‘Class and “Race”. . . the two antinomic poles of a permanent dialectic’: Racialization,racism and resistance in Japan

Abstract

Despite the pervasive social constructivist turn, regardless of some exceptions, discussions of race, racialization and racism continue to focus on the relatively essentialist White/non-White binary. In this article, I move from the White/non-White binary to consider the dynamics and practices of racialization, racism and racial conflicts in Japan where there are no phenotypical distinctions between the dominant and the main racialized minority groups – the Burakumin, the Ainu, the Okinawans, the Zainichi Koreans and the Chinese. The main argument made in this article is that in Japan, class and power inequalities generated by colonialism, the division of labour, adoption and the deployment of the dominant Western 19th-century discourse of ‘scientific racism’ contributed to ‘racial formations’, ‘racial projects’ and the construction of the racialized boundaries that fuelled and continue to compete over material and non-material resources. A historical sociology of the permanent dialectic between class and race in Japan is offered in this article.

. . . the extirpation, enslavement, and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of blackskins, signalized the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production.

– Karl Marx

Slavery was not born of racism; rather racism was the consequence of slavery.

– Eric Williams

. . . any cultural trait, no matter how superficial, can serve as a starting point for the familiar tendency to monopolistic closure.

– Max Weber

Irish history presents a case of racial oppression without reference to alleged skin color or, as the jargon goes, ‘phenotype’.

– Theodore Allen

For the Victorians race was a description of social distinctions, not of colour differences. . . the view of non-Europeans as an inferior race was but an extension of the already existing view of the working class at home.

– Kenan Malik

Introduction: the ‘permanent dialectic’ of class and race

The periodic resurgence and deployment of discredited 19th-century so-called ‘scientific racism’ notwithstanding, the fact that ‘race’ is a social and ideological construction is axiomatic for most social and natural scientists. As Omi and Winant (2014 [1994]: 13) put it, due to ‘such sociohistorical practices as conquest and enslavement’, the process of ‘racialization’ contributes to

the extension of racial meaning to a previously racially unclassified relationship, social practice, or group. . . racial projects are efforts to shape the ways in which human identities and social structures are racially signified, and the reciprocal ways that racial meaning becomes embedded in social structures. [They are the] building blocks in the racial formation process. (Omi and Winant, 2014 [1994]: 13)

Similarly, Visweswaran (1998: 77) argues that ‘races certainly exist, but they have no biological meaning outside the social significance we attach to biological explanation itself’. This axiomatic framework informs any critical analysis of racialization, race and racism (Bonnett, 1988, 2018, 2022; Du Bois, 1903, Emirbayer and Desmond, 2015; Gould, 1981; Hacking, 2006; Ignatiev, 1995; Lewontin, 1973; Maghbouleh, 2017; Malik, 1996; Mamdani, 2020; Miles, 1989, 1999; Omi and Winant, 2014 [1994]; Winant, 1994; Rattansi, 2007; Roediger, 2006; Winant, 2002, 2004, 2014; Takezawa, 2005a, 2005b; Prashad, 2000; Visweswaran, 2010). As the famous ‘Thomas Theorem’ (Thomas and Thomas, 1928: 571) has it, when humans ‘define situations as real, they are real in their consequences’. Or, in Kwame Anthony Appiah’s pithy formulation, ‘the concept of race might be a unicorn, but its horn could draw blood’ (Appiah, 2014: 113).

Drawing on a critical social constructivist perspective where the focus is on the mutually constitutive braiding of social structures, racial signification and ideologies, in this article, the dynamics of the racialization of groups and racist practices in a context where there are no obvious phenotypical differences are analysed. The main argument here is that in Japan where phenotypical differences are absent, colonial conquest, settler colonialism and a specific division of labour in a capitalist context enabled monopolistic closure of material and non-material resources while simultaneously contributing to the social construction of racialized minority groups (Baber, 2022; Bonacich, 1999; Murji and Solomos, 2005; Ogunrotifa, 2022; Roediger, 1992, 2006; Williams, 1966). In addition to the analysis of the dialectical braiding of race and class, another goal of the article is to provide a modest contribution to the growing literature on racialization and racisms in contexts where phenotypical distinctions are either totally absent or not significant (Allen, 2012; Baber, 2004, 2010, 2022; Bonnett, 2022; Brown, 2013; Dikotter, 1997; Ignatiev, 1995; Maghbouleh, 2017; Winant, 2002; Yeh, 2022).

