in London (White in Chapter 5) their number is nevertheless still very limited. It would be premature to interpret this development as an obvious trend towards a more permanent settlement of Japanese migrants in Düsseldorf, although responses in a survey

Japanese business community in Düsseldorf

Japanese multinational companies

Institutional Japanese service community

Japanese students

Japanese business community (employees of multinational enterprises)

Long term, permanent

Japanese married to Germans

Japanese service community (local commercial enterprises)

Non-corporate highly skilled Japanese migrants (cultural sector)

Highly skilled Japanese non-corporate businesses

Length of stay:

111

Short term

Japanese tourists

Draft: G. Glebe. Computer cartography: Cl.Dehling.

Figure 6.5 Model of the Japanese migrant community in Düsseldorf.

conducted by a local Japanese newspaper revealed that, given the opportunity, a significant number of Japanese would like to live in Germany for longer periods. There are two further sub-groups of totally different migratory origins which are only very weakly connected with the business-determined Japanese ethnoscape: international migrants of Japanese origin who work as musicians or singers in the opera or in orchestras, and the large number of Japanese tourists who visit the city each year and who will occasionally make use of the services offered by their compatriots living in the city. As a generalisation, it could be argued that the whole Japanese ethnoscape of the city is focused on two poles – the business community of the multinational companies and the local Japanese business and service community serving the former – interconnected by a complex set of networks. In addition, there are some satellite sub-communities that are only loosely tied into the core. Corporate influence and the complex community structure form two key elements driving the ethnoscape. Social networks and the pathways of group internal interaction within the ethnic boundaries constitute a third determinant. A variety of social networks have been transferred from the home country and are maintained whilst abroad: these significantly determine group-internal social communications and also function as informal information networks. The social

112

Günther Glebe

kenjinkai Religious groups Company-related groups dosokai

Of 250 respondents 88.7% were members of at least one informal group.

Others

0

10

20

30

40 (%)

50

60

70

Figure 6.6 Membership of informal groups. Source: Household Survey (1999).

networks into which most migrants are tied in their daily life and their occupational relations may be related to the region of origin in Japan, to the company, to the home university or to religious and other communities. Of the 250 respondents to the Japanese household survey, 88 per cent were members of at least one group, such as kenjinkai or dosokai (Figure 6.6). Membership of these communities not only creates opportunities to socialise and thus escape social isolation, but also provides many kinds of social and occupational advantages and connections. In offering support in every day life, these social networks diminish the pressure to adapt in a culturally alien environment. In arranging their life in a strange city and society it is Japanese women who are most affected, since many come to Germany speaking neither German nor English. The lack of German language ranked very high when they were questioned about the main difficulties of their stay in Germany. Not surprisingly, language also scored highest when asked about their fears before migration, followed by worries about the education of the children and anxiety concerning the cultural strangeness of their migration destination abroad (Figure 6.7). Although education of the children is an important factor, it seems less worrying than one might assume. Not only can they send their children to a Japanese school but, as Goodman (in Chapter 12) states, the perception of student returnees (kikokushijo) in Japan has changed over recent decades making it easier to readapt and accordingly less worrying for their parents. Differences in the ranking of worries between men and women (Figure 6.7) are a reflection of the different roles played while being abroad. Being tied into the company management and promotion system, job-related worries are more a concern of men. Men have more opportunities to socialise in daily life due to their jobs. Hence, making friends whilst on a foreign posting was considered much less a cause of anxiety than for women. Wives, who accompany their husbands abroad, even if they had a job in Japan, usually do not get a work permit and are forced

Japanese business community in Düsseldorf

Language difficulties Profile of job Different culture Education of children Food Making friends in Germany Housing

113

Men (n = 147)

Language difficulties Education of children Different culture Making friends in Germany Food Profile of job Housing

Women (n = 97) (Multiple response) 0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

(%)

Figure 6.7 Worries before migrating to Germany. Source: Household Survey (1999).

into traditional family roles. However, since they live within a Japanese ‘ethnoscape’, the members of the Japanese community can stay within the rules of behaviour they are familiar with (if they wish) and this enables them to reduce possible culture shock and adjustment problems. These survey results show that elite Japanese migrants are particularly worried about culture-related problems which prevent many of them, particularly women, from engaging with the host society they temporarily live in. The Japanese ethnoscape has a high level of segregated settlement and a community pattern with complex group-internal social networks that replicates in many ways the lifestyle of the home country. This allows many of the migrants a life of privileged exclusion. Life in the Japanese diaspora business community in Düsseldorf is controlled by a complex set of economic, social, cultural and spatial factors. The interrelationships between its main constructs can be projected in a simple fourdimensional model (Figure 6.8) with the Japanese multinational companies, communities, and social networks, and the local housing market acting as the determining and controlling forces. The three group-internal constructs create the Japanese ethnoscape and in combination with the external construct of the local housing market generate the segregated settlement pattern as its spatial dimension.

Conclusions In this chapter emphasis was placed on the interrelationships between community formation and the urban spatial organisation of a Japanese business diaspora

114

Günther Glebe Japanese multinational companies ‘Japanese ethnoscape’

Japanese group-internal social and economic networks

Japanese communities

Settlement pattern segregation

German local housing market

Figure 6.8 Constructs of the ‘Japanese ethnoscape’.

which has emerged as a result of post-war internationalisation and later globalisation of the Japanese economy. Evidence drawn from the spatial analysis of the Japanese housing pattern and segregation in Düsseldorf suggests that the high socio-economic status of the Japanese expatriate migrants who shape the core community, the social space of the city, and the housing market with its actors are most influential but not the only determining factors for the emergence and persistence of the highly-segregated residential pattern of the Japanese expatriate community. With regard to their socio-economic profiles and their social acceptance by the host society, the high-segregation level of the Japanese community in Düsseldorf cannot be fully explained by classical approaches to segregation as the spatial outcome of external discrimination practices or structural constraints in the housing market. In the case of the Japanese, high segregation is not the negatively viewed outcome of the oppression or marginalisation of an ethnic group but an accepted phenomenon of cultural diversity in the city. It has been argued that both ethnicity and culture must be accounted for as important additional factors controlling the settlement process of ethnically distinctive migrant groups. Appadurai’s concept of the ‘ethnoscape’, which incorporates both notions, seems to be a useful line to be followed in understanding the complex forces determining the settlement pattern and behaviour of Japanese migrants in Düsseldorf. In this context, social and cultural ties based on shared interests, values and expectations, and the tendency among Japanese migrants to foster these in

Japanese business community in Düsseldorf

115

maintaining intensive group-internal relations, must be interpreted as a means to meet the challenges of a culturally strange environment. To live in a ‘re-territorialised’ environment of the ‘ethnoscape’ abroad will also ease the adjustment process when returning home after a number of years. Generally speaking, the Japanese ‘ethnoscape’ as discussed in the Düsseldorf case refers to more than a specific highly segregated settlement pattern and its infrastructural features. It constitutes an ethnic space interlinked by complex social networks of shared interests, perceptions and images of the transient Japanese migrant community which has a strengthening and stabilising effect on the segregation process.

References Appadurai, A. (1990). ‘Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy’. Theory, Culture and Society 7: 295–310. Befu, H. (2001). ‘The Global Context of Japan Outside Japan’, pp. 3–22 in Befu, H. and S. Guichard-Anguis (eds), Globalizing Japan. London and New York: Routledge. Befu, H. and Stalker, N. (1996). ‘Globalization of Japan: Cosmopolitanization or Spread of the Japanese Village?’, pp. 101–20 in Befu, H. (ed.), Japan Engaging the World: A Century of International Encounter. Japan Studies. No. 1. Teikyo Loretto Heights University: Center for Japan Studies. Ben-Ari, E. (2000). ‘Global Talk?’ Discourse and Cognition among Japanese Business Managers in Singapore’, pp. 37– 62 in Ben-Ari, E. and Clammer, J. (eds), Japan in Singapore: Cultural Presences. Richmond, Surrey: Curzon Press. Cohen, R. (1997). Global Diasporas. London: UCL Press. Freund, B. (1998). ‘Frankfurt am Main und der Frankfurter Raum als Ziel qualifizierter Migranten’ (Frankfurt am Main and the Frankfurt Region as Destination of Skilled Migrants). Zeitschrift für Wirtschaftsgeographie 42: 57–81. Glebe, G. (1986). ‘Segregation and Intra-Urban Mobility of a High-Status Ethnic Group: the Case of the Japanese in Düsseldorf’. Ethnic and Racial Studies 9: 461–83. Glebe, G. (1998). ‘Struktur und Segregation Statushoher Qalifizierter Migranten in Deutschen Großstädten’ (Structure and Segregation of High Status Skilled Migrants in German Cities), pp. 17–32 in Kemper, F.-J. and Gans, P. (eds), Ethnische Minoritäten in Europa und Amerika (Ethnic Minorities in Europe and America). Berliner Geographische Arbeiten, 86. Peach, C. (1998). ‘South Asian and Caribbean Ethnic Minority Housing Choice in Britain’. Urban Studies. 35: 1657–80. Sassen, S. (1991). The Global City: New York, London, Tokyo. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Sassen, S. (1994). Cities in the World Economy. Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press. Watanabe, S. (1993). ‘Growth and Structural Changes of Japanese Overseas Direct Investment: Implications for Labour and Management in Host Economies’, pp. 125–58 in Bailey, P. et al. (eds), Multinationals and Employment. Geneva: International Labour Office. White, P. (1988). ‘Skilled International Migrants and Urban Structure in Western Europe’. Geoforum 19: 411–22. White, P. (1998). ‘The Settlement Patterns of Developed World Migrants in London’. Urban Studies 35: 1725–44.

7

The Japanese in Singapore The dynamics of an expatriate community Eyal Ben-Ari

Introduction This chapter examines the characteristics and dynamics of the Japanese expatriate community in Singapore. The background to this analysis involves the expansion of Japanese enterprises into countries around the world in general, and into Asia in particular (Hatch and Yamamura, 1996). Kotkin (1993) estimated that there are over 600,000 Japanese expatriates around the world at any one time. Unlike tourists, these people reside in their ‘host’ countries for periods ranging between 2 and 5 years, and are overwhelmingly businessmen and their families. As a consequence of this trend, an overseas assignment is slowly becoming a mandatory step for advancement into senior posts in many Japanese companies. Partly as a reaction to this situation, recent decades have been marked by the publication of studies of families of executives who have returned to Japan and investigations of returnee schoolchildren (Kobayashi, 1978; White, 1988; Goodman, 1991). These studies further our understanding of the problems that people face upon coming back to Japan. However, as yet, apart from journalistic observations (Kotkin, 1993; Yanagihara, 1994) and some limited scholarly work (Inamura, 1982; Hamada, 1992; Befu and Stalker, 1996; Hurdley and White, 1999a,b; Sakai, 2000), relatively little has been published in English with regard to Japanese expatriate communities abroad. The present inquiry aims to fill this paucity through providing an ethnographically based delineation of the main features of the Japanese expatriate community in Singapore. Where possible, it makes use of previously published essays as well as cross-referring to the other chapters in this volume to place the analysis in a comparative perspective. The contention is that in order to understand the dynamics and features of this community, four main elements must be taken into account: the economic engine of globalisation and the place of Japan and Singapore in the world economy; the importance of secondment to Singapore in terms of individuals’ life courses (career-building and family development); the formation of an ‘environmental bubble’ around the Japanese expatriate community; and the particular elements of Japanese culture as they are expressed in people’s understandings of their life abroad.

Japanese in Singapore

117

Situating the community: Singapore and the world economy Singapore was chosen for this study because it presented itself as a suitable venue for examining the social and cultural implications of the ‘globalisation’ of Japanese business. Between June 1992 and February 1994, I carried out my study, primarily through interviews and participant observation (Ben-Ari 1998b, 2000b). Of my ninety-three interviewees, sixty people (overwhelmingly men) were related to business. Reflecting the general patterns of the Japanese presence in Singapore, almost all of these sixty people were white-collar managers and executives who had been posted to the country for a period of between 3 and 5 year at the end of which they would return to Japan. I spent a further 6 months in Singapore between July 2001 and January 2002, during which time I had a further chance to observe the community and talk to many of its members. A Japanese expatriate community has been in existence in Singapore since the end of the nineteenth century. The post-war community, however, has developed primarily since the 1970s. Spurred by strong government support, Singapore has during the last three decades become a hub of business headquarters and manufacturing facilities for all of the ASEAN, Southeast Asian and, in many cases, South Asian countries. While the large-scale movement of Japanese business interests outside Japan began in the late 1960s, the shift to Southeast Asia began in the early 1970s. At its beginning, this movement mostly comprised production and servicing facilities, but in the last decade and a half it has increasingly come to include banking and financial services. This pattern, it should be stated, stands in direct contrast to London where the community developed out of members of financial services companies who were later joined by engineers and managers in manufacturing firms (Hurdley and White, 1999a: 101–2). Concurrently, like other areas around the world, while the large firms carried out the first moves into Southeast Asia, in recent years small- and medium-sized companies came in their wake. In this context, Singapore stands at the forefront of Japan’s move into Southeast and South Asia. A plethora of Japanese production facilities, headquarters, and sales and financial centres is now located in this small country, and by some estimates as much as a quarter of Singapore’s GDP is generated by Japanese companies (Choy and Yeo, 1990; Cronin, 1992). With the onset of the economic slowdown in Japan some representatives of the smaller companies have left Singapore and some of the large companies have slowly reduced their activities. Nevertheless there is still a very sizeable Japanese community in the island. Numbering over 20,000 people, it is the second largest community after that of Americans. The Japanese expatriate community is overwhelmingly comprised of men who manage various firms and companies, accompanied by their families. In this respect, the community offers a contrast to London (White, Chapter 5) and Los Angeles (Machimura (1997) and Chapter 9) and is more similar to Düsseldorf (Glebe, Chapter 6) in that it is relatively homogeneous. These managers have high educational achievements and are on what is called the ‘managerial track’ in

118

Eyal Ben-Ari

Japanese companies. Moreover, given the patterns of secondment to overseas posts in Japanese companies, most of these men are in their late thirties or early forties. While a small minority of the men are ‘straw widowers’ (tanshin funin) who have left their families in Japan, the great bulk of the businessmen come to Singapore with their families. The composition of the community in Singapore is the outcome of formal and informal policies in Japanese companies and the policies of the Singaporean government. First, most companies continue to recruit males to managerial track jobs. Second, these companies often (informally) encourage these men to marry early in their careers as a sign of maturity and responsibility. Third, for many executives and engineers a posting abroad is becoming a common part of careerbuilding in management or engineering. Fourth, a placement overseas does not occur at the point of entry, but usually happens after a few years in the company. Consequently, these patterns imply that it is married male employees (usually in mid-career) and their families who are sent overseas. In a related manner, it is still believed in many Japanese companies that wives are there to support the husband and to bring up the children. Thus even if wives worked in Japan, as expatriates they tend to evince conservative – or, more correctly, neo-conservative – patterns of behaviour. Many of these women retreat from the labour force and take up their ‘traditional’ role as supporters of men and as nurturers of children. Finally, this pattern is related to the very strict migration policies of the government in Singapore which make it very difficult for other types of migrants to find work in the city-state (Hui, 1992). This situation implies that despite self-labelling as such, the Japanese community in Singapore is not a homogeneous ‘little Japan’ in terms of its demographic and social make-up.

The life-course approach In order to add a dynamic aspect to this rather static description, the community is here placed for the purposes of analysis in the framework of a life-course approach (Sugerman, 1986). The life-course perspective allows us to link history, organisation and individual action through theoretical constructs. In terms of an individual’s life course, overseas assignments are intersections of a number of long-term processes: career-building at the workplace, the exigencies of family cycles, organisational expansion and contraction, and wider historical trends. Two dimensions (and the tension between them) are crucial for understanding the behaviour of Japanese individuals: career-building and the cultivation of social relations with family and friends (Plath, 1983). Each of these two centres of activity is ordered by its own rhythm of long-term conduct: work and home each involve different, and often contradictory, career timetables. From an organisational point of view, the essence of a career is that it is a predictable sequence of movements – a relay of roles set up to normalise the potentially turbulent flow of persons through the organisation. But from an individual’s point of view, careers are uncertain and unpredictable. Given the numerical limits on promotion, only some people will be able to advance up the

Japanese in Singapore

119

organisational hierarchy. This contention stands in contradiction to many portrayals of contemporary Japanese organisations. While it has by now become a commonplace notion that in the much vaunted life-time employment system (applicable to men in large corporations) one can find job security, what is much less appreciated are the uncertainties over promotion that mark this system. In the literature on organisations in Japan, there is a recurring tendency to assume that the security offered by ‘permanent employment’ also means a career of increasing responsibility and authority as employees move through their years of association with an organisation. But, in effect, middle-level positions are often limited in number and a series of job moves may be undertaken without advancement. The result of this situation in which workplace advancement is a rather indeterminate matter, is that individuals must constantly and actively undertake strategies and investments to assure promotion in Japanese corporations. The career path in such companies is accomplished through a more or less regular pattern of rotation within company headquarters, and between headquarters and branch offices or facilities. Rotation may take place sideways to more or less equivalent positions, or upwards to more important posts. Organisations, according to this view, are comprised of individuals who constantly manoeuvre and jostle for promotion to an ever-decreasing number of senior executive posts. In the competition for intra-organisational advancement, individuals must actively undertake a variety of strategies aimed at succeeding in business dealings and cultivating support networks (comprising an individual’s seniors, juniors and counterparts). Along these lines, each new assignment within the general patterns of rotation presents both potentials and hazards for the individual’s career prospects.

Career-building in Singapore With the expansion of a firm’s business interests beyond the borders of Japan, and with the establishment of offices and production facilities abroad, an assignment overseas corresponds to the patterns of rotation within the company. But such an assignment is also a sort of promotion, because companies situated outside Japan are like ‘daughter companies’ (kogaisha, although their exact legal definition may vary). People who were (to give two examples) department heads (ka-cho) in Japan become division heads (bu-cho) overseas, and section heads (kakari-cho) become department heads. This point was put to me rather picturesquely by the engineering advisor of Kitamura (a small company producing plating for semiconductors) who said, ‘While in Japan I was just an engineer in charge of a small area, here I am like the head of a factory’. Hence in comparison with postings to new positions in Japan, the stint abroad presents opportunities to handle greater responsibilities and more important tasks. In this context, however, it is important to note something that was not a takenfor-granted matter in most Japanese firms until a few years ago: a tour of service out of Japan has by now become a normal part of most managerial careers. Such a posting used to be part of ‘normal’ career development only in the general trading companies (sogo shosha) and in other internationally oriented businesses

120

Eyal Ben-Ari

such as shipping or airlines. But now it is increasingly becoming a pre-requisite for individual advancement in very many companies. For example, according to a manager in the Bank of Tokyo, about 50 or 60 per cent of the firm’s managerial corps had been abroad; the manager of the treasury and personnel department at Sumitomo estimated that about 20 per cent of the general trading company’s staff are, at one time, abroad; the deputy general manager at Nissho Iwai observed that it was now typical for about half of all of the company’s managers to be abroad at any one time; and a vice-president of Nomura Securities observed that while the major part of the company’s business is still focused on Japan itself, a sizeable minority of executives are developing careers by specialising in overseas investments and transactions. It is useful to chart out the place of an overseas assignment for these people. The fundamental conception is one of Japan as a centre and the various outposts and stations abroad as peripheries. According to this logic, expatriates are sent from (and later return to) the centre in order to provide organisational and technological knowledge, while people from the periphery usually stay in their place and are sometimes sent to the centre to learn and to enrich themselves. The centre holds economic and technological power, as well as the authority to bestow or withhold recognition: in both senses it is ‘the’ place where things happen. One illustration lies in the words of a manager at a Japanese city bank who boasted of the fact that apart from Singapore the only other places where they have a data processing centre connected to Japan are London and New York. In this way, of course, he both evoked the image of a network of communication and information centred on Japan, and portrayed the relative importance of different peripheries. All firms have a reference group. Underlying the view of Japan as the centre is a widespread notion that competitors are primarily (but not exclusively) other Japanese companies. The implication of this view is that ‘getting ahead’ is overwhelmingly a matter of getting ahead of other Japanese companies. The deputy general manager of Komatsu (which is the second largest heavy machinery manufacturer in the world after Caterpillar) conceded the competition with the Americans, but quickly related it to the Japanese context: Our business is to fight with Caterpillar, they are our big competitor; but also we compete with Hitachi and Kobleco. It depends on what sort of machine we are talking about. For a Seiko executive, the adversaries are Citizen and Casio and ‘yes well, also the Swiss watch makers’. The marketing manager at Kinokuniya Bookstores noted that his company is among (and therefore competes with) the ‘high-class’ book companies of Japan. Yet the terms ‘centre’ and ‘periphery’ may be too static to exemplify the dynamic aspect of the Japanese presence in Singapore. The picture is one in which the ebbs and flows of their company’s business meet the currents (and sometimes torrents) of other enterprises in various locations where competition

Japanese in Singapore

121

for markets, goods and sources takes place. For example, the perception of Southeast Asia’s economic strengths and weaknesses (as evinced, for example, in the crisis of the late 1990s) figures in the primacy attributed to the region in global terms. But the more fundamental point is that for Japanese corporate movers, the map of the world is arranged according to how the firm’s business activities and possibilities bear upon an individual’s prospects for promotion. Overseas postings present opportunities and dangers for promotion in the firm. Three major themes appear in discussions about the potentials and hazards of the stint abroad. Not surprisingly, all three directly bear upon the issue of future promotion: the skills that one garners abroad, possibilities for developing business deals, and the networks of people one cultivates. All the people interviewed, including men from banks or general trading companies who had been abroad a number of times, emphasised that a tour of duty in a foreign country was an opportunity to learn new skills and abilities. A manager from Kyodo Printing put this most succinctly when he said that his period in Singapore should be seen as part of ‘a life-long learning process in the organisation: we must study till we die’. Others talked either about the knowledge gathered about the specific place where they undertook their post (the local or regional markets and legal environments) or more general capacities such as sales and marketing skills, management of large and ethnically diverse numbers of employees, or the knowledge of English. The deputy general manager of Komatsu, who was an engineer by training, talked in very positive terms about how he had to learn such things as financial control, marketing and sales and the administrative side of his company. While these points are seen as advantageous, they are also seen as potentially dangerous: the skills and knowledge garnered abroad may come at the cost of enhancing capacities and experience relevant to functioning within Japan and, in this way, hinder one’s prospects for eventual advancement. Thus the deputy director at a large Asahi Glass factory confided that while he may learn about Singapore’s legal and business environment, he was not sure that this would be of ‘good benefit’ upon his return to Japan, and that he would have to ‘catch up’ with his colleagues who had stayed there. But the main danger of staying abroad, which came up time and again throughout the interviews, was related to a sense of disconnection, or lack of contact, with networks of personal supporters in Japan. Thus, for example, a manager at an equipment company said that ‘you may feel out of place after a few years, and then you can end up being sent to the edge of Japan, like Hokkaido’. Many others talked about their careers depending on Tokyo and the need constantly to monitor their relations and contacts with important people at ‘head office’. Indeed, all these men talked about how they will be perceived back in Tokyo.

Business and cultural mediation Another aspect of the stint abroad in Singapore is related to ideas derived from the Nihonjinron approach (Manabe, 1992; Manabe and Befu, 1992; Yoshino, 1992).

122

Eyal Ben-Ari

This concept is used by individuals primarily to describe cross-cultural contacts within the (overseas) workplace and secondarily to reason about the long-term organisational implications of living outside Japan. Three elements related to intercultural encounters appear here: a subtle but strong differentiation between the Japanese parts of the company and other parts; the unique quality of Japanese verbal and non-verbal communication; and the need for cultural mediators to bridge the gap between the two ‘cultural’ parts of the organisation. While there are a variety of formal and legal discriminations between head office and branches, or main and daughter companies, the most important is the informal differentiation between the Japanese and other parts of a company. This differentiation is grounded in an invisible but nevertheless highly significant boundary around what could be termed the ‘actual’ company. To put this point in another way, formal relations within an organisation’s offices are not necessarily the most meaningful ones. Rather, for Japanese expatriates the ‘real’ – in the sense of both personally relevant and culturally shared – organisation is the one in which Japanese people participate. While this view is consonant with the emphasis on career-building and the centrality of Tokyo (or the head office), its locus is elsewhere: on the special understandings and connections that only Japanese people are said to have. Japanese culture, according to this view, is so unique and special that only certain people can participate in it. To be sure, this culture is not exclusionary in a hermetic sense. A few foreigners can and do crossover into the ‘real’ part of the company, but they do so only if they master the Japanese modes of communication. This mastery, however, is problematic because of the technical difficulties of the written and spoken language, and the related intricacies of non-verbal perceptions. One central role of Japanese business people within these relations is to be cultural mediators – a very widespread self-conception among expatriates. Such a notion was often phrased in humorous terms as, for example, when I was told that the primary function of Japanese managers was to translate documents or telephone messages for the local staff. The general manager of Sumitomo Bank stated: It’s a bit different now: most of the circulars from the head office now come in English. But a good deal of the work of the Japanese here is still related to translation. For example, all of the material that arrives from the general managers’ meetings is in Japanese and I have to translate it into English. More significant aspects entail teaching Japanese customs and manners to local employees. A manager at a servicing facility for a large manufacturer told me about how uncomfortable he and his colleagues feel when called by their name without the addition of ‘-san’. He went on to talk of how the staff have to teach each newly recruited local employee to add ‘-san’ to Japanese people’s names. Almost all interviewees indicated that part of their duties in Singapore was to accompany guests from Japan around the island, not only to act as translators in the strict sense of aiding the visitors in terms of language, but more generally in explaining and negotiating different cultural expectations. Moreover, there

Japanese in Singapore

123

seems to be an underlying expectation or assumption on the part of the Japanese, that the local people should understand them perfectly without having to use explicit verbal communication. Indeed, local people often complained of not knowing what the expatriates are thinking or expecting of them. Other issues involve the distinct and ‘classic’ qualities of purported Japanese corporate culture, such as group responsibility. The regional general manager of the Japan Travel Bureau office argued that, unlike the Japanese, local Chinese people had trouble working in groups. According to an interviewee working in a financial service company: In Singapore I feel that there is more hierarchy: like between people who have finished their A levels and O levels … And this leads to people building up a wall around themselves and not [being] willing to take responsibility for anything outside their area: very different from the Japanese. An engineer from Seiko talked about group orientation: As you know, the Japanese like working in groups and here they are relatively individualists. You have to change their way of thinking and to teach them how to work in groups like in the new production system we brought here about three years ago. Finally, while the marketing manager of Kinokuniya Bookstores noted that Singaporeans lack ‘co-operativeness’ (kyocho), the managing director of NYK Shipping Lines observed that they lack ‘loyalty’. Consistent with this view is a perceived danger that may accompany cultural mediation, and one that was raised time and again in the interviews. The risk is one of losing one’s Japanese essence – to appear to have ‘gone native’, or to be seen as too localised. There is a very strong and widespread conception among the expatriates that they must maintain the appearance – the demeanour, language and attire – of being Japanese. To give but one example, a high-level executive in one of the securities firms noted that he dressed differently when meeting Singaporeans and when meeting other Japanese: When I meet Japanese guests I always wear a suit. If I don’t I will feel awkward, very uneasy. Maybe they will think that I am too localised, too relaxed. So in order that they don’t get that impression I dress this way. These are far from unimportant issues, as discussed in White’s (1988) study. The problem is important because international business is seen to pose certain threats to one’s ‘Japanese-ness’. The danger has less to do with the actual character of the company as an actor in the international arena as such, as with the possible influences on individuals of exposure to other cultures. The director of Sumitomo Bank mentioned that: [When] I returned to Japan after a good few years abroad they thought that I needed to be rehabilitated and they gave me work in internal auditing and then running one of the Tokyo branches of the bank.

124 Eyal Ben-Ari And the director of Uchida Yoko mused good-naturedly: Last year I returned to Japan for re-education: part of the re-education that they carry out for people who return from abroad. There was this guy there in the personnel department who said that there are people overseas that become maybe a little too much independent, more than in Japan. And maybe their way of thinking is different from normal people that work in the main office in Japan. Thus the model concept here is that of a unique and somehow ‘clean’ society that must be protected from external influences. Here again, however, this basic model is personalised: it is related to the life course, and to the standards by which individuals and their significant others appraise themselves. In this model Japanese business expatriates mediate two boundaries: the (national) cultural and the organisational.

Families – a balancing act Within, and intersecting, the dynamics of career-building at the company as outlined so far in this chapter are another set of considerations which centre on conceptions of family development. For the men interviewed, competition within the company must be balanced against what they perceive as the needs (and potentials) of their families. In effect, this means three aspects of the family cycle: the educational achievements of children, the duty of caring for aged parents, and the role of women as ‘wives’. With regard to education, the governing concept is that to assure the success of children implies a long-term investment within Japan. The idea in most families – and these are white-collar families, it should be remembered – is that if the children do not receive a Japanese education then it may be ‘too late’ in terms of losing out in Japan’s very competitive educational system (Yoneyama, 1999). It is thus not surprising to learn about the pervasiveness of Japanese educational institutions in Singapore: a kindergarten serving nearly 400 children, two primary schools together enrolling about 1,900, a junior-high school serving about 700 children and a high school catering for about 500. All these establishments teach in Japanese, and are run according to curricula determined by the Japanese Ministry of Education. In addition, there are at least twelve juku (supplementary afternoon schools preparing children for university examinations in Japan) dotted around the city. All these educational establishments are situated near ‘Japanese’ neighbourhoods with virtually all their students being Japanese. The teachers and almost of all the administrative staff are also Japanese nationals. Even the small minority of families who have chosen to send their children to international schools almost always have them attend the supplementary Japanese language classes held at the Japanese Association at weekends. The important point here, of course, is that given the rather homogeneous white-collar make-up of the community in Singapore, the stress on educational achievements characterises most families. It is interesting to note that

Japanese in Singapore

125

English-language teaching is confined to only one or two more weekly hours than found in Japan. Perhaps more importantly, by setting up Japanese schools in major centres of business around the world the Japanese Ministry of Education in effect contributes to the isolation of Japanese children from the society to which their parents (overwhelmingly fathers) have been posted. The next dimension related to the life course of many members of the community is related to the duty of caring for aging parents. This issue is associated with the demographic make-up of the community with most of its members in their forties or fifties. The implications of this situation were encountered many times during fieldwork. The director of Tomen Corporation became a ‘straw widower’ because his wife had to stay in Japan to take care of his aging parents. Another manager’s wife was scheduled to return to Japan to care for her father and mother since her only sister’s husband had been seconded to the United States. This pattern of intergenerational caring for the elderly is the generally preferred mode in Japan (Thang, 2000). What the case of the community in Singapore underlines is how this pattern influences the dynamics of career-building among expatriates. For a small minority of families, the wife’s career in Japan is seen to be important and the man lives on his own in Singapore with families uniting every few months. For many women, however, the stint in Singapore represents a break in their individual careers since they find very few opportunities to work on the island. According to Singapore government policy and the policies of some Japanese companies, wives are seen as being in Singapore to support their husbands. While for many wives in Singapore the experience abroad represents a unique period of freedom from the various social pressures (of relatives and neighbours) found in Japan, the move to the island nevertheless represents a swing towards more conservative familial patterns.

An environmental bubble Cohen (1977) has suggested that expatriates all over the world create their own ‘enclaves’ that shelter them from the environment of the host society. He calls these enclaves ‘environmental bubbles’ which encompass typical expatriates who tend to be reluctant to expose themselves to the host surroundings. Physically the ‘bubbles’ are manifested in areas into which expatriates retreat to live in close proximity, and within which they feel safe and comfortable. Socially, while they may interact with local people at work, the social networks and leisure activities of these people are usually monopolised by fellow expatriates (Ben-Ari, 1998a; 2000a). In addition, they frequently patronise services, organisations and facilities that cater solely or primarily to their needs. This exclusiveness is reinforced by the presence of expatriate associations, clubs and schools. The encapsulation of expatriates within their ‘bubbles’ is to a large extent due to their transience in the host country, their relatively privileged circumstances (e.g. receiving such benefits as large salaries, housing and educational allowances), and their hesitation to enter the native society.

126

Eyal Ben-Ari

Cohen’s generalisations well characterise the Japanese presence in Singapore. As anticipated in Cohen’s model, Japanese expatriate families tend to congregate in three or four particular residential areas around the island. A housewife noted: Here it’s unlike America where you have all sorts of Japanese people in different areas. Here the Japanese tend to concentrate more … We live in West Peak near Clementi and in our building there are about 60 per cent Japanese. I guess that it’s because it’s so close to the Japanese kindergarten and the schools … My husband found this place through a real-estate agent where the people all spoke Japanese. Certainly, the relative affluence of the expatriates means that they live in the more well-to-do areas of Singapore (usually in upper-middle-class precincts). But this pattern of residential segregation is the outcome of a number of factors beyond the sheer economic strength of community members. First, government policy in Singapore tightly controls the housing market. This situation implies that expatriates arriving in the city-state are channelled in the direction of rather specific areas and housing types. Second, the long-term relations between Japanese companies and real estate agents (many of whom have branches around the world and are known both in Japan and abroad) implies that the latter have much power in directing incoming managers and their families in the search for residences. This pattern is intensified by the fact that as in London (White, Chapter 5), because apartments are usually rented and not owned, real estate agents continue to be of importance. Third, proximity to the Japanese educational establishments or to the network of routes of school buses further contributes to the reproduction of the system. As in Düsseldorf, the prime target of Japanese migration to Germany, so the Japanese in Singapore tend to be the most segregated high-skilled foreign group in the city (Glebe, 1986; and in Chapter 6). In addition to the range of educational establishments mentioned, the existence of a large Japanese expatriate community has spawned an extensive range of other services: supermarkets and speciality shops, restaurants and cafés, clothing stores and boutiques, bookshops and hobby stores, real estate and travel agents, and shipping representatives. In addition, three or four locally printed or produced Japanese-language newspapers cater to their needs and tastes. In ways that are similar to the situations in London (White, Chapter 5) and Los Angeles (Machimura, Chapter 9), many local Singaporean firms have responded to local Japanese presences by offering Japanese product lines (especially in supermarkets and speciality shops). Finally, for many people, the Japanese Association (the chief expatriate club on the island) is the hub of activities. The buildings of the Association include meeting and reception halls, study rooms, a karaoke lounge, two restaurants, a library (for books and videos), and a clinic. Its activities include such things as English and Mandarin language lessons, Ikebana circles and traditional Japanese poetry recitations, lectures and lessons on contemporary issues, and Japanese festivals and golf tournaments. The consumption patterns of the expatriate families evince similar traits centred on reproducing a peculiarly Japanese ambience in Singapore. Many families

Japanese in Singapore

127

bring futon with them, and most have Japanese foodstuffs sent to them despite the fact that they can be bought on the island. Research carried out both in the early 1990s and in 2001 found that many families prefer cooking Japanese-style food at home and only occasionally go out for ‘exotic’ local cuisines in one of Singapore’s thousands of restaurants. Leisure activities – overwhelmingly carried out with other Japanese nationals – become much more important outside Japan since the expatriate families have more free time and money than they have in Japan. These leisure pursuits include golf, tennis, swimming, Mandarin and English classes, and cooking (local cuisine), very often run by Japanese. The following is a typical observation by the representative of NHK in Singapore, referring to his golfing pursuits: Here I can play once or twice a week whereas in Japan I simply could not afford it. And anyway if I didn’t play here in Singapore then things would be very boring here … I play in a Japanese owned club, Hoshigaoka [located in Malaysia just across the causeway]. More than half the members are Japanese. When I’m in the club I hear Japanese all of the time; and the Japanese restaurant, the clubhouse, the layout of the course and even the grass which are imported into Malaysia all are very Japanese. Many Japanese individuals in Singapore live in a world populated by other Japanese. As with Düsseldorf’s community centred around multi-national companies (Glebe, Chapter 6), so in Singapore the many networks and associations to which the Japanese belong allow for a rich social life that does not reach out much beyond other Japanese nationals. When placed in a comparative perspective, one may well ask whether the foreseeable future portends a change in these patterns of segregation. White (Chapter 6; Hurdley and White, 1999b), for example, suggests that with the growth of a population of long-term Japanese residents in London, there is a fragmentation of what has been described here as the ‘environmental bubble’ of expatriate Japanese. Today, Japanese nationals in London are much more integrated into the wider city and its cosmopolitan nature than in the past. In Los Angeles the fragmentation of the pattern of a single community has gone much further and today there are (in effect) two Japanese communities: an élite transient community of expatriates, and the older second, third and now fourth generation group of permanent immigrants who came to California out of poverty before the Second World War (Machimura, 1997; and in Chapter 9). These cases seem to suggest that over time the rather homogeneous community that was set up at the beginning of a wave of migration tends to break up. In present-day Singapore, however, apart from some scattered and statistically insignificant numbers, the expatriate community does not seem to follow the pattern found elsewhere. The key factor here seems to be the continued governmental control of migration to Singapore: in essence the company-led migration model will continue in the near future. A good comparative case in this respect is Hong Kong (Sakai, Chapter 8), where there is less government control of migration do that many more single people have moved in such that the expatriate community is much less homogeneous.

128

Eyal Ben-Ari

Questions of identity As a conclusion to this consideration of the Japanese in Singapore, it is useful to broaden the discussion to offer a few words with regard to Japanese identity. Expatriates (organisation men and women) who are posted abroad for a number of years are the people who are in constant contact with members of other cultures and who most acutely face the personal issues of accounting for and understanding globalisation. These people are not Japanese ‘captains of industry’ nor the Japanese ‘international statesmen’ who are seasoned veterans of media interviews and who regularly deal with such issues as Japan’s economic woes or the felt need to increase its political and security presence in Asia and around the world. Rather these are the often rather unexceptional people who work overseas and who carry out debates about the global-human situation (although they may not use this kind of term) on a daily basis. It is also these people who carry their experiences of contact (or its lack) back to their home country. For them the social circumstances within which the larger debates about globality take place are related to and refracted through their personal life courses. Moreover, the extension of expatriate service (in organisations) to larger numbers of people is itself making the problems of accounting for globalisation much more intense. To follow Kong (1999a: 218, 1999b), it is these people who face the dynamic, contingent and contested nature of identity in their everyday lives. When referring to ‘globalisation’, many Japanese ordinarily use the term kokusaika, which strictly speaking means ‘internationalisation’. This connotation is not a simple matter of incorrect or sloppy translation. For in underlining the relations between nations, kokusaika clearly predicates the power of the nationstate as an entity with clear social and cultural boundaries. Accordingly, when Japanese expatriate managers in Singapore deliberate issues related to the ‘internationalisation’ of Japan, they assume that the relevant ‘culture’ and its derivatives (such as personal or organisational identities) is Japanese national culture. This assumption is based on an unproblematic notion of the distinctiveness of societies, nations and cultures. Indeed, in Japan, as in some other societies, this ‘fact’ is so taken for granted that each country is seen to embody its own distinctive culture and society. Thus the Japanese men interviewed in this study hold the very common view that the terms ‘society’ and ‘culture’ are routinely simply appended to the names of nation-states, as when a tourist visits India to understand ‘Indian culture’ and ‘Indian society’. What I contend is that the unintended consequence of a stint in Singapore is that the Japanese expatriates discover their ‘Japanese-ness.’ Experiences at the workplace, in educational establishments and in leisure pursuits in Singapore seem to lead to very little ‘internationalisation’ – neither in the sense of creating and maintaining contact with locals or other expatriate foreigners, nor in the sense of a greater awareness of the cultures of others. Thus going overseas is not so much a process of ‘going international’ as of ‘going national’. During their period of service in Singapore, expatriates tend both to create and maintain ties with Japanese from other geographical areas and workplaces in Japan, and to be much

Japanese in Singapore

129

more aware of their national identity and the cultural assumptions that they share. For the Japanese business expatriates studied here, there is no substantial de-territorialisation of identity as their experience does not seriously challenge the mainstream Japanese claim to make Japanese-ness a defining focus of allegiance. ‘Japan’ and a sense of being Japanese are constantly created and recreated through the minute, everyday activities of expatriate families who must make sense of, and act upon, the reality within which they live.

