Minorities in Japan

By William Wetherall and George A. De Vos

Caution -- The so-called burakumin referred to in this article do not exist.
See Buraku residents under Minorities.

Prefatory qualifications

The following two comments are intended to qualify this article in the history of writing about the topic of "minorities in Japan".

Comment 1, added August 1998, describes the modifications in the web version of the article.

Comment 2, added October 2005, addresses other limitations of the article.

Both comments, and the modifications, were written by the senior author, William Wetherall, without consultating the junior author, George De Vos. The junior author's main contribution to the original article was to pass on the publisher's request for the article to the senior author, his student, then approve the outline and suggest a few changes in wording in preliminary and final drafts. The senior author has therefore taken full responsibility for the original article and its impact.

Comment 1 -- Other limitations of this article

This web edition is a slightly modified version of the following original report:

William Wetherall and George A. De Vos
Ethnic Minorities in Japan
In: Case Studies on Human rights and Fundamental Freedoms (A World Survey)
Edited by Willem A. Veenhoven and Winifred Crum Ewing
Published for the Foundation for the Study of Plural Societies by
Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, 5 Volumes, 1975-1976
Volume 1, 1975, pages 333-375, Table 1 (p. 368), Table 2 (p. 369)

This report is being posted here in order to make it readily available to interested researchers. It does not, however, reflect the current knowledge or viewpoints of either author. While most of the information is accurate and reliably sourced, a few errors of commission and omission involving mainly descriptive terminology and interpretation warrant caution when reading.

The title of the web edition has been changed because not all categorical minorities included in the original report are ethnic. Only the most problematic wording has been modified as follows:

Bracketed [blue words] have been added to this edition for clarification.
Bracketed [purple words] were in the original edition but should be considered deleted.

William Wetherall
August 1998

Comment 2 -- Other limitations of this article

There are, in hindsight, a number fatal flaws in this article. The most salient three shortcomings concern the words (1) "Japanese", (2) "national" and "foreign" minorities, (3) "burakumin", and (4) "group" and "community".

"Japanese" is raceless

Contrary to what is sometimes implied in this article, "Japanese" as a term referring to the people of Japan cannot imply race or ethnicity, since being Japanese is a matter of nationality, and Japanese nationality is not based on either race or ethnicity. This is also true of "Chinese" and "Korean" as terms referring to the people of ROC, PRC, ROK, or DPRK.

2. "national" should mean only "nationality"

What have been called "national minorities" in this article should really be called "Japanese minorities" -- since they are all Japanese, and there are no "minority nationalities" within Japanese nationality. As a label, "national minorities" would better describe "foreign minorities" in Japan, since foreigners are minorities on account of their not being Japanese.

3. There are no "burakumin" in Japan

Not only are "burakumin" not "ethnic" (or even "quasi-ethnic") minorities, but no such people exist. Nor are there "outcastes" by any other name in Japan. There were once various kinds of outcastes in Japan, including "eta" and "hinin", but they were not called "burakumin". Yesteryear's outcastes ceased to exist when the caste system that defined them was abolished in 1871. And because no one living today was born before then, there are no "former outcastes" either.

4. Few minorities exist as "groups" or "communities"

Japanese minorities (such as Ainu and Okinawans), and national minorities in Japan (such as Chinese and Koreans), do not really exist as "groups" or "communities" -- both of which terms are highly abused in discussions of "minority issues" around the world.

In other words, this article should be read as an example of what typically goes wrong -- still today -- in discussions of "minorities in Japan" by journalists and academics alike. First read the color highlighted (gray, blue, and purple) headings, and then the color highlighted (yellow and green) articles for my current views on terminological and other issues.

William Wetherall
October 2005

Contents

Introduction

 1. Ethnic Minority Populations
 2. Ethnic Minority Co-residence
 3. Burakumin: Ritual Purity and Untouchability in Japanese History
 4. Ainu: Internal Expansion and the Absorption of Frontier Aborigines
 5. Okinawans: National Expansion and the Assimilation of Southern Islanders
 6. Chinese: Preludes of Imperialism and Reversals of Historical Roles
 7. Koreans: Imperialism and the Immigration of Colonial Subjects
 8. Hibakusha: Contamination Phobia in the Shadow of Hiroshima
 9. Konketsuji: Miscegenation and Amalgamation in the Wake of Cultural Change
10. Kikajin: Accommodating Foreigners Looking for a Home
11. Kaigai no Nihonjin: The Defiling Experiences of Japanese Citizens Overseas
12. Nikkeijin: Status Deprivation of Foreigners of Japanese Ancestry
13. Aoime no Gaijin: Special Treatment of Euroamericans as a Form of Degradation>
14. Purity Myths and Ethnocentricity

Table 1
Table 2

References

Introduction

Japanese are often thought to be an unusually homogeneous people in two senses of the word. Not only is Japan frequently characterised as having fewer ethnic groups and minority problems than other nations, but majority Japanese are typically described as a relatively "pure" people manifesting less physical feature variation than Europeans. Japanese and foreigners alike attribute these alleged homogeneous tendencies to centuries of geographically imposed if not politically self-imposed isolation, under which circumstances Japanese racial and cultural ethnicity supposedly developed its "insular" idiosyncrasies. Looking at Japanese ethnicity empirically, however, both views of homogeneity are found to be substantially incorrect. Not only does Japan have many ethnic minority groups -- defined both culturally and genetically -- but the majority population continues to exhibit considerable phenotypic evidence of its heterogeneous origins.

Each of the several ethnic minority groups presently recognisable in Japan is burdened with a distinctive history of separation and exploitation. And each of the groups has its own heritage of cultural and physical features that raise barriers of discrimination in interaction with the patterns of social acceptability found in the majority community. Yet while surface examinations show these histories and heritages to be characteristically different for each group, deeper probings show them to be strikingly similar.

This analysis begins with an overview of ethnic minority populations in Japan with respect to who and how many. Rounded estimates drawn from figures from many sources suggest a model for ethnic composition in Japan [Table 1]. A second section looks at how Japan's minority populations are distributed in terms of co-residence not only with the majority population but with one another. A paragraph on minority occupations suggests why co-residence has probably been patterned as described.

The main body of this report is devoted to separate discussions of eleven nominally different but phenomenally overlapping minority groups in Japan. Starting with "invisible" outcastes it then proceeds to "blue-eyed" keptouts. The first several groups are taken in roughly chronological order, while the last few groups are treated without regard for their place in history. Some groups have been given more space than others, but yet all are equally important, if not numerically or politically then simply because their members face one form or another of degrading ethnic discrimination in majority Japanese society. The necessarily brief accounts even for groups receiving the most attention at best highlight the more salient historical and contemporary aspects while leaving undescribed many details that are none the less vital to a fuller understanding of minority status and discrimination in Japan.

This analysis concludes with an overview of minority status and discrimination in Japan with reference to purity myths as impediments to ethnic pluralism. Central to the patterns of systematic discrimination found in modern Japan -- despite humanistic face-liftings of its legalistic structures -- is a widely held belief in cultural if not racial purity. With regard to such purity myths and other aspects of discrimination discussed in this report, the writers are keenly aware that what is said about discrimination in Japan results from cultural and psychological propensities in no sense uniquely Japanese. While all cases of discrimination in Japan haven't exact analogs elsewhere, in the balance Japan is essentially like most other countries.

1. Ethnic Minority Populations

Ethnic minority groups in Japan -- defined in terms of separate national origins, different genetic attributes, or a history of outcaste status based on ritual pollution -- account for about four percent or 4,500,000 of Japan's 110,000,000 residents in 1974 [Table 1]. Some 2,000,000 of these minorities are [indigenous] burakumin [residents of former outcaste communities]. About 1,000,000 Okinawans -- residing on the Ryukyu Islands -- constitute the second largest minority group in Japan. An estimated 500,000 other Japanese citizens suffer minority status for allegedly genetic and cultural differences, including hibakusha [atomic bomb survivors], konketsuji [mixedblood citizens --> people] mainly of Japanese with Korean or American parentage, kikajin [naturalized citizens] mainly of Korean or Japanese ancestry, Ainu [aboriginals --> an indigenous people] on the northern island of Hokkaido, and a number of Japanese who have returned to their homeland after once emigrating or spending formative years abroad.

In addition to 109,000,000 Japanese citizens, nearly 1,000,000 foreign nationals live in Japan. Over 600,000 of these resident aliens are Koreans, who thus form the third largest ethnic minority group in Japan -- after Burakumin and Okinawans. There are much smaller though significant populations of Chinese and Americans, and still smaller but less significant numbers of other foreign nationals representing ethnic traditions around the world. Japan also boasts a fairly sizable and socially visible flow of foreign tourists.

