Japanese People - Japanese Diaspora

Japanese Diaspora

The term nikkeijin (日系人?) is used to refer to Japanese people who emigrated from Japan and their descendants.

Emigration from Japan was recorded as early as the 12th century to the Philippines and Borneo, but did not become a mass phenomenon until the Meiji Era, when Japanese began to go to the Philippines, United States, Canada, Peru, Brazil, and Argentina. There was also significant emigration to the territories of the Empire of Japan during the colonial period; however, most such emigrants repatriated to Japan after the end of World War II in Asia.

According to the Association of Nikkei and Japanese Abroad, there are about 2.5 million nikkeijin living in their adopted countries. The largest of these foreign communities are in the Brazilian states of São Paulo and Paraná. There are also significant cohesive Japanese communities in the Philippines, East Malaysia, Peru, Argentina, and the U.S states of Hawaii, California, and Washington. There is also a small group of Japanese descendants living in Caribbean countries such as Cuba and the Dominican Republic, where hundreds of these immigrants were brought in by Rafael L. Trujillo in the 1930s. Separately, the number of Japanese citizens living abroad is over one million according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.