Internal Boundaries and Models of Multiculturalism in Contemporary Japan

INTRODUCTION:
INTERNAL BOUNDARIES AND MODELS OF

MULTICULTURALISM IN CONTEMPORARY JAPAN
Nelson Graburn and John Ertl
Introduction: Multiculturalism in the New Japan

THIS VOLUME ILLUMINATES THE COMPLEX social processes result-
ing from the activism of native and immigrant minority communities in
Japan and shows that their influence is prevalent throughout the localities,
the margins, and the grassroots, and extends into central institutions as
well. It also reveals and highlights some of the more positive directions
among these processes.1 The sociopolitical goal of these directions is to
transform Japan from an asserted homogeneity into a multicultural society
that not only admits its cultural diversity but also upholds and celebrates
this complex political situation. There are no perfectly construed models
Copyright © 2008. Berghahn Books, Incorporated. All rights reserved.
for a multicultural society in the world, as the concept of multiculturalism

is a value-laden prescription rather than a descriptive condition. Further-
more, each nation has its own history and its own mix of “minorities” and
non-native immigrants and historically the two are necessarily connected,
and at some points indistinguishable. Japan is now a nation with 1.91 mil-
lion officially registered foreigners, constituting nearly 2 percent of the
total population (Nakamura 2005), with an additional unknown number
of non-registered immigrants and ethnically unclear Japanese nationals.
Our title phrase, “the new Japan,” is again both prescriptive as well as
descriptive in usage. Following Sugita (2001), we perceive a third era of re-
newal taking place today, along the lines of Japan’s previous ages of trans-
formation after 1868 and 1945.
Endnotes for this chapter begin on page 24.
Graburn, N. H., Ertl, J., & Tierney, R. K. (Eds.). (2008). Multiculturalism in the new japan : Crossing the boundaries within.
Berghahn Books, Incorporated.
Created from indonesiau-ebooks on 2024-02-05 05:02:38.
2 Nelson Graburn and John Ertl
After the Meiji restoration Japan’s elite judged both their country and
the Japanese people as physical bodies that were dangerously weak. The
new government, committed to the twin policies of fukoku kyôhei (wealthy
country, strong military), took up the challenge of renegotiating its treaties
with the Western powers. Japan underwent self-strengthening both by ac-
quiring industries, institutions, and military forces, and by disciplining
the people with new forms of mental and physical education in a national
school system. Within three decades Japan tested out these new strengths
with resounding success: against China in 1895 and against Russia in con-
tention for control of the Korea-Chinese border regions in 1904–1905.
These successes in turn encouraged those directing the nation to further
military adventures into Manchuria, China, Southeast Asia, the Aleutian
islands, and on to Pearl Harbor. Such ventures eventually led the nation to
a series of resounding defeats and tragedies, resulting in near physical de-
struction of many of Japan’s cities and industries, and the abandonment of
militarism.
Spurred on by both the instruction and the example of the Allied Occu-
pation, the new postwar government set off to catch up and compete with
the world again,2 this time in respect to industrial production. Starting
small and gaining market shares in industry after industry, Japan signaled
her new “coming out” with the 1964 Tokyo Olympic Games and the 1970
Osaka World’s Fair. Much of the competing world in time came to fear
“Japan as Number One” (Vogel 1979) and reacted with economic and legal
measures to stymie that success by imposing import restrictions that in-
cluded banning whaling and forcing Japan to import beef, and by accusing
Japan of almost inhuman proclivities such as “clannishness” in work and
leisure” or working so hard as to provoke sudden death. Nevertheless,
Japan’s newfound international self-confidence led to ever-widening ex-
port markets and to increasing numbers of affluent tourists exploring the
world. The end of this cycle came rather suddenly3 at the end of the 1980s,
following crippling economic consequences stemming largely from prop-
erty speculation at home and abroad.
Entering the contemporary era that we are primarily concerned with in
this book, Japan remains a significant economic and political power, but no
one expects Japan to conquer the world in the same way again. One arena
in which Japan may take the lead would be in sustaining a high standard
of living while safeguarding the environment. In many respects Japan has
given the world leads to follow in respect to energy conservation, recy-
cling, and tax incentives for fuel-efficient vehicles. On the other hand the
numbers of large-engine cars and the proliferation of suburban tract hous-
ing and shopping centers are indicators that Japanese consumption pat-
terns are not always aligned with political goals. As Japan has increasingly
opened its borders and economic markets to the international community
over the past few decades, it has also faced similar challenges relating to
Introduction 3
immigration and intercultural diversity. The many chapters in this volume

extend a growing number of analyses on the changing international demo-
graphics and increasing intercultural contact in this nation that has long
been described as one of the most homogeneous nations in the world. It
would be a disservice to praise Japan as a model multicultural nation, as
many forms of discrimination and structural inequalities continue to per-
sist. However, changes in both the national policies and popular imagina-
tion regarding multiculturalism in Japan have lent an overall positive tone
to the chapters in this volume. We find that multiculturalism has become
a key concept used to describe areas where old hegemonies are giving
way to new social forms, while simultaneously providing a model and a
method for achieving a new Japanese state.
Multiculturalism in the Anthropology of Japan

