ABSTRACT
The growth of the foreign worker population has become a major issue in Japan since the late 1980s. When the nationwide debate on the question was at its height in 1988 and 1989, it was assumed by many commentators, both for and against the influx of foreign workers to Japan, that it was a new and unprecedented phenomenon. Since then, especially since June 1990, when the revised Immigration Control Act came into effect, popular interest in the issue has declined, and the notion that the influx of foreign workers is new to Japan has not been questioned. Any serious student of Japanese history, however, knows that prewar Japan faced a grave problem regarding Korean and Chinese immigrant workers.
