Japanese people in Hong Kong
Encyclopedia
Japanese people in Hong Kong are composed primarily of expatriate businesspeople and their families, although there are also a sizable number of single women. Their numbers are smaller when compared to the sizable presence of Americans
, British
and Canadian expatriates. , 21,518 Japanese citizens had registered as residents of Hong Kong with the Japanese consulate there. Hong Kong
also remains a popular destination for Japanese tourists on their way to Mainland China
; in 2004, the Japanese consulate reported the arrival of more than one million Japanese tourists.
. 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. 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.
government in Nanjing declared 23 September 1931 as a day of mourning for the Mukden Incident
; that evening, a disturbance arose on Johnston Road in Wan Chai, where many Japanese lived, when some Chinese youths began throwing stones at a Japanese-owned pub, ironically patronized mostly by American and British sailors at the time. The next day, a Japanese flag flying in a Japanese school in Kennedy Town was burned; attacks on individual Japanese continued on the 25th.
The worst crime of the riots was the murder of a Japanese family. On September 26th, the date of the Mid-Autumn Festival
, five members of the Yamashita family were attacked near Kowloon City
in front of more than one thousand Chinese demonstrators by a Chinese man; the parents died on the scene due to knife wounds, while the grandmother and two of three sons later died in hospital. As a result of the murders, the colonial government called out the military that evening, and proclaimed a state of emergency the next day. Tokyo would later cite these riots, and specifically the murders of the Yamashita family, as one casus belli when they initiated the Shanghai War of 1932 (a.k.a. January 28th Incident).
and Kennedy Town, 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. Japanese settlers often followed the Imperial Japanese 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, with the exception of a few bureaucrats and administrators.
The existing institutions of the Japanese civilian population in Hong Kong were co-opted by the military for their own purposes; for example, the Hong Kong News, a Japanese language newspaper, ceased publication in Japanese, but continued operations in Chinese
and English versions, printing officially-approved news of the occupation government. 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).
, was established in the 1960s; there is also a weekly print newspaper, the Hong Kong Post, which began publication in June 1987. 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. 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
; 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. However, the population would soon bounce back; in 2004, the Japanese Consulate General estimated 25,600 Japanese living in Hong Kong.
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. 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 targeted 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 children's education and other such expatriate benefits.
Within Japanese-managed companies, local Chinese employees sensed a definite power differential between Japanese managers and local managers of the same rank. 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.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, British
British people
The British are citizens of the United Kingdom, of the Isle of Man, any of the Channel Islands, or of any of the British overseas territories, and their descendants...
and Canadian expatriates. , 21,518 Japanese citizens had registered as residents of Hong Kong with the Japanese consulate there. Hong Kong
Hong Kong
Hong Kong is one of two Special Administrative Regions of the People's Republic of China , the other being Macau. A city-state situated on China's south coast and enclosed by the Pearl River Delta and South China Sea, it is renowned for its expansive skyline and deep natural harbour...
also remains a popular destination for Japanese tourists on their way to Mainland China
Mainland China
Mainland China, the Chinese mainland or simply the mainland, is a geopolitical term that refers to the area under the jurisdiction of the People's Republic of China . According to the Taipei-based Mainland Affairs Council, the term excludes the PRC Special Administrative Regions of Hong Kong and...
; in 2004, the Japanese consulate reported the arrival of more than one million Japanese tourists.
History
Japanese migration to Hong Kong was noted as early as the latter years of the Tokugawa ShogunateTokugawa shogunate
The Tokugawa shogunate, also known as the and the , was a feudal regime of Japan established by Tokugawa Ieyasu and ruled by the shoguns of the Tokugawa family. This period is known as the Edo period and gets its name from the capital city, Edo, which is now called Tokyo, after the name was...
. With the forced end of the sakoku
Sakoku
was the foreign relations policy of Japan under which no foreigner could enter nor could any Japanese leave the country on penalty of death. The policy was enacted by the Tokugawa shogunate under Tokugawa Iemitsu through a number of edicts and policies from 1633–39 and remained in effect until...
policy, which prohibited Japanese people from leaving Japan, regular ship services began between Japan, Hong Kong, and Shanghai; Japanese merchants and karayuki
Prostitution in Japan
Prostitution in Japan has existed throughout the country's history.While the Anti-Prostitution Law of 1956 states that "No person may either do prostitution or become the customer of it," various loopholes, liberal interpretations of the law, and loose enforcement have allowed the sex industry to...
slowly began to settle overseas. 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.