For many readers the notion of “Japanese multiculturalism” may ring as an
oxymoron. Even despite increasing globalization and international migra-
tion, Japan still maintains one of the lowest figures of foreign national resi-
dents and a considerable share of these resident aliens, such as second- and
third-generation Chinese and Koreans, are not always noticeably foreign.
Regardless of the numbers, the visibility of foreign residents has in-
creased substantially, as politicians, academics, and the mass media have
brought a spotlight upon the contributions and consequences foreigners
have brought to Japan (e.g., Douglass and Roberts 2000; Komai 2001; Lie
2001; Oguma 2002; Weiner 1997). Complementing immigration there has
been a concerted internationalization effort set out by the government to
ease the transition to life in Japan for foreigners, increase interpersonal ex-
changes between Japanese and foreign nationals at home and abroad, and
to improve the image of Japan overseas. This has included the adoption of
multiculturalism as an ideal for public policy, aimed towards reversing

previous policies that erased cultural distinctions and worked to keep mi-
norities at the bottom of the social chain (cf. Hale 2002; Turner 1993).
Multiculturalism is by no means a comprehensive effort made by the
central administration, for as much as it may be lauded for slowly chang-
ing its stance towards minority and foreign national residents, it has been
the activism and volunteerism of concerned citizens (Kingston 2004) and
vocal scholars (Shoflji 2004) that has brought multiculturalism to its current
prominence. Furthermore, multiculturalism is inherently an international
issue that has been brought about through debates on the nature of Japa-
nese national character. It is well documented that the postwar literature
called Nihonjinron (Japanese character studies), which included English
language translations financed by the government, was one of the avenues
through which the “myth” of Japanese homogeneity was formed and dis-
seminated (Befu 1983). The origins of this discourse in the postwar period
are often traced to the publication of Ruth Benedict’s Chrysanthemum and

the Sword (1946) (Aoki 1999), which stimulated interest in how Japan is
perceived by outsiders (especially Americans) and went on to sell over 2.3
million copies in Japanese (Fukui 1999: 173). This text was representative
of the national character studies developed by anthropologists working
during the Second World War, which feature advanced “nations” as the
primary unit of analysis, comparable with other nations in terms of simi-
larities and differences (Neiburg and Goldman 1998). The national charac-
ter approach set the framework for future studies that continued to explain
Japan in holistic terms, often using the United States as its convenient cul-
tural opposite (e.g., Doi 1973; Nakane 1973). The prominence of Japanese
national character studies perpetuated the most basic of assumptions that
the study of Japan was the study of “the Japanese people.” This bias rein-
forced the illusion of homogeneity as studies largely ignored the legacy of
Japan’s recent colonial endeavors, expansion to its frontier territories, and
historical interactions with the outside world, favoring analyses that
stressed enduring and native cultural traits (Ryang 2004).
Complementary to national character studies has been considerable re-
search on Japan’s minority and indigenous groups during the postwar era.
Minorities are generally divided into three categories: Japan’s “indige-
nous” peoples, the Ainu, Okinawan, and Buraku; Koreans and Chinese
brought to Japan during the Pacific War and their descendents; and recent
migrant workers from Latin America and Asia. While studies of Japan’s
minorities are admirably aimed at illuminating the racial and ethnic diver-
sity of the Japanese islands, commonplace categorizations such as “out-
caste” and “minority” have often been found inappropriate, especially as
individuals and their representative organizations reject such classifications
themselves, as they may allow for the imposition of sanctioned inequali-
ties (Weiner 1997). Much of the early research on minorities inadvertently
reinforced the image of Japanese homogeneity, as representations of “Ja-

pan’s minorities” tended to isolate difference in specific geographic periph-
eries (Hokkaido, Okinawa, inner-city neighborhoods) or treat these groups
as “invisible” (DeVos and Wagatsuma 1967; Yoshino R. and Murakoshi
1977) and “vanishing” (Etter 1949; Hilger 1971) and thus of little influence
on mainstream society. By representing their subjects as “minority groups,”
each with their own specific culture in danger of eradication or assimila-
tion, the category of “the Japanese” is presumed to be an equally uniform
majority. Even the routine practice of counting minorities trivializes their
influence on the mystique of Japanese homogeneity, regardless of whether
the numbers were shown to be increasing or declining, as it compartmen-
talizes individuals into categories that are either Japanese or non-Japanese.
Sparked by the new wave of immigrants to Japan from the early 1990s,
the study of Japanese multiculturalism came to prominence based upon a
Introduction 5
changing stance to the study of diversity. Instead of arguing that notions of

