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{{Unreferenced|date=December 2006}}
'''Japanese people in Hong Kong''' are primarily in the territory for work related purpose. [[Hong Kong]] remains popular for [[Japan|Japanese]] tourists on their way to [[China]].


{{Ethnic group|
There numbers are smaller when compared to the sizable presence of [[United States|Americans]], [[Briton]]s and [[Canadian]] expatriats.
|group=Japanese people in Hong Kong
|poptime=14,100
|popplace=[[Happy Valley]], [[Shatin]], [[Tai Po]]
|langs=[[Japanese language]]
|rels= [[Shintoism]], [[Buddhism]]
|related=[[Japanese people]]
}}


'''Japanese people in Hong Kong''' are composed primarily of expatriate businesspeople and their families, although there are also a sizable number of single females.<ref>Sakai 2001: 32</ref> There numbers are smaller when compared to the sizable presence of [[United States|Americans]], [[Briton|British]] and [[Canadian]] expatriates. [[As of 2001]], they composed 3.5% of the ethnic minority population of Hong Kong, or roughly 14,100 individuals.<ref name="CSD">CSD 2001: 6</ref> [[Hong Kong]] also remains a popular destination for [[Japanese people|Japanese]] tourists on their way to [[China]]; in 2004, the Japanese consulate reported the arrival of more than one million Japanese tourists.<ref name="CGJ">CG of Japan in HK</ref>

== History ==

Japanese migration to Hong Kong was noted as early as the latter years of the [[Tokugawa Shogunate]]. With the forced end of the [[sakoku]] policy, which prohibited Japanese people from leaving Japan, regular ship services began between Japan, Hong Kong, and Shanghai; Japanese merchants and [[Prostitution in Japan|''karayuki'']] slowly began to settle overseas.<ref>Liu 2000</ref> By 1880, 26 men and 60 women of Japanese nationality were recorded as living in Hong Kong; the total population would reach 200 by the end of the [[Meiji era]] in 1912.<ref>Okuda 1937</ref>

=== Second Sino-Japanese War ===
In September 1931, there were anti-Japanese riots in Hong Kong as a result of the [[Invasion of Manchuria]], during which one Japanese family was murdered by a Chinese man;<ref>Kuo 2006</ref> Tokyo would later cite these riots as one ''casus belli'' when they initiated the [[Shanghai War of 1932]] (a.k.a. ''January 28th Incident'').<ref>Jordan 2001: 22</ref> The population did not grow much in the following decade; though a Japanese school continued to operate in [[Wan Chai]]<ref>Yu 2000: 38</ref>, by the time of the Japanese declaration of war against the British Empire and the start of the [[Battle of Hong Kong]], the Japanese population of Hong Kong had dropped to 80.<ref>Banham 2005: 24</ref>

Japanese settlers often followed the [[Imperial Army]], as in the case of [[Manchukuo]] in the aftermath of the [[Mukden Incident]]; however the 1941-1945 [[Japanese occupation of Hong Kong]] was not accompanied by an influx of Japanese civilians.<ref>Han 1982: 10</ref> The existing institutions of the Japanese civilian population in Hong Kong were co-opted by the military for their own purposes; the Hong Kong News, a [[Japanese language]] newspaper, ceased publication in Japanese, but continued operations in [[Chinese language|Chinese]] and [[English language|English]] versions, publishing officially-approved news of the occupation government. <ref>Banham 2005: 24</ref> However, the Japanese civilians who remained in Hong Kong were not entirely unsympathetic to the plight of their Chinese neighbours; [[Patrick Yu]], a celebrated trial lawyer, recalled in his memoirs the assistance his family received from the headmaster of the Japanese school in escaping from Hong Kong to [[Free China]] by way of [[Macau]] and [[Guangzhou Wan]] (then Portuguese and French colonies, respectively, and untouched by the Japanese military).<ref>Yu 2000: 39</ref>

