Iranians in Japan
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Iranians in Japan ( ja, 在日イラン人, , fa, ایرانیان در ژاپن) are a minority group, with official statistics recording about 5,000 Iranian migrants in the country. Part of the
Iranian diaspora Iranian diaspora refers to Iranian people or those who are of Iranian ancestry living outside Iran.Greater Tokyo Area The Greater Tokyo Area is the most populous metropolitan area in the world, consisting of the Kantō region of Japan (including Tokyo Metropolis and the prefectures of Chiba, Gunma, Ibaraki, Kanagawa, Saitama, and Tochigi) as well as the ...
.


Migration history


Ancient history

According to Akihiro Watanabe of the
Nara National Research Institute for Cultural Properties The , also known by its former name, the Nara Research Institute for Cultural Properties, is one of two research institutes that comprise the National Institutes for Cultural Heritage, an independent administrative institution created in 2001. Est ...
, a
mokkan are wooden tablets found at Japanese archaeological sites. Most of the tablets date from the mid-7th to mid-8th century, but some are as late as the early modern period. They have been found in sites across Japan, but mostly around the old capita ...
(wooden tablet) dating back to the 7th century CE which was found in
Nara Prefecture is a prefecture of Japan located in the Kansai region of Honshu. Nara Prefecture has a population of 1,321,805 and has a geographic area of . Nara Prefecture borders Kyoto Prefecture to the north, Osaka Prefecture to the northwest, Wakayama P ...
during the 1960s mentions a Persian official who lived and worked in Japan. Watanabe said that the official may have taught mathematics, citing Iran's expertise in the subject. The mokkan was deciphered in 2016 with the help of technology which allowed researchers to read characters not previously visible. Around the time the mokkan was inscribed,
Nara The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is an " independent federal agency of the United States government within the executive branch", charged with the preservation and documentation of government and historical records. It i ...
would have been an ethnically diverse metropolitan area associated with the
Silk Road The Silk Road () was a network of Eurasian trade routes active from the second century BCE until the mid-15th century. Spanning over 6,400 kilometers (4,000 miles), it played a central role in facilitating economic, cultural, political, and reli ...
and about to become Japan's capital city. Before the mokkan was discovered, the first written account of Persians in Japan was in the '' Nihon Shoki'' (''The Chronicles of Japan'', which was finished in 720). The book describes the arrival in Japan in 634 of several people from a place known in Japanese as Tokhārā (believed to be
Tokharistan Tokharistan (formed from "Tokhara" and the suffix ''-stan'' meaning "place of" in Persian) is an ancient Early Middle Ages name given to the area which was known as Bactria in Ancient Greek sources. In the 7th and 8th century CE, Tokharistan c ...
, which would have been part of the
Sasanian Empire The Sasanian () or Sassanid Empire, officially known as the Empire of Iranians (, ) and also referred to by historians as the Neo-Persian Empire, was the History of Iran, last Iranian empire before the early Muslim conquests of the 7th-8th cen ...
) and Dārā, a Persian man who worked for the emperor and returned to his homeland in 660. Another example of interaction between the Persians and the Japanese is the oldest known example of Persian writing in Japan, a one-page document with lines from the ''
Shahnameh The ''Shahnameh'' or ''Shahnama'' ( fa, شاهنامه, Šāhnāme, lit=The Book of Kings, ) is a long epic poem written by the Persian poet Ferdowsi between c. 977 and 1010 CE and is the national epic of Greater Iran. Consisting of some 50,00 ...
'' and the ''
Vis and Rāmin Vis and Rāmin ( fa, ويس و رامين, ''Vis o Rāmin'') is a classical Persian love story. The epic was composed in poetry by Fakhruddin As'ad Gurgani (or "Gorgani") in the 11th century. Gorgani claimed a Sassanid origin for the story, but i ...
'' and
Jami' al-tawarikh The ''Jāmiʿ al-tawārīkh'' (Persian/Arabic: , ) is a work of literature and history, produced in the Mongol Ilkhanate. Written by Rashid al-Din Hamadani (1247–1318 AD) at the start of the 14th century, the breadth of coverage of the work h ...
.the Persian manuscript in Japan Discovered during the 20th century,the paper that was given by several Persians to the Japanese priest Kyōsei during the priest's 1217 trip to the port
Quanzhou Quanzhou, postal map romanization, alternatively known as Chinchew, is a prefecture-level city, prefecture-level port city on the north bank of the Jin River, beside the Taiwan Strait in southern Fujian, China. It is Fujian's largest metrop ...
in China.


