Chinese in Japan

Extending as far back as 219 BCE when alchemist Xu Fu is said to have come to Japan with a shipload of Chinese youth, the presence, through the nineteenth century, of the Chinese in Japan has been characterized by flows from different regions in China. As a result of this diversity, the changing nature of Sino-Japanese relations, labor requirements, and immigration policies, the Chinese in Japan, unlike those in other parts of Asia, have established their own unique history.

Japanese chronicles make numerous references to migration from the Asian continent from the first century CE. According to the Shinsen shoji roku (Newly Compiled Record of Names, 815 CE), 162 naturalized families of Chinese origin lived in the centralprovinces during this period. Trade between China and Japan became significant from the late twelfth century and grew steadily until the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, when it became a large factor in the economic life of Japan. Records indicate the presence of many Chinese enclaves in Satsuma, the fief of the Shimadzu clan in southern Kyushu.

Although Japan's relations with China were severed as a result of the invasions of Korea (1592, 1597) by the Japanese warlord and statesman Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1536–1596), unofficial trade with China and other countries was encouraged by the first Tokugawa shogun, Ieyasu (1542–1616), and resulted in a flourishing Chinese community in Nagasaki in the seventeenth century. Kyofukuji, Sofukuji, and Fukuzaiji, Chinese temples built in the 1620s, were recognized as Japanese national treasures and attest to the wealth of Chinese merchants of the period. The number of Chinese dropped dramatically after 1688 due to more stringent isolation policies. Many naturalized Chinese took Japanese names, while others used the names of their particular homeland in China.

When Japan was opened again in the 1850s, Chinese began to arrive at the various port cities in limited numbers, generally in the service of Western firms and individuals. The Sino-Japanese Commercial Treaty of 1871 granted Chinese port, residence, and trading rights, with residence limited to specified areas in Tokyo, Yokohama, Osaka, Kobe, Nagasaki, and Sakai. In 1899 Chinese and Koreans were granted the same privileges of travel and residence that were extended to Europeans and Americans. During the Meiji period the three pillars of overseas Chinese economy developed: trade with Shanghai, Hong Kong, Southeast Asia, the Americas, and other parts of the British empire; the "three-blades trades" (the cook's knife, the tailor's shears, and the barber's razor); and peddling, which permitted Chinese to travel and reside in areas other than the trade ports. Posts established along peddling routes eventually developed into small communities.

After Japan's victories in the Sino-Japanese War (1895–1896) and the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905), Chinese students began to flood into Tokyo to learn from Japan's adaptation of Western theories and developments. In 1905 there were as many as eight thousand Chinese students within a mile radius of Tokyo's student quarters. Tokyo also became a haven for many Chinese political refugees and a training ground for political activists. Although most of these students and refugees returned to China, their influence endured in the overseas Chinese community.

Japan's aggression in China during the 1930s led to dramatic drops in the resident Chinese population in Japan, a trend that was countered by the importation of approximately forty thousand Chinese for slave labor primarily in Japanese mines. Following Japan's defeat in World War II, Manchurians and Taiwanese, formerly considered subjects of Japan, became Chinese citizens. The American Occupation government reported that there were then 14,941 Chinese of main-land origin and 15,906 Taiwanese in Japan.

When Japan signed a peace treaty with the Republic of China in 1952, many Chinese residents in Japan doubted whether the republic truly represented China and were irritated when the Guomindang tried to exercise authority over all Chinese nationals in Japan. In 1972, with Japan's normalization of relations with the People's Republic of China, there was an increase in the number of Chinese seeking Japanese citizenship.

The Chinese migration to Japan between 1988 and 1998 involved mostly young, unmarried Chinese from the mainland who concentrated in the inner city and subsequently sent for family members and friends to join them. Inner-city ethnic communities began to spill over into adjoining suburbs, leading to increasing diversification in a nation usually thought of as remarkably homogeneous.

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