In this article, I draw on elements of several existing perspectives and exemplars to analyse the dialectical relationship between class and race in the production and reproduction of social inequalities in Japan. These exemplars include Marx’s (1967) contention that

the discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement, and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of blackskins, signalized the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production. (p. 351)

Similarly, both Bourdieu (2014:10) and Balibar (1997) invoked the concept of ‘class racism’ to analyse the dialectics of class and race. Balibar (1997: 320-321) argued that ‘. . . class and “race” constitute the two antinomic poles of a permanent dialectic’. Similarly, Du Bois’ (1998 [1935]) concept of the ‘racial wage’ focuses on the intersection of class and race, although he also famously discussed the ‘psychological wage’ that for him prevented solidarity between White and Black workers. Finally, Weber argued that phenotypical differences per se were not at all necessary to produce racialized inequality – ‘any cultural trait, no matter how superficial, can serve as a starting point for the familiar tendency to monopolistic closure’ (Weber, 1978: 385). His point was that the focus on monopolizing and restricting access to resources – material and non-material – played a key role in the signification of cultural traits for the construction of hierarchical, essentialized group boundaries.

In the discussion below, the dynamics and consequences of the braiding of the historical, economic, social and political elements for the social construction of the major racialized minorities of Japan – the Burakumin, the Ainu, the Okinawans, the Zainichi Koreans and the Chinese – are analysed. The main argument is that although in contemporary Japan racialized minorities are phenotypically indistinguishable – except for the Ainu prior to colonial conquest and assimilation through intermarriage – from the non-minority Japanese (Wajin), their racialization has produced and continues to produce structural inequalities. This article complements and adds to the existing studies by scholars such as Yamashiro (2013), Kayano (1999) and Kitaguchi (1999) by providing a comprehensive comparative historical sociology of the major racialized minority Japanese citizens who are phenotypically indistinguishable from the dominant group as well as from each other. Thus, the other racialized non-citizen groups – the South Asians, the Africans, the Filipinos, the Iranians, the Brazilian-Japanese and so on – or the so-called ‘temporary migrant workers’ (dekasegi rodosha) – are not discussed in this article.

‘A lot of filth. . . non-human’: the Burakumin

The case of the Burakumin of Japan constitutes a prime example of the dialectic of class and race. A specific division of labour and class was infused with ideologies of inheritance and descent to construct, demarcate, segregate, racialize and marginalize a group that was earlier indistinguishable from other Japanese (Aoki, 2020; Brown, 2013; De Vos and Wagatsuma, 1966; Gottfried and Fasenfest, 2020; Kobayakawa, 2020; McKnight, 2011; Amos, 2011). It was during the military-feudal Edo period (1603–1867), when a fourfold caste system – similar but not identical to the Indian caste system – covered the major occupational categories that were created and institutionally enforced by the elites (Howell, 2005; Kurokawa, 2016). At the lowest level of the hierarchy were the hereditary group called Eta – a term that translates into ‘a lot of filth/defilement’. Also known as kawata or leather workers, members of these communities worked in occupations such as the handling of human corpses, slaughter of animals and the production of leather, which were considered polluting and stigmatizing by the larger society (Amos, 2006; Demel, 2015; Goodman and Neary, 1996;; Howell, 2005; Ishi and Yamaguchi, 1999; Morris-Suzuki, 2015; Nagahara, 1979; Teraki and Kurokawa, 2019).

During the Edo period (1601–1867) when the ongoing constant warfare ended and the Japanese social structure was transformed, the Eta or kawata were segregated and ghettoized in demarcated hamlets or buraku that rigidified their subjugated position (Newell, 1932; Ooms, 1996). Another marginalized community, the hinin (literally ‘non-human’), was also segregated from mainstream society and forced to work as executioners and undertakers (Mikiso, 2003; Tsutsui, 2018). Although the Eta people were accorded formal equality in 1871 after the Meiji Restoration (1868), in actual practice, their marginalization continued (Kobayakawa, 2020; Takezawa, 2011; Willis and Murphy-Shigematsu, 2007; Yoshino and Murakoshi, 1977). Due to the growing demand for cheaper labour in the context of the emergent capitalism, a majority of the Burakumin were ghettoized in low-wage and low-status jobs shunned by others (Aoki, 2020; Kobayakawa, 2020). Exemplifying Du Bois’ (1998 [1935]) concept of the ‘racial wage’ and Weber’s (1978) understanding of racialized ‘monopolistic closure’, despite their roots in the feudal era, the contemporary Burakumin are largely an invention of modern capitalism in Japan (Kobayakawa, 2020: 115).

