Cultural Migrants From Japan

Author : Yuiko Fujita
Publisher : Lexington Books
ISBN 13 : 0739137107
Total Pages : 217 pages
Book Rating : 4.09/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Cultural Migrants from Japan written by Yuiko Fujita and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2009-05-16 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent years, a large number of young Japanese have been migrating to New York and London for the purpose of engaging in cultural production in areas such as dance, fashion, DJing, film, and pop arts in the hope of 'making it' as artists. In the past, this kind of cultural migration was restricted to relatively small, elite groups, such as American artists in Paris in the 1920's, but Cultural Migrants from Japan looks at the phenomenon of tens of thousands of ordinary, middle-class Japanese youths who are moving to these cities for cultural purposes, and it questions how this shift in cultural migration can be explained. Following Appadurai's theory of the relation between electronic media and mass migration, and using ethnographies of twenty-two young migrants over a five year period, Fujita examines how television, film, and the internet influence this mobility. She challenges emerging orthodoxies in the general discussion of transnationalism, demonstrating the disjunction migrants experience between the pre-existing expectations created by media exposure, and the reality of creating and living as a 'transnational' artist participating in a global community. Intersecting long-term, multi-sited ethnography with emerging transnational and globalization theory, Cultural Migrants from Japan is a timely look at the emerging shift in concepts of national identity and migration.

Author : Gracia Liu-Farrer
Publisher : Cornell University Press
ISBN 13 : 1501748645
Total Pages : 276 pages
Book Rating : 4.46/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Immigrant Japan written by Gracia Liu-Farrer and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2020-04-15 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Immigrant Japan? Sounds like a contradiction, but as Gracia Liu-Farrer shows, millions of immigrants make their lives in Japan, dealing with the tensions between belonging and not belonging in this ethno-nationalist country. Why do people want to come to Japan? Where do immigrants with various resources and demographic profiles fit in the economic landscape? How do immigrants narrate belonging in an environment where they are "other" at a time when mobility is increasingly easy and belonging increasingly complex? Gracia Liu-Farrer illuminates the lives of these immigrants by bringing in sociological, geographical, and psychological theories—guiding the reader through life trajectories of migrants of diverse backgrounds while also going so far as to suggest that Japan is already an immigrant country.

Author : Joshua Hotaka Roth
Publisher : Cornell University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780801488085
Total Pages : 180 pages
Book Rating : 4.87/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Brokered Homeland written by Joshua Hotaka Roth and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Faced with an aging workforce, Japanese firms are hiring foreign workers in ever-increasing numbers. In 1990 Japan's government began encouraging the migration of Nikkeijin (overseas Japanese) who are presumed to assimilate more easily than are foreign nationals without a Japanese connection. More than 250,000 Nikkeijin, mainly from Brazil, now work in Japan. The interactions between Nikkeijin and natives, says Joshua Hotaka Roth, play a significant role in the emergence of an increasingly multicultural Japan. He uses the experiences of Japanese Brazilians in Japan to illuminate the racial, cultural, linguistic, and other criteria groups use to distinguish themselves from one another. Roth's analysis is enriched by on-site observations at festivals, in factories, and in community centers, as well as by interviews with workers, managers, employment brokers, and government officials.Considered both "essentially Japanese" and "foreign," nikkeijin benefit from preferential immigration policy, yet face economic and political strictures that marginalize them socially and deny them membership in local communities. Although the literature on immigration tends to blame native blue-collar workers for tense relations with migrants, Roth makes a compelling case for a more complex definition of the relationships among class, nativism, and foreign labor. Brokered Homeland is enlivened by Roth's own experience: in Japan, he came to think of himself as nikkeijin, rather than as Japanese-American.

Author : Megha Wadhwa
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1000207811
Total Pages : 226 pages
Book Rating : 4.11/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Indian Migrants in Tokyo written by Megha Wadhwa and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-10-29 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How does an extended stay in Japan influence Indian migrants’ sense of their identity as they adapt to a country very different from their own? The number of Indians in Japan is increasing. The links between Japan and India go back a long way in history, and the intricacy of their cultures is one of the many factors they have in common. Japanese culture and customs are among the most distinctive and complex in the world, and it is often difficult for foreigners to get used to them. Wadhwa focuses on the Indian Diaspora in Tokyo, analysing their lives there by drawing on a wealth of interviews and extensive participant observation. She examines their lifestyles, fears, problems, relations and expectations as foreigners in Tokyo and their efforts to create a 'home away from home' in Japan. This book will be of great interest to anthropologists and sociologists concerned with the impact of migration on diaspora communities, especially those focused on Japan, India or both.

Author : Olga Kanzaki Sooudi
Publisher : University of Hawaii Press
ISBN 13 : 0824847814
Total Pages : 266 pages
Book Rating : 4.14/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Japanese New York written by Olga Kanzaki Sooudi and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2014-10-31 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Spend time in New York City and, soon enough, you will encounter some of the Japanese nationals who live and work there—young English students, office workers, painters, and hairstylists. New York City, one of the world’s most vibrant and creative cities, is also home to one of the largest overseas Japanese populations in the world. Among them are artists and designers who produce cutting-edge work in fields such as design, fashion, music, and art. Part of the so-called “creative class” and a growing segment of the neoliberal economy, they are usually middle-class and college-educated. They move to New York for anywhere from a few years to several decades in the hope of realizing dreams and aspirations unavailable to them in Japan. Yet the creative careers they desire are competitive, and many end up working illegally in precarious, low paying jobs. Though they often migrate without fixed plans for return, nearly all eventually do, and their migrant trajectories are punctuated by visits home. Japanese New York offers an intimate, ethnographic portrait of these Japanese creative migrants living and working in NYC. At its heart is a universal question—how do adults reinvent their lives? In the absence of any material or social need, what makes it worthwhile for people to abandon middle-class comfort and home for an unfamiliar and insecure life? Author Olga Sooudi explores these questions in four different venues patronized by New York’s Japanese: a grocery store and restaurant, where hopeful migrants work part-time as they pursue their ambitions; a fashion designer’s atelier and an art gallery, both sites of migrant aspirations. As Sooudi’s migrant artists toil and network, biding time until they “make it” in their chosen industries, their optimism is complicated by the material and social limitations of their lives. The story of Japanese migrants in NYC is both a story about Japan and a way of examining Japan from beyond its borders. The Japanese presence abroad, a dynamic process involving the moving, settling, and return to Japan of people and their cultural products, is still underexplored. Sooudi’s work will help fill this lacuna and will contribute to international migration studies, to the study of contemporary Japanese culture and society, and to the study of Japanese youth, while shedding light on what it means to be a creative migrant worker in the global city today.

