Fujian, the coastal province in Southeast China, is where a large number of overseas Chinese called home. After widely publicized tragic events such as the Golden Venture and Dover incidents, the name Fujian has in recent decades become associated with clandestine border entry. This article examines the causes and contexts of undocumented migration from Fujian to Japan. It highlights the unique characteristics of undocumented migration into Japan: debt-driven migration and network-induced visa overstaying. It also explores the tradition- and reciprocity-oriented ethical frameworks within which Fujian undocumented migrants justify their behavior.

Okinawa is Japan's southernmost prefecture lying between mainland Japan and Taiwan off China's east coast. The main island measures twice the size of Guam and has a population roughly seven times greater, or one-third the size of New York's Long Island with 50,000 more people. On its slender, irregularly shaped island, which constitutes a mere 0.3 per cent of the country, Okinawa hosts 75 per cent in size of all U.S. only military bases in Japan, exclusive of sea and air space. U.S. bases include the Marine Corps jungle training, aviation, bombing and shooting ranges, landing training grounds and an ammunition depot, the largest Air Force base in the region with its own ammunition site, a naval station often visited by nuclear submarines and Army facilities, adding in sum to roughly one-fifth of the densely populated island. It is home to an estimated 24,600 U.S. service personnel, out of a total of 36,000 in all of Japan, many of them living with their dependents in fenced-in “American towns” with schools, gyms, golf courses, shopping centers and churches. Nearly 90 per cent (about 15,000 in number) of the Japan-based Marines are concentrated in Okinawa.

Agriculture in Japan suffers from a wide range of problems, including a low food self-sufficiency rate of only 41% and an inflexible farmland market. Rather than seriously tackling these problems, the Japanese government has chosen to compensate farmers through import restrictions, subsidies and price supports. These measures, aimed at addressing the widening urban-rural income gap and assuring the Liberal Democratic Party's rural base, raised Japanese rice prices to among the highest in the world and further reduced food self-sufficiency. Japan's farm support initiatives began in the 1960s and were promoted by Prime Minister Tanaka Kakuei as “Nihon Rettō Kaizō Ron” (Remodeling the Japanese Archipelago). The large infrastructure projects launched under this program provided public works jobs in rural and urban areas that boosted incomes of rural communities but did little to stay the decline of agriculture.

The U.S. war in Afghanistan is “going badly,” according to the New York Times. Nine years after American forces invaded to oust the repressive Taliban regime and its Al-Qaeda ally, “the deteriorating situation demands a serious assessment now of the military and civilian strategies.” Aerial bombardment, a centrepiece of the U.S. military effort in Afghanistan, has had a devastating impact on civilians there. Along with Taliban and Al-Qaeda insurgents and suicide bombers, who have recently escalated their slaughter of the Afghan population, U.S. and NATO aircraft have for years inflicted a horrific toll on innocent villagers.