During the early 20th century, the Dowa movement whose goal was ‘conciliatory’ assimilation was encouraged and sponsored by the state. In response to this initiative, the militant Zenkoku Suihesha or the National Levellers Association (1922) led a movement that rejected and resisted assimilation. It was after the Second World War when an organized Buraku rights movement gathered momentum. The formation of the National Committee for Burakumin Liberation that later became the militant Buraku Liberation League (BLL) signalled this transition. However, another Buraku rights organization – the National Buraku Liberation Alliance – that was opposed to the militant tactics of the BLL also emerged. Despite their differences, these movements focused on the fact that despite formal legal equality, discrimination continued, particularly when it came to marriage and housing. In 1988, resistance against discrimination was formalized when the BLL and the Buraku Liberation and Human Rights Research Institute (BHLRI) jointly organized the International Movement Against All forms of Discrimination and Racism (IMADR). Although overt discussion of their existence is currently avoided, many Burakumin continue to face and resist racialized discrimination (Bondy, 2015; 2010; Brown, 2013b; De Vos, 1974; Howell, 2005; Kitaguchi, 1999; Kobayakawa, 2020; Lie, 2004; Neary, 2010; Shimahara, 1971; Siddle, 1997; Sjoberg, 1993; Weiner, 2009; Wetherall, 2007; Amos, 2015).

Over the years, as members of a younger generation leave their communities – either by physically relocating elsewhere for work or by successfully passing as non-Buraku – support for the BLL has declined (Neary, 2003: 271; Hatanaka, 1988). However, the continuing demand for cheap labour ensures that of the estimated 1.2 million Burakumin, as many as 60%, ghettoized as they are in low-wage occupations, continue to draw ‘racial wages’ (Aoki, 2020; Kobayakawa, 2020). Since the Burakumin were ‘othered’ from the Japanese people, the dynamics of their ‘racialization’ is different from the other minorities for whom settler colonialism – the Ainu – and colonial conquests – the Koreans and the Chinese – were consequential.

‘Uncivilized devils . . . an inferior race. . . a dying race’: the Ainu

Prior to Japan’s conquest and annexation of the island of Ezogashima – later renamed Hokkaido – the Ainu were mainly hunters and gatherers who were considered racially distinct from the Japanese or the Wajin who practised settled agriculture (Hanihara, 1990; Kayano, 1994; Kikuchi, 1994; Siddle, 2014; Takakura and Harrison, 1960). The initial development of trade relations between the Ainu and the Wajin eventually gave way to conquest and settler colonialism. The recurring revolts and other forms of resistance constituted the crucible for the eventual construction and consolidation of a racialized Ainu identity (Irish, 2009; Lewallen, 2020). During the Edo Period (1600–1867), the Shogunate took direct control of Southern Hokkaido, and it was during the Meiji Period (1868–1912) that modern capitalist industries developed in this locale. After a harsh suppression of a major final revolt, aggressive policies for the dispossession of Ainu lands and their settlement emerged. An aggressive policy of assimilation through intermarriage followed in its wake. The eventual conferment of Japanese citizenship to the Ainu also meant that they were officially no longer categorized as or considered indigenous people (Howell, 2004; Katsuichi, 2010; Walker, 2001).

Labelled earlier as Oni – ‘uncivilized devils’ – the Ainu bore the full brunt of conquest, settler colonialism, acculturation and assimilation. Their traditional religious practices and the Ainu language were banned, and in 1892, a committee was constituted to discuss educational policies for the Ainu. In a report by the committee, Iwaya Eitaro argued that it was the duty of the dominant Japanese ‘Yamato race’ (Yamato jinshu) to ‘protect’ the ‘inferior race’ (retto no jinshu) or the Ainu. He discussed three possible options: westernization (okashugi), preservation (hozonshugi) and assimilation (dokashugi). Rejecting the first two, Iwaya concluded that assimilation through intermarriage was ‘the safest and most appropriate doctrine’ (Siddle, 2014: 91). His proposal for assimilation via miscegenation did not go unchallenged by other Japanese officials. In a 1918 article titled ‘On the Management of the Ainu Race’ (Ainu Jinshu Shobun Ron), Hiraoka forcefully argued that

