ABSTRACT
The aim of this chapter is to analyze the evolution of the idea of race beyond the industrial West where it was born. In effect, racial theories found a place in non-Indo-European contexts, where they were adopted and adapted according to regional mythologies and worldviews. In the seventh century, Japan borrowed its writing, codes, and religions from the Middle Kingdom. Likewise, in the nineteenth century, it was the first Asian country to modernize, this time by modeling itself after the West and blending old and new ideas together in an encounter between categorizations from modern science and structures of traditional thinking. This resulted in the development of actively reconstructed racial identities equipped with native significations. East Asialed by Japan, then China, and to a lesser extent Koreais thus an interesting site of analysis to measure what became of the idea of race outside of its place of origin. An equivalent term placed barbarians in the south, north, east, and west.