References Befu, H. and Stalker, N. (1996). ‘Globalization of Japan: Cosmopolitanization or Spread of the Japanese Village?’, pp. 101–120 in Befu, H. (ed.), Japan Engaging the World: A Century of International Encounter. Japan Studies No. 1. Teikyo Loretto Heights University: Center for Japanese Studies. Ben-Ari, E. (1998a). ‘Golf, Organization, and “Body Projects”: Japanese Business Expatriates in Singapore’, pp. 139–61 in Linhart, S. and Fruehstueck, S. (eds), The Culture of Japan as Seen Through its Leisure. Albany: State University of New York Press. Ben-Ari, E. (1998b). ‘Globalization, “Folk Models” of the World Order and National Identity: Japanese Business Expatriates in Singapore’, pp. 51–77 in Reader, I. and Soderberg, M. (eds), Japan in Asia. London: Curzon Press. Ben-Ari, E. (2000a). ‘ “Not-Precisely-Work”: Golf, Entertainment and Imbibement among Japanese Business Executives in Singapore’, pp. 150–74 in Clammer, J. and Ben-Ari, E. (eds), Japan in Singapore: Cultural Presences. Richmond, Surrey: Curzon Press. Ben-Ari, E. (2000b). ‘ “Global Talk?” Discourse and Cognition among Japanese Business Managers in Singapore’, pp. 37–62 in Clammer, J. and Ben-Ari, E. (eds), Japan in Singapore: Cultural Presences. Richmond, Surrey: Curzon Press. Choy Chong Li and Yeo, C. (1990). ‘Multinational Business and Singapore Society’, pp. 102–06 in Chong Li Choy et al. (eds), Business, Society and Development in Singapore. Singapore: Times Academic Press. Cohen, E. (1977). ‘Expatriate Communities’. Current Sociology 24(3): 5–133. Cronin, R.P. (1992). Japan, The United States and Prospects for the Asia-Pacific Century. Singapore: Institute of Souteast Asian Studies. Glebe, G. (1986). ‘Segregation and Intra-Urban Mobility of a High-Status Ethnic Group: The Case of the Japanese in Düsseldorf’. Ethnic and Racial Studies 9: 461–83. Goodman, R. (1991). Japan’s International Youth: The Emergence of a New Class of Schoolchildren. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Hamada, T. (1992). ‘Under the Silk Banner: the Japanese Company and its Overseas Managers’, pp. 135–64 in Lebra, T.S. (ed.), Japanese Social Organization. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Hatch, W. and Yamamura, K. (1996). Asia in Japan’s Embrace: Building a Regional Alliance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hui, W.T. (1992). ‘Singapore’s Immigration Policy: An Economic Perspective’, pp. 170–93 in Low, L. and Heng, T.M. (eds), Public Policies in Singapore. Singapore: Times Academic Press. Hurdley, L. and White, P. (1999a). ‘Japanese Economic Activity and Community Growth in Great Britain’. Revue Européenne des Migrations Internationales 15: 101–20.

130

Eyal Ben-Ari

Hurdley, L. and White, P. (1999b). ‘Japanese Investment and the Creation of Expatriate Communities’. Euro-Japanese Journal 5: 17–21. Inmaura, H. (1982). Nihonjin no Kaigai Futekio (The Non-Adaptation of Japanese Overseas). Tokyo: NHK Books. Kobayashi, T. (1978). ‘Japan’s Policy on Returning Students’. International Education and Cultural Exchange 13: 15–16, 47. Kong, L. (1999a). ‘Globalization, Transmigration and the Renegotiation of Ethnic Identity’, pp. 219–37 in Olds, K. et al. (eds), Globalization in the Asia-Pacific: Contested Territories. London: Routledge. Kong, L. (1999b). ‘Globalization and Singaporean Transmigration: Re-imagining and Negotiating National Identity’. Political Geography 18: 563–89. Kotkin, J. (1993). Tribes: How Race, Religion and Identity Determine Success in the New Global Economy. New York: Random House. Machimura, T. (1997). ‘Los Angeles Nihon-Kei Community no Seiritsu to Tenkai’ (The Formation and Evolution of the Japanese Community in Los Angeles). Chiiki Shakaigakkai Nenpo 9: 71–105. Manabe, K. (1992). ‘Japanese Cultural Identity: Old Tradition, New Technology’. Sociology Department Studies (Kwansei Gakuin University) 66: 119–22. Manabe, K. and Befu, H. (1992). ‘Japanese Cultural Identity: An Empirical Investigation of Nihonjinron’. Japanstudien: Jahrbuch des Deutschen Instituts für Japanstudien der Philip-Franz-von-Siebold-Stiftung 4: 89–102. Plath, D. (1983). ‘Life is not just a job resumé?’, pp. 1–13 in Plath, D.W. (ed.), Work and the Lifecourse in Japan. Albany: State University of New York Press. Sakai, J. (2000). Japanese Bankers in the City of London: Language, Culture and Identity in the Japanese Diaspora. London: Routledge. Sugerman, L. (1986). Life-Span Development: Concepts, Theories and Interventions. London: Methuen. Thang, L.L. (2000). Generations in Touch: Linking the Old and Young in a Tokyo Neighborhood. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. White, M. (1988). The Japanese Overseas: Can They Go Home Again. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Yanagihara, K. (ed.) (1994). Kaigi – Nihonjin. Tokyo: Yanagihara Shobun-sha. Yoneyama, S. (1999). The Japanese High School: Silence and Resistance. London: Routledge (Nissan Institute/Routledge Japanese Studies Series). Yoshino, K. (1992). Cultural Nationalism in Contemporary Japan: A Sociological Inquiry. London: Routledge.

8

The Japanese community in Hong Kong in the 1990s The diversity of strategies and intentions Chie Sakai

Introduction: the Japanese transient community in Hong Kong in the 1990s This chapter examines the community of Japanese transients in Hong Kong in the mid-1990s, focusing on those who migrated there on their own initiative as independent movers. Consideration is also given to the impact of what has become known in Japan as the ‘Hong Kong employment-seeking (or shushoku) boom’ on the increase of Japanese transients. Since the 1970s, immigration and emigration affecting Japan have generally been considered as being relatively unimportant. There have been over 600,000 Korean and Chinese permanent residents in Japan, but these had largely been officially ignored by the Japanese government. As part of the myth of Japanese economic growth, it had been emphasised that Japan was the only country that had achieved economic success without immigrant guestworkers (Sato, 1998). The effects of global population movement on Japanese society had been ignored, because of the assumption that Japan is an ethnically homogeneous, egalitarian and middle-class society (Lie, 2000). Douglass and Roberts (2000) have pointed out that government, citizens and even scholars have shared the ‘persistent beliefs’ that Japan is a nation without a history of immigration. As with immigration into Japan, so emigration from Japan has similarly not attracted public interest in the period since the 1970s because the Japanese government changed its emigration policies as a result of economic growth. However, the total number of Japanese leaving Japan has increased continuously since the 1970s, and an increasingly strong Japanese yen persuaded more people to go abroad from the middle of the 1980s onwards. Today over 15 million Japanese go abroad each year, and while most of them are tourists increasing numbers of Japanese decide to live overseas for a variety of reasons. Hong Kong has been one of the most popular destinations for transients as well as tourists. Moreover, the Japanese community in Hong Kong is a good case which shows the diversity of Japanese overseas in a number of ways – according to gender, intentions, relationships to Japanese companies, and so on. Japanese financial and manufacturing companies have opened branches and offices in other Asian countries including Hong Kong since the late 1980s, involving many assigned workers and their families. In the more recent period of recession

132

Chie Sakai

during the 1990s, during which Japanese firms had to localise and concentrate their activities, Hong Kong did not undergo any reduction in its importance for Japanese firms. Furthermore, Japanese outflow to Hong Kong represents an important example of the ‘feminisation of migration’ (Castles and Miller, 1993; Kofman et al., 2000) in Japan. The media have reported that some Japanese female workers prefer to go and work abroad rather than stay in the male-oriented culture of Japanese workplaces. Many articles have reported that young, single Japanese women had gone out from Japan to seek better jobs and build their careers, and that during the 1990s Asian cities such as Hong Kong and Singapore (Ben-Ari and Yong, 2000) became the preferred destinations for female workers who wanted to go abroad. This chapter examines the expansion of the Japanese transient community in Hong Kong during the 1990s, focusing on the locally employed Japanese population in relation to the ‘Hong Kong employment-seeking boom’. The chapter shows the characteristics of Japanese migration to Hong Kong, in comparison with movement to Western Europe, North America and Oceania. It examines the role of the mass media in generating migrant flows, and then goes on to analyse the diversity of the Japanese community in Hong Kong, using interviews with local Japanese workers and self-employed managers. Particular emphasis is placed on gender differences. The conclusion of these discussions is that for the individuals involved, the meaning of belonging to the Japanese community changes through their experience of life in Hong Kong.

The characteristics of the Japanese community in Hong Kong In comparison with Japanese communities in certain other parts of the world (e.g. in South America), the Japanese community in Hong Kong is a business-oriented one. Hong Kong is one of the most influential cities for the Japanese economy in Asia and the number of Japanese residents there consequently increased rapidly from 7,802 in 1981 to 23,480 in 1999, putting Hong Kong alongside New York, Los Angeles, London and Singapore in terms of the size of the community. There are clear differences between the nature of Japanese communities in different parts of the world. Using statistical data from Japanese embassies and consulates, it is possible to identify certain comparisons across the five global regions where the numbers of Japanese are relatively high – Asia, Oceania, North America, South America and Western Europe. Table 8.1 examines the ratio of transients (defined as those who have so far stayed for 3 months or more but do not have permanent settlement rights) to permanent expatriates (who have the right of permanent residence in the country they live in) in these five regions. In South America, which had been a traditional destination for Japanese emigration before the 1970s, the majority of Japanese residents are permanent expatriates and roughly half of them are male. In North America and Oceania, which contain the classical countries of immigration such as the United States, Canada and Australia, permanent expatriates are roughly equal in number to the transients. In

Japanese community in Hong Kong

133

Table 8.1 Japanese expatriates, 1 October 1999

Asia Total Transients Permanent Per cent permanent Oceania Total Transients Permanent Per cent permanent North America Total Transients Permanent Per cent permanent South America Total Transients Permanent Per cent permanent Western Europe Total Transients Permanent Per cent permanent

Males

Females

Total

Percentage of female

94,748 92,103 2,645 2.8

64,366 60,409 3,957 6.1

159,114 152,512 6,602 4.1

40.5 39.6 59.9

18,656 11,027 7,629 40.9

26,481 13,334 13,147 49.6

45,137 24,361 20,776 46.0

58.7 54.7 63.3

150,873 100,907 49,966 33.1

173,422 97,792 75,630 43.6

324,295 198,699 125,596 38.7

53.5 49.2 60.2

54,975 3,387 51,138 93.0

48,821 2,845 45,976 94.2

103,796 6,682 97,114 93.6

47.0 42.6 47.3

60,773 52,626 8,147 13.4

78,894 60,792 18,102 22.9

139,667 113,418 26,249 18.8

56.5 53.6 69.0

Source: Annual Report of Statistics on Japanese Nationals Overseas (2000).

Western Europe, around 20 per cent of Japanese are permanent expatriates. In these regions, the majority of the permanent expatriates are women, and in Western Europe and Oceania, transients are also a feminised group. In contrast, among the Japanese communities in Asia over 90 per cent of the residents are transients and 60 per cent of them are male. Asia also holds a unique position in terms of the types of transients present (Table 8.2). Transients are classified into six categories and each of them is divided into ‘primary migrants’ and their ‘dependants’. In Asia, North America and Western Europe, around 60 per cent of transients are primary migrants, rising to three out of four in Oceania. The sex ratios of the primary migrants are similar to those of migrants as a whole: Asia is the most male-oriented region, and women compete with men for primacy in Oceania and Western Europe. Around a half of primary transient migrants are students and academics, whilst in North America and Western Europe a further 30–40 per cent are private company staff. In Oceania, one-third are classed as ‘others’, and the other two-thirds are divided between students and private company staff. By contrast, in Asia 70 per cent of

Table 8.2 Categories of Japanese transients, 1 October 1999 Private companies

Media

Freelance

Students and academics

Government service

Others

Total

Primary transients (total) Asia

60,796 70.6% Oceania 4,531 24.3% North 43,798 America 39.4% South 1,891 America 50.1% Western 23,263 Europe 34.2% Hong 10,774 Kong 88.5%

308 1,485 0.4% 1.7% 21 323 0.1% 1.7% 640 1,921 0.6% 1.7% 14 215 0.4% 5.7% 384 3,622 0.6% 5.3% 52 374 0.4% 3.1%

9,377 10.9% 6,333 33.9% 56,836 51.1% 325 8.6% 31,415 46.2% 227 1.9%

3,845 4.5% 632 3.4% 1,699 1.5% 954 25.3% 2,228 3.3% 186 1.5%

10,246 11.9% 6,827 36.6% 6,309 5.7% 377 10.0% 7,158 10.5% 567 4.7%

86,057

274 1,133 0.4% 1.7% 16 218 0.2% 2.3% 554 1,254 0.7% 1.6% 13 145 0.4% 4.8% 291 2,086 0.8% 5.6% 44 255 0.4% 2.6%

4,700 7.0% 2,586 27.5% 29,913 38.9% 147 4.8% 11,377 30.7% 69 0.7%

2,955 4.4% 445 4.7% 1,390 1.8% 669 22.0% 1,730 4.7% 136 1.4%

1,684 67,581 2.5% 2,483 9,402 26.4% 2,655 76,825 3.5% 220 3,035 7.2% 1,955 37,064 5.3% 52 9,861 0.5%

4,677 25.3% 3,747 40.4% 26,923 78.3% 178 24.0% 20,038 64.6% 158 6.8%

890 4.8% 187 2.0% 309 0.9% 285 38.5% 498 1.6% 50 2.2%

8,562 18,476 46.3% 4,344 9,265 46.9% 3,654 34,378 10.6% 157 741 21.2% 5,203 31,006 16.8% 515 2,319 22.2%

18,667 111,203 3,776 68,070 12,180

Male primary transients Asia

56,835 84.1% Oceania 3,654 38.9% North 41,059 America 53.4% South 1,841 America 60.7% Western 19,625 Europe 52.9% Hong 9,305 Kong 94.4%

Female primary transients Asia Oceania North America South America Western Europe Hong Kong

3,961 21.4% 877 9.5% 2,739 8.0% 50 6.7% 3,638 11.7% 1,469 63.3%

34 352 0.2% 1.9% 5 105 0.1% 1.1% 86 667 0.3% 1.9% 1 70 0.1% 9.4% 93 1,536 0.3% 5.0% 8 119 0.3% 5.1%

Source: Annual Report of Statistics on Japanese Nationals Overseas (2000). Note For each region, the most important category is shaded.

Japanese community in Hong Kong

135

primary transient migrants are private company staff, and students only amount to 10 per cent of the total. Among female primary migrants, 78 per cent in North America and 64 per cent in Western Europe are students, and only around 10 per cent are private company staff. In Oceania, a little under half are ‘others’ and 40 per cent are students. In Asia, by contrast, 21 per cent of female primary transient migrants are working in private companies and only 25 per cent are students and academics. These figures indicate that Japanese communities in Asia are mainly composed of the staff of Japanese private companies and their families and are rather different in certain respects from Japanese communities elsewhere. In Hong Kong we can see the same characteristics as in Asia as a whole. For example, 88.5 per cent of transients are private company staff (94.4 per cent amongst males and 63.3 per cent amongst females). In 1999 1,469 female Japanese transients were recorded in Hong Kong as ‘private company staff’, which was 23.5 times higher than 1989 when the figure had stood at 66 females. By contrast, in North America and Western Europe, most female transients are students, whilst in Hong Kong only 6.8 per cent of female primary transients are students and academics. In addition, ‘permanent expatriates’ in Hong Kong increased from 102 in 1981 to 1086 in 1998, and 60 per cent of them were female – a phenomenon that is similar to patterns in North America and Western Europe. Although male transients working for Japanese companies are still in the majority, the structure of the Japanese community in Hong Kong was clearly changing throughout the 1990s.

The ‘Hong Kong employment-seeking boom’ and discourses spread by the mass media Changes in the Japanese community in Hong Kong are related to the impact of the ‘Hong Kong employment-seeking boom’. The media have explained the background to this ‘boom’ from a number of angles, generally through comparisons between life in Japan and in Hong Kong. A first factor identified has been discrimination against female workers in Japan. It has been argued that Japanese companies have behaved in ways that reflect on male chauvinism, and that this has been particularly the case during the recent recession when job opportunities for women have been reduced. A second factor has been related to tourist movement to Hong Kong and the attractions of popular culture there. Throughout the 1990s Hong Kong was a major tourist attraction for the Japanese (at around 300,000 tourist arrivals per year), with the territory proving a consistently more popular destination than other Asian countries. Arrivals increased dramatically with the rise in the Japanese yen in the late 1980s. Films and popular songs from Hong Kong were also introduced to Japan and these cultural products have changed the images of Hong Kong. Wong Kar-wai’s film ‘Chongqing Express’ was shown in 1995, and it became the first big Japanese success of the Hong Kong film industry (apart from Kung-fu films featuring Bruce Lee or films with Jacky Chen).

136

Chie Sakai

‘Chongqing Express’ was renamed ‘Koi suru Wakusei’ (Loving each other on the planet) in Japan, and it was influential in the construction of new images of a Hong Kong which was not only energetic, but stylish, fashionable, and postmodern (Iwabuchi, 2001). A third factor in increased Japanese interest in Hong Kong lay in the historic hand-over of the colony to China in 1997. In 1996 the total number of Japanese going to Hong Kong was its peak at 1.5 million in a year, which means that onetenth of the Japanese going abroad that year went to Hong Kong, but this was reduced by a half in the next year. According to the media, one of the prime attributes of the Hong Kong ‘boom’, however, was the factor of gender discrimination pushing female workers to go to Hong Kong. The following extract from an article in ‘Nikkei Business’ in 1994 represents the very typical discourse on the ‘boom’ from that period. Recession has reduced new employment for women, and companies do not want to employ women in an executive-track grade (sogo-shoku), even after the equal employment opportunity law has been enforced. That is why women who have a strong will to work begin to abandon these Japanese companies and go abroad or to foreign-affiliated firms in order to seek a more rewarding job. These kinds of women are now going to Hong Kong: Why do companies treat girls in such a negative way? I have always gone to a coeducational school and believed that there was no difference between boys and girls in ability. Why do companies dislike girls? We have received the same education up to university and believed it was natural to get a position in the same way as boys after graduation. Why are companies unequal in their treatment of girls and boys? I heard that there are some female university students who seek to get a position in Hong Kong, where women and men are equally treated. I am now thinking of working in Hong Kong. In Japanese companies, there are too many unreasonable things for girls. (Nikkei Business, 8–15 August 1994) Japan is here described as a place where women are not treated equally to men in companies, and where female graduates believe that discrimination is becoming stronger at a time of recession. In contrast, it was said that women were not forced to be housewives and mothers in Hong Kong, so women could continue to work after marriage and starting a family. In addition, some articles emphasised that Hong Kong was more meritocratic than Japan and people were so independent that they frequently changed their jobs and could have their own companies. These features appealed to those who were looking for the chance to start their own business – not only women but men as well. Against the discourses in the media suggesting that working conditions in Hong Kong would be totally different from those in Japan, it is obvious that Japanese economic globalisation was a further cause of the growth of Japanese transients in Hong Kong. The number of Japanese companies in Hong Kong increased from 1,087 in 1988 to 2,197 in 1994, and most of the Japanese

Japanese community in Hong Kong

137

transients who stayed in Hong Kong as local employees were working in Japanese firms. In November 1993, at the beginning of the ‘boom’, seminars in Tokyo and Osaka were held by a personnel placement agency. These seminars were aimed at Japanese women who wanted to find a job in Hong Kong, and the numbers recruited totalled 130 women in Tokyo and eighty in Osaka. Other similar seminars followed later. A representative of the agency in Hong Kong indicated that the seminars had been held in order to meet the demand for local Japanese staff from Japanese companies. Many Japanese companies at that time were seeking to decrease the numbers of assigned male employees in order to localise both employment and management. Management studies have previously criticised Japanese overseas firms for not being sufficiently localised, and thus failing the process of internationalisation and globalisation of the Japanese economy. Japanese firms have not appealed to local workers, because management staff are usually assigned from the head office in Japan and it would be difficult for local employees to have realistic aspirations for promotion. Japanese companies have had difficulties in finding the best workers and have not out-performed American- or European-affiliated companies in this respect (Morikawa and Yonekura, 1995). Some companies have begun to consider that it costs too much to employ assigned male staff, with family wages and accompanying benefits, since recession hit Japan in the 1990s. In such a situation, Japanese companies have tended to replace costly assigned male staff with local employees, including locally employed Japanese. But in many cases the gender division of labour has been preserved, such that the assigned employees are usually men and most of those locally employed are women. Thus the discourses of the ‘boom’ are incoherent. On the one hand, Japanese migrants have decided to head for a more ‘global’ place than Japan, but on the other hand the ‘boom’ was a very effective advertisement to meet the hiring requirements of Japanese companies overseas in the era of competitive globalisation.

Analysing the narratives These incoherences in the media discourses are examined here through the use of qualitative data from research carried out in 1996 and 1998. Interviews were conducted in Japanese, and each interview was loosely based on a series of prepared questions including the respondent’s reasons for coming to Hong Kong, the comparison of their working circumstances in Hong Kong and Japan, the languages they used, their means of obtaining jobs in Hong Kong, experiences of changing jobs, interactions with colleagues, personal networks in Hong Kong, housing, lifestyle, and future plans. Interviews usually lasted from 1–12 to 3 hours. Interviewees were recruited via a ‘snowball technique’, with some additional specific interviews with Japanese male managers who were assigned from Japan. The narratives obtained from the interviewees demonstrate the diversity of individual

138

Chie Sakai

experiences as well as the social interactions between media discourses and personal narratives. In total, thirty-nine interviews were conducted with Japanese people who were working in Hong Kong as local employees (genchi-saiyo) or self-employed managers, of whom twelve were male and twenty-seven female. Many interviewees in this survey had a number of things in common with the participants in the seminars held in 1993 by the personnel placement agency. The agency reported that the participants were 25–35 year-old single women who had worked in Japanese companies for several years after graduation, and they were generally satisfied with their working circumstances but felt anxious about their short-term future if they continued to work in the same company. In the Hong Kong survey, the interviewees ranged from 25 to 40. All the female interviewees who had come to Hong Kong were single or divorced, while some male interviewees were married. The year of coming to Hong Kong ranged from 1987 to 1996. Educational level varied from high-school graduates to 4-year university graduates, though the majority had graduated from university and had worked in large enterprises in Japan. One-third of the interviewees had experience of studying abroad before coming to Hong Kong – in the United States, Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom or China – and some had spent their childhood overseas with their parents.

Hong Kong as a global workplace without gender discrimination Media discourses on the ‘boom’ had the effect of increasing the number of Japanese who intended to go to Hong Kong. Registration figures of those seeking employment at the agency climbed from 388 (30 male, 358 female) in 1992 to 808 (128 male, 680 female) in 1994, in the middle of the ‘boom’. Some interviewees indicated that they had participated in the seminar held by the agency, or that they had got information through the mass media. Some of them registered with the agency only while they were searching for employment in Hong Kong. It is clear that publicity about the ‘boom’ influenced the belief that there was an option to work in Hong Kong. The narratives of those interviewed told a similar story about the comparison between Japan and Hong Kong. Female interviewees especially indicated that Hong Kong was a place of equality in terms of gender and other attributes. Akiko Nakata (all names have been fictionalised) left Japan and started a trading business after 2 years study of Chinese and 1 year working as a local employee in a Japanese firm, because she felt constraints on her working in Japan as a woman. She described her experiences before coming to Hong Kong: I had worked in that company for five and a half years, but I had already known what the company wanted women to do, because managers always told us. When I was in Japan, there had not yet been the Equal Employment Opportunity Law, and women didn’t have things to do if we continued to work for a long time. We couldn’t be promoted to a responsible position.

Japanese community in Hong Kong

139

Furthermore, I got a job as a regular employee, but three years after that, the employment system suddenly changed so that women graduates would be employed only as temporary workers. It seemed a fraud, didn’t it? I had understood the principles of the company, so I decided to change my job, and I started learning Chinese. She thought that there was fair competition in Hong Kong without distinction of age and sex. Akiko said that if she were in Japan, not only would she not be able to start to manage her own company, but she would not even think about it. Female interviewees broadly shared these positive impressions of Hong Kong. They highlighted the fact that women can continue to work after their marriage in Hong Kong, and mothers can also work in the company by hiring an amah. In contrast, they argued that in Japan, women had to bring their children up by themselves and give up their career. Hong Kong was described as being a more meritocratic society than Japan. For example, several interviewees pointed out that people in Hong Kong often changed jobs to put their experiences to the test, and that this reflected the meritocracy of Hong Kong society. They compared it to the Japanese ‘lifelong employment system’, which female interviewees thought would not, in practice, be applied to women.

Hong Kong as a second-best option Interviewees argued that the working circumstances, without gender discrimination, in Hong Kong were more ‘global’ than in Japan and were thus similar to what they thought of as the conditions in the United States, England or other English-speaking countries. But some interviewees thought of Hong Kong as a second-best option in their life course. They said they wanted to go to the United States, Australia and England if possible, but they came to Hong Kong because it was relatively easier to find a job and acquire a visa to work. In their narratives, Hong Kong appeared as one of a number of English-speaking workplaces. Taeko Noda, who came to Hong Kong in 1995, had gone to Canada for a year as a student before. She talked about her reasons for coming to Hong Kong: Many Japanese women say that they love to live in Hong Kong and its energetic feeling here, but I didn’t think to come to Hong Kong in truth. I had stayed in Canada as a student, so I hoped to work in Canada, with its marvellous nature. Before I came to Hong Kong, there was a boom for working in Asia, but I wasn’t interested in it at all. At first, I came to Hong Kong when I found a job advert in the newspaper, and I wanted to get it. Honestly I didn’t mind if that position was in Hong Kong or in the United States … The reason why I came to Hong Kong was that I wanted to make use of my ability in English. I hope to study English more, but at my age I had to work by myself, I am not permitted only to study at my age. Hanako Takano, who had stayed in England for 2 years, also said that she would go to England if there were a position suitable for her. She indicated that if she decided on the city where she wanted to live most, she would not choose

140 Chie Sakai Hong Kong. Some interviewees said that they decided to quit their jobs in Japan because the company did not assign them to overseas branches. For example, Hiroshi Maeda, a male local employee, wanted to go to the United States before coming to Hong Kong, but his company did not assign him. So he decided to go to Hong Kong by himself as a local employee. Hiroshi placed Hong Kong in the same category as the United States, saying: ‘In Hong Kong, the same as in the United States or all over the world excluding Japan, I can lead the life I want, because the self and the other can be separate’. In addition, it was more difficult for female interviewees to be assigned overseas than men. Naomi Sato, a local employee in a Japanese financial firm, had lived in the United States when she was in elementary school. She also hoped to work overseas before leaving Japan. But in the company she worked in at a generalduties post, it was not easy for her to be assigned to overseas branches. She had to take an exam to change her position from the general-duties grade to the executive-track grade, and had to wait for at least 5 years. She did not want to wait for such a long time and quit her job to come to Hong Kong. These narratives accord with the fact (reported earlier) that a majority of the Japanese transients in Hong Kong are working in private companies in contrast with the situation in Western Europe and North America, where most female transients are students and academics. This contrast is suggested to be the result of the difficulties of acquiring a work permit in North America and in Western Europe.

Hong Kong as a multicultural/multilingual society A further narrative from the respondents saw Hong Kong as a multicultural place in terms of workplace, community and friendship relations. This ‘multiculturalism’ in Hong Kong is not conceived in terms of equal coexistence, but as power relations between ethnic groups. For example, Japanese people thought that they could lead a comfortable life in Hong Kong; they could have Japanese food and cultural information as they wanted, because of the existence of Japanese companies. Michiko Kato said that the Japanese were ‘a kind of privileged class’ in Hong Kong, compared to one of her friends who was from Bangladesh. Interviewees referred to the multilingualism that represents the competing ethnicities in multicultural Hong Kong. They found that Cantonese, the local dialect, was less important than English, Putonghua (Mandarin Chinese) and even Japanese in the workplace. Such a recognition helped them to decide which language would be best to obtain. Naomi Sato said that she tried to learn Cantonese and Mandarin, but gave up and found that it was not inconvenient for her to speak in English. And Noriko Tanaka had learned Cantonese for a year before coming to Hong Kong, but thought those who wanted to work in Hong Kong would be better engaged in improving their English. Similar attitudes to Cantonese did not depend on how long respondents had lived in Hong Kong. A few interviewees had fully achieved the ability to use Cantonese, and there were several types of relationships to the language. First, some interviewees said

Japanese community in Hong Kong

141

that Cantonese belonged to the sphere of personal relations. For example, Takashi Sudo, who originally came to Hong Kong as a male executive assigned from Japan and quit his position one year after returning to Japan so that he could come back to Hong Kong, said that he started learning Cantonese just after he got married to a Hong Kong woman. Ayako Enomoto, who had arrived looking for a job, said that in learning Cantonese she was expressing her respect for Hong Kong, and not doing so for personal profit. However, such interviewees who show attachment to the language and culture of Hong Kong are in the minority. Second, self-employed managers were inclined to acquire Cantonese in order to communicate with their business partners. Eriko Asada, a self-employed manager, said that she started to learn Cantonese the moment she came to Hong Kong as a local employee at a factory in the garment industry, because she had to communicate with her colleagues who could only speak Cantonese. Third, there were a few Cantonese speakers who had studied in Mainland China before coming to Hong Kong. They said that it was relatively easy to learn Cantonese because of their ability to use Mandarin. Interviewees who had studied in China were similar to those who had gone to study in the United States and other Englishspeaking countries. They indicated that they could make the most of their ability to speak English or Chinese, which they had obtained prior to arrival in Hong Kong. Haruko Yamada, a local employee, had felt that she was not utilising her ability to speak Chinese, learned in China, because she had gone back to Japan just after the events in Tiananmen Square in June 1989, so she decided to come to Hong Kong to work. For a number of respondents, therefore, their own linguistic abilities coupled with the multilingualism of Hong Kong made it possible for them to work there.

Living in the Japanese community Interviewees had indicated that they were not satisfied with the working culture of the companies that employed them when they were in Japan, yet most of them continued to work in Japanese companies while others were working for the Japanese section of foreign-affiliated corporations even in Hong Kong. The personnel placement agency indicated that 80 per cent of their clients were Japanese overseas firms. This means that Japanese local employees in Hong Kong have retained strong connections with the Japanese business community. This brings into question whether the difference between Hong Kong and Japan is really relevant. The respondents are differentiated from local employees because they are culturally ‘Japanese’, but they are also distinguished from the Japanese assigned workers in terms of their contracts: ‘local’ Japanese employees have different salaries, housing and other allowances, and conditions of contract. Hiroshi said that Japanese managers assigned to Hong Kong discriminated against local Japanese employees, calling them ‘non-career’ people. Hanako thought that: ‘Japanese managers who were assigned from Tokyo head office are always at the top … [and] the Hong Kong people and the foreigners are not the same even if they were in the same position’. She said she was in the same

142

Chie Sakai

situation as the non-Japanese, although she was a ‘Japanese’. Female local employees also felt that assigned male managers expected them to act as Japanese women, or in other words to take care of Japanese men. Fumiko Kanda, who had changed job to become the manager of a Japanese office, mentioned that she had accepted this job offer because there was no Japanese male manager. She thought that Japanese male managers hired Japanese women on local contracts because: ‘they (the managers) are lazy, depending on the Japanese women. When they had bothersome tasks, they could ask Japanese women to do them, saying “Onegai” (please) in Japanese’. And Rie Ishida, a local employee, also said that: Japanese society in Hong Kong is very male-dominated. After going overseas, their demands for Japanese women have become more conservative. I thought that I could give my opinion more openly in Hong Kong, but in reality I cannot. I could speak, but no one hears me. At least in the firm I have worked for, there is no circumstance in which we local employees were on an equal footing with Japanese male managers and work together with each other. I think there is little difference from Japanese firms in Japan. My female friends who are looking for a different working environment change their jobs. However, respondents did not always think it disadvantageous that they were working in Japanese companies even in Hong Kong. One of the reasons is that in their jobs they could make use of the fact that they were Japanese. When Fumiko worked as a sales manager, she felt the advantage of being Japanese, because Japanese firms were not open to local people. She was Japanese and had working experience in Japan, so she could do business directly with Japanese male managers who held decision-making authority. She felt that the fact that she was a ‘Japanese’ made her job easier than for Hong Kong Chinese employees. The selfemployed managers especially said that relationships with Japanese people and Japanese firms were very important for them because most of their customers were Japanese. Eriko, a manager in the garment industry, said that she positively wanted to expand her relationship with Japanese people, because her market was Japan. Because of this recognition of the importance of relationships with the Japanese community, interviewees did not shrink from joining in Japanese club activities such as basketball, membership of a dragon boat crew, diving and so on. Some of them even played a central role in such activities because assigned male workers and their families usually go back Japan after 3–5 years and local employees tend to live in Hong Kong for longer periods. Some interviewees also joined Japanese prefectural or university associations.

The changing meaning of being ‘Japanese’ According to both the government statistics and the interviewees, increases in the numbers of Japanese transients are strongly connected with the globalisation of

Japanese community in Hong Kong

143

the Japanese economy in the 1990s. The narratives of the interviewees follow the media discourse on the ‘boom’ which emphasised the differences between Hong Kong and Japan, yet most of them are working and living in the Japanese business community. They felt that Hong Kong is a multicultural and multilingual society, but the majority of them usually use English and Japanese. The majority of local Japanese employees were female, and whilst some of them indicated that there was a clear distinction between assigned managers and local employees, they did not necessarily think this to be a negative factor. Do their stories contradict themselves? It may be natural that the respondents considered their experiences to be positive, because the interviews were conducted in Hong Kong and the interviewees had been living and working there for some time. But the most important reason for this positive evaluation was their recognition that the multiculturalism of Hong Kong has changed their attitude towards being a ‘Japanese’. After their experiences in Hong Kong, Japan is no longer seen as a homogeneous and unproblematic category in the way it used to be for these interviewees. They started to recognise that the Japanese differ from one another in terms of gender, position in the workplace, class, future intentions for staying in Hong Kong, and so on. As mentioned earlier, differences between the locally employed Japanese and the assigned managers reflect the diversity of the Japanese transient community. In addition, they have begun to think that being Japanese is a changeable or negotiable attribute in their everyday experiences. The interview with Naomi Sato provides good examples of tactics that have involved changing positions according to the current situation. For example, she situated herself within the Japanese way of working when she talked about her experiences in the workplace: People in Hong Kong don’t intend to work as a team. They think that the salary is paid only for what they were told to do. They never do additional work, for example, sorting out papers or helping busy colleagues, even if they had three hours before they go back home. They spend these three hours putting all their things away, reading comics. They never answer the call to another section. [In response to a question about whether it is easier to work with Japanese than with Hong Kong people.] Absolutely. Among Japanese, if I had worked in other companies, there would be a minimum rule shared among Japanese companies. It may be a weak point of the Japanese company, but also this must be an advantage. On the other hand, she believed she was inclined towards foreign countries because she had lived in the United States for 2 years during her childhood. The reason she decided to quit a job in Japan and came to be employed locally in Hong Kong was that she thought there were few possibilities for women to be assigned to offices abroad. So on the one hand Hong Kong appeared as a different culture to her and her Japanese colleagues, but on the other she considered Hong Kong to be more global than Japan.

144

Chie Sakai

Furthermore she placed herself within ‘Asia’, which contrasted with her images of the United States, constructed through her childhood experiences. After all, however much I longed to be an American, I am an ‘Asian’. However much Hong Kong is different from Japan, it also belongs to Asia. As an ‘Asian’, I hope to live in Asia because it must be suitable for me. In America, I think there are few people who understand Japan. Even though they know Sony or Nissan, most of them don’t know these goods were made in Japan. Her sense of being an ‘Asian’ is different from being a ‘Japanese’. These narratives indicate that whilst she has taken part in the Japanese business community in Hong Kong, she nevertheless was not fully involved with it. Her various positions contradict each other in her stories, and she felt that she could change her position because being a Japanese in Hong Kong is not a homogeneous and coherent status, but is changeable according to her situation. For interviewees such as Naomi, Japan began to appear to them as a place that could be as diverse as Hong Kong. They felt that Hong Kong was multicultural and that people there were open to change. Transients who had come to Hong Kong voluntarily tended to stress that they were under pressure to follow social conventions in Japan: for example, female employees were forced to quit a job after having a baby and were treated as being different from male workers. But they also found that in Hong Kong they could get a position in Japanese-related companies, because they were Japanese and had experiences of working in Japan. Through their relationships with diverse people, they could give fragmented meanings to ‘being Japanese’. In other words, they changed their meaning of ‘belonging to the nation’ into resources which they could make use of. In addition, interviewees said that they felt ‘released’ through experiencing the multiculturalism of Hong Kong, because many transients who came to Hong Kong voluntarily, especially female local employees and the self-employed, argued that they found it difficult to work and live without gender discrimination in Japan. They could not believe in the myth of the homogeneity of Japan. Mieko Takano, a female local employee, said that there was a risk for her in staying in Japan because she had worked under a part-time contract. She identified herself with people in Hong Kong because she thought that people in Hong Kong felt insecure about their future just as she did in Japan.

Crossing the boundary between Japan and Hong Kong Through the analysis of interviews with Japanese transients in Hong Kong, we have seen that the meaning of being Japanese has begun to appear not only as belonging to a nation, but also as a resource for their lives in Hong Kong. These understandings of being Japanese, however, sometimes seem ambivalent. First, respondents felt that sometimes they were treated as Japanese, and sometimes not, depending only on their changing relations to the Japanese business

Japanese community in Hong Kong

145

community. When they obtained a job by making use of ‘being Japanese’, they could not avoid being asked to conform to the Japanese way of working. Nevertheless the interviewees have been caught in the complexity between the plural meanings of Japanese nationality, both belonging to the nation and using it as a personal resource. Eriko said: Those who live in Hong Kong the same way as in Japan don’t accept me. They tend to consider that I am too impertinent for them. Actually I don’t care what they say, rather I enjoy observing their way of thinking, but they dislike me. They don’t consider us as Japanese. They only consider us as Japanese when they want to do so, and at other times they consider us as Hong Kong people. Basically, these kinds of Japanese look down on Hong Kong people, so they also look down on us. They criticise us about small matters, saying that we couldn’t do that in spite of being Japanese. In a sense, I think our position is very painful. Bur Eriko did not complain publicly about the attitudes and behaviour of the assigned managers, but said that she could take advantage of her position because she had to do business between Japan and Hong Kong. Michiko Kato was not satisfied with her experience of working in a Japanese firm as a local because she was required to play a feminine role: for example, she was often asked to look after the male engineers sent from Japan. But she said that she wanted in the future to be a consultant for Japanese workers assigned overseas, putting her experiences to good account. In other words, Japanese transients in Hong Kong have made use of their ‘Japanese-ness’ in order to get away from Japan itself. Second, some interviewees talked about their anxieties about their future, and felt it was uncertain whether or not they would go back to Japan. They thought it was very difficult for an older person to get a job in Japan, especially for women. Noriko Tanaka said that she wanted to go back to Japan before she got into her forties, but she was worried about her plans because one of her friends who had gone back to Japan returned to Hong Kong after only a month. She said that Japanese companies in Hong Kong would need her ability but she was not sure she would get a position in Japan, so she hesitated to return. We should not over-generalise the various experiences of the transients in Hong Kong. However, they all tended to discuss their decisions, the difficulties they confronted, and their relations with their friends and colleagues in terms of comparisons between Hong Kong, Japan, Asia more generally and western countries. They placed themselves in these comparisons according to their individual situations, most adopting a position somewhere between Japan and Hong Kong, making most of their ‘Japanese-ness’ in Hong Kong. The increasing numbers of Japanese transients in Hong Kong is one example of the tactics of contemporary migrants. In the age of globalisation, it is much easier to cross national boundaries, not only physically but also culturally. The transients in this study are not unskilled labourers who are forced to live as an underclass, nor professionals who can improve their standing within a new

146

Chie Sakai

host society. The interviewees in this study are working in service industries, sales departments or in clerical jobs, so they have to make use of their ‘Japanese-ness’ to get a position. Interviewees indicated that transients came to Hong Kong as part of a tactic of making use of the career and abilities they have gained so far, and Hong Kong has been chosen as a place where it is possible to satisfy their aspirations and to live independently. It could be suggested that this may be one reason why Hong Kong has become one of the biggest Japanese transient communities.

References Ben-Ari, E. and Yong, Y.F.V. (2000). ‘Twice Marginalized: Single Japanese Female Expatriates in Singapore’, pp. 82–111 in Clammer, J. and Ben-Ari, E. (eds), Japan in Singapore, Cultural Presences. London: Curzon. Castles, S. and Miller, M.J. (1993). The Age of Migration: International Population Movement in the Modern World. London: Macmillan. Douglass, M. and Roberts, G.S. (2000). ‘Japan in a Global Age of Migration’, pp. 3–37 in Douglass, M. and Roberts, G.S. (eds), Japan and Global Migration: Foreign Workers and the Advent of a Multicultural Society. London and New York: Routledge. Iwabuchi, K. (2001). Transnational Japan: Asia wo Tsunagu Popular-Bunka (Transnational Japan). Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten. Kofman, E. et al. (2000). Gender and International Migration in Europe: Employment, Welfare and Politics. London and New York: Routledge. Lie, J. (2000). ‘The discourse of Japaneseness’, pp. 70–90 in Douglass, M. and Roberts, G.S. (eds), Japan and Global Migration: Foreign Workers and the Advent of a Multicultural Society. London and New York: Routledge. Morikawa, H. and Yonekura, S. (eds) (1995). Kodo Keizai Seicho wo Koete (Beyond the High Growth of the Economy). Tokyo: Iwanami-Shoten. Nikkei Business (Tokyo), 8–15 August, 1994. Sato M. (1998). ‘Nihon no Kokusai Rodo Ido wo Meguru Giron no Tokucho’ (The features of the discussion on international labour migration in Japan), pp. 5–32 in Sato, M. and Fielding, A.J. (eds), Ido to Teiju: Nichi-o Hikaku no Kokusai Rodo Ido (Migration and Settlement: Comparison between Japan and Europe on International Labour Migration). Tokyo: Doubunkan.

