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Ethnic Enclaves in Contemporary Japan

Part of the book series: International Perspectives in Geography ((IPG,volume 14))

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Abstract

This book presents a comprehensive study on the enclaves of foreign residents, as ethnic minorities, in contemporary Japan. After briefly describing the trends of immigration into Japan, we introduce the existing literature on Japan’s ethnic enclaves. Next, the major findings from this body of research are summarized. The most significant finding is that the main locations of these enclaves are inner cities, city centers/sub-centers, areas surrounding factories/universities, and public housing. Then, four key issues in the existing literature are addressed (i.e., weak interest in the spatial aspects of enclaves, insufficient attention given to the cross-nationality viewpoint, ad hoc explanations of spatial clustering and enclave formation just for particular nationalities, and few works applying existing explanatory frameworks), and our approaches to meeting those challenges are presented. The enclaves of the five nationalities under focus (China, Korea, the Philippines, Brazil and Turkey) are discussed in Chaps. 3–7 of this volume using the same data source and corresponding figures and tables to present fair comparisons. Finally, an outline of the five authors’ contributions is presented.

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  1. Faculty of Economics, Teikyo University, Hachioji, Tokyo, Japan

    Yoshitaka Ishikawa

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  1. Yoshitaka Ishikawa
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  1. Faculty of Economics, Teikyo University, Hachioji, Tokyo, Japan

    Yoshitaka Ishikawa

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Ishikawa, Y. (2021). Introduction. In: Ishikawa, Y. (eds) Ethnic Enclaves in Contemporary Japan. International Perspectives in Geography, vol 14. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-6995-5_1

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