ABSTRACT
The present size and distribution of population in Japan are unlikely to change greatly in the next few decades, but the Japanese people themselves are changing. Up to now they have been very insular both literally and figuratively and, apart from forays into Korea, China, and briefly Southeast Asia, particularly from 1930 to 1945, Japan has kept
itself very isolated. To the outsider, the Japanese appear remarkably homogeneous. There are only about 200,000 foreigners, mostly Koreans, in the country. The original inhabitants of Hokkaido in the north do, however, differ from the rest of the Japanese. There is also a class, the Bukharamin, whose situation resembles the Indian caste of untouchables. The shift of employment from agriculture to
Source: Nippon (1993), Tables 1 and 5. Key to numbering is in Table 8.3
industry and services has occurred fairly smoothly in Japan; because of the physical conditions, the cities and shrinking cultivated areas share the same plains.
