ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a cultural-historic overview of what has come to be called the Japanese diaspora – that mass movement of people of Japanese ancestry to all parts of the world including “returnee” immigrants. At least 800,000 people (JICA 1994), and perhaps as many as a million, left Japan before World War II, and another 300,000 have relocated since then. Probably at least three million people of Japanese descent live as citizens of fifty-five countries, and three-quarters of a million Japanese nationals live abroad as temporary or permanent residents (Japanese American National Museum 1999: 14). While the greatest migration has occurred over the last 150 years, Japanese have migrated abroad from at least the fifteenth century.