Japanese homogeneity are falsified by the presence of ethnic “others,” the
study of Japanese multiculturalism begins by complicating the category of
“the Japanese” by examining how it has been formed through particular
historical engagements within Japan and between Japan and the outside
world (Morris-Suzuki 1998). This research emerged from the lengthy re-
tort, mostly by Western trained scholars, to Japanese attempts to form a
postwar nationalism through Nihonjinron that built up notions of Japanese
uniqueness and superiority during a period of sharp economic growth
(Befu 2001; K. Yoshino 1992). The most straightforward texts of this genre
are the many new ethnographic and historical studies of specific immi-
grant and “minority” groups (Ryang 1997; Sered 1999; Sjoberg 1993; Tsuda
2003a). These are companioned with broad edited volumes on ethnic mi-
norities and immigrant groups, their interrelations to each other and the
Japanese state, and on the condition of migration to and from Japan (Doug-
lass and Roberts 2000; Weiner 1997). Responding to deficiencies in earlier
studies that defined these groups as the marginal “other” in contrast to the
dominant Japanese “self,” these texts have showcased the historical inter-
actions and political motivations that led to their seclusion. To oppose the
so-called myth of Japanese homogeneity many authors have written their
own counter narratives that detail a long history of ethnic, national, and
linguistic diversity (Denoon et al. 1996; Lie 2001; Murphy-Shigematsu
1993). Some narratives extend into the archaeological record to explain the
origins of the Japanese ethnicity from the earliest prehistoric evidence
through the formation of the early Yamato State, arguing that archaeolog-
ical, linguistic, and biological evidence shows a great deal of repeated ex-
change and mixture with the Asian continent (Hudson 1999; Kaner 1996).
Research on Japanese multiculturalism has great potential for altering
the belief in Japanese homogeneity, and we hope that our text will add to
the increasing narratives on the multifaceted nature of culture and identity

in Japan. The following chapters show that global issues such as immigra-
tion, business practices, and cultural exchanges are best understood in the
dynamics of particular localities. Where previous studies focused on larger
processes of international migrations or indigenous minority movements,
this book with its emphasis on ethnography allows for critical examina-
tions of categories such as nation, ethnicity, race, and culture, by showing
how their immediate articulations always manipulate and subvert univer-
sal classifications. Through a broad range of silhouettes and anecdotes on
the contemporary conditions of minorities and immigrants, Japanese citi-
zens’ engagements with diversity, and the local manifestations of national
policies and global processes, this volume demonstrates that multicultur-
alism has become a pervasive ideology in Japan that varies widely in
terms of its form, content, and manifestations.
Models of Multiculturalism
Japan is a nation best understood or defined by its relation to powerful oth-

ers (Ohnuki-Tierney 1990). From the Japanese point of view, Nakane (1978)
claimed that Japanese people are always conscious of belonging within or
outside a group or frame. The “uchi-soto” (inside outside) and “omote-ura”
(front or back) distinctions are highlighted. Since the early modern period,
membership at the national level has usually been posed as Nihonjin ver-
sus gaikokujin (Japanese versus foreigner). Since the opening to the West it
is usually non-Asians, particularly Caucasians, who have typified foreign-
ers. Chinese, Koreans, and others may be Ajiajin (Asians)—significantly
this categorization from time to time specifically excludes Japanese, espe-
cially when they have wanted to identify with the “advanced” industrial-
ized Western world. There is also an intermediate category of those who
are not truly outside, but are different or exotic, expressed in Japanese as
imin, ikoku. For instance this term is used in Japanese guidebooks about
Okinawa (see Komai 2003; Nugaido 1997: 16; Oguma 2002).
By the early twentieth century many Japanese leaders had traveled
abroad and learned Western ideas of democracy and socialism. A few mem-
bers of the two “internal” minorities, the Ainu and the Burakumin, fomented
resistance movements under the rubric of what we would now call human
rights. The Suiheisha (Levelers Association) was established in 1922 as the
first stable Buraku rights organization, informed by increasing activity of
tenants’ groups and labor unions and backed by socialist ideology out of
Russia (Neary 1997: 57). From 1945 until the 1980s, the cultural divisions
internal to Japan were not granted recognition: the “internal others,” Ainu,
Okinawans, and Buraku, were denied ethnic difference, and other non-
Japanese, such as Zainichi (Japan-dwelling) Chinese and Koreans were
ignored, though 90,000 were sent to North Korea (Morris-Suzuki 2005).
However, the Burakumin Liberation Movement reformed, aided by home-

grown communists, and attracted media attention by protesting continued
discrimination. Whether directly sparked by the Civil Rights movement in
the United States or by anticolonialism generally, Burakumin social and
educational history has shown remarkable parallels with that of African
Americans in terms of residential discrimination, education, and affirma-
tive action.
Japan was then engaged in its second great encounter with the Western
world, mainly through the economic sphere of trade. After the Occupation
had left, contacts with foreigners increasingly took place not at home
ground but in foreigners’ home countries. Efforts were made to familiarize
traveling Japanese with foreign language and cultures, so that they could
communicate more effectively and feel more self-confident. Thus informal
and later governmental initiatives of internationalization (kokusaika) were
implemented in many forms. This term can be very flexible, embracing
Introduction 7
both positive intercultural relations and the reification of ethno-national

