Asahi: Shanghai surpasses New York as overseas city with most Japanese residents
Shanghai surpassed New York as the overseas city with the largest number of long-term Japanese residents, the Foreign Ministry said Wednesday. Shanghai is the largest business center in rapidly growing China, and many Japanese companies are setting up offices there, the ministry said based on its statistics. The statistics showed the number of Japanese staying in cities for three months or longer as of Oct. 1 last year. The figures excluded those with permanent residency status. The number of long-term Japanese residents in Shanghai increased by about 3,700 from last year, when it was ranked No. 2, to 47,731 this year. Many long-term residents in Shanghai were company employees and their families as well as students. Since the ministry started compiling these statistics in 1971, New York had remained in the top spot, but fell to second place this year with 40,068 Japanese residents...By country, however, the United States had the largest number of long-term Japanese residents with 247,771, compared with 126,627 in second-ranked China. Including those with permanent residency status, Los Angeles, which has a large Japanese-American community, was the overseas city with the largest number of Japanese residents, with 61,336. It was followed by New York with 51,705 and Shanghai with 47,794.
The distinctions this article make seem a little odd. Why would you exclude permanent residents from a calculation of the size of the Japanese community? I suppose you could be trying to count "Japanese who are currently abroad but will probably return home". It's also worth noting that China only introduced permanent residence status in August 2004 with a roughly four year qualification period which would explain why the numbers only show 63 Japanese permanent residents in Shanghai.
