Japanese in the world

Abstract

The genesis and trajectories of Japanese diaspora communities around the world reflect the history of international population movement, cultural and educational orientation, and the language situations of those communities. The diversity of Japanese communities ranges from the older sites of migrant labour diaspora in North and South America and the Pacific—with the disappearance of their historic nihon machi in Southeast Asia—to the shrinkage of colonial Japanese speech communities in the northwest Pacific. It ranges from the modern lifestyle communities of permanent and long-term residents in European cities like Düsseldorf and Paris, to the social fluidities of kikokushijo and reverse-migration of Nikkei. These communities—historic and contemporary—encompass numerous themes in the study of the sociology of the language and sociolinguistics: lingua francas, diglossia, bilingualism, code-switching, heritage language education, borrowing, mixed varieties, ethnolects, and koineization. The global increase in Japanese language education suggests new transnational communities of heritage and foreign language learners.