As Darwin wrote in Origin of Species, the so-called Idea of the survival of the fittest is a principle that rules the whole world of nature. . . those unadapted for life are oppressed. The Ainu are unadapted members of humanity. . . [they] have to contribute to the happiness of humanity. . . consequently their survival or extinction should be left to nature. . . Our country is proud of the purity of our ancient race, and the long term preservation of this racial purity (shuzoku jinshu) is our nationalism. . . If interbreeding with Ainu introduces Ainu blood into Japanese it will violate the movement to preserve our national essence (kokkusui). (Siddle, 2014: 91–92)

Another article by a Native School teacher Yoshida Iwao argued for the setting up of reservations and a separate education system for the Ainu (Siddle, 2014: 91).

However, even prior to these debates, assimilation (Doka) sponsored by the Hokkaido Kaitakushi or the Development Commission of Hokkaido was well underway. Takushoku, the official term for colonization, is synonymous with industrialization and economic development. The term was only much later replaced by the benign sounding kaitaku that roughly translates into reclamation and opening up. The Land Regulation Act of 1872 in tandem with the Hokkaido Ordinance of Land Certificates of 1877 provided the legal institutional support for the dispossession and transfer of Ainu lands to Wajin settlers (Cheung, 2006; Hossain et al., 2018; Okada, 2012; Siddle, 2014; Takakura and Harrison, 1960; Tsutsui, 2018; Walker, 2001). In addition to the many scholarly accounts, the many contemporary consequences of these policies for the Ainu are hauntingly portrayed in films such as Naruse Mikio’s (1959) Kotan no kuchibue (whistling in Kotan) and Fukunaga Takeshi’s (2020) Ainu Mosir (the land/country/world of the Ainu).

With an abundance of natural resources that were now off limits for the Ainu, Hokkaido became the major staging grounds for the growth and expansion of industrial capitalism in Japan during the Meiji Era (1868–1912). In the wake of the Meiji Restoration, the disbanded Samurai were resettled in Hokkaido and deployed as tondenhei or soldier-farmers of the Imperial Army on the northern border to defend Japan against Russia. Most of the other new settlers eventually became members of the new industrial working class and expropriation of their labour power fuelled industrial-capitalist transformation of Japan. The new factories of Hokkaido, together with the lessons learned about managing capital and labour relations, constituted the templates and exemplars for the subsequent rapid growth of industrial capitalism in the rest of Japan (Mason, 2012; Siddle, 2010, Walker, 2001).

Partly due to the aggressive policy of intermarriage and assimilation, accurate data for the Ainu population in Japan are hard to obtain. Official government estimates put their number at 25,000, while other estimates are closer to about 200,000 (Siddle, 2014). As in the case of indigenous people globally, land claims and the rights to hunt and fish have been the major focus of Ainu resistance and activism (Sjoberg, 1993; The Mainichi, 2019). In March 1997, the Sapporo District Court made a landmark ruling in favour of the Ainu plaintiffs who had filed a lawsuit against the appropriation of their land for the building of two new dams in Hokkaido. It paved the way for the legal and eventually state recognition of the Ainu as indigenous people with a distinct culture. Within 3 months of the ruling, the Japanese Parliament or Diet repealed the 1899 Ainu Protection Act – the key state institutional vehicle for the marginalization of the Ainu – and replaced with the Ainu Culture Law.

However, the new law has been sharply criticized for its culturalism and concomitant exclusion of any reference to land and resource rights (Morris-Suzuki, 1999). Not a single Ainu person had been included in newly constituted Organization to Promote Research about Ainu Culture supported by the Japanese Ministry of Education (Morris-Suzuki, 1999). Although in response to the protests, the organization finally included 13 Ainu members out of a total of 35, many Ainu activists and their allies argue that the funding procedures are opaque. As in similar modes of indigenous resistance elsewhere (Gray, 2022; 2018), some Ainu activists successfully sued researchers from Hokkaido University who were ordered by the court to repatriate bones that had been removed from Ainu ancestral graves without permission (Kimura, 2018).

