Race and Migration in Imperial Japan

Michael Weiner

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780415062282
• eBook ISBN: 9781136121326
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Ethnic Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

A high degree of cultural and racial homogeneity has long been associated with Japan, with its political discourse and with the lexicon of post-war Japanese scholarship. This book examines underlying assumptions. The author provides an analysis of racial discourse in Japan, its articulation and re-articulation over the past century, against the background of labour migration from the colonial periphery. He deconstructs the myth of a `Japanese race'.
Michael Weiner pursues a second major theme of colonial migration; its causes and consequences. Rather than merely identifying the `push factors', the analysis focuses on the more dynamic `pull factors' that determined immigrant destinations. Similarly, rather than focusing upon the immigrant, the author examines the structural need for low-cost temporary labour that was filled by Korean immigrants.

1 Race, nation and empire

Like contemporary racial politics, the scholarship dealing with race and racism is in considerable flux. In part this can be accounted for by the unanticipated reappearance of racial issues on national agendas long after social science and history had declared them dead. Scholars now approach this area with a heightened awareness of the complexity of the subject and with considerably more interest in empirical studies. While few commentators would any longer deny the existence of racism throughout the world, the voluminous literature on the theme of race contains no consensual definition of the term ‘racism’. As Chris Mullard has remarked, ‘There exist as many definitions in the literature as there do specialists and experts in the field’.¹ In the past, writers relied upon a concept of racism which itself rested upon two assumptions: the first, that human populations could be categorised into different types, or races, on the basis of fixed biological characteristics which were passed down genetically from one generation to the next; and the second, that human potential, that is to say an individual’s social, cultural, economic and intellectual capacities, were also biologically determined in such a way as to create a hierarchy of races. Although such arguments remain deeply embedded within ‘common-sense’ discourse, most social scientists in Europe and North America have moved away from the assumption that races exist as easily identifiable categories. Instead, there is at least a tacit acceptance that the classification of human populations on the basis of ‘race’ is a social activity or construction which occurs within a particular historical context. To put it another way, the classification of peoples into easily measured discrete categories is itself a human, or social, activity which takes place within certain types of society at specific stages of economic, political and social development. This process has been defined as ‘ethnicisation’ by Wallerstein, and ‘racialisation’ by Banton and others.²

Although there has been considerable research into the production and reproduction of racial ideologies and racism in Europe and North America, the Japanese case has rarely been the subject of systematic analysis. Moreover, in both the Japanese- and English-language literature dealing with these topics, commentators have generally made use of a concept of racism based upon the notion of racial prejudice existing at the level of personal feelings. While never explicitly stated, these formulations offer a definition of racism which involves two elements. There is first of all the recurrent and uncritical acceptance of the notion that the world’s population is indeed composed of different races of which the Japanese are one. Second, and following on from the first, is the assumption that racism can therefore be reduced to hostility between races.

The work of Hayashida, Wagatsuma and Yoneyama are typical in this regard. Hayashida, for example, argues that the tendency to exclude and denigrate others is an inherent feature of the Japanese social structure. He finds that traditional notions of purity and pollution found in Shintō, with their emphasis on ‘blood’ relations, have largely determined the boundaries which separate those ‘within’ from the excluded ‘other’. Given the historical importance of ‘blood’ in defining social relations within society, Hayashida concludes that there is a natural propensity for the Japanese to discriminate against those who do not share the same ‘blood’ line.³ Indeed, references to junketsushugi (pure blood ideology) abound in both prewar and postwar literature. The noted anthropologist Mizuno Yu, for example, has argued that despite the gradual assimilation of ‘foreign blood’ early in its history, the superior qualities of the basic Japanese stem race have never been threatened.⁴ While echoing the racial discourse prevalent in prewar literature, Mizuno’s assertion that the Japanese have retained certain unique racial qualities since at least the Jomon period is characteristic of much social scientific writing in postwar Japan as well. The apparently immutable linkage between race, conceptualised in terms of bloodline, and culture is clearly evident in the writings of scholars such as Kamishima Jirō, Masuda Yoshio and Furuhata Tanemoto. Yoneyama and Wagatsuma also suggest that racism is deeply rooted in Japanese culture and has its origins in the pre-modern period. Evidence for this, they maintain, can be found in the Japanese fascination with and high evaluation of fair skin which appears as early as the Nara period (719–794). Such beliefs have been reinforced and nourished through systematic contacts with white-skinned Westerners since the middle of the nineteenth century, in particular Americans, and largely account for the tendency of Japanese to denigrate non-white populations.⁵ Although this clearly complements the essentially descriptive accounts found in Ninomiya⁶ and other earlier works, it fails to provide an adequate explanation for either the production of racial ideologies or the survival of discrimination against burakumin (indigenous outcaste community) and other marginalised groups within Japan. The overall value of these approaches is further undermined by the absence of a coherent theoretical basis for the discussion. In suggesting that racism is somehow inherent in Japanese society, all three fail to acknowledge the problematic nature of race as an analytical category.

