Eas205 unit 9 2015 16

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EAS205AutumnSemester　2013-2014
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Can you ‘become’ Japanese?
• Extremely difficult to obtain Japanese nationality
• Those who are successful must denounce their
original nationality

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What does it mean to be
Japanese?

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Aim
• To introduce the general theme of identity,
• To address the role of ethnicity in the
construction of Japanese identity,
• To analyse critically the concepts of
‘homogeneity’ and ‘heterogeneity’ as tools for
understanding Japanese society.
Of the same kind,
alike
Diverse in character
or content

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Objectives:
1) To discuss identity and national identity,
2) To introduce and critique the concept of
‘ethnicity’ at the heart of post-war Japanese
identity,
3) To assess the degree to which Japanese
society is ‘homogeneous’ or
‘heterogeneous’.

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Wat is “identity”?
• Can be understood in different ways:
• Personal identity
Gender
Ethnicity
Occupation, etc.
• National identity
Irrespective of any other identities,
Share a common identity based on:
all being members of the same nation
A common sense of belonging among the group.

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The nature of identity
Benedict Anderson: Belonging to an “imagined
community” （ 1983/1991 ） :
• We accept the idea of having things in common that
tie us together, despite differences (wealth,
occupation...) and even though we may not know
everyone in the community.
• There may be some innate differences between
people based on race, but nothing fundamental.
• Rather, race is used as the basis to create ethnic
identity.
the nature of identity issocial, rather than biological.

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Understanding Japanese
identity
• More than / other than biological issue.
• Understanding the identity of the ‘Japanese
people’ requires knowledge of historical and
institutional circumstances in which Japanese
identity has been constructed.
• Who the Japanese people are, and who has
Japanese identity are both contested questions.

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The 3 essential elements
• Elements that make up the national identity of
the Japanese people:
• Ethnicity: Through blood lineage a particular
ethnicity is passed on to the next generation by
the previous as a key element in that identity.
• Culture: Minimally, language. But more broadly
customs and ways of doing things that
determine people belong to one cultural
group and not another.
• Nationality: The legal definition of identity, as
determined by the laws of the state.

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Nationality and identity
• A member of its community results from:
• Being born within the territorial boundaries of a
state or the sovereign space claimed by the state
(jus soli)
The sovereign space may include being born on
board a vessel or plane flying the sovereign flag of
that state
• Progenitors having the right to pass on their
nationality to their off-springs (jus sanguinis)
...but, this right may be circumscribed if the father
have the right to pass on nationality but not the
mother, for example

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Each of the 3 elements'
weight varies
• The 3 elements all differ in their importance
depending on the people in question:
• A greater degree of congruence amongst the 3
variables, compared to other national identities.
• A crucial point about the case of Japan:
• Nationality is not determined by place of birth but
rather by lineage, the mother and father of a child

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How to balance the
3 essential elements?
A matter of
nationality/law?
A matter of
Ethnicity?

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The law and the lineage
• The revision to the Nationality Law and Family
Registration Law took effect 1 January 1985:
• Before then, the offspring of a Japanese father,
irrespective of the nationality of the mother, was
entitled to Japanese nationality
• Under the revised law:
• The offspring of a Japanese mother, irrespective
of the nationality of the father, is also entitled
the Japanese nationality

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Legal nationality
• The offspring of an international marriage may
have the opportunity to gain dual nationality:
• In the case of Japan, the Nationality Law (Article
14) permits the offspring dual nationality up to
the age of 22.
• After that, he/she has to choose either
Japanese or the other nationality.
• Question: Do those who choose Japanese
nationality, have Japanese national identity?

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Let's think it all over again
• Putting together ‘national’ and ‘identity’ may
seem to bring a simple answer to the question:
what is Japanese national identity.
• This splits people into 2 categories:
• Those who possess Japanese nationality = who
are expected to have Japanese identity.
• Those who do not possess Japanese nationality
= who are not expected to have Japanese
identity.

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• Dividing people into two discrete groups simply
gives us a legal definition of nationality, but not
an understanding of national identity.
It is but a distinction between people based on
having a passport of a country or not.
Japanese national identity also involves ethnicity
and culture.
It involves how Japanese people are represented,
and how they represent themselves.
Identity is opaque and fluid, not given, and
constructed within a specific historical and
institutional setting.
Nationality ≠ National
Identity

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National identity:
not predetermined
• A young person from an international marriage
opts for Japanese nationality at 22:
• Does he/she possesses Japanese national
identity?
• Japanese nationality often relates on how the
offspring appears ethnically and culturally
Japanese.
• So, having the Japanese nationality may not
mean the wider community accepts that person
as having Japanese nationality identity.

