This book is promoted as a "Second edition" of the following publication.

Michael A. Weiner (editor)
Japan's Minorities: The illusion of homogeneity
London: Routledge, 1997
xviii, 251 pages, paperback
Sheffield Centre for Japanese Studies / Routledge series

While there is some overlap and reclycing, the "Second edition" is actually an entirely new volume. Only the editor Michael Weiner, and contributors Richard Siddle and Ian Neary, are returnees, and even their articles have been moderately to entirely revamped.

The new book covers more so-called "minorities".

Weiner 2009            Weiner 1997        Wetherall 1975

                                           1. Populations
                                           2. Co-residence
 1. Self and other      1. Self and other
 2. The Ainu            2. Ainu            4. Ainu
 3. 'Mixed-blood'                          9. Konketsuji
     Japanese
 4. Burakumin           3. Burakumin       3. Burakumin
 5. Blacks
 6. Chinese newcomers   5. Chinese         6. Chinese
 7. Multiethnic Japan   8. Soto others 
                            uchi others
 8. Zainichi Koreans    4. Korean          7. Koreans
                            hibakusha      8. Hibakusha

 9. Okinawa             6. Ryukyuans/      5. Okinawans
                            Okinawans
10. Japanese-Brazilians 7. Nikkeijin      12. Nikkeijin
                                          11. Kaigai no Nihonjin
                                          10. Kikajin
                                          13. Aoime no Gaijin  
                                          14. Purity myths and
                                               ethnocentricity

It is somewhat gratifying to see that Weiner's list of "Japan's minorities" has expanded to include more of those in my 1975 article on ""Minorities in Japan", which I wrote with some input from George De Vos, its junior author, who at the time was my mentor and graduate advisor.

At the same time, it is a bit disappointing to see how Weiner and his contributors -- over three decades later -- are still perpetuating some of the same illusions about Japan's minorities that are evident, looking back, in my 1975 article -- and new illusions reflecting the fashions of present-day academic ideology.

The overall grade of "C" for Weiner's 2009 book reflects the average for the all articles, which vary from "B" to "D". In this review, I have evaluated each article in the order it appears as a chapter in the book. In hindsight, I have given my 1975 article an "F".

Weiner makes numerous curious remarks in his introduction to the ten chapters of his book. Here are just a few of the more egregious statements.

"Racial" categories, proper and improper

Weiner begins his introduction to "race" as a "primary determinant of social relations" with a reference the "Colour Line" issues that preoccupied writers like W.E.B. Du Bois. He downplays the "colour" aspects of "race" by way of prefacing the following statement (page xiv).

Here we see the persistence of the "racialization" (my term) of "minorities" in Japan that was evident in the writings of De Vos, and of his colleagues, collaborators, and disciples (Wagatsuma, Wetherall, et al), in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. Weiner seems unaware of the role that he and other academics play in the imagination, definition, and maintenance of categorical "minorities".

One putative "minority" in Weiner's list -- burakumin -- stands out as "improper" since it is written in lower case. What is the significance of writing Koreans, Chinese, Okinawan, and Ainu as "proper" nouns?

Since some of the minority categories on Weiner's list are known to be defined as "distinct" by the individuals who would classify themselves in the category -- why the implication that "distinct" and "inferior" are somehow related?

US History 101

Weiner then makes this remark (page xv).

Whatever Weiner means by "race" as a metaphor for differentiating people, there are several serious flaws in his history of "racial identity" in the United States.

1. The United States was barely two centuries old when Weiner wrote his this introduction.

2. The first "racial identities" in the Americas, on the part of European and other migrants, were made within the ranks of the migrants themselves, and then between the migrants and the various people they found already inhabiting the "New World". It also appears that some of the inhabitants had been making "racialist" (my term) distinctions among themselves.

3. Various forms of slavery were practiced within some of the migrant populations themselves, before the emergence of the "slavery" that Weiner seems to be alluding to.

4. "Racial identities" were not "produced" and then "reproduced" in the United States. They evolved and have been proliferating.

