Japanese people in India


There is a small Japanese community in India which consists mainly of expatriates from Japan or Indian-born people of Japanese ancestry.

Settlement

Bangalore

In Bangalore, the Japanese community has increased by approximately 3000 in the last few years. The vast majority of the community works for Toyota Kirloskar, Honda, Fujitsu, Komatsu, Hitachi, Tsujikawa, Keihin, and 80 other Japanese corporates. Bangalore attracts over 1800 Japanese business visitors every month. The Karnataka government has announced to set up an industrial township on 1,000 acres of land outside Bangalore for Japanese manufacturers. The Department of Foreign Languages at Bangalore University teaches Japanese. Bangalore has a Japanese-influenced Sakra World Hospital, a Kenkos store for lifestyle products.
The Japanese Association of Bengaluru runs a Japanese Supplementary School Hoshū jugyō kō or, or hoshūkō in the premises of Trio World Academy. which is a Japanese-friendly school.
Japan Habba has been held in Bangalore since 2005 and about 1,000 Japanese people from various parts of India travel to Bangalore to join in the festival.
Many Japanese restaurants exist in Bangalore, and some are owned by Japanese people.

Chennai

is home to the largest Japanese community in India around 8200 members. Chennai has traditionally respected and valued Japanese culture and discipline. As of 2015, around 577 Japanese companies are present in Chennai, which represents more than a third of the Japanese companies in India. Japanese language centers have sprung up and American International School Chennai has opened a center that teaches the language; there are about 55 Japanese restaurants while hotels continue to add Japanese cuisine to their menus. The Japanese influence in the city has resulted in a keen interest in the Japanese language among the people of Chennai, who learn it to better understand Japanese culture and the language's traditional linguistic similarity to Tamil, the official language of Tamil Nadu. Some also learn Japanese to explore new business opportunities. The Indo-Japan Chamber of Commerce and Industry aims to increase cultural competence between India and Japan. They regularly host Japanese cultural events to expose the Chennai community to an otherwise unknown culture. Chennai has the largest number of JLPT test takers among the cities that offer the test in India.
The number of Japanese expatriates is expected to rise with the development of a 1500-acre Japanese township on the outskirts of Chennai.

Haldia

The Japanese community of Haldia is mostly engineers and top executives at Mitsubishi Chemicals Corporation's PTA plant in the city. The community have been living in the mini Japanese township called Sataku for many years. Sataku has many Japanese restaurants and a local Japanese news station. Japanese movies are also shown in local theaters. Haldia is the only Indian city to have a Japantown.
The only problem for tourists to this Japantown is that it is not open to public. You need to be invited as a guest of one of the residents to gain entry to the complex. Also, the exact location is not available on Google Maps and not known to most locals or local traffic police. It is located in the Huzur tehsil and the Phanda block. According to the 2011 census of India, Haldia Sataku has a population of 1,814 people.
The commissioning of the PTA plant and subsequent expansions have seen the arrival of many Japanese executives. While a few have returned, many stayed back in this quaint township, thousands of miles away from their home land. The next phase of expansion promises to bring in more Japanese expatriates to this new industrial hub in West Bengal.

Gujarat

There were 321 Japanese establishments and 347 Japanese citizens residing in Gujarat as of March 2019.

Education

List of Japanese international schools in India:
Supplementary programmes :
  • Japanese School of Bangalore
  • Japanese School Educational Trust of Chennai - located at American International School Chennai, Taramani. Established by the Japanese Association in Chennai, it opened in June 1975 as the Japanese Class of Madras. In 1998 the school adopted the name Japanese Language School of Chennai since Madras took the name Chennai. The school moved to AIS Chennai in 2003. It adopted its current name in 2005 so it could register as a trust, as per the Trust Act.
The Calcutta Japanese School, a day school was established but not longer exists. The hoshuko in Kolkata also closed.

Notable people