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In this paper, I demonstrate how long-term multigenerational minorities and Japanese residents engage in the current socio-political discourse of "multicultural coexistence" society (tabunkakyōsei shakai), which had not previously been integral to the vocabulary of national rhetoric in Japan until the 2000s. I argue that the lack of clear definition and goals of multicultural coexistence by the current Japanese government generates obstacles in the attempt to build a multicultural society. While local municipalities' programs, such as multilingual services and lifestyle support, are certainly needed, long-term foreign residents with linguistic and cultural competence are suspicious of the concept of multicultural coexistence due to their own embodied marginalized positions. Taking a local municipality's intercultural event as a point of reference, this paper explores how long-term minority residents perceive their positions at the crossroads of seemingly paradoxical forces of multicultural trends and an ongoing national identity founded upon ethnic homogeneity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the end of World War II, the Kuomintang (KMT) (Guomindang) government has erased all traces of Japanese rule from public space, deeming them "poisonous" to the people in Taiwan. This frenzy, often termed "de-Japanization" or qu Ribenhua in Chinese, included the destruction and alteration of Japanese structures. Yet, with democratization in the 1990s, the Japanese past has been revisited, and many Japanese structures have been reconstructed and preserved. This paper examines the social phenomenon of preserving Japanese heritage in present- day Taiwan. It mainly investigates religious/ spiritual architecture, such as Shinto shrines and martial arts halls (Butokuden), war monuments and Japanese statues and busts. A close investigation of these monuments finds that many of them are not restored and preserved in their original form but in a deformed/ transformed one. This finding leads the paper to conclude that the phenomenon is a postcolonial endeavour, rather than being "pro-colonial", and that the preservation of Japanese heritage contributes to the construction and consolidation of a Taiwancentric historiography in which Taiwan is imagined as multicultural and hybrid. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper evaluates Japan's multicultural policy, introduced as an extension of the internationalisation scheme under the banner of tabunka kyōsei (multicultural coexistence). I first review the framework of tabunka kyōsei as it is expressed in the policy documents, highlighting its apolitical ideas of coexistence, and then explore its local reception, impact and practice, drawing from the narratives of people involved in multicultural programmes. The delivery of Japanese language classes by volunteers in the Aichi Prefecture is used as a case study. The participants' accounts reveal that the multicultural policy is evaluated by the public as poor, and its intent is questioned. For volunteers, the framework has had both positive and negative impacts on the work they perform. Their practices, although limited and localised, demonstrate independent engagement with the local authorities and expose the current multicultural framework as both ambiguous and ambivalent in its concern for the social and political rights of migrants. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]