There are other indigenous minority groups in Japan that might be called "ethnic" in the broadest cultural sense of this word, but they are dwindling and amorphous, and are mentioned here only in passing. Included among these little-known minorities are migrant marine fisherfolk, woodworkers, hunters, ironworkers, riverine migrants, quasi-religious itinerants, and scattered other groups whose communities may be regarded as ethnic subcultures. (Norbeck 1972)

Several occupational minority groups -- some of them quite extensive -- are subject to considerable discrimination in Japan. Included here are miners, weavers, craftsmen working with bamboo and straw, leather products workers, truck and taxi drivers, day labourers, sewage and garbage collectors, hostesses and bartenders, waitresses and waiters, maids and servants, and models and performers. The eight general occupational classifications that include most of these low status vocations -- of forty-one classifications tabulated by Japanese census takers accounted for 9,088,700 persons in 1965, around nineteen percent of Japan's employed work force fifteen years old and older [47,633,3801, or nine percent of the total resident population [98,274,961]. Moreover, the worlds of organized crime and street delinquency -- not represented in these occupational statistics -- attract a disproportionate number of ethnic minorities along with majorities who have fallen in status. (Sorifu 1969[5.2]:252; sum of intermediate occupational classifications 13, 23, 24, 25, 29, 36, 37, and 40)

Roughly speaking, then, about ten percent of Japan's resident population suffers some form of social status discrimination -- leaving aside women -- nearly half of these for nominally cultural and genetic reasons, and the balance because of their livelihoods. While noting some overlap between these two divisions, this study is concerned primarily with ethnic groups composed of persons differentiable -- apart from their vocations -- on the basis of caste, race, or nationality. The number of such minorities in Japan -- estimated here [Table 1] at some four percent of the total resident population -- would be as high as six percent using the figures claimed by some minority movement leaders. Yet even the rate of three percent -- computable from scattered published statistics -- is surprisingly high when it is remembered that problems of ethnic discrimination in Japan are seldom acknowledged by Japanese or adequately assessed by foreigners in survey reports of Japanese culture and society.

But how many persons in Japan might fall into one or another socially perceived category, and why more significance may be attached to one category rather than another, should not distract attention from the people who must bear degraded status for whatever reason. While the writers might wish to enumerate, evaluate, and classify people for limited purposes of description and analysis, their ultimate concern is to fathom the psychological and social problems experienced by those who find themselves systematically discriminated against figuratively from before the cradle to after the grave.

They have twice used the word "systematic" with implications that may require some explanation. The term is sometimes intended to describe social behaviour patterned by rather explicit rules and regulations. But they refer not so much to the overt systems of law and policy -- which are found in contemporary Japan to be outwardly nondiscriminatory -- as to the more covert and deeply rooted culture and personality systems. The psychocultural patterns that characterise such systems inwardly perpetuate discriminatory attitudes and behaviour among majority members of the community while concurrently they deepen propensities for low self-esteem and subnormal achievement motivation among minorities. They consider these patterns "systematic" because they are "structured" albeit subconsciously.

2. Ethnic Minority Co-residence

Burakumin are found mainly in western Japan in prefectures around the Inland Sea [Seto Naikai], where they tend to co-reside with large numbers of Koreans and Chinese, particularly in the Kinki region. The seven Kinki prefectures -- including Kyoto, Osaka, and Hyogo (Kobe City) -- account for over 40 percent of all Japanese outcastes and nearly 50 and 40 percent respectively of all Korean and Chinese nationals residing in Japan, compared with less than 20 and 30 percent respectively of all residents and all other foreigners in Japan. In contrast, the seven prefectures of the Kanto region in eastern Japan -- including Tokyo and Kanagawa (Yokohama City) -- account for less than 10 percent of Japan's Burakumin, with these found mainly in rural inland Kanto prefectures. But the Kanto region includes roughly 20 percent of Japan's Korean minority, some 50 and 60 percent respectively of all Chinese and all other foreign nationals in Japan (practically all of these in urban Tokyo and Kanagawa), and nearly 30 percent of all residents in Japan.

Chinese and Euroamerican foreign nationals tend to co-reside in the high commercial activity prefectures and in the same administrative districts within the urban centres of these prefectures. Koreans are found mainly in the industrial areas that overlap these commercial regions, while Burakumin are distributed primarily in rural and industrial areas around cities and towns in western Japan where they have been distributed for the past five centuries. In most Inland Sea prefectures having large communities of outcastes and Koreans, their combined numbers account for between four and seven percent of the total prefecture population. Within these prefectures, however, Koreans tend to live in the major cities while Burakumin tend to reside outside them. In not a few prefectures in central and western Japan, Burakumin alone make up four, five, and six percent of the population, while most prefectures in northern Japan report no outcastes at all.

1959 figures show that whereas 5 and 12 percent of all Japanese employees 15 years old and older were engaged respectively as professional or sales personnel -- versus 30 percent in factory production and labour -- the corresponding figures for Koreans were 2 and 5 percent versus 53 percent, while for Chinese they were 8 and 28 percent versus only 9 percent. In contrast, 65 percent of all Americans in Japan in 1959 were professionals, compared with 11 percent in sales work and only 2 percent in processing of labour. Such distinct occupational differences reflect the characteristic histories of these minorities in Japan. Chinese came principally as merchants and traders, Koreans as factory workers, miners, and construction hands, while Europeans and Americans have come principally as managers, teachers, and other elites. Burakumin, on the other hand, continue to follow traditional trades, labour in the cities, or till inherited farmlands. (Homusho 1964:93)

Except for individuals who have recently migrated, Ainu are found mainly on Hokkaido. There are Ainu also on the Sakhalin [Karafuto] and Kurile [Chishima] islands to the north of Hokkaido. Although. many Okinawans migrated to Japan's main islands or emigrated overseas before the Pacific War, persons recognised as Okinawans today are found principally on the Ryukyu Islands. Indeed, all Japanese nationals residing on Okinawa during the extended American occupation there -- regardless of origins within Japan -- are in a sense now Okinawan minorities. Konketsuji are found primarily in the largest cities where they most readily find employment in marketing and entertainment industries.

3. Burakumin

About 2,000,000 Japanese citizens are considered genetically polluted and treated by majorities essentially like untouchables in India and as outcastes elsewhere in the world. This largest minority group in Japan is ironically the most invisible. Burakumin cannot be distinguished from other Japanese by any measurable biological attribute. The genetic differences traditionally attributed to outcastes in Japan are founded in myths of racial origin, many of them ancient but none with a convincing basis in history.

A popular but pseudo-historic view argues that Japanese outcastes are in some sense the descendants of Koreans brought to Japan as captives and slaves from peninsula campaigns during the Yamato period (300-645). Such wars are described in Japan's earliest historical documents -- the Kojiki [Record of ancient matters] (712) and Nihon shoki [Chronicles of Japan] (720) -- which provide also important insights into the role of ritual purity in the religious values of ancient Japanese society. It is largely through an understanding of the continuity of these values down to the present day -- and the absence of biological and reliable historiographic information to the contrary -- that Burakumin are most reasonably thought by contemporary anthropologists to be of indigenous rather than foreign origin. (Price 1972:12)

By the 17th century, Japanese society had become highly stratified. Below the nobility, a four-tier class system placed samurai [warrior] administrators above all others. Second came the farmers, third the artisans, and last the merchants. Members of these four classes were calledryomin [good subjects] in contrast with senmin (base subjects]. The senmin were divided into several subclasses, the most important of which were the eta and hinin. The hinin [nonpeople] were typically beggars, itinerant entertainers, prostitutes, mediums, diviners, religious wanderers, fugitives from justice, or persons reduced to hinin status as punishment for a crime or misdemeanour. The eta [a word of uncertain origin commonly represented with Chinese characters meaning "much filth"] were nominally hereditary outcastes who performed tasks traditionally considered to be ritually polluting, including leatherwork and sandal making.

Polluting occupations of various kinds were recognized at the dawn of Japanese history, but eta origins are commonly traced to the 9th century when apparently the first outcaste communities were founded by herders of cattle and disposers of the dead, and by persons skilled in the slaughter of game -- for falcons and dogs -- who moved into these villages to serve as butchers and tanners, or to engage in other despised occupations. It was the rigidification of society during the Tokugawa period (16oo-1868), however, that firmly established the degraded status of Japanese practicing such trades. (Price 1972: 17-19)

All senmin, including hinin and eta, became ordinary citizens as a result of the Eta Emancipation Edict [Eta Kaiho Rei] issued by the Meiji government in 1871. The hinin were generally absorbed into the larger former eta communities, and not a few indigent majorities also found themselves living in outcaste settlements at the time of the first Meiji census. Estimates of the Burakumin population a century ago vary from 280,311 to 520,451 depending on what one wishes to consider "outcaste." Similarly, 1963 figures vary from 1,113,043 to 3,000,000 depending on whether one is a government official (low) or Burakumin movement leader (high). In the meantime, the total resident population has increased 176 percent from 34,806,000 to 96,156,000 in 1963 [Table 2].

Life for residents of the tokushu buraku [special communities] -- as former outcaste settlements came to be called -- grew physically hazardous. Non-outcaste commoners -- suffering greatly themselves in the wake of social and economic upheaval, particularly in rural areas would sometimes vent their anguish through etagari [eta hunts] organized spontaneously in mixed localities. The capacity of Japanese majorities to dissipate frustrations by indiscriminately attacking minorities has been demonstrated also against foreign nationals in Japan, both Euroamerican and Asian. Most notable was the killing of several thousand Koreans in and around Tokyo following the Great Kanto Earthquake [Kanto Dai Shinsai] of September 1923. The destruction of outcaste lives and property early in the Meiji period (1868-1912) was not as focused as the Korean massacres, but seems to have taken a comparable toll. (Totten and Wagatsuma 1972:34-37; Mitchell 1967:38-41)

The only way one can identify an outcaste in contemporary Japan with any degree of certainty is to know his place of residence. A Burakumin living in an area outside a known buraku [settlement] may attempt to hide his origins in an effort to pass into majority society -- a demanding task at best in view of Japan's nationwide registration system and the continuing interest majorities have in family origins. Passing becomes most difficult when attempting marriage, which may involve a background enquiry. Added to the external social obstructions are the internal psychological barriers concerning personal integrity. Many passing Burakumin feel very guilty about passing, believing that their passing is somehow unfair to nonpassing relatives and friends, from whom they must sever all ties or risk discovery.

