Associate Professor Henry Johnson
In recent years, New Zealand has developed stronger political, economic and cultural ties with Asia, which is reflected in the meteoric growth in trade, tourism, educational and cultural links. Statistics suggest this growth will continue through to 2020 and beyond.
Today, Asia has a huge impact on the lives of all New Zealanders, from the clothes we wear, the cars we drive, electrical appliances and goods we buy every day, to the food we eat, restaurants and takeaway bars we visit, and the films and festivals we watch.
In the decade since 1991, the number of New Zealanders who identify as Asian has doubled to 6.6 per cent of the population, a reflection of a relaxation of the country's immigration laws in the late 1980s.
It is this rapid increase in population, and greater visibility of Asian influences in New Zealand in the last 15 years in particular, that has attracted the attention of the Asia-New Zealand Research Cluster at the University of Otago.
This cluster, the only university research group specifically devoted to the study of Asian diaspora, recently published the book Asia in the Making of New Zealand, which looks at the influences of Asian culture on New Zealand from the 19th century to the present day.
It comprises a selection of articles written by an outstanding group of scholars covering a range of disciplines, says ethnomusicologist and contributor Associate Professor Henry Johnson.
The list includes leading historians, anthropologists, economists, media experts, musicians and performing artists, most specialists in the languages and culture of different Asian communities.
"They're a great bunch of scholars doing ground-breaking work," says Johnson, who co-edited the publication with former Otago historian Brian Moloughney.
Dunedin's Mayor Peter Chin wrote the foreword, a "delicious irony" Chin says, considering he is the second consecutive mayor of Asian ethnicity in a city which hosted the first major influx of Chinese immigrants during the Otago gold rush of the 1860s. The last word goes to influential Australian historian Ann Curthoys.
"I feel very proud of this book because it was a collaboration, not only with the scholars who contributed, but with the people we were studying as well," Johnson says.
"It's saying something about my own country, about the place in which I live. It makes us think about our identity and our place in the world, and it makes us more understanding of other cultures."
Johnson sees Asia's influence on New Zealand life as constantly evolving and very fast-moving, so the book is "a stepping stone" towards another publication in about three or four years' time.
"The highlight for me is that there is so much more to do," he says. "There is so much out there that we haven't written about."