5. "Racialism" (my term), in the broadest metaphorical sense in which Weiner is using the word "race", clearly begins in Japan long before Europeans ventured to the Americas, and long before they ventured to Japan. In Japan, too, "racialism" has been proliferating.

Ideologues

Weiner dismisses, without serious examination, of Japan's official responses to the UN Committee on Elimination of Racial Discrimination, regarding the International Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. He then summarizes the recommendations made by UN Special Rapporteur Doudou Diene (Diène) in his 2006 "Mission to Japan" report to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights concerning Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and All Forms of Discrimination.He If he is aware of the ideological origins of Diene's report, he does not tell us.

Weiner then says this (page xvi).

Apparently he does not regard his own writing, and the writing of many of the others whose works he favorable cites, or articles he includes in his books, as the academic counterpart of "denial" ideology -- representing, if I may paraphrase him, "the lengths to which ideologues have gone in publicizing the existence of 'minorities' defined by politically motivated interest groups in Japan."

I prefer to think that Weiner is politically innocent rather than disingeneous.

Obectives of book

Weiner finally seques into the purpose of the book and each contribution (page xvii, bold emphasis and underscoring are mine).

It is far from clear why Weiner goes out of his way to mention children of mixed parentage under the first objection. Mixtures of what? Class? Caste? Race? Religion? Region? Whatever? Presumably all the "populations" Weiner would talk about intermix with each other. And presumably all these "populations" are capable of "including" or "excluding" putatively mixed individuals, either personally or categorically.

Nor is it clear why Weiner exceptionalizes Russell's contribution as a "marked departure" from the "first edition". Many contributions to the so-called "second edition" are "marked departures" from the "first edition. What, in any event, could Weiner mean by "the conventional binary of 'black-white' race relations"? If "Japanese" (or "Koreans" or "Chinese" or whatever) have "negotiated" any "racialized" or "privileged" spaces, it has been as "yellow" people in a "white" versus "non-white" or "colored" dichotomy. That much should be clear from any reading of late 19th and early 20th century social history.

Much more could be said here about the weaknesses of Weiner's introduction, but they will be evident in the following article reviews.

This chapter constitutes a cook's tour of the kitchen as a means of explaining the menu. Weiner shows is all the essential ingredients of his "self" and "other" cuisine. What he dishes out on the plate, however, is a mishmash of statements about various concerns, some based on opinions of or observations by "others" (who Weiner cites), and some apparently (but not clearly) based on his own "self" appraisals of the content of primary sources.

It is not clear to what extent Weiner's "self-other" analysis is a reflection of his devotion to contemporary academic theory, created by academics to entertain themselves, or intended as an objective evaluation of life in complex and dynamic societies in one or another place at one or another time. The chapter might have been more valuable had he shortlisted his more specific concerns and separated them on the plate, or served his food for thought on a number of smaller saucers or in separate bowels.

"jinshu" and "minzoku"

Significantly, in the first of the three parts of his "self-other" article, Weiner attempts to nuance his English dubs of certain Japanese words which appear in his sources.

Japanese minzoku [untranslated]
within the paradigm of minzoku, both race and nation . . .
minzoku no ōsa (head of the people)
Jinshu Minzoku Senō (Jinshu, Minzoku and War)
jinshuteki (racial)
Yamato jinshu (race) and Yamato minzoku (ethnicity/people/nation)
kokuminshugi (civil nationalism)
Nihon Jinshu (Japanese race)

Appropriateness of conflation

According to Weiner, the title Jinshu Minzoku Senō implies "a conceptual distinction between jinshu (race) and minzoku (ethnicity; people; nation), but the author "reaffirms the biological basis of minzoku" (page 2).

Weiner himself generally uses "race" and "racism" in a manner that conflates "jinshu" (人種) and "minzoku" (民族). However, his conflation is both intentional and, I feel, generally appropriate.

The scope of minzoku may transcend the narrower more essentially biological sense of jinshu. But minzoku is generally used with strongly biological nuances in the broader anthropological sense of "race" as a population of people with certain biological, linguistic, and cultural traits. Moreover, minzoku is commonly used to translate "people" and "nation" when these words are perceived to have biological "racioethnic" or racialistic "ethnonational" nuances.

