ABSTRACT
Japan is in the process of renegotiating what it means to be Japanese. Acknowledgment of allochthonous and autochthonous minorities, international marriages, transnationalism, and the spread of international norms on minority policies are important factors pushing these renegotiations ahead. Japan is at a crossroad today because it needs to overcome certain specific consequences of its modernity. Informed by a dominant ideology through which the nation was imagined, the mainland Yamato ethnic identity was transformed into overall national identity. In this process, Yamato ethnicity was imposed on autochthonous minorities and in consequence the existence of minority ethnicity, language, and culture in Japan was denied. The subsequent presentation of Japan as a homogeneous nation also posed an obstacle to the inclusion of immigrants in Japanese society, since this was perceived as unsettling the order of homogeneity. Japanese ethnic nationalism is thus not only a problem for autochthonous minorities who are at pains to maintain their cultural and linguistic heritage within a framework of homogeneity; it also creates and highlights distance for migrant minorities. The integration of migrant minorities and the granting to them of citizenship rights are crucially hampered by the barriers imposed by ethnic nationalism.