Author : Mike Douglass
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 113465510X
Total Pages : 330 pages
Book Rating : 4.06/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Japan and Global Migration written by Mike Douglass and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-04-22 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book contains the most up-to-date, original data on Japanese migrant culture available. Its inescapable conclusion is that the multicultural age has finally come to Japan.

Author : Susanne Klien
Publisher : State University of New York Press
ISBN 13 : 1438478070
Total Pages : 234 pages
Book Rating : 4.74/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Urban Migrants in Rural Japan written by Susanne Klien and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2020-01-15 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 2020 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title Urban Migrants in Rural Japan provides a fresh perspective on theoretical notions of rurality and emerging modes of working and living in post-growth Japan. By exploring narratives and trajectories of individuals who relocate from urban to rural areas and seek new modes of working and living, this multisited ethnography reveals the changing role of rurality, from postwar notions of a stagnant backwater to contemporary sites of experimentation. The individual cases presented in the book vividly illustrate changing lifestyles and perceptions of work. What emerges from Urban Migrants in Rural Japan is the emotionally fraught quest of many individuals for a personally fulfilling lifestyle and the conflicting neoliberal constraints many settlers face. In fact, flexibility often coincides with precarity and self-exploitation. Susanne Klien shows how mobility serves as a strategic mechanism for neophytes in rural Japan who hedge their bets; gain time; and seek assurance, inspiration, and courage to do (or further postpone doing) what they ultimately feel makes sense to them.

Author : Koichi Iwabuchi
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN 13 : 1783484993
Total Pages : 248 pages
Book Rating : 4.97/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Multiculturalism in East Asia written by Koichi Iwabuchi and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2016-10-04 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An examination of multiculturalism in East Asia using a transnational approach. The collection focuses in on Japan, Korea and Taiwan to examine key issues including policy, racial discourse, subjectivity and the implications for established ethic minority communities.

Author : Christopher S. Thompson
Publisher : State University of New York Press
ISBN 13 : 0791482103
Total Pages : 230 pages
Book Rating : 4.00/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Wearing Cultural Styles in Japan written by Christopher S. Thompson and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2012-02-01 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This groundbreaking collection examines the regional dynamics of state societies, looking at how people use the concepts of urban and rural, traditional and modern, and industrial and agricultural to define their existence and the experience of living in contemporary Japanese society. The book focuses on the Tohoku (Northeast) region, which many Japanese consider rural, agrarian, undeveloped economically, and the epitome of the traditional way of life. While this stereotype overstates the case—the region is home to one of Japan's largest cities—most Japanese contrast Tohoku (everything traditional) with Tokyo (everything modern). However, the contributors show how various regional phenomena—internationalization, lacquerware production, farming, enka (modern Japanese ballads), women's roles, and professional dance —combine the traditional, the modern, and the global. Wearing Cultural Styles in Japan demonstrates that while people use the dichotomies of urban/rural and traditional/modern in order to define their experiences, these categories are no longer useful in analyzing contemporary Japan.

Author : Nelson H. H. Graburn
Publisher : Berghahn Books
ISBN 13 : 9781845452261
Total Pages : 266 pages
Book Rating : 4.67/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Multiculturalism in the New Japan written by Nelson H. H. Graburn and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2008 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "...a valuable addition to the increasing literature on Japanese multiculturalism which has challenged the long-held homogeneous Japan thesis...A particular contribution of this ... book is to illuminate the ground-level process where hybridities emerge and group boundaries are redrawn in a particular local context...I greatly enjoyed reading [this book] from beginning to end. My undergraduate students who encountered it in their subject reading list also enjoyed it. I would recommend it highly for both undergraduate and graduate students studying Japanese society." - Japan Studies "This book importantly seeks out the meanings behind the nooks and crannies in which peoples from different cultures are juxtaposed within Japan. However the real work of living side by side, of respecting individual and cultural differences, of embracing diversity...remains a vital challenge to both Japan, as well as to scholars who stand poised to connect the dots of this critical and evolving picture. I recommend this volume as one further step toward that undertaking." - Asia Pacific World "...a very readable volume offering through its focus on the local a vivid picture of multiculturalism in Japan. All articles are ethnographically grounded and it is here, and not in systematic and theoretically exhaustive treatment of the subject of multiculturalism." - Zeitschrift für Ethnologie Like other industrial nations, Japan is experiencing its own forms of, and problems with, internationalization and multiculturalism. This volume focuses on several aspects of this process and examines the immigrant minorities as well as their Japanese recipient communities. Multiculturalism is considered broadly, and includes topics often neglected in other works, such as: religious pluralism, domestic and international tourism, political regionalism and decentralization, sports, business styles in the post-Bubble era, and the education of immigrant minorities.