In Search of Silver Line from Immigrant Entrepreneurs in Japan: Review of Literature

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to review published documents on immigrant entrepreneurship in conceptual, theoretical and empirical perspectives and summarize existing studies on immigrant entrepreneurs in Japan including Sri Lankans. Findings of this paper indicates several gaps to be addressed for further development of research on immigrant entrepreneurship in Japan as (1) it is a relatively new concept and a limited number of studies have been conducted due to small size of foreign born population and their scatted nature, wider language and cultural differences, insufficient macro-level data and difficulties in accessing micro-level information; (2) there are enough evidences to show that the number of immigrant entrepreneurs in Japan have been increasing in recent past and are predicted to increase in future; (3) most of the existing Asian immigrant entrepreneurs in Japan have emerged through migrant workers, assets generated in Japan and married to Japanese; (4) since services and ICT sectors have been expanding, foreigners have new avenues to start businesses in Japan (5) the large number of SMEs in Japan still focus on local markets with high technical abilities and suffer due to the limited access to Asian markets, although mutual benefits can be expanded if they have wider access to develop linkages with immigrant entrepreneurs in Japan; and finally, (6) internalization of immigrant businesses in Japan (export orientation, mergers and acquisition of foreign firms and assets, joint ventures and FDI projects started in collaboration with Japanese banks) has been a new phenomenon in the literature of immigrant entrepreneurship in the 21st century. Therefore, immigrant entrepreneurship continues to remain as an unexplored research field in Japan.