Japan

Chinese and Korean Migration

Although the concept of diaspora needs further clarification when applied to ethnicities other than Jews, it has recently been used to refer to Chinese and Korean migration as well. A scholar on migration studies, Chen Tien-Shi, estimates that of the 34.9 million people in the Chinese diaspora, a great majority live in Southeast Asian countries (notably 7.4 million in Indonesia, 6.5 million in Thailand, and 5.6 million in Malaysia), whereas 960,000 live in Canada, 2,830,000 in the United States, 1,000,000 in Peru, 1,000,000 in Russia, and 380,000 in Australia. The sociologist Koh Chung Hesung regards Koreans as the fourth biggest diaspora group, following Chinese, Jews, and Italians, and estimates that 7 million Koreans live abroad, 90% of them in the United States, Japan, China, or the former USSR.

The Korean and Chinese impact on Japanese societies related to its imperialist and colonialist past, beginning with the First Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895), followed by the cession of Taiwan to Japan in 1895, and the annexation of Korea in 1910. The defeat of Japan in World War II in 1945 destroyed this regime, depriving Japan of territories outside the Japanese archipelago. A number of Koreans and Chinese had lived in the archipelago until then and decided to remain. It is estimated that at the end of the war, more than 2 million Koreans lived in Japan, including around 700,000 laborers who had been forced to go, and 90,000 Chinese (56,000 from the mainland, among them 40,000 forced laborers, and 34,000 from Taiwan). Among the Chinese, 68,000 left Japan by 1950 (44,000 to the Chinese mainland and 24,000 to Taiwan). Although the Koreans and Chinese who chose to remain lost their Japanese citizenship in 1952, postwar legislation guaranteed that they could live in Japan with the status of “special permanent residence.” As of the end of 2006, the special permanent residence status applied to around 439,000 Koreans and 3,000 Chinese, while the ordinary permanent residence applied to 117,000 Chinese and 79,000 Brazilians.

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