Anti-Japanese riots of 1931
Following the Japanese invasion of Manchuria, tensions between Japanese and Chinese residents in Hong Kong began to grow. The first report of the invasion in the Hong Kong Chinese press appeared in the Kung Sheung Evening News on 20 September 1931, condemning it in harsh terms and calling on Chinese people to "stand up and take action". The KuomintangKuomintang
The Kuomintang of China , sometimes romanized as Guomindang via the Pinyin transcription system or GMD for short, and translated as the Chinese Nationalist Party is a founding and ruling political party of the Republic of China . Its guiding ideology is the Three Principles of the People, espoused...
government in Nanjing declared 23 September 1931 as a day of mourning for the Mukden Incident
Mukden Incident
The Mukden Incident, also known as the Manchurian Incident, was a staged event that was engineered by Japanese military personnel as a pretext for invading the northern part of China known as Manchuria in 1931....
; that evening, a disturbance arose on Johnston Road in Wan Chai, where many Japanese lived, when some Chinese youths began throwing stones at a Japanese-owned pub, ironically patronized mostly by American and British sailors at the time. The next day, a Japanese flag flying in a Japanese school in Kennedy Town was burned; attacks on individual Japanese continued on the 25th.
The worst crime of the riots was the murder of a Japanese family. On September 26th, the date of the Mid-Autumn Festival
Mid-Autumn Festival
The Mid-Autumn Festival , also known as the Moon Festival or Mooncake Festival or Zhongqiu Festival, is a popular lunar harvest festival celebrated by Chinese and Vietnamese people. A description of the festival first appeared in Rites of Zhou, a written collection of rituals of the Western Zhou...
, five members of the Yamashita family were attacked near Kowloon City
Kowloon City
Kowloon City is an area in Kowloon, Hong Kong. It is named after the Kowloon Walled City, and is administratively part of Kowloon City District....
in front of more than one thousand Chinese demonstrators by a Chinese man; the parents died on the scene due to knife wounds, while the grandmother and two of three sons later died in hospital. As a result of the murders, the colonial government called out the military that evening, and proclaimed a state of emergency the next day. Tokyo would later cite these riots, and specifically the murders of the Yamashita family, as one casus belli when they initiated the Shanghai War of 1932 (a.k.a. January 28th Incident).
The Imperial Japanese Occupation and Japanese civilians
The Japanese population did not grow much in the following decade; though Japanese schools continued to operate in Wan ChaiWan Chai
Wan Chai is a metropolitan area situated at the western part of the Wan Chai District on the northern shore of Hong Kong Island, in Hong Kong. Its other boundaries are Canal Road to the east, Arsenal Street to the west and Bowen Road to the south. The area north of Gloucester Road is often called...
and Kennedy Town, by the time of the Japanese declaration of war against the British Empire and the start of the Battle of Hong Kong
Battle of Hong Kong
The Battle of Hong Kong took place during the Pacific campaign of World War II. It began on 8 December 1941 and ended on 25 December 1941 with Hong Kong, then a Crown colony, surrendering to the Empire of Japan.-Background:...
, the Japanese population of Hong Kong had dropped to 80. Japanese settlers often followed the Imperial Japanese Army
Imperial Japanese Army
-Foundation:During the Meiji Restoration, the military forces loyal to the Emperor were samurai drawn primarily from the loyalist feudal domains of Satsuma and Chōshū...
, as in the case of Manchukuo
Manchukuo
Manchukuo or Manshū-koku was a puppet state in Manchuria and eastern Inner Mongolia, governed under a form of constitutional monarchy. The region was the historical homeland of the Manchus, who founded the Qing Empire in China...
in the aftermath of the Mukden Incident
Mukden Incident
The Mukden Incident, also known as the Manchurian Incident, was a staged event that was engineered by Japanese military personnel as a pretext for invading the northern part of China known as Manchuria in 1931....