Modern history

After the end of the
Iran–Iraq War The Iran–Iraq War was an armed conflict between Iran and Iraq that lasted from September 1980 to August 1988. It began with the Iraqi invasion of Iran and lasted for almost eight years, until the acceptance of United Nations Security Council ...
in 1988, a number of Iranians (primarily men with lower-class, military, or criminal backgrounds) traveled to Japan to find work because the war and the
Iranian Revolution The Iranian Revolution ( fa, انقلاب ایران, Enqelâb-e Irân, ), also known as the Islamic Revolution ( fa, انقلاب اسلامی, Enqelâb-e Eslâmī), was a series of events that culminated in the overthrow of the Pahlavi dynas ...
had had a devastating effect on the Iranian economy. This coincided with an economic boom in Japan which created a need for unskilled laborers, allowing migrant workers without the money to travel to the
Western world The Western world, also known as the West, primarily refers to the various nations and state (polity), states in the regions of Europe, North America, and Oceania.
to secure high-paying jobs and support their families in Iran.
Airfare An airfare (otherwise known as a fare) is the fee paid by a passenger for air transport and is made up of the charge for a passenger to fly from an origin to destination and includes the conditions, rules and restrictions for travelling on the airfa ...
subsidized by
Iran Air The National Airline of Iran ( fa, هواپیمايی ملی ایران, Havâpeymâyi-ye Melli-ye Irân), branded as Iran Air, is the flag carrier of Iran, which is headquartered at Mehrabad Airport in Tehran. As of 2018, it operates scheduled ...
and a bilateral visa-exemption agreement which had been in place for decades allowed for relatively easy and affordable travel between the countries. The workers arrived in Japan legally and received work permits which allowed them time (typically three months) to find work in Japan. A number of workers had trouble finding work while their permits were in effect, however, and reported that Japanese employers intentionally waited until a worker's permit expired to offer them a job at a fraction of the prevailing wage; deportation was a possibility if they complained about unfair wages. Some Iranians then became low-level
yakuza , also known as , are members of transnational organized crime syndicates originating in Japan. The Japanese police and media, by request of the police, call them , while the ''yakuza'' call themselves . The English equivalent for the term ...
(members of the Japanese
mafia "Mafia" is an informal term that is used to describe criminal organizations that bear a strong similarity to the original “Mafia”, the Sicilian Mafia and Italian Mafia. The central activity of such an organization would be the arbitration of d ...
), selling illegal drugs and cell phones. In February 1979, the
Iranian monarchy Iranian monarchism is the advocacy of restoring the monarchy in Iran, which was abolished after the 1979 Revolution. Historical background Iran first became a constitutional monarchy in 1906, but underwent a period of autocracy during the years ...
was collapsed by the
revolution In political science, a revolution (Latin: ''revolutio'', "a turn around") is a fundamental and relatively sudden change in political power and political organization which occurs when the population revolts against the government, typically due ...
; nevertheless, the diplomatic relations with Japan have been inherited and the Embassy of Iran, Tokyo has continued to this day without any suspension.Embassy of Iran in Tokyo
/ref>


Return to Iran

Due to their inability to legalise their visa situation, 95 percent of Iranian migrants to Japan eventually returned to Iran; only a few, typically those who married Japanese citizens or found an employer who would sponsor their visa application, were able to stay. Unlike return migrants to traditional labour-exporting countries, most Iranians who return home from Japan find that they have no other opportunities to go abroad in search of higher wages to maintain their increased living standards or save more money. Iranian migrants stayed in Japan for an average of four years before returning home, during which time they remitted an average of $33,680. Most used that money to buy their own home in Iran or to start a business. Money earned abroad contributed significantly to their social mobility; 57 percent of a sample of 120 returnees used their savings to start their own business and become self-employed after holding unskilled jobs working for others or as farmers before their migration.


Demographics and distribution

Like other labour migrants from Muslim countries, most Iranians in Japan are middle-aged. Seventy-six percent are 30 to 40 years old; six percent are younger than 20, and less than three percent are older than 50. The overwhelming majority are male; most are single, in their 20s or 30s, and had never travelled abroad before their migration. Married men are typically unaccompanied by family members. Most lived in Iranian cities before their migration, and many came from the neighbourhoods of southern
Tehran Tehran (; fa, تهران ) is the largest city in Tehran Province and the capital of Iran. With a population of around 9 million in the city and around 16 million in the larger metropolitan area of Greater Tehran, Tehran is the most popul ...
; most were Persian speakers. Iranian migrants to Japan were less educated than other Muslim groups, such as Bangladeshis. Less than two percent of a sample of 120 Iranian migrants to Japan who had returned to Iran had a university or college education, and 73.1 percent left school before college. In Japan, they sent an average
remittance A remittance is a non-commercial transfer of money by a foreign worker, a member of a diaspora community, or a citizen with familial ties abroad, for household income in their home country or homeland. Money sent home by migrants competes wit ...
of
US$ The United States dollar (symbol: $; code: USD; also abbreviated US$ or U.S. Dollar, to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies; referred to as the dollar, U.S. dollar, American dollar, or colloquially buck) is the official ...
712 per month. Most originally worked in the construction industry; after the number of construction jobs decreased, many became vendors near train stations and were known for selling illegal
telephone card A telephone card, calling card or phonecard for short, is a credit card-size plastic or paper card, used to pay for telephone services (often international or long-distance calling). It is not necessary to have the physical card except with a st ...
s.