9

Living in a transnational community within a multi-ethnic city Making a localised ‘Japan’ in Los Angeles Takashi Machimura

Introduction The aim of this chapter is to describe the formation of the Japanese community in Los Angeles as a localised form of globalisation. During the economic boom period of the 1980s, several overseas Japanese communities were created in major international economic centres, accompanying a huge flow of Japanese capital. The main argument here is that even such transnational communities of expatriates are deeply embedded within a local context, such that their characteristics are determined along an interconnected nexus of local–national–global relations. Unlike other chapters in this volume dealing with overseas Japanese communities (Sakai, Ben-Ari, Glebe, White), the study here of Los Angeles demonstrates the existence of two different strands of Japanese mobility or circulation flows: imin (migrant) and hi-imin (non-migrant). Roughly speaking, imin is used in the context of immigrant workers and their families, while the hi-imin category relates to expatriate staff sent by corporations, as well as professional people and students. The Japanese community in Los Angeles was established mostly by imin almost a century ago. In contrast, Japanese international migrant flows in the post-war period have generally been hi-imin in nature, or at least not imin in origin. Los Angeles is unique in terms of Japanese-community building, because here a lot of recent hi-imin Japanese migrants have met with imin Japanese and their descendents, most of whom are now Japanese Americans. Such a social mixture within the Japanese community forms an important and integral part of the local setting, into which current global migrants are embedded. This chapter traces the development of the Japanese expatriate community in Los Angeles in the 1980s and 1990s, focusing especially on the establishment of major institutions. These include various businesses targeting the Japanese market, the creation of the Japanese school, Japanese-language media, and so on. These institutions contribute to the reproduction of a Japanese way of life by expatriates. Such a story is very important but, as other chapters in this volume show, not necessarily unique. What is really significant in the case of Los Angeles is again the mixed base of these ethnic institutions. At an early stage of development, daily life in the new expatriate community depended heavily upon ethnic resources provided by the Japanese-American community. However, as the

148

Takashi Machimura

Japanese population has continued to increase, new actors came into this active marketplace. First, overseas Japanese corporations themselves tried to be more directly involved with the creation of a self-sufficient community for expatriate staff and families. Second, this emerging market attracted a lot of Japan-based corporations that tried to extend a more globalised reach. And third, many Japanese, rather than Japanese-American, entrepreneurs tried to develop small businesses targeting the Japanese market for their livelihood. All these actors took up more competitive positions than the traditional Japanese Americans because they had more direct ties with current Japanese culture, and therefore could reproduce conditions that were more similar to those of the ‘real’ Japan. Here, we can see a process in which a consolidation of local, national, and global forces produces a localised ‘Japan’ as an imagined transnational community. However, such an attempt to create a transnational form of a localised ‘Japan’ has recently been foiled by several factors, both local and global. Although expatriate Japanese are often regarded as invisible in terms of ethnicity, they actually cannot be kept intact in this multiracial city. There are several local ethnic and racial friction between Japanese and other groups. In addition, growing diversity within the Japanese community itself, as well as shrinking numbers of Japanese expatriate staff, have reduced the social and economic base for this localised ‘Japan’. The Japanese community is now surrounded by multiple ethnic boundaries.

Imin and hi-imin: two strands in Japanese migration Since the early Meiji era, millions of Japanese have crossed the ocean to settle, whether permanently or not, in a new land. Generally speaking, there are two major types of Japanese international migrants. One is an élite group composed of people such as diplomats, professionals, and business personnel in overseas Japanese banks and in trading and shipping companies. Well-educated and westernised in manner, they have been expected to return to their homeland after staying abroad for only a few years. The other migrant group has been composed of various types of migrant workers, most of whom left a poor home village and worked as labourers to survive in the face of economic disadvantage and social discrimination. Although they often had an initial intention of returning home after achieving their own dream, many of them actually settled permanently as immigrants in their destination countries. This division was clearly institutionalised in 1908 when the Japanese government officially separated Japanese travellers into two specific passport categories: hi-imin and imin (Sawada, 1996: 44). As Sawada points out, hi-imin was a new term designating a person who was neither a labourer nor one who intended to engage in manual work once in the United States. With the imin and hi-imin designations, the Japanese government differentiated “culprits” from “gentlemen” – those whom it considered labourers, both skilled and unskilled, “who have less opportunity for cultivation,” from those of the “educated classes,” who theoretically did not intend to settle permanently in the United States. (Sawada, 1996: 53)

Japanese community in Los Angeles

149

A social cleavage between these two contrasting groups within a single community often characterised overseas Japanese communities in pre-war days (Yano, 1975: 124–27). From a historical point of view, poor migrant workers had constituted a majority of the overseas Japanese population, and they established hundreds of small Japanese communities all over the world, from Brazil to Zanzibar, and from Canada to the Solomon Islands. However, as imperial Japan expanded its international influence in both the military and economic spheres, hi-imin or élite groups took more power within each community, because their authority depended directly upon the activities of this imperial state. While the material life of the élite group was often supported by goods and services provided by small Japanese migrant businesses, migrant workers were often regarded as ‘savage Japanese’ and looked down on by such élites. Overseas communities often represented a microcosm of the homeland in terms of class structure or social discrimination. By the time of Japan’s defeat in the Second World War, most of the overseas Japanese communities had become uncoupled from the homeland. Some were almost naturalised into a host country and others disappeared. Today’s overseas communities of the Internet age are totally different from those of pre-war days, particularly in the technological ability of reproducing a Japanese way of life far from home. However, there still exists a similar disparity between the state- or corporate-sponsored élite group and the more localised and less privileged population. In the following sections this chapter deals with the emergence of, and changes in, the Japanese expatriate community in multi-ethnic Los Angeles, particularly focusing on its internal social tensions.

Localised ‘Japan’ as an imagined transnational community Los Angeles has a long history of community building by Japanese immigrants dating back to the early twentieth century. In the early 1960s, when an influx of Japanese began once again, there were already several Japanese-American communities in the Los Angeles area (Machimura, 1997; 1999). In 1961, overseas branches of forty-eight Japanese firms established the ‘Japan Traders Club’ in Los Angeles. As the Japanese economy recorded miraculous growth rates during the 1960s and 1970s, the number of affiliated members increased to 121 in 1971 and 369 in 1981. At that period, newly arriving Japanese businessmen and their families tended to settle among traditional communities of Japanese Americans. Thus, daily life in the new expatriate community was constructed on the basis of ethnic resources provided from Japanese-American origins. During the 1980s the Japanese community underwent a drastic change. Figure 9.1 shows the number of Japanese citizens in Los Angeles, as registered by the Japanese government. The overseas migration of Japanese expatriates accelerated considerably as a result of the boom of the ‘bubble economy’ in Japan, and the destinations particularly included Los Angeles, which resulted in what Davis (1990: 135) has called the ‘Nipponization of Southern California’. As Figure 9.1 demonstrates, in the early 1970s permanent settlers were predominant in the Los Angeles region, but by the mid-1980s the numbers of expatriates temporarily

150

Takashi Machimura 25,000 Expatriates Permanent settlers 20,000

15,000

10,000

5,000

3

1

19 9

9

19 9

7

19 8

5

19 8

3

19 8

1

19 8

9

19 8

7

19 7

5

19 7

19 7

19 7

3

0

Figure 9.1 Registered Japanese citizens in the Los Angeles area, 1973–94. Source: Japan, Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

present had reached similar levels, and rose to exceed the permanent residents by the end of the decade before falling back in number. According to estimates by the local Japanese media, the total Japanese population in the Los Angeles area amounted to 70,000, although the official figures indicate a total of only around 36,000. Affiliated members of the Japan Business Association of Southern California (a successor to the Japan Traders Club) reached a peak of over 700 in 1991. Japanese businessmen sent by their corporations, along with their families, were concentrated in the suburban areas of Los Angeles, particularly in South Bay. Major Japanese automotive corporations, such as Toyota, Nissan, and Honda, also located their regional headquarters in this area. This neighbourhood therefore gradually took on the characteristics of being a largely Japanese selfcontained community within a self-sufficient world of its own. Facilities such as a Japanese-language school, shopping centres for Japanese goods, and Japaneselanguage media were established to provide basic services enabling the reproduction of a Japanese way of life. Some facilities were owned by Japan-based large corporations, whilst others were managed by local Japanese small businesses. In 1969, a Japanese-language school named Asahi Gakuen was established in the Japanese Consulate with considerable support from the major Japanese

Japanese community in Los Angeles

151

corporations. In Los Angeles, most Japanese students attend local American schools from Monday to Friday. Therefore this Saturday school was expected to contribute much to the maintenance of learning ability in Japanese through teaching the main subjects by following the standard Japanese curriculum. Students who are permitted to enter this school are expected to return to Japan after a short stay. Thus the school also seeks to ‘establish the identity of a student as part of the Japanese nation’ by ‘cultivating Japanese customs and attitudes’ (Los Angeles Nihongo Kyoiku Shinko Kai, 1995). Enrolment drastically increased from seventy-four in 1969, to 1,356 in 1980, and 3,108 in 1991. Commercial centres for the Japanese expatriate community are still embedded in those for the Japanese-American community. As a result, more complex geographical distribution patterns of various services are emerging – some concentrated in the traditional downtown ‘Little Tokyo’, whilst others are predominantly found 15 miles south from downtown, in the South Bay area of the expatriate community. As Table 9.1 indicates, the traditional Little Tokyo provides professional services such as travel agencies, legal services, insurance, and real estate, most of which are managed by Japanese-American businesses. In contrast, domestic services for expatriate families are provided mainly in the South Bay area, where the new Japanese population is concentrated. Recent Japanese settlers from outside the corporate sphere are also involved with these small businesses. In practice Little Tokyo now has only a small residential population, but it does retain its functional significance for the Japanese-American population. In contrast, South Bay contains both Japanese residential and functional concentrations. In 1983, the Japan-based supermarket chain store Yaohan opened its first Los Angeles branch in the centre of South Bay, in the new ‘Japantown’ (see Table 9.2). By 1992, Yaohan operated five stores in the Los Angeles area. In 1987, a satellite edition of Asahi Shimbun was published in Los Angeles, following the inauguration of a London edition in 1986; the New York edition was launched in the same year as that for Los Angeles. The Fuji-Sankei Group also started Japanese TV News broadcasts in Los Angeles on an almost real time basis in 1987. Two years later, a couple of bimonthly free papers were started for Japanese readers. Both of these are edited and published by Japanese small businesses located in the new Japantown of South Bay. In 1994 one of the papers also started operating a morning drive-time FM radio programme to reach the Japanese audience more directly. Consequently the daily life of Japanese nationals has become connected more closely and immediately to the homeland through the extension of the educational system, through imported consumer goods and services, and through the reproduction of media space. A localised ‘Japan’ was created on the basis of the intersection of global, national, and local forces. Here we see an instance of ‘a global creation of locality’ (Featherstone and Lash, 1995: 4). Yet in reality these processes were often accompanied by keen and sometimes unfair competition between small native institutions managed by Japanese Americans and those started by newcomer Japanese. In this light, local conflict also has a global dimension.

53.6 49.4 37.2 24.4 27.3 34.8 41.9 27.3 28.8 13.8 23.7 3.7 16 21.6 14.0 18.8 15.3

138 79 78 172 44 46 43 11 59 65 59 27 94 153 57 48 518

Downtown (Little Tokyo)

14.8 9.6 6.5 12.3 10.4 12.4

4.7 18.2 13.6 4.6 16.9

6.5 16.5 6.4 8.7 2.3 10.9

West Los Angeles

Los Angeles County

Per cent of total number

48.1 39.4 33.3 26.3 25.0 23.0

41.9 27.3 25.4 40.0 10.2

22.5 6.3 24.4 25.0 18.2 23.9

South Bay

11.1 10.6 20.3 29.8 31.3 28.2

2.3 0 22.0 15.4 32.2

8.0 16.5 17.9 18.0 25.0 20.0

Other

Note Numbers in bold indicate values of 25 per cent or over.

Source: Rafu Telephone Guide (The Japanese Telephone Directory and Guide of Southern California) (1994). Los Angeles: Japan Publicity.

General services for Japanese Americans and expatriates Travel agencies and bureaux Attorneys and immigration counsellors Insurance Real estate Christian religious organisations Buddhist and other religious organisations Miscellaneous services for Japanese corporations and expatriates Night clubs, bars, and lounges Karaoke boxes and studios Translators and interpreters Computer products and services English-language schools and classes Domestic services for expatriate families and individuals Tutoring and home tutors Automobile repairs Beauty salon, skin care Video tapes: rental and sales Markets and grocers Japanese restaurants

Number

Table 9.1 Geographical distribution of businesses for the Japanese market, Los Angeles area, 1994

22.2 18.1 12.4 17.6 14.6 21.2

9.3 27.3 10.2 26.2 16.9

9.4 11.4 14.1 23.8 27.3 10.9

Orange County

Japanese community in Los Angeles

153

Table 9.2 Opening dates of the Japanese supermarket Yaohan, California Los Angeles area Torrance (South Bay) Little Tokyo (Downtown) Costa Mesa (Orange County) San Gabriel (Valley) New Torrance (South Bay) Santa Monica (West L.A.)

Elsewhere 4/1983–2/1992 9/1985– 12/1989– 9/1991– 2/1992– 6/1992–

Fresno Fresno, No. 2 Fresno, No. 3 San José San Diego

7/1979–5/1989 1/1983–6/1991 9/1984–6/1989 6/1988– 5/1993–

Source: Interviews with staff of Yaohan, May 1996.

No longer living on an island: the transnational community in ethnic conflict Expatriate communities are often regarded as invisible in terms of ethnicity, because they pose no threat in terms of perceived social and economic burdens for host societies (Findlay, 1995: 515). However, even such a transnational community needs a local basis and therefore cannot be kept isolated, particularly in a multi-ethnic city such as Los Angeles (Davis, 1990). First, a social cleavage began to emerge between short-stay expatriates who keep a strong tie with their corporations and homeland, and those who are starting to take a step forward to becoming new Issei long-term immigrants. One of the major topics of conflict has been the process of inculcating ‘Japaneseness’ through education. As indicated earlier, the Asahi Gakuen school was initially established only for Japanese students who were on a temporary stay in the United States and were expected to return to Japan, along with other students who might migrate there in the future. However, because of a decrease in enrolments it began to accept students who had no intention of going (back) to Japan, as well as students who were American citizens. As a consequence, such students came to occupy around half the school, with a massive identifiable gap in Japanese-language abilities between different groups of students (JBA Kaiho, No. 90, 1996). The Japan Business Association, which actually manages the school, therefore started to investigate the possibility of establishing a more formal Japanese-language school that could exclude students with lower abilities in Japanese. The economic decline of the Japanese corporations precluded such a development from occurring. Second, Japanese nationals rarely communicate with, or are occasionally in conflict with, individuals from the Japanese-American community. As a JapaneseAmerican city councillor for the new Japantown area has said, ‘some Japanese nationals see Japanese Americans as below themselves, as the offspring of those who couldn’t make it in Japan’ (Moffat, 1994). In addition, as Moffat (1994) has described: Another problem for Japanese Americans is that many people do not distinguish between them and Japanese Nationals. So when Japanese corporations or politicians create frictions with Americans, Japanese Americans find themselves taking heat for something they have nothing to do with.

154

Takashi Machimura

The location of the Japanese Consulate became an important issue in the conflict between the two groups. Until the 1980s, the Japanese Consulate in Los Angeles had been located in Little Tokyo, the traditional centre for the Japanese-American community. The Japanese government then planned to move it to a new financial centre in the downtown area where subsidiaries and branches of Japanese financial corporations were concentrated. In spite of protest by Little Tokyo merchants, it finally moved into high-rise buildings in Bunker Hills. There is much local ethnic and racial friction between the Japanese and other groups. These include a tension between Japanese corporations and the African American community (Takezawa, 1996). In addition, the growing diversity within the Japanese community itself, as well as the shrinking numbers of Japanese expatriate staff and their families, are now resulting in fragmentation of the social and economic basis of a localised ‘Japan’. Thus the future of this imagined transnational community is now difficult to foresee. Once again, it is the

Business people and their families sent by corporations Old core: finance, trade

Others Locally-hired workers Entrepreneurs Students

New core: manufacture

Overseas Zainichi (Koreans in Japan)

Expatriate Japanese

Ethnic Japanese

Japanese Americans Bilingual (Kibei, educated in Japan) or (New Issei, first generation) English only (Nisei and later generations)

Other Asian Americans

Asian Americans

Ethnic Asians (population of Asian origin)

Figure 9.2 The multiple ethnic boundaries of the Japanese in Los Angeles.

Japanese community in Los Angeles

155

intersection of local, national, and global forces that brings the Japanese transnational community into local ethnic tension. The Japanese community in Los Angeles is now divided as well as surrounded by multiple ethnic boundaries (see Figure 9.2), with a series of interactions between different categories. Thus ‘ethnic Japanese’ are made up of both the longestablished Japanese-American community and the expatriates, most of whom have been sent by corporations but some of whom have come independently, as entrepreneurs or as students. The corporate group is itself divided between those involved in the ‘older’ foreign direct investment activities of finance and trade, and those involved in manufacturing industries. As overseas Japanese communities in the pre-war days, the former group was seen as more prestigious than the latter, but recently such ‘older’ sectors have lost influence. There is some tendency amongst recent independent expatriates to move more towards the Japanese-American community, rather than sharing interests with the company movers. The Japanese-American community itself is partly divided according to abilities in the Japanese language. Bilingual Japanese Americans comprise two major types: Kibei (‘coming back from America’), a second generation who were born in the United States but received their childhood education in pre-war Japan, and the new Issei immigrants who came to the United States from the 1950s onwards. These groups often play the role of ‘middlemen’ between the expatriate Japanese and local American communities. Alongside the Japanese migrants to Los Angeles have also come a small number of Zainichi (Koreans in Japan). While some of these join the Korean community, a number are closely associated with the Japanese expatriate group as locally hired workers and local entrepreneurs, because they can speak Japanese more fluently than Korean. Beyond all these categories are wider American definitions of Asian populations.

From localised ‘Japan’ to a multi-ethnic ‘Asia Town’ or non-spatial Japan? In the 1990s the economic basis for an exclusive Japanese community deteriorated as a result of the decline in the Japanese economy. Affiliated members of the Japan Business Association declined from 691 in 1991 to 389 in 2002. The number of Japanese expatriates from these corporations also decreased from 3,827 in 1991 to 2,653 in 1997 (Japan Business Association of Southern California, 1998). The Yaohan shopping stores, which used to form small theme parks for Japanese nationals, also failed at last in 1997. The Japanese community in Los Angeles is now at a crossroads, particularly given its developing level of internal fragmentation. It is difficult to foresee its future form, but there seem to be several different possibilities at this point. Other Asian communities in Los Angeles, especially the Chinese and Koreans, are very competitive, such that sites and buildings in Little Tokyo have been occupied by active Asian businesses from other groups. A gradual transformation of Japantown into a more inclusive and multi-ethnic type of community such as an ‘Asiatown’ may continue (see Laguerre, 2000, on the case of San Francisco). In addition

156

Takashi Machimura

attention needs to be focused on the non-spatial forms of community, often based on the Internet. The Japanese community in Los Angeles is now more easily connected to the homeland through the Internet, and the effect of such innovations in information technology on the survival of a localised ‘Japan’ as an imagined community is still unclear. The relationships between these spatial and non-spatial communities require more in-depth analysis in order to understand the development of future forms of transnational communities in an era of globalisation.

References Davis, M. (1990). City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles. London: Verso. Featherstone, M. and Lash, S. (1995). ‘Globalization, Modernity and the Spatialization of Social Theory, an Introduction’, pp. 1–24 in Featherstone, M., Lash, S., and Robertson, R. (eds), Global Modernities. London: Sage. Findlay, A.M. (1995). ‘Skilled Transients: The Invisible Phenomenon?’ pp. 515–22 in Cohen, R. (ed.), The Cambridge Survey of World Migration. Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press. Japan Business Association of Southern California (1998). Survey of Japanese Affiliated Companies in Southern California. Kaiho (Los Angeles), Japanese Business Association, No. 90, 1996. Laguerre, M.S. (2000). The Global Ethnopolis: Chinatown, Japantown and Manilatown in American Society. New York: St Martin’s Press. Los Angeles Nihongo Kyoiku Shinko Kai (1995). Asahi Gakuen Yoran (Outlook of Asahi Gakuen). Machimura, T. (1997). ‘Los Angeles Nihon-kei Community no Seiritsu to Tenkai’ (The Formation and Evolution of the Japanese Community in Los Angeles). Chiiki Shakaigakkai Nenpo (Annals of Region and Community Studies) 9: 71–105. Jicho Sha. Machimura, T. (1999). Ekkyoshatachi no Los Angeles (Migrants’ Los Angeles). Tokyo: Heibonsha. Moffat, S. (1994). ‘No Longer Living on an Island’. Los Angeles Times, 4 April 1994. Sawada, M. (1996). Tokyo Life, New York Dreams: Urban Japanese Visions of America, 1890–1924. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Takezawa, Y. (1996). ‘Toransunashonaru na Ido to Bunka Masatsu no Jusoka: Nikkei Kigyo to Afurika-kei Amerika-jin no Sogo Kankei no Jittai’ (Transnational Movement and Multileveled Cultural Frictions: The Relationship Between Japanese-Affiliated Companies and African Americans). Shakaigaku Journal (Tsukuba Journal of Sociology) 21: 14–27. Yano, T. (1975). Nanshin no Keifu (History of Migration to the South). Tokyo: Chuokoronsha.

Part III

Japan’s new migrant groups

10 Iranian immigrant workers in Japan and their networks1 Toyoko Morita

Introduction The recent increase in the number of foreign workers has led to widespread public debate in Japan over the so-called foreign workers ‘problem’ (see e.g. Iguchi, 2001). At the heart of the origins of this debate were Iranians who came to Japan during the early 1990s as undocumented workers. This chapter focuses on Iranian migration to Japan and the networks they have formed in Japan. Although it is difficult to estimate the real number because of their predominantly illegal status, the Immigration Bureau reported that there were 37,457 Iranians in Japan in November 1992, 32,994 of whom were staying illegally. Thereafter, as the Japanese recession deepened, the number decreased rapidly to 14,448, including 7,304 illegals, by November 1998. About 8 per cent or 1,103, obtained residency through marriage to Japanese nationals. In contrast to 280,000 Iranians in the United States and 170,000 in Europe who migrated as refugees and then stayed, more than half of the Iranians who migrated to Japan went back to Iran. This chapter draws on thirty-six interviews I conducted in Tehran, Iran, during the summer of 2000 together with a Meiji University lecturer, Tomoko Yamagishi. Out of the thirty-six Iranians we interviewed, twenty-eight had lived in Japan as illegal foreign workers, while four studied at Japanese universities and four were married to Japanese. We found these twenty-eight foreign workers through a Japanese volunteer, who worked for many years helping Iranian workers in Japan, and a key Iranian informant who had acquaintances especially in G City, Saitama Prefecture.2

Iranians in Japan The Iranian diaspora Iranians in Japan form part of a broader ‘Iranian Diaspora’ (Bozorgmehr, 1998: 3). Following the Iranian Islamic Revolution (1979) and the Iran–Iraq War (1980–88), Iranians became dispersed across the globe, primarily in the United States and Western Europe. Not only political refugees, but also musicians, filmmakers, and artists who were condemned as ‘anti-Islamic’, fled to the West, and religious

160

Toyoko Morita

minorities such as Jews or Armenians, and some ethnic minorities, also migrated to countries such as the United States and Israel. Among various destinations, Los Angeles, known as ‘Irangels’ or ‘Tehrangels’ in Iran, came to have the largest number of Iranian migrants and it continues to attract more. Some of the Iranians we interviewed in Iran had relatives living in Los Angeles and, because of their ongoing communication and ties with the United States, they had often acquired a good command of English. While most Iranians fled to the West as political refugees, many went to Japan as economic migrants, almost always illegally. While Iranians in the West migrated with their families and tended to be highly educated, professional, and entrepreneurial (Amanat, 1993: 5), those who headed to Japan were overwhelmingly single males. Who migrated to Japan and why? Most Iranian migrant workers and guest workers entered Japan during 1989–92. After the end of the Iran–Iraq War (1980–88), the Iranian economy collapsed and many young men found that they had no jobs to go to following military service. At the time, Iran and Japan had a bilateral agreement that allowed all Iranians and Japanese (even tourists) to stay in the other’s country for up to 3 months without a visa. When the anti-Western Iranian Islamic Revolution caused the West to close its door to Iranian workers, except political refugees, Japan remained practically the only developed country that Iranian workers could enter without a visa. During the peak period, about 500 Iranians went to Japan every week. Since Iran Air had only one flight a week, flights were fully booked for several years. The exodus was so drastic in some areas that one interviewee commented, ‘There were no young men in my neighbourhood at that time; all of them had left for Japan’. Even though Japan was little known prior to the migration boom, word soon spread that one could make a fortune there. Many left with little knowledge about either Japan or the Japanese language. Most of the migrants were members of the lower middle-class and came from the south side of Enqelab Street, one of the poorer sections of the capital, Tehran. Some were ethnic Turks whose parents had migrated to Iran from places such as Azerbaijan. Most of the Iranians who entered Japan to work were young men between the ages of 20 and 30. Because Iranian young men could receive passports only after doing military service, Japan was the first foreign country most of them had visited. Most were single – only a few of them had wives and children and very few Iranian women came to Japan to work as there were Islamic restrictions to stop women going abroad by themselves without permission from their husbands or fathers. Indeed, after the Japanese government decided to freeze the bilateral agreement in 1992 in an attempt to restrict the entry of Iranian migrant workers, it became difficult for Iranian men with spouses and children to bring them in. As a result, most Iranian workers have lived in Japan without families. As one interviewee explained, ‘I went to Japan without my wife and child, because I didn’t

Iranian immigrant workers in Japan and their networks

161

know whether I really would be able to stay and work. Some months later, a manager at my workplace recommended that my family join me, but the regulations had already changed and every Iranian who entered Japan by then needed to get a visa and my family could not come. It was a real pity for me’. There is no doubt that this male predominance has helped to create a stereotypical view of Iranians on the part of the Japanese.

Networks in Japan Like other migrant groups, Iranians rely on networks to gain employment and other types of information. There are two types of network that they have developed in Japan: networks in public parks and kinship and regional networks. ‘Public information stations’ – the parks in the centre of the city Parks became important sites for social gathering among Iranians, partly because parks play an important role in everyday life in Iran, and partly because in Tokyo they are centrally located. There was an understanding among Iranian workers that if one could not meet someone at Narita airport, one should go to Ueno Park (in central Tokyo) or Harajuku (the name of a railway station near Yoyogi Park). Every Sunday, a day-off in Japan, many Iranian workers used to gather in these parks to meet and exchange information about work, housing, shopping, and news about their home country. The parks soon became ‘public information stations’.3 In 1990 and 1991, these parks were full of Iranian workers. Some opened small shops to sell Iranian food and Iranian music and videotapes; some, who had been barbers in Iran, cut hair; some went there to meet friends, while others went to get information, play soccer, get hair cuts, or shop; some, as mentioned, went directly from Narita airport to find a job and, if unsuccessful, to spend a few nights in the park. Foreigners of other nationalities and Japanese also went to the parks. Some of these were brokers. As two interviewees explained: ‘A Pakistani whom I met in the park found work for me; I gave him several hundred dollars’; ‘A Japanese whom I saw in the park found work for me; he didn’t want me to pay him, but I gave him some money as a reward’. There were three types of recruitment systems among the Iranian workers. First, they found jobs from other Iranians; second, they found jobs from foreigners of other nationalities, which might include paying several hundred dollars; third, as some Iranians stayed in Japan longer and learnt Japanese, they got jobs through Japanese contacts. In general, the Iranians engaged in what were largely known as 3K (kitsui [hard], kitanai [dirty], kiken [dangerous]) jobs, such as construction and factory work, without health insurance or other benefits. In public parks, Iranians not only saw Iranian friends, but also communicated with Japanese. One interviewee described how when he sat down on a bench in the park one day, a Japanese came up and sat next to him and told him that he wanted to learn Persian: ‘Because his house was near mine, he came nearly every

162

Toyoko Morita

day-off; I taught him Persian, and he taught me Japanese. He was very kind and he helped many Iranians and after I came back to Iran, he visited Iran a few times’. When I went to Ueno Park in 1991, I also saw a middle-aged Japanese man who tried to talk with Iranian workers. He did not know Persian, but he carried a notebook and a pencil in his hand, and wrote down their words one-by-one. He said to me that he liked Iranians and that he wanted to communicate with them and so he went every week and spent a whole day with them. The kind of network that the Iranians had used ceased to function when the Tokyo government effectively cut off access to parks for foreign workers by increasing the police presence. There were two reasons for this. One was that the parks had become a symbol of the illegal foreign workers in Japan. Some newspapers reported on the parks being full of Iranian workers. It was the first experience for many Japanese to see such a large group of foreign workers at the same time in one place and some said they found it ‘scary’. This feeling of ‘fear’ resulted in public pressure being put on officials to no longer accept the presence of foreign workers, and immigration officers began to sweep the parks regularly. As a result they became in effect shut off to foreigners. The other reason was that some Iranian or foreign workers began to commit crimes, such as selling fake telephone cards or drugs in these parks. These scenes were covered repeatedly on TV and the reputation of Iranians consequently deteriorated among the Japanese. One interviewee, who had been in Japan for 7 years from 1989 as a student in a local university commented, ‘The day after a TV programme about Iranian workers in Tokyo was aired, the attitude of the shop clerks and neighbors to me suddenly became very cold’. Another interviewee said, ‘When I went to a store near Tokyo one day, a sales clerk asked where I came from. I answered that I was an Iranian, but he did not believe me. I had just moved to the town, and I had bought two or three articles of clothing and I think the sales clerk thought I was rich, and so he didn’t believe that I was Iranian. He said that I was surely Russian, and that an Iranian could not buy such expensive things’. Many Iranian workers reported having similar experiences. Iranians themselves began to avoid parks, associating them with ‘bad’ Iranians. When interviewees spoke about these parks, they often said that they did not go there much and it was clear that they themselves divided Iranian foreign workers into two groups, ‘good Iranians’ and ‘bad Iranians’. They pointed out that all Iranians were not the same. As one put it: ‘A hand has five fingers; all of them are fingers, but none of them are the same’. Iranians who considered themselves to be good Iranians would often try to downplay their connection with the parks, saying that they rarely went there, knowing that if they said they often frequented these parks, the Japanese would think that they were criminals. As a result these ‘public information stations’ became effectively closed as far as Iranian workers were concerned.

Kinship and regional networks Another important network for Iranians in Japan was based on kinship and regional connections. Once an Iranian entered Japan, he often contacted kin or

Iranian immigrant workers in Japan and their networks

163

friends and suggested that they join him. If they came to Japan, he would go to the airport and do everything to help them. One interviewee described the process thus: ‘When I arrived at Narita airport, my friend came to see me, brought me to his house by train, introduced me to the president of the company where he was working, and I began to work the next day. There was no problem’. Another interviewee said, ‘a manager asked me to introduce another Iranian worker to him, so I called my family and my younger brother came to Japan’. A third described his own situation: ‘When my friend was working in Japan and wanted to return to Iran, he called me and asked me to take his place, and so I began to work there instead of him’. In Iranian society, relations between relatives or neighbours are very strong and they visit each other’s houses constantly. Even when abroad most interviewees said that they called their families at least once a month and they often got information about jobs or housing from families or friends in Iran. In addition to kin and friends, there also existed a regional network. We interviewed a group of five Iranian workers who had such a network in G City, a city near Tokyo with many small factories. They all worked and lived in this city, and met each other there by chance. They constantly exchanged information about housing, jobs, health care, and local news of Iran. They called themselves the ‘G-City boys’ – ‘we got together on our days off in Japan, ate Iranian dishes, played soccer, and went on trips together’ – and they continued to maintain friendly relations back in Tehran. They celebrated together the Iranian New Year festival, ‘Noruz’, and the traditional festival of ‘Chahar Shanbeh Suri’ and they exchanged information and helped each other, if something happened to one of them. They were very conscious of the Japanese view of Iranians as the following account shows: ‘One day, an Iranian thought about selling illegal things in front of the railway station in G-city. We all became angry and talked to each other, and told him that he should leave the city, or else we would beat him up. First, he said that it was none of our business, but we made him leave the city eventually. If only one Iranian commits a crime in a city, Japanese think that all Iranians in the city are criminals and we could not live comfortably with that situation’.

Conclusion The first generation of immigrants learn the language of a country and get information by themselves that they pass on to their compatriots who follow them, creating networks and a sense of community. In the case of Iranian immigrants in Japan, they established ‘public information stations’ and ‘kinship and regional networks’. They exchanged information on jobs and housing and so on, and helped each other when trouble happened. Most interviewees concluded that they wanted to go to Japan again and thought of Japan as a second home country. Japan is clearly still a country where many Iranians hope to emigrate and some speak Japanese fluently and keep contact with Japanese friends even years after they returned to Iran, even though it remains difficult for them to enter the country again.

164

Toyoko Morita

Notes 1 Research for this chapter was assisted by a grant for scientific research from the Japanese Ministry of Education and Science, ‘Islam Area Studies (No. 09NP1301)’. 2 This chapter draws on a number of published sources in Japanese and in Persian on the Iranian community in Japan, including Kura (1996), Mobini (1997; in Persian), Okada (1998), Sakurai (2001), Tsukuba-daigaku Shakaigaku Kenkyushitsu (1995),Yamagishi (1999). 3 This section draws on two published sources in Japanese on Iranians in the parks in Japan, Mamazaki et al. (1992) and Nishiyama (1994).

References Amanat, M. (1993). ‘Nationalism and Social Change in Contemporary Iran’, pp. 5–28 in Kelley, R. (ed.), Irangeles-Iranians in Los Angeles. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and Oxford: University of California Press. Bozorgmehr, M. (1998). ‘From Iranian Studies to Studies of Iranians in the U.S.’ Iranian Studies 31(1): 3–31. Iguchi, Y. (2001). Gaikokujin Rodosha Shinjidai (New Era of Foreign Workers). Tokyo: Chikuma Shobo. Kura, S. (1996). ‘Keiki Kotaika ni okeru Zainichi Iranjin’ (Iranians in Japan during the Business Recession), pp. 229–52 in Komai, H. (ed.), Nihon no Ethnic Shakai (Ethnic Societies in Japan). Tokyo: Akashi Shoten. Mamazaki, Y. et al. (1992). ‘Ueno no Machi to Iran-jin: Masatsu to Kyosei’ (The City of Ueno and the Iranians: Friction and Co-existence). Tokyo-daigaku Igaku-bu Hoken Shakaigaku-kyoshitu. Mobini, H. (1997). Man az Japon Amadeham (I came back from Japan). Tehran: Mehdi Nishiyama, T. (1994). Tokyo no Kabab no Kemuri (The Smoke from Kabab in Tokyo). Tokyo: Pot Shuppan. Okada, E. (1998). Tonari no Iran-jin (Iranian Neighbours). Tokyo: Heibonsha. Sakurai, K. (2001). Gendai Iran: Kami no Kuni no Henbo (Modern Iran: The Change of the Country of God). Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten. Tsukuba-daigaku Shakaigaku Kenkyushitsu (1995). ‘Zainichi Iran-jin: Keikikotai-ka ni okeru Seikatsu to Shuro’ (Iranians in Japan: Their Lives and Jobs During the Business Recession), pp. 329–587 in Komai, H. (ed.), Gaikokujinn Teiju Mondai Shiryo Shusei (A Collection about the Problem of Foreign Immigrants). Tokyo: Akashi Shoten. Yamagishi, T. (1999). ‘ “Zainichi Iran-jin” no Meian’ (Light and Shade of Iranians in Japan), pp. 92–110 in Yamauchi, M. and Ishii, Y. (eds), Nihon-jin to Tabunka-shugi (Japanese and Multiculturalism). Tokyo: Kokusaibunka Koryu Suishin Kyokai.

11 The lifestyles and ethnic identity of Vietnamese youth residing in Japan Masami Shingaki and Shinichi Asano

Although the Vietnamese in Japan are in the midst of generational change (Toda, 2001: 107), very few studies have been undertaken on the second-generation Vietnamese youth (Kawakami, 1991a: 164–5; Kawakami, 1991b: 163–4; Kawakami, 1994: 19–21; Himeji Institute of Technology, 2000: 29; Toda, 2001: 184–5).1 This chapter aims to clarify the relation between the lifestyles and ethnic identity of such youth and the local Japanese community. The political changes in Indo-China in the 1970s saw many people flee the region as refugees, and so-called boat people began arriving in Japan in May 1975. The Japanese government officially granted three Indo-Chinese refugees permanent residency in 1978, and offered permanent residence to another 500 in 1979, marking the start of the acceptance of refugees in Japan. There are today around 10,700 Indo-Chinese refugees residing in Japan (Asia Fukushi Kyoiku Zaidan Nanmin Jigyobu, 1996: 5–17). Until its defeat in the Second World War, Japan was a multiracial empire, but after the war, it changed its policy completely and a social structure based on ‘the myth of a single race’ was established (Asano, 1997: 17–20; Asano, 1998a: 163–78; Asano, 1998b: 103, 109–13). There were of course still many foreigners from the former Japanese colonies (such as Koreans and Chinese) and minorities (such as Ainu) living in post-war Japan but, after the war, Japan prohibited the influx and residence of foreign immigrant workers and, based on this ‘myth’ that Japanese society was composed of a single race, various systems and practices to limit the rights of minorities and foreign residents were maintained. In such a context, the acceptance of Indo-Chinese refugees in the late 1970s, albeit in small numbers, was significant. About 75 per cent of the Indo-Chinese refugees in Japan are Vietnamese (Kawakami, 2001: 48). Most are people who left South Vietnam as boat people and their families. They decided to escape from their country out of discontent with, and anxiety about, the new government after the Vietnam War. Refugees and their families make up about 70 per cent of the Vietnamese residing in Japan and they are concentrated in cities, mostly in Kanagawa Prefecture (2,661 persons) and Hyogo Prefecture (2,325), where refugee relocation centres were established (Homusho Nyukoku Kanrikyoku, 2000).2 In Hyogo Prefecture, about one-fourth (519 persons) live in Nagata Ward, Kobe City (Kobe City, 2000). Some of the

166

Masami Shingaki and Shinichi Asano

reasons given for the concentration in Nagata Ward include: (1) the presence of an unskilled labour market like shoemaking, (2) inexpensive housing and (3) a large number of foreign residents, such as Japanese Koreans, which has created a local environment where it is easy for foreigners to live (Toda, 1998: 150–2; Toda, 2001: 39–42).3 Nagata Ward is a centre for the rubber industry, particularly small businesses that manufacture rubber shoes. Koreans gathered in this area before the Second World War because of this local industry and it attracted the Vietnamese and led to a well-established community centred around the Catholic Church. In this chapter, we focus on Vietnamese youths in Nagata. Drawing upon interviews with 37 youths (aged 12–31) (Kawakami, 1991b: 151–60; Kawakami, 2001: 120– 46; Toda, 2001: 38–52),4 this paper analyses the relationship between their sense of attachment to Vietnam and the socio-economic achievement of their families in Japan. Although past research has focused less on socio-economic attainment than on prior backgrounds (their geographical, religious, ethnic origins in Vietnam), we find the former important for explaining the diverse identification patterns that have developed among Vietnamese youths.

Life history, class division, and family life According to the results of our research, the subjects can first be divided into two groups, ‘Vietnam-born’ and ‘Japan-born’. The ‘Vietnam-born’ group can be classified into two types based on the age when they came to Japan and on the occupational stratification of their parents in Vietnam. The ‘Japan-born’ group can be classified into three types based on the occupational stratification of their parents in Japan. Let us describe each type. The Vietnam-born (n  19) subjects were born in South Vietnam. An elder brother or sister came to Japan in the 1980s as a refugee before their families, and then called their parents and siblings (the youths surveyed in this study) over to Japan in the 1990s under the Orderly Departure Programme.5 In their families, various Vietnamese customs are still practised in terms of fashion, festivities, furniture, magazines, and music. They eat Vietnamese food almost every day and family conversation is mostly in Vietnamese. The children say that they can express themselves freely in Vietnamese, and that they feel that the Japanese language is not their own. They discuss their troubles with other family members, and they feel that family ties became stronger after coming to Japan: ‘In Vietnam, we used to fight a lot over money, but our family became closer after coming to Japan’; ‘we talk more with each other in the family after coming to Japan’. The Vietnam-born group can be subdivided into the following two types. Type I (n  12): Born into poor farming families, they typically came to Japan five years ago. Many of their fathers had passed away before they came to Japan and mothers were elderly. After coming to Japan, the elder children would support the family by doing unskilled jobs such as shoemaking, drainage work, and harbour work. The average age of the children when they came to Japan was 15.5 years and all had had schooling experience in Vietnam.