boundaries. When kokusaika was imposed, many ordinary Japanese balked
at the idea of having to engage with foreigners in their homeland (Lebra,
1993: 13), much as Japanese tourists may return from overseas thankful
that they live in Japan.
One way of advancing internationalization and bringing trade to par-
ticipating localities was the establishment of social, business, and educa-
tional exchange programs. Sister-city relations were set up, at first with the
United States, and began to recreate their distinctiveness and identity
through such programs (Ertl, chapter 4). These “international cultural ex-
changes” became generally known as kokusai kôryû, a term that has another
meaning for ethnic education, referring to the interactions and exchanges
between immigrant groups, such as Vietnamese and Koreans, without
mainstream Japanese taking part (Okubo 2005). Though international ex-
change programs are still going strong, they have been massively supple-
mented by outbound and inbound international tourism, especially by
commercial homestay programs for young people in which the outgoing
Japanese outnumber the foreigners coming in.
However, in the past twenty-five years Japanese have not only looked
outward for trade and tourism, accompanied by kokusaika policies, but
parts of the nation have been “internationalized” through immigration.
The immediate cause for this shift was not only the global engagements of
the successful Japanese nation (Eades et al. 2000) but increasing numbers
of foreign workers brought in or entering illegally (Douglass and Roberts
2000; Komai 1999, 2001) to work at jobs Japanese consider kitanai, kitsui,
kiken (dirty, demanding, dangerous). Awareness of these minorities arose
only when visibly non-Japanese arrived in numbers, such as Vietnamese
refugees, and immigrant workers, especially Filipinos, South East Asians,
and South Asians including Singhalese and Nepalis, and Middle Eastern-
ers. The new workers and refugees came to be called nyûkama (newcom-
ers) and by back formation the long-standing minorities became known as
ôrudokama (oldcomers). According to Morris-Suzuki (1998: 194) Hatsuse
Ryûhei of Kobe University coined the phrase uchinaru kokusaika, which can
be glossed as internal or domestic internationalization (Hatsuse 1985) to
point to a change in the internationalization goals and processes. This has
generally been termed kokunai kokusaika, or “domestic internationalization.”
It became increasingly difficult to uphold a model of homogenous
Japan from the 1980s, although the belief that Japan is, always has been,
and should be homogenous directs right-wing public policy makers. New
terms emerged to describe and explain Japan’s new social body. Many of
them, like kokusai kôryû changed meaning over time, and most expressed
an ambiguity felt by different parts of Japanese society or even ambiva-
lence within one individual. These words cannot have exactly the same
connotations as their English equivalents and their use is very much situ-
ational. For instance the vague word esunikku (ethnic) has been imported to
describe exotic, different, even primitive, applied to imported arts, cloth-
ing, and cuisines; more recently daibâshiti (diversity) has emerged with a
generally positive ring, especially for tourist consumption. Both these “bor-
rowed” terms are used in commercial situations for commodities, not peo-
ple, and they strike a rather lightweight liberal chord. However, it could be
that borrowed words are used to cover up or soften the implications of their
Japanese equivalents, and being from the West makes them seem more ac-
ceptable if they express sociocultural realities that the West might expect.
One key term is tabunka kyôsei, “many cultures living together,” which
closely resembles the concept “multiculturalism.” One key example of
tabunka kyôsei emerged following the great Kobe earthquake of January
1995 (Takezawa, chapter 1) when Japanese, Koreans, Chinese, and other
foreigners living in the same devastated neighborhoods began to help each
other; this positive development was lauded by the press, print, and tele-
vision and held up as an example of something new in Japan. In other
instances the clash of cultural differences within Japan has not been uni-
formly positive. There is confusion over the nature of a society that in-
cludes foreign residents and workers, as shown in these remarks about
tabunka kyôsei by Toshio Iyotani (1995: 5, quoted in Pang 2000: 114–115):
“My … point concerns the co-existence of cultures, or multiculturalism.…

Yet discussions about the coexistence and symbiosis of cultures often are
tinged with the tacit conviction that the differences between cultures make
mutual understanding between them impossible. Accordingly, arguments
supporting ‘respect for other cultures’ may help avoid cross-cultural fric-
tion, but they also risk premature closure of any possibility for mutual un-
derstanding. In effect, arguments for cultural coexistence and those for
cultural exclusion boil down to the same thing.”
Seeing the negative side of tabunka kyôsei, some sociologists prefer to use
the phrase tabunka-shugi, which might also be translated as multicultural-
ism but could engender a more neutral “hands off” connotation of the fact
of, or the study of multiculturalism (Ishii and Yamauchi 1999; Sekine 2003).
Yet tabunka-shugi could also be interpreted as the policy of, and in favor of,
multiculturalism.
Kyôsei, literally meaning “symbiosis,” generally means “living together”
side-by-side in a relationship, positively as in commensality. Taking kyôsei
to mean “solidarity,” we can see the parallel with Emile Durkheim’s two
classic models4 of solidarity from Division of Labour (Durkheim 1893). John
Lie (2001: 50, 163) writes about the Japanese monoethnic identity of Ni-
honjinron as being based on a model of mechanical solidarity (between
groups of equals, who may also be rivals) as opposed to Durkheim’s orig-
inal intent of showing that the solidarity of complex societies is always
based on organic solidarity (interdependence amongst diverse people,
Introduction 9
closer to “symbiosis”). At one end of this continuum lies the dangerous sit-
uation pointed out by Iyotani, that of separate but equal (which allows
separation, segregation, or ghettoization), and at the other, the mutual de-
pendence shown by Takezawa (chapter 1) in describing the interethnic co-
operation after the Kobe earthquake. One central theme of this volume
illustrates how cultural pluralism is situational and articulated differen-
tially throughout Japan. For example, Burgess (chapter 3) shows the nec-
essary cooperation of foreign wives in rural communities; Yamanaka
(chapter 4) and Tsuda (chapter 6) show the interdependence between
Japanese employers’ need for cheap labor and migrant workers’ need for
comparatively good wages; and Ertl (chapter 4) shows the need for inter-
nationalization to stimulate local industry and identity.
Komai Hiroshi, an Advocate for Immigrants in Japan
“The most admirable thinkers within the scholarly community … do not

