Trade of the Times: Reconceiving "Diaspora" with the Sindhi Merchants in Japan

Abstract

This thesis attempts to reconceive the parameters of `diaspora¿ by bringing into case study focus a relatively undocumented community, the Sindhi merchant diaspora in Japan. With Kobe and Yokohama as the primary field sites, this thesis deconstructs the notion of ethnically-endowed `success¿ in business by locating the contemporary as relative to historical contingencies and by situating business establishments within the larger scheme of diasporic enterprise. Generational and gendered elements are also taken into view in order to build on extant studies that focus on merchant networks as purely androcentric and as singularly prosperous. The role of (social) memory is then considered as a metaphoric 'return' to the 'homeland' which is in turn argued to be necessarily mobile and plural, more so for the doubly 'diasporicized' Sindhis. Lastly, the Sindhi merchant community is placed within a global setting to chart its placement alongside the growing South Asian climate in present day Japan.