Most Tokugawa communities enforced proscriptions against marriage between eta and non-outcastes. Burakumin populations continue to be relatively endogamous, however, as non-outcaste majorities who disfavour interethnic unions generally -- continue to object most strongly to intercaste marriages. Reluctance to alter traditional patterns of prejudice towards persons of outcaste origins is reported even among Japanese emigrants overseas, some of whom came from Burakumin communities. (Wagatsuma and De Vos 1972:118-120; De Vos and Wagatsuma 1972[a]: 252-256; Ito 1972)

There is a long history of political militancy among Burakumin that in recent decades has solidified into a notably proletarian orientation, as has the Korean movement in Japan. The principal Burakumin organisation today -- Buraku Kaihō Dōmei [Buraku Liberation League] -- serves more Burakumin community needs than all other outcaste and non-outcaste groups combined. Local governments in metropolitan areas having large populations of Burakumin have made sporadic attempts at meaningful urban redevelopment, but an off-the-tourist-beat trip through these cities will reveal still extensive neighbourhoods with conspicuously inadequate sanitation and housing. All urban outcaste neighbourhoods are not as badly off, however, and some are virtually indistinguishable from surrounding majority communities.

Agricultural Buraku in rural areas are generally much better off than their urban counterparts and are relatively self-sufficient. Outcastes during the Tokugawa period were predominately farmers, and only on occasion -- if ever -- did they engage in "polluting" activities. Today, few Burakumin are involved in the traditionally low status industries, although more are represented in such vocations in relation to their numbers in Japan than majorities. As late as 1920, while 52 percent of all Japanese households were engaged principally in farming activities, a comparable 49 percent of known Burakumin households also were employed in agriculture. (Price 1972:20-22; Wagatsuma and De Vos 1972:120-124)

Delinquency rates in ghettoed Buraku are often three and four times those found in majority areas. Burakumin youth tend to be left selectively unemployed as some companies prefer older Japanese, and outcastes are sometimes underpaid for similar work performed by nonoutcastes. Surveys have shown also that Burakumin children may do less well in school than majority children, and may be truant more frequently. While there are notable cases of achievement and accomplishment and gradual improvements generally in Burakumin social conditions, many outcastes continue to be apathetically resigned to their depressed station in life. Finding themselves socially disadvantaged and despised by the members of majority society, Burakumin often develop hatreds towards this society. A sense of hopelessness is often passed to the next generation through parentally informed self-doubt and even self-hatred. (De Vos and Wagatsuma 1972[b]:259-269)

1971 and 1972 were years of great celebration for history conscious Burakumin. The years marked the centennial of the Emancipation Edict of 1871 and 1872, and the semicentennial of the founding in 1921 and 1922 of the predecessor to the postwar Buraku Liberation League. Recent Burakumin issues include the ongoing appeal of a death sentence handed down in the 1964 conviction of a Burakumin youth for the 1963 kidnapping, rape, and murder of a non-outcaste high school girl. Another issue involves conservative majority criticism of proletarian Burakumin literature introduced into integrated public school curricula.

Both of these issues have parallels in the United States, where minority groups rally in defence of accused or convicted fellow minorities, and fight majority objection to the introduction of ethnic studies materials into public school textbooks -- materials that would impose a new point of view on majority written history. Such concern with treatment by the institutions of law and education makes it clear that Burakumin leaders today are interested in developing a profound historical sense of Burakumin ethnicity among Burakumin youth. Like other degraded minorities in Japan and throughout the world, Japan's large outcaste population generally disavows melting-pot-style assimilation. Preferring instead a salad-bowl-style pluralism, Burakumin are groping for ways to bring about a multiethnic society that would acknowledge a present continuity of differences based on past separation and exploitation.

The future of Burakumin self-esteem is perhaps best symbolized in the emergence of a Burakumin literature by Burakumin individuals having experiences in life that only they can know internally and express externally to fellow Burakumin if not sensitive majorities. The outcaste struggle has been a legitimate theme for majority artists since Shimazaki Toson (1872-1943) published Hakai [Broken commandment] in 1906, his first novel and a landmark in the history of Japanese literary realism. But more significant for Japan's 2,000,000 outcastes is the recent bestseller Hashi no nai kawa [River without a bridge] by Burakumin authoress Sumii Sue. Hakai was filmed by Ichikawa Kon in 1961, while the earliest of the six volumes of Hashi no nai kawa published between 1961 and 1973 have been filmed in two parts by Imai Tadashi in 1969 and 1970. (McClellan 1971: 79-93; Buraku 259 [special issue on Hashi no nai kawa film movement, May1970)

4. Ainu

The Ainu, who were possibly distributed throughout Japan two millennia ago, remained in possession of a considerable portion of northern Honshu -- Japan's main island -- as late as the Nara period (645-794). The Ainu were known as fierce warriors, and it took several centuries for Japanese frontiersmen to bring about their total submission. Military campaigns during the late 8th and 9th centuries settled most of northern Honshu and secured the Japanese frontier by the middle of the Heian period (794-1185). Hokkaido was under nominal Japanese control by the Tokugawa period (1600-1868). During this period, the Matsumae feudatory occupied the southern tip of the peninsula now bearing its name directly across the Tsugaru Straits from Honshu. Assimilation efforts by the Matsumae clan were strongly resisted. When the Ainu threatened to revolt, the Japanese eased their ethnocentric policies. (Sansom 1958:12, 19, 91, 104-106; Hilger 1971:xiii)

In 1868, Ainu became subject to the laws of the new Meiji government. Hokkaido was declared a frontierland and Japanese were encouraged to settle there. Whereas Ainu had in some sense succeeded in evading total ethnic subjugation in the past, they faced now a force of rule that was utterly determined to assimilate them into Japanese society. The Hokkaido Former Aborigine Protection Law [Hokkaido Kyudojin Hogo Ho] of 1899 made Japanese education compulsory for all Ainu children, who were now to acquire a "superior" culture. (Hilger 1971:xiv)

While the Japanese population on Hokkaido continuously increased by northward migration from 20,086 in 1701 to 151,786 in 1873, the Ainu population decreased from 23,797 reported in 1804 to 18,644 in 1873. Official censuses since 1873 have put Hokkaido Ainu at 16,000 plus or minus 2,000 while the Japanese population has increased to a 1970 figure of over 5,000,000. (Takakura 1972:290-291; Hokkaido 1937:143-144)

One of the most telling changes in the Ainu population in recent centuries, but particularly since 1868, has been a phenotypic shift from nominally "pure" Ainu features to predominately "mixedblood" Ainu-Japanese if not "pure" Japanese physical characteristics. One field study found that about ten percent of those living culturally as Ainu in two sizable Ainu communities were definably "pure" (Suzuki 1973: 73-75). Most estimates, however, put the number of nominally "pure" Ainu at no more than one percent of the countable 16,000 Ainu population (Ainu BHTK 1969[1]:12).

Physical features that statistically distinguish Ainu from majority Japanese are many but diffuse. Ainu generally have more body hair than majority Japanese, who in turn tend to have more body hair than other Asians. Some Ainu individuals are reported to have "blue eyes," but not all observers have witnessed this attribute (Hilger 1971:x). Persons considered physically Ainu also manifest more deeply engraved facial features, including a tendency towards double-folded eyelids, and they show statistical differences in fingerprint and blood type indices. These population tendencies, with a notable increase in the presence of the Mongolian Birthmark (reported absent in the past) among offspring of Japanese-Ainu marriages, have led most some physical anthropologists to view Ainu as Caucasoid or protocaucasoid -- a somewhat arbitrary classification that majority Japanese are quick to point out in their tourist guides. (Ono 1970:22)

The present attitude of majority Japanese towards Ainu is one of condescending quaintness. Many Japanese tourists visit Ainu reservations to see professionals perform traditional dances at Bear Festivals and produce native crafts. Like Native American culture, the remnants of Ainu culture have been commercialised in the face of majority cultural oppression. Resident Ainu have reported being verbally abused by majority Japanese. Ainu are sometimes called gaijin [foreigners] by majority Japanese despite the legal status of Ainu as Japanese nationals. Ainu tell also of being irritated by tourists who express surprise that "Ainu speak pretty good Japanese," and wonder "How do Ainu walk?" The word for "dog" in Japanese is inu. Using the exclamatory "Ah!", majority Japanese are known to convert Ainu da [It's an Ainu] to Ah, inu da! [Ah, a dog!]. (Asahigawa 1971:178-179, 181, 202)

Ainu youth, like Native American youth, are determined to reverse the directions of majority oppression, but as yet they face enormous social barriers in the majority community, not the least of which -- as for other minorities in Japan -- is the pervasive Japanese sense of racial if not cultural purity and superiority. Offspring of Japanese-Ainu intermarriages are systematically regarded as "Ainu" by Japanese majorities. A fraction of "foreign" blood in a child's veins is sufficient to deny it "pure Japanese" status in Japanese society. It becomes easier for these children to be raised as Ainu [Ainu word meaning "man"] than as Shamo [Ainu term for majority Japanese]. Moreover, when majority Japanese are adopted into Ainu families -- a not infrequent occurrence (Suzuki 1973:70) -- their family register status tends to become that of a child born to the adopting family, with the result that majority adoptees become "Ainu."

