ABSTRACT
US President Nixon’s visit to Beijing in 1972 came as a shock to Japan and wrecked the foundation of its postwar foreign policy towards China; thus, its “two Chinas” policy was given up when Prime Minister Tanaka visited Beijing in the same year and normalized Sino-Japanese relations (Hsiao 1974: 102, 108). Subsequently, the enormously complicated job of repatriating zanryū-hōjin was again taken up. The laws and policies that had hindered zanryū-hōjin repatriation started to change, and it became necessary to deal with emerging complaints and disputes originating from them and from their Japanese relatives, volunteers, and lawyers. This dynamic process of repatriation requires a detailed explanation, as the existing research on zanryū-hōjin deals with insufficient and unspecified features of the post-1972 repatriation process. This essentially ethnographic and inductive chapter draws on the following sources for this purpose: legal references and records concerning the repatriation processes,1 newsletters and pamphlets distributed by zanryū-hōjin related organizations, together with relevant knowledge learnt from my huaqiao family experience.
