What place is there for sympathy in politics or politics in sympathy? This essay takes inspiration from the Japanese formulation of multiculturalism (tabunka-kyōsei or “the living together of multiple cultures”) to explore the sympathetic politics of living together. Following a group of Japanese activists on a solidarity trip to Chennai, India, the essay builds a definition of politics—the creation of venues, scenes, and opportunities in which we might practice ourselves as we want to become—that relies on the cultivation of fellow feeling. Rooted in the history and contemporary practice of Japanese activist trips to India, this essay specifies a definition of politics and sympathetic engagement that complicates recent discussions of humanitarianism and politics that tend to place these two efforts in opposition against each other.
AppaduraiA (1996) Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
2.
BefuH (2001) Hegemony of Homogeneity, Melbourne, AU: Trans Pacific Press.
3.
BrownW (1995) States of Injury, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
4.
CandeaM (2011) ‘Our division of the universe’: Making space for the non-political in the anthropology of politics. Current Anthropology52(3): 309–334.
5.
CsordasT (1993) Somatic modes of attention. Cultural Anthropology8(2): 135–156.
6.
De Vos G and Wagatsuma H (eds) (1966) Japan’s Invisible Race: Caste in Culture and Personality. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
7.
de VosGWetherallW (1983) Japan’s Minorities: Burakumin, Koreans, Ainu, and Okinawans, London, UK: Minority Rights Group.
8.
FassinD (2011) Humanitarian Reason: A Moral History of the Present, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
9.
FennellC (2012) The museum of resilience: Raising a sympathetic public in post-welfare Chicago. Cultural Anthropology27(4): 641–666.
10.
FraserN (2000) Rethinking recognition. New Left Review3(3): 107–120.
11.
GalS (2003) Movements of feminism: The circulation of discourses about women. In: HobsonB (ed.) Recognition Struggles and Social Movements, New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, pp. 93–118.
12.
HankinsJ (2012) Maneuvers of multiculturalism: International representations of minority politics in Japan. Japanese Studies32(1): 1–19.
13.
HankinsJ (2014) Working Skin: Making Leather, Making a Multicultural Japan, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Hume D ([1739] 2000) A Treatise of Human Nature (Norton DF and Norton MJ, eds). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
16.
Kondo A (2011) Migrant immigration policy in Japan. In: Grassroots Perspectives on Multiculturalism and Cohesion in Japan and the UK: Miejo Law Review 61(1): 3–30.
17.
LeebawB (2014) Justice, charity, or alibi? Human rights, humanitarianism, and humanity’s law. Humanity5(2): 261–276.
18.
LieJ (2001) Multiethnic Japan, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
19.
MoynS (2011) The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
20.
NearyI (1997) Burakumin in contemporary Japan. In: WeinerM (ed.) Japan’s Minorities: The Illusion of Homogeneity, New York, NY: Routledge, pp. 59–83.
21.
PovinelliE (2002) The Cunning of Recognition: Indigenous Alterities and the Making of Australian Multiculturalism, Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
22.
PovinelliE (2006) The Empire of Love: Toward a Theory of Intimacy, Genealogy, and Carnality, Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
23.
RortyR (1990) Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth: Philosophical Papers, New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
24.
RutherfordD (2009) Sympathy, statebuilding, and the experience of empire. Cultural Anthropology24(1): 1–32.
25.
Schmitt C (2007) The Concept of the Political. Schwab G (trans). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
26.
SmithA ([1759] 2010) The Theory of Moral Sentiments, New York, NY: Penguin.
TaylorC (1994) The politics of recognition. In: GutmannATaylorC (eds) Multiculturalism, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, pp. 25–73.
29.
ThelenT (2015) Care as social organization: Creating, maintaining and dissolving significant relations. Anthropological Theory15(4): 497–515.
30.
ThroopCJ (2010) Suffering and Sentiment: Exploring the Vicissitudes of Experience and Pain in Yap, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
31.
TicktinM (2011) Casualties of Care, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
32.
Tomonaga K (2005) Nihon kara Sekai he no Hasshin: Shokugyō to Seikei ni Motoduku Sabetsu [A Missive from Japan to the World: Discrimination Based on Work and Descent]. Buraku Liberation and Human Rights Research Institute (ed.). Osaka, JP: Kaihou Shuppansha.
33.
TsudaT (2003) Strangers in the Ethnic Homeland: Japanese Brazilian Return Migration in Transnational Perspective, New York, NY: Columbia University Press.
34.
WeeksK (2011) The Problem With Work: Feminism, Marxism, Antiwork Politics, and Postwork Imaginaries, Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
35.
WeinerM (1997) Introduction. In: WeinerM (ed.) Japan’s Minorities: The Illusion of Homogeneity, New York, NY: Routledge, pp. xiv–xxii.
36.
YoneyamaL (2003) Bōryoku, Sensō, Ridoresu: Tabunkashugi no Poritikusu [Violence, War, Redress: The Politics of Multiculturalism], Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten.
