Tokyo immigrants are mostly from Uttarakhand, Jammu, and New Delhi and very few from Punjab. Apart from some IT engineers, restaurant owners and entrepreneurs, most are employed as factory workers, welders, electricians, etc. They are clean shaven and without turbans to hide their Sikh identity and illegal status. Some of them marry Japanese girls to avail legal status for stay. The Guru Nanak Darbar Gurdwara was started in 1999 at the time of 300th anniversary of Khalsa. It is as yet a makeshift Gurdwara open only once a month when service is held.

The author has narrated some case studies of Sikh migrants. I will like to mention just 2 cases: Kirandeep Sethi family of Kobe and Sarabjit Singh Chadha of Tokyo. Kirandeep is married to a Japanese lady and has two sons; the family maintains Sikh tradition and acts as a role model for Sikh migrants. Sarabjit Chadha is the first non-Japanese singer of Enka - a genre of Japanese songs that can be compared to ghazals for their slow, meaningful melody. Chadha owes a lot to the turban and can easily pair his turban with a kimono. He is a popular TV artist in Japan and is known as Dancing Maha Chadha, and every Sikh with a turban is called Chadha in Japan.

Chapter 12 covers an important aspect of Sikh immigrants, who imbibed the spirit of freedom, and joined Ghadar movement and Indian National Army, popularly called Azad Hind Fauz, to liberate India from the clutches of British Empire. The author took the trouble to trace the history of these movements in South-East Asia but the main fulcrum of Ghadar movement was not Asia but North America. In the Conclusion, the author gives an abstract of all the Chapters briefly. He has given a comparison of profiles of Sikh migrants to East and West in a tabulated form. The book contains 18 appendices, which are highly useful for a researcher, as these illustrate history of Sikh Gurdwaras, including a catalogue of Sikh institutions and Gurdwaras of Asia-Pacific countries covered by the author in his book.

The book is very well written, free of flaws, and provides useful source material for researchers in social sciences and diaspora studies. I am looking forward to his 3rd volume covering Sikh migration to Europe.
Hardev Singh Virk.