Recent scholarship on emerging multiculturalism in contemporary Japan has primarily focused on migrants from ‘third world’ countries, with limited attention given to migrants from the ‘West’ and their impact on global and local communities. This chapter fills this gap by examining the narratives of Anglophone Japan scholars who arrived in Japan as JET Programme (Japan Exchange and Teaching) (1987–) participants teaching English in Japanese secondary schools, and later received training in postgraduate programmes in the ‘West’ to become scholars researching some aspect of Japan based in Japanese higher education institutions. Drawing on in-depth interviews with ten former JET Programme participants of various ages about their life stories, this chapter will shed light on ways in which these scholars are ‘wanted’ as symbols of ‘internationalisation’, and hence enjoy ‘privileged’ status in Japan, yet find themselves marginalised in scholarly communities at global and local levels. Through critically examining how these JET-alumni scholars perform and negotiate their academic and personal identities, this chapter will also highlight tensions and connections between the ‘core’ and ‘peripheries’ of the twenty-first century academic ‘world system’ as well as those between area studies and disciplines in the humanities and social sciences.