Issue of Multicultural People in Globalizing Japan: (Cultural) Identity, Mental Health and “Ibasho”

The number of multicultural people has increased over many years with the globalization of the world economy. Japan is no exception. Ibasho is a Japanese unique concept and means one’s place where one feels secure, comfortable, and accepted. There are very few studies on ibasho among people with multicultural backgrounds. Suzuki (2018) refers to relationships among identity/cultural identity formation, mental health (including subjective well-being) and ibasho. In this paper, we examined the relationship among mental health, identity and ibasho with a focus on ibasho in the case of two groups of people with multicultural backgrounds: International students (N = 105) living in Japan, from 30 countries (Study 1) and Japanese-Indonesian young people (N = 10) living in Indonesia (Study 2). In Study 1, a questionnaire survey and interviews were conducted, and in Study 2, multiple interviews were carried out. In both studies, the analysis was mainly qualitative in nature. The results showed that there was the relationship among ibasho, mental health, and (cultural) identity, and creating ibasho was very useful to support for cultural identity formation of multicultural people as well as to maintain their mental health