; however the 1941-1945 Japanese occupation of Hong Kong
Japanese occupation of Hong Kong
The Japanese occupation of Hong Kong began after the Governor of Hong Kong, Sir Mark Young, surrendered the territory of Hong Kong to Japan on 25 December 1941 after 18 days of fierce fighting by British and Canadian defenders against overwhelming Japanese Imperial forces. The occupation lasted...
was not accompanied by an influx of Japanese civilians, with the exception of a few bureaucrats and administrators.
The existing institutions of the Japanese civilian population in Hong Kong were co-opted by the military for their own purposes; for example, the Hong Kong News, a Japanese language newspaper, ceased publication in Japanese, but continued operations in Chinese
Chinese language
The Chinese language is a language or language family consisting of varieties which are mutually intelligible to varying degrees. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the branches of Sino-Tibetan family of languages...
and English versions, printing officially-approved news of the occupation government. However, the Japanese civilians who remained in Hong Kong were not entirely unsympathetic to the plight of their Chinese neighbours; Patrick Yu
Patrick Yu
Patrick Yu Shuk-Siu is a celebrated trial and appellate lawyer in Hong Kong.Born into an intellectual Chinese family in Hong Kong, with ancestry from Taishan Guangdong, Yu was educated at home for many years before attending Wah Yan College Hong Kong, a prominent Jesuit high school in Hong Kong...
, 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
Free China (Second Sino-Japanese War)
The term Free China, in the context of the Second Sino-Japanese War, refers to those areas of China not under the control of the Imperial Japanese Army or any of its puppet governments, such as Manchukuo, the Mengjiang government in Suiyuan and Chahar, or the Provisional Government of the Republic...
by way of Macau
Macau
Macau , also spelled Macao , is, along with Hong Kong, one of the two special administrative regions of the People's Republic of China...
and Guangzhou Wan (then Portuguese and French colonies, respectively, and untouched by the Japanese military).
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 studentsNihonjin gakko
, also called Japanese School, is a full day school outside of Japan for native speakers of Japanese. It is an expatriate school, designed for children whose parents are working on diplomatic, business, or educational mission overseas and have plans to go back to Japan for good.The schools offer...
, was established in the 1960s; there is also a weekly print newspaper, the Hong Kong Post, which began publication in June 1987. 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. 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
Shenzhen
Shenzhen is a major city in the south of Southern China's Guangdong Province, situated immediately north of Hong Kong. The area became China's first—and one of the most successful—Special Economic Zones...
and Guangzhou
Guangzhou
Guangzhou , known historically as Canton or Kwangchow, is the capital and largest city of the Guangdong province in the People's Republic of China. Located in southern China on the Pearl River, about north-northwest of Hong Kong, Guangzhou is a key national transportation hub and trading port...
; 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. However, the population would soon bounce back; in 2004, the Japanese Consulate General estimated 25,600 Japanese living in Hong Kong.
Attitude towards integration
Yaohan
Yaohan was a Japanese retail group. The company was founded in 1930 by Kazuo Wada . Initially a single shop, it later expanded into a major supermarket chain after the Second World War with most retail outlets located in Shizuoka prefecture, south of Tokyo. It was listed on Tokyo Stock Exchange...
employees refuted this notion in the case of businesswomen working in Hong Kong. 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 targeted 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 children's education and other such expatriate benefits.
Within Japanese-managed companies, local Chinese employees sensed a definite power differential between Japanese managers and local managers of the same rank. 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.
Sources
|month=November|year=2000|publisher=Nichibunken|url=http://www.nichibun.ac.jp/~shoji/archives/ircjs-nl43.pdf|format=PDF}}; only abstract freely available|publisher=台湾総督府熱帶產業調査會|location=Taipei|year=1937|language=Japanese|oclc=33750570}}|accessdate=2011-04-26|ref=harv|last=MOFA}}Further reading
|publisher=Hong Kong Anthropological Society|date=16 June 2005}}|publisher=Japan Anthropology Workshop, European Association for Japanese Studies Conference|location=Warsaw, Poland|year=2003}}External links
Hong Kong Post, a Japanese-language newspaper Hong Kong Japanese School, an international school for Japanese studentsNihonjin gakko
, also called Japanese School, is a full day school outside of Japan for native speakers of Japanese. It is an expatriate school, designed for children whose parents are working on diplomatic, business, or educational mission overseas and have plans to go back to Japan for good.The schools offer...