This paper examines how sub-Saharan Africans in Japan challenge three Japanese societal convictions: the myth of Japanese homogeneity, ideas concerning contemporary blackness, and inclusivity into Japanese self-identity. The analysis is based on participant-observation fieldwork and in-depth interviews with members of Japan's African communities. As will be shown below, the particular conditions surrounding African migration are notably different from those of other minority groups in Japan. The African population embodies a phenotypically disparate population that has settled in Japan and engages in work within the core of mainstream society. Additionally, in contrast to other minority groups, African-Japanese children lack a strong ethnic consciousness. As a result it is increasingly likely they will demand greater acceptance into mainstream Japanese identity, thereby questioning some of the essential criteria of what it means to be Japanese.

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This article examines the process of “place‐making” among Africans in Japan. Ethnographically, this paper explores how these places operate for the Africans who frequent them, underscoring how these particular sites function as “points of sociality.” Through an ethnography of a Tokyo neighborhood and an African establishment, I show how places are made African through a unique set of conditions. This essay demonstrates how, in some instances, African place‐making offers sites from which various forms of African nationalisms come together through continent‐based community formations in Japan. By drawing upon scholarship on space, place, identity, race, and public communality, it explores the multifaceted ways these “made places” assist Africans as they navigate the difficulties of life in Japan. I argue that “place‐making” can be operationalized within the broader context of a changing Japanese society in order to understand the emergence of African places within Japanese space.

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