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In introducing this special issue on Japanese outside of Japan, this article sets the scene by providing an overview of the genesis and trajectories of the Japanese diaspora which examines the history of international population movements, demographic transitions, educational orientations and language situations in the resulting communities. It touches upon: (a) the disappearance of the oldest nihon machi (Japan towns) formed by fleeing samurai and traders as refugee and trade diasporas; (b) the emergence of Nikkei (Japanese ancestry) identities in Japanese labour diaspora communities; (c) the obsolescence of varieties of Japanese learnt/acquired during childhood in imperial diaspora contexts, along with the employment and integration of Japanese borrowings in the local languages; (d) the contrast in the social lives and language situations in global Japanese diaspora communities between affluent long-term residents living within Japanese norms, on the one hand, and, on the other, permanent residents seeking personal freedom from these norms; and (e) the contrasting social realities in contemporary Japan of returnee children of Japanese diplomats and expatriate Japanese business executives as a new privileged class, on the one hand, and returnee Nikkei Latin Americans working as foreign labourers in Japan, on the other. Given the wide range of historical and socio-economic contexts in which the Japanese diaspora found itself, we conclude that it continues to provide a rich seam of potential sociolinguistic enquiry, which may provide an illustrative framework serving as a possible model for the historicised analysis of diasporic sociolinguistic complexities in other world contexts.