5. Okinawans

Okinawans are the people of the Ryukyu Archipelago that extends between the main Japanese islands and Taiwan. While today Okinawans are Japanese nationals, they were not until recently subject to the strictures of Japanese society. Throughout the first millennium of Japanese history, the Ryukyu Islands were generally independent of outside domination. The Okinawan Kingdom paid nominal tribute to Chinese courts. The geographical location of the island chain -- called Liu-ch'iu in Chinese -- made it a principal trade route between China and Japan. From 1609 and throughout the Tokugawa period (1600-1868) -- while main island Japanese lived under the close surveillance of Tokugawa rulers in Edo [now Tokyo] -- Okinawans endured the distant suzerainty of the Shimazu clan of Satsuma on Kyushu. Formally, however, the islands remained tributary to China.

Okinawans first experienced the rigid legacies of Tokugawa Japanese society in 1872 when the new Meiji government -- despite conflicting Chinese claims -- extended its national boundaries to include the Ryukyu Islands. The islands were annexed in 1879 and made a prefecture. Japanese sugar companies promptly infiltrated Okinawa upsetting the traditional economy and leaving thousands of farmers landless. The Okinawan people faced considerable pressure -- brought to bear principally through the Ministry of Education -- to assimilate into the mainstream of Japanese culture, in particular to adopt the Japanese language in place of Okinawan.

The transition to Japanese rule was not easy. Okinawans were helpless to prevent key posts in the new island government from being filled predominantly by Japanese from the main islands. Newcomers by the thousands formed a new elite. Okinawans were subjected to both social and political discrimination by main islanders who enjoyed income differences and other preferential treatment in their quasi-colonial posts. Japanese businessmen and bureaucrats visiting Okinawa brought back bizarre stories of the "unsophisticated" and "strange" speech and manners that set Okinawans apart as degraded "country cousins" in the new Japanese family. (Kerr 1958:393, 399)

When Japanese main islanders were swept up in the mass hysteria that led Japan to war with America in 1941, Okinawans were reportedly unenthusiastic, having no tradition of glorifying the warrior in battle. Moreover, Okinawans clearly anticipated the unenviable role their outlying islands would undoubtedly play in a defence of the main islands. Military officers assigned to Okinawan garrisons publicly criticized the spirit and conduct of young Ryukyu islanders, castigating their allegedly traditional easy going manners. Ethnic slurs of this kind symbolized majority Japanese distrust of Okinawan loyalty and were deeply resented. (Kerr 1958:462)

The premonitions many Okinawans had about the militarisation of their homeland proved tragically justified. Some 62,489 Okinawan civilians were figuratively crushed to death between the Japanese anvil and the American hammer in the Battle of Okinawa in the spring of 1945 (Kerr 1958:472). Japanese polity held the Ryukyu Islands to be expendable under conditions requiring their sacrifice in the national interest. The Japanese sense of ethnic identity allegedly centres on the home prefectures. Okinawa lacks territorial status for not having been a part of Japan at the dawn of Japanese history (Kerr 1958:10).

Okinawans suffered a quarter century of American military occupation, the last years of which were particularly tense and at times riotous because of Ryukyu base involvement in the Vietnam War. But ambivalence about returning to Japanese administration in May 1972 not surprisingly became more widespread after reversion. The people of Okinawa correctly anticipated a flood of Japanese capital with inevitable inflation, monopolization, and industrial pollution. Okinawans migrating to the main islands -- again as Japanese citizens -- looked forward to discrimination in education, employment, and marriage.

While it is too soon to know to what extent Okinawan fears are justified, it is clear that there is not much room in Japanese government administrative philosophy for the sensitivities of 1,000,000 citizens living on the periphery of the "homeland." Most symbolic of the renewed Japanese exploitation of the southern islands is the Okinawa Development Agency established by the Japanese government at the time of reversion for the purpose of "correcting the gap with Japan proper" [hondo nami].

Okinawans are notably apprehensive of their future as a restored territorial arm of a revitalized Japanese industry and a possibly reemerging military. But they are anxious also about continuing main island Japanese sensitivity to slight physical differences such as hairiness and skin colour (Maretzki 1964:104). A Japanese government source -- in describing the physical characteristics of the Japanese people -- observes that, "There are small local differences in skin colour: southern Japanese have darker skins than northerners, [and] the inhabitants of the Ryukyu Archipelago [have] the darkest skin of all (Japanese UNESCO 1964:81)."

6. Chinese

Chinese in Japan symbolize two millennia of some degree of contact with continental culture. Chinese travellers to ancient Japan filed reports of their observations, a few of which survive today as the earliest external accounts of Japanese national character. Other Chinese migrating to Japan before the 8th century served as conveyors of Chinese and Indian religious thought, literature, and art. But most Chinese came to Japan as traders and merchants, sometimes through Korea but usually by way of Okinawa. Chinese have therefore always been present -- however small in number -- in the lively ports of Kyushu southwesternmost of the main Japanese islands -- as well as in major cities around the Inland Sea.

From the 8th century until the beginning of the Meiji period, however, Chinese did not appear in substantial numbers as residents in Japan. After 1868 -- while China continued to have difficulties coping with Euroamerican imperialism and numerous domestic problems Japan set an example of national self-assertion that attracted not a few Chinese merchants, entrepreneurs, and political activists. When Japan humiliated China in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895, even students of Japanese technology began streaming to the island empire from the continent. The Chinese student population in Japan rose from 18 in 1898 to some 13,000 by 1906, though not all succeeded in their academic studies if many even seriously tried, as reflected in the small yet impressive number of Chinese who graduated from Japanese colleges and universities. But Japan provided a less expensive source of technical training -- and shelter from social unrest in China -- than distant Europe or America. Not a few scientific and political terms coined by Japanese using Chinese characters found their way back to China as the ancient teacher-student roles were figuratively reversed. (Fairbank et al. 1965:618; Miller1967:260-261)

Many Taiwanese also came to Japan in the decades following 1895 when Formosa became part of Japanese territory. Japanese activities in Manchuria added also northern continentals to the nominally Chinese speaking population in Japan, though not in great numbers [Table 2, note 3]. Nor did very large numbers of any of these Chinese groups come to Japan as did Koreans during the Pacific War. At the end of the war, some 60,000 Chinese speaking residents in Japan -- about half of these Formosans and half continentals -- returned to their respective homelands. Another 30,000 Chinese -- some two-thirds of these mainlanders -- stayed on in Japan where they had made their lives for several decades, and where they found life -- despite the occupation more tolerable than in China where revolution brewed. Throughout the occupation, Japan's Chinese [sic = Taiwanese] were treated along with Koreans as "third nationals" [daisankokujin], and like Koreans became officially foreign nationals after April 1952 when the occupation period came officially to a close (Sorifu 1949[1]:82-83, 129)

Chinese have been treated worst by Japanese in China. The Rape of Nanking in 1937 is the best known but not the only example of Japanese brutality on the mainland. Formosans received considerably better treatment during their half-century under Japanese rule than did Koreans, who among nearby Asians have been the most consistently abused by Japanese. Chinese living in Japan also have fared much better than Korean residents, but have nevertheless been regarded as inferior people particularly after 1895 when Chinese began coming to Japan as students. (Chao 1970:132-147)

7. Koreans

Over 600,000 Koreans are currently registered as resident foreign nationals with the Japanese Immigration Bureau. In addition, an unknown number of Japanese nationals risk discrimination because of real, suspect, or concealed Korean ties, including naturalized Koreans, Koreans who have managed to pass into Japanese society, Korean-Japanese mixedbloods, and miscellaneous craftsmen thought by some majorities to be culturally if not genetically in some sense the descendants of early Korean immigrants.

The prehistories of Japan and Korea are difficult to separate. Eighth century historical documents report that an early Japanese state probably of peninsular origin -- had a foothold in southern Korea and was intimately involved in conflicts between the several Korean kingdoms. By the end of the 7th century -- according to an early Japanese peerage -- more than one-third of the Japanese nobility claimed Chinese or Korean descent. These Chinese and Korean Japanese taught majority Japanese the philosophically and esthetically rich Indian and Chinese literary, artistic, and religious traditions to which subsequent Japanese culture was to become so heavily indebted. When their roles as teachers gradually passed, the continentals blended into the ethnic brew they had helped ferment. (Sansom 1962:44; Sansom 1963:35)

Japanese pirates, with Chinese and Korean adventurers among their tens of thousands, ravaged towns up and down the coasts of East Asia, particularly of Korea, from the 13th century until proscribed by Toyotomi Hideyoshi in the 16th century. In 1592, however, Hideyoshi himself invaded Korea on his way to conquer China, although the campaign bogged down and was finally halted when the warlord died in 1598. This seven year war -- involving also Chinese -- left large areas of Korean civilization in ruin and imbued Koreans with an indelible early memory of Japanese brutality. (Mitchell 1967:5-6)

Japan "opened" Korea with an unequal treaty in 1876, and fought in Korea with China in 1894 over territorial interests on the peninsula and in the Pacific. Korea was invaded by Japan in 1904 at the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War, and was forced into an alliance with Japan as a protectorate of the Meiji state. The peninsular kingdom was annexed in 1910, fulfilling a territorial ambition traceable throughout Japanese history. Korea remained under military rule for about a decade, during which time mutual dislike between the geographical brothers further hardened.

