Spend time in New York City and; soon enough; you will encounter some of the Japanese nationals who live and work theremdash;young English students; office workers; painters; and hairstylists. New York City; one of the worldrsquo;s most vibrant and creative cities; is also home to one of the largest overseas Japanese populations in the world. Among them are artists and designers who produce cutting-edge work in fields such as design; fashion; music; and art. Part of the so-called ldquo;creative classrdquo; and a growing segment of the neoliberal economy; they are usually middle-class and college-educated. They move to New York for anywhere from a few years to several decades in the hope of realizing dreams and aspirations unavailable to them in Japan. Yet the creative careers they desire are competitive; and many end up working illegally in precarious; low paying jobs. Though they often migrate without fixed plans for return; nearly all eventually do; and their migrant trajectories are punctuated by visits home. Japanese New York offers an intimate; ethnographic portrait of these Japanese creative migrants living and working in NYC. At its heart is a universal questionmdash;how do adults reinvent their lives? In the absence of any material or social need; what makes it worthwhile for people to abandon middle-class comfort and home for an unfamiliar and insecure life? Author Olga Sooudi explores these questions in four different venues patronized by New Yorkrsquo;s Japanese: a grocery store and restaurant; where hopeful migrants work part-time as they pursue their ambitions; a fashion designerrsquo;s atelier and an art gallery; both sites of migrant aspirations. As Sooudirsquo;s migrant artists toil and network; biding time until they ldquo;make itrdquo; in their chosen industries; their optimism is complicated by the material and social limitations of their lives. The story of Japanese migrants in NYC is both a story about Japan and a way of examining Japan from beyond its borders. The Japanese presence abroad; a dynamic process involving the moving; settling; and return to Japan of people and their cultural products; is still underexplored. Sooudirsquo;s work will help fill this lacuna and will contribute to international migration studies; to the study of contemporary Japanese culture and society; and to the study of Japanese youth; while shedding light on what it means to be a creative migrant worker in the global city today.
#1819069 in eBooks 2017-07-11 2017-07-11File Name: B013QMUNOG
Review
