Japanese Women Marriage Migrants Today: Negotiating Gender, Identity and Community in Search of a New Lifestyle in Western Sydney Takeshi Hamano Doctor of Philosophy The University of Western Sydney 2011 copyright © 2011 Takeshi Hamano Acknowledgements First of all, I would like to thank all of my informants for their sustained engagement with my research. Especially, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Ms Yuka Weatley, President of the Penrith Japanese Community. My research project for this thesis would not have been possible without her agreement with my participation in the activities of the Penrith Japanese Community. Also, I would like to thank Tomoko Ward, Vice-President of the Penrith Japanese Community, and all others who were willing to be interviewed in both Australia and Japan. I would also like to thank Mr Yoshihide Hosaka for providing me with his invaluable collection of records of the activities of Japanese ethnic clubs in Australia since the early 1980s.Then; I owe my deepest gratitude to my principal supervisor, Distinguished Professor Ien Ang, for her encouragement and enduring supervision during my candidature. The feedback she gave to me in any meeting or correspondence was always critical but also always positive and constructive, which kept me working on this project to the end. Her supervision also taught me how to supervise someone else in my future career. I would like to thank my second supervisor, Dr Judith Snodgrass, whose accurate and detailed comments greatly improved my thesis draft. I could not have met Japanese women in Greater Western Sydney without her information about local Japanese communities in the first stage of my doctoral candidature. I thank my colleagues at the Centre for Cultural Research: Sarah James, Jayde Cahir, Jo Winchester, Cathy O‟Callaghan, Glen Fuller, Farid Farid and Justine Humphry. They encouraged me to join the network of local postgraduate students. Especially I thank Sarah and Jayde for their friendship since I first came to CCR. As co-postgraduate liaison officer, Jo greatly supported me with my duties at any instance. I am very indebted to Shinsuke Funaki (and his family) for his interest in my research and for his tolerance with my participation in his research on the Japanese community in Sydney. I also thank Associate Professor Yoshikazu Shiobara for his attention to the progress of my research. Thanks to him, I could also join the academic network of Australian studies in Japan. Professor Hiroshi Sudo always encouraged me to finish my PhD whenever I visited his office. I still owe my gratitude to him, as he encouraged me to apply for an exchange program in Australia in 2001, which eventually led me to do my PhD in Sydney later. And, as my best academic colleague in Japan, I thank Mario Lopez for his honest and constructive feedback on my thesis draft. To complete my thesis, David Kelly, Andrew Wright and Kathleen Olive spent long hours editing my English and proof reading. Maree O‟Neil, Executive Officer of the Centre for Cultural Research, always dealt with a great deal of administrative matters for my candidature. Of course, I could not have commenced my PhD in Australia without the UWS International Postgraduate Research Scholarship provided to me by the University of Western Sydney. Lastly, I am grateful to my partner Chie Yoshiya for her understanding of my PhD research in Australia and her endless encouragement to me from Japan. Statement of Authentication The work presented in this thesis is, to the best of my knowledge and belief, original except as acknowledged in the text. I hereby declare that I have not submitted this material, either in full or in part, for a degree at any other institutio (Signature) Contents List of Tables............................................................................................................... iii List of Figures ............................................................................................................. iv Abbreviations ............................................................................................................... v Abstract ....................................................................................................................... vi CHAPTER 1. LIFESTYLE MIGRANT, CONSEQUENT SETTLER AND MARRIAGE MIGRANT ............................................................................................. 7 1. 1. Introduction................................................................................................. 7 1.2. Migration Today: Development of a Theoretical Framework ................... 10 1.3. Gender Difference in Migration ................................................................ 14 1.4. Leaving Japan for the Sake of a Better Lifestyle: Women and Contemporary Japanese International Migration.............................................. 16 1.5. Methodology .............................................................................................. 21 1.6. Thesis Outline ............................................................................................ 24 CHAPTER 2. CONSUMER SOCIETY AND LIFESTYLE MIGRATION ............. 28 2. 1. Introduction............................................................................................... 28 2. 2. Hyper-Consumer Society in Late Capitalism ........................................... 33 2. 3. Japan‟s Consumer Society Following the Post-Industrial Period............. 41 2. 4. Japanese International Travel: Shifting to Consumption-Oriented Practice ............................................................................................................. 44 2. 5. Going Overseas as Consumer-Oriented Practice ...................................... 50 2. 6. Conclusion ................................................................................................ 52 CHAPTER 3. JAPANESE MIGRANTS IN AUSTRALIA, 1880s-2000s ................ 55 3.1. Introduction................................................................................................ 55 3.2. History of Japanese Migration to Australia ............................................... 57 3.3. Socio-Demographic Profiles of Japanese in Australia Today ................... 74 3.4. Kokusaikekkon or Cross-National Marriage in Japan Today .................... 86 3.5. Conclusion ................................................................................................. 90 CHAPTER 4. VERNACULAR DIASPORIC COMMUNITY: A NATIONAL JAPANESE ETHNIC ASSOCIATION IN AUSTRALIA ........................................ 94 4.1. Introduction................................................................................................ 94 4.2. Conceptualising Ethnicity .......................................................................... 96 4.3. Functional Approach to Ethnic Association of Migrants ........................ 103 4.4. Japanese Migrants and Their Ethnic Associations .................................. 112 4.5. The Japan Club of Australia: Within the Transnational Nikkei Community ..................................................................................................... 115 4.6. Conclusion: Limit of Transnational Nikkei Identity? .............................. 130 CHAPTER 5. CONSEQUENT SETTLEMENT AND MARRIAGE MIGRATION OF JAPANESE WOMEN........................................................................................ 134 5.1. Introduction.............................................................................................. 134 5.2. Growing Japanese Population in Sydney ................................................ 135 5.3. Recent Residential Distribution of the Japanese in Sydney .................... 140 5.4. Becoming a Consequent Settler: Marriage Migration ............................. 148 5.5. Australia as a New Home ........................................................................ 161 5.6. Are Japanese Women More Adaptable to Difference? ........................... 172 i 5.7. Conclusion ............................................................................................... 177 CHAPTER 6. REMOULDING ETHNO-GENDERED SELF AMONG JAPANESE WOMEN MARRIAGE MIGRANTS ................................................. 181 6.1. Introduction.............................................................................................. 181 6.2. Migrant Women and the Problem of Social Mobility ............................. 183 6.3. Gender Division of Labour and Migrant Women.................................... 192 6.4. Japanese Gender Ideas: Traditional Ideas of Femininity and Recent Change ............................................................................................................ 199 6.5. Crafting the (Feminine) Self .................................................................... 209 6.6. Liberal but Conservative?: The Two Sides of Japanese Women Today . 218 6.7. Conclusion: Westernisation, Indivisualisaion and the „Aestheticisation‟ of Everyday Life in Marriage Migration ........................................................ 220 CHAPTER 7. A BRIDGE TO THE MAINSTREAM: THE PENRITH JAPANESE COMMUNITY .................................................................................... 222 7.1. Introduction.............................................................................................. 222 7.2. Home away from Home: Making Home in the New Settlement............. 224 7.3. From Home to the Local Region: Forming a Local Japanese Group ...... 237 7.4. The