Abstract
This chapter investigates the socio-cultural characteristics of Japanese migrants living in Australia. In settler societies (Stasiulis & Yuval-Davis eds. in Unsettling settler societies: Articulations, gender, ethnicity and class. SAGE, London, 1995) such as Australia, it is quite popular with migrants to organise their own ethnic communities and organisational bodies, for their well-being in the new society. A consideration of this allows me to theorize the general but essential functions and expected roles of the ethnic association of migrants in a settler society such as Australia. I focus on the very short history of the Japan Club of Australia (JCA), a Japanese ethnic organisation organized nationally across states in Australia. To investigate the reasons why this national Japanese ethnic association was founded but lasted only a decade, this chapter highlights the fact that most contemporary Japanese migrants are lifestyle migrants, who find it difficult to perceive that they belong to an ethno-specific “imagined community” (Anderson in Imagined communities: reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism. Verso, London, 2006) in Australia.
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Notes
- 1.
For this, Weber argues the definition of ethnicity as follows: “The concept of the ‘ethnic’ group, which dissolves if we define our terms exactly, corresponds in this regard to one of the most vexing, since emotionally charged concepts, the nation, as soon as we attempt a sociological definition” (Weber 1978[1968]: 395).
- 2.
In this sense, race/ethnicity must be understood as a socio-cultural discourse, rather than objective scientific discourse. A counterpart to this can be found in the assumed distinction between “scientific” sex and “cultural” gender category, challenged by Judith Butler in Gender Trouble (Butler 1999[1990]).
- 3.
Notwithstanding, problems of racism or racial discrimination cannot be made to disappear simply by replacing the term race with ethnicity. In reality, the racial concept is still working to discriminate or look down on an antagonistic or minority groups in society. Moreover, as Étienne Balibar urges in Is There a Neo-Racism? (Balibar 1991), ethnic or cultural differences are by no means innocent of racism either. Hage (2000) also examines the structure of such “cultural racism” in contemporary Australia.
- 4.
There have, however, been associations formed to deal with migrant women’s problems, such as Immigrant Women’s Speakout, an NGO based in Western Sydney, which has been acting for migrant women across ethnic communities.
- 5.
Nevertheless, I do not deny that there is room for identity politics or “strategic essentialism” that strategically insists on (imagined) essential ethnic or other cultural identities for political struggle from social minorities.
- 6.
JCQ merged with the Japan Society of Brisbane, a group of Japanese business expatriates and their families, since both associations had suffered from membership decline. Meanwhile, the Japanese population in south-eastern Queensland is still rowing through the 2000s.
- 7.
A larger global network among nikkei communities was active around that time. Hosaka played a significant role in lobbying, in association with others across the world.
- 8.
The JCA eventually received an answer from the Consulate General that it was unable to have the regulation rescinded, although the State authority finally consented to overlook the selling of sea laver at Japanese supermarkets.
- 9.
As of 2017, Nichigo Press continues to publish a monthly magazine in both the national and Queensland editions, as well as other seasonal special issues.
- 10.
For further debates on the rise of the One Nation Party and its impact on Australian society as well as its aftermath, see Abbott and Manne (1998).
- 11.
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Hamano, T. (2019). Nikkei Identity in Question: A Story of National Ethnic Japanese Organisation in Australia between 1990 and 2000s. In: Marriage Migrants of Japanese Women in Australia. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-7848-5_4
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