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Ethnic entrepreneurship can be an alternative economic strategy among immigrants whose labor market opportunities in the host society are hindered by language deficiency, institutional constraints or racial discrimination. However, it can also constrain migrants' social economic mobility. This is especially likely when, with particular visa policies, ethnic business is appropriated as a channel for labor migration, trapping migrants in a narrow economic niche. Excessive concentration in one type of business leads to low road competition within the community and co-ethnic exploitation. This study uses the case of Nepalese immigrants' restaurant businesses in Japan to illustrate this pitfall of ethnic entrepreneurship. It highlights the roles of the immigration regime and the migration industry in creating such a condition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tenshoku means changing jobs: quitting one's company and starting work in a new company. Under the lifetime employment system, regular workers have enjoyed the security and stability provided by corporations, and tenshoku used to be rare among regular workers. In the decades after the Japanese economic bubble burst in 1991, tenshoku has become a more common practice in Japan. However, even now, young people's job-changing behavior is often regarded negatively. What young workers inside the prestigious lifetime employment system think of tenshoku remains underexamined. This qualitative study uses young regular workers' experiences of tenshoku as a lens to investigate their values. Overall, instead of relying steadfastly on their employers, I find in this study that young workers are actively utilizing tenshoku for better working lives: it is an option that supports their subjective well-being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What is the relationship between truth, sense of self and being a professional in Japanese queer nightlife? For service industry professionals' spontaneity is not a fruitful quality to cultivate to establish oneself. Instead, commitment to customers' satisfaction and adaptability to their wants, needs and grudges are considered by customers and providers to be paramount qualities of a service professional. Drawing on my ethnography at Japanese-style gay bars in Shinjuku Ni-chōme (Tokyo) and other Japanese urban centers, and from studies on the Japanese self, religious practice and authenticity, I propose in-sincerity as an analytical tool to describe how service professionals orient their practice. At Japanese-style gay bars, in-sincerity represents a strict approach to work involving withdrawing parts of one's self and concocting subjunctive selves (customized versions of one's self that occupied an illusive 'as if' dimension) for customers' entertainment. The co-creation and reproduction of bar legends at Zenith bar exemplifies the surfacing of these subjunctive selves by inextricably entangling factual information and the imaginary worlds of both service professionals and customers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to increase productivity in national agricultural land and help depopulated villages with aging farmers, current agricultural policy in Japan rewards small farmers who contribute their land to agriculture corporations in which they own shares, have a vote, and labor in the fields for a low wage. Membership is individual, and the sacred link between household and land is virtually cut. Akata, a small village in northeast Japan, has formed agriculture corporations that result in tensions, new alignments, and marginalizations that are well captured by Foucault's concept of heterotopia: a displacement and regrowth that juxtapose villagers' pasts, presents, and futures in disruptive yet creative ways. An anthropological analysis unearths social nuances bridging new roles and older connections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]