This book illustrates the complex issues surrounding the identity formation of Chinese immigrants in Yokohama, Japan, from the end of the nineteenth century to 1972. Through a solid examination of such multinational sources as archives; newspapers; and personal collections in Japanese, Chinese, and English, it provides a path-breaking study of Chinese communities in modern Japan. It makes an important contribution to our understanding of the intertwined past of China and Japan, which cannot be fully grasped in any nation-based narrative.
The five chapters of the book follow a chronological order. Chapter 1 examines the history of Chinese immigrants in Japan from the premodern era to the end of the Sino-Japanese War in 1895. A declining view of Chinese immigrants in the archipelago mirrored a discursive shift of Japanese ethnicity from a cultural unit to a modern nation, and consequently the deterioration of diplomatic relations between Meiji Japan and the Qing...