Ethnic identity of Vietnamese youth in Japan

167

Within this Type I group, family ties based on Vietnamese culture are especially strong. Most mothers do not speak Japanese, and desire that their children do ‘not lose their pride in being Vietnamese, or in Vietnamese culture’ and ‘they should try to be obedient, respecting the opinions of their parents and elders’. Some families even prohibit the use of the Japanese language at home. The children say that they are obedient towards their mothers: ‘what my mother says is important, necessary, and valuable’. Type II (n  7): In contrast to the Type I group, the Type II group were born into relatively successful families of the urban self-employed class, such as doctors, cooks, and tailors, and came to Japan about 9 years ago on average. After coming to Japan, both parents took up shoemaking jobs (including work at home). The average age when they came to Japan was 8 years, and all have schooling experience in Japan. Within the Type II group, family ties based on Vietnamese values are rather weak, and parents expect their children to ‘study hard and go to good schools’ rather than ‘have pride in being Vietnamese’. The children appear on the whole to be obedient, but some are more rebellious: ‘I was told to study so much that I became neurotic and I told my parents to “shut up” about it when I was sixteen ( junior high school third grade)’. Some children who came to Japan when they were young speak better Japanese than Vietnamese and appear indifferent to Vietnamese culture and practices at home. In the Japan-born group (n  18), their parents came to Japan as refugees in the 1980s and gave birth to them in Japan. Family unity and ties based on Vietnamese culture are clearly weak, and children do not discuss their troubles much with their families. The Japan-born group can be divided into three types according to the occupational stratum of their parents. Type III (n  6): Fathers run small trading businesses to export second-hand goods from Japan (farming machines, automobiles, electric goods) to Vietnam. Mothers work in shoemaking or are housewives. Their families cannot be described as being wealthy, but are economically stable, in relative terms, compared to other subjects in this investigation. The parents tell their children to ‘go to good schools, don’t worry about tuition, and be obedient to your parents’. Although some children are rebellious – ‘my parents expect too much’; ‘I wish I had the freedom of Japanese families’ – conflict between parents and children is not serious and there appear to be few family problems. Within the Type III group, both the Vietnamese and Japanese cultural values work effectively to promote family unity. Parents speak Japanese relatively well, and the children understand Vietnamese, thus parents and children are able to communicate smoothly using both languages. Vietnamese customs are practiced at home, and meals tend to be half-Japanese and half-Vietnamese. Parents expect their children to carry on the culture of Vietnam and take pride in being Vietnamese: ‘when my father is drunk, he will tell me not to forget that I am Vietnamese’; ‘my parents have told me to study Vietnamese ever since I was small’. The children on the other hand ‘accept’ Vietnamese culture and customs

168 Masami Shingaki and Shinichi Asano as a regular part of their lives. Some children go back to study in Vietnam at their parents’ prompting and say that they grew to appreciate Vietnamese customs and culture after studying there. Type IV (n  5): In contrast to Type III, both parents work in shoemaking; sometimes their jobs may be part-time or temporary. Life is unstable; in one case a subject commented that one of his parents did not receive forty-days’ worth of income because the president of the company vanished. The practice of Vietnamese culture at home is very weak, and the children see it as a cause of alienation within the family. Parents have a poor command of Japanese while children have a poor command of Vietnamese and therefore they have difficulty in communicating: ‘When my mother scolds me in Vietnamese, I cannot understand what she is saying. Even if I ask her “What are you saying?” she just continues to shout in Vietnamese’. The parents do not expect their children to carry on Vietnamese culture nor take pride in being Vietnamese. Instead they tell their children to ‘go to public schools where tuition is inexpensive’, ‘don’t drop out of school’, and ‘be obedient’. Children on the other hand say that they dislike and are uninterested in Vietnamese culture and customs at home, and may express considerable discontent or rebellion towards their parents: ‘I wish my parents would learn to speak Japanese, and take care of themselves instead of depending on me’; ‘I wish my father, who is currently out of work, would work a little, even if not everyday’; ‘I wish they would not interfere with my life too much’. Type V (n  7): Fathers are absent due to divorce or detention and mothers support the family through shoemaking work at home. This is the poorest group. Mothers are unable to speak Japanese, and children in this group have the poorest command of Vietnamese. In one case, when the child said, ‘There is no point in arguing since we don’t understand each other, so I am not going to argue with you anymore’, the mother just kept on shouting ‘stupid!’ in Japanese. Some children say they do not know what their mothers expect from them: ‘I don’t have the chance to talk with my mother nor do we have things to talk about, and she never asks me about school and grades, so I don’t know what she expects from me’. Many of them feel considerable discontent towards their mothers: ‘If I had a Japanese mother, I could talk to her and she would understand what I am trying to say and I could depend on her’. Some even say that they can expect nothing from their mothers. The children in the Type V group face serious problems. At the home of a high school student who swears that ‘we are nothing but poor’, a mother and five children live in an apartment with two six-tatami rooms. The room screens and paper doors are broken, the kitchen is scattered with empty instant noodle containers, the house smells of the thinner used in the mother’s shoemaking work which she does at home, and the whole family talks of having headaches due to the thinner used. Another elementary school child said that: ‘After my parent’s divorce, my mother suffered breast cancer and often talked about wanting to quit her home job while bad-mouthing the Japanese, and each time I had to convince her not to’. Such families have few possibilities for preserving Vietnamese culture and

Ethnic identity of Vietnamese youth in Japan

169

customs at home, and meals consist mainly of instant food. The children dislike what little Vietnamese culture is retained at home, describing it as a hassle. The children in the Type V group take pride in being independent and show consideration towards their mothers whose life is not easy: ‘Japanese kids depend on their mothers for everything and are unable to do anything’, ‘I feel sorry for our mother, she should be happy’. At the same time, some say they dislike their parents, especially their mothers, and are pressured by the heavy burden of family life, and filled with despair and resignation about their families: ‘I am not going to get married; getting a girlfriend or getting married comes with hardships and problems. If you don’t get married, you may not have the nice things that come with marriage, but you don’t have the troubles either’.

Relations with Vietnam: ethnic identities Each group has different relations with Vietnam and different ethnic identities. First, the Vietnam-born group remember their lives in Vietnam and can speak Vietnamese. They seem to have ambivalent impressions of and feelings towards Vietnam as can be seen in such remarks as: ‘I dislike the Vietnamese government but like the city of churches that is Vietnam’; and ‘I don’t trust the government of Vietnam but I do like Vietnam itself because government and culture are totally different’. They define themselves as ‘Vietnamese’, do not want to adopt Japanese names and prefer to remain Vietnamese nationals. This tendency is especially conspicuous amongst the Type I group. Members of this group have many relatives, including siblings, still living in Vietnam and keep in touch with them through visits, telephone, and letters. They say: ‘I can’t see myself becoming totally Japanese; I want to work very hard in Japan and save money, and then go back to Vietnam’; and ‘I long to go back to Vietnam; I am proud of being Vietnamese’. Some wish to marry Vietnamese, or take up jobs that are linked to Vietnam such as starting businesses in Vietnam or acting as interpreters. Attachments towards Vietnam and self-consciousness of being Vietnamese amongst the Type I group are born from the continuation of awareness of being different in Japan as well as from nostalgia. They fled Vietnam as refugees, and have no intention of going back in the near future believing that there are no jobs there, that life is difficult, and ‘there are many children too poor to go to school’. They say, however, they long to go back to Vietnam, for example, when they feel ‘troubled or lonely or bullied in Japan’. Some say that before they did not want to return to Vietnam, but that has changed now; in the future, they want to live there. With the Type II group, relations with Vietnam and their consciousness of being Vietnamese are slightly weaker. They have relatives in Vietnam, but these relatives are distant and few and it is mainly their parents who keep in contact with them. As this group came to Japan when they were young, they only have a vague memory of life in Vietnam. In some cases, they visited their relatives in Vietnam only after coming to live in Japan and say that it was through this that they came to know the real Vietnam, which ‘broadened [their] view of the world suddenly’.

170

Masami Shingaki and Shinichi Asano

The Type II group see themselves as bicultural and accept this positively: ‘I feel happy to know and live in two cultures’; ‘I like myself for being able to say I like both Vietnam and Japan’. Some have taken jobs at Japanese companies that are expanding into Vietnam saying that they want to make use of their ability to speak Vietnamese and their experience of living in Japan in the hope that it will boost their careers. There are also others who aim for self-fulfilment and self-realization in a global network, by studying abroad in America where their relatives have immigrated: ‘I don’t mind living anywhere in the world; I will go anywhere if I have goals I can achieve there like learning skills, studying, and so on’; ‘Where I live in the future will depend on circumstances; it will be somewhere where I can enhance myself; I am also not particular about the nationality of the person I will marry in the future’. As for adopting Japanese names, one commented: ‘I don’t need a Japanese name for the time being because “changing the outside does not change the inside” but if having a Japanese name is an advantage for getting a job, I don’t mind having two names’. Japan-born Vietnamese, compared to those who are Vietnam-born, have weaker relations with Vietnam and weaker personal feelings for Vietnam. They have little experience of spending time living in Vietnam, and speak Japanese considerably better than Vietnamese. Their image of Vietnam is ‘not good nor bad’ or ‘the same as other countries’. They have never felt a longing to return to Vietnam, and have no intention of living in Vietnam in the future: ‘There is no meaning for me to go to Vietnam since I don’t speak the language, and going back is contrary to what my mother did’. The Japan-born already have Japanese names or want to have one. Some reasons for this are that ‘katakana names (the distinctive way of spelling foreign names in Japanese) stand out and people make fun of them’ and ‘often I need to say my name more than once for people to catch it’. But this does not necessarily mean that they want to hide the fact that they are Vietnamese: ‘In school, I tell my friends to call me by my Vietnamese name if they want to, or whichever name they prefer’; ‘I use my Japanese name at school, but everyone knows that I am Vietnamese because I tell them so’. Of the Japan-born, the Type III group have many relatives in Vietnam with whom they keep in touch. They have visited Vietnam several times, and some have also gone to study for up to a year. Like the Type II group, they see themselves as positively bicultural saying ‘it is good to be a part of two cultures’. The use of their real Vietnamese names and Japanese names is a symbol of such positive identity. The Type III group define themselves not as Vietnamese but halfVietnamese and half-Japanese, with more emphasis on the Japanese side than the Type II group. For this reason, they have little conflict or inconvenience in Japan. Some have relatives in America and France and they look to self-fulfilment in a global network: ‘I don’t mind living anywhere in the world in the future; I am not particular about that; I want to go to many places’. Some take their cosmopolitanism as an opportunity to fulfil dreams in the future: ‘I am interested in world history and when Vietnam comes up, I wonder what it is like’; ‘I want to be an interpreter of Japanese, Vietnamese, and English in the future’. In general, being Vietnamese is to them a potential means of broadening the choices in their lives.

Ethnic identity of Vietnamese youth in Japan

171

In contrast, the Type IV group have few relatives in Vietnam with whom they keep in touch and have little experience of visiting the country. They have strong ambitions about ‘wanting to live normally’ in Japanese society. They neither classify themselves as Japanese nor Vietnamese, and feel that they are ‘the same as Japanese’. They have Japanese and Vietnamese names, and see this as an expression of living ‘normally’ in Japanese society. Finally, the Type V group have, of all groups, the fewest relatives in Vietnam with whom they keep in touch and have little experience of visiting the country. They know little about the country: ‘Does it only have summer?’ They define themselves as half-Japanese and half-Vietnamese, but not in the positive manner of Type III. On the contrary, they feel a sense of conflict in not having a single culture to identify with. As mentioned earlier, most do not speak Vietnamese, but at the same time they speak poor Japanese. One elementary grade six child said: ‘I like art class and physical education; nothing else. I don’t understand my “shakuji” (a mispronunciation for “society” [shakai] in Japanese) and “reshigi” (a mis-pronunciation for “history” [rekishi]) classes. Indeed I don’t understand most of my classes at school which are in Japanese’. Aiming to break away from a state of being neither here nor there, they desire strongly to become Japanese. Due to communication difficulties within the family, they have never had the chance to adopt Japanese names – it is of course especially necessary to discuss with family members when deciding the family name – even though they long to have one. Some say that though they have never told anyone, they have a Japanese name that they secretly use. Several say things such as: ‘I don’t care about Vietnam because I was born in Japan’; ‘I want to change my nationality to Japanese’, and ‘I want to marry a Japanese’.

Relations with the local community The Vietnamese community in Nagata is centred mainly around the Catholic Church.6 At the church in the area we studied, about half the participants at mass are Vietnamese; masses in Vietnamese are also held by inviting Vietnamese priests. After mass, some of the youths practice choir in Vietnamese and local residents also use the church buildings to teach Vietnamese children. The church serves as an important site for interacting with local residents through activities such as volunteer work to distribute miso soup to the homeless. The parents of the Vietnamese refugees, however, find it difficult to interact with the Japanese directly due to language barriers. The children thus play an important role in interpreting for them. As one child put it: ‘There is a wall between the Japanese and my mother; I am like the airport; If they don’t come through me, they can’t communicate’. There are also many Korean residents in Nagata Ward.7 About half of the subjects have good Korean friends such as classmates, friends they met through part-time work, the president of the shoe manufacturing company at which their parents work, and so on. However, the Vietnamese do not think of the Koreans residing in Japan as being an ethnic minority like themselves. On the contrary, they say: ‘I can’t tell the difference between Koreans and Japanese’ and ‘I know

172

Masami Shingaki and Shinichi Asano

about the problems of Koreans residing in Japan, but it is not my concern; I have never thought about learning something from these problems. The Koreans say we Vietnamese are lucky because conditions were worse for them, but that is the problem of the relationship between the Japanese and Koreans. The Vietnamese have a different background’. Individual relations with the local community also differ from type to type. First, the Vietnam-born group are the most positive participants in the community. They have many close friends and spend weekends at each other’s homes, cooking, eating, drinking, and having fun. This group also leads the choir in Vietnamese. The Vietnam-born also have many good Japanese friends. These, however, tend to be the Japanese from church or volunteers because, with other Japanese, there can be considerable friction due to cultural differences. For instance, they say that some Japanese come banging on their doors saying the nyokmum (fish sauce used in Vietnamese cooking) smells and that when they gather they make a lot of noise having fun. Amongst the Vietnam-born group, members of the Type I group reproduce a strong sense of community based on friendship between families. They sense a language barrier in their workplace, school, and neighbourhood: ‘I feel irritated not being able to communicate’; ‘I have no confidence in making conversation, and therefore don’t try to make friends with the Japanese’. They also feel that the Vietnamese and Japanese associate differently: ‘I don’t get along well with the Japanese; I become very tired trying to keep up with their pace’; ‘The Japanese are kind, but with the Vietnamese, it is easier to be frank and become friends’. The Type I group feels a sense of discomfort with the Japan-born Vietnamese: ‘I don’t get along with Japan-born Vietnamese because they are not cooperative’; ‘They don’t join the choir because they can’t speak Vietnamese’; ‘They are a little Japanese and therefore seem somewhat cold, and indifferent about others’. In contrast, members of the Type II group do not feel such a great sense of discomfort or language barrier with either Japanese or Vietnamese born in Japan. They have many good Japanese friends with whom they can discuss their problems. Some are gradually distancing themselves from the Vietnamese community and forming independent relationships with Japanese: ‘I feel more at ease talking to Japanese than Vietnamese when I meet people for the first time. I have lived in Japan for a long time and I feel uncomfortable talking to Vietnamese’. However, such shifts in social relationships are inextricably mixed with experiences of prejudice such as being teased for having katakana names and bringing Vietnamese lunchboxes to school. Some in the Type II group may feel a sense of conflict: ‘The subject of Vietnam is something which I want to avoid because it is a cause for developing an inferiority complex’. However at the same time, some make a joke out of their katakana names, while others, who met Japanese volunteers who spoke Vietnamese during the earthquake disaster, are able to see themselves more positively – ‘there are Japanese people who study about Vietnam and I realize I have nothing to be ashamed about’ – and start participating enthusiastically in the Lanon Club, a social club for Vietnamese youths.

Ethnic identity of Vietnamese youth in Japan

173

Japan-born Vietnamese rarely mix as families nor have good friends who are Vietnamese. They feel uncomfortable with Vietnam-born Vietnamese: ‘It is difficult to talk to them because they speak poor Japanese’; ‘I feel they are basically foreigners in terms of how they speak and how they think; I don’t see anything Japanese in them’; ‘Their skin colour is different and they are very Vietnamese’. Japan-born Vietnamese have more Japanese friends than Vietnamese friends, most of whom are not the Japanese they meet in church or volunteers, but mainly those Japanese they meet in school, at work, or in the neighbourhood. They have often experienced ethnic discrimination, being teased for their katakana names or told to ‘go back to Vietnam’. On the other hand, as such ethnic discrimination usually takes place in private relationships, it does not seem all that different from the bullying seen amongst Japanese and, moreover, since it is also Japanese friends who support them, they usually do not see it as ethnic discrimination. Amongst such Japan-born Vietnamese, members of the Type III group have both Japanese and Vietnamese people whom they can talk to about their problems. They also participate actively in the Lanon Club. Members of the Type IV group, on the other hand, do not participate in Vietnamese-only clubs such as the Lanon Club. On the contrary, they have Japanese friends of the same generation with whom they can ride motorbikes or go to karaoke. Like their friends, they described themselves as generally bored – ‘When I was in the first grade of high school (age 17), I got suspended for riding my bike, and dropped out when I was suspended after a fight’; ‘I am bored with studying, I don’t have confidence in myself, I am not successful in anything despite my efforts, I am sick of everything’ – but they do not see these sentiments as problems and do not talk to anyone about them. They have strong relationships with their Japanese friends, and the least experience of ethnic discrimination. Members of the Type V group have the smallest number of friends, either Japanese or Vietnamese. Though they face serious problems as mentioned earlier, they feel it ‘a waste of time talking about these problems to others’. They do not go to the Catholic Church and describe it as a hassle to be invited to parties at the home of Vietnamese families. Many intentionally keep a distance from Vietnamese activities feeling that: ‘The Vietnamese communities are a nuisance and I feel like breaking them apart’; ‘It is very depressing when there is a Vietnamese kid in the school with whom I have no intention of being friends’.

Conclusion This chapter has given a description of the lifestyles, ethnic identity, and relations with the local community of Vietnamese youths residing in Japan. The following is a brief conclusion. First, the community of Vietnamese refugees is not monolithic. There are many reasons for this, which relate not only to attributes prior to their adaptation in Japan. The Vietnamese community is mainly led by Vietnam-born Vietnamese, amongst whom, there is the Type I group whose identity as a Vietnamese grew stronger after coming to Japan, and the Type II group who hold a dual identity.

174

Masami Shingaki and Shinichi Asano

Members of the latter group are in tune with the Type III group of the Japan-born Vietnamese whose lives are relatively stable. On the other hand, the Type IV and V groups amongst the Japan-born Vietnamese, whose lives are not stable, have become detached from the community. The local Catholic Church and volunteers help create opportunities for Vietnamborn Vietnamese who have language barriers that prevent them from interacting with local Japanese and Koreans in their community. This serves an important role in invigorating the dual identities of the Type II and III groups. Furthermore, as well as the significant roles children play as interpreters in the relations between Vietnamese refugee families and the Japanese, the activities of volunteers who teach children are also very important. Despite this, the Type IV and V groups have little contact with church activities. Even when they do, it is difficult for them to see these as supportive or for them to see themselves in a positive light. Second, the ethnic identity of Vietnamese youths is largely formed by their adaptation patterns and socio-economic achievement in Japan. This is because, unlike the Koreans living in Japan, they were not forced to live in Japan as a result of the aggression of Japanese Imperialism, but came as refugees. Despite the fact that there is little resentment against Japan, the Type II and III groups are the only ones who embrace multicultural identities and maintain personal and business ties with Vietnam and other countries. Most other Vietnamese are faced with the threat of unemployment and poverty in the shoe-manufacturing industry in Nagata and struggle to make ends meet. Third, the family plays a significant role in shaping the identities of Vietnamese youths. In families of Japan-born Vietnamese, there is a language barrier between parents and children, and communication is difficult. Family disintegration is common, especially amongst the Type V group, who are financially poor. While the system of reuniting family members in Japan is based on humanitarian grounds, it can be counterproductive if it is not backed up with proper language education and economic support after such family members arrive in Japan. As the analysis shows, the concept of class is essential for understanding the situation of the Indo-Chinese refugees in Japan. The closest friends of the Type IV group are Japanese youths from the same social class. The cultural conflicts of Type V are expressions of economic poverty and the lack of prospects in life. We can see these groups forging class alliances in the local community rather than national or ethnic identity as Vietnamese. This begs the question of whether the trend towards a multiracial society in Japan will see the revival of a ‘multiracial empire’, which positions ethnic groups in terms of class, or whether a new classless multiracial society will emerge.

Notes 1 The few earlier studies have focused on the use and acquisition of language, and on the development of family networks scattered over several countries (Date, 1993; Hifumi, 1996; Yamaguchi, 1998; Kawakami, 2001).

Ethnic identity of Vietnamese youth in Japan

175

2 The relocation centres in Kanagawa and Hyogo were closed in 1996 and 1998, respectively; after the Japanese government ruled that all ‘boat people’ who arrived on Japanese shores after March 1994 would be considered illegal (Himeji Institute of Technology, 2000). 3 Nagata Ward was one of the most devastated areas during the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake and many of the subjects in this survey were directly affected. Details about damage suffered by the Vietnamese community are provided in Toda (2001: 147–76) and Refugee Assistance Headquarters (1996). 4 We conducted intensive interviews with thirty-seven Vietnamese youths (from sixteen families), aged 12–31, residing in Nagata Ward, Kobe City, during November and December 2000. All the subjects were ethnic Kinh from refugee families from the south of Vietnam, and all were Catholics. According to Toda (2001: 44, 104–7, 117–21, 135–43) 28 per cent of Vietnamese residing in Kobe City and 34 per cent in Nagata Ward are Catholic. We would like to express our appreciation to the Catholic Church and volunteer organization teaching Vietnamese children for their enormous cooperation during this project. 5 For details on the Orderly Departure Programme, refer to Refugee Assistance Headquarters (1996: 27). 6 For details on the role of the Catholic Church in the Vietnamese community, see Toda (2001: 43–5, 59–63) and Kawakami (2001: 125–31, 223–48). 7 According to Kobe Statistical Yearbook 2000, there were 8,446 foreigners living in Nagata ward in March 2000, of whom 86.9 per cent were South and North Koreans.

References Asano, Shinichi (1997). Asia de Manabu Asia-kei Gaikokujin (Asian Foreigners Studying in Japan). Okayama: University Education Press. Asano, Shinichi (1998a). Shin-ban Gendai Nihon Shakai no Kozo to Tenkan (Structure and Change of Contemporary Japanese Society [new edition]). Okayama: University Education Press. Asano, Shinichi (1998b). ‘Tanitsu Minzoku Shinwa no Hensen to Shuen’ (Transition and End of the Mono-Ethnic Myth in Japan), pp. 103–18 in the Study Group of Social Environment Edition, Shakai Kankyo to Ningen Hattatsu (Social Environment and Human Development). Okayama: University Education Press. Asia Fukushi Kyoiku Zaidan Nanmin Jigyo-bu. (Asia Welfare Education Foundation, Refugee Assistance Headquarters) (1996). Indoshina Nanmin Teijusha no Hanshin Awaji Daishinsai ni yoru Higai Jokyo Chosa Hokokusho (Report on Survey of Damages on IndoChinese Refugee Residents by the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake), Tokyo. Date, Shigeaki (1993). ‘Indoshina Nanmin no Kodomotachi to sono Kyoiku’ (Indo-Chinese Refugee Children and their Education). Kyoiku (Education) 558: 49–55. Hifumi, Tomoko (1996). ‘Nenshosha no Goi Shutoku Katei to Gengo Shiyo Jokyo ni Kansuru Kosatsu’ (Study on Vocabulary Learning Process and Language Use of Youths). Nihongo Kyoiku (Journal of Japanese Language Teaching) 90: 13–24. Himeji Institute of Technology, School of Humanities for Environmental Policy and Technology, Faculty of Human Environment, Study Group to Promote International Understanding (2000). Himeji Shimin no ‘Kokusaika’ ni taisuru Ishiki to Gaikokujin Ukeire no Genjo (Awareness of Himeji Citizens about ‘Internationalisation’ and the Current State of Acceptance of Foreigners). Homusho Nyukoku Kanrikyoku (Japan Immigration Association) (2000). Zairyu Gaikokujin Tokei (Statistics on Foreigners), Tokyo.

176

Masami Shingaki and Shinichi Asano

Kawakami, Ikuo (1991a). ‘Zainichi Betonamujin Shitei no Gengo Seikatsu to Gengo Kyoiku’ (Language and Language Training of Vietnamese Youths in Japan). Nihongo Kyoiku (Journal of Japanese Language Teaching) 73: 154–66. Kawakami, Ikuo (1991b). “Zainichi Betonamu Nanmin’ no Ibunka Tekio: Betonamukei Community no Bunseki wo Chushin ni” (Analysis of Cultural Adjustment of Vietnamese Refugees in Japan). Nihon Gakuho (Journal of Japanese Studies) 10: 141–68. Kawakami, Ikuo (1994). ‘Zainichi Betomanu Nanmin no Ibunka Tekio: Teiju Tekio Katei to Kazoku-kan no Henyo’ (Cultural Adjustment of Vietnamese Refugees Residing in Japan: The Process of Settlement and Changes in Family Values). Hikaku Nihon Bunka Kenkyu (Journal of Comparative Studies in Japanese Culture) 1: 1–22. Kawakami, Ikuo (2001). Ekkyo suru Kazoku: Zainichi Betonamu-kei Jumin no Seikatsu Sekai (Migrant Families: Lifestyles of Vietnamese Refugees Living in Japan). Tokyo: Akashi Shoten. Kobe City (2000). Kobeshi Tokeisho (Kobe Statistics Yearbook), Kobe. Toda, Keiko (1998). ‘Hanshin Awaji Daishinsai-go no Zainichi Betonamujin no Seikatsu Saiken’ (Vietnamese Residing in Japan: How They Survived after the Great HanshinAwaji Earthquake). Kokusai Kyoryoku Ronshu (Journal of International Cooperation Studies) 5(3): 147–74. Toda, Keiko (2001). Nihon no Betomanujin Community (Vietnamese Communities in Japan). Tokyo: Kyoin Shokan. Yamaguchi, Eri (1998). ‘Zainichi Betomanujin Nenshosha no Nihongo, Bogo no Goi Noryoku ni Kansuru Ichi Kosatsu’ (Study on Japanese and Native Tongue Vocabulary of Vietnamese Youths Residing in Japan). Ningen Kenkyu (Journal of Human Studies) 34: 51–6.

12 The changing perception and status of Japan’s returnee children (kikokushijo) Roger Goodman

This chapter examines how the mainstream perception and social status of the group of children known in Japan as kikokushijo have changed over the last 40 years. Few groups in Japan in recent years have been as intensively studied as the kikokushijo, and no other group’s image and status have changed as rapidly. Examining this research, therefore, has important implications for the studies of migrants as well as for understanding changing attitudes towards newcomer groups in Japan. From the early 1960s to the present day, a large amount of social scientific research – sociological, linguistic, psychological, educational and anthropological – has been conducted on the experiences of kikokushijo as they have re-entered Japanese society. With hindsight, however, much of this research has been conducted within and influenced by the ‘paradigm’ (to use the terminology of Thomas Kuhn, 1962) for understanding kikokushijo that was paramount at each particular period. As such, this research tended to reinforce rather than explore both the social status of kikokushijo and the perception of them by the rest of Japanese society. According to Thomas Kuhn, all research is affected by the researchers’ preconceptions and assumptions about the object of their study. These assumptions are so embedded in everyday thinking that they are generally taken for granted and rarely held up for examination. When one paradigm is replaced by a new one through what Kuhn describes as a ‘scientific revolution’, this new paradigm is thought to express the ‘truth’ just as had been the case with its predecessor so that those undertaking research within this new paradigm still do not explore its implicit assumptions.

Who are the kikokushijo? The term kikokushijo appeared in the late 1960s and is readily recognisable to all Japanese, though it is significant that there is no equivalent word in either English or any other major Western language (see Kidder, 1992). In the 1960s, large numbers of Japanese began for the first time to go and work overseas to support Japan’s growing overseas export economy. At first many men went abroad alone, leaving their wives and families back at home. Increasingly, however, as overseas

178

Roger Goodman

contracts became longer, more and more employees took their families with them. In 1968, there were 53,000 Japanese so-called prolonged Japanese expatriates (kaigai choki taizaisha); by 1976, there were 150,000 and by 1999, 500,000. The number of children overseas grew even faster: 8,600 in 1971, 16,000 in 1975, 30,200 in 1981 and 50,000 in 1999. The number of children who had been overseas and then returned to Japan grew the fastest of all: a mere 1,599 in 1971; 5,799 in 1977; 10,200 by 1985; 13,200 by 1993.1 It is these children (sometimes known as returnees in English) who came to be called kikokushijo in Japanese. It is important to define carefully exactly who has been included in the category of kikokushijo, since there is a major difference between the image and the reality of such children. It has been widely believed in Japan that kikokushijo are Japanese children who have lived overseas (normally thought of as the ‘West’) for such a long period of time that they have lost many of their Japanese cultural traits; have certainly forgotten many of their Japanese-language skills; and have become imbued with non-Japanese ways of behaving, most notably with Western ideas of individualism. There is no doubt that some kikokushijo fit this model; but there are many who do not, since the definition of kikokushijo is in fact much wider than this general perception suggests. In practice, kikokushijo are defined by the following features: (i) both parents are Japanese; (ii) they went overseas before they reached the age of twenty; (iii) they went abroad, generally, because their father was posted temporarily overseas (note that the children of returning emigrants, especially from Latin America, or the children of ‘permanent’ expatriates (eijusha), such as blue-collar workers who went overseas to work in sushi bars, have never been considered kikokushijo on their return to Japan); (iv) they have been overseas for 3 months or more so that they are registered when abroad as children of chuzaiin (businessmen) or kaigai choki taizaisha (‘prolonged overseas Japanese residents’) rather than tourists; (v) on their return to Japan, they have entered schools that are part of the mainstream education system and not international schools.2 According to Namiki Midori (Daily Yomiuri, 1993), chief counsellor at ISEK, the International Students Education Centre of Kawai Juku, public perception of kikokushijo went through three main shifts in the previous 20 years. (i) Initially there was public sympathy for such students, who were forced to have a foreign education because their parents were transferred abroad; there were demands that such children be ‘rescued’ and as a result, some schools and universities in Japan started making special allowances for them. (ii) Later a feeling grew that those children who had lived in a foreign country should upon their return try to become fully Japanese again. (iii) By the mid-1990s, there was a belief among some people that kikokushijo were a ‘privileged class’ protected by special educational advantages. Sato Gunei (Japan Times, 1996), one of the leading researchers of kikokushijo in Japan, characterised these stages by the epithets: (i) adjustment, (ii) symbiosis, and (iii) exchange.3 As Kuhn points out, paradigm shifts are not clear-cut nor even necessarily unidirectional, but the accounts of Namiki and Sato, who were closely involved with kikokushijo for three decades, provide useful models within which to analyse research on kikokushijo. We might term these paradigms Stage I, Stage II and Stage III.

The changing perception and status of kikokushijo

179

Stage I: the creation of the kikokushijo debate (1960s) According to accounts reconstructed by Kobayashi (1978) and Kitsuse, Murase and Yamamura (1984), there was a set of pressure groups consisting of the parents of the kikokushijo who were initially responsible for creating a public awareness of the situation of these children. To put it simply, these parents felt that while they were loyally serving their country by working overseas, their children had to suffer the effects of missing out on part of their Japanese education. They, therefore, persuaded the Ministry of Education (Monbusho) to examine the issue and to explore just how problematic the experience of going overseas and then returning to Japan was for the individual children involved. Monbusho accepted that there were problems associated with leaving Japan and, in order to alleviate these problems, they introduced a number of innovative and important programmes. Overseas schools were set up to provide education in a Japanese style for children while they were abroad. In 1971, there were a mere twenty-two full-time Japanese schools overseas (Nihonjingakko) and a further twenty-two supplementary schools (hoshuko). By 1987, there were eighty-two full-time and 120 supplementary schools. Official policy (see Monbusho, 1985) was that Nihonjingakko should be set up in developing countries, hoshuko in the developed world. A substantial proportion of the costs (particularly the costs of sending teachers from Japan) of this overseas education would be met by the Japanese government, since it was considered part of the compulsory education system for Japanese children. Not only in supposedly developing countries, but also in many developed countries, however, parents were so anxious about the education of their children that they also arranged for the establishment of Nihonjingakko. Hence, by the early 1980s, while in Asia close to 95 per cent of Japanese children attended full-time Japanese schools, in Europe, around 40 per cent also did likewise. The anxieties of the parents were easy to understand in the context of the Japanese education system, where social status relates closely to educational success, and where such success is measured through the results of tests based on memorising facts from a set curriculum. Japan is not the only country to have the type of overseas education offered by the Nihonjingakko and the hoshuko. Probably no other country, however, has instituted the special programmes that were set up for Japanese children when they returned from abroad. A large number of schools – sometimes known as ukeireko (reception schools) – received money in return for receiving, and showing special consideration (tokubetsu hairyo) towards, kikokushijo. At the widest measure, by the early 1980s, some 600 schools could be included in this category. These overseas and domestic educational programmes were not cheap. By 1980, it was estimated that central government money spent on the special programmes for overseas and returnee children was between 60 and 70 per cent more per child than that spent on children who had never left Japan (Shibanuma, 1982). Perhaps most important, however, universities started to set up special quotas (tokubetsu waku) specifically for kikokushijo. The number of universities and colleges offering such special entrance quotas rose rapidly from just 35 in 1983 to 308 in 1992, and the number of students entering by such a system rose from

180

Roger Goodman

346 to 1,539 over the same period. The significance of this system can be illustrated by the fact that no other group – including disabled people, mature students, members of Japan’s minority groups – has ever been provided with such ‘positive discrimination’ in the Japanese education system.4 From the start of the debate about kikokushijo in the late 1960s, a whole industry of interested organisations and individuals emerged. Most spectacular was the growth in the number of researchers who became interested in the kikokushijo issue. By the mid-1980s, the Ibunkakan Kyoiku Gakkai (Intercultural Education Society), for example, had some 170 members, a third giving kikokushijo as their main research interest, in the fields of sociology, anthropology, education, psychology, psychiatry and linguistics, and over half of the articles in the early issues of its journal concerned the experiences of either overseas or returnee children (Mabuchi, 2001: 6). Journalists and parents also began to write increasingly on the topic of kikokushijo, and together they, the academic researchers and those working for official organisations, produced so much literature that by the early 1980s the Yaesu bookshop in Tokyo had a whole section in the education department marked ‘Kikokushijo Mondai’ (the returnee children issue).5 At the time, the development of the special programmes for kikokushijo was seen as a response to the image of them as being children in need of public support. Kawaiso (how sad!) was perhaps the most common response to the situation of such children and the expression kyusai kyoiku (relief education) was often used to explain the purpose of the special institutions set up for them. It is important to highlight, however, the role of the parents of the kikokushijo in creating the perception of their children’s situation as being problematic. Much of the important research on kikokushijo in the 1970s and early 1980s was carried out by individuals who had either been kikokushijo themselves or were the teachers or the parents of kikokushijo. The parents of the kikokushijo acted as a very powerful interest group on behalf of their children. They were able to do this because of their considerable economic and political power within Japanese society. The majority of children clearly originated from high-status families: in a survey in the early 1980s, nearly 90 per cent of fathers had received a university education; over 60 per cent of mothers had received tertiary education, 35 per cent at university. These figures were far above the average for the age group and were an indication of the access these parents had to individuals and institutions that could act on behalf of their children. Many parents had important positions in government, business, the mass media and the academic world and they were able to use their status and contacts to campaign on behalf of their children. The parents of the kikokushijo, therefore, must take a large amount of the credit for having created the image of their children as in need of help, and for thereby enabling the establishment of the institutions and programmes to provide special help for them.6

Stage II: the reintegration period (1970s) There were many streams of thought that emerged from the literature of the 1970s onwards. Although it is difficult to summarise, the general tenor of the work of

The changing perception and status of kikokushijo

181

the era was perhaps best illustrated in the tone of the Q and A volumes that were produced by the main organisation that represented the interests of those involved in the education of Japanese children overseas, Kaigai Shijo Kyoiku Shinko Zaidan. During the 1980s, these volumes stressed the potential problems of overseas experience for those returning to Japan and some of the actions that parents should take in order to alleviate these problems (see Nakanishi, 1986). Essentially, the experience of going overseas was seen to be problematic in two ways – educationally and culturally – and the best method for dealing with these problems was that children should be helped to become fully ‘Japanese’ again.7 Educational and linguistic problems In terms of education, there is little doubt that many kikokushijo did, from the beginning, have problems catching up with their peers in Japan, particularly in subjects such as Japanese language, social studies and mathematics. Monbusho’s (1982) own surveys, however, suggested that the extent of these problems was not as severe as many believed, and indeed that often students expected – and were expected – to face bigger educational problems when they returned to Japan than actually proved to be the case. Part of the explanation for this lay in the fact that by the early 1980s over 40 per cent of kikokushijo were attending full-time Japanese schools (Nihonjingakko); and a further 40 per cent were attending supplementary Japanese schools (hoshuko) or taking correspondence courses (tsushin kyoiku). Moreover, language was rarely the problem that it was publicly perceived to be. Because most of the students overseas knew that they would be returning to Japan, they tended to pick up the local language somewhat slower than other foreign children, and, depending on their age, it could take 4 or 5 years before the foreign language became their main language (see Iwasaki, 1982; Kono, 1982). Therefore, while it is true that some children had problems with the Japanese language when they returned to Japan, it was a mistake to generalise, as much of the popular media did, from this to the experience of all kikokushijo.8 Cultural problems The most interesting aspect, however, of the debates about the kikokushijo concerned the cultural and psychological problems that they were expected to face on their return to Japan. It was generally assumed that kikokushijo would have problems because of the nature of Japanese society. At the same time, the problems that kikokushijo faced were often used as a means of explaining the way that Japanese society operated. The effect, as shown in Figure 12.1, was that the two arguments quickly became mutually reinforcing. At its simplest, the ‘culturalist’ argument drew on the following points to explain what were seen as the inevitable problems of kikokushijo: (i) Japanese society was a homogenous society with a strong sense of the distinction between inside and outside (uchi and soto), which led to the exclusion of anything – such as kikokushijo – coming from outside unless it could be properly incorporated into the inside; (ii) this sense of homogeneity was engrained in the Japanese

182

Roger Goodman

The way Japanese society works

The problems kikokushijo have

⇒ = direction of argument

Figure 12.1 Culturalist assumptions underlying examinations of the problems faced by kikokushijo.

people because of an island country mentality (shimaguni konjo) and the two centuries of seclusion (sakoku jidai) that Japan had had from the outside world between roughly the 1640s and the 1850s. As some argued, due to these geographical and historical facts, Japan had developed a unique language and set of cultural values that required constant attention from birth in order to be mastered. These values included such ideas as groupishness, loyalty, conformity, perseverance, sense of hierarchy and belief in the importance of harmony in social relations – and they were challenged by the behaviour of those who grow up in the West. The expression deru kugi wa utareru (the nail that sticks up gets hammered down) was often cited in this context. (For examples from this period of work that took this approach, see, Inamura, 1982; Kondo, 1984; Minoura, 1984.) The assumptions that were inherent, therefore, in the culturalist explanation of returnee ‘problems’ were, first, that Japanese culture consisted of an identifiable cluster of values – what Minoura (1984) called a cultural ‘grammar’ – and, second, that by living outside Japan, even for a short period of time, individuals either lost, or never fully learnt, the skills they needed to adhere to these values. As a result of either not learning or fully expressing these cultural skills, returnees were considered to be ‘incomplete’ Japanese. This could be seen in some of the terms used to describe kikokushijo in the 1970s and early 1980s, which included ‘han-Japa’ (half-Japanese), ‘henna-Nihonjin’ (strange Japanese) and ‘chutohanpana Nihonjin’ (half-baked Japanese) (see Horoiwa, 1983). As one foreign observer of the kikokushijo debate in the early 1980s summarised the general perception of returnee cultural status: to whatever extent a second non-Japanese culture was learnt, there was an equivalent loss of Japaneseness in the eyes of stay-at-home Japanese (La Brack, 1983).

The changing perception and status of kikokushijo

183

It was in this context of overseas-experience-as-problematic that much of the research on kikokushijo was carried out in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Kobayashi Tetsuya and his research team in the Department of Educational Studies at Kyoto University were principally responsible for setting up a large number of projects – both quantitative and qualitative – which set out to ‘measure’ the problems of the kikokushijo and to suggest ways in which these might be alleviated.9 It was Kobayashi who first coined the term futekio shojo (nonadaptation symptoms) and who constructed a number of models of kikokushijo adaptation (see Kobayashi, 1981). This idea of a ‘medical model’ for understanding the problems of kikokushijo lay behind the advice that was given to kikokushijo when they visited the special advice centres that had been set up for them by the Kaigai Shijo Kyoiku Shinko Zaidan in Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya. Here, children were given what was sometimes known as a diagnosis (shindan) on the basis of which an educational institution was suggested that would best help them re-adapt to Japanese society. At the same time, the process of education that the kikokushijo received in such institutions was described by some as ‘Japanisation’ (Nihonka), ‘redying’ (somenaoshi) and ‘stripping off [the children’s] foreignness’ (gaikoku hagashi) and the programmes in the schools that they went to as ‘adaptation education’ (tekio kyoiku) (Inui and Sono, 1977; Befu, 1983). Most people in Japan accepted that something had to be done in order to alleviate the problems that kikokushijo faced and accepted the special budgets and institutions that were set up to support them.