In June 2008, the Japanese government introduced a bipartisan resolution to recognize the Ainu as ‘an indigenous people [of Japan] with a distinct language, religion and culture’. The resolution also included the crucial acknowledgement: ‘The government would like to solemnly accept the historical fact that many Ainu were discriminated against and forced into poverty with the advancement of modernization, despite being legally equal to (Japanese) people’ (Japan Times, 2008). In 2019, the Japanese government finally passed a bill that officially recognized the Ainu as indigenous people. But as the critics had predicted and feared, the bill that became law focused exclusively on identity, culture and ‘traditional lifestyles’ while excluding any reference to land and other material resources. However, like other indigenous people around the world, Ainu activists have been resisting and testing the existing laws and regulations that, even as the large fishing corporations process millions of salmon per year, allow the Ainu to fish only for a very restricted range of Ainu cultural rituals and that too a miniscule quota of 25 per person per year (Hossain et al., 2018; The Mainichi, 2019).

‘Uncooperative, unstable’: the Okinawans

The people of Okinawa or the indigenous Ryukyuan people, who were part of the Ryukyu Kingdom from the 15th to 19th centuries, constitute another major racialized minority group in Japan. Largely due to strategic and geopolitical concerns, the Kingdom of Ryukyu that was once part of the tributary system of China was invaded by Japan in 1609. After the Meiji Restoration, the Japanese government absorbed the Ryukyu Kingdom and renamed it Okinawa in 1879 (Oguma, 2014: 15). As was the case with all modern colonialisms, the Okinawan people with their distinctive cultures, traditions, and languages were subjected to the standard stereotypes and policies of assimilation.

As the main producer and exporter of sugar, Okinawa was hit particularly hard after the collapse of sugar prices in 1921 during the depression after the First World War (Matsumura, 2015; Rabson, 2012: 65). Tens of thousands of Okinawans migrated to the greater Tokyo and Osaka areas looking for work. Confronted with ‘No Okinawan and Korean workers’ signs everywhere and labelled as ‘uncooperative’ and ‘unstable’, most Okinawans settled for work – the ‘three-K jobs’: kitsui (hard), kitanai (dirty), kiken (dangerous) – considered undesirable by the mainland Japanese (Rabson, 2012: 65–66). Most men worked in sawmills, textile mills, construction sites and metal factories, while the women were largely confined to the textile mills. A 1926 survey showed that many Okinawan factory workers in Osaka – frequently described as ‘the smoke capital’ of Japan – suffered from severe lung disease. Of the many who succumbed to lung disease, about 80% were women workers and at least one major factory had a dedicated crematorium on its premises (Rabson, 2012: 68). With rental signs announcing ‘No Ryukyans or Koreans’, the Okinawans were ghettoized in the most deprived and undesirable areas of Osaka and Tokyo (Lie, 2008b; Rabson, 2012: 76).

After the Second World War, Okinawa was invaded and occupied by 185,000 American soldiers. A quarter of the population, mostly civilians, were killed in the ‘Battle of Okinawa’, and the American army bases that were set up during the US Military Government of the Ryukyus Islands after the war continue to this day. Okinawa and the rest of the Ryukyu islands were formally returned to Japan in 1972, but the American army bases remain. The many cases of rapes by American servicemen draw thousands of protestors, and Okinawa continues to be the focus of protests against the United States and the Japanese government (Bhowmick and Rabson, 2016; Hein and Selden, 2003; Hijino and Vogt, 2019; Hook and Siddle, 2003; Loo, 2014; Matsumura, 2015; Oguma, 2014; Tada, 2015). Under the 1951 Security Treaty between the United States and Japan, Okinawa with its army bases was also the staging ground for all the American war operations in Asia: the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Now a popular tourist destination for many mainlander Japanese – the ‘Hawaii of Japan’ – many academics, critics, and activists consider Okinawa an ‘internal colony’ of Japan (Loo, 2014).

‘A penchant for criminality’: the Zainichi Koreans

Despite the real differences in the historical contexts – the Ainu were subjected to settler colonialism, the Burakumin were outcastes from the Japanese communities, and the Koreans are in Japan largely due to the colonization of Korea – the racialization of the Koreans in Japan follows a broadly similar trajectory and consequences. Colonial conquests, settler colonialism, structural inequality, division of labour and racial ideologies all contributed to the racialization of the Koreans in Japan (Demel and Kowner, 2015; Dikotter, 1997; Keevak, 2011; Shiryokan, 2008; Suzuki, 2016; Yang, 1996).

