The Return Migrations of the Filipino Nikkei Diaspora

Their Perceptions of “Home” in the Postwar Period

Abstract

This article explores how migrants’ experiences of “return” have influenced their perceptions of “home.” In order to describe various processes and ways of identifying one’s home, the author focuses on the different patterns of return migrations actualized by the second generation of the Filipino Nikkei diaspora, originating in the prewar Japanese immigrant community established in Davao. This paper analyzes three postwar return migrations:(1)the repatriation of the Japanese from the Philippines to Japan in 1945,(2)the tours by Japanese consoling the war dead in the Philippines, organized by repatriates since the late 1960s, and(3)the group homecoming tours of the Japanese-Filipino second generation to Japan, starting in the late 1990s. Previous research concerning the 20th-century migrations of the Japanese tend to approach the phenomena of return movements from the perspective of two established fields of studies:(1)Japanese imperial history, mainly dealing with repatriation after the fall of the Japanese Empire, and (2)migration studies, which has focused on the “circular migration of Nikkeijin(people of Japanese ancestry).” This research, by employing return migration as an analytical framework, attempts to comprehend those three kinds of return as a consecutive, not intermittent, inward movement. In addition, this article demonstrates that the “home” of a diaspora is not simply anchored to a single place or country, but rather has a diverse range of geographical and conceptual perceptions developed in the process of the diaspora’s experience of returning “home.”