Civil disturbances intensified by chronic unemployment and rapid population increases that continued under the civilian administration motivated hundreds of thousands of Koreans to emigrate to Japan, where life was expected to be better but seldom was. These swelling numbers of Koreans in Japan -- many unemployed and politically militant -- constituted a major social problem for the Japanese government before and during the Pacific War. Japanese industries, however, demanded cheap Korean labour and contracted hundreds of thousands more to replace Japanese workers as the war took Japan's labour force to the battlefields [Table 2].

Most Koreans remaining in Japan after the Pacific War were among earlier immigrants whose offspring had been born and raised in Japan. Koreans electing to stay in Japan after 1950 were divided half and half between first and second generations (Yi 1960:144), and of first generation Koreans practically all hailed from regions now part of South Korea (Homusho 1964:87). Postwar ambivalence regarding their legal status on the part of the Korean minority itself resulted in Koreans in Japan being officially designated aliens when the San Francisco Peace Treaty was ratified in 1952.

The status of Japan's Koreans was further complicated by the fact that Korea had divided into political divisions that did not exist when these Koreans emigrated. Both North and South Korea claimed the allegiance of Koreans in Japan despite the fact that practically all of these Koreans claimed regional origins in what was nominally South Korea. But North Korea most effectively courted the pluralistic sentiments of Japan's Korean minority in ethnic or "national" education and identification, in contrast with the South Korean government, which provided little economic and even less moral assistance and seemed at times -- in alliance with the Japanese Ministry of Education even opposed to such ethnic concerns.

Koreans in Japan became strongly divided politically. Japanese Red Cross data reports that of 563,146 Koreans in Japan in December 1964, some 122,308 or 22 percent aligned themselves with South Korea while 277,321 or 49 percent supported North Korea. The balance claimed neutrality or fell in other categories (Yi 1960: 112). The Japanese government, under American influence and conservative in its own right, leaned towards South Korea but was pressured from within to enter into an agreement with the North in 1959 that resulted in the repatriation of tens of thousands of Japan's Koreans to the communist sector by 1963 [Table 2, note 5].

In 1965, South Korea reached an agreement with Japan concerning the legal status and treatment of Koreans residing in Japan that made it possible for about 500,000 of Japan's Korean minorities to apply for permanent residence status and attendant social privileges. By the 16 January 1971 deadline, only 351,955 had filed for higher residence status. The Japanese Ministry of justice reported that the majority of applicants sought permanent residency in order to be eligible for National Health Insurance benefits and compulsory education on the same basis as Japanese citizens. (Asahi shinbun 21 June 1971 [morning edition]:2; Chosen kenkyu 106 [July 1971]:30-33)

Unification overtures from both North and South Korea have not resolved the ambivalencies Japan's divided Korean minority continues to harbour towards which Korea should lead reunification. Nor does it seem that after reunification -- realistically a generation away -- Japan's Koreans will be culturally if even psychologically prepared to return to a foreign "homeland" they never knew the emotional experience of leaving. By then, the Korean minority in Japan will be half second generation and half third, with fourth imminent, in all meaningful respects culturally Japanese.

In the meantime, Koreans in Japan will continue to be stereotyped much as Burakumin are, and they will continue to suffer much the same forms and consequences of social discrimination. Japan's Koreans contribute proportionally more than majority Japanese to the national crime rate -- allowing for alien registration misdemeanours and are more involved than Japanese in marginally legal professions.

At the same time, Koreans are systematically refused jobs in many Japanese companies and are denied entrance to not a few private schools -- ostensibly because of their foreign citizenship -- and are generally dismissed or expelled when discovered after passing as Japanese to gain employment or admission.

8. Hibakusha

The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 created a new quasi- ethnic minority in Japan that shows every sign of perpetuating itself and being perpetuated into future generations. The variety of physical and psychological problems that plagued survivors in the weeks, months, and years following the two holocausts generated widespread doubts among Hibakusha and nonhibakusha alike concerning the genetic wholesomeness of Hibakusha parents and their descendants. Conspicuous atom bomb afflictions gave rise to the kinds of discrimination commonly suffered by maimed and scarred individuals around the world. But the ailment most alarmingly imputed to persons even remotely exposed to the flashes was "invisible" in the darkest recesses of the body.

Hibakusha [persons who experienced the bomb] are popularly believed to carry defective genetic mutants expected to manifest in subsequent generations. This fear of contamination has placed considerable psychological stress on Hibakusha identity and has raised difficult barriers for Hibakusha seeking marriages with nonhibakusha majorities. Atom bomb survivors are sometimes described as nuclear outcastes, and Hibakusha communities have been called genbaku buraku [atom bomb settlements]. The comparison with Burakumin is not without a tragic irony, however. Hiroshima has traditionally had large Burakumin communities, and not a few Hibakusha carry a double burden that tends to make them minorities within their own minority group. (Lifton 1969: 165-208)

Also among Hiroshima and Nagasaki victims and survivors were tens of thousands of Koreans and thousands of Chinese. Korean and Chinese Hibakusha returning to their homelands after the war have experienced great difficulty in securing adequate medical attention for their chronic atom bomb ailments. In I 972, however, repatriated and resident Korean atom bomb survivors publicly protested on behalf of all internationally isolated Hibakusha. The movement generated considerable sympathy among sensitive newspaper columnists, and apparently among judges as well. (Asahi shinbun 28 July 1972 [evening edition]:11)

A landmark decision in a Fukuoka Prefecture court on 30 March 1974 held that a repatriated Korean Hibakusha convicted of illegally re-entering Japan nevertheless qualified for medical care and could not be deported. It was ruled that the standing Atom Bomb Medical Treatment Law [Genbaku Iryo Ho] -- which provides for the care of atom bomb survivors regardless of citizenship -- should be broadly interpreted to mean that Hibakusha be issued treatment passbooks also regardless of place of residence, and in the case of foreign national Hibakusha residing overseas, regardless of whether at the time they request treatment they are in Japan as tourists or illegal entrants. The decision was expected to invite an increase in the incidence of illegal entry across the Tsushima Straits among some 20,000 Korean Hibakusha repatriates in South Korea.

In late 1970, a popular series of children's comic magazines was criticized for featuring monsters with keloid hides as objects of disparagement (Asahi shinbun 30 November 1970 [morning edition]:13). A Hibakusha writer of caricature fiction counters such inadvertent media discrimination with stories that graphically express the sociopsychological problems that atom bomb survivors experience in their struggle to cope with their alleged impurity (Shukan Asahi 2747 [13 August 1971]:126-129).

9. Konketsuji

One Japanese observer is reported to have said that there are some 200,000 mixedblood citizens in Japan today, of which 40,000 may be Black-Japanese (Takasaki 1953:194). Authorities have put the number of Eurasian Konketsuji between 10,000 and 20,000, while other estimates run as high as 50,000 (Trumbull 1967:112). Yet another writer cites guestimates from 4,000 (including 500 Black-Japanese) to 50,000 (including 10,000 Black-Japanese), then states matter-of-factly that some 20,000 mixedbloods have been fathered by American servicemen in Japan since the end of the Pacific War, that most of these Konketsuji have been illegitimate, and that 2,000 of them are offspring of Black-Japanese unions (Thompson 1967:44, 46).

The Japanese Ministry of Welfare reported that by February 1953 as many as 3,289 mixedblood children had been abandoned in Japan by their foreign fathers. By December 1952, when a new immigration law went into effect simplifying legal registration of international marriages, American consulates had granted passports to Some 2,585 other children born of interracial unions in Japan. Passage of the Refugee Relief Act in 1953 -- which permitted up to 4,000 orphans under ten years of age to be admitted to the United States if adopted by an American citizen with a spouse -- and later legislation providing children of American-Alien parentage with nonquota visas, had allowed some 700 Black-Japanese to be adopted by Black families in America by the middle of the Sixties. (Graham 1954:330; Thompson 1967:49)

In contrast with nominal American encouragement for mixedblood immigration, the Japanese government made Brazil the target of an emigration movement whereby Black-Japanese in particular would be resettled in South America. In the summer of 1967, the director of the Elizabeth Saunders Home -- the best known institution for the care of Konketsuji orphans in Japan -- was turned down after several attempts to resettle Black mixedbloods. The Brazilian government wanted to know why it should assume the responsibility for children neglected by the countries of their parents and virtually made outcast by the country of their birth. (Thompson 1967:54)

Offspring of interracial unions are not new to Japan, which has witnessed considerable genetic mixing throughout its history. Particularly around its periphery -- where contact with nominally non-Japanese was common -- the Japanese archipelago has experienced a "mixedblood problem" [konketsuji mondai] for thousands of years. While Eurasians born after the Pacific War are statistically the most visible Japanese-non-Asian Konketsuji in Japan, they are not the first historically, nor were postwar Black-Japanese the first mixedbloods to face banishment.

