[5] Japanese settlement in France, in contrast to that in Brazil or in the United States, has always consisted of individual sojourners coming to the country for cultural or intellectual reasons rather than economic ones, with little collective mobilisation by the government.

[6] The arrival of Japanese expatriates continued at a trickle until the 1930s, when the onset of World War II brought it to a halt.

[8] Japanese in France in the 1990s and 2000s are considered almost "invisible", in contrast to the far more controversial stream of migrants from North Africa.

[12] Unlike other communities of expatriates from Asia, such as the Chinese, as of 1995, social life for the Japanese tends to centre around their company, rather than their neighbourhood of residence.

Increasingly, circa 1995, many of the restaurants in the area serving Japanese cuisine are run by immigrants from Cambodia, Thailand, or Vietnam, and target a French customer base.

[18] There are also part-time Japanese educational programmes in Paris, Boulogne-Billancourt, and St. Germain en Laye in the Paris metropolitan area, as well as Bordeaux, Colmar, Grenoble, La Madeleine (near Lille), Labège (near Toulouse), Lyon, Meistratzheim, Marseille, St. Cyr sur Loire, Valbonne (near Nice), and Villeurbanne.