"Leprosy"

The second part of Weiner's "self-other" chapter, called "The 'Other' Within", is mostly dedicated to views of leprosy, and the treatment of lepers, in Japan, from the 8th century to the beginning of the 21st century. Not only does this part qualify as a "marked departure" from the "first edition", but it should have been expanded into an independent chapter concerning what I would call "medical minorities" generally.

All manner of people -- not just lepers -- have been segregated from the mainstream because of a genetic or contracted physical and/or mental condition. Such people probably constitute the largest "minority" defined as population which has been "marginalized" and otherwise "otherized" within the general population.

A number of medically troubled people have been ostracized from the mainstream or otherwise been treated as outcastes. For a while, though less likely today, such medical minorities would also include "hibakusha" -- survivors of atomic bomb blasts -- and at times their lineal descendants.

Weiner has written on "Korean hibakusha" in Hiroshima in both editions (more about this below), but has missed the opportunity, in this book, to give all medical minorities the attention they deserve in any generally overview of dehumanizing discrimination that is metaphorically no different from "racial" discrimination most broadly defined. Since the mid 1990s or so, I have included "medical minorities" in my discussions of minorities in Japan.

"Colonial order"

In the third and last part his "self-other" article, Weiner defines what he means by "The Colonial 'Other'". This part is essentially a retread of a similar overview in the "first edition" of the "colonial order" that began to be established during the Meiji period, beginning with "Hokkaido" and continuing with "Korea and Taiwan".

Apart from how one might define "colonial policy" -- and apart from when colonization could be said to have started in Hokkaido -- I do believe that Taiwan joined the Empire of Japan a number of years before Korea.

Siddle's article is one of few returnees from the "first volume". It begins with minimally rewritten opening graphs then moves into entirely new graphs which significantly update the first article.

Siddle has been one of my favorite writers in English on Ainu. His writing is clear and generally unembellished by fashionable jargon. His scholarship is also strong and he shows considerable respect for historical fact and accuracy.

There are, however, a few problems in his story.

Having begun with the statement that "The Ainu are the indigenous people of northern Japan" (page 21), Siddle later takes this back to the historical expansion of "the Yamato or ritsuryō state into the north of Honshu fron the eighth century" (page 22).

From this point, according to Siddle, "a clearly identifiable Ainu culture replaced that of the Satsumon and Okhotsk in Hokkaido" (page 22). From this point on he mostly speaks of "the Ainu" as a singularity.

However, historical ethnographers of the region that today embraces Hokkaido in Japan and Sakhalin and the Kurils in Russia suggest something other than a monolithic "Ainu culture". Siddle imputes an "Ainu identity" to "Ainu" before they are quite "Ainu", and otherwise reduces the demographic complexity of the region by way of stressing that "Ainu" became victims of "Wajin" expansion, exploitation, and colonization.

"Ainu" and "Japanese"

Siddle has the usual difficulties (as have I and everyone writing about "Ainu") with the term "Japanese". Three pages into his article, he parenthetically states that Japanese are "usually known in the literature as Wajin" -- and from this point speaks as much of Wajin as of Japanese.

At times he gets into trouble. After Ezo is incorporated into Japan as Hokkaido territory, indigeneous populations are nationalized through household registers, which leads to their status as Japanese. Siddle, though, racializes "Japanese" in numerous references to "Japanese" and "Ainu" in Hokkaido long after "Ainu" had become "Japanese".

The more carefully edited Utari Kyokai Literature studiously avoids exceptionalizing "Ainu" from "Nihonjin" (Japanese) -- but speak of "Ainu and other Japanese". To do otherwise would alienate Japanese of putatively Ainu descent from recognition as an "ethnic minority" in Japan.

Utari Kyokai leaders know that "Ainu" -- whatever else them may be -- are Japanese. Their problem, politically, is to convince "other Japanese" to accept "Ainu" as Japanese.

In in speaking of Ainu apart from Japanese, as though Ainu were not Japanese, not a few writers in Japanese, and many writers in English including Siddle, unwittingly embrace the racialism of the extremes on both sides of the "Ainu" / "Wajin" divide.

