• Journal of the Korean association of regional geographers
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.449-463
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• 2009

One feature of the multicultural policy practiced in Japan is that the central government stresses the importance of local administrations in executing the policy, providing a systematic framework through which local administrations can actively promote and execute multicultural policy intended to foster social tolerance. In other words, the multicultural policy practiced in Japan seeks to overcome some of the limits and issues inherent to such policy by encouraging the delivery of opinions from below that reflect differences among different localities, while the central government proposes the policy aims and recommendations from above down to local administrations. The multicultural policy of Japan, which allows local administrations to administer such networks by actively carrying out the roles of arbitration and integration within communities where multiculturalism is found, presents meaningful points of comparison and learning to the multicultural policy in Korea that has only recently begun to seek for the aims and ways of multicultural policy from the perspective of social integration.

• Journal of the Korean association of regional geographers
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.17-39
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• 2011

As recent inflows of foreign immigrants to relatively advanced countries in Northeast Asia have rapidly increased, Japan in particular uses 'multicultural coexistance' as a key concept for developing both discourse and policies on them. This paper is first of all to suggest a new typology of multicultural societies in the world ill order to differentiate the case of Northeast Asian countries from those of Western countries. And this paper is to suggest that foreign immigrants in Japan have different positions in labor markets and living experiences according to historical and social backgrounds as well as their nationality. The transformation process towards multicultural society is not only historical and social but also geographical and spatial, as foreign immigrants have made different spatial distribution and regional segregation in types. In order to control this socio-spatial process towards multicultural society, Japan has developed the concept of 'multicultural coexistence' similar with that of multiculturalism in Western countries. This concept seems to be quite significant as it has been initiated by local communities for symbiotic relationship between foreign immigrants and native Japanese dwellers. But it can be regarded as a strategic ideology to control foreign immigrants as it targets mainly on Nikkeijin, and is usually concerned with the cultural aspect. Seen from a theoretical point of view, this concept can be seen as closed with liberal multiculturalism as opportunity equity, but far from corporative multiculturalism as outcome equity, and it is on the process transferring from the first stage of tolerance to the second stage of legislation of nondiscrimination, while being distant from the third stage of legislation paradigmization of recognition, and hence appears to be easily reverted to assimilationism.

• Knowledge Management Research
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.189-216
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• 2021

This paper analyzes guidelines and enforcement that influence the multiculturalism in Japan and Korea. My results indicate that multiculturalism have different effects on communities in both countries. I find that the Japanese guidelines and enforcement have promoted the quality of multiculturalism. Specifically, I conclude that in the long term, the role of local government could help improve social integration.

• Journal of the Korean association of regional geographers
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.181-203
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• 2011

Transformation towards multicultural society requires discussion on new concepts of citizenship which would overcome some limits of national citizenship developed on the basis of the nation-state. Citizenship can be defined as a relationship between individuals and their community, and conceptualized in a relation with identity. Citizenship also includes its spatial elements such as site and movement, place and public/private space, boundary and territory, flow and network, level and scale, etc. and in particular implies a multi-scalability of local, national, and global level. A new discussion on citizenship has emerged in Japan in shift to multicultural society, especially focusing on activities of local governments and grassroots social movements to support and ensure welfare services to and human rights of foreign immigrants in local communities, hence develops a concept of local citizenship. This concept seems to be highly significant for both foreign immigrants and Japanese dwellers for multicultural coexistence, but raises serious problems of separating local citizenship from formal national citizenship and from universal global citizenship. In order to resolve these problems, a new multiscalar concept of glocal citizenship which links interrelationally local, national and global citizenship. The concept of glocal citizenship is suggested to lead academically a new version of cosmopolitanism which embraces the universal and the particular in a dialectic manner, and to give strategically an alternative to multicultural coexistence policy and discourse and local citizenship discussion in Japan.