INTRODUCTION

This chapter, while focusing on links to a wider transnational network, analyses a community of Indians in Kobe, Japan. Here, the term “Indians in Kobe” will be used to denote the group of affluent Indians who identify themselves as part of an established Indian community that is centred around Indian organizations in Kobe and Osaka. The ethnic Indians included may well be outnumbered by those excluded — so-called “new immigrants” who mainly work for IT industries, and lower classes Indians, some working for Indian restaurants. “Indians in Kobe” is simply a short way of referring to those Indians engaged in the activities of the long-established Indian organizations.

OUTLINE OF THE INDIAN COMMUNITY IN KOBE

History

Around 1885, in the two major open ports of Kobe and Yokohama, merchants who were predominantly engaged in the cotton and silk textile trade comprised the first Indian communities in Japan. Hardly any Indian migrants came to perform manual labour and the earliest business migrants were exclusively men.

More Indians entered Japan during WWI, when Japanese products were sought to fill gaps in demand that war-torn Europe could not meet. Following the Great Kanto Earthquake in 1923, most of the Indians in Yokohama relocated to Kobe, and the city hosted the largest migrant Indian population in Japan. When the Pacific War broke out, many Indian trading companies fled Japan and Japan–India trade was disrupted until 1948.

The economic prosperity of post-war Japan tempted Indian textile merchants to the country once more. In general, post-war Indian merchants have shifted towards importing from India and business interests have diversified into real estate management and trading in electronics, automobiles, sundries, and other goods besides textiles.

From the inter-war period until the 1970s, Kobe maintained the largest population of Indian people in Japan. Even so, since the 1980s, its numerical predominance has been waning because of the rapid flow of new migrants into other parts of Japan.

COMPOSITION OF THE COMMUNITY

It is difficult to accurately specify the population of the Indian community in Kobe. In 1998, The Indian Chamber of Commerce Japan, its office located in the textile trade quarter of Osaka, had 280 members (from 119 companies) stationed in Osaka and Kobe. Meanwhile, in 1998, the India Club had seventy-four families on the rolls and in 1999, the Indian Social Society had fifty-seven corporate members.