Total population | |
---|---|
19,490 (in December, 2023)[1] | |
Languages | |
Japanese, Mongolian |
Mongolians in Japan | |||||
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Japanese name | |||||
Kanji | 在日モンゴル人 | ||||
| |||||
Cyrillic name | |||||
Cyrillic | Япон дахь Монголчууд | ||||
Romanisation name | |||||
Romanisation | Yapon dahi Mongolchuud |
There is a small community of Mongolians in Japan, representing a minor portion of emigration from Mongolia. As of December 2023, there were 19,490 registered Mongolian citizens residing in Japan, according to the Immigration Services Agency, up from 2,545 in 2003.[2]
International students form a large proportion of the registered population of Mongolians in Japan.[3] The earliest Mongol exchange students, all three of them women, came to Japan in 1906, when Mongolia was still ruled by the Qing Dynasty.[4] Japan was also a popular destination for students from Mengjiang (in today's Inner Mongolia) in the late 1930s and early 1940s; among them were several who would go on to become famous scholars, such as Chinggeltei.[5][6] Japan and the Mongolian People's Republic officially agreed to send exchange students to each other in 1974; the first Mongolian student to arrive under the agreement came in 1976. As of May 2006[update], 1,006 Mongolian students were studying in Japanese institutions of higher education.[3]
Aside from Mongolian citizens, there were also estimated to be roughly 4,000 members of the Mongolian minority of China residing in Japan as of 2005[update]. Like migrants from Mongolia proper, they also came mostly on student visas, beginning in the 1990s; they were sponsored by professors of Mongolian studies at Japanese universities. They are a close-knit community; they reside mostly in the Nerima and Sugamo areas of Tokyo and in many cases the same apartment has been occupied serially by successive migrants for more than a decade, with each passing the lease on to another migrant before leaving the country or moving on to different accommodation.[7]
Starting in 1991, Mongolians began to become especially prominent in sumo; as of 2005[update], Mongolians composed roughly 5% of all ranked sumo wrestlers, making them more than 60% (37 out of 61) of non-Japanese rikishi in Japan.[8][9] In a 2009 survey conducted by a Japanese statistical agency, of the four sumo wrestlers named as most famous by Japanese people, three were Mongolian.[10]
See also: Category:Mongolian sumo wrestlers |