split their work from their lives. They seem to take both too seriously to
allow such dissociation, and they want to use each for the enrichment of the
other.” (Mills 1959: 195)
Japanese multiculturalism would be little more than a fanciful flight of

intellectual reflection were it not for the grassroots activism of concerned
individuals working to construct this ideal society in their local communi-
ties. The most evident figures in the struggle to form a harmonious multi-
cultural Japan are perhaps the civil servants and public educators that are
required by central government directives and community needs to form
outreach programs, moderate conflicts, and conduct language and cul-
tural training for immigrants and local citizens. In other cases it is religious,
industrial, and other leaders that instruct or impose upon others their ideals
about how to think about and act in “international” situations. Involved

citizens are prevalent in neighborhoods throughout Japan, who choose for
various reasons to reach out to their foreign neighbors, host international
students, visit a foreign country, and form interpersonal “multicultural”
relationships. The actions of such individuals, of many different national-
ities and ethnicities, are featured by the authors of every chapter of this
volume. In addition, most of the contributors function as activists in their
own right, as their writing is not only a description of the conditions of mul-
ticulturalism but an offshoot of their efforts to embrace and enact change
in the communities where they lived. The following is dedicated to out-
lining the life and work of Komai Hiroshi, the most noteworthy and ubiq-
uitous scholarly figure on immigration and Japanese multicultural society.
This examination of his activism provides an introduction to the social
conditions and motivation that infuse the multiculturalism movement in
Japan today.
Komai Hiroshi was born in Dalian, China during World War II. Like
most Japanese colonizers, he was repatriated to Japan in 1945 and he re-
members the discrimination he faced in elementary school (personal com-
munication 2005). Until recently a professor of sociology at Tsukuba
University, Komai is Japan’s most active scholar of immigration and mul-
ticulturalism; he is a true “public intellectual,” leading demonstrations,
organizing activist symposia, and writing briefs to Japanese courts and
ministries. Trained at the University of Tokyo as a sociologist of Southeast
Asia working on the modernization of Thailand (Tominaga et al. 1969), he
also carried out research on the revival of Buddhism since the Communist
rule in Cambodia (Komai 1997). He became interested in the lives of mi-
grant workers who left to work in industrialized countries. Working in
North America he published on both immigrant workers (Komai 1978)
and on “immigrant employers” (Komai 1979). He is best known for his re-
search, publications, and public activism with foreign workers in Japan,
changing his focus from the condition of temporary guest workers (Komai
1990) to a realization that many of them might stay in Japan (Komai 1994,
2001; Shipper 2003). Komai is well known overseas for his widely recom-
mended Foreign Migrants in Contemporary Japan (2001) (Abe 2002). He
belongs to overseas research groups from Monterey’s “Human Flows Proj-
ect” to Bangkok’s Chulalongkorn University “Intellectual Exchange” and
has a strong relationship with Melbourne’s LaTrobe University, whose
Transpacific Press published his 2001 work.
He was the lead author and editor of the six-volume Kôza: Gurobaru
suru Nihon to Imin Mondai (Japan and the Immigration Issue in Globaliza-
tion Series) (Komai 2002) with thirty-nine co-authors, some members of
minority populations. He points out there are many different kinds of im-
migration into Japanese society; for comparisons the authors examine im-
migration in the United States, France, Germany, England, the European
Union, and South America. The recession of the 1990s slowed demand or
halted labor immigration, but it later re-emerged. Komai proposed that
rather than trying to control immigration (shutsu nyûkoku kanri) the Japa-
nese agenda should be to construct an ideal multicultural society. In “How
to Build a Multicultural Society,” which introduces the final volume, he de-
fines multiculturalism as the attempt to create a national culture through
respecting the various cultures of ethnic minorities and short-term and
long-term immigrants, both those who have adopted the host nationality
and “foreigners” who have not. He asserts that multiculturalism is the local
manifestation of the developing “global culture” (Komai 2002: 20–21; see
also Komai and Watado 1997).
Within Japan he points to three critical sites: corporations in intensive
international competition, universities facing the crisis of survival due to
falling birth rates, and the Catholic Church (and other churches) overrun
with dependent immigrant followers. He contrasts Chinese immigrants as
Introduction 11
widely dispersed and highly qualified, with a strong tendency to settle in