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Ethnicity and identity:
The Bathhouse Case
• What of someone who naturalizes as a
Japanese, speaks the language and adopts
the culture (to some extent), but is not
ethnically Japanese?
• In April 2005 the Supreme Court rejected an
appeal by a naturalized American for
compensation for discrimination in a bathhouse.
• The bathhouse had a sign in English saying,
‘Japanese only’.
• Despite showing his driver’s license as proof of
his Japanese nationality, the bathhouse refused
him entry.

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What the case shows
• For the bathhouse owner, a Japanese passport
(nationality) did not make him Japanese (national
identity).
• The Law states that Japanese nationality can be
acquired by birth or naturalization.
• Clearly, someone can become a ‘Japanese
national’ through due legal process,
• ...but the case shows that the law simply
distinguishes between Japanese nationals and non
Japanese nationals.

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What the case implies
• The Nationality Law does not distinguish between
Japanese nationals and those regarded as having
Japanese identity
This also means that Japanese identity is not only a
matter of self-definition but requires communal
acceptance.

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Nationality is not the
border
• Changes in the legal system can and do make
decisions on who are nationals.
• Who is Japanese or not according to the law is the
result of a political process, the making of policy, not
the ethnic make up of a person.
• ...but, the ethnic make up of people can be used as a
way to determine the border between Japanese
people and others,
• ...and, that is irrespective of the nationality of people
as Japanese..
the Japanese Identity is ethnicity.  historical.

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Post-war Japanese
identity: Ethnicity
• There are various ways of constructing
identities.
• At the heart of Japanese identity is ethnicity
• The idea of a consanguineous relationship as
the basis for people to join a community with the
national identity, ‘Japanese’.
• The historical roots to this ethnic identity go
back to the needs of the Meiji state to forge a
nation.

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During the Tokugawa or
Edo period (1600-1867)
• The population was divided into a feudal hierarchy:
warriors, peasants, artisans, merchants (Shi-nô-kô-
shô / 士農工商 ).
• No sense of sharing a national identity as Japanese.
• Stratified, the society were divided.
• The country was split into different regions: people
spoke different dialects, strongly attached to locality,
and divided amongst themselves.
• Sharing a common sense of all belonging to one
nation, sharing a national identity was not
commonplace.

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1868 Meiji Restoration
• With the arrival of Commodore Perry’s ‘black
ships’ in 1853, and the possibility of Japan
being colonized, the choice was how to respond
to the arrival of Western imperial powers.
• With the restoration of the emperor and the start
of the Meiji period in 1868, national leaders
faced the task of knitting the nation together
• It was imperative for the Meiji elite to build up a
sense of nation, of belonging to one community

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Importance of belonging
• The goal was to redraw the boundaries to
include everyone in an all-embracing sense of
belonging to the same group of people, the
Japanese.
• Giving meaning to the symbolic boundaries
amongst classes and people was not seen as
a priority.
• Standard Japanese (based on Tokyo dialect)
was promoted and local dialects were
suppressed.

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Belonging to the nation
• A common culture was spread:
The Japanese state was strengthened by including outcast
groups (Burakumin).
The boundaries of the state was expanded.
Ezo (and the inhabitants incl. Ainu) in the North, were
incorporated with the creation of the prefecture of
Hokkaido in 1868.
Japan legally included the Ainu people within the national
boundaries, as part of the Japanese ‘nation’.
But the Ainu were ethnically and culturally different.
In 1879, Ryukyu Kingdom was abolished and was
incorporated into Japan despite differences in ethnicity and
culture.

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Integration and the
sense of nation
• Integration meant the promotion of standard
Japanese language and the erosion of local
culture.
• In 1910, a sense of nation had been created by
identifying the nation with the Japanese Yamato
ethnic group, seen to be superior to others.
• This, particularly when the boundaries of the
Japanese state expanded further.
• Historically, the integration of Hokkaido and
Okinawa was followed by the imperialist
expansion of Japan.

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Imperialist expansion of
Japan
Country/region Year How it was colonized
Taiwan 1895
Karafuto (Sakharin) 1905 Russo-Japanese war
Kwantung (south Manchuria) 1905 Russo-Japanese war
Korea 1910
The Pacific Mandate
Territories
1919
Assigned by the League of
Nations after WW I
Manchuria 1931 De facto control
North China 1937 De facto control
•With varying degrees of emphasis, Japanese language and culture were
spread in the colonies.
•The defeat (WWII) ended the Japanese colonial and administrative
domination, but the idea of the ethnic core of Japanese identity in the form
of Japan as a homogenous nation continued.

