ABSTRACT
Identity is one of the most commonly used words in the social scientific literature and used as in the expression 'identity politics'. This chapter introduces the issues surrounding identity, and certainly considers the Japanese identity. It explores the problems plaguing investigations of 'identity'. The chapter explains when Japanese began to think of themselves as 'Japanese' in its modern senses of race, ethnoculture, and citizenship, and focuses on types of identity include bioracial, political, and ethnocultural. Race, a product of the Enlightenment impulse at scientific categorization, can be traced back to the 1700s and is a relatively modern idea. As modern national states began to form in the nineteenth century, debates about the relationship between race, ancestry, lineage, culture, language, and political loyalty would lead to the distinction between citizenship rules informed by jus solis and jus sanguinis. Identities can be ranked in a hierarchy, for example, in modern times political affiliation often supersedes familial relations.
