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

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

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 UBD, and was a Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Visiting Fellow in 2001.

Ayumi Takenaka is Richard Storry Junior Research Fellow at the Nissan Institute of Japanese Studies at St Antony's College, Oxford University, and an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Bryn Mawr College. 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).