The Japanese annexation and colonization of Korea (1910–1945) constituted the structural and ideological context for the racialization of the Zainichi (residing in Japan) Koreans. During the 35 years of colonial rule, Japan embarked on a programme of industrialization, massive public works and the ‘Japanization’ of Koreans (Schmidt, 2000; Weiner, 1989; Robillard-Martell and Laurent, 2020). Colonial rule in Japan triggered several resistance movements including the March 1st Movement of 1919 and the Gwang-ju Students’ Anti-Japanese Movement of June 1929 (Lee, 1999). Despite organized resistance, faced with new structural and political realities, many Koreans also collaborated with Japanese colonial rule. Indeed, during the Second World War, thousands of Koreans – including Park Chung-Hee who was later to become the President of Korea – either voluntarily enlisted or were conscripted in the Japanese Imperial Army.

As Japan embarked on rapid capitalist industrialization after the Meiji Restoration, labour shortages led to the conscription of a very large number of Koreans who were also subject to kyosei renko or forced labour in Japanese factories and mines during 1943–1945 (Fujitani, 2013; Kawashima, 2009; Lie, 2004; 2008a; 2008b; Tsutsui, 2018; Weiner, 1989). By the end of the Second World War, there were over 2 million Koreans in Japan, of which over a million and 300,000 were repatriated. About 650,000 Koreans who stayed in Japan constitute the contemporary Zainichi community (Ryang, 2002; Ryang and Lie, 2009; Weiner, 1995; 2013). Over the years, a very small number of Koreans in Japan assimilated, but due to widespread discrimination and poverty, most of them were confined to areas contiguous with the ghettoized Burakumin and Okinawan neighbourhoods (Lie, 2008b: 5).

The legacy of colonial domination, subordination and racialization came tragically to the fore in the aftermath of the great Kanto earthquake of 1923. Rumours that they were planning to poison the water supply led to pogroms against them resulting in thousands of deaths of Koreans as well as Okinawans and the Chinese (Lie, 2008b; Ryang, 2002). Finally, the Japanese Imperial Army’s active role in the organized sexual slavery or the issue of the so-called ‘comfort women’ – ianfu in Japanese – that involved predominantly Korean as well as women of other nationalities continues to fuel the dominant ideologies of gendered inequality (Soh, 2009; Yoshimi, 2000). As depicted in Shohei Imamura’s poignant film Nianchan (1959), the more than 650,000 Zainichi Koreans who currently reside in Japan continue to be racialized and marginalized. In addition to the occasional random physical attacks on the streets, official institutionalized discrimination against the Zainichi Koreans has taken many forms in the past – from mandatory fingerprinting to the requirement that they carry certificates of alien registration or gaitosho all the time, and social pressure to use Japanese aliases and names (tsumei) instead of Korean ‘real names’ or honmyo (Lie, 2008a; Strausz, 2006; Fukuoka, 2000; Taka and Amemiya, 2013). During the 1980s, the Zainichi Koreans and their Japanese allies resisted through the anti-fingerprinting movement (shimon onatsu) (Lie, 2008a). Despite the many progressive changes and the new anti-hate speech laws passed in the Japanese parliament in 2016, anti-Korean organizations such as Zaitokukai and demonstrations orchestrated by them are not uncommon in the metropolitan cities (Hyun, 2019; Lie, 2008a, 2008b; Kobayakawa, 2020: 126; Ryang, 2002; Tei, 2001: 126; Itagaki, 2015).

‘Sangokujin’: the Chinese in Japan

Like the case of Zainichi Koreans, a history of war that eventually led to the conquest and colonization of Taiwan and Northeast China constitutes a significant factor in the racialization of and discrimination against the Chinese community – over 900,000 in number, mostly in Yokohama, Tokyo, Osaka, Kobe, and Nagasaki – of Japan. Historically, Japan looked up to and drew upon many aspects of Chinese culture. However, the fact that when compared to Japan, China was relatively economically ‘underdeveloped’ fueled notions of Japanese cultural superiority and eventually, tensions. These views were reinforced among the Japanese elite when the First Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895) resulted in a decisive victory for the Japanese Imperial Army. Eventually, Japan replaced China’s historic relationship of dominance over Korea and invaded Manchuria in 1894. The subsequent invasion and colonization of Taiwan (1895–1945) – Japan’s first overseas colony – heralded a dramatic shift in regional dominance from China to Japan (Ching, 2000, 2001). Finally, Japan’s victory over Russia in the Russian-Japanese War (1904–1905) further boosted Japanese self-perceptions of superiority in the region. These perceptions and ideologies were further cemented by the bloody outcome of the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945) that resulted in the colonization of Manchuria, the setting up of the puppet state of Manchukuo and the deaths of millions of Chinese, mostly civilians (Coble, 1991; Duara, 2004; Ping-Hui and Wang, 2006; Tsu, 2010).