Stage III: kikokushijo as a privileged elite (1980s) By the late 1980s, however, it was becoming increasingly clear that the image of the kikokushijo as a group to be pitied (the kawaiso viewpoint) or in need of re-Japanisation in order to survive in Japanese society was no longer tenable. By a whole series of measurements, kikokushijo were clearly doing as well, if not better, than their non-kikokushijo peers almost as soon as they returned to Japan. The proportion of kikokushijo who were gaining entry to the schools attached to the national universities ( fuzoku gakko), amongst the most prestigious schools in Japan, was up to thirty-five times the national average (Hasebe, 1985). At university entrance, the tokubetsu waku system made entry for kikokushijo much easier than for children who had never been overseas. About 90 per cent of kikokushijo made use of this system (Monbusho, 1988) and at some top universities, such as Waseda University, for example, kikokushijo who applied through the system were three times as likely to be successful in gaining entry as students who applied through the normal entrance system. Overall, 48 per cent of kikokushijo who applied to 4-year universities were successful whereas in the rest of the population only 37 per cent continued to higher education, including those who went to the much lower status 2-year junior colleges (Nakanishi, 1986). In terms of success after graduation, it began to appear that kikokushijo were also not doing as badly as earlier believed. A large number of companies had begun to set up special systems to recruit kikokushijo, and in a survey in April 1987 of 163 kikokushijo in the Tokyo area, 65 per cent felt that their overseas

184

Roger Goodman

experience had helped rather than hindered them find employment (Japan Times Weekly, 9 May 1987). A 1989 manual for employees prepared for the Bank of Tokyo personnel department by the head of its educational advice section confirmed that it could be a positive advantage to be a kikokushijo when looking for employment (Sogabe, 1989). Perhaps the clearest manifestation in the change of status of kikokushijo, however, could be seen in the growing competition among parents of children who had never been overseas to get their children into the special schools that had been specially set up to take kikokushijo. By the mid-1980s, it was normally between three and six times more difficult for non-kikokushijo to gain places in such schools as ICU Kotogakko, Doshisha Kokusai Kotogakko and Gyosei Kokusai Kotogakko than it was for the kikokushijo who had a quota – in these three schools 66 per cent of places – reserved for them. Indeed, open discussion began about the abuse of the system set up to help kikokushijo, so that some Japanese children were going overseas – or were being sent overseas by their parents – specifically so that they could be classified as kikokushijo when they returned to Japan (see Ichi, 1983; Kinoshita et al., 1985). As for the ukeireko, which had been given money for looking after the kikokushijo, many of these were clearly no longer thinking in terms of re-Japanisation and re-adaptation. Instead, in several of the schools I researched in the mid-1980s (see Goodman, 1990), the policy was much more oriented towards grooming these internationally experienced children for membership of a future, international elite. Sometimes, the principals of these schools explicitly used famous British Public Schools, such as Eton, as models for their own institutions. It was the hope of the parents of the non-kikokushijo in such schools that their children might pick up something of this international nature (kokusaisei) from the kikokushijo with whom they studied. Perhaps the most symptomatic example of the changed status of the kikokushijo could be found in the final report of the 3-year government-sponsored Education Reform committee in 1987. This report contained a whole section devoted to kikokushijo and stressed the need to expand opportunities for them at all levels of the Japanese educational system. Most significantly, however, kikokushijo were discussed under the heading of internationalisation (kokusaika) and the idea that came through was very clearly not so much that something needed to be done for the kikokushijo, but that something should be done with them; they were assets to be treasured rather than victims to be rescued (see Roesgaard, 1998: 213; Hood, 2001: 63–6). In my accounts (Goodman, 1990, 1992) of the kikokushijo based on research undertaken in the mid-1980s, I described them as a new ‘elite’ in Japanese society who would lead the country into the twenty-first century.

The changing status of the kikokushijo The status and perception of kikokushijo changed very rapidly during the 1980s from being what some saw as a potential new minority group that faced

The changing perception and status of kikokushijo

185

discrimination (see Hoshino, 1983; Minority Rights Group, 1983) to becoming a new elite group. In some ways, the new elite status of kikokushijo could be best captured in the fact that both the Crown Prince and his younger brother, Prince Aya, married kikokushijo during the early 1990s (Singer, 1999). For anthropologists, the new elite status of the kikokushijo served to undermine the culturalist or essentialist explanations that appeared during the 1970s and early 1980s, which had suggested that it was inevitable that kikokushijo would suffer on their return to Japan because of the nature of Japanese society. A number of converging factors that occurred during the 1980s in Japanese society need to be considered in seeking an explanation of how and why the status of kikokushijo changed so rapidly during that period. One such factor was the concern of some employers that the Japanese education system was no longer producing the type of worker needed for the next century. Put simply, by people such as the head of the Sony Corporation, Akio Morita (1987), Japan needed a more creative work force to invent new ideas for its manufacturing industry to produce and export. In the minds of some employers, the kikokushijo were seen as the potential vanguard of such a work force. The supporters (often parents) of the kikokushijo vigorously promoted the idea that these children were more individualistic, logical and creative than children who had never left Japan. Such perceptions were, of course, largely symbolic since, with such a wide range of children included in the definition of the word kikokushijo, only a minority of them were in any significant way different from their peers. Nevertheless, female kikokushijo – and for various reasons there were always more female than male kikokushijo – in particular began to be favourably treated in the employment market, perhaps because they could be employed as kikokushijo rather than as women and hence did not upset traditional concepts of the gender division of labour in Japan, which were still strong in the Japanese employment market in the early 1980s.10 The greater opportunities afforded to all kikokushijo clearly related more to their social background than their personal qualities. A further important element related to the threat posed to schools, especially the private senior high schools and universities, by the very rapid decline in the number of students entering high school during the late 1980s. Many of these schools, faced by a 25 per cent drop in enrolments over a 5-year period, were threatened with bankruptcy and hence were looking around for innovative educational programmes that they hoped would encourage parents to send children to their schools. One of the most popular programmes selected by such schools (and also many private universities) was that of ‘international education’. This included encouraging kikokushijo to apply and then advertising their presence as an attraction to parents of non-kikokushijo children to enrol their children. In part, this explains why schools would count children who had hardly spent any time at all overseas as part of their kikokushijo enrolment. The most important backdrop to the changing status of the kikokushijo during the 1980s, however, was probably the change in national rhetoric during the decade away from talk about ‘modernisation’ (kindaika) to the language of ‘internationalisation’ (kokusaika). The rhetoric of ‘modernisation’ could no longer be

186

Roger Goodman

sustained as more and more Japanese travelling abroad became aware that, by global standards, Japan was clearly already a very modern, if not international, society. If the language of kindaika had been one of conformity, homogeneity and loyalty – in the context of which kikokushijo were perceived as potentially socially disruptive – the language of the era of kokusaika was much more about heterogeneity, creativity and individuality, in the context of which kikokushijo could be held up as exemplars. Indeed, the very fact that the exact meaning of such popular terms as kokusaika (internationalisation), kokusaijin (international person), kokusaisei (internationalness), kokusai jidai (international era) remained very unclear meant that the supporters and parents of the kikokushijo were able to manipulate such terms in favour of their own children, suggesting that kikokushijo should be seen, for example, as chiisana kokusaijin (mini-internationalists) and bunka taishi (cultural ambassadors). The important point to stress, of course, is that the kikokushijo and their actual skills and personalities were largely peripheral to debates and discussions about them; to a large degree they were merely symbols in internal cultural debates about what it meant to be Japanese. Pang (2000: 287) suggests that kikokushijo’s self-identity had gone in less than 20 years through the process of being non-han-shin Nihonjin (first not-, then half-, and finally new Japanese), reflecting the way they were perceived as a group by the wider society rather than any changes in either their experiences or behaviour. The idea that kikokushijo were symbols in wider cultural debates to some extent explains how the perception of them changed so quickly during the 1980s. It may also help explain, to a large degree, many of the weaknesses of earlier research projects that were carried out on kikokushijo. Earlier researchers not only took it for granted that kikokushijo inevitably faced serious ‘problems’ that needed to be ‘measured’, but also generalised these ‘problems’ to all kikokushijo. There is, of course, no doubt that many kikokushijo in the 1970s and 1980s suffered serious cultural, linguistic and educational problems on returning to Japan. There is no doubt also that many of these problems may have been directly related to the fact that they were kikokushijo. Many other kikokushijo, however, clearly benefited from their overseas experiences and research that set out to examine kikokushijo ‘problems’ may, indeed, have actually created problems for such children rather than explored or explained them.

Stage IV: competing views of kikokushijo in the 1990s Four main strands emerged in the debates about kikokushijo in the 1990s. (1) There was still a strong view expressed by some that, unless kikokushijo were re-Japanised, they were treated like members of a new minority group on their return to Japan (what I have called the Stage II paradigm). Some teachers still likened the situation of kikokushijo to that of disabled children (see Fujimoto, 1991) or argued that when they returned to Japan they would still find themselves ostracised or become the object of bullying (Nihon Keizai Shinbun, 1992; Inamura, 1995). This view has always been popular outside Japan especially in the mass media where it is regularly used as an example of Japanese nationalism

The changing perception and status of kikokushijo

187

(see Jackson, 1991, 1992; French, 2000). Kanno (2000) argues that, despite the prevalent view that little discrimination remains against kikokushijo, schools still tend to fault them for what they do not know while giving little recognition to their bilingual and bicultural abilities.11 It is important to point out that many of those who wrote in this vein in Japan were those whose own children had problems on return to Japan and felt that these problematic experiences were denied in the light of the new, more positive, perception of kikokushijo. Osawa (1993), Inui (1993) and Sato (1993) for example, in reviewing my own work when it was published in Japanese in 1992 (Goodman, 1992), complained that the school on which I based my fieldwork could not be considered as representative of the type of educational environment that most kikokushijo entered when they returned to Japan. Osawa (1993) indeed sarcastically called it ‘Kofuku Gakuen’ (Happiness College). (2) On the other hand, there was considerable evidence to suggest that the situation of kikokushijo continued to improve from the mid-1980s. There was a rapid growth in the number of institutions – schools, colleges, universities and companies – offering special advantages to kikokushijo and of kikokushijo taking up these opportunities. Employers were attracted by the enhanced horizons and strong personalities of kikokushijo (Asahi Shinbun, 23 November 1990) and some companies even went to the United States in order to seek out possible recruits, which in turn led to an increasing number of children going overseas in order to become kikokushijo. In particular, the Kikokushijo Association International (KAI) was set up in early 1991, specifically to share personal and professional experiences and for exchanging information about employment opportunities (see Kealing, 1991). The group expressed extreme optimism about the new status and public perception of kikokushijo in Japan and sought to take full advantage of this situation. The position of female kikokushijo continued to improve in the 1990s, and there were many successful women (especially in the media world, such as Yoshino Mika, and the pop culture world, such as Nishida Hikaru) who put their success down to their overseas experience (Japan Times Weekly, 1985; Singer, 1999). Even the idea that those who had been overseas should be seen as part of the ‘elite’ became acceptable; Nakajima Akio, an educator working closely with kikokushijo, termed them ‘neo-elites’ who possessed the ability to understand different cultures and to express their opinions clearly. As one kikokushijo (see MacDonald, 1995) put it: ‘Some Japanese live with the myth that returnees are some kind of chosen Japanese with special abilities’. Certainly, while they were still a minority in terms of numbers, most kikokushijo saw themselves as members of a new elite rather than as of a new marginal class (see Pang, 2000: 280). (3) Partly in support of this idea, there was some evidence of a backlash against the new status of kikokushijo during the 1990s, something that was first acknowledged in the mid-1980s (see Ichi, 1983; Kinoshita et al., 1985). An article in Shukan Asahi (Nagashima, 1992), appropriately subtitled ‘Returnees versus Regular Students’ (kikokushijo versus ippansei), described the anti-kikokushijo feelings at Sophia University engendered by the fact that kikokushijo students had

188

Roger Goodman

been admitted without going through the normal highly-competitive examination process. An article 2 months later in the Shukan Yomiuri (Takasuka, 1992) reiterated the unfairness of the special university entrance examination that existed for kikokushijo. As the employment market in the 1990s became increasingly competitive, there was in some quarters increasing irritation at the special advantages afforded to any one group such as the kikokushijo. Significantly, though, the recession of the 1990s had the effect of stabilising, and in some years even reducing, the number of children returning to Japan each year, which had been rising exponentially during the previous two decades, and this did something to mute the rising criticism of the advantages kikokushijo enjoyed in education and employment.12 (4) Perhaps most interesting was the suggestion that the paradigm for understanding kikokushijo had now moved on to a new, fourth stage. Merry White (1992), for example, whose work The Japanese Overseas (published in 1988 but based on research undertaken in the mid-to-late 1970s) was clearly in the Stage II paradigm, argued that in the 1990s those leaving Japan came from much more diverse and heterogeneous backgrounds than had been the case in the mid-1980s. She believed that in future there might be two tiers of kikokushijo: those from high-class families who would be able to attend schools specially set up for kikokushijo and who would form part of a future elite; and those whose return to Japan would be much more problematic.

Kikoku in the twenty-first century: towards a new paradigm? After 40 years of being in the public eye, kikokushijo have become more widely accepted in Japanese society. One indication of this is that in daily conversation today, such people are more generally referred to (and certainly refer to themselves) as simply ‘kikoku’ (literally, return country) dropping the suffix ‘shijo’ which meant ‘children’ and ‘weaker’ members of society. Also, a clearer hierarchy (both perceived and self-perceived) has developed among kikokushijo, largely determined by where they have lived overseas. Some suggest that this is not only a hierarchy between continents (North America, Europe, the rest) but also within continents (the United Kingdom, France, Germany, the rest) and even, according to some, within countries (Washington, New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco). Employers no longer lump all those who have been overseas as somehow sharing ‘international values’ simply by virtue of having lived overseas, but discriminate more clearly between how long, where and why individual kikokushijo lived overseas and what exactly the effect of the experience on them has been. Essentialised images of kikokushijo are beginning to collapse and they are no longer viewed, nor indeed view themselves, as the same, as Pang (2000) found out in interviews with kikokushijo in the late 1990s. Indeed, parents who were once so active in trying to construct the category of kikokushijo now seem to be part of the move to deconstruct it as can be seen in Machiko Sato’s (1999; 2001) recent books, which concentrate on the unique experiences of a hundred returnee children.

The changing perception and status of kikokushijo

189

In 2001 few kikokushijo look or indeed feel ‘alien’ or ‘out-of-place’ in Japan in the context of the behavioural patterns of the current younger generation. Indeed, many kikokushijo, particularly those who have been to overseas Japanese fulltime schools, appear and feel very conservative and rather ‘old-fashioned’ when they return and are confronted with the variety of modern youth lifestyles in Japan today such as ganguro, yamanba, chapatsu, kogaru and one-kei.13 If in the past, kikokushijo were criticised for looking and acting too westernised, this could hardly be a problem any more. As one kikoku put it: ‘any kikoku-allergy on the basis of a westernised look or behaviour simply doesn’t make sense any more’. This view, of course, is a largely urban one but the kikokushijo phenomenon has always been a largely urban one with over 80 per cent of children returning to live in the Tokyo or Osaka metropolises. As Mabuchi (2001: 3) points out, the number of papers about kikokushijo delivered at conferences has dropped considerably and the fact that schools having quotas for kikokushijo no longer receive governmental funding for doing so demonstrates how the issue has dropped down the political agenda. At the same time, the rapid expansion in the 1980s and the growing recognition in the 1990s of foreign workers have also impacted significantly on the (self )-image of the kikokushijo. The boundaries of what it means to be Japanese have stretched to include kikokushijo, at the same time as they have been set up to exclude some of these migrant workers such as Nikkeijin. As Pang (2000: 281–2) shows, kikokushijo clearly perceive themselves as Japanese and they perceive Nikkeijin as non-Japanese. Lie (2001: 143) implies also that Japanese who have not been overseas see kikokushijo as Japanese, even if they cannot speak Japanese, while they deny the Japaneseness of ethnic Japanese from Latin America who can speak Japanese. As a result, kikokushijo have become both less diffident but also less visible in society.14 While a new rhetoric of tabunkashugi (multi-culturalism) may be developing in Japan, this has not been appropriated by the new migrant groups as effectively as the rhetoric of kokusaika was appropriated in the 1980s by kikokushijo. Given the relative economic and political positions in Japanese society of these groups, this is hardly surprising. The position of kikokushijo in Japanese society has been far from static over the past 40 years. What this primarily demonstrates is the weakness of any argument that has tried to explain the status (either low or high) of kikokushijo at any particular point in time in terms of essentialist cultural values such as homogeneity, inside/outside distinctions or a ‘sense of isolationism’, which is historically or geographically determined. Any account in terms of such ‘cultural values’ does as much to construct social status as it does to explore it. The concept of ‘culture’ is simply a shorthand expression for a confluence of economic, political and historical forces in an ever-changing process within which interest groups struggle to have their view of the world, and their interpretation of important symbols and rituals, accepted as the mainstream interpretation. The example of the kikokushijo is unusual (given the high status of their family background and their parents’ ability to control the debate about them and to create a new position for them in society so quickly) but the lessons from their story are applicable to all cases of migration and return migration, and perhaps need to be

190

Roger Goodman

particularly remembered at the present moment in Japan as recession causes particular problems for Japan’s minority, marginal, and migrant groups, problems that are sometimes passed off as being due to Japanese ‘culture’ and ‘history’.

Notes 1 For the most up-to-date and detailed breakdown of the numbers and educational backgrounds of Japanese children overseas and on return to Japan, see Kaigai Shijo Kyoiku Shinko Zaidan (1999). 2 For more on the definition of kikokushijo in English, see Goodman (1990: chapter 2). For a recent attempt to define the word kikokushijo in Japanese, see Shibuya (2001: 3–5). 3 In a more recent summary in Japanese, Sato (2001: 112–13) uses the expressions (i) dokashugi (assimilating); (ii) togoshugi (combining); and (iii) jiko no kakuritsu (establishing one’s own self ) to describe these three phases. 4 Similarly, as Mabuchi (2001: 64) points out, when discussing the establishment of the Centre for the Education of Overseas Children at Tokyo Gakugei University, no statefunded centre for any other group of minority students has ever been set up at a national university in Japan. 5 Podolsky (1990: 198) found more than forty books written just by mothers of kikokushijo about their overseas and returnee experience, which were published between 1981 and 1985. 6 For a detailed statistical analysis of the social-class background of the parents of kikokushijo during the 1970s and 1980s in terms of occupation and residence, see Smith (1995: 237–38). 7 It is interesting that there was very little research about the problems Japanese children had adjusting to foreign schools while overseas; the emphasis of the debate was almost completely on the problems that Japanese children would have when they returned home. Omori (2001: 230–31), for example, simply states that ‘it is uncommon for kikokushijo to experience ijime (bullying) abroad, but on their return to Japan, they are much more likely to become victims of bullying’. For an account of some of the linguistic and educational problems faced by Japanese children who have attended British schools, see Yamada-Yamamoto and Richards (1999). 8 Overall, therefore, the educational and linguistic problems faced by kikokushijo on their return to the Japanese education system were nothing like the problems faced by the children of Japan’s new immigrant groups who began to enter the education system in the 1990s (see Sellek, 2001: chapter 8). 9 It is interesting to note that research (e.g. Takahagi, 1982; Murase, 1983) clearly suggesting that the problems of returnees were not as great as generally perceived when looked at in the context of other groups of young people in Japanese society, was conspicuously ignored at this period. 10 Female kikokushijo in the 1990s were often categorised as ‘bilin-gals’ and were frequently seen appearing on television and to some extent idolised for their fluent English and their American image. 11 Kanno (2000: 372), herself a former kikokushijo, suggests in her article that my own work on the children has helped create a new hegemonic paradigm within which they are seen as members of a new elite whose educational and psychological problems have been exaggerated, and she is worried that the discourse that results from this paradigm is problematic for those kikokushijo who really do suffer from identity and other problems when they return to Japan. 12 The number of children returning to the Japanese education system each year peaked in 1993 at 13,219 and then dropped 8 per cent to 12,181 by 1997 before beginning to rise again (Kaigai Shijo Kyoiku Shinko Zaidan, 1999: 349).

The changing perception and status of kikokushijo

191

13 Ganguro refers to the dark-faced, pink-lipped and blonde-tipped look that was fashionable for girls in 2000; the yamanba look was named after a ghostly mountain witch and created by adding white lipstick, eye shadow and hair to a tanned face; chapatsu was the fashion to henna hair; the supposedly cute kogaru model was named after a cartoon character called Sailor Girl, with ultra-short skirts and rusu (short for ‘loose socks’) dropping over clumpy shoes and stuck with glue to stay somewhere between knee and ankle; one-kei (‘big sisters’) girls wear an ironic ladylike style known as new-tora (short for ‘new tradition’). For more on these youth styles, see Kinsella, 2002; Miller, 2002. 14 Omori’s research (2001: 247) suggests that both non-kikokushijo and kikokushijo are finding it easier to get on with each other in schools: the latter are learning how to ‘melt into their peer group’, while the former seem to be accepting the different experiences that the kikokushijo have had and are increasingly curious to learn from, rather than ignore, those experiences.

References Asahi Shinbun (1990). ‘Kikokushijo Shushoku ni wa Yuri: Kigyo, Gogaku Ryoku ni Kitai’ (Advantages for Kikokushijo When Applying for Jobs: Companies Have Expectations of Their Language Abilities), 23 November. Befu, Harumi (1983). ‘Internationalization of Japan and Nihon Bunkaron’, pp. 232–66 in Mannari and Befu (eds), The Challenge of Japan’s Internationalization: Organization and Culture. Tokyo: Kwansei Gakuin University and Kodansha International. Daily Yomiuri (1993). ‘Returnee Student Special’. 21 June, pp. 7–10. French, Howard W. (2000). ‘Back in Japan, They’re Foreigners: Those Who Have Picked Up Habits Abroad Find It Hard to Adapt’. International Herald Tribune, 5 April. Fujimoto, Kazuko (1991). ‘Special School Considers Needs of Learning Disabled’. Japan Times Weekly, 18 November, p. 14. Goodman, Roger (1990). Japan’s ‘International Youth’: The Emergence of a New Class of Schoolchildren. Oxford: Oxford University Press (reissued in Clarendon Paperbacks, 1993). Goodman, Roger (1992). Kikokushijo: Atarashii Tokkenso no Shutsugen (translated by Nagashima Nobuhiro and Shimizu Satomi). Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten. Hasebe, Shoji (ed.) (1985). Kaigaishijo Kyoiku Manual (Parents’ Manual for Educating Children Overseas). Tokyo: Kaigai Shijo Kyoiku Shinko Zaidan. Hood, Christopher (2001). Japanese Education Reform: Nakasone’s Legacy. New York and London: Sheffield Centre for Japanese Studies/Routledge Series. Horoiwa, Naomi (1983). Kaigai Seicho Nihonjin no Identity Hensen to Tekio: Life History Kenkyu kara (Adaptive Strategies and Changing Identities of Japanese Growing Up Overseas). META Report I. Tokyo: META Culture no Kai. Hoshino, Akira (1983). ‘Kodomotachi no Ibunka Taiken to Identity’ (Children’s Experience of Different Cultures and Identity), pp. 29–61 in Kobayashi (ed.), Ibunka ni Sodatsu Kodomotachi (Children Brought Up in a Different Culture). Tokyo: Yuhikaku. Ichi, Yuki (1983). ‘Gaikoku no Koko o Dete Tokubetsu Waku de Kyodai ni Hairo?!’ (Let’s Enter Kyoto University Through the Special Network by Going to an Overseas Senior High School?!). Shukan Asahi, 11 April, pp. 167–69. Inamura, Hiroshi (1982). Nihonjin no Kaigai Futekio (The Non-Adaptation of Japanese Overseas). Tokyo: NHK Books. Inamura, Hiroshi (1995). ‘Re-Adjustment of Children Returning from Overseas Residency’. Child Welfare: Quarterly News from Japan 14(4): 2–13.

192

Roger Goodman

Inui, Susumu (1993). ‘Kikokushijo Mondai kara Nihon Bunseki’ (Analysing Japanese Society from the Standpoint of the Kikokushijo). Eigo Kyoiku (English Education), April: 97–8. Inui, Susumu and Sono, Kazuhiko (1977). Kaigai Chuzaiin no Shijo Kyoiku: Kage o Otosu Shingakko Kyoso (Education for the Children of Overseas Employees: Under The Shadow of the Education Rat-Race). Tokyo: Nihon Keizai Shinbunsha. Iwasaki, Mariko (1982). ‘New York Kyoju Nihonjin Shijo ni Miru Bilingualism: Sono Dokkairyoku ni kansuru Kenkyu’ (A Study of First Language Maintenance and Second Language Acquisition of Kaigaishijo in New York). Tokyo Gakugei Daigaku Kaigaishijo Kyoiku Centre Kenkyu Kiyo (Research Report of Tokyo Gakugei University Centre for the Education of Children Overseas) 1(1): 47–66. Jackson, Tim (1991). ‘Children Who Are Strangers in Their Own Land’. The Independent, 24 June. Jackson, Tim (1992). ‘An Innocent Abroad in Her Own Society’. The Independent, 14 September. Japan Times (1996). ‘Adapting to School System in Japan’. 24 June, p. 18. Japan Times Weekly (International Edition) (1985). ‘ Returnees Find Themselves at Home: Living Abroad is Now Less Likely to Mean Alienation Upon Return’, 2–8 October, p. 16. Japan Times Weekly (1987). ‘Living Abroad Helps Careers’, 9 May, p. 9. Kaigai Shijo Kyoiku Shinko Zaidan (ed.) (1999). Shin. Kaigaishijo Kyoiku Manual (Overseas Children’s Education Manual: Revised Version). Tokyo: Kaigai Shijo Kyoiku Shinko Zaidan. Kanno, Yasuko (2000). ‘Kikokushijo as Bicultural’. International Journal of Intercultural Relations 24(3): 361–82. Kealing, Jeffrey (1991). ‘The New Non-Conformists’. Intersect 1(7): 10–13. Kidder, L.H. (1992). ‘Requirement for Being “Japanese.” ’ International Journal of Intercultural Relations 16(3): 383–93. Kinoshita, Tomio et al. (1985). Kyoto Daigaku ni okeru Tokubetsu Senbatsu Seido no Keika to Hyoron (The Progress and Criticism of the Special Selection System at Kyoto University). Kyoto: Kyoto Daigaku Kyoiku Yobu. Kinsella, Sharon (2002). ‘What’s Behind the Fetishism of Japanese School Uniforms’. Fashion Theory 6(1): 1–24. Kitsuse, John I., Murase, Anne E. and Yamamura, Yoshiaki (1984). ‘Kikokushijo: The Emergence and Institutionalization of an Education Problem in Japan’, pp. 162–79 in Schneider and Kitsuse (eds), Studies in the Sociology of Social Problems. Norwood, NJ: Ablex Publishing Corporation. Kobayashi, Tetsuya (1978). ‘Japan’s Policy on Returning Students’. International Education and Cultural Exchange 13(4): 15–16 and 47. Kobayashi, Tetsuya (1981). Kaigaishijo Kyoiku, Kikokushijo Kyoiku (Overseas Children’s Education, Returnee Children’s Education). Tokyo: Yuhikaku. Kondo, Hiroshi (1984). Culture Shock no Shinri: Ibunka to Tsukiau tame ni (The Psychology of Culture Shock: How to Get On in Different Cultures). Osaka: Sogensha. Kono, Mamoru (1982). ‘Zaibei Nihonjin Shijo no Nigengo Shiyo to Kyoka Gakushu’ (Bilingualism and Academic Language Proficiency of Japanese Children in the United States). Tokyo Gakugei Daigaku Kaigaishijo Kyoiku Centre Kenkyu Kiyo (Research Report of Tokyo Gakugei University Centre for the Education of Children Overseas) 1: 25–45. Kuhn, Thomas (1962). The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. La Brack, Bruce (1983). ‘Is an International Identity Possible for the Japanese?’ Paper presented at the International Education Center, Tokyo, 21 May.

The changing perception and status of kikokushijo

193

Lie, John (2001). Multiethnic Japan. London and Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Mabuchi, Hitoshi (2001). Discourses of Intercultural Education in Japan. PhD thesis, Faculty of Education, Monash University, Australia. Macdonald, Gaynor (1995). ‘A Non-Japanese Japanese: On Being a Returnee’, pp. 249–69 in Maher, John C. and Macdonald, Gaynor (eds), Diversity in Japanese Culture and Language. London and New York: Kegan Paul International. Miller, Laura (2002). ‘Media Typifications of Hip Bijin’. U.S.– Japan Women’s Journal, English Supplement 19: 176–205. Minority Rights Group (1983). Japan’s Minorities (Burakumin, Koreans, Ainu, Okinawans). Report No. 3. Minoura, Yasuko (1984). Kodomo no Ibunka Taiken: Jinkaku Keisei Katei no Shinri Jinruigakuteki Kenkyu (Children’s Experience of Different Cultures: A PsychoAnthropological Study of the Process of Personality Formation). Tokyo: Shisakusha. Monbusho (1982). Kaigai Kinmusha Shijo Kyoiku ni kansuru Sogoteki Jittai Chosa Hokokusho (Final Research Report Concerning the Education of the Children of Japanese Working Overseas). Monbusho (1985). Kaigai Shijo Kyoiku no Genjo (The Current Situation of Education for Overseas Children). Monbusho Kyoiku Joseikyoku Zaimuka Kaigai Shijo Kyoikushitsu. Monbusho (1988). Kaigai Shijo Kyoiku no Genjo (The Current Situation of Education for Overseas Children). Monbusho Kyoiku Joseikyoku Zaimuka Kaigai Shijo Kyoikushitsu. Morita, Akio, Reingold, Edwin M. and Shimomura, Mitsuko (1987). Made in Japan: Akio Morita and Sony. London: Collins. Murase, Anne E. (1983). ‘Kikokushita kodomotachi no fuan’ (Anxiety Levels Among Japanese Returnees), pp. 152–73 in Kobayashi, Tetsuya (ed.), Ibunka ni Sodatsu Kodomotachi (Children Brought Up in a Different Culture). Tokyo: Yuhikaku. Nagashima, Tetsuro (1992). ‘ “Kikokushijo Haigekiron” no Shinso Shinri: Kikokushijo versus Ippansei’ (The Underlying Psychology of the ‘Kikokushijo Rejection Thesis’: Kikokushijo versus Normal Students). Shukan Asahi, 24 July. Nakanishi, Akira (1986). ‘Kikoku Jido.Seito no Ukeire no Jittai’ (The Actual Conditions for Receiving Returnee Students and Children), pp. 24–47 in Kawabata et al., Kokusaika Jidai no Kyoiku: Kikokushijo Kyoiku no Kadai to Tenbo (Education in the Era of Internationalization: Themes and Views on Returnee Children’s Education). Tokyo: Soyusha. Nihon Keizai Shinbun (1992). ‘Returnees Find You Can’t Go Home Again’, Nikkei Weekly, 7 March. Omori, Miya (2001). ‘Returnees to Japan: The Impact of Having Lived in the United States’, pp. 228–53 in Shimizu, Hidetaka and LeVine, Robert A. (eds), Japanese Frames of Mind: Cultural Perspectives on Human Development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Osawa, Chikako (1993). ‘Kikokushijo’. Shukan Bunshun January: 146 – 47. Pang, Ching Lin (2000). Negotiating Identity in Contemporary Japan: The Case of Kikokushijo. London and New York: Kegan Paul International. Podolsky, Momo (1990). ‘The Experience of the Kikokushijo (Returnee Children): A Preliminary Study’, pp. 197–213 in Daly, Donald J. and Sekine, Tom T. (eds), Discovering Japan: Issues for Canadians. North York, Ontario: Captus University Publications. Roesgaard, Marie (1998). Moving Mountains: Japanese Education Reform. Aarhus: Aarhus University Press.

194

Roger Goodman

Sato, Gunei (1993). ‘Kikokushijo’. Ibunkakan Kyoiku 7: 176–79. Sato, Gunei (2001). ‘Kaigai kikokushijo kyoiku: Atarashii rinen no kochiku ni mukete’ (The Education of Overseas Japanese Children and Kikokushijo: Towards the Construction of New Ideologies), pp. 105–18 in Amano, Masaharu and Murata, Yokuo (eds), Ibunka Kyosei Shakai no Kyoiku (Multicultural Education). Tokyo: Tamagawa Daigaku Shuppanbu. Sato, Machiko (1999). Bairingaru Japanîzu: Kikokushijo Hyakunin no Kino, Kyo, Ashita (Bilingual Japanese: The Past, Present and Future of One Hundred Returnee Children). Tokyo: Jinbun Shoin. Sato, Machiko (2001). Farewell to Nippon: Japanese Lifestyle Migrants in Australia. Melbourne: Trans Pacific Press. Sellek, Yoko (2001). Migrant Labour in Japan. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Shibanuma, Susumu (1982). ‘Tenki ni Tatsu Kaigaishijo Kyoiku’ (Overseas Children’s Education at the Turning Point), pp. 153–57 in Yamazaki (ed.), Kokusaiha Shuryu Sengen: Stop. Out kara no Hasso (Declaration of the Mainstream Internationalist Faction: Conceptions from the Stop Out). Tokyo: Nihon Recruit Centre Shuppanbu. Shibuya, Maki (2001). ‘Kikokushijo’ no Ichi Tori no Seiji: Kikokushijo Kyoiku Gakkyu no Sa-i no Ethnography (The Politics of Social Locating ‘Kikokushijo’: An Ethnography of the Difference of the Educational Levels of Kikokushijo). Tokyo: Keiso Shobo. Singer, Jane (1999). ‘Returnees Now More at Home’. Japan Quarterly, April–June: 41–8. Smith, Herman W. (1995). The Myth of Japanese Homogeneity: Social-Ecological Diversity in Education and Socialization. New York: Nova Science Publishers Inc. Sogabe Yasusaburo (ed.) (1989). Kaigaishijo Kyoiku Q and A (Overseas Children’s Education: Questions and Answers). Nikkeiren Kohobu, Tokyo. Takahagi Yasuji et al. (1982). Kaigai.Kikokushijo ni okeru Culture Shock no Yoin Bunseki to Tekio Programme no Kaihatsu Seiko (The Trial and Development of a Programme for Adaptation and Fundamental Analysis of Culture Shock Among Overseas and Returnee Children). Tokyo: Tokyo Gakugei Daigaku Kaigaishijo Kyoiku Centre. Takasuka, Shigefumi (1992). ‘Kikokushijo nyushi waku wa zurui ka?’ (Is the Special Entrance Network for Kikokushijo Unfair?). Shukan Yomiuri, 13 September, pp. 34–8. White, Merry (1988). The Japanese Overseas: Can They Go Home Again? New York: Free Press. White, Merry (1992). ‘Review of “Japan’s ‘International Youth’.” ’ Journal of Japanese Studies 18(1): 250–53. Yamada-Yamamoto, Asako and Richards, Brian (eds) (1999). Japanese Children Abroad: Cultural, Educational and Language Issues. Clevedon, Philadelphia, Toronto, Sydney, Johannesburg: Multilingual Matters Ltd.

13 Nikkei communities in Japan Daniela de Carvalho

According to the 1990 revision of the Japanese Immigration Control Law, only foreign nationals of Japanese descent (Nikkeijin) up to the third generation, or the spouses of such people, are permitted to reside in Japan without legal or employment restrictions. This new law has led to a significant increase in the employment of people of Japanese descent from South America, in particular from Brazil, where many Japanese had emigrated during the first half of the twentieth century. In 1999, the number of Brazilian Nikkeijin residing in Japan was estimated at 224,299 (Japanese Immigration Association, 2000). Over the past 10 years the number of Nikkeijin has grown and they currently constitute one of the largest ethnic groups in Japan. There are signs, moreover, that many of them do not intend to return to Brazil. Increasing numbers are accompanied by their families and the number of those who re-emigrate to Japan from Brazil for a second time has also been on the increase. In the space of just 10 years, they have effectively established their own distinct communities in Japan. The difficulties of incorporating foreigners into Japanese society have been illustrated by the experience of the Koreans and the Chinese. However, these South Americans now immigrating to Japan have Japanese blood. Although they are welcomed by the government, a question remains as to whether they are equally welcomed by the Japanese people. The extent to which people of Japanese descent can be fully integrated into Japanese society depends not only on government policy but also on their encounters and relationships with the local population. This question, in turn, depends upon the fundamental issue of blood versus culture: how they come to terms with the great importance attached to Japanese ‘blood’ on the one hand, and the belief, on the other, that people raised in another culture are different from those raised in Japan. Though such issues are frequently aired in popular debate, they have not so far received much scholarly attention – a lacuna this chapter aims to answer. The chapter is based on research conducted over the period 1992–99 and is part of a monograph that has recently been published (Carvalho, 2002). It opens with an overview of the 10-year period of migration and the creation of ethnic communities and discusses the possibilities for, and the implications of, long-term settlement in Japan. To better understand the making of a Nikkei minority, the issue of discrimination against Nikkeijin is discussed and a town with a large

196

Daniela de Carvalho

concentration of Nikkeijin is examined. This is followed by an exploration of the contact between the Japanese and the Nikkeijin and the mutual perceptions they have developed. Finally, I conclude that issues related to the presence of Nikkeijin are closely related to the emerging diversity of Japanese society.

Re-emigration to Japan and prospects for settlement Since 1990, Brazilians of Japanese descent have accounted for the largest proportion of the foreign labour supply in Japan. Recruited by job brokers, they tend to be employed in the manufacturing and, to a lesser extent, the service sector of the economy. The economic recession led to a fall in the number of migrants from Brazil by the first half of 1992 compared with the same period over the previous year. However, this contrasts with the increasing number of re-migrants, a trend that suggests intended settlement in Japan. In order to discuss the future of the Nikkeijin in Japan, we have to consider the process of immigration itself. Initially, immigrants in general tend to regard themselves as guest workers and their commitments are to their countries of origin. As time goes by, they realise that it is not possible to become as wealthy as they had first thought or in such a short period of time. Often it is at this stage that family reunion occurs. Cultural links to the home country are maintained while a better adjustment to the host society is sought. It is also at this stage that the immigrants tend to get more involved in the society of adoption. They set up shops where they can buy products from the home country, schools for their children, ethnic associations and the like. The final stage is that of permanent settlement, which, depending on the migration policies and the social response of the receiving country, leads either to integration and eventual citizenship or socio-economic marginalisation. Based on the above, it seems reasonable to say that some Nikkeijin have progressed to the middle stage in the migration process. However, residence in Japan does not necessarily imply full integration into Japanese society. This at any rate seems to be the opinion of researchers and commentators who foresee the possibility that the Nikkeijin may well go through the same experience as other minority populations in Japan (e.g. Komai, 1995; Yamanaka, 1996). In other words, they may be compelled to assimilate behaviourally to Japanese cultural norms without actually being accepted into mainstream society. In this event, the Nikkeijin would be confined to a marginal position as a source of available labour subject to industrial needs. They would thus suffer the fate common to many migrants in the world who are accepted merely as citizens of second-class status. These concerns have some foundation. The making of a minority is a collusive process, however, that requires the active participation of both the majority and the minority concerned.

Perceptions of the Nikkeijin: ‘blood’ versus culture Culture and race have been discursively related in the historical construction of Japanese identity. The concepts of ‘blood’, Japanese culture and Japanese

Nikkei communities in Japan

197

language have become inextricably linked and have been used to determine who is (and can be) Japanese. The Nikkeijin as a category dismantle this concept, since they share the ‘blood’ but not the commonalties of Japanese culture and mother tongue. What people perceive and use for making distinctions depends more on what is socially defined as important than on what stands out. In the absence of clear phenotypical differences, other characteristics or criteria (e.g. cultural) can be made to play the same role in distinguishing a group (Miles, 1982: 64). In the last analysis what is perhaps most important is the attribution of significance to differences (observed or imagined). Research must, therefore, focus on people’s perception of a sense of difference in relation to others who are thought of as being ‘not us’. In Barth’s terms, groups, together with their officials, researchers and commentators, define themselves at the boundaries of discursive difference. Thus, it is essential to examine what has been written about the Nikkeijin and the different views expressed in such writing. There are two competing ‘narratives’ about Japanese emigrants that convey contrasting attitudes. According to one version, Japanese emigrants were traitors who abandoned their country in crisis. According to another, they were obliged to leave Japan and, by doing so, helped the country by sending remittances, actions for which they and their offspring should be respected. Different accounts follow from this. Some report that traditionally Japanese nationals have tended to treat the Nikkeijin as inferior (even as traitors) and as such they have a harder time in Japan than other foreigners because there is less tolerance towards them. In other accounts, the ‘Japanese aspects’ of the Nikkeijin are emphasised. For instance, according to Hayashida (1976), they are referred to as Nihonjin and the Japanese sense of a racial bond with the second- and third-generation Nikkeijin is often great enough to overlook their linguistic handicaps. However, these claims refer to North American Nikkeijin, whose presence has never been significant in Japan. In analysing how Brazilian Nikkeijin are perceived in Japan, we also have to consider the image of South America in Japan. This is more often than not associated with Indians, samba, carnival and drugs plus the international inventory of stereotypes attached to poverty, elements of which tend to accrue to the Nikkeijin. An analysis of perceptions by Japanese officials, media and researchers suggests that South American Nikkeijin are described as having ‘Japanese blood’ and being ‘culturally non-Japanese’. Nevertheless, while researchers tend to focus more on their ‘Brazilian’ aspects, officials (and businessmen) tend to focus more on their ‘Japanese’ aspects. Media representations have been changing over the last 10 years and increasingly references are made to them as Brazilians and attention given to their ethnic communities. The focus therefore is on ‘blood’ versus ‘culture’ and the presumed inability of the Nikkeijin to adjust to Japanese society together with the difficulty on the part of Japanese society in coping with their ‘cultural differences’. It may be asserted without much fear of contradiction that problematising the presence of the Nikkeijin in Japan certainly helps to construct them as the ‘other within’.

