ABSTRACT
The chapter analyses what race and Whiteness mean in the context of Japan, a non-White country occupying the same socioeconomic status and privilege as the racially white West. In this chapter, they explore the two parallel mechanisms of race-based privileges in Japan. One is the idea of nihonjin (Japaneseness), an unmarked racialising category embedded with privilege and invisible dominant culture equivalent to Whiteness in the West. The other is Whiteness as a white racial category from the Western dominant perspective, a concept that privileges the white-Western phenotypes and cultures associated with admiration and positive images in Japan. The chapter explores these two parallel yet not mutually exclusive constructions of race, through the experiences and identities of hāfu (ハーフ) i.e. individuals of multiethnic and multiracial background living in Japan.
