ABSTRACT
Japan has a race problem. While it is a developed democracy with an increasingly vibrant civil society, boasting an affluent consumer economy and increasing tolerance of alternative lifestyles, minorities continue to languish on the margins of society with few civil rights and limited prospects for integration as officially recognized citizens. These contrary impulses between diversity and exclusion have characterized the nation for at least a century, and highlight the regressive political policies that sustain racial inequality. The overarching ideology of racial homogeneity that has legitimated this state of
affairs remains firmly implanted in the national psyche, and is evident in the pronouncements of conservative politicians such as the popular former Governor of Tokyo Ishihara Shintaro and Prime Minister Abe Shinzo, who have invoked racially loaded language to justify the colonization of Korea (including the forced conscription of Korean “comfort women” into wartime brothels), dismissed the atrocities associated with the Rape of Nanking (1937-38) and remained obstinately unsympathetic-even belligerent-to the claims made by the victims of Japan’s wartime policies. It is tempting to dismiss such race-infused nationalism as characteristic of a Japan that no longer exists, distinct to elderly politicians who are out of touch with the realities of modern society, whose nostalgic, reactionary views have been supplanted by more progressive attitudes commensurate with the diversity that is readily evident. However, these sentiments are not the shrill cry of fringe right-wing Uyoko nationalists, but are voiced by mainstream, popularly elected politicians whose insensitive and racist comments do not apparently harm their political prospects; after making these statements they were reelected and remain in power. Japan’s international relations continue to be undermined by these views, which are
not merely the episodic venting of ill-advised personal animosity, but rather express a coherent worldview, a political ideology in which Japanese conservatives still assume a position atop a presumed racial hierarchy over and against its former colonial victims with whom it now attempts to cultivate economic exchange and negotiate frayed diplomatic relations. It is within the context of these historical disputes that Japanese nationalism takes on racial dimensions (Diene 2006). Japanese nationalism and racism converge at the myth of Japanese homogeneity, the archaic worldview that all Japanese derive from a common bloodline that is racially pure and unadulterated by foreign influence. Despite claims to antiquity, this myth is largely a post-war reactionary construct that exonerates Japan of wartime responsibility by claiming that Japan’s imperialism was an heroic effort to bring all of Asia under the sphere of Japan’s prosperity and to remake those countries in Japan’s image (Lie 2008). The rationale for this was racist: because non-Japanese Asians were viewed as being uncivilized, immature and
incapable of making advances without Japan’s guidance, a fundamental reordering of these societies was seen as a justifiable-even benevolent-necessity. Japan’s imperialist history casts a long shadow over its international relations, serving
as a vehicle for positioning Japan at the pinnacle of Asia, and thereby relegating its former enemies to their proper place in the regional hierarchy (see Chapter 10). In his seminal work on race in the Pacific War, the historian John Dower has demonstrated that even though Japan was critical of the United States for hypocritically maintaining the legal segregation of the races even as it fought wars of “liberation” against the Axis powers, Japan also promoted its own version of Manifest Destiny (Dower 1986, 8). Contemporary Japanese political rhetoric uses this history as a touchstone for nationalist claims. When Ishihara bluntly refers to Asian minorities as “sankokujin,” a derogatory label that literally means “third-country foreigners,” he is referring to ethnic Chinese, Taiwanese and Koreans brought to Japan in the early 20th century. Similarly, when PM Abe offers devotion at Yasukuni, where revisionist nationalistic narratives in the Yushukan war museum justify Japan’s wartime actions and dismiss atrocities in the city of Nanking as minor infractions by undisciplined troops, he revisits these ideological notions and updates their relevance to Japan-China relations, with predictable results. Japan is unique today in that it maintains racially laden nationalistic views despite
their political implications and in the face of historical and genetic analyses that have long made these notions untenable. However, by the onset of World War II, such master-race theories of cultural superiority based on notions of racial purity had become inscribed in the worldviews of Western nations as well, providing ideological rationales for British colonialism, German anti-Semitism, and American exceptionalism. These culturally distinct versions of racial difference were inspired by the late 19thcentury eugenics movement, an influential paradigm of scientific racism that used flawed readings of Darwin’s theories of evolution and Mendelian genetics to support beliefs in racial purity (Morris-Suzuki 1998, 357). As the principles of scientific racism became widespread, they provided rationale for immigration policies that restricted the influx of the so-called inferior races on the one hand, while providing ammunition for imperialist conscription of “uncivilized” lands on the other. In Japan the basic principles of race-based stratification remain pertinent and poli-
tically influential. These racial assumptions are encoded in Japan’s political policies in Asia and prove useful to politicians as a strategic provocation that reinforce notions of cultural superiority while once again putting its Asian neighbors in their “proper place.” Such grand narratives are useful to state-level actors, but they are not generally subscribed to by the general public, who may entertain vague notions of cultural superiority, but do not conceive of these issues in coherent political terms. Public opinion polls suggest more ambivalence than truculence about Japan’s wartime past while support for and opposition to Yasukuni Shrine visits, for example, vacillates considerably. The legacy of race-based nationalism casts a long shadow across Japan and is important for understanding Japan’s regional politics and international relations, but it only partly explains racism as it is expressed and experienced throughout society at an inter-personal level.