"indigenous people / peoples"

In his introduction, Siddle speaks of "the politicisation of the category 'indigenous peoples' and an international movement for indigenous rights centred on the United Nations" (page 21). While true that there were "indigenous peoples" movements, the "indigenous rights" programs promoted by the UN concerned "indigenous people".

The semantic distinction became important in Japanese as well. In 1993, the United Nations celebrated the "International Year of the World's Indigenous People". The term was "indigenous people" (先住民 senjōmin) rather than "indigenous peoples" (先住民族 senjō minzoku), because the United Nations wished to avoid the racialist implications of "peoples" (民族 minzoku).

Concerning Japan's eventual recognition of Ainu as an "ethnic minority" (少数民族 shōsū minzoku), Siddle makes this at once interesting but curious observation (page 33).

There has been absolutely no dispute between Japan and Russia with regard to the few Ainu who inhabited the disputed islands that Japan calls its "Northern Territories". It is a purely territorial issue.

Ainuesque people inhabited the southern half of Sakhalin the a number of islands in the more southern reaches of the Kurils. These people were enrolled into household registers affiliated with either Karafuto (southern Sakhalin) or Hokkaido prefecture (which had jurisdiction over the Kurils).

Karafuto was incorporated into the Interior in 1943, and before the Soviet Union invaded and occupied Karafuto and the Kurils in 1945, practically all Japanese of putatively Ainu descent had migrated to or been resettled on Hokkaido. A few Ainuesque inhabitants of Sakhalin may have remained "Russified" and not been nationalized as Japanese, but this would not have been possible in the islands which Japan is claiming, and I know of no Soviet or Russian contention that any of the original inhabitants of the southern Kurils are by rights "Russian".

Difficulties with exceptionalization

The main problem with the recognition of "Ainu" as "indigenous" has been the implications of such exceptionalization.

Japan's laws are raceless and do not compartmentalize "Japanese" in any racioethnic classification. Nationality is a purely civil status. There are no race boxes.

In speaking of "Japanese" ("Wajin") as opposed to "Ainu", not only does Siddle racialize Japanese, but he sidesteps the issues related to "indigenous" labeling among Japanese as nationals of Japan.

One difficulty with the claim that "Ainu" are "indigenous" is the unlikely implication that "other Japanese" are not also "indigenous" -- even when speaking just of Hokkaido. We are talking about many centuries, during which there was a lot of migration (which Siddle oddly calls "immigration") into what is today Hokkaido. With migration comes mixture and confusion of languages and ways of life.

Siddle focuses on the intense migration to Hokkaido that followed its incorporation into Japan's sovereign territory in 1869. That is fine. But it was not as though there were not already some "Wajin" in the area who were essentially "native" to the area because their families were rooted there.

Another problem is whether one views "Ainu" as "an" or "the" indigenous minority "in" or "of" Japan. The meanings are hugely different. Siddle, to his credit, makes this important distinction -- unlike most writers of English. Writers of Japanese could also make such distinctions, but not as easily as in English, which mandates such clarifications.

Yet another issue is whether the recognition of "Ainu" as "an 'ethnic minority'" or as "an 'indigenous people'" extends to individuals. In fact, at present, it does not. The recognition is one of the existence of an undefined population that claims to maintain so-called "Ainu" linguistic and/or cultural and economic traits, et cetera.

Utari Kyokai in Hokkaido is an organization that mediates on behalf of members that claim (and are recognized by Utari Kyokai) as being of "Ainu" ancestry by some measure, including adoptive. There are no blood quantums as such. Affiliation is with Utari Kyokai, not with a national agency. Utari Kyokai is essentially a former Hokkaido agency that continues to function as a private conduit between the Hokkaido government and the relatively few people who register as its members.

However, there is no racioethnic exceptionalization of Japanese as individuals under general laws that apply to all nationals of Japan if not also to aliens.

In fact, all manner of "local" populations in Japan could claim to be "indigenous" by way of exceptionalizing themselves demographically in order to maintain or restore local linguistic, cultural, and economic interests that arguably go back many centuries if not millennia.

