International Migrants in Japan: Contributions in an Era of Population Decline ed. by Yoshitaka Ishikawa (review)

This volume, which was edited by geographer Yoshitaka Ishikawa, takes up the issue of international migrants in Japan in an era of population decline. Its 12 chapters set out to study ways in which international migrants contribute to contemporary Japan. Those contributions can include participation in community building activities and in the nation's labor market and raising Japan's total fertility rate (TFR). In other words, international migrants in Japan, in this volume, are understood to be members of the municipalities in which they live, members of the national labor market, and individuals who are often in the midst of family planning. This threefold perspective is kept throughout the volume, with chapters addressing one or more of these roles of international migrants' potential areas of contribution in Japan. The chapters vary not only in their thematic focus but also regarding their methodological approaches. Subsumed under the heading "nationwide empirical studies," the first four chapters (part 1) of this volume are of a decisively quantitative nature and map the occupational attainment, fertility behavior, and naturalization statistics of Japan. The five chapters of part 2 provide so-called "ethnicity- and region-specific empirical studies" and address issues such as marriage migration, school education for foreign children, and ethnic businesses through case studies based on multimethod approaches. Finally, part 3, in three chapters, adds "policy studies" and speaks to issues of labor market policy and integration policy directed at marriage migrants, mainly through qualitative analysis.

The editor might have chosen the slightly bolder approach of arranging the chapters according to their common themes, such as work, local residency, or marriage and fertility. In that way, the multidisciplinary and multimethod approach of the chapters would have been highlighted more prominently, and the chapters would have complemented each other in a more obvious manner. The editor shares his reason for arranging the chapters in their specific order in the preface: the volume seems to have materialized as the result of a funded research project studying international migrants in Japan from the disciplinary viewpoint of geography. Certain key topics thus had to be addressed—these made their way into part 1—while others (chapters in parts 2 and 3) reflect the personal research interests of the members of the research group. Thus, the volume features a high concentration of chapters (4 out of 12) on Brazilian residents, most of them living in Hamamatsu City. Readers will not find even one chapter on Japan's largest ethnic minority, the Chinese. The overall impression is that this volume in its current form came to life in a rather accidental manner.

And yet, this volume is highly informative. Let us, first, have a closer look at the theme of work. It is in particular the chapters on the occupational attainment of migrants (Yu Korekawa), the economy of Hamamatsu residents of Brazilian ethnicity (Hiromi Kitaoka), Brazilian workers during the economic downturn (Hirohisa Takenoshita), and general policy issues of labor migration to Japan since the 1980s (Tatsuya Chiba and Kenji Yamamoto) that address the labor-related issues of international migration to Japan. The chapter by Chiba and Yamamoto clearly points to the gap in Japan's migration policy: "Although the Japanese government officially rejects the acceptance of foreign unskilled workers, it invites them in practice by applying different categories of status-of-residence to foreigners of specific nationalities" (p. 232). Chiba and Yamamoto conclude that while Japan's migration policy has not seen an actual paradigm shift since the Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Act (Shutsunyūkoku Oyobi Nanmin Nintei Hō) came into effect in 1990 regarding the acceptance of labor, the Japanese government has also opened side doors to the immigration of workers who are not highly skilled. These side doors are mainly frequented by youngsters coming from China who hold student visas or trainee status—two groups that de facto feed the low-skilled labor...