Decrees throughout the 17th century dealt with the Eurasian progeny of hairy foreigners and Japanese women, often requiring that such children be deported to the Asian colonies of European homelands of their fathers. The Tokugawa hegemony was bent on sweeping Japanese soil clean of all subjects who had Red-haired-men [komojin] from Holland, or Southern Barbarians [nanbanjin] from Portugal or Spain for fathers or grandfathers -- until edicts in the early 18th century forbade Konketsuji from leaving Japan. Foreigners on the island of Deshima in Nagasaki Bay during the Tokugawa period (1600-1868) had access to special pleasure quarters in the city, but these districts were prohibited to the few Blacks who had begun to appear in the port. Women found entertaining Blacks were harshly punished, as were their patrons. (Takasaki 1953:195-197)

Japan's largest encyclopedia reports that a July 1959 Ministry of Education survey found 2,401 Konketsuji registered in elementary and junior high schools throughout Japan, with 2,115 or 88 percent of these children in the first six grades. A peak of three to four hundred mixedblood students completed their compulsory nine-year education between 1964 and 1965 and were looking for jobs if not going on to high school. A study of the world of Japanese entertainment leaves a clear impression that a large proportion of Japan's postwar mixedbloods have found careers as models, singers, and dancers, if not as hostesses and waiters in drinking establishments. (Heibonsha 1964-1968[9]:199-200)

Postwar Konketsuji seem the most commonly featured minority group in Japanese popular arts. Some caricature fiction and derivative films centre around mixedblood characters often depicted in deviant roles. Japan's mixedbloods are stereotyped as fast, loose, and confused. Many Konketsuji invite these images through the lifestyles they inadvertently choose, but no evidence whatsoever supports the popular notion that such social tendencies are attributable to genetic mixing rather than widespread discrimination.

Pulp magazines in Japan give direct insights into Japanese interethnic sexuality. Eurasian if not Caucasian models regularly frequent nude gravure sections in not a few popular periodicals. Mixedblood models are almost always White-Japanese, as Black-Japanese usually manifest physical features most despised by majorities. But despite superficial inclinations of the indigenous paradigm of physical beauty towards nominally Eurasian features -- witnessed particularly in contemporary fashions and cosmetics -- Japanese continue to be essentially proud of their own attributes. (Wagatsuma 1967)

10. Kikajin

Some 28,579 persons holding foreign citizenship were naturalized in Japan in the first decade of postwar independence from 1952 to 1962 [Table 2], 3,928 or 14 percent of these "new" Japanese citizens were former Japanese nationals. 1,152 or 4 percent were spouses of Japanese nationals; 3,105 or 11 percent were offspring of Japanese nationals; 8,828 or 31 percent were offspring of former Japanese nationals; 11,108 or 39 percent were "pure" Koreans; and 386 or one percent were "pure" aliens other than Koreans, while another 72 naturalized persons were adoptees. (These and following figures computed on basis of data in Homusho 1964:91-92)

Ninety percent or 25,723 of these 28,579 Kikajin had nominally been Korean nationals before naturalization as Japanese citizens. Of these Korean nationals, some 2,867 or 11 percent were women twenty years old or older who had once been Japanese citizens. 885 or 3 percent were spouses of Japanese (606 or 68 percent of these spouses were women). Offspring of parents one or both of whom were Japanese citizens accounted for 2,310 or 9 percent (1,756 or 76 percent of these offspring were of Japanese women who had married Koreans). In contrast, the progeny of parents one or both of whom formerly held Japanese citizenship accounted for some 8,411 or 33 percent (all of 8,387 or 99.7 percent of these offspring were of women who had married Koreans and surrendered their Japanese nationality). 11,108 or 43 percent of all Korean nationals who acquired Japanese citizenship during this ten year period were "pure" Koreans, that is, Korean nationals claiming no relationship -- genetic or marital -- with Japanese. The remaining 142 or one percent were divided between adoptees and former Japanese citizens in other categories.

Stated yet another way -- some 14,473 or 56 percent of all Korean nationals who acquired Japanese citizenship during this ten year period did so on the basis of genetic or marital relationships with majority Japanese. Some 10,143 or 70 percent of these 56 percent -- or 39 percent of all Korean citizens who took Japanese citizenship -- were the children of mothers who held or formerly held Japanese citizenship. In short -- not only were most [56 percent] of the Korean nationals who gained Japanese citizenship during this decade categorically not "pure" Koreans, but most [70 percent] of those who were not "pure" Koreans were apparently the offspring of Japanese women who had married Korean men.

These multidimensional figures suggest that naturalization is not an inviting pathway of identification except for Korean nationals who already have a genetic foot in the door of Japanese ethnicity. The notably low naturalization rate among ethnic minorities not having genetic ties with Japanese or former Japanese majorities may reflect the ambivalent attitude these minorities have towards becoming nominal members of Japanese society. Indeed, it is not difficult to conclude from these figures that motivation seeking naturalization in Japan is primarily familial in nature and involves the satisfaction of needs to cultivate formal relations with the Japanese half of one's biethnic self.

Legal status as a Japanese citizen does not reduce the visceral disdain that Japanese majorities are capable of displaying towards Kikajin, particularly those naturalized from other Asian nations. Foreign nationals who take Japanese citizenship continue to be regarded as gaijin [outsiders, i.e., foreigners] by many majority Japanese, but endure the process in the hope that their offspring may find a greater nominal kinship with their contemporaries. This becomes particularly important for ethnically mixed citizens who have majority relatives. Bicultural and biracial children must covet close ties with their Japanese majority kin if they are to have full access to the nurturing benefits of family belonging enjoyed by most majority citizens.

While naturalization in Japan does not necessarily benefit directly those who change citizenship, it would be wrong to leave the impression that Japan is peculiar in this regard. It is sometimes pointed out that Japanese sharply distinguish between themselves and "foreigners," while residents in the United States supposedly believe that everyone living in America is more or less "American" regardless of whether native born or how long they have resided in the country if an immigrant.

While there is a notable tendency for Japanese to believe that only the descendants of Japanese can be truly Japanese, America is not the haven it is often made out to be for ethnic pluralism. The spiritual "Americanness" of several non-European minority groups in the United States is widely doubted by European ancestry majorities. A case in point is the treatment of Asian Americans generally and Japanese Americans particularly. The widespread "suspicion" that popularly supported the unconstitutional encampment of Japanese Americans during the Pacific War has not yet diminished. Not a few European ancestry majorities continue to regard Japanese Americans with a sense of disbelief that "they" are really "true" countrymen like "we" are.

11. Kaigai no Nihonjin

Some 267,246 Japanese citizens were reported living abroad in 1970, of which 144,853 or 54 percent were in Brazil while 173,382 or 65 percent were in all of South America. Another 52,161 or 20 percent were in North America, all but 4,172 of these in the United States. Among these overseas Japanese -- along with resident immigrants -- are diplomats, professionals, businessmen, students, and other Japanese who intend to return to Japan within two or three years. (Asahi 1973[1]:532)

Not a few Japanese are hesitant about company or government assignments in foreign countries, afraid that time and experience overseas may retard their advancement in highly inbred, permanent employment systems back home. Japanese graduates of American universities and Japanese professors who spend too many years abroad as visiting faculty may find upon their return to Japan a sense of distance if not hostility directed towards their batakusai [butter reeking] professional attitudes and career expectations. Young Japanese women who work or study in North America or Europe may experience some difficulty in courting a husband in Japan if it is suspect that their experiences abroad have corrupted their views of sexual status in Japan, or worse, included companionships with foreign men.

Japanese nationals returning "home" after living overseas for long periods of time have traditionally been viewed with mixed feelings by their stay-at-home countrymen. Japanese [Nihonjin] abroad [kaigai] are thought to lose their "Japaneseness" in proportion to their exposure to foreign cultures. In the 17th century, the Tokugawa government curtailed the spirited migration trend that had begun in the 16th century and resulted in Japanese settlements in countries throughout Southeast Asia and the East Indies. Decrees issued between 1633 and 1639 excluded Japanese who had been outside Japan for more than five years, and provided death penalties for those who attempted to return to Japan from a foreign territory -- and for those who tried to leave Japan -- without a valid license. (Sansom 1963:36)

The decrees re-enforced anti-Christian orders issued between 1611 and 1614, and coincided with the Shimabara uprisings from 1637 to 1638 that resulted in the massacre of tens of thousands of Japanese Christians on Kyushu, and the systematic persecution of Christians scattered throughout Japan. A 1636 decree dealt with the children and grandchildren of foreign fathers and Japanese mothers, while another order posted that year required all foreigners in Japan to move to the island of Deshima in Nagasaki Bay. The seclusion edict that nominally closed Japan until the 19th century was promulgated in 1639.

Japanese who continued to take an interest in foreign culture during the centuries of relative isolation were regarded much like Japanese translators are today. Conservative Japanese have usually recognized the need to maintain some semblance of a relationship with the outside world, but a countryman assuming the role of cultural intermediary has traditionally been considered somehow soiled by his expertise in foreign customs and languages. Approaching the Meiji period (1868-1912), when enormous emotions were rallied against the reopening of Japan to foreigners, not a few Japanese advocates of sonno joi [revere the emperor and repel the barbarian] advised against Euroamerican relations because such contact "polluted" Japan in the indigenous Shinto sense of the term. Japanese who traded with the Dutch were considered fools, and those who pursued Dutch learning [Rangaku] were viewed with great fear and contempt. (Harootunian 1970: 265)

Japanese women who became mistresses to foreign dignitaries in Shimoda and other ports opened to barbarian traffic in the middle of the 19th century were scorned by their contemporaries, but were later depicted as citizens who had been sacrificed for their country (Statler 1971: 560-561). The theme of martyrdom is found also in the occupation period prostitute, and in Japanese women who continue to act as repositories of the contaminants of American military personnel still in Japan under the auspices of the Mutual Security Agreement. Even businessmen and government officials who reluctantly live abroad for their companies and country evoke strong sentiments of martyrdom.

