ABSTRACT
Since the middle of the 1980s, the increasing number of ‘male japayuki’ (japaykui-kun: see, for example, KKSK, 1989:32) became conspicuous. A frequently quoted indicator of this are yearly figures for the ‘uncovered’ (or rather, recorded) ‘illegals’ of the Immigration Control Bureau (shutsunyūkoku kanrikyoku, abbreviated as: nyūkan). In 1986, 27 per cent of all the ‘temporary immigrants’ entering Japan were males with tourist visas (‘working tourists’), a more than threefold increase over the previous year. In consequence, 38 per cent of the 11,307 ‘exposed’ illegals in the following year were male (Gonoi, 1989:111). In 1988, males outnumbered females in these figures for the first time (8,929 of the 14,314 detected ‘illegals’ were male). In 1990, male ‘working tourists’ exposed or expelled comprised roughly 80 per cent of the 29,884 foreigners gainfully employed without an appropriate visa (the overall rate of increase to the previous year also was around 80 per cent, cf. Hoizumi, 1991:7). These official data are those most often cited in reference to irregular immigration to Japan. They do mirror a ‘real trend’, typically captioned with such a description as ‘enormous increase in male illegals’, but nonetheless require interpretation. The present study mostly covers for the discussion up to 1990, so the data available to that year are our primary concern. It was precisely the reversal in gender-pattern which received special attention, for example in the sex-related graphs which were now, for the first time, produced and reproduced. In almost every publication on the subject, one can find graphic illustrations similar to the following (figs 5.1 and 5.2):
These figures are arrived at by aggregating data; they reveal some notable gender-related differences. Female migrants ‘established’ in
the services (that is, victims of trafficking for more than two decades) from ‘traditional’ countries such as Thailand or the Philippines, still outnumber men from these countries, whereas in the case of Iranians, for example, migration is almost exclusively male (data based on estimates of the Immigration Control Bureau, cf. Table 5.1 from Ampo, 23, April (1992), 23).
