Abstract

TESSA MORRIS-SUZUKI
Invisible Immigrants: Undocumented Migration and Border Controls
in Early Postwar Japan

The economic "bubble" of the 1980s is widely assumed to mark the start of large-scale immigration to postwar Japan. This article questions that assumption by examining the neglected topic of immigration to Japan in the decades immediately following the Pacific War. Though the scale of immigration to Japan in these decades is difficult to assess, there is good reason to believe that tens of thousands of "illegal" migrants (so-called mikkōsha) entered Japan, mainly from Korea, between 1946 and the 1970s. The article explores the experiences of these migrants and suggests that official responses to their presence had a lasting impact on Japan’s migration and border control policies.

Volume 32, Number 1 (Winter 2006)
© 2006 Society for Japanese Studies