Much of the Chinese immigration to Japan occurred during the Meiji (1868–1912) and the Taisho (1912–1926) era when the country perceived itself and was perceived by its neighbours as the dominant regional power. The Sino-Japanese wars and the subsequent colonization of parts of China and Taiwan constituted the crucibles in which the racialization and perceptions of the Chinese people were forged and nurtured in Japan. The stoking of anti-Chinese sentiments by right-wing organizations such as Ganbare Nippon and Zaitokukai and the 2005 anti-Japanese riots in China have also played significant roles in the complexities and contradictions of the racialization and the sustenance of anti-Chinese discrimination and sentiments in Japan. One of the more infamous incidents was the deployment of the derogatory term ‘Sangokujin’ – allegedly ‘illegal’ citizens of a third country – in 2000 by the then powerful Governor of Tokyo Ishihara Shintaro to describe the Chinese of Taiwanese ancestry living in Japan. The many ideological schisms and differences within the Chinese community in Japan have been analysed in Eric Han’s insightful Rise of a Japanese Chinatown (2014). Influenced by the changing global and structural and ideological contexts, the situation of the shin kakyo or the ‘new’ Chinese community that includes the established as well as the relatively recent immigrants in Japan unsurprisingly continues to wax and wane (Coble, 1991; Han, 2020 [2014]; Kuo, 2015; Ping-Hui and Wang, 2006; Tsu, 2010).

Nihonjinron or the ideology of the ‘Japanese race’

In tandem with the social construction of the putatively ‘inferior’ races was the construction of an overarching dominant ‘Japanese race’ that served as the unmarked benchmark for the ‘othering’ of various groups. Analogous to ‘the invention of the white race’ (Allen, 2012), specific social structures anchored the braiding of class with racial ideologies and racial projects for the simultaneous construction of the putative Japanese race, nation and its ‘others’ (Aoki, 1990; Befu, 1987; Kawai, 2015a, 2015b; Minami, 1976).

As in the case of the ‘Hindu nationalist’ ideology of Hindutva in India (Baber, 2000, 2004; Jaffrelot, 2021), European ‘scientific racism’, Social Darwinism and European fascist ideas were significant influences on the Japanese conceptions and constructions of race (Kowner and Befu, 2015; Krebs, 2015). Jinshu (jin = people, shu = species) is the closest to the modern concept of ‘race’, while minzoku (min = people, zoku = group) is broadly equivalent to the German concept of Volk. Jinshu was a late 19th-century construction that, partly due to the intellectual exchanges between Japan and Germany, was superseded by minzoku in the early 20th century (Kawai, 2015b). While the concept of Jinshu was deployed to register and create Japanese commonality and solidarity with the rest of Asia in contrast to the dominant Western political and racial order, minzoku served to distinguish the Japanese people from the Asian ‘others’. Up until the end of the Second World War, the ideological deployment of the concept of minzoku also played a significant role in the project of the creation of a new Asian racial order led by Japan to putatively contest and resist Western dominance (Kawai, 2015b: 368–369; Kowner and Demel, 2015). After Japan’s defeat in the Second World War, the terms jinshu and minzoku were avoided for self-reference but continued to be used for people outside Japan. For self-reference, the seemingly but not quite neutral term nihonjin or ‘the Japanese people’ gained currency. Implied in the term nihonjin is the dominant and pervasive racialized discourse of Nihonjinron which found its full ideological expression and deployment in post-war Japan.

