Japan and Global Migration: Foreign Workers and the Advent of a Multicultural Society

330 Pages·1999·3.5 MB·English

by  Mike Douglass

Japan and Global Migration
Despite being long thought of as immune to the globalizing effect of immigrant labor,
Japan has now begun to experience major increases in the numbers of foreign workers.
These migrants do not just come to work and return home, but bring families and form
households with Japanese nationals. They are spread throughout the country. With the
country’s impending population decline, a rapidly aging society, a low-wage service
sector and income disparities, it seems that the global age of migration is to become a
permanent, if uncomfortable, feature of Japanese life.
Japan and Global Migration brings together current research on foreign workers and
households from a variety of different perspectives. This influx has had a substantial
impact on Japan’s economic, social and political landscape. The books asks three major
questions: whether the recent wave of migration constitutes a new multicultural age
challenging Japan’s identity as a homogenous society; how foreign workers confront the
many difficulties of living in Japan; and how Japanese society is both resisting and
accommodating the growing presence of foreign workers in the community.
The book contains the most up-to-date, original data on Japanese migrant culture
available. Its inescapable conclusion is that the multi-cultural age has finally come to
Japan. The question is whether foreign workers will be legally and socially assimilated
into the fabric of Japanese society or will continue to be treated as temporary entrants
with limited civil rights. The book is written with postgraduate students in Asian studies,
Japanese studies, political science, sociology, anthropology and migration studies in
mind.
Mike Douglass is Professor of Urban Planning at the University of Hawaii. His recent
books include co-editing Culture and the City in East Asia and Cities for Citizens:
Planning and the Rise of the Global Age. Glenda S.Roberts is Associate Professor at the
Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies at Waseda University. She is the author of Staying on the
Line: Blue-Collar Women in Contemporary Japan.

Japan and Global Migration
Foreign workers and the advent of a multicultural
society
Edited by Mike Douglass and Glenda
S.Roberts

London and New York
First published 2000 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York,
NY 10001
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group
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
http://www.ebookstore.tandf.co.uk/.”
© 2000 Mike Douglass and Glenda S.Roberts for selection and editorial material.
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 Japan and global migration: Foregin workers
and the advent of a multi cultural society/edited by Mike Douglass and Glenda S.Roberts pp.
15.6×23.4 cm. Conference papers. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Japan—
Emigration and immigration. 2. Japan—Emigration and immigration Government policy. I.
Douglass, Mike. II. Roberts, Glenda Susan JV8722.J37 1999 99–24302 305.8′00952′09045–dc21
CIP
ISBN 0-203-97647-9 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-415-19110-6 (Print Edition)
In memory of Morita Kiriro—scholar, mentor and friend

Contents

List of figures ix
List of tables xi
Contributors xiv
Acknowledgements xvi

1
PART I Global and historical perspectives on migration to Japan

1 Japan in a global age of migration 2

MIKE DOUGLASS AND GLENDA S.ROBERTS
2 Foreign workers in Japan: a historical perspective 36

KEIZO YAMAWAKI
3 Japan in the age of migration 51

MICHAEL WEINER
4 The discourse of Japaneseness 69

JOHN LIE
5 The singularities of international migration of women to Japan: past, present 89
and future
MIKE DOUGLASS

119
PART II Livelihood and living in Japanese workplaces and communities

6 “I will go home, but when?”: labor migration and circular diaspora formation 120
by Japanese Brazilians in Japan
KEIKO YAMANAKA
7 Aliens, gangsters and myth in Kon Satoshi’s World Apartment Horror 150

DAVID POLLACK
8 Local settlement patterns of foreign workers in Greater Tokyo: growing 178
diversity and its consequences
TAKASHI MACHIMURA
9 Identities of multiethnic people in Japan 198

STEPHEN MURPHY-SHIGEMATSU

219
PART III Government policies and community responses

10 Labor law, civil law, immigration law and the reality of migrants and their 220
children
KATSUKO TERASAWA
11 Foreigners are local citizens, too: local governments respond to international 246
migration in Japan
KATHERINE TEGTMEYER PAK
12 NGO support for migrant labor in Japan 276

GLENDA S.ROBERTS

Index 302
Figures

1.1 Visa overstayers in Japan, 1990–6 19
1.2 Entrants into Japan, 1975–96 21
1.3 Annual and cumulative Japanese direct foreign investment, 22

1960–95
5.1 Number of entrants into Japan from the Philippines by 104

gender and age, 1996
5.2 Number of entrants into Japan from Indonesia by gender 105

and age, 1996
5.3 Share of female/male entrants from Asia by age group, 106

1996
5.4 Entrants from Brazil to Japan by gender and age, 1996 107
5.5 Occupation of apprehended illegal female entrants, 1990–6 112
7.1– 152-
Untitled scenes from World Apartment Horror
7.25 167
8.1 Occupational distribution of Korean and other foreign 182

residents in the Tokyo Metropolis
8.2 Occupational distribution of Korean and other foreign 183

residents in Kanagawa, Saitama and Chiba prefectures