No island is an island : perspectives on immigration to Japan / edited by Michael Strausz.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Strausz, Michael, editor.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Immigrants--Japan.

Immigrants.

Japan--Emigration and immigration.

Japan.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (249 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Honolulu : University of Hawaii Press 2025

Summary:

"Despite Japan's long-held reputation as an ethnically homogeneous country largely closed to foreigners, the number of immigrants in Japan has been increasing, partially as a direct result of government policies to address labor shortages associated with Japan's aging and declining population. What have these changes meant for Japan as a nation, as well as for foreign communities living in Japan? This book puts recent changes to the nature of immigration to Japan as well as the foreign population of Japan into social, political, historical, cultural, and religious context with contributions from a diverse group of 13 scholars representing five academic disciplines. This book addresses four questions related to the changing situation of immigration and immigrants to and in Japan. First, what can previous immigration regimes tell us about recent efforts to reform immigration in Japan? Second, how do the new visa categories set up to promote the admission of foreign manual laborers into Japan influence existing foreign populations in Japan? Third, how have local and national governments adapted to the increase in immigration to Japan as well as the changing nature of Japan's foreign community? Fourth, what kind of immigration country will Japan become? The nature of the foreign communities in Japan has undergone several major changes since the end of the World War II and the US Occupation, and there continue to be major changes in the composition of those communities. The essays in this volume highlight both the various dimensions of Japan's complicated relationship with its foreign communities as well as several possible directions in which Japan's immigration policy might continue to evolve"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Introduction: the dynamics of Japan's immigration in three turning points / Michael Strausz

An open empire? Imperial Japan's border controls, 1899-1945 / Eric Han

Side doors and redefined skills: continuity in Japanese labor migration policy / Chikako Kashiwazaki

Postwar unauthorized migration into Japan / Kato Jotaro and Gracia Liu-Farrer

Migrations and religious diversification in contemporary Japan: critical situations resulting from the COVID-19 disaster / Takahashi Norihito

Foreign labor without foreign residents: foreign agricultural labor in Japan / Glenda S. Roberts and Noriko Fujita

"Training" foreign workers, cultivating bias? TITP and immigration to Japan / Hilary J. Holbrow

Local-level governance and contestation of temporary labor migration / Yunchen Tian

Shy foreign labor supporters? Immigration and Japan's 2019 House of Councilors Election / Michael Strausz

Why it's different now: quantitative and qualitative changes to Japanese migration trends / Paul Capobianco

Japan as an "emerging migration state": a litmus test of liberal democracy? / James F. Hollifield and Michael Orlando Sharpe

Japan as a country of non-immigration / Erin Aeran Chung.

ISBN:

979-88-8070-037-0

OCLC:

1531327216