Economic and social difficulties at the beginning of the 20th century caused many Japanese to emigrate to Brazil. The situation was reversed in the 1980s as a result of economic downturn in Brazil and labour shortages in Japan. This book examines the construction and reconstruction of the ethnic identities of people of Japanese descent, firstly in the process of emigration to Brazil up to the 1980s, and secondly in the process of return migration to Japan in the 1990s.
The closed nature of Japan's social history means that the effect of return migration' can clearly be seen. Japan is to...