Migrations & Identities 1.2 (2008), 71–88 ISSN 1753-9021 (print) 1753-903X (online) © LUP Deconstructing Nikkeijin Politics of Representation among People of Japanese Ancestry Migrating from the Americas to Japan Martín Hugo Córdova Quero, Alberto Fonseca Sakai, Mélanie Perroud and Jane H. Yamashiro Since the mid-1980s and the so-called ‘bubble economy’, Japan has received an increasing number of migrants, including thousands of ethnic Japanese from the Americas – especially from Brazil, but also including people from Peru, Bolivia, Argentina, Paraguay and the United States. These descendants of Japanese emigrants to the Americas challenge the paradigm of conlated national and racial identity in Japan, as foreign nationals with a shared Japanese background. Usually referred to as Nikkeijin in Japan, these migrants have varying levels of Japanese language ability and exposure to Japanese culture and society. In some ways they are considered close to ‘Japanese’ while in other ways they are not. This article interrogates the ways in which Nikkeijin are understood and deined in Japan, exploring, in particular, how the contemporary construction of Nikkeijin intersects with the notion of Nihonjin (ethnically Japanese citizens of Japan) and dekasegi, a term used originally to describe Japanese labour migrants in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. During the Meiji period (1868–1912), Japan rapidly underwent a process of industrialisation and modernisation, including widespread land reform which resulted in the economic displacement of thousands of people, especially farm- ers in rural western Japan. In addition to internal migration and settlement in Japanese colonies in Korea and Manchuria, international migration became another solution favoured by the state. Beginning with 29,000 contract labour- ers to Hawaii in 1885, Japanese emigrants ventured to the South Paciic, Latin America, the Philippines and North America seeking a better future (Kikumu- ra-Yano, 2002). Until the Second World War, the majority of those migrants aspired to return to Japan. But, as with most migrant populations, having fam- ilies, developing social networks and economic challenges led many Japanese to settle outside Japan. hough there was limited migration to or from Japan during the Second World War, ater the war emigration to South American countries, Brazil in particular, continued. Ethnic Japanese communities have developed around the world, now up to the sixth generation in Hawaii and Brazil. By 1993, Brazil and the United States (including Hawaii and the continent) were hosts to the largest ethnic Japanese populations outside Japan – at more than 1,300,000 (JICA, 2003, 12) and 760,000 (Kikumura-Yano, 2002, 29), respectively.