Japan and participate in fields related to China or Chinese culture, with
Filipinos who play a large role in “reproductive work,” and “the revitali-
zation of energy in others” (as nurses and household workers) and pro-
creation (2002: 30). Factors inhibiting multiculturalism include the public
school culture for immigrant children (see Okubo, chapter 9), corpora-
tions’ indifference to foreign workers’ demands, and discrimination
against Chinese. He notes the dependency of third-world immigrants (ex-
cept the Chinese) on their overburdened Muslim, Catholic, and Protestant
churches, for emotional, social, and practical support.
In 1999 Komai helped organize a mass public appeal to the Ministry of
Justice on behalf of about-to-be-deported “visa overstayers,” and spoke
about “The Settlement of Foreigners” at a related symposium. In 2000 he led
a group of scholars in rebuttal of Tokyo Governor Ishihara’s statement that
illegal sankokujin (third-country people) would riot after national disasters
(Komai et al. 2000), asserting that the word sankokujin was derogatory and
that Ishihara described them as fuhô-taizai (illegal overstayers) as though
they were violent criminals. Komai claims that the press and politicians are
wrong in blaming Japan’s rising crime rate on foreigners: although for-
eigners are more likely to be picked up for crimes, police figures show they
are responsible for less than 2 percent of violent crime and there has been
no disproportionate increase in the numbers committed by foreigners.
In March 2000 the second Basic Plan for Immigration Control took effect,
aiming to reduce the numbers of undocumented immigrants in light of the
reduction of the labor demands. Komai’s research contended that hard-
working, long-resident immigrants were unlikely to be involved in crime
because detection would lead to deportation. In spite of this, Prime Minis-
ter Koizumi increased the 2004 budget for cracking down on illegals. Gov-
ernor Ishihara and Justice Minister Nozawa accompanied police on night
patrols to pick up “illegals.” Katsu Yoshinari, head of the pro-immigrant

NPO Asian People’s Friendship Society, agreed with Komai, blaming the
xenophobic politicians for the crackdown which worsened relations be-
tween foreigners and Japanese (Matsubara 2003).
In 2003, Komai joined the Asian People’s Friendship Society march for
human rights in Shibuya. Taking a long-term view (Yamaguchi 2003), he
reiterated warnings that the Japanese workforce will drop by half by 2050,
with only two workers for each elder. Japan needs 600,000 foreign migrants
annually to maintain the labor force ratio. The 2000 reform of the Basic Im-
migration Law, primarily a crackdown on overstayers, was also a victory
for NGOs because it promised the acceptance of certain needed kinds of
immigrants, and better training, internships, and treatment of foreigners
and refugees. Hammar (1999) advocated that settled residents should have
most of the rights and protections of citizenship regardless of nationality.
In 2000 illegal migrants dropped to about 200,000 and the reformed Basic
Immigration Law accepted NGO demands that treatment of immigrants

should make “special dispensations” proportionate to their integration
into the Japanese community. In the end Komai concludes that high de-
mand for cheap or lower-skilled labor is over and that admitting such peo-
ple legally would “only make an underclass stratum in Japanese society”
(2003: 5).
Chapter Summaries
Yasuko Takezawa’s opening chapter focuses on the 1995 “breakthrough”
after the Hanshin earthquake in Kobe that made the public aware of the
living situations of poor and foreign communities, and that gave rise to the
now common phrase tabunka kyôsei. Kobe has long prided itself on being
one of Japan’s most international cities. Gaijin, the prototypical “White”
foreigners, were visible and their former quarters in Kobe’s Kitanocho area
are now a source of historical Meiji-era tourism. Other foreigners, such as
the early twentieth-century Koreans and Chinese, and recent newcomers
including more Chinese, Vietnamese, and South American Nikkeijin, were
not so visible to most Kobe residents. Kobe was de facto multicultural be-
fore the 1995 earthquake, but not in public discourse nor as an ideal model.
These minorities, even though subject to the instruments of the modern
state, were out of sight and out of mind before 1995 (e.g., Anderson 1983;
Taylor 1994). The Kobe case brings together a number of critical elements:
the concept tabunka kyôsei in its positive sense of interdependent, symbi-
otic, living together (the Durkheimian “organic”), as a description of the
freely given mutual aid between “foreigners” and “Japanese;” secondly
we see a range of local peoples and initiatives working and becoming per-
manent NGOs, especially churches and neighborhoods, alongside local
municipal departments. Local Japanese fought to have “illegal” immi-
grants get their medical bills paid. One lasting effect of this increased ex-
change has resulted in the creation of an “Asia town” in Nagata ward.
Business partnerships and joint ventures were early forms of post-
World War II internationalization. Tomoko Hamada “started” as a transla-
tor for international business negotiations and was also one of the first to
demonstrate the long-term insupportability of the “Japanese employment
system” (1980). Japanese businessmen’s model of kokusaika was not one of
multiculturalism. The business structure and dynamics were innovative
but Japanese business culture prevailed. For decades Westerners railed
against the rigidity of these business practices and exerted different kinds
of gaiatsu, foreign pressure, to foster change. Hamada (chapter 2) shows
that it was the collapse of the bubble, the reverse flow of foreign capital
buying up ownership of car companies, and the failures of Japanese com-
panies that finally brought about change. She focuses on Renault’s pur-
chase of a controlling interest in Nissan, and the imposition of a foreign
Introduction 13
executive Ghosn who performed a miracle turnaround, and at the same

