Vietnamese

Transnational cultural flows between Vietnam and Japan predate Japan’s occupation of Vietnam in 1940 and the Indo-Chinese refugee wave following the Vietnam War. Vietnamese refugees arrived in Kanto and Kansai in the late 1970s. The L1 of the second generation is shifting from Vietnamese to Japanese. Today there is a stream of students and technical intern trainees who speak Vietnamese as L1 and Japanese as L2. Literacy in Japanese is a barrier for linguistic and cultural adaptation. In multigenerational communities, often located in urban housing complexes, the need for children’s literacy in Japanese and educational advancement has compromised the ethnolinguistic vitality of Vietnamese. Vibrant community festivals, the wave of trainee-workers, Vietnamese-medium, Buddhist, and Catholic religious practice, a surge in Vietnamese studies in Japanese institutions, and widespread interest in Vietnamese food culture are changing the shape of the Vietnamese diaspora in Japan.