About NDT

About Nikkei Decolonization Tour (NDT)

Nikkei Decolonization Tour (NDT) evolved through more than a decade of grassroots exchanges between Japan and the United States. These exchanges began as pilot tours initially organized by Eclipse Rising, a US-based social justice group of Zainichi Korean diaspora, to cultivate direct solidarity between marginalized communities in the US and Japan. Manami Kishimoto and Miho Kim worked with blessings and encouragement from Yuri Kochiyama to make grassroots solidarity possible between the Third World peoples on both sides of the Pacific, a vision that she and Malcolm X shared.

NDT is grassroots and volunteer-run, with self-raised funds and donations. We conduct delegation tours to Japan to bridge not only the ‘Nikkei diaspora,’ as conventionally defined by Japanese ancestry, but also the diaspora of all subjects of the Japanese Empire and its descendants in/of Japan today, including (but certainly not limited to) Zainichi Koreans, Okinawans, Ainu, and Buraku-min. We want to work with everybody who has a stake in Japan's future to shape a Japan we can all be proud to claim.

NDT fundamentally centers the experiences and knowledge of those firsthand affected by the ongoing legacies of tennou-sei (Japan’s imperial racial hierarchy), as well as other marginalized communities like migrants, workers, women, and queer people. By doing so, NDT aims to reveal hidden truths about Japan, its people, and its history; unearth the rich indigenous and local histories throughout the archipelago; and expand Nikkei identity beyond the racial nation-state. Instead, NDT wishes to see Japan moving towards visibility and inclusion of all people who share a stake in the archipelago, regardless of ancestry or other distinctions that have been used to deny belonging.

By centering oppressed social groups in/of/from Japan (Hisabetsu Nikkei), NDT empowers a new generation of diasporic people of Japan — whether of Japanese ancestry or colonial diaspora — to collectively claim the term Nikkei. Through this collective empowerment, we strive to see past nation-state borders. We wish to eclipse the prevailing racial premise of belonging in Japan. And we hope to grow strong roots in our shared ancestral heritage of resistance, solidarity, and wisdom to reach for an international people’s movement for justice, liberation, and self-determination.