Preface
In 1600, after a century of brutal civil war, the Tokugawa shogunate unified Japan and established a form of government that would last until the Americans opened the country in the 1860s. For the next 250 years, the shogunate—officially, at least—forbade any Japanese to leave the islands. Things changed overnight when the country tried to instantly modernize in the face of increasing economic and military pressure from the West. The shogunate collapsed, and the old travel restrictions were eliminated. As a result, it is likely that some million and a half Japanese left Japan in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, becomingIssei—the first generation of Japanese immigrants.
Today, some three million people of Japanese descent, Nikkei, are citizens of almost every nation in the world. Also, at least a half million Japanese nationals now live abroad as either permanent residents or long-term guests. This volume explores the societies and communities of these overseas Japanese, as they make lives for themselves in new—and old—homelands. Here we examine, both theoretically and descriptively, the processes of ethnic identity creation for Nikkei and Japanese nationals living overseas.