No Island Is an Island

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? With contributions from a diverse group of thirteen scholars representing five academic disciplines, No Island Is an Island 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.

The 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 and to 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.