===Post-World War II===
As the Japanese economy recovered from the effects of World War II and began its boom, Japanese investment overseas grew, resulting in an increase in the Japanese population living in Hong Kong. The Hong Kong Japanese School, an [[Nihonjin gakko|international school aimed at Japanese students]], was established in the 1960s;<ref>HKJS: [http://www.hkjs.edu.hk/index2.html 理事長メッセージ]</ref> there is also a weekly print newspaper, the Hong Kong Post, which began publication in June 1987.<ref>HK Post: [http://hkpost.pasona.com.hk/aboutus.asp 香港ポストについて]</ref> Between 1981 and 1999, the population of Japanese in Hong Kong nearly tripled from 7,802 to 23,480, making the Japanese community similar in size to those in cities such as London and New York; in line with this increase, the number of Japanese companies also grew rapidly, almost doubling from 1,088 to 2,197 from 1988 to 1994.<ref>Sakai 2001: 132</ref> The [[reform and opening up]] of China and the [[return of Hong Kong]] to Chinese sovereignty in 1997 spurred increasing economic integration with the mainland, and, following this trend, many Japanese-managed companies moved their operations across the border into [[Shenzhen]] and [[Guangzhou]];<ref>Wong 1999: 182</ref> as a result, the Japanese population of Hong Kong declined from its 1999 peak; the Hong Kong Census and Statistics Department recorded only 14,100 Japanese people in 2001, a 33% decrease.<ref name="CSD"/> However, the population would soon bounce back; in 2004, the Japanese Consulate General estimated 25,600 Japanese living in Hong Kong.<ref name="CGJ"/>

== Attitude towards integration ==

[[Image:Sogo Causeway.JPG|right|thumb|300px|[[Sogo]] is one of many Japanese-managed companies in the [[Causeway Bay]]-[[Wan Chai]] area]]

Japanese communities abroad have been described as "Japanese villages abroad ... whose residents make maintenance of cultural, economic, and political ties with Tokyo their foremost concern"; however, Wong's 2001 study of [[Yaohan]] employees refuted this notion in the case of businesswomen working in Hong Kong.<ref>Wong 2001: 52-56</ref> Though the majority of Japanese coming to Hong Kong continued to be businessmen and their families, during the 1990s, there was a "boom" of single Japanese women emigrating to escape the male-oriented environment of Japanese domestic workplaces; unlike previous migration, which had often been targetted towards Anglophone countries, many of these women went to Hong Kong and other Asian cities in an effort to further their careers. Notably, in one survey, a third of the single or divorced women coming to Hong Kong during this period reported previous study abroad experience. Not only were single women more willing to emigrate, but Japanese companies in Hong Kong proved more willing to hire and promote women than those in Japan, partially due to the costs of employing male staff, which typically included allowances for childrens' education and other such expatriate benefits.<ref>Sakai 2001: 136-138</ref>

Within Japanese-managed companies, local Chinese employees sensed a definite power differential between Japanese managers and local managers of the same rank.<ref>Wong 1999: 166</ref> Though many Japanese women came to Hong Kong intending to learn to speak Chinese (either Cantonese or Mandarin), upon arrival they found that communicating in English was not only sufficient for everyday life, but placed them in a privileged position vis-a-vis the local population.<ref>Sakai 2001: 142</ref>