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The post-WW II period
• The postwar period saw a lot of
introspection...
• Despite the sense of the Japanese as superior
and unique, the war had been lost.
• Intense interest was developed in trying to
understand the Japanese, illustrated by what
became known as discourse on the Japanese:
NihonjinronNihonjinron

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Are Japanese different?
• Focus: Japanese, as a race, are different from
other people.
• Some argue on Japan as a group society, with
hierarchical links between people.
• This makes Japanese different from the
‘individualist’ West.
• Many argue on the ‘uniqueness’
of the Japanese, their history,
the difficulty of the language, etc.

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Creating a sense of
homogeneity
• IMPORTANT: the promotion of a discourse on
‘the Japanese’ reinforced the self-
representation of Japanese people as different
and unique.
• ... and influenced the way Japanese people
perceive themselves in terms of ethnicity.
• Nihonjinron served to reinforce the sense of
Japan as a homogeneous nation.

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Is Japan homogeneous?
• The portrayal of Japan as a homogeneous
nation pays attention to the majority of people in
Japan in terms of ethnicity, the Yamato people.
• Why does it matter if Japanese people believe
their society is homogeneous?
• It is based on the premise that, due to the belief in
the homogeneity of Japan, minorities do not exist.
• That is, a discourse of a homogenous Japan
makes certain groups of people ‘invisible’.

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No minorities?
• In Sept. 1979, Japan ratified:
the UN International Covenant on Economic,
Social and Cultural Rights and
the UN International Covenant on Civil and
Political Rights.
• In 1980, the Japanese government submitted
a report (as required under Article 40 of the
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights)
declaring that, as defined, minorities in Japan
‘did not exist’.

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Politicising homogeneity

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Stats and facts
• It is difficult to offer accurate statistics on how
many of Japan’s 127 million people are a
‘minority’.
• Should the number just be based on those of
non-Japanese nationality, or include e.g.
Burakumin, Ainu and Okinawan (Ryūkyūan)?
• Whatever measure is taken, the percentage is
small: foreign nationals in 2011 rated 1.98% of
the population, accounting for 2,533,441 people
(excluding Burakumin, Ainu, and Okinawan) .

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Foreign nationals in Japan
These figures include both ‘old comers’ and
‘new comers’.
Old comers mainly being Korean and Chinese
or their descendants who migrated to Japan
(forcibly or not) prior to or during the war, and
remained in Japan after the defeat.

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Second, third and fourth
generations
• The vast majority of Korean and Chinese
minority in Japan are the second, third or
fourth generation born in Japan.
• Some of them were naturalized, while others
seek to maintain a Korean or Chinese culture.
• Portraying Japan as homogeneous downplays
the heterogeneous nature of Japanese
society.
• This heterogeneity can and does take many
forms.

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Heterogeneity revealed
Ethnically different Example: Anglo-Saxon foreigners
Ethnically close to Japanese but
seen as different
Resident Chinese/Koreans who speaks
and culturally behave as Japanese
More than one overlapping
identities
May pass as Japanese but maintain
their own background culture
Japanese nationals but not seen
as mainstream Japanese
Ainus, Okinawans
Japanese nationals but historically
suffered discrimination
Burakumin

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Challenges to homogeneity
• A policy of assimilation has eroded differences.
...but ethnic or cultural identity may be the base of a
challenge to Japanese national identity.
Societal level: minorities may promote the idea of Japan as
a multicultural society.
Individual level: legally “Japanese” by nationality with
separate languages and cultures Ainu and Okinawans may:
Prioritize such identities in Japan and abroad.
When asked if they are Japanese  “No. I’m Okinawan” 
politicize Okinawan identity.
Build up a sense of the existence
of minority groups in Japan.
Build up a sense of the existence
of minority groups in Japan.

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• If prioritizing heterogeneity over homogeneity,
what is the basis for national identity?
• The critics of Japan as a homogenous society
argue that, rather than a society based on the
idea of homogeneity,
• Japan should recognize diversity and
heterogeneity.
• Move towards the creation of a multicultural
society.
Foundation to Japanese
national identity

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The choice
• If we accept the existence of minorities with a
different culture or language...
Should these groups be assimilated into the
mainstream? OR
Should multiculturalism be the policy pursued by
the government, where the mutual acceptance of
difference is promoted?
• Yet, if the issue is viewed in terms of homogeneity
or heterogeneity, the point to bear in mind is the
flexibility in the boundaries of legally defined
nationality, in tension with ethnicity and culture.

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Conclusion
• The construction of Japanese identity
• Identity and national identity
• The concept of ‘ethnicity’ in post-war
Japan
• Is Japan ‘homogeneous’ or
‘heterogeneous’?

Eas205 unit 9 2015 16

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