Forever Sojourning? Articulations Between Empire, Nation, and the Local in the Identities of the Yokohama Chinese

Large scale Chinatowns in Japan date to the mid-nineteenth century, and Chinese residents are now the largest foreign nationality group in Japan. Nevertheless, there is still no widely held Chinese Japanese identity. This paper seeks a historical explanation for the current social position of Chinese in Japan by analyzing the roles of institutions that have governed the Chinese community in the port city of Yokohama. In this venerable Chinese community, the huaqiao (Chinese sojourner) paradigm of identity remains dominant, and along with it a homeland orientation and a tenacious anti-assimilationism. Much has already been written about the exclusiveness of Japanese nationality law as an obstacle to large-scale naturalization of migrants to Japan. However, there are two additional historical contexts that have allowed the preeminence of the huaqiao identity: first, the Chinese nation-building movements at the start of the twentieth century, which treated Japan as principal antagonist; and second, Japanese empire-building efforts at mid-century, where the Japanese state affirmed the huaqiao identity as expedient for the cultivation of authentic Chinese collaborators among the Chinese in Japan. Shaped by such institutions and discourses, the Chinese of Yokohama have largely understood their collective identity through the lens of long-distance nationalism. Within such constraints, this diasporic community has nevertheless developed a range of solidarities with its host community. Not merely passive subjects of nationalism, imperialism,and globalization, the community has constructed hybrid identities in the local register--a particular lacuna in huaqiao discourses. This longitudinal study thus suggests the potential for elements of “local citizenship” to emerge from huaqiao identity.