Borderline Japan : foreigners and frontier controls in the postwar era / Tessa Morris-Suzuki.

Cambridge ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 2010.

xi, 272 p. : ill. ; 24 cm.

"This book offers a radical reinterpretation of postwar Japan's policies towards immigrants and foreign residents. Drawing on a wealth of historical material, Tessa Morris-Suzuki shows how the Cold War played a decisive role in shaping Japan's migration controls. She explores the little-known world of the thousands of Korean 'boat people' who entered Japan in the immediate postwar period, focuses attention on the US military service people and their families and employees, and also takes readers behind the walls of Japan's notorious Omura migrant detention centre, and into the lives of Koreans who opted to leave Japan in search of a better future in communist North Korea. This book offers a fascinating contrast to traditional images of postwar Japan and sheds new light on the origins and the dilemmas of migration policy in twenty-first century Japan"--Provided by publisher.

August 10, 2010

Machine generated contents note: Introduction; 1. Border politics: rethinking Japan's migration controls; 2. Drawing the line: from empire to Cold War; 3. Crossing the line: 'unauthorized arrivals' in occupied Japan; 4. Guarding the line: the Cold War and the immigration bureau; 5. A place apart I: the armed archipelago; 6. A place apart II: the liminal world of Ōmura; 7. Special permission to stay: 'hidden lives' in postwar Japan; 8. A point of no return: repatriation to China and North Korea; 9. Beyond the postwar system: what changed; what stayed the same?.