== Notes ==
{{reflist|2}}

== Bibliography ==
* {{cite book|title=Not the slightest chance: The defence of Hong Kong, 1941|last=Banham|first=Tony|publisher=Hong Kong University Press|location=Hong Kong|date=2005}}
* {{cite conference|last=Han|first=Wing-Tak|title=Bureaucracy and the Japanese Occupation of Hong Kong|booktitle=Japan in Asia, Nineteen Hundred and Forty-Two Thru Nineteen Hundred and Forty-Five|publisher=Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore University Press|location=Singapore|date=1982|pages=7-24}}
* {{cite book|title=China's Trial by Fire: The Shanghai War of 1932|last=Jordan|first=Donald|date=2001|publisher=University of Michigan Press}}
* {{cite journal|title=Chinese bourgeois nationalism in Hong Kong and Singapore in the 1930s|last=Kuo|first=Huei-ying|journal=Journal of Contemporary Asia|date=August 2006|accessdate=2006-12-21|url=http://www.accessmylibrary.com/coms2/summary_0286-16680252_ITM}}
* {{zh icon}} {{cite paper|author=Lam Wing Sze|title=嫁雞隨雞，嫁狗隨狗?: 隨丈夫來港的日本婦 (The Adventures of Japanese Housewives in Hong Kong)|publisher=Hong Kong Anthropological Society|date=16 June 2005}}
* {{ja icon}} {{cite paper|author=Liu Jianhui|title=大陸アジアに開かれた日本 (Japan, Opened to Continental Asia)|date=November 2000|publisher=Nichibunken|url=http://www.nichibun.ac.jp/~shoji/archives/ircjs-nl43.pdf|format=PDF; only abstract freely available}}
* {{cite conference|last=Mathews|first=Gordon|title=A collision of discourses: Japanese and Hong Kong Chinese during the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands crisis|booktitle=Globalizing Japan: Ethnography of the Japanese Presence in America, Asia and Europe|date=2001|publisher=Routledge|location=United Kingdom}}
* {{cite paper|author=Mathews, Gordon and Akiko Sone|title=香港日本人中的｀日本人＇和｀非日本人＇之間的衝突 (The Struggle Between "Japanese" and "non-Japanese" Among Japanese in Hong Kong)|publisher=Japan Anthropology Workshop, European Association for Japanese Studies Conference, Warsaw, Poland|date=2003-08-28}}
* {{ja icon}} {{cite paper|author=Okuda Otojiro|title=明治初年に於ける香港日本人 (Japanese in Hong Kong in the Early Meiji Period)|publisher=台灣省熱帶產業調查會|location=Taipei|date=1937}}
* {{cite conference|last=Sakai|first=Chie|title=The Japanese community in Hong Kong in the 1990s: the diversity of strategies and intentions|booktitle=Global Japan: The Experience of Japan's New Immigrants and Overseas Communities|date=2001|pages=131-146|publisher=Routledge|location=United Kingdom}}
* {{cite paper|author=Sone Akiko|title="Being Japanese" in a Foreign Place: Cultural Identities of Japanese in Hong Kong|publisher=Anthropology Department, Chinese University of Hong Kong|location=Hong Kong|date=2002}}
* {{cite book|last=Wong|first=Dixon|title=Japanese Bosses, Chinese Workers: power and control in a Hong Kong megastore|publisher=University of Hawaii Press|location=Hawaii|date=1999}}
* {{cite conference|last=Wong|first=Dixon|title=Japanese businesswomen of Yaohan Hong Kong: Towards a diversified model of a Japanese "ethnoscape"|booktitle=Globalizing Japan: Ethnography of the Japanese Presence in America, Asia and Europe|date=2001|publisher=Routledge|location=United Kingdom}}
* {{cite book|last=Yu|first=Patrick Shuk-Siu|title=A Seventh Child and the Law|date=2000|publisher=Hong Kong University Press|location=Hong Kong}}
* {{cite paper|title=2001 Population Census Thematic Report – Ethnic Minorities|publisher=Census and Statistics Department|location=Hong Kong|date=2001-12-17|accessdate=2006-12-21|url=http://www.censtatd.gov.hk/FileManager/EN/Content_41/ethnic.pdf|filetype=PDF}}
* {{zh icon}} {{cite web|title=日港關係 (Japan-Hong Kong Relations)|url=http://www.hk.emb-japan.go.jp/chi/news.html|publisher=Consulate General of Japan in Hong Kong|date=2005|accessdate=2006-12-21}}

== External links ==
* {{ja icon}} [http://hkpost.pasona.com.hk/ Hong Kong Post], a Japanese-language newspaper
* {{ja icon}} [http://www.hkjs.edu.hk/index3.html Hong Kong Japanese School], an [[Nihonjin gakko|international school for Japanese students]]
{{Hong Kongers}}
{{Hong Kongers}}


[[Category:Hong Kong society]]
[[Category:Hong Kong society]]
[[Category:Japanese expatriates|Hong Kong, Japanese people in]]

Revision as of 00:00, 22 December 2006

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Japanese people in Hong Kong
Regions with significant populations
Happy Valley, Shatin, Tai Po
Languages
Japanese language
Religion
Shintoism, Buddhism
Related ethnic groups
Japanese people

Japanese people in Hong Kong are composed primarily of expatriate businesspeople and their families, although there are also a sizable number of single females.[1] There numbers are smaller when compared to the sizable presence of Americans, British and Canadian expatriates. As of 2001, they composed 3.5% of the ethnic minority population of Hong Kong, or roughly 14,100 individuals.[2] Hong Kong also remains a popular destination for Japanese tourists on their way to China; in 2004, the Japanese consulate reported the arrival of more than one million Japanese tourists.[3]

History

Japanese migration to Hong Kong was noted as early as the latter years of the Tokugawa Shogunate. With the forced end of the sakoku policy, which prohibited Japanese people from leaving Japan, regular ship services began between Japan, Hong Kong, and Shanghai; Japanese merchants and karayuki slowly began to settle overseas.[4] By 1880, 26 men and 60 women of Japanese nationality were recorded as living in Hong Kong; the total population would reach 200 by the end of the Meiji era in 1912.[5]