198

Daniela de Carvalho

It has also been suggested that the Nikkeijin have been subject to discrimination in Japan. Whether or not this is true is an important point in analysing the situation of the Nikkeijin in Japan. Hence it is to this subject that I now wish to turn.

Are the Nikkeijin discriminated against? According to some accounts, the Nikkeijin have been subject to serious discrimination in their daily lives. To give an example, according to Yamanaka (1996: 84), the Nikkeijin feel discriminated in the workplace based on differences in language and culture. Admittedly, reports of discrimination against the Nikkeijin are not infrequent. Cases of children being bullied at school have been reported in the press. It also happens that in the workplace, Japanese personnel tend to blame the Brazilians for faulty workmanship. In areas with a large concentration of Nikkeijin, as in Hamamatsu, problems have been reported by the local population over the last few years (International Press, 11 July 1998). The case of Herculano, a 14-year-old Brazilian Nikkeijin who was beaten to death in 1997 by a Japanese gang in Komaki (Aichi), deserves special attention. There have been attempts to present the young boy as a victim of discrimination on the part of Japanese society, but this was not always how the situation was interpreted. Brazilians who were interviewed in Toyohashi (Aichi) tended to blame Brazilian parents in Japan who leave their children on their own and to remark that Brazil is a country of violence. Whilst it is true that the Nikkeijin are often presented as suffering from discrimination, research conducted so far has not clearly shown this to be the case. For example, Tsuda’s (1998) findings indicate that, in general, although there were negative evaluations of the social and cultural characteristics of the Nikkeijin, overtly prejudiced behaviour was unusual. Very few Nikkeijin I interviewed had actually experienced any discrimination. On the contrary, they tended to think that the Japanese had a good opinion of them. However, it should not be assumed from this that there were no problems. Interviews held in Aichi, Okayama and Shizuoka Prefectures clarified some aspects of these findings. One aspect that seemed to emerge was that being from a Third World country may account as much for a sense of discrimination as not being able to behave as ‘proper Japanese’. An aspect that cannot be underestimated in analysing feelings of discrimination is the sense of alienation and loss of social status that migrants often experience in performing low-skilled jobs that they would not do in their home countries in order to earn the money that they could not earn there. The fact that their parents and/or grandparents were immigrants may further reinforce their susceptibility to discrimination. It should be noted that much has changed since the early years of migration. Initially, everything was difficult. As many of them say, even making a phone call was problematic. Just as conditions changed, so too did the lived experiences of the Nikkeijin over a period of 10 years. Life became easier in particular because of the emergence of networks and ethnic communities.

Nikkei communities in Japan

199

It is difficult to assess what has actually been happening but, whilst it is probably true that discrimination does exist, it would be misleading to exaggerate its extent and assume that it is absolute. I do not want to reject the idea that the Nikkeijin face difficulties in Japan. I do, however, challenge the idea of the inevitability of conflicts and suggest that what happens between the Nikkeijin and Japanese society as a whole depends on how they negotiate their encounters. Some of the relevant issues can best be explicated in reference to an actual Nikkei community, a practical instance of which I shall attempt to evoke hereafter.

Nikkei communities in Japan As discussed before, during the first stage of immigration there is a tendency to preserve attachments to the country of origin and to create enclaves in the host society that are cultural extensions of the country of origin. This is usually aggravated by the cultural distance that separates immigrants from the native population. In this regard, considering the history of Japanese communities in Brazil, it seems unlikely that the majority of the Nikkeijin had absolutely no previous contact with Japanese habits and customs, although it is a fact that the majority do not speak Japanese. Whatever the case, it has become increasingly apparent that they are creating their own communities isolated from society at large. The ¯ izumi (Gunma Prefecture) deserves special mention as it has been instance of O referred to as ‘a model case of how Japanese and non-Japanese can co-exist’, ‘the best example of the integration of the Nikkeijin’ (The Nikkei Weekly, 21 October 1996 and Made in Japan, 1 August 1997).

¯ izumi O ¯ izumi has been called ‘The most Brazilian town in all Japan’, ‘the town of the O Brazilian Nikkeijin’ and ‘Samba no Machi’ (the City of Samba). Located in ¯ izumi is one of hundreds of small towns in Japan that Gunma Prefecture, O depend on foreign labourers. There are 200 small- and medium-sized contractors ¯ izumi employing about 4,000 foreign labourers. in O The town has had a chronic labour shortage since the war and the situation worsened with Japanese economic expansion. In May 1987, an automobile parts manufacturer employed six Pakistanis (Look Japan, October 1991: 32). In 1989, soon after the amendment to the immigration law, an association of small- and ¯ izumi city and two neighbouring towns in need medium-sized companies from O of labourers set up an organisation to recruit overseas labourers. According to the book ‘Samba no Machi’ (Shinbunsha, 1997), companies started to recruit the Nikkeijin and also Chinese trainees because of a reluctance to depend solely on one source of labour. They also thought about recruiting children of Japanese descent in Manchuria. However, this policy was abandoned for political reasons; thereafter, it was decided to concentrate efforts on Japanese South Americans, offering them good living and working conditions. ¯ izumi has the highest concentration of foreigners of all Japanese municipaliO ties, and nearly 80 per cent of them are from Brazil. In 1986, there were no

200 Daniela de Carvalho ¯ izumi; by 1990, there were 821 of them working in sixty-three Brazilians in O companies within the Tomo Area Association for the Promotion of Stable ¯ izumi had been born in Brazil Employment. Six years later, 3,273 inhabitants of O (Shinbunsha, 1997). On Saturdays and Sundays, the number of Brazilians grows three times larger because of the temporary influx of friends and relatives from other regions in Japan who go to visit or just sample the atmosphere. There are more than fifty Brazilian-owned commercial houses and a shopping centre that attracts some 4,000 customers every weekend, the large majority of them Brazilians. There is a pharmacy that labels its products in both Japanese and Portuguese. There is also a school of samba and, though the Brazilians participate ¯ izumi’s matsuri (festival), they do not dress in the yukata (summertime cotin O ton kimono) and do not dance the bon odori (Japanese dance), but instead they prefer to dance the samba and other Latin American rhythms and wear carnival ¯ izumi have sought to make the samba group a major costumes. Officials in O ¯ izumi are often associated with samba and tourist attraction and references to O carnival, ‘symbols’ of Brazil. Fifteen thousand tourists from all over the country go to see the festival. ¯ izumi were Brazilians. The increase in numIn 1997, half the babies born in O bers of children led to a new educational market and the number of Brazilian kindergartens and schools has accordingly increased. The presence of a Brazilian population has promoted all sorts of new businesses and the owner of the shopping ¯ izumi. mall is a good example of a Dekasegi (emigrant) who enriched himself in O In addition to the shopping mall he also owns the discotheque ‘Made in Brazil’ and two restaurants. The owners of shops serving the Brazilian population tend to be Nikkeijin who came earlier than the others, are fluent in Japanese and are in contact with the local Japanese. However, the owner of the ‘Plaza no Komaki’ shopping centre, opened in April 1998, is Japanese and is also the president of a conglomerate that employs Brazilians (about 97 per cent of the personnel). For businessmen, it is important that ‘although the Nikkeijin were not born in Japan, they are like the Japanese’ and companies have promoted initiatives to help their legal foreign workers (Shinbunsha, 1997). In this regard, the representative of an industrial organisation, Genshiro Kouchi, claims that Brazilians tend to stay ¯ izumi partly because they are invited to bring their families longer in O (The Nikkei Weekly, 21 October 1996). Companies have also been buying and distributing video tapes of a film made by a Brazilian Nikkeijin about the life of Japanese immigrants in Brazil and in this way make the population aware that the Brazilians who are in the city are the descendants of Japanese emigrants (O Estado de São Paulo, 13 March 1996). The policy of the authorities deserves special mention. The mayor carried out a campaign to get citizens to accept South Americans of Japanese descent as relatives who have returned after a long absence (Oka, 1994: 57). Apparently, the ¯ izumi is seen as an example of successful coexiscampaign was successful and O ¯ izumi has a reputation for tence between foreigners and Japanese nationals. O being open to foreigners and the determination to integrate foreign residents dates back to 1992. At that time the town already offered Japanese language classes and

Nikkei communities in Japan

201

Japanese-Portuguese translators. The city planning department claims that the local government ‘treats Japanese and foreign citizens [Nikkeijin] as equals’ ¯ izumi (Look Japan, February 1994: 6). For the mayor, the Brazilians are helping O because few Japanese want to work on assembly lines. The Nikkeijin tend to be aware of their importance in the local labour market ¯ izumi from bankruptcy. They also say that and assert the claim that they saved O ¯ izumi and they are ‘westernising’ the city, rewriting the they feel comfortable in O history of their ancestors in São Paulo (Made in Japan, 1 August 1997: 53). Not everyone agrees, however, with the above views and some local residents remark that instead of ‘coexistence’, the Nikkeijin stay aloof from the Japanese people, and the native population in general show some concern about the increase in the numbers of Nikkeijin: ‘I feel a foreigner in my own city’ remarked a local Japanese. There are also Nikkeijin who will remark that their own people do not understand that the rules in Japan are different and behave as if they were in Brazil (Made in Japan, 1 June 1998: 2). ¯ izumi gives a clear picture of the situation of the Nikkeijin in Japan. They are O needed to supply the local labour market and, accordingly, there have been efforts on the part of the officials and business people to ‘integrate’ them whilst recognising their cultural ‘differences’. Partly as a consequence of these efforts, they have increased in numbers in recent years and have established their own networks and ethnic communities. Whilst the local population acknowledges their presence but largely ignores them, the Nikkeijin for their part recreate a version of the ‘Brazilian life-style’ in equal indifference as to what surrounds them. From what has been argued so far and based on the evidence that has been presented, I suggest that circumstances have evolved in Japan conducive to the formation of a minority and that the Nikkeijin should in fact be seen as constituting a new minority.

Constructing ‘differences’ A minority is formed when two groups are brought together in social interaction and establish ‘differences’. The general result of this nexus of ‘differences’ depends largely upon the attitudes of both the majority and the minority. While it is the majority (in this case the Japanese) who exert a major impress upon the formation of an immigrant underclass, the two entities acting and re-acting upon each other are needed to complete the process of making a minority. With this in mind, we shall focus now on the Nikkeijin as a minority. As mentioned earlier, the Nikkeijin have created their own communities that are isolated from the larger society. An analysis of findings from my own fieldwork shows how mutual contact has led to a process involving the assertion of differences. It is to these findings we now turn. There are many significant examples of how the Nikkeijin attempt to differentiate themselves from the Japanese. The Nikkeijin cultivate the ‘Brazilian flair’ ( jeitinho brasileiro) supposedly characteristic of Brazilian people. The communities often portray themselves and are themselves portrayed as dancing samba

202

Daniela de Carvalho

half-naked on the streets according to the stereotypical image of Brazilians. They eat Brazilian dishes, they buy products ‘made in Brazil’ and wear Brazilianimported clothes such as jeans and underwear on the grounds that Japanese sizes do not fit Nikkei bodies. By the same token, Japanese hairdressers do not know how to cut their hair and cakes for their parties must be made by Brazilians. Most Nikkei informants were familiar with Japanese tradition. However, they thought their knowledge of ‘correct Japanese behaviour [to be] insufficient’. As one interviewee remarked, ‘by the way we dress, we talk and walk, it is clear to the Japanese that we are Brazilians’. Treated like foreigners, they sometimes find this suits them. As a 35-year-old Nisei (second generation) put it: ‘I am a foreigner. My hair is long, I have a beard, I gesticulate, my meishi (business card) is written in katakana. There are no doubts that I am a foreigner who lives in Japan’. Samba is the clearest symbol of how Nikkeijin attempt to assert themselves as Brazilians. Although in Brazil few Nikkeijin actually dance samba and participate in carnival, in Japan any occasion is used to express their ‘Brazilianness’ through these customs. Apparently, the Japanese also expect them to perform them and events organised for the Brazilians always include samba and Brazilian carnival. ¯ izumi, carnival has become almost an official date in the calendar and, on that In O occasion, the Nikkeijin do their best to reproduce their own version of this festi¯ izumi is not unique in this and carnival has val. However, it may be added that O been celebrated in other localities where the Nikkeijin reside. Inquiry as to the reason for this assertion of differences provoked various answers. Some informants claimed that it was an assertion of ethnicity; others said that it was an emotional response to their perceived negative valuation by Japanese society. Indeed, pride in the exaggeration of difference is more often than not a reaction to an attributed negative social identity and a way of making the identity more positive. Allegiance to Brazilian culture may therefore express a desire to return to a past, antecedent to when they became immigrant returnees with a subordinate status, and thus may be interpreted as an effort to raise the value of their social identities. Nikkeijin criticisms concerning Japan and the Japanese can also be interpreted as a way of positively enhancing an ascribed social identity, and interviews revealed the existence of a tendency to criticise the host society. As an example of this, Japan was said to lack the appearance of a First World country and to be far behind the United States and Western Europe in developmental terms. A common topic expressed was the lack of joy in Japan in contrast with Brazil; ‘Japan is fading away’, said one interviewee. While Japan was usually referred to as ‘the land of our ancestors’, Brazil was referred to as the ‘beloved country’ and described as a poor but a happy country. Interviewees tended to describe themselves positively by contrast with the Japanese, though in some this is a qualified affirmation, as, for example: ‘The Brazilians have an unshakably high opinion of themselves’; ‘The Brazilians want to impose their own way. They think God is Brazilian and the rest of the world does not think like that’.

Nikkei communities in Japan

203

An overview of the Nikkei press in Japan confirms the content of these interview findings and offers important insights into how the Nikkeijin perceive both Japan and themselves. In Nikkei newspapers, articles are published expressing the opinion of readers and they frequently express bitter criticism of Japan and the Japanese. In one article it is claimed that ‘Japanese men are empty, empty … ’ Other articles are ironical: speaking about domestic waste disposal one reader calls it ‘the Japanese art of disposing of the garbage’ (A Folha Mundial, 5 April 1998: 2). Strong expressions of discontent were not, however, frequent during the interviews: ‘Here everything is easy, the only problem is the language’, said the president of a company that sells mobile phones in Hamamatsu. For others, language was not a problem: ‘We have everything here, even camdoblé (black magic)’, said a young Sansei (third generation). Discontent concerning social exclusion was usually phrased in terms of not being treated like relatives. As mentioned earlier, very few informants had actually experienced overt discrimination. Nevertheless, expressions of disappointment were common when they talked about their first contact with Japan. Their representations of Japan prior to migration were usually based on what they had heard from their relatives and the Brazilian media. The majority of Nikkeijin had an image of Japan associated with advanced technology and high buildings and they often found themselves living in the suburbs of a small town working in small factories. Moreover, the majority of the Japanese they were in contact with were their workmates who likewise did not fit the Nikkeijin image of the Japanese. Faced with a situation they did not expect to find in Japan, they tend to position themselves as foreigners in relation to it, though this move is not accomplished without difficulties. While it is clear that they do not feel like ‘nationals’, it is also clear they do not feel truly ‘foreign’ either. Naturally there have been changes in self-image during the 10 years of Nikkei migration to Japan. As one interviewee put it: ‘In the early years of migration to Japan, to be called foreigner was an insult. However, now it is different. Now we know we have to put up with two stereotypes: that of being Dekasegi (migrant) and that of being Gaijin (foreigner)’. It is important to note that the Nikkeijin in general think that the Immigration Law that gives them the right to work in Japan is fair and ought not to be extended to other foreigners. Even the Sansei (third generation) and Mestiços (mixed blood), who stressed that they had little in common with the Japanese, thought that they ought to have the right to work and live in Japan. Brazilians tend to concentrate in the same areas and spend their leisure time together. They get together to feel at home in shops where they buy beer and sit and chat for hours as they do in Brazilian snack shops. This is sometimes a nuisance for the shop owner not used to such a custom since Japanese customers usually leave the shop immediately after paying for their purchases. In general, they have few contacts with their Japanese neighbours, although conflicts with Japanese residents are said to be on the rise. Unlike undocumented foreign workers who have reasons to behave as discreetly as possible, the Brazilians have few

204

Daniela de Carvalho

reasons to fear the authorities, and often their neighbours will complain about the noise. Informants had little idea of how they were perceived by the Japanese. In general, informants thought the Japanese had a good image of them as workers and claimed that Japanese workers were jealous of the Nikkeijin because they worked much better. Others thought differently and tended to blame the Japanese media and the Brazilian stereotype for the bad image they might now carry in Japan. For them, some Brazilians (Nikkei and non-Nikkei) too often conform to the stereotype, thus reinforcing it. ‘The Brazilians cause many problems, they do not pay, they steal, they fight and quarrel, they have car accidents; problems began with the garbage but now there are criminal cases every week’, explained a journalist of International Press in Hamamatsu, a town containing the largest number of Nikkeijin. Such isolation from the wider society is not due solely to avoidance by the local population; nor does it necessarily mean that the Nikkeijin are protecting themselves from a hostile society. Several factors account for the lack of interaction with the local Japanese. Poor command of the Japanese language is probably the most important factor. Another is that many of them tend to see themselves as living temporarily in Japan (despite many years of residence) and act as if they are not fully present. It should also be pointed out that there are often practical reasons for taking refuge in ethnic communities. Communities provide a space of familiarity and social support that is otherwise absent. They help the Nikkeijin to overcome linguistic and cultural barriers, to obtain employment and also to provide a shelter for newcomers. By the same token, the more such communities satisfy their own needs internally, the less their members tend to come into contact with the local population. As often happens in minority–majority contexts, whereas Nikkei communities accentuate differences vis-à-vis the Japanese, they tend at the same time to display in-group homogeneity and attenuate the differences that mattered in Brazil. However, there are tensions within the communities and a frequent complaint is that the Brazilians exploit their fellow countrymen. Apparently, bonds of common nationality are often overcome by self-interest. For example, those who master the Japanese language charge high fees for translation and interpretation services and the Nikkeijin compete with each other for overtime work. Some informants expressed a negative opinion about their compatriots, claiming that the Brazilians in Japan are becoming increasingly isolated, closing themselves off in a circle of meanness and intrigue. Indeed, some informants expressed ambivalence towards Nikkei communities. On some occasions, they felt repelled by their country-people and drawn towards the Japanese. This was particularly the case when informants felt comfortable in Japan. Not surprisingly, the more satisfied were those who felt more successful. The attitudes conducive to isolation on the part of the Nikkeijin are encouraged by the local Japanese who seldom come into contact with them even when living near to or working together with them. The host society attitude does not however regard the Nikkeijin with fear or suspicion and no direct hostilities or social

Nikkei communities in Japan

205

tensions between the Nikkeijin and local Japanese have developed to the point of causing open conflicts. The attitude is more one of avoidance. When asked directly why this should be the case, cultural differences (ways of thinking, lifestyle) were pointed out as the main reasons for the separation. Cultural distance was pointed out by emphasising their Brazilian upbringing but cultural incompatibilities were never explicitly expressed. Social distance was also pointed to by some who argued that an immigrant is by definition a poor and ill-educated person. It should be noted that interviewees expressed neither dislike nor curiosity in regard to the Nikkei communities in Japan. The majority of Japanese people interviewed and surveyed did not seem to have had any close contact with the Nikkeijin beyond occasional neighbourhood or commercial relations. They tended to believe that as Japanese descendants they must have inherited some Japanese characteristics. As one Japanese man put it, if their parents were Japanese and they were brought up as Japanese, probably they have the heart of a Japanese (Nihonjin no kokoro). Owing to this belief, most Japanese interviewed felt that it would be easier to be closer (shitashimiyasui) to the Nikkeijin than to other foreigners on grounds of common ancestry: ‘They look Japanese and this puts us at ease’; ‘We feel closer to the Nikkeijin because they look like Japanese; the Iranians and other foreigners do not look like us’. Perceptions depended to a large extent on personal experiences, but the general image of the Nikkeijin tended to be positive. Claims were sometimes made, such as ‘they tend to be laid back’ and ‘they are noisy’, but the more typical comment was that they were diligent and hard-working, honest and serious-minded people: ‘They came to Japan to work and they do work’. However, people interviewed in Hamamatsu and Toyohashi cities tended to mention the number of crimes committed by Brazilians. In general, interviews revealed that while for some the Nikkeijin were relatives (though distant relatives) and as such they could adjust well to Japanese society, others clearly stated that there was nothing in common between Japanese citizens and the children of immigrants who left Japan many years ago. Informants who had more contact with the Nikkeijin tended to say that, whilst they may have ‘Japanese blood’, their way of thinking was Brazilian. As one Japanese man interviewed put it: ‘the Nikkeijin are like one of the family but yet not of the family, they are Brazilians with Japanese blood’. People who were in contact with them tended to point out the ‘differences’, but ‘cultural incompatibilities’ were never explicitly expressed, although they were suggested through references to ‘cultural distance’. There, of course, exists a diversity of attitudes concerning the Nikkeijin, but the prevailing attitude noticed by the survey was that they were South Americans and since they were in Japan they had to respect Japanese norms. Different generations were seen as having graduated ‘rights’ to belong to Japan and interviewees made a distinction between the second-generation Nikkeijin and those of the third generation and the mixed ‘blood’ Mestiços. The second generation was considered to be closer to the national Japanese, particularly if they could speak Japanese.

206

Daniela de Carvalho

A commonly-held assumption was that the Nikkeijin would eventually return to their country. When they were told that Japan needed foreign workers, Japanese interviewees tended first to give evasive answers and then to argue that Japan was a small country and that the Japanese economic recession did not offer good prospects. When they were told that the Nikkeijin could legally, if they so wished, remain in Japan, interviewees tended to say that in that case they should be allowed to work in Japan. The general attitude to the Nikkeijin presence of Japanese people interviewed was clearly summarised by one of them: ‘It would be better if they the (Nikkeijin) did not have to come here but, since they are already here, we may as well accept them’.

Conclusion The main argument advanced in this chapter is that what happens to the Nikkeijin in Japan depends not so much on endemic cultural differences as on the dynamic relationships continuously negotiated between themselves and the Japanese. Japanese identity has been based on the idea of family. The concepts of ‘blood’, Japanese culture and Japanese language have become inextricably linked, and have been used both to include and exclude people. Except in relation to ‘blood’, the Nikkeijin do not fulfil any of the criteria that have in the past been used to define what it is to be Japanese. An analysis of perceptions of Japanese officials, media and researchers suggests that Nikkeijin ‘differences’ from Japanese nationals tend to be emphasised. However, no definitive conclusions may as yet be reached as to whether they are being discriminated against in Japan. Admittedly, there is some concern over their numbers in areas of high concentration and some local Japanese express apprehension lest this trend continue. It is also true that the native population does not in general interact with them and, by and large, ignores them. Findings from fieldwork suggest that mutual contact has led neither to a state of conflict nor to peaceful coexistence, but rather to an assertion of mutual difference. They also suggest that common ancestry may not necessarily imply the affinity that the Immigration Law assumes. However, it should not straightforwardly be concluded from this that Nikkeijin are seen (or see themselves) as foreigners. Rather, they are seen as a combination of familiarity and ‘foreignness’ and this feeds back into how they perceive themselves. They are a minority and their ethnicity has increasingly expressed itself in terms of ‘Brazilianness’. As we saw, Nikkei or Brazilian communities in Japan are an expression of ‘foreignness’ on the part of both the Nikkeijin and the national Japanese. The Nikkeijin want to maintain difference. However, to identify as a minority is to attribute to oneself the characteristics associated with a minority and to accept the condition of belonging to a minority and there are costs involved in alienation from the majority. In a Japanese-speaking economy, where the attainment of higher-status jobs is regulated by higher educational achievements, the Nikkeijin are in a disadvantageous position.

Nikkei communities in Japan

207

On the other hand, contrary to popular belief, there may be advantages to minority status. On this point, it is important to mention the flourishing businesses that the Nikkeijin have promoted, many of which are under their own ownership and control. They have also succeeded in setting up collective organisations to promote their own social and economic interests. As to whether or not their experience will turn out to be similar to other minorities, it seems likely that if they continue preferring their own group and asserting their differentiated identities, they will continue to feel and be seen as foreign; and by not integrating and dealing with Japanese culture on equal terms, they challenge the Japanese way of life and it is here that problems may arise. It seems probable, therefore, that they will constitute a subordinate group for some time. One must remember that immigrants are always in a disadvantaged position compared to natives, but this does not necessarily mean that their subordinate status will be perpetuated. Moreover, as already mentioned, it is difficult to foresee whether the Nikkeijin as a minority will be targets of discrimination and prejudice merely because of their cultural allegiance to Brazilian culture. A 10-year period is probably insufficient to afford definite conclusions, but the evidence does not suggest that the Nikkeijin are a target of harassment for Japanese citizens. Ultimately, the question of whether or not their experience will turn out to be similar to other minorities in Japan depends very largely upon the destiny of Japanese society as a whole. Most important, the actual pattern of immigration is somewhat different from the objectives of immigration policy. Acceptance of the Nikkeijin has not in fact stemmed the inward flow of other foreigners of non-Japanese ancestry and migration to Japan shows no signs of coming to an end. This is particularly important in a country where the ideal of homogeneity, however illusory, has been highly valued. Japan, like any other industrial society, will sooner or later be confronted with cultural diversity. National identity is continuously constructed and reshaped in interaction with outsiders, and particularly with immigrants. The Nikkeijin and other minorities challenge the dominant national identity. They generate a need to rethink ‘Japaneseness’ as an identity rather than as a product of historical contingency. Therefore, I should like to conclude by suggesting that ultimately the issue of the Nikkeijin is profoundly implicated in the larger redefinition of Japan’s national identity.

References Carvalho, D. de (2002). Migrants and Identity in Japan and Brazil: The Nikkeijin. London and New York: RoutledgeCurzon. Hayashida, C. (1976). ‘Identity, Race and the Blood Ideology of Japan’. Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Washington. Komai, H. (1993). Gaikokujin Rodosha Teiju e no Michi (Living Together with Foreigners). Tokyo: Akashi Shoten. English translation by Jens Wilkinson (1995), Migrant Workers in Japan. London: Routledge. Miles, R. (1982). Racism and Migrant Labour. London and New York: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

208

Daniela de Carvalho

Nyukan Kyokai (Japanese Immigration Association) (2000). Zairyu Gaikokujin Tokei (Statistics on Foreign Workers). Oka, T. (1994). Prying Open the Door: Foreign Workers in Japan (Contemporary Issues Paper 2). Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Shinbunsha, Jomon (ed.) (1997). Samba Machi kara Gaikokujin to tomo ni ikiru Gunma ¯ izumi (Living together with Foreigners from the City of Samba, Gunma O ¯ izumi). O ¯ izumi: Jomon Shinbunsha. O Tsuda, T. (1998). ‘The Stigma of Ethnic Difference: The Structure of Prejudice and “Discrimination” towards Japan’s New Immigrant Minority’. Journal of Japanese Studies 24(2): 317–59. Yamanaka, K. (1996). ‘Return Migration of Japanese Brazilians to Japan: The Nikkeijin as Ethnic Minority and Political Construct’. Diaspora 1(1): 65–164.

14 Transnational strategies by Japanese-Brazilian migrants in the age of IT Angelo Ishi

Introduction: migration in the age of IT This chapter documents various kinds of transnational strategies taken by Brazilians of Japanese descent (called Nikkei) who increasingly migrate back and forth between Japan and Brazil following the so-called dekassegui migration boom that began in the late 1980s.1 Over 250,000 Brazilians currently reside in Japan, mostly as manual labourers working in factories, but their lives have increasingly diversified in recent years.2 This chapter presents a case study of a Japanese-Brazilian transnational business enterprise and the role played by various ethnic actors – the master, the worker, and the entrepreneur.3 Studies about migrant ethnic entrepreneurs are numerous both in the United States (Wilson and Portes, 1980; Light and Bonacich, 1988) and in Japan (Ishi, 1995; Higuchi and Takahashi, 1998). Ethnic entrepreneurs have a central place in the studies of ethnic migrants, and particularly Brazilian migrants, partly because entrepreneurs often become opinion leaders in their communities, and partly because their business sites serve as important meeting points among members of the community. Most studies on Brazilian migrants in Japan have treated entrepreneurs as ‘ethnic minorities’ and their businesses as ‘ethnic enclaves’, focusing solely on the country of destination. Studies (for example, Mori, 1995) that focus on the sending country, however, typically stress the negative effects brought about by migration on their ethnic communities. Both approaches have neglected the dynamics of transnational ties that link host and home societies. Thus, the aim of this chapter is to discuss what Brazilian migrants do between their ‘country of origin’ and the ‘country of destination’ rather than what they do ‘in Japan’. In the age of IT (information technology), there is a greater need on the part of researchers to follow the path of ‘transnational’ migration, instead of focusing solely on one place or space. This chapter, therefore, focuses more on agents of migration than on place (Ishi, 2001a), drawing upon interviews both in Brazil and Japan and various quintessential ‘points of passage’, such as inside airplanes and lobbies of international airports, during the past decade.4 So-called IT has played a significant role in triggering migration from Brazil to Japan. During the 1990s, international calls and air tickets have become less expensive. In 1990, air tickets between Brazil and Japan cost at least

210

Angelo Ishi

US$ 2,500–3,000, but, by 2000, the price dropped to a little over US$ 1,000. Likewise, a phone call from Japan to Brazil costs ten times less – ¥20 (or ¢2) per minute, about the same as a local call within Japan. The diffusion of the Internet has further reduced communication costs between the two countries. Brazilians who migrated to Japan increasingly take advantage of these modern technologies in adapting to their transnational lives. Although Japanese-Brazilian politicians who traditionally relied on ‘ethnic ballots’ have been severely affected by the dekassegui boom, as their potential electors have gone away to Japan, some have decided to go beyond borders. For instance, Carlos Shinoda, who owns a school for Brazilians in Tokyo, ran for a parliamentary seat in Brazil from Tokyo with a platform to improve the lives of ‘dekasseguis and their families’ in Japan. While running his campaign in Japan, he appealed to their families and acquaintances in Brazil for their support. In this way, he sought a position in a national election transnationally with a goal stretching beyond national borders. Although he was in the end not elected, such a manifesto and campaign would have been hard to imagine until recently.

Selling ‘desires’ en route Brazil–Japan: a transnational ethnic business The business Many Japanese companies operate in Brazil, and a smaller number of Brazilian companies operate in Japan. And since the beginning of the dekassegui boom, several ethnic enterprises have emerged for, and run by, Japanese Brazilians, as reported on by many scholars. However, the Nipomed company that I will describe here is a new type of business distinct from any of these companies. Unlike large multinational corporations that seek to expand their markets, Nipomed has planned its business strategy as an enterprise for/by Japanese Brazilians in Brazil and Japan. It is a ‘transnational’ business in that it has opened branches in two countries, and it is essentially ‘ethnic’, targeting Japanese Brazilians. Meaning ‘Japanese (Nipo) Medical (Med)’, Nipomed started its business in the late 1980s by selling health insurance plans to Japanese-Brazilian businesses in Brazil. Staffed by Japanese-Brazilian sales workers and board members, the company grew due to the generally positive image of Japanese Brazilians in Brazil as ‘honest and hard-working’. When the dekassegui phenomenon began, many Japanese-Brazilian enterprises lost both clients and workers who had gone to Japan, and Nipomed was not an exception to this trend. Unlike other companies, however, Nipomed sought to expand its clientele among dekasseguis in Japan. They succeeded in recruiting hundreds of sales staff by launching a ‘franchising’ system in 1997.5 In just one year, a total of more than 1,200 people had become franchisees of Nipomed insurance plans. Half of them were Brazilians working in Japan. The ‘ethnic’ character of Nipomed was clearly demonstrated in its pamphlet: (…) Nipomed is backed by a long tradition of 20 years and a historical link with Japanese immigrants. In fact, it was born in the core of the Japanese

Transnational strategies by Japanese-Brazilian migrants

211

colony in Brazil, with the initial goal of offering another option of medical assistance to these immigrants and their descendants. Therefore, we are also proud to collaborate and support the Nikkei colony in this new moment of history.6 Why did Nipomed define itself as an ethnic enterprise targeting the Nikkei community? By proclaiming that it was ‘supporting the Nikkei community’, Nipomed linked itself to the positive image of the community. This has enabled the company to construct a ‘clean’ image, which was crucial to a business that was based on reliability and trust. Nipomed’s franchising system was quite different from other big chains established in Brazil. A spokesman for the Brazilian Association of Franchising compared Nipomed to larger companies: ‘For owning a McDonald’s store, one should pay as much as $100,000 dollars. But the number of Nipomed’s franchisees has increased thanks to its low fees’. Among Brazilians in Japan, the ‘franchising’ was compared to ‘pyramid selling’ in which the main goal of the enterprise was not the selling of the product itself, but just to recruit the highest number of sellers. One reason for this negative opinion about Nipomed’s business was that the main product to be sold – the health insurance plan – could not be used in Japan, but only in Brazil. Despite the argument that ‘one could subscribe to this plan and give it as a gift to relatives who live in Brazil’, it was clear that this was a profitable market neither to Nipomed nor to its franchisees. Many former franchisees admitted that they were instructed to concentrate their efforts on inviting more franchisees (so that they would receive a big premium for each new franchisee that joined their group). It is also significant that although they have run a big marketing campaign in Japanese-Brazilian ethnic newspapers in Japan, the advertisements were invariably focused on the rhetoric of ‘be one of our franchisees’, instead of ‘subscribe to our plan’. Several advertisements illustrate this, as follows: ‘Own your business with a minimum $3,500’. ‘So long since you left Brazil? Are you here (in Japan) longer than you initially planned? Are you looking for an opportunity to return? Then, come and know NIPOMED FRANCHISING’. ‘Follow these people. Own a successful business’. This rhetoric deserves attention, since it is closely related to the thoughts and feelings of Brazilian migrants. The fore-mentioned pamphlet is useful for understanding the essence of Nipomed’s philosophy: Democratically, the sun shines for everyone, but one says that it shines more for some – i.e., for the afortunados (lucky, enriched). Hundreds and thousands of Nikkei fought, worked hard, and made enormous sacrifice for sunshine while dreaming of going back to their country of origin. The problem in going back is how to maintain the same standard of living and security for the whole family? As one may perceive from this excerpt, the message of Nipomed has elements that touch migrants’ hearts. It is not incidental that the message begins with the

212

Angelo Ishi

proposition that ‘someone is more afortunado than you’. This is an important way to stimulate dissatisfaction concerning a sense of injustice (especially economic inequality) and the desire to become equal – equal to the afortunados. The message ‘translates’ what many Brazilians in Japan may feel: they dream about going back to Brazil, but do not know how to maintain the same level of income they earn in Japanese yen. The message also shows a solution to this dilemma: An obvious way to return (to Brazil) is to invest your savings in some business enterprise. The problem is that, not having any experience as an entrepreneur or lacking knowledge of the market, the current Brazilian economy involves a high risk. You may totally lose your investments. Studies by the Getúlio Vargas Foundation indeed show that 8 out of 10 businesses opened in Brazil close within two years. Nipomed is proud to provide an ideal alternative. With a minimum investment, it is possible to acquire a franchise that will generate, in a short term, incomes certainly superior to what those (Brazilian) workers obtain in Japan … In monetary terms, Nipomed successfully read the minds of dekasseguis. After experiencing the ‘First World level’ incomes in Japan (and a higher cost of living as well), the definition of ‘ideal’ or ‘reasonable’ income drastically increased. The ‘First World’ was the keyword Nipomed used in its rhetoric, as in ‘A health plan of First World level’. Non-verbal messages also delivered this image. In the ¯ izumi (where, officially, as of ‘general meeting of franchisees’ in the town of O March 2001, the total population of 42,761 included 4,686 Brazilians), participants were surprised by an international video conference: directors’ speeches from Brazil were projected ‘live’ on a big screen. Why had organizers not recorded the message previously? They probably wanted to use high-tech ‘realtime broadcasting’ to emphasise the image of ‘modernity’. The secret message was ‘We are a First World company’. Nipomed’s discourse matched the desire of dekasseguis to feel and live as ‘First World’ citizens. This desire was evident in many aspects of Japanese-Brazilian lives in Japan: learning English (there is a boom in English courses for dekasseguis in Japan), being plugged into the Internet (the computer is not yet popular in Brazil) and travelling to resorts in and out of Japan, such as Okinawa, Bali, and so forth. Market researches have found that the preferred destination for domestic travel is Tokyo Disneyland, a symbol of the ‘modern’ Japan, rather than more ‘traditional’ places, such as Mount Fuji and Kyoto. The master The main marketing tool for Nipomed was the Curso Básico para o Sucesso (Basic course for Success), which was sold in many localities of Brazilian concentration across Japan. This course was advertised to offer ‘self-help and self-improvement’, instead of ‘selling techniques’, and appeared in JapaneseBrazilian ethnic newspapers with the catchphrase: ‘You have a meeting scheduled with prosperity’ (Jornal Tudo Bem, 19 September 1998). The course met at

Transnational strategies by Japanese-Brazilian migrants

213

exclusive hotels, such as the five-star Hamamatsu Grand Hotel and New Otani Hotel in Tokyo. Since courses were free and held on Sundays, the number of participants reached hundreds (and sometimes more than a thousand). The master behind this was the president of Nipomed, Tsutomu Matsumoras, who led the company to success with his charismatic image. He flew only First Class, because ‘I want to show that if you work hard, you will be able to enjoy a better life’. His charisma derived from his talent to convince people and his wealth. Matsumoras was born in Okinawa and, when he was 2 years old, his family migrated to Brazil. In his speeches, Matsumoras repeated his stories as a ‘self-made man’: ‘In Brazil I first sold vegetables in the street at a feira (open street food market). I am not ashamed to make it public that I was very poor in the past’. Sometimes like a preacher, sometimes like a Messiah or a priest and sometimes like a politician in an electoral campaign, Matsumoras has guided his listeners to the conclusion that ‘to improve one’s life, one should start a new business’. The ‘new business’ referred to the selling of ‘Nipomed’ products. As Matsumoras stated during a speech in a meeting of Nipomed franchisees in Hamamatsu City, with 2,000 participants: Suppose there are many fish in front of you. You think how to catch one, you prepare instruments, and you catch one or two. And … the other ones are already gone. You are here, not doing much, while fish are moving on … The fish of prosperity and success … So is our life and business! Opportunities are like a shoal of fish. Why don’t you catch them? Then, he proceeds to a more concrete message: Some people make the right decision only after all their savings are gone. Some people are waiting for some miracle that would enable a big saving. Some people work washing plates and nothing more. Some people are capable of washing plates and, at the same time, preparing another dish. So what kind of fisherman are you? You have to decide and act fast, as the fish are going somewhere … If you are working for Nipomed you are safe, but if you are not … You cannot waste time! You have to get the chance! One could say the main product sold by Nipomed was ‘desire’ – the desire to enrich oneself faster and fly higher. The next section shows whether and how Brazilians ‘bought’ this desire. The worker Edson Ito works in a car parts’ factory in Hamamatsu, the city with the largest Brazilian population in Japan, where he lives with his wife and two sons of school age. Before moving to Japan, he was an office worker of a major beverage company in São Paulo, where he earned almost $2,500 a month – much more than the average of white-collar workers in Brazil. Despite his high salary, he chose to

