ABSTRACT
The process of the diversification of people, which accompanies globalization, challenges the existing boundaries which separate different groups. As the process of globalization affects countries around the globe, there are few exceptions to its influence. This chapter focuses on Japan, one of the societies most quoted as “homogeneous” or homogeneously oriented. However, since the 1980s, Japan has experienced an inflow of foreign workers, spouses of Japanese, etc., which has made diversity more visible. Preceding the inflow of the new foreigners, there were of course, the long-existing ethnic minorities in Japan – the Koreans in Japan. Japan also witness the increase of Japanese returnees, Japanese children who had received part of the schooling abroad and had returned to Japan as Japanese businesses expanded internationally. The diversification of the society has challenged existing definitions of cultural boundaries, and this chapter identified four frameworks that have emerged as a response to the diversification of Japanese society. The four frameworks are: internationalization, human rights, multicultural coexistence, and globalization. Each framework is an attempt to capture the new landscape of diversity, and each puts different populations together. Such an ongoing redefinition of diversity illustrates how a society moving from assumptions of homogeneity to diversity socially constructs the borders of cultures within.