Second Sino-Japanese War

In September 1931, there were anti-Japanese riots in Hong Kong as a result of the Invasion of Manchuria, during which one Japanese family was murdered by a Chinese man;[6] Tokyo would later cite these riots as one casus belli when they initiated the Shanghai War of 1932 (a.k.a. January 28th Incident).[7] The population did not grow much in the following decade; though a Japanese school continued to operate in Wan Chai[8], by the time of the Japanese declaration of war against the British Empire and the start of the Battle of Hong Kong, the Japanese population of Hong Kong had dropped to 80.[9]

Japanese settlers often followed the Imperial Army, as in the case of Manchukuo in the aftermath of the Mukden Incident; however the 1941-1945 Japanese occupation of Hong Kong was not accompanied by an influx of Japanese civilians.[10] The existing institutions of the Japanese civilian population in Hong Kong were co-opted by the military for their own purposes; the Hong Kong News, a Japanese language newspaper, ceased publication in Japanese, but continued operations in Chinese and English versions, publishing officially-approved news of the occupation government. [11] However, the Japanese civilians who remained in Hong Kong were not entirely unsympathetic to the plight of their Chinese neighbours; Patrick Yu, a celebrated trial lawyer, recalled in his memoirs the assistance his family received from the headmaster of the Japanese school in escaping from Hong Kong to Free China by way of Macau and Guangzhou Wan (then Portuguese and French colonies, respectively, and untouched by the Japanese military).[12]

Post-World War II

As the Japanese economy recovered from the effects of World War II and began its boom, Japanese investment overseas grew, resulting in an increase in the Japanese population living in Hong Kong. The Hong Kong Japanese School, an international school aimed at Japanese students, was established in the 1960s;[13] there is also a weekly print newspaper, the Hong Kong Post, which began publication in June 1987.[14] Between 1981 and 1999, the population of Japanese in Hong Kong nearly tripled from 7,802 to 23,480, making the Japanese community similar in size to those in cities such as London and New York; in line with this increase, the number of Japanese companies also grew rapidly, almost doubling from 1,088 to 2,197 from 1988 to 1994.[15] The reform and opening up of China and the return of Hong Kong to Chinese sovereignty in 1997 spurred increasing economic integration with the mainland, and, following this trend, many Japanese-managed companies moved their operations across the border into Shenzhen and Guangzhou;[16] as a result, the Japanese population of Hong Kong declined from its 1999 peak; the Hong Kong Census and Statistics Department recorded only 14,100 Japanese people in 2001, a 33% decrease.[2] However, the population would soon bounce back; in 2004, the Japanese Consulate General estimated 25,600 Japanese living in Hong Kong.[3]

Attitude towards integration

Sogo is one of many Japanese-managed companies in the Causeway Bay-Wan Chai area

Japanese communities abroad have been described as "Japanese villages abroad ... whose residents make maintenance of cultural, economic, and political ties with Tokyo their foremost concern"; however, Wong's 2001 study of Yaohan employees refuted this notion in the case of businesswomen working in Hong Kong.[17] Though the majority of Japanese coming to Hong Kong continued to be businessmen and their families, during the 1990s, there was a "boom" of single Japanese women emigrating to escape the male-oriented environment of Japanese domestic workplaces; unlike previous migration, which had often been targetted towards Anglophone countries, many of these women went to Hong Kong and other Asian cities in an effort to further their careers. Notably, in one survey, a third of the single or divorced women coming to Hong Kong during this period reported previous study abroad experience. Not only were single women more willing to emigrate, but Japanese companies in Hong Kong proved more willing to hire and promote women than those in Japan, partially due to the costs of employing male staff, which typically included allowances for childrens' education and other such expatriate benefits.[18]

Within Japanese-managed companies, local Chinese employees sensed a definite power differential between Japanese managers and local managers of the same rank.[19] Though many Japanese women came to Hong Kong intending to learn to speak Chinese (either Cantonese or Mandarin), upon arrival they found that communicating in English was not only sufficient for everyday life, but placed them in a privileged position vis-a-vis the local population.[20]