After the end of the Second World War, race disappeared from public discourse in Japan and it was replaced by essentialized conceptions of ‘culture’ or ‘nationality’ to explain the perceived success or lack thereof of people and societies in question. Exemplifying Max Weber’s (1978: 385) formulation – ‘any cultural trait, no matter how superficial, can serve as a starting point for the familiar tendency to monopolistic closure’ – structural racial inequality continues to survive and thrive despite the disappearance of the discourse of race in Japan (Takezawa, 2005a, 2005b). As Sivanandan (1981: 293) put it, ‘you cannot do away with racism by rejecting the concept of race. . . it is practice that defines terminology, not terminology the practice. . . it is in the act that the word is made flesh’.

The rapid economic growth experienced by Japan in the 1970s fueled cultural and national pride and the revival of resurgent Japanese ethnic nationalism as articulated by the ideology of Nihonjinron (Aoki, 1990; Befu, 1987; Kowner and Befu, 2015; Minami, 1976). The key ingredients of Nihonjinron as summarized by Kowner and Befu (2015: 391–393) are: Japan is a culturally homogeneous nation – tohitsu or doshitsu – and the Japanese were a culturally homogeneous people – tan’itsu minzoku – who are united by a single language, religion and race/ethnicity. The second claim is that there is an intrinsic connection between the land of Japan and the people who putatively share the same ‘blood’. A corollary is that a non-Japanese person could never become ‘real’ Japanese. Another essentializing claim is that the Japanese people are inherently group oriented whose relationships with each other are based on mutual dependency in a hierarchical social structure that provides a stable social order that determines individual behaviour. A final claim is that the Japanese people are a ‘unique’ people, superior to other ‘races’. The argument goes that because the Ainu and the Okinawans as different ‘races’ threaten to disrupt the Nihonjinron ideology, they need to be assimilated into the larger ‘family-nation’. The dominant narrative that undergirded the discourse of Nihonjinron in Japan was the obsession with the ‘purity of blood’ or junketsu shugi that supposedly not only contributed to the racial homogeneity of the Japanese people but also served to distinguish and demarcate them from the Chinese and the Koreans. Overall, Nihonjinron not only permeates contemporary Japanese society, but it has also been considered by some as a national, secular/civil ‘Japanese religion’ or Nihonkyo that is putatively the social glue that binds the Japanese people or the Nihonjin together (Kowner and Befu, 2015; Tierney, 2005; Yoshino, 1992, 1997).

Conclusion

Drawing on the insights of Marx, Weber, Du Bois and Balibar, among others, an historical sociology of the processes and consequences of racialization and racism in Japan has been provided in this article. Marx’s (1967: 351) pithy observation that ‘the extirpation, enslavement, and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of blackskins, signalized the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production’ (Marx, 1967: 351) in tandem with Weber’s (1978: 385) argument that ‘any cultural trait, no matter how superficial, can serve as a starting point for the familiar tendency to monopolistic closure’, Du Bois’ concept of the ‘racial wage’ and Bourdieu’s and Balibar’s concept of ‘class racism’ provide the ingredients for a critical framework to analyse the ‘permanent dialectic of class and race’ in Japan where phenotypical differences are absent.

The main argument of this article is that racialization and racism exist even in contexts where distinctive phenotypical differences are non-existent. The dynamics of the production of the major minority groups in Japan – the Burakumin, the Ainu, the Okinawans, the Zainichi Koreans and the Chinese – have been analysed to understand the processes of racialization wherein putatively innate and inheritable characteristics, propensities, and capacities are attributed to groups, which results in, despite resistance, their ongoing marginalization and unequal intergenerational access to and control of material and non-material resources . A related argument is that the process of the construction of the ‘Japanese race’ by the discourse of Nihonjinron is broadly analogous to the ‘invention of the white race’ (Allen, 2012).

The point of focusing on Japan is certainly not to argue that racial formations and racial projects emanate from some allegedly universal, biologically hardwired universal imperative for in-group and out-group boundaries. Rather, the goal of the article has been to argue that although in-group and out-group distinctions have existed in various forms in all societies through history, the specifically modern form of racism and including ‘scientific racism’ was incubated, crystallized, flourished and travelled globally in the crucible of colonial conquests, and organized transatlantic slavery and modern industrial capitalism (Williams, 1966). Depending on the specific conjunction of historical, structural and political contexts in Japan and elsewhere, the absence of phenotypical distinctions did not constitute barriers for the ideologies and practices of racism to produce and sustain racialized class inequalities. Although racist ideologies and practices indeed do take on relatively autonomous lives of their own, it is the constant braiding of class and race, structure and experience that fuels, anchors and sustains global racisms.