The influx of _Nikkeijin_ workers in Japan is due to the revision of the Japanese immigration law in 1990. As mentioned above, foreigners are prohibited from taking unskilled jobs in Japan, in principle. However, the revision of the immigration law added a visa category of “long term resident ( _teijusha_ )”. The law allowed anyone whose parent or grandparent was Japanese (second and third generations) to apply for the “long term resident visa”. Long term residents can stay in Japan for three years, and they can take any activities in Japan including the unskilled work. As a result, a great number of _Nikkeijin_ began to come to Japan to make quick money. Table 12 shows the number of “long term residents” by sending countries. As indicated in the table, in 2004, more than half (57.6%) of the long term residents were Brazilians.

The increase in the number of Brazilians coming to Japan has been dramatic. Figure 4 presents the number of Brazilians staying in Japan since 1988. While there were only 4,159 Brazilians in Japan in 1988, the number jumped to 56,429 in 1990. Since then, the number of Brazilian immigrants has increased almost every year to 286,557 in 2004, which is seventy times as high as that in 1988. Moreover, many Brazilians are repeat migrants, who come back to Japan in a few years after they return to their home country. Table 13 shows the number of entry of Brazilians to Japan since 1999. As indicated, about half of Brazilians are repeat migrants.

In the early 1990s, most of _Nikkeijin_ workers in Japan were single males, who intended to stay for a few years and to return home with big money earned in Japan. They therefore remitted a large portion of their income to their home country. However, the _Nikkeijin_ workers have begun to stay for a longer period and to live in Japan with their families. Some of them obtained permanent residency in Japan. The more they take root in Japan, the less remittance they may send to their home country. In the following section, I will first briefly discuss the situation of _Nikkeijin_ workers in the early 1990s. Then I will examine what kind of changes emerged in the characteristics of _Nikkeijin_ workers in more recent years, and discuss how these changes affect the amount of future remittances to their home country.

# **2.** **_Nikkeijin_ Workers in the Early 1990s --Single Males in Car Parts Factory**<sup>**2**</sup>

The Japanese Ministry of Labour published results of a survey on _Nikkeijin_ workers in Japan in 1991, and the following discussion is mainly based on the outcome of this survey. According to the survey, about two thirds of the _Nikkeijin_ were male, and the majority of them were under thirty years old. About two-thirds were coming to Japan without family, and only 13 percent were accompanied by their entire family. Almost all (more than 90 percent) of these males were working as production workers in the manufacturing sector. Of these, approximately one-third were employed in the transport equipment production sector (most of them in car parts factories). This constituted a striking contrast with illegal unskilled workers from Asia, who were employed mainly

> 2 The discussion in this subsection is largely based on Goto (1993).

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