But Japanese are not the only people who tend to view intimate foreign experiences with ambivalency and suspicion. Nor are Japanese companies and government bureaucracies unique among business and official organs elsewhere in their concern with the loyalty of their employees and officers assigned abroad. The United States Department of State, for example, is known to have discouraged if not prohibited marriages between its career foreign service officers and non-Americans, it being popularly feared that international marriages divide national loyalties. Even the assignment of area specialists to foreign countries is rare, as the specialist may genuinely respect if not covet the values of his adopted culture, and be that less able to serve the ethnocentric interests of his home office. Provinciality -if this is the appropriate word is in no sense a Japanese specialty, nor viewed objectively is there much evidence that Japanese are better at ethnocentricity than other peoples around the world. Americans in Tokyo and Hong Kong enclave as much as Asians in San Francisco.

12. Nikkeijin

By October 1969, there were reported to be 1,062,293 foreigners of Japanese ancestry in countries throughout the world. Some 49I,418 or 46 percent of these Nikkeijin were settled in Brazil, while 554,744 or 52 percent were found in all of South America. In contrast, the United States was listed as having 464,587 or 44 percent of all foreign citizens thought to be of Japanese ancestry. All of North America accounted for some 494,153 or 47 percent of the world total. Of an estimated 1,329,539 Japanese citizens or persons of Japanese ancestry living abroad in 1969 and 1970, a total of 728,126 or 55 percent were in South America with most of the balance in the United States. The statistical presence of Japanese or persons of Japanese ancestry in Brazil -- about one percent of that nation's 1970 population of 95,305,000 persons -- is similar to the numerical presence of Korean nationals in Japan. (Asahi 1973[1]:19I, 532)

The Japanese treatment of Nikkeijin [persons of Japanese ancestry] by Japanese citizens living temporarily abroad -- and the treatment in Japan of Nikkeijin who have come to sightseer study, work, or visit relatives -- is not unlike the treatment in Japan of citizens returning from extended stays overseas. The two groups are sharply distinguished, however, in several important respects. Not only are Nikkeijin citizens of foreign countries, but they exemplify patterns of behaviour compatible with those of their majority countrymen. Many second generation [nisei] and most third generation [sansei] Nikkeijin have no competency in the Japanese language, and are kinesthetically identifiable among Japanese.

While many Japanese sense a physical affinity with their surname and phenotypic kinfolk abroad -- and while some Nikkeijin view Japanese with a similar feeling of cultural and racial brotherhood -- this common attraction affords Nikkeijin little more than a tentatively closer initial relationship with Japanese in Japan and overseas. The fact that Nikkeijin are ultimately not Japanese in the Japanese view, however, gives rise to discrimination as in marriage with Japanese, and may lead to conflicts of interest as when Japanese financiers and developers overseas take advantage of superficial affinities in the process of establishing often exploitative footholds in Nikkeijin communities.

Japanese visiting Japanese language classes in North America are sometimes surprised at the number of "Japanese" studying "their" language. Although themselves foreigners when outside Japan, Japanese living abroad often continue to refer to Euroamerican majorities as gaijin [aliens] while excluding Nikkeijin from this category. Thus Japanese are known to use the word amerikajin [American] with reference to White Americans if not also Blacks, but tend to distinguish Japanese Americans as Nikkeijin if not Nihonjin [Japanese].

Nor do Japanese regard Nikkeijin coming to Japan from America or Canada, for example, as "real" Americans or Canadians. Japanese tend to feel that being a "real" foreigner has genetic requisites that categorically disqualify Nikkeijin from being genuinely foreign. Japanese Americans and Japanese Canadians are sometimes denied teaching positions in fly-by-night English schools in Japan because of popular beliefs that their English -- though natively acquired and college polished -- is somehow not "pure" enough to serve as a model for Japanese students. Yet Japanese employers at such schools will accept Europeans whose command of English in no sense qualifies them as teachers of the language much less as models of usage, but whose faces satisfy the often more important requirement that teachers of a foreign language ought to "look" foreign. (Okimoto 1971:178-179)

To make matters more difficult for Nikkeijin living in Japan, among some English schools willing to hire them have been known to require that "Japanese looking foreigners" dress and behave like "proper" Japanese -- at least less radically or conspicuously "foreign" than their European ancestry faculty fellows. Some school administrators have felt that their students will identify more with Nikkeijin teachers and aspire towards Nikkeijin lifestyles, whereas "genuine" foreigners would be viewed more like carnival performers observed by spectators mainly for amusement.

Foreigners of Japanese ancestry are criticized by majority countrymen when they fail to reflect fully the values of the majority community, and they are criticized by Japanese for not retaining the values of their surname relatives in Japan. Nikkeijin are not as overtly discriminated against in Japan as Burakumin, Koreans, and Konketsuji, nor are they as covertly degraded as Euroamerican Caucasians. But they are subjected to a more subtle and for this reason painful form of discrimination whereby status is deprived in a crossfire of conflicting expectations. If not considered ethnically "impure" by Japanese, Nikkeijin are often looked down upon as offspring of immigrants sometimes thought to have shown their disloyalty by leaving Japan. Yet Japanese citizens venturing overseas do not often plan to stay permanently. Years simply become decades as the point of easy return recedes from their horizon. Before they are fully aware of it, they find themselves issei [first generation] immigrants replenishing the roots of Nikkeijin ethnicity.

13. Aoime no Gaijin

The term "aoime no gaijin" [blue-eyed foreigner] and its abbreviated form "aoime" [blue eyes] are used rather freely by Japanese to designate Caucasian foreigners. It makes little difference that individuals called "aoime" may not have blue eyes. Japan's Emigration and Immigration Control Law defines gaikokujin [alien] as "a person who does not possess Japanese citizenship" (Koria hyoron 122[May 1971]:50). But one must note that such legal definitions seldom regulate the emotional meanings that words assume in vernacular usage. An observant Japanese psychologist has pointed out that gaikokujin [literally "outside country person" or "foreigner"] and its more common colloquial abbreviation gaijin [outsider] conjure up Caucasian [hakujin] images for many Japanese users (Minami 1971:106-107).

The basis for this often restricted meaning of gaikokujin and gaijin is attributed to a tendency for Japanese to fantasize their world in terms of a "heterogeneous and global" yet somehow "monolithic west" [Europe and America] versus a "homogeneous and insular Japan" [ambivalently "east" yet "unique in Asia and the rest of the world" for many Japanese and foreigners]. Japanese are often said to harbour a sense of inferiority towards Euroamerican Caucasians while they feel superior to other Asians and Third World peoples. Japanese themselves have described their alleged "middlority complex" as a case of "worshipping whites and despising blacks (Suzuki 1973:57)."

The presence in Japan of European ancestry foreigners from Europe and North America has always been a source of anxiety for Japanese, who have sometimes blamed national or local calamities on resident aliens. The "blue-eyed" co-pilot of the ill-fated Japanese YS11 "Bandai" that crashed in Hokkaido in early July 1971 was rumoured in the mass media -- within hours after the plane had been reported missing, before the wreckage had been discovered much less an investigation made -- to have been the "cause" of the accident (Asahi shinbun 5 July 1971 [morning edition]:2). Foreign pilots in Japan reacted promptly, charging that such premature conclusions exemplified the nativistic attitude with which they felt Japanese regard their homeland, and the racist attitude they felt pervaded the way Japanese may suspect the ability of non-Japanese to navigate Japanese fudo [(mystical) climate and (mystical) terrain] (The Japan Times 18 July 1971; 5 August 1971:14).

Not a few foreigners who have seriously attempted to assimilate into Japanese society -- including some who have naturalized and taken Japanese names -- describe a great reluctance on the part of Japanese majorities generally to recognize the "visible" foreigner as a genuine member of the national much less local community. But totally committed aspirants are not well represented in Japan. They are usually minorities among an enclaved, protective foreign population that every bit deserves the skepticism Japanese tend to harbour about the ability of Euroamericans to get inside Japanese culture. (Bell 1973)

One of the most common complaints voiced by Euroamerican residents in Japan concerns the word "gaijin" as used by Japanese, particularly children. The English language press in Japan abounds with letters-to-the-editor decrying repeated experiences of being pointed at and called gaijin by Japanese children if not adults. The word is considered somewhat offensive by resident foreigners marginally familiar enough with the Japanese language to detect the word when used towards them. Less known to the paranoid foreigner is the occasional rendering of gaijin as jingai to give it both a more secretive and pejorative character. (The Japan Times 31 October 1971; The Japan Times 16, 22, 28 November 1971; The Japan Times 6, 9, 21 December 1971; Shukan Yomiuri 1203[2 February 1972]:148-149)

Caucasian foreigners are frequently used in television and magazine advertising in Japan. Aoime no gaijin appeared in a recent promotion of a kind of soup that excites Japanese nostalgia for their national cuisine. Despite the tendency for Japanese to feel that Euroamerican foreigners are not quite capable of appreciating the textures of Japanese foods, the television viewer was shown that this brand is the one to buy because even gaijin ask for second helpings. Yet one could not help but feel after several viewings of the appeal -- that what was intended to sell the soup was not the explicit message, but its humorous implications that the reason the soup is excellent is because foreigners have so conspicuously pretended to like it.

