ABSTRACT
From ancient times migrants to Japan have mixed with the local inhabitants and produced offspring. While much ethnic mixing has occurred in the distant past, many contemporary persons trace their immediate ancestry to more than one ethnic source. Since 1988,1 have been studying multiethnic individuals in Japan through interviews, psychological counseling and ethnographic fieldwork in Okinawa and Tokyo. In this chapter I will give examples of these lives and explain how their identities are influenced by a wide range of political, legal, ideological social and psychological forces and constraints. Although some of the conditions are favorable, I will focus on the problems that have become evident in my study.
