A documentary about the life of Iranian immigrants in Japan has been made by director Amir Bashti. The 60-minute film “Mehrabad-Narita” is a three-episode documentary that reviews the life of three Iranians who migrate to Japan after the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, ILNA reported on its Persian website. “I was always fascinated by the life of Iranian immigrants in Japan because they mostly came from the lower-end of the economic ladder and chose to live there for financial reasons. They were normally different from those who moved to Europe or America”, Bashti said. The film, currently in the editing phase, also briefly looks into the fate of Iranians who ended up in drug dealing and were dragged into the underworld and organized crime in Japan. Financial difficulties after the bloody war in the mid 1980’s prompted a wave of working class immigrants to Japan. At the time the Asian economic power was desperate for foreign workers to do menial jobs. Many of those who took up the challenges of hard work joined the expanding construction industry and married Japanese women to be eligible for citizenship. Iranians in Japan formed the fifth-largest community of immigrants from a Muslim country. As of 2000, Japanese government figures recorded the population of legal Iranian residents at 6,167 with another 5,821 residing illegally. The documentary is slated to be screened at Iran’s International Documentary Film Festival “Cinema Verite” in December.