Notes

  1. ^ Sakai 2001: 32
  2. ^ a b CSD 2001: 6
  3. ^ a b CG of Japan in HK
  4. ^ Liu 2000
  5. ^ Okuda 1937
  6. ^ Kuo 2006
  7. ^ Jordan 2001: 22
  8. ^ Yu 2000: 38
  9. ^ Banham 2005: 24
  10. ^ Han 1982: 10
  11. ^ Banham 2005: 24
  12. ^ Yu 2000: 39
  13. ^ HKJS: 理事長メッセージ
  14. ^ HK Post: 香港ポストについて
  15. ^ Sakai 2001: 132
  16. ^ Wong 1999: 182
  17. ^ Wong 2001: 52-56
  18. ^ Sakai 2001: 136-138
  19. ^ Wong 1999: 166
  20. ^ Sakai 2001: 142

Bibliography

  • Banham, Tony (2005). Not the slightest chance: The defence of Hong Kong, 1941. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.
  • Han, Wing-Tak (1982). "Bureaucracy and the Japanese Occupation of Hong Kong". Japan in Asia, Nineteen Hundred and Forty-Two Thru Nineteen Hundred and Forty-Five. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore University Press. pp. 7–24. {{cite conference}}: Unknown parameter |booktitle= ignored (|book-title= suggested) (help)
  • Jordan, Donald (2001). China's Trial by Fire: The Shanghai War of 1932. University of Michigan Press.
  • Kuo, Huei-ying (August 2006). "Chinese bourgeois nationalism in Hong Kong and Singapore in the 1930s". Journal of Contemporary Asia. Retrieved 2006-12-21.
  • Template:Zh icon Lam Wing Sze (16 June 2005). "嫁雞隨雞，嫁狗隨狗?: 隨丈夫來港的日本婦 (The Adventures of Japanese Housewives in Hong Kong)". Hong Kong Anthropological Society. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  • Template:Ja icon Liu Jianhui (November 2000). "大陸アジアに開かれた日本 (Japan, Opened to Continental Asia)" (PDF; only abstract freely available). Nichibunken. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  • Mathews, Gordon (2001). "A collision of discourses: Japanese and Hong Kong Chinese during the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands crisis". Globalizing Japan: Ethnography of the Japanese Presence in America, Asia and Europe. United Kingdom: Routledge. {{cite conference}}: Unknown parameter |booktitle= ignored (|book-title= suggested) (help)
  • Mathews, Gordon and Akiko Sone (2003-08-28). "香港日本人中的｀日本人＇和｀非日本人＇之間的衝突 (The Struggle Between "Japanese" and "non-Japanese" Among Japanese in Hong Kong)". Japan Anthropology Workshop, European Association for Japanese Studies Conference, Warsaw, Poland. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  • Template:Ja icon Okuda Otojiro (1937). "明治初年に於ける香港日本人 (Japanese in Hong Kong in the Early Meiji Period)". Taipei: 台灣省熱帶產業調查會. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  • Sakai, Chie (2001). "The Japanese community in Hong Kong in the 1990s: the diversity of strategies and intentions". Global Japan: The Experience of Japan's New Immigrants and Overseas Communities. United Kingdom: Routledge. pp. 131–146. {{cite conference}}: Unknown parameter |booktitle= ignored (|book-title= suggested) (help)
  • Sone Akiko (2002). ""Being Japanese" in a Foreign Place: Cultural Identities of Japanese in Hong Kong". Hong Kong: Anthropology Department, Chinese University of Hong Kong. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  • Wong, Dixon (1999). Japanese Bosses, Chinese Workers: power and control in a Hong Kong megastore. Hawaii: University of Hawaii Press.
  • Wong, Dixon (2001). "Japanese businesswomen of Yaohan Hong Kong: Towards a diversified model of a Japanese "ethnoscape"". Globalizing Japan: Ethnography of the Japanese Presence in America, Asia and Europe. United Kingdom: Routledge. {{cite conference}}: Unknown parameter |booktitle= ignored (|book-title= suggested) (help)
  • Yu, Patrick Shuk-Siu (2000). A Seventh Child and the Law. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.
  • "2001 Population Census Thematic Report – Ethnic Minorities" (PDF). Hong Kong: Census and Statistics Department. 2001-12-17. Retrieved 2006-12-21. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help); Unknown parameter |filetype= ignored (|format= suggested) (help)
  • Template:Zh icon "日港關係 (Japan-Hong Kong Relations)". Consulate General of Japan in Hong Kong. 2005. Retrieved 2006-12-21.

External links

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