time dramatically changed the business culture. English was imposed as
language of administrative meetings and foreign-national executives have
become more common since then. Business culture has become more mul-
ticultural (but not necessarily female-friendly); the form of multicultural-
ism embraced here is more accurately globalized neoliberal capitalism.
This chapter joins John Nelson’s on religion and Kenji Tierney’s on sumo,
which show change taking place in the central institutions of Japanese
society.
Chris Burgess’s portrayal of a polyglot hinterland community bears out
a number of claims. Counter-intuitively, this case of foreign wives pro-
moting intercultural and international appreciation takes place in one of
the most remote, conservative hinterland areas in Japan, reinforcing the
point that “cosmopolitanism” is not restricted to the wealthy or college ed-
ucated. The second point is the agency and initiative of the immigrants
who know realistically what they are up against and take a long-term
strategy in winning over the local people. As Yamashita (chapter 5) also
points out, it is the women who are the activists in this transformation. But
we must realize that these women willingly came to Japan, they have close
allies in their husbands, they come from fairly educated backgrounds and
got employment in Yamagata and, above all, they are all in the country
legally. These women’s legal immigrant status allows them to act without
local NGOs, NPOs, or municipal offices helping them. One might look
suspect that in the long run these women will adapt and their children will
assimilate so to become “homogeneous” all over again. But these smart
women see how Japanese pay attention to American culture, and how the
World Cup raised Korea in esteem. They have found positive reception
and have been able to introduce personally crucial elements of their native
cultures to their new families and community.
John Ertl focuses on the interrelated national policies of international-

ization (kokusaika) and decentralization (chihô-bunken) within the context of
local government and civil action in Ishikawa Prefecture. Examining a
broad range of internationalization strategies, Ertl claims that many pro-
jects are aimed towards the creation of unique municipal identities that
may allow them to compete for central government and foreign capital in-
vestment. For example, Kanazawa City has been promoted as a “world
city” and has built a strong network of sister-city relationships, business
ventures, and training exchange programs with cities in several different
countries. In contrast the remote town of Rokusei, which has only a few
foreign residents, is introduced to show how ubiquitous and essential in-
ternationalization has become in Japan. Relating his personal experiences
working for Rokusei Town, Ertl examines the impact education initiatives
to “internationalize” the nation, including the Japan Exchange Teaching
(JET) program (McConnell 2000). While its immediate goals are to improve
foreign language and culture education and form a cosmopolitan coun-

