Exporting Japan : politics of emigration toward Latin America /
Toake Endoh.
- Urbana : University of Illinois Press, (c)2009.
- 1 online resource
Includes bibliographies and index.
Origins, historical development, and patterns of Japanese migration to Latin America -- The first wave of Japanese migration to Latin America -- The second wave: post-World War II period -- Latin American emigration as a national strategy -- Building the emigration machinery -- Post-World War II resurgence of state-led migration to Latin America -- State expansion through human exclusion -- Social origins of Japanese emigration policy -- Latin American emigration as political decompressor -- State expansion through emigration.
Exporting Japan examines the domestic origins of the Japanese government's policies to promote the emigration of approximately three hundred thousand native Japanese citizens to Latin America between the 1890s and the 1960s. This imperialist policy, spanning two world wars and encompassing both the pre-World War II authoritarian government and the postwar conservative regime, reveals strategic efforts by the Japanese state to control its populace while building an expansive nation beyond its territorial borders. Toake Endoh argues that Japan's emigration policy embodied the state's anxieties over domestic political stability and its intention to remove marginalized and radicalized social groups by relocating them abroad. Documenting the disproportionate focus of the southwest region of Japan as a source of emigrants, Endoh considers the state's motivations in formulating emigration policies that selected certain elements of the Japanese population for "export." She also recounts the situations migrants encountered once they reached Latin America, where they were often met with distrust and violence in the "yellow scare" of the pre-World War II period. --From publisher's description.