214

Angelo Ishi

migrate to Japan because of his concern about Brazil’s economy: ‘Some of my friends told me that they earned $5,000 per month working in Japanese factories, twice as much as what I earned. In 1991, I decided to come to Japan as well’. His decision was based on the concrete success stories he heard from his acquaintances who had temporarily gone back to Brazil. Unlike earlier times when only a handful of successful migrants could afford to go back to their homeland, today’s migrants can enjoy holidays in Brazil after only 1 or 2 years of working in Japan. They can also buy new cars, buy (or renovate) houses in Brazil, and bring lots of valuable gifts to their families. Thus, signs of migrants’ ‘success’ have become more materially visible today. If Edson believed in recruitment agents enticing him to ‘grow richer and faster in Japan’, he was not deluded; he ‘wanted’ to be deluded. He believed that he made his own decision to take the risk, thus he did not regret that he had come to Japan: ‘After I came to Japan, I found that things were much more difficult than I had been told. But so is life, and we have to accept it’. When it was suggested that he join the ‘Nipomed family’, he took a similar decision to take a big risk. Edson did not find Japan a ‘paradise’. His income rarely reached $4,000 a month. Work was hard, and he was always ‘exhausted’ from repetitive manual work in a factory. In a way, the ease of moving between the two countries encourages Brazilian migrants to stay longer in Japan, and Edson and his family once returned to Brazil in 1995, for a period of 4 months, to take a rest before resuming the same kind of work in Japan. When I interviewed him in 1998, Edson was worried about restructuring in his company, and that was why he was enticed by Nipomed’s rosy messages. His new job was physically demanding, working a night shift in a factory and selling Nipomed products during the day. Yet, his new daytime white-collar job helped him recover his ‘self-esteem’ both mentally and spiritually (Ishi, 2001b). He proudly gave me his meishi (business card), something that most Brazilians who engage in manual factory work do not have. He said, ‘Yes, my meishi and my tie are signs of improved status’. The ‘Nipomed Family Convention’ I attended imposed a strict dress code: a ‘black tie’ for male participants and ‘fine dresses’ for females. Most participants wore expensive clothes that they had rented for the day, and looked happy. In another meeting that I attended, Edson was interviewed by a NHK television crew and said: ‘We had almost forgotten our initial goal to go back to Brazil. But he (the president of Nipomed) has helped us remember it’. But, like many other Brazilians, Edson failed to specify the goal (i.e. how much he wanted to save before he went back to Brazil) or give a specific deadline (i.e. by when he had to return). This was reflected in the words of Matsumoras, the president of Nipomed, during an interview: The routine in the workplace may be the same, but dekasseguis who are sure to go back to Brazil can surely work more enthusiastically. We are trying to bring the ‘hope’ they have lost. There is a gap between what people say and what they really want. Although many Nipomed’s franchisees, as Matsumoras suggests, want to ‘go back to Brazil as soon as possible’, very few, in fact, do so. Rather than going back definitely,

Transnational strategies by Japanese-Brazilian migrants

215

their real desire seems to live ‘between Japan and Brazil’ with a base in an economically more advanced Japan. Contrary to Nipomed’s messages, most franchisees, like Edson, are ‘part-time sellers’, who work for Nipomed as a side business to bring in extra cash in addition to their factory salaries. Contrary to what it claims to promote, Nipomed, in reality, helps Brazilians delay their decision to go back to Brazil, as shown in its advertisement: ‘Own a business both in Brazil and Japan’. Nipomed ‘sold’ the desire to go back to Brazil. Yet, what was bought was the desire to become a ‘transnational entrepreneur’, like their ‘master’, Matsumoras. The star Japanese Brazilian Joe Akio Hirata is a ‘world famous’ artist, but not in the sense of a Michael Jackson or a Hollywood superstar, who have fans worldwide. He is a ‘Nikkei community’ star, though not in the traditional sense of karaoke contest champions. He sings for Japanese Brazilians, everywhere and anywhere. Taking advantage of cheaper air tickets and adapting to the mobility of his public, he holds concerts in Toyota City, Japan, as well as in Mogi das Cruzes in São Paulo. He sings in Japanese and Portuguese, and his CDs sell both in Brazil and Japan. His career would have been unimaginable had he not left for Japan to work in a factory in the early 1990s. Hirata’s artistic career is closely connected to the history of dekassegui migration as a whole. Before he moved to Japan, he frequently participated in (and usually won) karaoke contests organized by the Nikkei community in Brazil. In early 1990s, he left his wife in Brazil and came alone to Japan as a blue-collar worker. He wanted to sing every night to overcome his homesickness but, since his apartment was tiny with thin walls, he took his bicycle to the nearby rice field: ‘I cried every time I remembered my wife and my son who was born after I left Brazil. I had seen him only in pictures …’ One day, a friend brought an application form to participate in a singing contest, NHK’s Nodojiman Taikai. Hirata showed no interest, since he neither watched Japanese television nor understood the Japanese language, but his friend secretly applied for him. In a small city of Aichi where he lived, 350 applicants participated in the first round of competition; Hirata was selected as one of twenty-two to compete in the next round. Then, one of the jury asked him if he wanted to become a professional singer. ‘I said no’, said Hirata, ‘All I wanted at that moment was to go back to Brazil as soon as possible to see my family’. The day of the 1995 Nodojiman grand final, held in NHK Hall in Tokyo, changed his life. ‘The winner is … Mr. Joe Akio Hirata!’ Although he had the opportunity to sign a contract with a Japanese record company, Hirata decided to go back to Brazil. He gave up his music career – until a surprising offer came from a company that had nothing to do with show business. When a business meets an artist – a transnational connection Nipomed’s ‘courses for success’ needed additional attractions to entertain the participants, and the course organisers invited Joe Hirata as their ‘official artist’. The company claimed that Hirata’s character matched Nipomed’s spirit. He was

216

Angelo Ishi

chosen not because of his sweet voice, but because of his tough life history. So Hirata began to entertain the guests at every Nipomed event. He was not a mere singer; between songs, the organisers projected videotapes narrating Hirata’s dramatic life history, to show how he suffered and how hard he worked until he obtained success – the experience of working in a factory, winning the TV contest defeating Japanese rivals, and giving up a big music career in the name of the ‘family’. His story appealed to the audience and so he proved to be Nipomed’s ‘self-made man’, making the discourse of its president even more credible. Hirata’s international career as a professional artist began with sponsorship from Nipomed. He did not need his own concerts, since the ‘Basic Courses for Success’ were his main ‘stage’. His first CD sold around 30,000 copies, thanks to a ‘direct mail’ campaign within the ‘Nipomed family’. Although it was nowhere close to a ‘big hit’ by international standards, by the standard of the JapaneseBrazilian community, it was outstanding. It is difficult to define whether his CD was ‘made in Brazil’ or ‘made in Japan’. Neither Hirata nor Nipomed staff knew how many CDs were sold in Brazil or Japan. Some were purchased at international airports or perhaps even on planes. To Hirata’s surprise, Nipomed announced in 1999 that, after a series of scandals, the company had decided to leave Japan altogether and move to Brazil:7 ‘Our mission in Japan has been concluded, let’s continue business in Brazil’. At this point, Hirata decided to move his headquarters to Brazil, where his family lived. His name had become reasonably famous in both countries. This enabled him to cut his ties with Nipomed, while keeping his ties with the Brazilian community in Japan. In late 2000, Hirata held seven shows across Japan sponsored by a company called 3M. The company had no relation to the entertainment business, but was a labour recruitment company that sent thousands of Brazilians as temporary workers to several Japanese factories. Every December, 3M organized bonenkai, Japanese-style year-end parties, in places where its employees lived. In 2000, its president invited Joe Hirata as a guest singer for these parties. The president liked Hirata, because 3M was the very company that employed Hirata when he came to Japan as a factory worker. The president had never listened to Hirata’s CDs, but he had become a fan of his former employee’s ‘success story’. Thus, the cycle was now complete; the former factory worker returned to the place where he had once worked as a factory worker, but now as an artist who addressed a message of hope to fellow Brazilian workers. Perhaps because the audience was touched by this message, Hirata’s CD sold a total of 2,750 copies at those seven parties. Although Hirata’s speeches were not as pretentious as Matsumoras’, their relationship to the audience was the same; one sold desires, and others bought them, because the single star spot lit on the stage was concrete ‘proof’ that, as Matsumoras used to say, ‘the sun can shine for everyone’.

Conclusions People often say in referring to dekassegui migration to Japan that ‘the history (of migration) is recurring’. Terms like ‘U-turn’ and ‘reverse migration’ are often

Transnational strategies by Japanese-Brazilian migrants

217

used to emphasise that this movement is the ‘reverse’ of earlier migration from Japan to Brazil. The cases presented here show that these terms conceal the dynamism of this phenomenon – the intensive moving between one and the other country. The enterprise (Nipomed), the master (Matsumoras), the worker (Edson’s family), and the artist (Hirata) are not mere ‘pieces’ of a ‘global machine’. They are the active agents of the migration process, alert to the new opportunities of the IT age, conscious of the ‘cost-benefit equations’ of when, how, and why they should move or stay in or between Brazil and Japan. As shown in this chapter, each of these agents took concrete strategies: business planning (Nipomed), rhetoric construction (Matsumoras), life-course decision-making (Edson’s family), and career management (Hirata). Although they undoubtedly shared ‘ethnic’ backgrounds, they were not restricted to the ‘ethnic market’ of 250,000 compatriots in Japan. Concepts such as ‘ethnic enclave’ may conceal the role and significance of their close connections with Brazil. Their potential human and economic resources extend beyond national borders. Hirata’s case shows new possibilities for ‘ethnic’ musicians. There are a variety of strategies taken by ‘transnational ethnic artists’, but Hirata’s strategy was different.8 While some artists appeal to specific locales (e.g. the Chicago-based Japanese American James Iha), and some appeal to their ethnic diversity (e.g. Delighted Mint, a group led by a Japanese Italian and made up of members from the Cameroons and Japan), and others appeal to their ethnicity in the broader society (e.g. Andean folklore singers from South America in Europe, the United States, and Japan), Hirata’s strategy was to appeal to a specific ethnic group (Japanese Brazilians) in more than one country (Japan and Brazil). He, as well as his audience, moved between Japan and Brazil, listening to the same song in both. How did Brazilian migrants respond to these new possibilities opened up in the age of IT? Even though business owners and artists remain a minority among Brazilian migrants, migration itself has become an ‘enterprise’ for many. Like Edson, many dekasseguis saw migration not as a survival strategy, but as an investment or an upgrade in their life style (Ishi, 1997). The transnational movement of dekasseguis has been limited to a two-way route between Brazil and Japan because of their legal privilege (as Japanese descendants, they can stay in Japan legally) and for economic reasons (they can earn higher wages in Japan and in any other industrial country). Thus, without legal privileges, Japanese Brazilians would not have gone to Japan, and they would choose to migrate to other countries, such as the United States, if that would yield better wages. Most Japanese-Brazilian migrants are ‘commuters’ who go back and forth between Brazil and Japan (many dekasseguis buy round-trip tickets in Japan when they ‘return’ to Brazil). According to one survey, 56 per cent of 1,706 Nikkei respondents were in Japan more than once, 15 per cent for the third time, 6 per cent for the fourth time, and 3 per cent for the fifth time (Sangyo Koyo Antei Center, 2002: 5). The most transnational of all are ethnic entrepreneurs who lead ‘two country, double address’ lifestyles. For instance, one video rental owner ¯ izumi opened a store in his city of origin in São Paulo State. He spends half in O the year in Brazil and the other half in Japan. In his homeland, more than in Japan, he is treated as a ‘VIP’, a fact of which many compatriots in Japan are jealous.

218

Angelo Ishi

Although some dekasseguis stress their desire ‘definitely’ to return to Brazil, they would be happy to own some transnational enterprise and move between Brazil and Japan a couple of times a year, preferably in ‘first class’ just like Matsumoras. As the manager of Brazilian Plaza, the Brazilian shopping centre in Oizumi, says: ‘My home is not Brazil nor Japan. My home is the world’. Margolis (1994) has called this circular movement ‘yo-yo migration’, referring to Brazilians living in the United States.9 For Brazilians in Japan, it is more appropriate to use the term ‘firework migration’. They are like fireworks, because only the starting point is defined – the country of origin. After reaching the first destination, they become dispersed in a couple of directions. One informant, Jairo (a fictitious name), is a good example of this trend. He has used the money earned in Japan to fly to Australia, where he attended an English-language course for a year. After that, he came back to Japan to save money and then flew to France, where he spent another year studying French. Similarly, other Brazilians, mostly young singles, travel to Europe and the United States via Japan. For others, Japanese yen function as a guarantee that gives them more confidence to take on some (mostly blue-collar) jobs in American and West European labour markets. When the money runs out, they return to Japan to work again, and then repeat the cycle. In the ‘post-dekassegui age’, Japan has suddenly become close to young Nikkei living in Brazil. Before 1990, except for a few rich people who could go sightseeing, the only way to go to Japan was to get a fellowship from some Japanese central or prefectural government. Some leaders of Nikkei associations in Brazil now report that the number of applicants for study abroad programs (ryugaku) has drastically dropped because potential candidates have gone to Japan as dekasseguis. Following the 11 September 2001 attacks on the United States, a Portugueselanguage newspaper in Japan reported that one Brazilian nurse living in Japan moved to New York City to work as a volunteer. The nurse was praised for her ‘non-economic’ humanitarian motive, but it is doubtful if she would go to Afghanistan or Pakistan for the same reason. Like many other Brazilians, experiencing the ‘First World’ was important for her. In some senses, Brazilian migrants are like foreign exchange market players. They are very sensitive to monetary fluctuations, such as in the yen–dollar–real (the Brazilian currency) exchange rates and the employment/unemployment rates. In 2001, in the midst of the worsening recession in Japan, Cecilia Takemura, president of a recruitment company that employs about 1,000 Brazilians in electronic parts factories, told me that she suggests to job seekers that they go back to Brazil instead of remaining unemployed in Japan: ‘I tell them, go to Brazil, take a rest for 6 months, and contact me by phone, e-mail, or whatever. If a good job position opens, I surely will call them back’. Travel and communication costs between Brazil and Japan have declined so much that, from the migrant’s point of view, it makes economic sense to go back to Brazil while seeking a new job in Japan. At the same time, technological advances have enabled the migrants to rely less on ‘kinship’ or ‘friendship’ ties in seeking a job in Japan. To many, ‘transnational’ migration is becoming nothing more than an extension of ‘local’ migration.

Transnational strategies by Japanese-Brazilian migrants

219

We need to reconsider the common assumption that Brazilian migrants in Japan are ‘disadvantaged’ as ‘ethnic minorities’. Who is more disadvantaged: a Japanese worker who believed in lifelong employment but is suddenly laid off, or a Brazilian, like Edson, who knew his job was temporary and keeps moving to better jobs in Japan or Brazil? Who is more ‘miserable’: a Japanese who does not have anyone to help him look for jobs overseas with full air fares paid, or a Brazilian migrant who can fly to Japan with the air fares entirely defrayed by some recruitment agency? The picture presented here may seem too optimistic to reflect the ‘real’ situation of Brazilians in Japan. We must remember, however, that ‘reality’ is constantly ‘(re) interpreted’ by migrants. A number of Brazilians consider Japanese people ‘miserable’ for having no choice other than working all their lives to pay back the loan on a house. ‘How happy we are! We need to work just a couple of years to buy a big house in Brazil!’ they say. It is true that Brazilians and other foreigners in Japan are ‘disadvantaged’ in terms of ‘civil rights’, ‘social welfare’, and ‘work and living conditions’, as has been widely pointed out by the media and scholars. However, this fails to address the complexity and diversity of recent migratory patterns. While the reality of uncertainty led Brazilians to the Japanese labour market in the first place, migrants, in turn, developed a ‘culture of uncertainty’ – first in Brazil, where they experienced a chronic hyperinflation economy, and later in Japan, as ‘the top of the list of job losers in any restructuring process’ (remember that they are just ‘part-time workers’). Paradoxically, this ‘culture of uncertainty’ seems to have helped them respond more flexibly and positively to the adversities of transnational migration. In an attempt to stress the ‘moving’, instead of the ‘settling’, character of transnational migration, Niihara (1997) has used the term ‘homo movens’. Scholars who focus solely on one research site fail to follow the dynamism and mobility of versatile actors like Nipomed, Matsumoras, Edson, and Hirata. As migrants are moving at high speed making full use of IT, researchers should also become more transnational.

Notes 1 The Japanese term ‘dekasegi’ was originally used to define poor people from rural areas who go to the big cities to do temporary work. It has been incorporated into the Portuguese language as ‘dekassegui’, to refer both to the ‘migrants’ and ‘migration’ to Japan. Although the most complete Brazilian dictionary Dicionário Houaiss spells this term as ‘decasségui’, this chapter follows the spelling largely adopted by Brazilian newspapers. The diverse interpretations and the debate over the pertinence of this terminology are discussed in detail in Ishi (forthcoming). 2 According to the Japanese Ministry of Justice, in December 2000 there were 254,000 Brazilian nationals registered in Japan. For an overall picture about the first years of the dekassegui phenomenon, see JICA (1992), Ninomiya (1993), Ishi (1995), Watanabe (1995), and Kajita (1999). 3 The Centro de Estudos Nipo-Brasileiros (Japanese-Brazilian Studies Centre) (1990) has estimated the Nikkei population in Brazil as 1,280,000 people in 1988. This figure includes original Japanese immigrants and their descendants, including mestiços (halfJapanese or quarter-Japanese). This chapter follows this more largely accepted definition of Nikkei, meaning any person who has at least one Japanese ancestor. The definition of

220

4

5

6 7

8

9

Angelo Ishi

who is a Nikkei has been crucial to Brazilians, as the renewed Japanese Immigration Law allows long-term visas only for Nikkei. For details, see Ishi (1999). About social mobility strategies by Nikkei in Brazil, see Maeyama (1996). The specific cases presented in this chapter were studied mainly during the period 1998–2000, when I have gone several times to all the prefectures with large Brazilian populations in Japan (especially Gunma, Shizuoka, and Aichi). During the same period, I have also gone several times to Brazil. Franchising is a method of distributing products or services. At least two levels of people are involved in the franchise system: (i) the franchiser, who lends his trademark or trade name and a business system and (ii) the franchisee, who pays a royalty and often an initial fee for the right to do business under the franchiser’s name and system. All the interviews and texts are translated by the author. The original texts in Portuguese are omitted due to economy of space. The company was investigated by local authorities both in Japan and Brazil. Moreover, in late 2001, former franchisees organised a group for filing against Nipomed (‘Nipomed acusada de estelionato’. International Press, 8 December 2001. ‘Ex-franqueado organiza grupo no Japão para processar empresa’. International Press, 15 December 2001). A special report in a journal about Nikkei migrants’ culture all over the world (JICA, 2001) featured a recent boom in transnational ethnic musicians. Japanese Mexican Ray Sandoval and Jake Shimabukuro, a Hawaii-born fourth-generation Japanese, are cited as examples. The report also cites groups based in Japan, such as m-flo (whose members include a Korean, a Japanese, and a singer of Colombian descent born in Tokyo, named Lisa). It should be noted, however, that none of these musicians had the karaoke culture in their musical roots. Their commitment to the ethnic community is far thinner than Hirata’s case. ‘For more on the cultural activities of ethnic minorities, including musicians, see Shiramizu (1998)’. While undertaking an ethnography on Brazilians in the United States, Margolis (1994) did an extensive review of previous discussions concerning the distinction between ‘sojourners’ and ‘settlers’. Despite some differences in terminology, there seems to be a consensus that this distinction is not clear, even for the migrants themselves.

References Centro de Estudos Nipo-Brasileiros (1990). Pesquisa da População de Descendentes de Japoneses Residentes no Brasil 1987–1988 (Survey on Japanese-Brazilian Residents’ Population in Brazil 1987–1988). São Paulo: Centro de Estudos Nipo-Brasileiros. Higuchi, Naoto and Takahashi, Sachie (1998). ‘Ethnic Business of Brazilians in Japan: Microstructural Development for Entrepreneurship and Ethnic Market Concentration.’ Ibero America Kenkyu 20(1): 1–15. Ishi, Angelo (1995). ‘Por um punhado de ienes’ (For a Piece of Yen), pp. 353–58 in Medina, Cremilda and Greco, Milton (eds), Sobrevivências Projeto Plural (Survival Experiences – Plural Project). São Paulo: ECA/USP/CNP. Ishi, Angelo (1997). ‘Daisotsu Gishi ga Sankei Rodosha ni Natta Toki – Dekasegi Nikkei Burajirujin no Shigoto to Identity’ (When a University-Graduated Engineer Turns into a Manual Worker – Work and Identity of Brazilian Nikkei Dekasseguis), pp. 101–40 in Kawai, Hayao and Uchihashi, Katsuto (eds), Shigoto no Sozo (The Creation of Work). Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten. Ishi, Angelo (1999). ‘Working in Japan – The Multiple Meanings and New Trends of Brazilian’s “Dekasegi” Experience’. Annual Review of Labor Sociology 10: 45–68. Ishi, Angelo (2001a). ‘I.T. Jidai No Imin to Imin Kenkyu – Zainichi Dekasegi Nikkei Burajirujin no baai’ (Migrants and Migration Studies in the Age of ‘I.T.’ – The Case of

Transnational strategies by Japanese-Brazilian migrants

221

Brazilian Nikkei Dekasseguis in Japan). Imin Kenkyu Nenpo (The Annual Review of Migration Studies) 7: 163–76. Ishi, Angelo (2001b). ‘De Charles Chaplin a John Travolta’ (From Charles Chaplin to John Travolta), pp. 55–69 in Medina, Cremilda (ed.), Viagem ao Sol Poente (Journey to the Setting Sun). São Paulo: ECA/USP. Ishi, Angelo (Forthcoming). ‘Searching for Home, Wealth, Pride and “Class”: JapaneseBrazilians in the Land of “Yen” ’, in Lesser, Jeffrey (ed.), Searching for Home Abroad: Japanese-Brazilians and the Transnational Moment. Durham: Duke University Press. JICA (1992). Nikkeijin Honbo Shuro Jittai Chosa Hokokusho (Report on Research Concerning the Situation of Nikkei Working in Japan). Tokyo: Japan International Cooperation Agency. JICA (2001). ‘Sekai ni Hasshin, Nikkei Culture’ (Addressing Nikkei Culture to the World). Kaigai Iju (Overseas Migration) 600: 17–19. Kajita, Takamichi (1999). ‘Japanese Brazilians After 10 years’ Stay in Japan: Re-Examination of Their Reality of Life According to a Questionnaire to Brazilian Workers in 1998’ (Research on International Relations Studies). Kokusai Kankeigaku Kenkyu 25: 1–22. Light, Ivan and Bonacich, Edna (1988). Immigrant Entrepreneurs. Berkeley: University of California Press. Maeyama, Takashi (1996). Ethnicity to Burajiru Nikkeijin (Ethnicity and Brazilian Nikkeijin). Tokyo: Ochanomizu Shobo. Margolis, Maxine (1994). Little Brazil – An Ethnography of Brazilian Immigrants in New York City. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Mori, Koichi (1995). ‘Nikkei Shudanchi ni Totte no “Dekasegi” ga Motsu Imi – 3 Nikkei Shudanchi no Dekasegi Soshutsu Keitai to Sono Eikyo’ (The Significance of “Dekassegui” for Nikkei Communities – The Patterns of Dekasegi Emigration from 3 Nikkei Communities and Their Implications), pp. 547–84 in Watanabe, Masako (ed.), Kyodo Kenkyu Dekasegi Nikkei Burajirujin (Group Research on Brazilian Nikkei Dekasseguis). Tokyo: Akashi Shoten. Niihara, Michinobu (1997). Homo Movens – Tabi suru Shakaigaku (Homo Movens – The Sociology of Travelling). Tokyo: Madosha. Ninomiya, Masato (ed.) (1993). Dekasegi Gensho ni Kansuru Symposium Hokokusho (Report on the Symposium about the Dekassegui Phenomenon). São Paulo: Burajiru Nihon Bunka Kyokai. Sangyo Koyo Antei Center (2002). Nikkeijin Shurosha Anketo Chosa Kekka (Report on a Survey Among Nikkeijin Workers). Tokyo: Sangyo Koyo Antei Center. Shiramizu, Shigehiko (1998). Ethnic Bunka no Shakaigaku (The Sociology of Ethnic Cultures). Tokyo: Nihon Hyoronsha. Watanabe, Masako (ed.) (1995). Kyodo Kenkyu Dekasegi Nikkei Burajirujin (Group Research on Brazilian Nikkei Dekasseguis). Tokyo: Akashi Shoten. Wilson, Kenneth and Portes, Alejandro (1980). ‘Immigrant Enclave: An Analysis of the Labor Market Experiences of Cubans in Miami’. American Journal of Sociology 86: 295–319.

15 Paradoxes of ethnicity-based immigration Peruvian and Japanese-Peruvian migrants in Japan Ayumi Takenaka Introduction: the salience of ethnicity in migration Ethnicity plays an increasingly salient role in shaping and regulating international migration. Apart from Japan, many countries, including Italy, Spain, Greece, Korea and Germany, have implemented a descent-based immigration policy, providing ‘co-ethnics’ with privileges, ranging from automatic citizenship to special language training1 (Ministry of Justice, 1992; Thränhardt, 1999). For industrial countries experiencing large inflows of immigrants today, descent-based immigration policy is indeed an effective tool to cope with their need to simultaneously incorporate and selectively control foreign in-migration. It is particularly so in a country, such as Japan, where a sense of ‘blood ties’ is fundamental to nationhood. When the new ethnicity-based immigration provision was introduced in 1990 targeting Japanese descendants, neither the Japanese public nor the international community debated or protested against it. Consistent with the country’s descent-based nationality law, as well as the widespread belief in racial and cultural homogeneity, such a policy made sense. And so began the migration of Peruvians, along with Brazilians and other South Americans, who entered the country as Nikkeijin2 or Japanese descendants. Under the new policy that effectively created a two-tier system between skilled foreign migrants (‘legals’) and unskilled migrants (‘illegals’), Nikkeijin were the only group of foreigners, apart from a small number of trainees, who were allowed to engage lawfully in unskilled work, making ethnicity and legal status the two most important determinants of foreign migrants’ incorporation in Japan (Cornelius and Tsuda, 2002). If ethnicity is important in inducing migration, how does it play a role in migrants’ adaptation, or what are the consequences of ethnicity-based immigration? Do ‘ethnic ties’ facilitate adaptation, and do ‘co-ethnics’ adapt better than other foreigners? Not always, according to numerous studies that have documented Nikkeijin’s ‘lack’ of adaptation in Japan. Despite their descent and preferential treatment, Nikkeijin are marginalised as an ethnic minority, and this paradox, goes the argument, is attributable to their ‘distinct cultural behaviour’ (e.g. Tsuda, 1996; Watanabe, 1996). Though ‘culturally Latin American’ (e.g. NIKKEIS, 1994; Kawamura, 2000), Nikkeijin are nonetheless believed to be

Peruvian and Japanese-Peruvian migrants in Japan

223

‘more Japanese’ than non-Japanese descendants, and thus adapt better in Japan not only because of their greater cultural proximity but also because of their privileged legal status accorded on this ground (e.g. Fujisaki, 1991; Clucas, 1995). Because of their descent, Nikkeijin migrants are expected to speak better Japanese, have familial ties in Japan, be more familiar with Japanese customs and, consequently, feel more at home. In this way, cultural argument has dominated discussions on foreign migrants in Japan. In a country where a strong myth of homogeneity exists, the degree of cultural proximity, measured linearly along the bipolar continuum between ‘Japanese culture’ and ‘foreign culture’, is widely considered important in ‘explaining’ foreigners’ adaptability. The case of Peruvian and Japanese-Peruvian migrants, however, poses a problem with this assumption. If Japanese Peruvians’ social distance from the Japanese increased due to their ‘distinct (Peruvian) culture’, so did, in fact, their distance from other Peruvians despite their shared language and national origin. Contrary to common expectations, moreover, non-Japanese Peruvians generally speak better Japanese, are more satisfied with life in Japan and, in a way, are better integrated into Japanese society than Peruvians of Japanese descent. Why is this so? It is not because of cultural difference, I argue, but because of the contradictory manner in which Peruvians, both of Japanese and non-Japanese descent, were incorporated and then classified in terms of ethnic and legal statuses. Although Peruvian migration began in direct response to the ethnicitybased immigration policy, many non-Japanese Peruvians also entered the country. Some entered lawfully as spouses of Nikkeijin or of Japanese, or under other status categories, such as students. Many others entered as tourists before Japan abolished the visa exemption agreement with Peru in 1994; or else, they entered as ‘false Nikkeijin’ with forged documents. Out of an estimated 60,000 Peruvians (including 46,000 who were officially registered in 2000), perhaps half are of non-Japanese descent (Masuda and Yanagida, 1999), making Peruvians more diverse than other South Americans in terms of ethnic background and legal status.3 Among Peruvians of Japanese descent, a greater proportion of them are also considered to be ‘racially mixed’, as shown in a JICA survey (1992) that 30 per cent of Nikkei-Peruvian respondents were of ‘mixed descent’ as opposed to only 10 per cent of Brazilian counterparts. Because of this, Peruvians, overall, carry a more negative image than other South Americans in Japan and are associated with ‘illegality’, ‘crime’ and racial ‘impurity’. At the same time, Peruvian migrants are all relegated to the same low-rung occupations and treated as ‘dekasegui’4 (contract manual) labourers, regardless of their descent and legal status. In response, those Peruvians who were given preferential treatment because of their ethnicity try to distinguish themselves from other Peruvians by asserting their cultural difference. The thinking goes: ‘Peruvians (of nonJapanese descent) are sly and shrewd, of course, and they are even more so in Japan. Look how they came to Japan illegally without any shame’. Through such rhetoric, the distance between Japanese- and non-Japanese Peruvians was gradually increased, leading to differential patterns of adaptation along lines of descent and legal status – in addition to race.

224

Ayumi Takenaka

Cultural difference is, indeed, a powerful rhetoric for making sense of social difference, but we should not confuse what Brubaker and Cooper (2000) call ‘categories of practice’ with ‘categories of analysis’, or categories that ordinary people use in everyday life with categories researchers use to analyse how and why ordinary people talk about categories. Brubaker and Cooper (2000: 6) state: The problem is that (categories such as) ‘nation’, ‘race’, and ‘identity’ are used analytically a good deal of the time more or less as they are used in practice, in an implicitly or explicitly reifying manner, in a manner that implies or asserts that ‘nations’, ‘races’, and ‘identities’ ‘exist’ and that people ‘have’ a ‘nationality’, a ‘race’, and an ‘identity’. In the same way, many studies have attempted to identify the difference between the culture Japanese Peruvians ‘have’ and that of other Peruvians (Morimoto, 1979, 1992) or ‘explain’ Nikkeijin’s adaptation on the grounds of their ‘distinct culture’ without actually explaining anything. But here, I focus instead on the processes by which a rhetoric of cultural difference emerged and crystallised as well as the contexts in which culture, as a category of practice, shaped their social relations. As the case of Peruvian migrants illustrates, ‘cultural difference’ emerges in such a way as to reflect or make sense of socio-economic differences, rather than the other way around. Class or social positions explain migrants’ adaptation better than culture, and this can be seen in the way migrants are incorporated and classified, and the way they respond as they move from one context to another and from one position to another.5

How Peruvian migrants were incorporated into Japan: ethnicity and immigration The ethnicity-based immigration policy that brought Peruvian migrants into Japan was justified on the premise that Nikkeijin would assimilate more smoothly than other foreigners due to their shared ‘blood’ (Ministry of Justice, 1992: 21). It was also justified as a way to ‘help’ distant ‘blood’ relatives, or the descendants of Japanese emigrants sent by the Japanese government a century ago, during the current economic crises in South America. If one looks at what blood ties actually meant, however, they were more about social relations than cultural proximity. First of all, ‘blood’ was measured by the number of generations removed from Japan. Under the new policy, second-generation Japanese descendants (nisei) were eligible for a 3-year-long visa, while third generation (sansei) were entitled only to a 1-year-long visa. Later-generation Japanese descendants (fourth generation and thereafter) did not qualify to enter Japan under the scheme. Generation mattered, as each generation removed from Japan was considered to have fewer blood ties. ‘Their Japanese blood thins out over generations’, explained one official during an interview, ‘Inter-marriage becomes more common with each generation. And with the passage of generations, they become culturally less Japanese. So, third-generation Nikkeijin are less Japanese (than first and second

Peruvian and Japanese-Peruvian migrants in Japan

225

generation), even if they may still preserve Japanese faces. When it comes to fourth generation … well, they practically have nothing Japanese’. The conflated notion of Japanese race and culture, symbolised by ‘blood’, served well to justify the right of Nikkeijin to enter, reside and work in Japan, while denying this same right to other foreigners, for a lack of ‘Japanese blood’. This notion of ‘blood’, however, was malleable and relational, measured by one’s distance from Japan. ‘Blood’ was also a symbol of familial ties. Thus, generation mattered as a measure of direct ties to the Japanese; second-generation children of Japanese nationals were thought to have closer ties to the Japanese than third-generation grandchildren. According to an official, ‘It’s customary that family ties extend up to three generations. People often live with their grandparents and take care of them. So, it’s justifiable to admit up to third-generation Nikkeijin’ (Ministry of Justice, 1992). Concretely, familial ties were measured by direct parent–child relations. In accordance with the descent-based Japanese nationality law, children born to a Japanese national are automatically entitled to Japanese citizenship, regardless of their place of birth. Accordingly, second-generation Nikkeijin, as the children of Japanese nationals, could have become Japanese citizens had their parents registered their births promptly at the Japanese consulate. Logically, third-generation Japanese descendants, too, could have been Japanese nationals had their foreign-born parents acquired Japanese citizenship (Maeyama, 1996). To be admitted as family visitors, therefore, Nikkeijin must demonstrate their familial ties to Japanese citizens in various ways. In addition to the most important document, koseki (Japanese family registry), birth, death and marriage certificates of each relevant family member are required, as are a family genealogical tree, and letters from an employer and a guarantor who are expected to be Japanese nationals (NIKKEIS, 1994). In this way, Nikkeijin were admitted as ‘co-ethnic family visitors’, as legal ‘settlers’ who were allowed to work without any restrictions.

How Peruvian migrants are classified: ethnicity versus class The return migration was triggered ethnically, but it was fundamentally an economic migration. Being admitted as blood-related relatives, Japanese Peruvians, along with non-Japanese Peruvians who accompanied them, engaged in unskilled contract labour. In reality, familial ties to the Japanese were generally weak, as Peruvians, regardless of descent, relied heavily on labour brokers for gaining employment (Kajita, 1994). Thus, going to Japan primarily meant factory work, except for a handful of students, and implied a status loss – at least for university-educated white-collar workers in Peru. Peruvians were incorporated into specific types of jobs in specific sectors (manufacturing and construction) and were employed through labour brokers under a distinct system from that for natives. This meant, therefore, that Peruvians, regardless of descent and legal status, all engaged in the same type of manual work in Japan as ‘dekasegui Nikkeijin’.

226 Ayumi Takenaka In this process, Peruvians became collectively labelled as ‘dekasegui’ workers. The official employment agency, specifically set up by the Japanese government to help Nikkeijin, treated them as blue-collar manual workers. The agency’s numerous multilingual pamphlets, published for the purpose of ‘promoting Nikkeijin’s smooth adaptation in Japan’, automatically labelled Nikkeijin as ‘dekasegui’, constantly depicting them as blue-collar workers wearing uniforms, helmets and boots. These publications explained in detail how to deal with heavy machinery and how to cope with work in ‘dangerous’ places. Major Japanese books published on Nikkeijin also categorised them as ‘dekasegui’ workers, as their titles readily indicate: for example, ‘Brazilian Dekasegui Nikkeijin’ (Watanabe, 1996), ‘Dekasegui Nikkei Gaikokujin Rodosha’ (Dekasegui Nikkei Foreign Workers) (Fujisaki, 1991), ‘Dekasegui’ (on Japanese Brazilians) (Omiya, 1997). Their low status as dekasegui labourers was exacerbated by their backgrounds as members of a ‘Third World’ country and their social isolation due to their limited command of Japanese and a lack of belonging (group affiliation) to Japanese social institutions, such as a company, family or neighbourhood. In migrating to their ancestral homeland, Japanese Peruvians became an ‘ethnic’ minority as ‘Peruvian’ and ‘dekasegui’ workers, primarily because of the position they occupied in Japan and the very manner in which they were incorporated into Japanese society. The handful of Japanese-Peruvian students and trainees invited to Japan through government fellowships was treated differently from dekasegui workers. Being exposed to different social circles, those in more privileged positions generally formed more positive perceptions of Japan and the Japanese, as pointed out by those who were in Japan both as a worker and a student. While JapanesePeruvian ‘dekasegui’ workers were often rejected by their distant Japanese relatives, students were often welcomed, as a Japanese Peruvian said: ‘People treat you much better if you are an exchange student. No one shouts at you and tells you what to do as they do in factories’. Unlike contract workers who lived day-by-day, students often had a disposable income allowing them to live ‘like a king’ and to ‘see Disney (Disneyland) and all the other nice things about Japan’. Their social status, as government-sponsored students, also granted them access to higherechelon social circles, such as government officials, governors and fellow students, while ‘dekasegui’ workers’ interactions were mostly limited to circles among factory workers and contract agents. More than ethnicity (or descent), class positions shaped migrants’ perceptions and experiences.

How Peruvian migrants responded: using culture to make sense of difference The contradictory mode of incorporation resulted in increasing the distance between Japanese- and non-Japanese Peruvians in Japan. Even though Peruvians were brought in as descendants, their descent mattered little in what they did and how they were treated. Real descendants, then, were ‘shocked’ and ‘upset’ that they were not only treated as foreigners, but their descent was completely ignored

Peruvian and Japanese-Peruvian migrants in Japan

227

in Japan. A second-generation Japanese Peruvian said during an interview: ‘Of course, we were shocked that the Japanese treat us as gaijin (foreigners), but, after all, that’s what we are. But what really bothers us is that the Japanese don’t respect the history of Japanese emigration, that we are the descendants of Japanese immigrants. To the Japanese, Nikkei and Peruvians are the same thing’. Regardless of skills, education, age and ethnic backgrounds, all Peruvians were automatically relegated to the lowest dead-end jobs simply because of being Peruvians, doing the same work for the same pay. ‘It’s shocking’, said another Japanese Peruvian, ‘because in Peru, we looked down on Peruvians (non-Japanese Peruvians) and discriminated against them. But here in Japan, the Japanese discriminate against us’. In Peru, Japanese Peruvians used to treat non-Japanese Peruvians with contempt as ‘gaijin’; yet, in Japan, they are the ones who are treated as such by the Japanese. Japanese Peruvians are ‘shocked’, because they are denied the very identity that they had cherished and used to distinguish themselves from other Peruvians. The separation between the two groups, that originated in Peru, has further increased in Japan along lines of descent and legal status. Prensa Nikkei, Lima’s Japanese-Peruvian community newspaper, divided Peruvians in Japan into four groups: real Nikkei (Nikkei verdaderos), racially mixed Nikkei (Nikkei mestizos), Nikkei chichas or false Nikkei (Nikkei falsos) and illegals (ilegales) (Prensa Nikkei, 1992). The divisions were partly due to the difference in class backgrounds in Peru. Compared to the predominantly middle-class origins of Japanese Peruvians, other Peruvians tended to come from lower socio-economic backgrounds. It was also due to the difference in legal status in Japan, as most non-Japanese Peruvians in Japan were treated as if they were illegal, except for the spouses of lawful residents and ‘false Nikkei’ who entered on forged documents. Because of the difference in legal status, Japanese Peruvians frequently label other Peruvians as ‘bambas’, ‘truchas’, ‘false Nikkei’, or ‘ilegals’, all in reference to their illegal status. Japanese Peruvians frequently blamed other Peruvians for having hurt the image of the entire Peruvian population and, in particular, Peruvians of Japanese descent. One Japanese Peruvian said, ‘You never know about Peruvians here in Japan, because some of them come from really low-class backgrounds and they commit crimes’. This view was prevalent even among racially mixed Japanese Peruvians who had little prior consciousness of being ‘Nikkei’ in Peru. Having grown up poor, a mixed Japanese Peruvian of half Japanese descent said she always felt excluded from Lima’s Japanese community but, being in Japan, she identified more with ‘Nikkei’ for the first time: ‘Because Peruvians in Japan are so bad. I wonder how so many cholos and even negritos (mestizo and black Peruvians) managed to sneak into Japan’. Lima’s community newspapers, both Prensa Nikkei and Peru Shimpo, also regarded ‘chichas’ as the major threat to ‘the real Nikkei’. In an article headlined, ‘False Nikkei, A Problem For Our Community’, Peru Shimpo (4 February 1990) expressed its concern over how (non-Japanese) Peruvians, including ‘terrorists and criminals’, might ruin ‘our prestigious Nikkei community achieved through years of our hard work and honesty’ by having entered Japan as ‘false Nikkei’.

