Japantown

Japantown
Liberdade in São Paulo, Brazil, the most populous Japantown in the world
Japanese name
Kanji	日本人街
Kana	にほんじんがい
Transcriptions Romanization Nihonjin-gai Kunrei-shiki ひもとひとまち

Japanese diaspora
日系人

Total population
About 2,600,000 [1]
Regions with significant populations
Brazil	1,500,000[2]
United States	1,204,205[3]
China	127,282[4]
Philippines	120,000
Canada	109,740[5]
United Kingdom	100,000
Peru	90,000[6]
South Korea	58,169[7]
Thailand	47,000[8]
Australia	40,968[9]
Germany	34,388
Argentina	34,000[10]
France	30,947[11]
Hong Kong	21,297
Micronesia	20,000[12]
Mexico	15,650[13]
Indonesia	11,263[14]
Bolivia	9,500[15]
New Caledonia	8,000[16]
Italy	7,556[17]
Paraguay	7,000[18]
New Zealand	6,888[19]
Marshall Islands	6,000[20]
India	5,554Japanese people in India
Palau	5,000[21]
Switzerland	4,071[22]
Chile	2,600[23]
^ note: The population of naturalized Japanese people and their descendants is unknown. Only the number of the permanent residents with Japanese nationality is shown.

Japantown (日本人街, Nihonjin-gai^?) is a common name for official Japanese communities in big cities outside Japan. Alternatively, a Japantown may be called J-town, Little Tokyo, or Nihonmachi (日本町), the first two being common names for the Japanese communities in San Francisco and Los Angeles, respectively.

Historically, Japantowns represented the Japanese diaspora, and its individual members known as nikkei (日系^?), are Japanese emigrants from Japan and their descendants that reside in a foreign country. Emigration from Japan first happened and was recorded as early as the 12th century to the Philippines, but did not become a mass phenomenon until the Meiji Era, when Japanese began to go to the Philippines,North America, and beginning in 1897 with 35 emigrants to Mexico; and later to Peru, beginning in 1899 with 790 emigrants. There was also significant emigration to the territories of the Empire of Japan during the colonial period; however, most such emigrants repatriated to Japan after the end of World War II in Asia.