The most radical "restorationists" (as I call them) among Ainu activists want the government of Japan to recognize "Ainu" as "the" indigenous people not only of Hokkaido but of Northern Honshu.

"American-authored constitution"

Siddle occasionally makes statements that do not agree with historical facts, such as this common cliche (page 30).

A large multinational force occuped Japan under MacArthur. The so-called "MacArthur draft" of the Constitution was heavily Japanized by the time the cabinet was submitted it to the Imperial Diet for further discussion and minor revision, and eventual approval by the Diet and sanctioning by Hirohito under the provisions of the Meiji Constitution. It was not that Japanese had no "rights" before this, for the Meiji Constitution had a section on rights and duties, and a number of related laws gave imperial subjects a number of rights as nationals of Japan.

Ainu obituary?

Siddle injects some tension into his drama in the opening scene with these two tandem remarks (pages 21-22).

Yet Siddle ends his article on this somewhat plaintive note (page 37).

Siddle fails to state that, in addition to being a charistmatic idealist, Kayano Shigeru was also a pragmatist, who made himself somewhat of a tourist attraction in order to popularlize Ainudom -- among people who considered themselves Ainu but needed to work at becoming Ainu, among other Japanese, and even among aliens.

This article reflects the strengths and weaknesses of Fish's 2002 doctoral dissertation on The Heiress and the Love Children: Sawada Miki and the Elizabeth Saunders Home for Mixed-Blood Orphans in Postwar Japan. Unfortunately, it amplifies the weaknesseses of the dissertation. And, as part of the book under review here, it will be read by more people.

My review of this article is posted as Fish 2009 under the "Mixture" section of the "Race" bibliography, where I have also reviewed the dissertation as Fish 2002.

Forthcoming.

In different articles published in the late 1980s, I reviewed Sueo Murakoshi and Yoshi Miwa (editors), Discrimination Against Buraku, Today, Osaka: Buraku Liberation Research Institute, 1986.
10, 145 pages, softcover

The Buraku Liberation Research Institute, which runs interference for BLL in mass media, sent FEER a one-page letter, and a three-page single-spaced comment of my review, protesting my attitude toward the book. The letter stated that "It is offen [sic] difficult . . . for people outside Japan to correctly understand the nature of this problem . . . ." The commenet concluded that "Mr. Wetheral's [sic] critique of our book is based on his mistaken perception of the purpose of its publication. Furthermore, his analytic framework seems to be lacking in correct understanding of the nature of buraku discrimination."

To the best of my knowledge, BLRI did not protest the much longer article in The Japan Times.

I had, by the late 1980s, already began to distance myself from the idea that "burakumin" were, as a categorical minority, the victims that I had been led to believe in my own education. By the end of the 1980s and early 1990s, I began to realize that the facts were very different from the reporting in English academia and journalism.

For one, writing in Japanese -- including the enormous volume of material published by organs of BLL -- eschewed calling people in BLL-dominated and Dowa catchments "burakumin" -- because that would be attachment a label to people who were merely residents of what had once been eta and other such communities. In other words, "burakumin" did not exist -- and could not exists -- because, in principle, the residents of BLL-styled "unliberated buraku" and "discrimination-receiving buraku" were just people some others -- and few others at that -- held in contempt.

Forthcoming.

Forthcoming.

Forthcoming.

This article replaces Weiner's article on Korean victims of the atomic bomb in the 1997 edition the book under review here. Why he teamed with Chapman is not clear. The order of names in the byline suggests that he is to be considered the senior author, presumably for reasons other than his seniority, in terms either of age, or of experience in research on Koreans in Japan, the subject of both his 1989 book The origins of the Korean community in Japan, 1910-1923 (Manchester University Press) and his 1994 book Race and Migration in Imperial Japan: The Limits of Assimilation (The Sheffield Centre for Japanese Studies, Routledge).

My review of this article is posted as Weiner and Chapman 2009 under the "Koreans" section of the "Minorities" bibliography, where I have also reviewed -- and yellow-flagged -- several of Chapman's articles and his 2007 book.

Forthcoming.

Forthcoming.