Americans in Japan

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The community of Americans in Japan (Japanese: 在日アメリカ人/在日米国人) began to form after the 1854 Convention of Kanagawa, under which Commodore Matthew C. Perry forced Japan open to international trade.[1] As of 2004, Americans formed 2.4% of the total population of registered foreigners in Japan, with 51,851 U.S. citizens residing there, according to the statistics of Japan's Ministry of Justice. This made them the sixth-largest group of foreigners; they had formerly been the fifth-largest, but were surpassed by Peruvians in 2000.[2]

Contents

[edit] History

The first Americans to come to Japan actually predated Perry by nearly six decades. In 1791, two merchant vessels from Massachusetts, the Lady Washington and the Grace, landed at Kushimoto, near Osaka, under the pretense that they were taking refuge from a storm. They began negotations with Japanese authorities there about the potential of opening trade, but made no headway, and departed after eleven days.[1]

Especially prior to World War II, it was a common practise for issei Japanese Americans to send their nisei children to Japan for education. Known as Kibei (帰米?), they often found themselves the subject of discrimination from their classmates in Japan during their studies; upon their return to the United States, their Japanese American peers also derided them as "too Japanesey" for their alleged authoritarian mindset and pro-Japanese militarist sympathies.[3][4]

[edit] Health issues

Americans in Japan overall had similar pattern of mortality to Americans at large, according to one 1986 study; however, American women in Japan showed a somewhat elevated propensity to strokes.[5]


[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b Mitarai, Shoji, An Exploration of the History of Cross-cultural Negotiation: The First U.S.-Japan Trade Negotiation before Commodore Perry's Arrival, Working Papers, Social Science Research Network, <http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=602701>. Retrieved on 11 April 2008 
  2. ^ 平成19年末現在における外国人登録者統計について (About the statistics of registered foreigners at 2007 year-end), Japan: Ministry of Justice, June 2008, <http://www.moj.go.jp/PRESS/080601-1.pdf> 
  3. ^ Takahashi, Jere (1998), Nisei/Sansei: Shifting Japanese American Identities and Politics, Temple University Press, pp. 65-84, ISBN 156639659X 
  4. ^ Yamashiro, Masahiro (1995), 帰米二世―解体していく「日本人」, Gogatsu Shobo, ISBN 4772702229 
  5. ^ Kono, Suminori; R. Isa, Abdul; Ogimoto, Itsuro & Yoshimura, Takesumi (1987), “Cause-Specific Mortality among Koreans, Chinese, and Americans in Japan, 1973-1982”, International Journal of Epidemiology (Oxford University Press) 16 (3), <http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/16/3/415> 

[edit] Further reading