228

Ayumi Takenaka

Japanese Peruvians also sensed that other Peruvians damaged their status by entering the country on forged documents, abusing Japanese Peruvians’ names and koseki (Japanese family registries). ‘Because of them’, complained a JapanesePeruvian organisational leader, ‘the Japanese think that Japanese descendants in Peru don’t look at all like Japanese’. The view was indeed prevalent among Japanese officials interviewed and in scholarly writings (e.g. Ninomiya, 1995; Watanabe, 1996) that Japanese Peruvians, compared to Japanese descendants from other countries (such as Brazil and Argentina), maintained few Japanese facial features. Consequently, many ‘real Nikkei’ complained that ‘Peruvians’ made it difficult to obtain and renew Japanese visas, as one Japanese Peruvian complained: ‘Whenever Japanese officials see Peruvian documents, they scrutinise them extra carefully’. According to Prensa Nikkei (1992), out of 854 visa renewals rejected among South Americans, 90 per cent were to Peruvians because of fraudulent documents. ‘To Japanese officials, real Nikkei and false ones are the same thing; we are all the same Peruvian. And we, real Nikkei, always suffer the consequences’. Precisely because they were lumped together with other ‘lowerstatus’ Peruvians, Japanese Peruvians consciously tried to distinguish themselves from them. On the whole, interactions between these two groups were limited. Although they both worked in the same factories, they often engaged in separate social activities. According to one version, ‘pure Peruvians’ gathered at Latin discos and bars, while Nikkei went to museums or watched TV at home. Peruvian restaurants, too, were disproportionately filled with non-Japanese Peruvians, partly because many were single, being unable to bring in families due to their illegal status. This separation was partially a result of Japanese Peruvians’ conscious effort to avoid ‘Peruvians’, because they associated them with ‘trouble’, especially when alcohol was involved. They also avoided ‘Peruvians’ because of the shame attached with being Peruvian. In addition to its ‘Third World’ status, they perceived, there was little positive coming out of Peru and Peruvians in Japan. Occasionally, the tension between Japanese Peruvians and Peruvians erupted into fistfights. Fights were common at Peruvian parties and typically involved Japanese Peruvians and other Peruvians. According to one Japanese Peruvian, fights usually took place in men’s toilets between 4 and 6 in the morning and began in either of two ways: ‘a Peruvian stares at a Nikkei fiercely’ or ‘a Nikkei curses a Peruvian for his false documents’. One Peruvian had been killed in a disco during such a fight. In distinguishing themselves from other Peruvians, Japanese Peruvians stressed their Nikkei identity, instead of Peruvian-ness, in Japan. This was quite in contrast to Japanese Brazilians who developed nationalistic sentiments in Japan (Tsuda, 1996; Ishikawa, 2000). Japanese Peruvians themselves frequently contrasted their lack of national identity with the overtly expressed national pride of Brazilians who ‘always talk about how big their country is’. According to a JICA study (1992), 65 per cent of the Japanese Peruvians surveyed responded that they identified more with Nikkei than Peruvians, higher than the 44 and 41 per cent of Japanese Brazilians and Bolivians, respectively, who, unlike Peruvians, did not have a significant (illegal) population of non-Japanese descent.

Peruvian and Japanese-Peruvian migrants in Japan

229

Descent as a status symbol: the emergence of a new ethnic group The emerging Japanese-Peruvian community in Japan was consciously being defined as Nikkei, rather than Peruvian. Although some large-scale events were held together, such as the ‘Dekasegui Soccer League’ (1997), newly created associations were mostly for Nikkei with membership and leadership primarily limited to Nikkei Peruvians. One association, established in 1995, also limited its membership to Japanese descendants, as its president explained: After a long debate, we concluded that this is basically a Nikkei association. We can’t let just anyone into our association, like criminals and those who abused others’ names. The Japanese government discriminates against illegals and non-Nikkei, and so, in the same way, we select our members. Peruvians in Japan are all supposed to be Nikkei anyway. So, it’s not discrimination. To select its members, the association implemented a guarantor system, the very system that they found discriminatory in Japanese society. Thus, to join the association, one had to be recommended by ‘guarantors’ or, specifically, two current members of the association. ‘In this way’, explained the leader, ‘we can ensure the quality of our members and the sanctity of our institution. We don’t want to be closed, but we don’t want problems’. Similarly, many other associations formed among migrants were overwhelmingly represented by Nikkei members, partly because of leaders’ conscious efforts to select membership, and also because of the general segregation between Japanese Peruvians and other Peruvians. Non-Japanese Peruvians were reluctant to take part in formal community activities due to their illegal status, and they often engaged in other types of activities, such as those organised by Japanese NGOs, aid agencies and religious organisations that aimed to help foreign migrants in need. In distinguishing themselves from other Peruvians, Japanese Peruvians tried to recreate Lima’s Nikkei community in Japan. ‘Nikkei’, however, entailed a different meaning in Japan from that in Peru. Although it was strictly racial in Peru, Nikkei became a racial and legal term in Japan. Since the Japanese government automatically granted privileged legal status to all Japanese descendants (up to the third generation), the definition was broadened. While Nikkei mainly referred to racially ‘pure’ and middle-class Japanese Peruvians in Peru, in Japan, it legally encompassed all Peruvians who had at least one Japanese grandparent. Nikkei also referred to legal Peruvians (while non-Nikkei were labelled ‘illegal’). One third-generation Peruvian with a Japanese grandfather, expressed it well: ‘I don’t look Japanese and I am not familiar with any Japanese customs. I had never heard of the term Nikkei and never considered myself Nikkei in Peru. I learned only in Japan that I am Nikkei because I have a Japanese grandfather. Yes, I am Nikkei because to me it’s a matter of blood’. He then added that when he went back to Peru, however, he would cease to be Nikkei. Likewise, racially mixed and poorer Japanese Peruvians, who had previously been excluded from Lima’s Nikkei community associations, discovered in Japan that they, too, were Nikkei because of their Japanese ‘blood’.

230

Ayumi Takenaka

With the legal privilege conferred on Japanese ‘blood’, Nikkei became a status symbol in Japan. It meant the right, or at least more right than non-Japanese Peruvians, to stay and work in Japan. Consequently, the value of Nikkei-ness went up. ‘We pay $2,000 for a Nikkei Identity’, as the headline of an International Press (30 June 1996) article read; documents to prove such an identity were sold and bought at a price beyond the reach of the average Peruvian. Since the surname served as the primary symbol of Nikkei-ness, its value rose. Thus, Japanese Peruvians of mixed descent almost always used their Japanese surname in Japan as a way of asserting their Nikkei-ness, even if it was their maternal name, rarely used in Peru. A quarter-Japanese Peruvian, Carlos Kori, went by Kori (a simplified and changed spelling of his maternal Japanese name Kuwaori), although in Peru he always went by his paternal name: ‘That way, people recognise that I’m a descendant (and thus legal). Then people treat you better if you have something Japanese’. Meanwhile, ‘Nikkei’-Peruvians who had held a strong sense of Japanese-ness in Lima, were stunned to suddenly encounter a variety of ‘Nikkei’ in Japan. ‘In Peru, I always thought that Nikkei meant children of both Japanese parents’, said a racially unmixed Japanese Peruvian; and another, ‘Before coming to Japan, I didn’t know there were so many poor and racially mixed Nikkei. Plus you never know if they are real Nikkei or not. So, you’d better watch out’. Perplexed and confused, the ‘real Nikkei’ also spoke of the need to protect their surnames and koseki, symbols of Nikkei-ness: ‘To us real Nikkei, it’s our real name, so we don’t want it to be abused. But Peruvians don’t care because they bought the name’. In response to the blurred and amplified notion of Nikkei-ness, a stricter definition of group membership emerged; racially Japanese and middle-class Japanese Peruvians, who had cultivated a sense of Japanese-ness in Peru through Lima’s Japanese community activities, were now called ‘true Nikkei’, ‘legitimate Nikkei’, or ‘Nikkei Nikkei’ in contrast to racially mixed (and poorer) ‘Nikkei’ in Japan. While the ‘Nikkei Nikkei’ used these terms to distinguish themselves from ‘suspicious’ Nikkei and to protect their increasingly prestigious Nikkei status, other Peruvians used the terms to refer to the group that is racially distinct (with ‘slanted eyes’) and socially ‘closed’ and ‘racist’. Meanwhile, the ‘Nikkei Nikkei’ began to treat those unidentifiable, notso-Japanese-looking ‘Nikkei’ with suspicion. A quarter-Japanese Peruvian was annoyed that the ‘Nikkei Nikkei’ always suspected his Nikkei-ness: ‘Because I don’t look Japanese, the Nikkei-Nikkei always assume I am illegal. They ask me if I’m bamba (illegal) and how much I paid to purchase a koseki (Japanese family registry)’. Once a thorough examination of ‘Nikkei-ness’ was even institutionalised. Between 1993 and 1994, Nikkei visa applicants were required to provide ‘proof’ of Nikkei authenticity issued by Lima’s Japanese embassy. This practice, implemented only for Peruvians (not for Brazilians) in order to tackle the increasing number of ‘false Nikkei’, however, soon ended because it had led to further corruption in forging Nikkei documents. Nikkei group membership, therefore, became more narrowly defined through the process of migration to Japan. While primarily based on race and class, the

Peruvian and Japanese-Peruvian migrants in Japan

231

term also came to be defined by social relations. To ‘us Nikkei Nikkei’, said a ‘legitimate’ Japanese Peruvian, ‘it’s relatively easy to tell true Nikkei from false Nikkei’. Since Lima’s Japanese-Peruvian community functioned on the basis of quasi-kin relations, he said, ‘we can usually tell by some references if they are true Nikkei or not’. Moreover, as a sense of Nikkei-ness had been cultivated through community activities, shared cultural symbols used in Lima emerged as the key indicators of ‘true Nikkei-ness’. One ‘Nikkei-Nikkei’ explained: At a glance, it’s got hard to distinguish Nikkei from non-Nikkei. But once you start talking to them, you can easily tell if they are real Nikkei or not. When we talk about our Nikkei customs, like ‘sobre’ (envelope containing cash) and ‘butsudan’ (Buddhist altar), non-Nikkei don’t know what they mean. And non-Nikkei don’t mix Japanese words in their speech as we do. … Peruanos (Peruvians) say they would have to go to Okinawa to get papers (e.g. family registries), even though they have surnames from Naichi (mainland Japan), because that’s how we talk. Then they soon reveal they don’t even know where Okinawa is. Even though they might be called ‘Nikkei’ in Japan just because of one Japanese grandparent, racially mixed Japanese Peruvians were still ‘culturally’ different. So went the typical argument that the ‘Nikkei-Nikkei’ often used to exclude them when organising communal activities. As the number of ‘Nikkei’ increased in Japan, some became ‘more Nikkei’ than others. Restoring a ‘true Nikkei identity’ was important for Japanese Peruvians to solve their own identity crisis and to cope with their abrupt downward mobility in Japan. Nikkei-ness – whether real, false, more or less – was a struggle over status, and so Japanese and other Peruvians contended over meanings of ‘Nikkeiness’ in trying to adapt to Japanese life. A racially mixed Japanese Peruvian said of the ‘Nikkei Nikkei’: ‘They suffer an inferiority complex in Japan, because they are unskilled workers in Japan and feel between Peruvian and Japanese. So, they use their Nikkei-ness as a way of maintaining their sense of superiority over other Peruvians. They are scapegoats’. He continued, ‘If you commit a crime, you must be non-Nikkei. If you are too lazy to work, you must be non-Nikkei. So everyone is suspicious whether Pepe is a real Nikkei, because he doesn’t like to work’. ‘Bad Nikkei’, like Pepe, were often described as ‘fake descendants’ (descendientes malogrados). Consequences of ethnic transformation: ethnic adaptation in ancestral homelands While Japanese Peruvians tried to establish a community as Nikkei, non-Japanese Peruvians, in general, were ironically less isolated from mainstream Japanese society. According to marriage statistics registered at the Peruvian embassy in Tokyo, as of 1997, non-Japanese Peruvians married Japanese partners in greater proportion (75 per cent; or 100 out of 133 marriages involving Peruvians without

232

Ayumi Takenaka

Japanese surnames) than Japanese Peruvians (31 per cent, or 119 out of 382 marriages involving Peruvians with a Japanese surname).6 Among my sample of forty Japanese Peruvians and twenty non-Japanese Peruvians, a greater percentage of non-Japanese Peruvians also had Japanese spouses or partners (though nonJapanese Peruvians tended to be single or separated from their spouses in Peru due to their illegal status in Japan; and their illegal status might have encouraged them to marry a Japanese to legalise their status). Peruvians of non-Japanese descent were also more likely to speak better Japanese, according to their own observations, as well as those of Japanese interviewed (e.g. Igarashi, 2000). Moreover, non-Japanese Peruvians, particularly illegal residents, established more contact with the Japanese through aid agencies and religious and volunteer organisations, compared to Japanese Peruvians who tended to interact amongst themselves through their own communal activities. Such aid organisations, which increased in numbers in recent years, were mostly run and operated by the Japanese, and often served as a key point of encounter between the Japanese and foreigners (see also Shingaki and Asano, Chapter 11, in this volume). NonJapanese Peruvians relied more on these aid organisations than Japanese Peruvians, partly because of their greater need for assistance, and partly because other activities were closed to them. Furthermore, non-Japanese Peruvians, who generally came from poorer economic backgrounds, were more likely to be satisfied with the life (and money) in Japan than Japanese descendants who were ‘shocked’ and ‘upset’ about their downward mobility and treatment by the Japanese as gaijin (foreigners). Subsequently, non-Japanese Peruvians, regardless of their intentions, were less likely than Japanese descendants (especially the ‘NikkeiNikkei’) to go back to Peru or migrate (or aspire to migrate) further to other countries, such as the United States, although obviously their illegal status limited their international movements. Paradoxically, then, non-Japanese Peruvians, in a way, were more ‘settled’ in Japan than Japanese descendants who increasingly migrated back and forth between Japan, Peru and elsewhere with a persistent ‘dekasegui mentality’ to ‘try to make as much money as possible before going home’ and a lack of will to try to move upward within Japan (Mori, 1999; Ishikawa, 2000; Ishi, Chapter 14, in this volume). In her comparative study between Nikkei and other foreigners in Japan of levels of satisfaction about their lives, Clucas (1995: 105) found, primarily based on survey data, that the Nikkeijin, on average, were more satisfied than other foreigners in Japan due to their shared ethnic background: Ethnic similarity has more importance on greater feelings of satisfaction, perhaps because in everyday life the cultural familiarity does help ease the strain of living and working in a foreign country. My data, however, suggest the opposite; Japanese descendants’ alleged ‘cultural similarity’ ironically widened social distance from the Japanese because of their contradictory mode of incorporation and the gap between prior expectations and reality. The sense of affinity, based on common descent on both sides, led to

Peruvian and Japanese-Peruvian migrants in Japan

233

increased expectations towards each other, and the differences were magnified because of their very similarities (Tsuda, 1996). The breakdown of ethnic affinity reflects the very nature of ancestral myth; it is imagined, interpreted, and constructed in locally specific manners, often with positive and idealised meanings attached to it. Japanese Peruvians’ social distance from the Japanese has increased precisely because prior expectations were so great. And in order to cope with this, Japanese Peruvians had the greater need to re-interpret their cultural difference than other Peruvians. Consequently, the descent-based immigration resulted in further increasing their distance not only from the Japanese but also from non-Japanese Peruvians in Japan.

Conclusion As Nikkeijin were incorporated in contradictory ways as an ambiguous category ‘in-between’ Japanese and foreigners, so there emerged the need to debate the meaning, as well as the boundary, of Nikkeijin: who is Nikkei and who is more Nikkei than others? While much of this was debated on the grounds of culture and cultural difference from others, ‘ethnic’ divisions were exacerbated and re-created with stricter group membership – ‘Japanese–Japanese’ (or ‘Japanese from Japan’), ‘Nikkei-Nikkei’ (or ‘authentic Nikkei’) and ‘Peruvian–Peruvian’ (or ‘pure Peruvian’) – along lines of socio-economic (and legal) status. Cultural difference emerged to legitimate socio-economic difference, rather than that Nikkeijin were differentiated socio-economically because of their cultural difference. Ethnicity has increasingly become an effective tool in many industrial countries for inducing migration and selectively controlling in-migratory flows. But so long as ethnicity is used as a tool, it should not be confused with a ‘category of analysis’ (Brubaker, 1996; Brubaker and Cooper, 2000) to explain ethnic migrants’ adaptation in the host society. Migrants do not simply ‘have’ ethnicity or culture, either similar or different; their ethnicity or culture, as they talk about them, are constantly re-created in such a way as to make sense of the gap between expectation and reality, the changes brought about by migration, and the shift in relation to the others they encounter in a new country. Just as culture was used to justify the descent-based immigration policy, so it was used to make sense of unexpected outcomes. Cultural arguments that have dominated the studies of migrants, particularly of Nikkeijin, in Japan do more to exacerbate cultural difference than to understand the trajectory of migration and its outcomes.

Notes 1 Unlike most other countries, Japan does not automatically grant citizenship. However, the process of obtaining permanent resident status is somewhat eased for Japanese descendants compared with other foreigners. 2 Literally meaning ‘non-Japanese nationals of Japanese descent’ in the Japanese language, the term ‘Nikkeijin’ does not have clear-cut definitions. It commonly refers to ‘members of an overseas Japanese immigrant society, including the Japanese-born first generation’ (Fuchigami, 1995: 3). The Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs also distinguishes

234

3 4

5

6

Ayumi Takenaka

‘Nikkeijin’ from ‘long-term Japanese residents abroad’ (Kaigai choki taizaisha). Maeyama (1996) defines the term not as a legal concept, but as an ethnicity-based ‘native concept or folk concept’, which is given meaning by the Nikkeijin themselves. Although the proportion of non-Japanese Brazilians is relatively small, Kawamura (2002: 139) reports that Japanese Brazilians also look down on non-Japanese Brazilians and other South Americans. Conventionally spelled ‘dekasegi’ in Japanese, I use the spelling Japanese Peruvians commonly used in Spanish. The Japanese term is officially defined by the Ministry of Labour (1993) as labourers who leave home for more than 1 month to engage in temporary work and return home within less than 1 year. The results presented here are based on my year-long field research in Japan. Between 1996 and 1997, I interviewed approximately sixty Peruvian migrants in addition to Japanese policy-makers and employers. I also conducted participant observation in various sites where Peruvian migrants interacted with each other and with others. Data were collected from this ethnographic research as well as document analyses. It is unclear, however, whether those Peruvians who entered Japan on forged documents used their real or forged Japanese surname.

References Brubaker, Rogers (1996). Nationalism Reframed: Nationhood and the National Question in New Europe. New York: Cambridge University Press. Brubaker, Rogers and Cooper, Frederick (2000). ‘Beyond “Identity” ’. Theory and Society 29(1): 1– 47. Clucas, Meika Sha (1995). ‘Race, Ethnicity, and Life Satisfaction: A Study of Nikkei Workers in Japan’. PhD dissertation, University of Southern California. Cornelius, Wayne A. and Tsuda, Takeyuki (2002). ‘Labor Market Incorporation of Immigrants in Japan and the United States: A Comparative Analysis’. IZA Discussion Paper No. 476, April 2002. Fuchigami, Eiji (1995). Nikkeijin Shomei : Nanbei Imin, Nihon e no Dekasegi no Kozu (Proving Nikkei: Dekasegi Migration of South American Japanese Immigrants to Japan). Tokyo: Shinhyoron. Fujisaki, Yasuo (1991). Dekasegui Nikkei Gaikokujin Rodosha (Dekasegi Nikkei Migrant Labourers). Tokyo: Akashi Shoten. Igarashi, Yasumasa (2000). ‘ “Gaijin” Kategori wo Meguru 4-rui gata’ (4 Types of ‘Gaijin’ Categories and Interpretations). Shakaigaku Hyoron (Sociological Studies) 51(1): 54 –70. Ishikawa-Koga, Eunice A. (2000). ‘ “Dekasegi” Taizaisha to “Jumin” eno Aida de’ (Between ‘Dekasegi’ Migrants and ‘Residents’), pp. 130–49 in Miyajima, Takashi (ed.), Gaikokujin Shimin to Seiji Sanka (New Citizens: Foreign Residents and Political Participation). Tokyo: Yushindo. JICA (Japan International Cooperation Agency) (1992). Nikkeijin Honpo Shuro Jittai Chosa Hokokusho (Report on Nikkeijin Labourers in Japan). Tokyo: JICA. Kajita, Takamichi (1994). Gaikokujin Rodosha to Nihon (Foreign Migrant Workers and Japan). NHK Books 698. Tokyo: NHK. Kawamura, Lili (2002). Nihon Shakai to Burajiru-jin Imin (Japanese Society and Brazilian Migrants). Tokyo: Akashi Shoten. Maeyama, Takashi (1996). Esunishiti to Brazil Nikkeijin (Ethnicity and Brazil Nikkeijin). Tokyo: Ochanomizu Shobo.

Peruvian and Japanese-Peruvian migrants in Japan

235

Masuda, Yoshio and Yanagida, Toshio (1999). Peru: Taiheiyo to Andes no Kuni (Peru: A Pacific and Andean Country). Tokyo: Chuo Koron Shinsha. Ministry of Justice (1992). Shutsunyukoku Kanri Kihon Keikaku. (Basic Policy on Immigration Control). Tokyo: Ministry of Justice. Ministry of Labor (1993). Dodo Yogo Jiten. Tokyo: Nikkan Rodo Tsushinsha. Mori, Koichi (1999). ‘Brazil kara no Nikkeijin Dekasegi no 15-nen Kanryu-gata Iju’ (Circular Migration of Japanese-Brazilians over the past 15 years). Latin America Ministry of Justice: Tokyo. Repoto (Latin America Report) 16(2): 2–13. Morimoto, Amelia (1979). Los Inmigrantes Japoneses en el Perú (Japanese Immigrants in Peru). Lima: Taller de Estudios Andinos. Morimoto, Amelia (1992). Peru no Nihonjin Imin (Japanese Immigrants in Peru). Tokyo: Nihon Hyoronsha. NIKKEIS (Sangyo Koyo Antei Senta) (1994). Orientación para Trabajar en el Japón: Guía para Nikkeis (Orientation for Workers in Japan: Guide Book for Nikkeis). Tokyo. Ninomiya, Masato (ed.) (1995). Nikkei Community no Shorai. (The Future of Nikkei Communities). Tokyo: Burajiru Nihon Bunka Kyokai. Omiya, Tomonobu (1997). Dekasegi: Gyakuryu suru Nikkei Brazil (Dekasegi: Reverse Nikkei Migrants from Brazil). Tokyo: Soshisha. Prensa Nikkei (1992). Anuario (Annual Report). Lima: Prensa Nikkei. Thränhardt, Dietrich (1999). ‘Closed Doors, Back Doors, Side Doors. Japan’s NonImmigration Policy in Comparative Perspective’. Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis 1(2): 203–23. Tsuda, Takeyuki (1996). ‘Strangers in the Ethnic Homeland: The Migration, Ethnic Identity, and Psychological Adaptation of Japan’s New Immigrant Minority (Japanese Brazilians)’. PhD dissertation, University of California, Berkeley. Watanabe, Masako (ed.) (1996). Dekasegui Nikkei Brazil (Dekasegi Nikkei Brazilians). Tokyo: Akashi Shoten.

Index

abortion 40 African Americans 24–5, 31–2, 154 ageing 4, 25, 35–6, 42, 54, 57, 62, 64–5 agriculture 1, 28–9, 31, 35, 39–40, 54, 59, 68 Ainu 7, 11, 165 American occupation 3 Americans 117 Argentina 228 Armenians 160 Asian-ness 144 associations 87, 124–7, 142, 150, 153, 155, 187, 196, 199–200, 211, 218, 229 Australia 132, 138, 139, 218 Australians 83, 96 Austria 80 Azerbaijan 160 Bangkok 49, 52 Bangladesh 17, 38, 45–6, 140 Bangladeshis 109 banking and financial services 8, 83, 85, 117, 131 Belgium 80 Berlin 100 biculturalism 170, 187 blood descent 3, 14–15, 33, 195–8, 205–6, 222, 224–5, 229, 234 boat people 12, 165, 175 Bolivians 228 branch plants and offices 8, 29, 119, 122–3 Brazil 3, 6, 13–14, 43, 46, 149, 195, 199, 202, 204, 209–19, 228 Brazilians in Japan 11, 14, 28, 195–206, 209–21, 222, 228, 230, 234 Brunei 39, 45, 48 bubble economy 31, 57, 149 Buddhism 12, 100–1, 108 Burakumin 11

California 25, 33, 127, 149 Cambodia 12, 39 Canada 8, 60–2, 65, 74–5, 132, 138, 139, 149 Canadians 83 capital accumulation 53 capital flows 15, 23, 29, 147 career-building 8–9, 86, 116, 118–22, 125, 217; for women 7, 36, 125, 132, 136, 139, 143 carnival 197, 200, 202 Catholic church 166, 171, 174–5 Chicago 32, 217 China 5, 14–15, 17, 39, 43, 45–7, 54, 136, 138, 141 Chinese 7, 11–12, 28, 34, 44, 46, 69, 123, 131, 155, 165, 195, 199 Christianity 5 circulation 15, 79, 94, 147, 218 citizenship 11, 27, 33–4, 46, 222, 225, 233 class 10–11, 13, 15, 40, 47, 83, 106, 108, 126, 149, 166–9, 174, 190, 224–7, 230 colonies 1–3, 5–6, 13, 27, 70, 165 community: among foreigners in Japan 155–6, 163, 166, 171–4, 195, 201, 204, 229; among Japanese abroad 9–10, 14, 79, 84, 86–90, 92, 94–5, 105, 107–15, 127, 141–2, 149–50 community infrastructure 9, 84, 86, 88–9, 101, 106–7, 109–10, 125–7, 147–8, 150–4, 200 company migrants, Japanese 7–10, 16, 44, 52, 67, 71, 82–9, 92, 95, 116–17, 133–7, 140–2, 145, 149–50, 152–3, 155 construction industry 28, 41, 49, 51, 68, 161, 225 criminality 17, 49–50, 52, 162–3, 204, 223, 227, 229 cultural capital 95–6 cultural events 99–100, 110, 163, 200, 202

238 Index cultural hybridisation 83 cultural mediation 121–4 culture 3, 13, 15, 99–101, 108–15, 116, 122–4, 128–9, 167–9, 172, 178, 181–3, 189–90, 195–8, 202, 205–6, 222–5, 231, 233 Cypriots 88 dekasegi (also dekassegui, dekasegui) (Japanese contract labour migrants) 200, 203, 209–10, 212, 215–19, 223, 225–6, 229, 232, 234 demography 1–2, 4, 38–40, 42–6, 52–3 Denmark 80 dependency ratio 4, 35–6, 42, 62–3 deportation 48 diaspora 100, 109–10, 113–14, 159–60 discrimination 73, 93, 99, 110, 114, 149; against foreigners in Japan 173, 195, 198–9, 206–7, 227; against women 135–9, 144; in relation to kikokushijo 180, 184–5, 187 Düsseldorf 10, 89–90, 98–115, 117, 126–7 economic growth 1–3, 23–30, 33, 35, 37, 38, 42, 47, 131 economic recession 47, 51, 131–2, 135–7, 159, 188, 190, 196, 206, 218 education: costs 64, 125; and economic growth 30; foreigners in Japan 166–8; of Japanese children abroad 112–13, 124–5, 179, see also Japanese schools overseas; of kikokushijo 179–81, 183, 185, 187; length of 1; levels, migrants 42, 50, 62, 74, 117, 136, 138, 206; as reason for migration 79, 83–4, 89–90; system, Japanese 3, 13, 89–90, 109, 124–6, 128, 153, 179, 185 elderly 17, 62; in labour force 1, 42, 64, 66 emigration from Japan 3, 5, 7–8, 15–16, 46, 79, 131, 148, 195, 224; policies 5, 43, 131 England 74, 91, 139 entrepreneurs 148, 154–5, 160, 209–13, 215, 217 environmental bubble 9, 10, 94, 125–7 estate agents 85, 87, 92, 99, 107, 110, 126 ethnic balance 57–8, 69 ethnic boundaries 111, 148 ethnic community 204 ethnic enclave 31, 209, 217 ethnic entrepreneurs 209, 217 ethnic group, Japanese abroad as 109–11, 114–15

ethnic identity 169–71, 173–4 ethnicity 11, 13, 15, 46–7, 73, 80, 107, 109–11, 115, 121, 140, 153, 202, 217, 220, 222–35; and the Nikkeijin 13–15, 197, 202, 222–35 ethnic minorities, Japan 2, 6, 11, 165–75, 197, 209, 219, 222–35; other countries 2, 24–5, 31–4, 160 ethnoscape 95, 98–115 Europe 1, 8, 12, 23–6, 28, 31, 33–6, 80, 87, 93, 96, 159, 188, 218; immigration 25, 33–4, 61, 71–2, 75 European Union 1, 23, 25–8, 35–6, 60, 83 expatriates 8–9, 82, 95, 98–100, 103–5, 107, 109–10, 114, 116–29, 132–5, 147–50, 152–5, 177–9 family 40, 42, 50, 73–5, 82–4, 86–7, 99, 101, 104, 107, 113, 116–18, 124–7, 129, 166–9, 173, 177–9, 196, 200, 225, see also kinship; planning 40, 43 female labour force participation 1–2, 7, 17, 36, 40–2, 64–6, 118 female migrants 3, 7, 16, 48–51, 82–4, 91–2, 132–45 fertility 38–40, 42–3, 54, 62–3, 65–6 Filipinos 48 foreign direct investment (FDI) 29, 41, 44–5, 83–4, 98, 120, 155 foreigners: in Japan 2–4, 16–17, 23, 35–6, 44, 46, 49, 51, 159, 161, 165–6, 199–200; Nikkeijin as 14, 200, 203, 205, 222–3, 225, 227; in other countries 2, 23–4, 44, 51, 99, 105, 128; permanent residents in Japan 2, 13, 57–61, 65, 67, 233; unemployment 58 France 2, 33–4, 60, 70, 74, 80, 170, 188, 218 friendships 86, 91, 93, 112–13, 118, 140, 142, 145, 161, 163, 171–4, 200, 218 gender inequality 36, 138–9 Germany 2, 4, 23, 29–30, 34, 60, 71–2, 80, 87, 100, 111–13, 126, 188, 222 ghettoisation 31–2, 34 global cities 10, 89, 95, 98 globalisation 9, 44, 50, 79, 84, 98–100, 103, 107–8, 109, 114, 116–17, 128, 136, 142–3, 145, 147 global networks 79, 170 golf 88, 93, 110, 126–7 Greece 80, 222 Greeks 105

Index 239 group orientation 3, 111–12, 123, 143, 182, 226 guest-workers 71, 105, 131, 160, 196 Hamamatsu 198, 203–5, 213 Hamburg 100 Hanshin earthquake 175 Hawaii 5 high-status migrants 85, 99, 109, 180, 189 high-status neighbourhoods 85, 101, 106–7 Hispanics 24–5, 31–3 Hong Kong 8, 10, 38–41, 45, 47–8, 82, 127, 131–46 household income 62–4 housing 9, 85, 87–92, 94, 96, 107–9, 113–14, 125–6 Hyogo 165, 175 identity 10, 14, 34, 128–9, 165–75, 190, 202, 207, 227–8 illegal workers 3, 12, 31, 51–3, 58, 67, 69–70, 73, 159, 162, 222, 227 immigrants: in Japan 2–4, 10–17, 23, 28, 46, 49–53, 57–8, 131, 157–76, 195–235; in other countries 2, 23–6, 33–4, 83 immigration: in Japan 1–4, 6–7, 10–17, 23, 27–8, 30–1, 35–6, 41–2, 46–9, 57, 62–6, 131, 222; in other countries 1–4, 23–7, 33, 35, 41–2 Immigration Control Act 1952 27, 28 immigration policy 1, 3–4, 7, 14, 23, 30, 35, 41, 43, 51, 57–75, 118, 165, 222–4 Immigration and Refugee Control Act 1990 13, 195, 203, 220, 222 India 45–6 Indians 88 individualism 2–3, 123, 178, 185 Indo-China 12, 17, 165 Indonesia 39, 43, 45–7, 54 industrialisation 38 information technology 15, 17, 59, 156, 209–21 integration 11, 70, 73, 75, 87, 94–5, 110, 195–6 inter-marriage 92, 110–11, 159, 224, 231–2 internationalisation (kokusaika) 4, 13, 90, 96, 114, 128, 184–6, 188–9 international schools 87, 89, 103, 124, 178 internet 149, 156, 210, 212 intra-urban migration 104–5 Iran 159–60

Iranians in Japan 11–12, 15, 46, 159–64, 205 Israel 48, 160 Italy 80, 222 Iwakura mission 5 Japanese: Americans 147, 149, 151, 153–5; communities overseas 8–10, 79–156, 234; corporations 8–10, 86, 98, 108, 119, 136, 141, 147–8, 153–5; descendants 4, 6–7, 13–15, 43, 57, 59, 67, 147, 195–208, 219–20, 222, 224, 226–32, see also Nikkeijin; ‘fear’ of foreigners and immigration 5, 41, 51, 162; homogeneity 2–5, 8, 10, 14–15, 41, 43, 51, 54, 165, 181–2, 189, 207, 222; imperialism 40, 46, 149, 165, 174; isolation 5–6, 94, 112, 125, 182; management practices 8–9, 83–4, 98–100, 117–18, 120, 137; names 170–3, 230, 232, 234; nationhood 7, 11; schools abroad 9, 87, 89, 99, 101, 106, 112, 124–6, 147, 150–1, 153, 179, 181, 189 Japanese-ness 7, 10, 15, 92, 94, 96, 121–4, 128–9, 142–6, 153, 182, 189, 207 Japanisation 183, 186 Jews 88, 160 Kanagawa 165, 175 kenjinkai (association based on prefectural origins in Japan) 112 kikokushijo (returnee schoolchildren) 11, 13, 15, 90, 112, 177–94; females 185, 187, 190 kinship 162–3, 169, 218, 231; see also family 3K jobs – kitsui (hard), kitanai (dirty), kiken (dangerous) 30–1, 161 Kobayashi Tetsuya 183 Kobe 165–75 Komaki 198 Korea 6, 17, 28, 43, 45–7, 49, 54, 222 Koreans 6–7, 11, 14, 27, 34, 44, 131, 155, 165, 166, 171–2, 174–5, 195; see also Zainichi Kyoto 212 labour: demand 3–4, 15, 24, 42–3, 58; force 1, 7, 29, 35, 38, 40, 42–3, 45, 66, 118; market 11, 43, 61, 65, 99, 108–9, 201; migration 27, 29, 38, 40, 43–9, 51, 53, 57–75, 99, 105, 110; productivity 28–30; recruitment 43–4, 137–8, 196,

240 Index labour (Continued) 199, 216, 218; shortage 2, 16–17, 28, 31, 38–42, 44, 199; supply 2, 24, 35, 38, 43–4, 47, 58, 196, 199 Laos 12, 39 Latin America 13–14, 178, 189, 222 legal status 195, 206, 217, 222–3, 227–30, 233 leisure activities 86, 87, 91–3, 126–7 Libya 48 life course 116, 118–19, 124–5 life history 166–9, 216 lifestyle 10, 15–16, 109, 113, 137, 165–75, 189, 201, 205, 217 Lima 227, 229–31 linguistic abilities 62; foreigners in Japan 60, 160, 163, 166–9, 171, 181, 190, 199, 200–1, 203–4, 232; Japanese abroad 9, 84, 86–7, 90–2, 108, 112–13, 122–3, 140–1, 153, 155 London 10, 30, 34, 79–96, 100, 105, 108–10, 117, 120, 126–7, 132 Los Angeles 8, 10, 117, 126–7, 132, 147–56, 159, 188 maids 41–2, 47 Malaysia 8, 46–9, 54, 127 Malaysians 86 male chauvinism 135–6, 142 male migrant workers 3, 83, 133, 160–1 Maltese 88 Manchuria 6, 46, 199 manual labour 27–8, 31, 42, 57, 209, 214, 223, 226 manufacturing 1, 8, 28–30, 35, 40–1, 48–9, 51, 117, 122, 131, 155, 185, 196, 225 media 12, 17, 99, 128, 132, 135–8, 147, 150, 151, 162, 186–7, 197, 203–4, 227 Meiji period 5–6, 148 Mexico 31, 33 Middle East 12, 43–4, 46–8, 52 migrant business 149, 209–12 migration system 38, 44, 47, 54, 94–5, 104, 109 - 9, 89, Ministry of Education (Monbusho) 124–5, 179, 181 Ministry of Foreign Affairs 6 Ministry of Justice 57–8 minorities 6–7, 16, 24–5, 27, 31, 33–5, 88, 105, 107–8, 165, 180, 184–6, 196, 201–7, 219, 222 modernisation (kindaika) 2, 5, 40, 50, 185–6

Mount Fuji 212 multiculturalism (tabunka kyosei) 4, 11, 15, 34, 140–1, 143–4, 179, 189 Myanmar 39, 46 Nagasaki 5 Nagoya 9, 183 Nakasone Yasuhiro 2 Netherlands 80 New York 120, 132, 188, 218 Nikkei(jin) (foreign population of Japanese origin) 4, 7, 13–16, 34, 189, 195–235; see also Japanese descendants North America 8, 98, 132–5, 140, 188, 197 Obuchi administration 57 Oceania 132–5 off-shore production 1, 15, 41, 45 Oizumi 199–201, 212, 217, 218 Okinawa 213, 231 Okinawans 7, 11 Osaka 9, 137, 183, 189 Pacific Asia 38–54; see also Southeast Asia Pacific Islanders 12 Pacific Rim 8, 98 Pakistan 17, 45–6 Pakistanis 161, 199 parental obligations 50, 52–3, 124–5 parks 12, 161–2 paternalism 40 patriarchy 2, 8, 10, 50 Peru 6, 13–14, 46, 227–8, 232 Peruvians in Japan 11, 14–15, 222–35 Philippines 28, 39, 45–7, 49 Poles 88 popular culture 135–6, 215–17, 219–20 population growth 39, 53, 75; projections 35–6, 65–6; structure 36, 62–6; turnover 9, 79, 85, 104–5 refugee quotas 12 refugees 5, 12, 17, 34, 71, 159–60, 165–7, 169, 171, 175 residential distribution 84–5, 87–8, 91, 94, 99, 101, 103–6, 108–9, 114, 126 re-territorialisation 109–10, 115 retirement 42, 79, 90 return migration 189, 216–17, 225 rotation 9, 71, 99, 108, 119 rural depopulation (kaso) 1 Russia 80

Index 241 Saitama 159 samba 197, 199–202 San Fransisco 188 São Paulo 201, 213, 215, 217 Saudi Arabia 48 savings 40, 52–3 segregation 31, 34, 98–115, 126–7 service sector employment 41, 146, 196 sex industry 3, 46, 49–53 sex ratio 66, 82–3, 133 Singapore 8, 38–42, 44–5, 48–9, 52, 59–60, 69, 89, 116–29, 132 skilled migrants 44, 59–62, 67, 69, 74–5, 83, 85, 103, 111, 126, 222 social exclusion 203 social networks 9, 50, 92, 109, 111–15, 125 social policies 14, 23, 42 social security 63–4 social status 15, 31, 99, 179, 189, 198, 226 Solomon Islands 149 South America 6, 43, 132–4, 195, 197, 205, 223, 234 South Asia 46, 117 Southeast Asia 6, 8, 12, 15, 29–30, 38, 46, 117, 121; see also Pacific Asia Spain 80, 222 Sri Lanka 45–6 students as migrants 7, 16, 62, 74, 82–3, 86, 95, 110–11, 133–5, 139–40, 162, 190, 223, 225–6 Sweden 80 Switzerland 60, 68, 80 Taichi Sakaiya 16, 57 Taiwan 27, 38–41, 44–9, 51 tax burden 63–4 technology 15–16, 29–30, 41, 68, 71–3, 120 temporary migrants 16, 60–2, 65, 70, 73–5, 109, 204 Thailand 38–9, 41, 43–54 Tokugawa shogunate 5 Tokyo 9, 12, 137, 161–3, 183–4, 189, 213 Tokyo Disneyland 212 tourists 46, 111, 131, 135–6, 200, 223 - shosha) trading companies (sogo 8, 119–21

trainee migration 31, 48–9, 51, 53, 71, 226 transient migration 79–80, 82, 88, 90, 92–4, 115, 127, 131–7, 140, 144–5 transnationalism 14–16, 50, 147–56, 209–21 Triadic world economy 8, 98 Turks 105, 160 United Kingdom 2, 4, 6, 29, 80–4, 138, 188 United States 4, 6, 8, 23–5, 27–33, 35–6, 60, 73–4, 83, 96, 138, 140–1, 143, 159–60, 170, 187, 202, 209, 217, 218, 220; immigration 24–5, 31–3, 60, 73–4, 147–9; Japanese in 5, 27, 33, 132, 138, 147–56; migrants in Japan 28, 46 universities 30, 136, 138, 179–80, 183, 185, 187 unskilled labour 4, 13, 48–9, 51–2, 69, 145, 148, 166, 222, 225, 231 urbanisation 38–9 Vietnam 12, 39, 43, 165–75 Vietnamese in Japan 11–13, 15, 165–75 visa: exemptions 17, 52, 160; overstayers 11, 31, 48–9, 52; restrictions 12, 52, 67, 72–4, 139, 161, 220, 223, 230 Washington 188 welfare 1, 62 Western Europe 8, 98, 132–5, 140, 159, 202, 218 women 35–6, 41–2, 49–50, 52–3, 65, 88, 92, 95, 110, 112–13, 115, 124–5, 128, 135–9, 142; as wives 50, 87, 91, 94, 112, 118, 124–5 Yaohan shopping centres 89, 151, 153, 155 Yoshida doctrine 2 Yugoslavia 25–6 Zainichi (long-standing Korean residents in Japan) 154–5, 166; see also Koreans Zanzibar 149