The Euroamerican foreigner in Japan is expected to like what is classic and refined about Japanese culture while at the same time it is popularly felt that he really doesn't know what he is involved in. The mossy and subdued are supposed to have an exotic appeal even for non-Japanese. But relishing what is considered the core of Japanese ethnicity is not seen as tantamount to understanding Japan. It is viewed instead as superficial appreciation. What the foreigner often dislikes most about Japan -- its material "westernization" and industrial clamour -- is what most Japanese take for granted as part of their daily lives. The Japanese marketing technician who suggested that gaijin be used to sell Japanese what is felt to be most Japanese well understood the reverse psychology that allows foreigners to regard as an "honour" what is really a form of degradation.

14. Purity Myths and Ethnocentricity

Japanese tend to view "racial discrimination" [jinshuteki sabetsu] as a problem of other countries in the world but not of Japan. The term jinshu [variety of man] is ordinarily used to designate groups like "mongoloid" or "Caucasoid" or "negroid," but is seldom applied to groups like "Japanese" or "Korean" or "Chinese," which are commonly referred to as minzoku [group of people --> ethnic group]. Accordingly, Japanese society is seen as supporting "racial discrimination" [jinshu sabetsu] only in reference to the Ainu, who are often characterized as "Caucasoid." Treatment of Koreans in Japan is viewed as a case of "ethnic discrimination" [minzoku sabetsu], whereas discrimination towards Burakumin is thought to play essentially the same "objective role" [kyakkanteki yakuwari] as "racial discrimination" in the broader sense of the term in countries throughout the world. (Suzuki 1973:56-57)

The term "racism" in English, used vernacularly in reference to contemporary social issues, has much broader applications. The American quite easily labels this "racist" and that "sexist" without many technical restrictions, and tends to believe that such "isms" are universal even though not always recognized in racist and sexist societies. In Japan, the word sabetsu [discrimination] is used widely with a number of prefixes but not often vernacularly with jinshu [race] by majorities in reference to minority problems in Japan. Nor is minzoku sabetsu [ethnic discrimination] commonly used except with broader implications of race than culture.

It must be noted, however, that the word minzoku is often translated "race" and with some justification. The colloquial, emotional use of the term -- as it is frequently suffixed to nationalities -- is very definitely with a sense that a minzoku has very special attributes that distinguish it from all other minzoku. This is not altogether unlike our use of the term "ethnicity" throughout this report, with the exception of the emphasis that minzoku seems often to place on the physical or genetic dimension of ethnicity. The words Nippon minzoku are particularly used with such a visceral sense of absolute ethnic distinction with a genetic flavour that one cannot easily avoid "Japanese race" as a suitably emotional English equivalent. In not a few English language publications by the Japanese government, the word "race" is used with reference to the "Japanese people" both consistently enough, and in sufficiently "racist" contexts, to warrant our suspicion that -- technical definitions aside -- Japanese are as "racist" as Europeans and Americans but simply will not describe themselves as such.

A number of surveys have shown, however, that Japanese have specific preconceptions [sennyukan] concerning physical types, and specific biases [henken], including worshipping Whites and despising Blacks. Koreans are also despised, according to other surveys, second only to Blacks (Mitchell 1967:133; Shukan bunshun 760 [20 January 1974]:25). The prevailing view, however, is that discrimination against other Asians does not result from "racial" preconceptions or biases, but from "objective" minzoku distinctions [minzoku sabetsu being here also jinshu sabetsu in the wider vernacular senses of both terms]. A prominent Japanese social scientist, in commenting on these nominalistic problems, has stated emphatically that, "In Japan, racial discrimination as a social system does not exist" (Suzuki 1973:57; italics in original).

The differential treatment of Black versus White mixedbloods in Japan suggests that Japanese are somehow sensitive to "colour" if not "race." Yet the director of the Elizabeth Saunders Home is quoted to have said that the prejudice Japanese harbour towards Konketsuji, especially Black-Japanese, "is a moral judgment rather than colour consciousness (Trumbull 1967:113)." Supposedly, if mixedbloods in Japan are discriminated against, it is because some were the offspring of foreign soldiers and Japanese prostitutes, or because some were born out of wedlock if not also abandoned by their parents. The tendency for Japanese to deny a colour or racial basis for Konketsuji discrimination is widespread. Japan's largest encyclopedia specifically observes that, "Japan's mixedblood child problem [konketsuji mondai] is not an allegedly race problem (Heibonsha 1964-1968[9]:200)."

Yet the overwhelming evidence is that Japanese have been colour sensitive throughout their history, in which light if not white skin has been highly regarded and cultivated, while dark if not black skin has been viewed negatively and avoided (Wagatsuma 1967:407-415). A deep pigmentation of the skin is sometimes imagined to be an identifying characteristic of Burakumin and Koreans, and is also said to stigmatize atom bomb survivors (Lifton 1969:170-172). The contemporary emphasis in Japanese cosmetics on literally snowy or milky skin, smooth as silk and clear as honey, continues a tradition traceable from the court literature of the Heian Period (794-1185) to the pulp fiction of the present era.

The concept of Japanese "racial" uniqueness cannot be understood except as part of a larger concept of "cultural" uniqueness, and neither of these notions of "uniqueness" can be adequately articulated without recourse to a "purity "myth. The belief that Japanese racial and cultural ethnicity is not simply "different" from other national ethnicities but is "uniquely different" and somehow "pure" pervades the Japanese language press on Japan. An official publication intended for foreigners reading English -- compiled by the Japanese National Commission for UNESCO under the auspices of the Japanese Ministry of Education -- assumes such a thesis of "unique difference" and "purity" throughout its thousand pages. The opening lines set the tone for the entire volume and are worth repeating here at some length (Japanese UNESCO 1964:5; italics ours):

The Japanese race has formed a unique mode of living and shaped an extremely individual pattern of culture in the past two thousand years. The Japanese have maintained individual characteristics through every stage of their history -- ever since the first ancient state emerged and established its domain over central and western Japan, between the third and sixth centuries. These traditions lived through the social and political reformations patterned after the states of the West in the Meiji Era, which spanned the last half of the nineteenth century.

It cannot be denied that every race has its own hallmark imprinted in the process of cultural evolution in its particular geographical surroundings. But the Japanese race has, besides the characteristics derived from the geographical and climatic peculiarities of the land, a very individual mode of living and a special pattern of culture which almost defies comparison with those of other peoples. . . .

What is truly remarkable in the cultural attitude of the Japanese race is the coexistence of exclusive and receptive tendencies. The former is best exemplified by the fact that the Japanese people have chosen to retain a mode of living and a pattern of culture that are purely and peculiarly Japanese in character. The peculiar mode and pattern of this way of life cannot be adapted to those of other communities. For instance, most of the fundamental habits retained by the Japanese in the matter of clothing, food and housing -- though, no doubt, subject to influences from the West and the world at large -- may hardly be adopted as they are by the peoples of Western countries and even other Asian countries. . . .

Language is perhaps more emotionally involved in a people's self-perception of their ethnicity than any other cultural artifact, and thus how Japanese regard their language is instructive as to how they tend to feel about their total ethnicity. The Japanese UNESCO volume quoted above describes the Japanese language in highly hyperbolic terms as having "little relation with any [other language] of the world." The Japanese language is said to occupy "a unique position among the languages of the modern world [because] the Japanese people were confined to their native islands and never suffered the invasion of foreign races... The confusion of the Japanese language [is therefore] fundamentally different from that of foreign languages in that it is not the result of intermingling. . . . Chinese [and] other foreign languages . . . have influenced the vocabulary of the Japanese language but never its structure (Japanese UNESCO 1964:89; italics ours)."

The structure of the Japanese language -- whatever is meant by this -- has allegedly never been "contaminated" by the structural incursions of foreign tongues. Like all else that is perceived as most Japanese about Japanese culture, the Japanese language is described here as being "pure" in a world of languages steeped in amalgamation. Nor do many Japanese consider the pristine structure of their language-culture susceptible of change.

Indigenous Shinto beliefs embodied concepts of ritual pollution and avoidance, and required offerings of propitiation to cleanse one of contamination associated with blood and death. Persons involved in the handling of the dead -- as well as those who assisted in childbirth, and even itinerants who occupied abandoned parturition shelters -- were considered unclean. Acts of murder, wounding, incest, and bestiality were also regarded as polluting, and required expiation by ceremonial cleansing sometimes accompanied by purgatory fines or other punishments. (Price 1972:17; Sansom 1958:31)

Dissections in 18th century Japan were performed by eta outcastes under the direction of majority anatomists who were psychologically and socially incapable of handling dead flesh (Keene 1969:21-22). Majority Japanese medical students in the early 20th century are known to have stood back and let fellow Chinese students handle cadavers and make the incisions required for laboratory exercises: the Japanese students would wash their hands after touching exposed parts with forceps (Chao 1970: 141).

The Japanese concern for ritual cleanliness is given considerable scriptural authority in the myths of origin found in the Kojiki and Nihon shoki [called also the Nihongi]. The god Izanagi and the goddess Izanami are the heavenly parents of the Japanese islands, to which Izanami gave birth. Izanami gives birth also to a number of gods, but when the god of fire emerges from her body she is burned and dies. Izanagi finds his mate a mass of putrefaction in the polluted Land of Darkness [yomi no kuni], and he purifies himself upon returning to Japan by bathing in a stream. Throwing down his garments on the bank of the stream, Izanagi produces the sun goddess Amaterasu and the storm god Susanowo. There is frequent discord between the sister who reigns in heaven, and the brother who stays on earth. In one dramatic quarrel, when Susanowo pollutes his sister's palace, she withdraws into a cave and the light of the world goes out. (Sansom 1958:30-32)

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