To be fair, they would probably maintain that, once established, racial thinking becomes institutionalised and takes on an autonomous existence, independent of social, legal or economic structures. Racial prejudice and discrimination should therefore be regarded as premodern constructions, whose continued existence, despite the introduction of liberal-democratic values, is due to a type of functional autonomy. This would seem to imply that antipathy expressed towards burakumin and Koreans is the sum of all the individual prejudices which occur naturally and inherently in the minds of every Japanese. Racial discrimination is thus reduced to the level of individual behavioural pathologies, a position which is difficult to maintain in the light of the vast body of literature available on how children learn from the surrounding society. Ultimately their arguments fail to account for the social factors which have produced and reproduced a psychology of racial prejudice in Japan.

Similar problems are encountered in much of the English-language literature concerning minority populations in Japan. Mitchell’s early study of the Korean community, for example, implicitly acknowledges the existence of races and identifies the conflicts which arose after 1910 between resident Koreans and the Japanese majority as being racial in character.⁷ No attempt is made to define either race or racism, nor does the text contain any explanation of the ideological basis for discrimination against and hostility towards the Korean population. Mitchell does acknowledge that Korean immigrants between the fourth and sixth centuries were welcomed by the native Japanese as the bearers of superior culture and technology, and were awarded a commensurately high status. At the same time, however, he argues that ‘full assimilation’ was only possible because the population of Japan was ‘still heterogeneous’ and that a ‘fully centralised’ state had not yet come into existence. Although no further evidence is provided in the text, he concludes that ‘Korean immigrants could establish themselves quite easily in Japan in this period, but they were greeted with mild prejudice even then’.⁸

In a later study of the Korean community Lee and De Vos attempt to draw a distinction between the burakumin population in contemporary Japan which is ‘covertly branded as biologically unassimilable’, and the more ‘overt plight of the ethnically distinct Korean population caught in the dilemma of identity fostered by present-day legal restrictions as well as by discriminatory attitudes inherited from the past’.⁹ Here again, the reader is not provided with a definition of race or racism, only the implicit assumption that a distinction can be drawn between a biologically determined group, or race, and a socially constructed population, or ethnic group. At the same time, however, the authors maintain that Koreans suffer from ‘racist-caste thinking peculiar to the Japanese’,¹⁰ who regard the Koreans as biologically distinct and inferior.¹¹ Indeed, earlier in the text, the authors themselves appear to accept that racial or biological differences between Japanese and Koreans do exist. While noting that relations between the peoples of Japan and Korea date back to a period prior to the establishment of unified states in either country, they casually conclude that the movement of peoples between the peninsula and the Japanese islands were of such frequency and magnitude during the prehistoric period that ‘Perhaps it will never be possible for scientific research to distinguish these waves of incursion that imparted distinct differences in racial composition between the people of the Japanese isles and the Korean peninsula’.¹² In an attempt to reconcile this apparent contradiction in their argument, the authors claim that ‘Not only are the Japanese incapable of assimilating those of obviously different physical strains but their racism is so strong that they cannot readily assimilate even those who display no physiological differences’.¹³ While the present author would certainly agree that cultural differences can be, and often have been, used to identify certain groups as inferior and to justify their subordination in ‘racial’ terms, it is first necessary to outline both the economic and political environment, as well as the ideological terrain, in which the process of ‘racialisation’ takes place. It is only by reconstructing this landscape that we can avoid the analytical confusion which characterises the work of De Vos and Lee, and fully appreciate the continued relevance of racial discourse in contemporary Japan.

Racism needs to be understood as a supportive ideology, which is the product of specific sets of unequal economic and political relationships, and which serves to explain and justify the continued existence of those relationships. This is not to suggest that racist ideologies are either simply imposed from above as a means of social control, or that their content is fixed and immutable. Ideologies, as Miles argues, ‘have to be produced and reproduced, with the implication that their content and object is subject to change’.¹⁴ The common element in all racial ideologies is the correlation between membership of a particular group and the possession of a set of negatively evaluated group qualities. Historically, physical features, such as skin colour, have acted as effective criteria for distinguishing one group from another, but the important distinction is not between physical and/or cultural characteristics as criteria, so much as how these criteria are regarded and acted upon. As defined by Miles:

the concept of racism refers to those negative beliefs held by one group which identify and set apart another by attributing significance to some biological or other ‘inherent’ characteristic(s) which it is said to possess, and which deterministically associate that characteristic(s) with some other (negatively evaluated) feature(s) or action(s). The possession of these supposed characteristics may be used to justify the denial of the group equal access to material and other resources and/or political rights.¹⁵

