ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the narratives of Japanese self-searching migrants in Canada and Australia based on their gender. The purpose, however, is not to point out the idiosyncrasy of women’s situation or mentality, nor to claim that women easily buy into media discourses that encourage their self-searching and migration. Rather, the purpose is to elucidate the idiosyncrasy of Japanese men’s immobility. In other words, this chapter focuses on their situation and mentality characterized by nationalism and corporate-centrism, which bind them to their homeland and the homosocial hierarchy in the age of global mass migration. After introducing the saliently gender-related narratives of my participants, the chapter discusses the essentially homebound nature of the gurōbaru jinzai, or Global Human Resources (GHR), discourse promoted by the Japanese government from around 2010, in contrast to the more media-led outbound discourses of self-searching. It then elucidates how gender and class are implicitly related to each discourse. It is argued that the GHR discourse is essentially nationalistic, corporate-centric, and elitist, geared for male graduates of high-ranking universities as potential corporate workers to send overseas, while the discourse of self-searching is addressed to other groups, who are mostly less privileged women, but also less privileged men and privileged women. The chapter also points out the paradox in that the less privileged men sojourners believe in corporate-centrism more strongly than the privileged men sojourners do. Finally, the chapter spotlights the narratives of male self-searching migrants who are attempting to defy domestic norms by finding a more fulfilling career and life in Vancouver and Sydney.