Community spaces

Public parks, especially
Ueno is a district in Tokyo's Taitō Ward, best known as the home of Ueno Park. Ueno is also home to some of Tokyo's finest cultural sites, including the Tokyo National Museum, the National Museum of Western Art, and the National Museum of Na ...
and
Yoyogi Park is a park in Shibuya, Tokyo, Japan. It is located adjacent to Harajuku Station and Meiji Shrine in Yoyogikamizonochō. The park is a popular Tokyo destination, especially on Sundays when it is used as a gathering place for Japanese rock music ...
s, were initially the primary gathering points for the Iranian community. Many Iranians set up small stands selling imported Iranian products, and Japanese and Iranian brokers made money helping new arrivals find jobs. Complaints from neighbours and media coverage of illegal-drug and counterfeit-phone-card sales in the parks resulted in an increased police presence, however, and immigration officers began to conduct regular sweeps of the parks for people without documentation. Iranians began to avoid the parks, hoping to avoid being stereotyped as the "bad Iranians" who still assembled there, and the importance of public parks to the Iranian community declined. With the parks less attractive for communal gatherings, mosques began to take on a similar function. As in Iran, most Iranians in Japan are followers of
Shia Islam Shīʿa Islam or Shīʿīsm is the second-largest branch of Islam. It holds that the Islamic prophet Muhammad designated ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib as his successor (''khalīfa'') and the Imam (spiritual and political leader) after him, m ...
. Early in their migration, Iranians lacked the funds to establish a mosque and often used the prayer facilities of the Iranian embassy in Tokyo. They later established a mosque in Kodenma-chō, Chūō-ku with a management board dominated by Iranians, but with representatives of other nationalities. The mosque is also a community gathering point on non-Islamic holidays, especially
Nowruz Nowruz ( fa, نوروز, ; ), zh, 诺鲁孜节, ug, نەۋروز, ka, ნოვრუზ, ku, Newroz, he, נורוז, kk, Наурыз, ky, Нооруз, mn, Наурыз, ur, نوروز, tg, Наврӯз, tr, Nevruz, tk, Nowruz, ...
.


Notable individuals

*
Yu Darvish , more commonly known as Yu Darvish (ダルビッシュ 有), is a Japanese professional baseball pitcher for the San Diego Padres of Major League Baseball (MLB). Darvish has also played in MLB for the Texas Rangers, Los Angeles Dodgers, and ...
, professional
baseball Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each, taking turns batting and fielding. The game occurs over the course of several plays, with each play generally beginning when a player on the fielding tea ...
player *
Aria Jasuru Hasegawa Ariajasuru Hasegawa ( ja, 長谷川 アーリアジャスール; fa, آریا جسور; born 29 October 1988) is a Japanese professional footballer who plays as an attacking midfielder for Machida Zelvia. He was born to a Japanese mother and an ...
, professional
football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ball to score a goal. Unqualified, the word ''football'' normally means the form of football that is the most popular where the word is used. Sports commonly c ...
player *
Shirin Nezammafi Shirin Nezammafi ( fa, شیرین نظام‌مافی; ja, シリン・ネザマフィ) is an Iranian writer who resides in Japan. Though her native language is Persian, she writes in Japanese. She is fluent in English language, English, Persian l ...
, Japanese language novelist *
May J. , better known by her stage name May J., is a Japanese pop and R&B singer who made her major label debut under Sony Music Japan on July 12, 2006, with her first mini-album '' All My Girls''. She was born to an Iranian mother and Japanese father ...
, J-pop singer * Sahel Rosa, model, television personality and actress


See also

*
Iran–Japan relations Iran–Japan relations ( fa, روابط ایران و ژاپن, ja, 日本とイランの関係) are diplomatic relations between Iran and Japan. It was officially established in 1926 during the Pahlavi-Persian era. With the exception of Worl ...
* Persian manuscript in Japan * Embassy of Iran, Tokyo * Academic Society of Iranians in Japan


References


Notes


Sources

* * * * * * *


Further reading

* * * * * {{Portal bar, Iran, Japan Ethnic groups in Japan
Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...