If, therefore, a race is a human population so defined, the question to be considered is why and how peoples have come to be classified in this way. Moreover, it is only through an analysis of the conditions under which racial categorisation has taken place that the nature and significance of racism can be understood. This necessitates an exploration of the past, for it is not possible to understand the ways in which racial ideologies have taken shape without first examining the context in which they were historically produced and reproduced. Although written twenty-five years ago, Washburn’s advice still holds true:

If one has no purpose for classification, the number of races can be multiplied almost indefinitely, and it seems to me that the erratically varying number of races is a source of confusion to student, laymen, and to specialist. I think we should require people who propose a classification of races to state in the first place why they wish to divide the human species and to give in detail the important reasons for subdividing our species.¹⁶

It is generally acknowledged that there are two types of situation in which an ideology of race and racism is thought to exist: first, the colonial context, particularly that associated with late-nineteenth-century European imperial expansion and, second, situations in which migrants and/or refugees from the periphery seek, or are invited, to enter the labour market of the metropolitan state. But, while these may appear as discrete categories in theory, in reality the distinction is far more difficult to maintain. In many instances the migration itself is a direct or indirect consequence of colonial subjugation, or, in the postcolonial context, the result of economic dependencies which had been created during the colonial period. The flow of Korean labour to Japan between 1910 and 1945 is a particularly good example of the sort of overlapping which can and does occur. In this case the migration itself took place within a colonial context and involved both the voluntary and involuntary movement of hundreds of thousands of Koreans to Japan.

Similarly, once underway, racial discrimination itself includes quite a wide variety of different situations for the victimised group and an equally wide range of policies pursued towards that group. It may, for example, mean the denial of admission to the full social, political and legal rights of citizenship. It might mean limiting group access to certain facilities, resulting in unfair competition and economic exploitation. It might involve scapegoating by and outright hostility from the dominant community. Racial discrimination might also involve either the forced assimilation or segregation of a particular population. A people may be denied the right to emigrate, or forced to emigrate to another country or, as has been the case in South Africa, to a segregated area within the same country. It might also incorporate the application of punitive measures, or even policies leading to extermination as in parts of Nazi-occupied Europe. The racialisation and subordination of a particular group may also incorporate most if not all of the above, dependent upon changes in the economic and political environment.

The point I wish to make here is that racial ideologies and politics are neither fixed in content, nor simply a consequence of capitalism or late-nineteenth-century imperialism. To suggest otherwise would be to ignore the long history of anti-Semitism in Europe, and would also run the risk of falling prey to the very sort of crude economic determinism which characterises some Marxist scholarship on the subject of racism in general. Racism, like all ideologies, has cultural and historical roots. It does not necessarily exist simply as a pure idea, but as a loose set of discourses, which are themselves often contradictory in character and which, under changing circumstances, may be articulated in such a way as to imbue them with new meaning and significance. Indeed, there is a considerable body of evidence which points to the existence of nativist or racial discourses, later embodied in the notion of the Kazoku Kokka (Family State) in Japan, which predate both the establishment of empire and the migration of Koreans.

Some of the earliest examples of racial/ethnic exceptionalism can, in fact, be traced back to the writings of Motoori Norinaga and other scholars associated with the Kokugaku (School of National Learning) towards the end of the Tokugawa period. Unlike early Tokugawa Confucian scholars like Ogyū Sorai and Itō Jinsai, who regarded Chinese Confucianism as the primary source of civilisation and morality, or scholars of the Kimon School, such as Yamazaki Ansai and Asami Keisai, who attempted to accommodate Confucian norms with contemporary social and economic realities by identifying the Way of the Sages with the Way of the Kami, the Kokugakusha rejected Sinocentric definitions of what constituted civilisation and barbarism entirely. In doing so, Norinaga and others sought to establish the innate superiority of Japanese culture over that of China and all other nations, and in this respect foreshadowed the imperial rhetoric of the late nineteenth century. Norinaga argued that the ancient purity of the Divine Land (Japan), as revealed in the Kojiki (Record of Ancient Matters), had in fact been corrupted by external agents in the form of Confucianism and Buddhism.¹⁷ Slavish adherence to an alien culture had only served to obscure the true Wakon (Japanese Spirit), and thus deprive Japan of its rightful position within the world order. Although the criteria for Japanese superiority, as articulated by the nativists, was often fanciful or irrational, Kokugaku thought raised concerns which influenced the scholarship of both the later Confucian Mito School, which asserted Japan’s position as the Middle Kingdom, and that of students of Rangaku (Dutch Learning). Thus, early in the...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of figures and tables
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Race, nation and empire
• 2 Migration: first phase
• 3 Some consequences of Cultural Rule
• 4 Migration, 1925–1938
• 5 Assimilation and opposition
• 6 The mobilisation of Koreans during the Second World War
• 7 The limits of assimilation
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index