This essay will discuss how we can describe the unspeakable, the “Middle,” and uncontrollable time of diasporic Chinese. This is done through the examination of the “time” that we can observe through Fae Myenne Ng’s novel, Bone. In this novel, the author narrates the suicide of Ona, a sister of the storyteller Leila but does not arrange stories in chronological order. Instead the author tells the same story repeatedly but incompletely, and prevents the plurality of the time from being understood merely along the official history and identity of Chinese Americans. The “time” that Leila’s family experienced is an “unspeakable gap,” or an “uncontrollable middle,” which is generated by conflicting voices of each member of the family. Tightly associated with the threat of the “middle,” the loss of Ona could not anyhow be eased. It is the sound of village dialect and the Han characters written on paper that barely compensates for the uncontrollable time. On both sides of the “middle,” various “twos” are contrasted: living in the United States as a migrant and the shackles of Chinatown. Some examples of this contrasts are Chinatown’s “in” and “out,” love for Oswald and love for family, Leon and Mason and others. Moreover, as also revealed in this essay, the “middle” should not be understood in the opposition between the “official written history,” and the “informal family history.” This view invites us to ignore how the author cannot or hesitates to speak. The “Middle” time is a sort of a temporal reality that can be perceived by leaving it unspeakable. By holding phonocentric assumptions, postmodern ethnographers presume that writing and literacy are strictly opposites to orality and speech. However, on the social world of diasporic Chinese, both the Han script and various voices could represent the pace and rhythms of migrants’ daily lives, the social meaning of repetition, the continuation and completion of their acts, and the distinction of the said and the unsaid. These could constitute and also compensate uncontrollable, “the Middle,” and unspeakable time of diasporic Chinese.

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One important instance of the migrations of overseas Chinese/ethnic Chinese before 1980 is the migration of people from Taiwan to Japan. However, how Taiwanese people came to Japan remains unclear. To clarify some unclear points, this paper will take the acceptance of Taiwanese students at Kindai University as a case study. In Japan, the acceptance of international students is not only to train future Japanophiles who can understand Japan well, and can connect their countries with Japan after returning to their homeland, but also to free Japan from the discrimination against other Asian people. In response to this mission, Kindai University has sent the chairman of Foreign Student Administration to Southeast Asian countries since 1955, to investigate the state of universities in Taiwan and the situation of those wishing to study abroad. It is noteworthy that Kindai University’s early acceptance of international students has sparked a new wave in postwar Japanese higher education.

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Regardless of its English translation “overseas Chinese,” this research note tackles the term “Kakyō,” by analysing the narratives of Chinese and Taiwanese residents in post-war Japan to re-examine the shifting categorisations and labels of “Kakyō.” These shifting categorisations and labels of the so-called “Kakyō” are manifestly flimsy and incoherent in the pre-existing academic writings or works, when it comes to associations supporting the Taiwanese authorities or the peoples from Taiwan. This is because the researchers or writers tend to use “Kakyō” to refer to the Taiwanese people they coped with despite the recent growth of “Taiwanese identity” or the changing recognition of Taiwan’s independence. Undoubtedly, there is an increase of the researches that reposition Taiwan. However, to proclaim that these researches have shared a similar recognition under the Japanese context is far from being satisfactory, and it has turned out to be a convolution. Hence, being conscious of this convolution, this research note is an attempt to retrieve the narratives of “Kakyō,” especially by looking at how Taiwanese residents have been represented as varied categorisations and labels of “Kakyō” in post-war Japan.

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Few studies have explored the problems of grown-up Chinese newcomers, who came to Japan in the 1990s. The purpose of this study is to explore the problems faced by the second-generation of Chinese newcomers from childhood to adulthood. The participants are two second generations who have grown-up as they were children who had weak connections with Chinese overseas communities while growing up in Japanese society. Participants were interviewed about what kind of experiences they had in life, and what kind of things they worried about. After the interviews, the narratives obtained from the participants were analyzed with a focus on thematic analysis. As a result, one participant had a parent-child conflict over the future image of the second- generation. The other participant felt shortage in academic and communication ability caused by the experience of transferring to a school in Japan as well as the experience of inconsistency in communication with club activity members. Also, the common worries of the two participants were name and expression of origin. In this study, these worries of the second-generation were discussed in terms of (1) The future image of second-generation in highly educated families, (2) Length of time in Japanese as second language classes, and (3) Assimilation and Naturalization with Japanese society due to racial discourse. Further second-generation research requires a deeper look into the reasons behind generational conflicts, an increase in scale of research, and analysis of discourse and institutional issues in Japanese local context from the 1990s to the present.

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As the number of Chinese people in Japan is increasing, the necessity of psychological research dealing with their acculturation strategies and mental health has become increasingly important. This paper discusses the relationship between acculturation strategies and mental health of Chinese overseas. The authors reviewed some research focusing on Chinese overseas and their mental health. The preference of acculturation strategy is often not consistent and depends on factors such as resident status and host countries’ policy. Not all research which supports “integration” is connected to better mental health. Researches based in Japan should be conducted in the future.

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This article outlines the formation process of the earliest known “China Town” called Miton in the 16th century Philippines under the Spanish colonial rule, offering a picture of its residents. Miton, located in the suburb of the City of Manila, was called “pueblo de los chinos,” a Spanish phrase which literally means “town of the Chinese”. During the Spanish colonial period, pueblo constituted part of the basic societal structure at both civil and ecclesiastical levels. In a strict sense, a place with an established church was recognized as a pueblo, or an administrative unit entailing civil and religious control. Chinese communities at that time shared the same fundamental structure. Through the construction of a church and monastery under the license and direction of the Spanish Governor of the Philippines, the Augustinians intentionally created the Chinese pueblo, Miton. For the Augustinians Miton was a place to congregate the Chinese for their religious conversion and evangelization. At the same time, it was a basic unit for judiciary and administration at the civil level. Chinese inhabitants of Miton were engaged not only in commerce but also in various kinds of artisanal handicrafts. Importantly, Miton had already wealthy Chinese residents who performed leadership roles. Following Miton, several other Chinese pueblos were created in the process of integration of the Chinese society under the Spanish rule, and such Chinese societies had self-governing organizations within, in parallel with the pueblos of the natives.

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