tryside, the program may be more effective in stimulating local pride and
knowledge of both Japan and the community through the “dialectic” ex-
changes that take place. Furthermore, many of these guests, filled with
positive experiences, return to their home countries to become informal
spokespeople for Japan.
Shinji Yamashita’s wide-ranging field experiences provide a macro-per-
spective to the topic of international marriages by Japanese women abroad
and of Japanese men in Japan. These marriages eventually create new “hy-
brid” cultural forms as in-marrying spouses do not simply assimilate and
become “mono-cultural” locals. Alliance by marriage is one of the world’s
oldest politico-cultural links between nations and ethnic groups. The di-
rection of these links is subject to a particular power-logic that men of a
more powerful group will have relations with and marry women of com-
plementary and lower status groups (Graburn 1983b; Kelsky 2001). This
recalls Levi-Strauss’s (1949) work on the circulation of women between
groups of men, which Leach (1951) proved later to be incomplete by bring-
ing in social hierarchy as a power gradient, resulting in an excess of
women “at the bottom” and an excess of powerful men “at the top.” But in
Yamashita’s case, Japanese women who marry Balinese men provide a
counter example to this “ero-power” logic. MacCannell’s (1976) concept of
alienation from home and the search elsewhere for “authenticity” may ex-
plain middle-class Japanese attraction to ideal communities overseas as fu-
rusato (native place) tourism. Rea (2000) found such tourists in England’s
Lake District and in Prince Edward Island, Canada, and more recently we
see Japanese hanryû (Korean boom) tourists at the sites of the nostalgic Ko-
rean television drama Winter Sonata (Fuyu no Sonata).
Gaku Tsuda’s background as a Japanese American and his work among
Brazilian Nikkeijin migrants position him well to conduct research on
“both sides of the immigrant fence.” The Nikkeijin are a special legal im-
migrant category created by the revised 1990 Basic Immigration Law in the
hope of replacing the inflow of Asian blue-collar workers with more ac-
ceptable descendants of emigrant Japanese. By 2000 there were 275,000
Brazilian and 54,000 Peruvian Nikkei in Japan. It surprised the officials, the
Japanese population, and the migrants themselves that their identity as
admired, mainly middle-class “japonês” in financially distressed Brazil, also
positioned them as loud, South American lower-class foreigners in Japan.
Tsuda gives evidence of many kinds, including television portrayals, of
their “outsider,” bad neighbor, and lazy worker image (Tsuda 2003b).
Tsuda mentions that there are exceptions to this stereotype, including flu-
ently bilingual Nikkeijin, Japanese who enjoy the flexible and expressive
lifestyle of Nikkei, and others who feel sentimental attachments because of
their essential (bodily, ancestral) similarities. Because Nikkei are “legal”
workers, after the bubble burst and the excess of good blue-collar jobs
Introduction 15
dried up, employers tended to hire or keep them and relegate the hard-
working, more visible, and often illegal immigrants to lower-paying and
unstable jobs. In many cases, illness and layoffs led to poverty, threats of
deportation, or desperate measures, which the disadvantaged now blame
on the “cheap Brazilian labor.” The Nikkeijin, in spite of their marginaliza-
tion, have built communities where they can enjoy, express, and consume
their Brazilianness, as well as obtain services from local governments and
NGOs. While most of Tsuda’s informants preferred Nikkeijin to more visi-
ble kinds of immigrants, Tsuda concludes that multiculturalism—in the
sense of incorporating people of different cultures and languages as ethnic
equals—is unlikely to take hold in Japan.
Jeff Hester’s chapter examines the contemporary identity politics of
Zainichi Koreans, who are the families and descendants of forced laborers
brought to Japan during the Second World War. In spite of cultural and lin-
guistic assimilation, separatist nationalism identifying with either South
Korean Mindan or North Korean Chôsen maintained an oppositional sepa-
rateness until recently. Resident Koreans have recently experienced social
and economic advancement and decreasing marital and employment dis-
crimination, and by legal standards their population has been falling for fif-
teen years as they have relinquished Korean nationality and intermarried
with Japanese nationals. Koreans’ ability to voluntarily change their
names and become “hyphenated Japanese” without a specific cultural
change demonstrates the fragilely constructed nature of nationality or for-
eignness. Out of Koreans’ decisions to naturalize are emerging new types
of “Japanese,” such as Kankoku-kei Nihonjin, Chôsen-kei Nihonjin, Korian-kei
Nihonjin (all kinds of “Japanese with Korean ancestry”), Nihonseki Chôsenjin
(Korean with Japanese nationality), or Korian-Japanı^zu (Korean-Japanese).
This parallels the emergence of Asian Americans, Chinese Americans, and
other hyphenated Americans in the past thirty to forty years. It threatens
the dominant essentialist equation that “race equals culture equals citi-
zenship,” in which the boundaries of racial groups are supposed to coin-
cide with cultural and linguistic communities and hence with citizenship.
When things do not coincide, such as foreigners speaking perfect Japanese
or Japanese citizens of European descent, they become the building blocks
of new kinds of Japaneseness.
Keiko Yamanaka focuses on a group of immigrant Nepalis, many of
whom are illegal visa overstayers, phenotypically visible, and low paid
blue-collar workers. Yamanaka originally met these individuals through
her research in Nepal, and tells us that they represent many ethnic groups
who share historical experiences of temporary overseas labor and sending
remittances home. Unlike the numerous “legal” South American Nikkei
immigrants that have many official avenues of support, this small group of
Nepali immigrants has formed an active and broad network of Japanese
friends and fellow immigrants to assist in daily living and difficult crisis
situations. They are able to manage their situation, despite a certain degree
of poverty, discrimination, and threat of deportation, by exercising agency
over their status. By empowering themselves and being reliable workers,
they gain employers’ support and admiration from other Japanese. Though
they are sometimes hunted by the police and blamed for rising crime, their
employers want to retain them, and through their own community orga-
nizations and friends in NGOs they fight for pay and benefits and for hu-
mane justice. Yamanaka asserts that a passive tolerance of foreigners and
growing grassroots activism are forming the basis of an admirable “civil
society” in Japan.
Yuko Okubo studies the education for newcomer minority children, ei-
ther immigrants or children of immigrants, some foreigners and some nat-
uralized, in an Osaka school district. This case illuminates the historical
sequence of indigenous “old” and “new” minority educational politics.
This Buraku community, with relatively good housing, schools, and ser-
vices, is no longer dominated by Buraku as they have moved into and as-
similated with the general community. Zainichi Koreans moved in, worked
with them politically and took advantage of Dôwa self-awareness educa-
tion and afternoon “ethnic club” classes where city-paid special teachers
helped raise their identity awareness by using their proper Korean names,
speaking Korean, using Korean clothing and toys, and celebrating Korean
festivals. Similar classes were started for recent Chinese and refugee Viet-
namese who moved into the subsidized housing, plus extra “Japanese lan-
guage” classes and teachers so they would not fall behind in their regular
studies. Soon, the Korean classes stopped because students preferred after-
noon sports, leaving only Chinese and Vietnamese children with special
“ethnic” club-classes. This school is specially designated for receiving im-
migrant students and teachers direct the clubs to help the children retain
and nurture their ethnic identities. Okubo views the program as a form of
segregation, as it forces these children to act publicly as visible subjects,

under the rubric of “international exchange,” according to the teachers’
stereotypes of their nationality. She suspects most parents will reject this
special distinction and the ethnic clubs will collapse and the minority chil-
dren will rejoin their Japanese peers.
Mitzi Carter and Aina Hunter bring to the fore central features such
as stereotyping, race, visibility, hybridity, class, and gender. They did not
personally experience the stereotype of Japanese as anti-Black racists,
but their Blackness brought up the mostly unmentioned ethnicity, the
Whiteness of most European American tourists and social scientists. Their
welcome matched that of White students, both in the cities and the coun-
tryside. They confront Black sociologist John Russell (of Gifu University)
for extending his analysis of male Blackness in Japan to females. They
agree that the stereotype of Blacks is conflated with and narrowed to the
very visible Black males in the military, but they want to construct a sepa-
Introduction 17
rate model for Black women. They also point out that racism in Japan is ex-
ercised differently from the United States. Though it appeared fashionable
to “consume blackness” in niche roles at the high fashion end and in gan-
guro5 counterculture, the authors and their friends suspected the stability
of these positive relations. Carter’s childhood memory of intercultural re-
lationships brought up the volatile topic of Black konketsuji (children of
mixed race): her mother trying to save her from becoming dark “like her
father” reminiscent of the shame parents felt in the 1950s and 1960s, when
most konketsuji babies were sent to a private orphanage whose philan-
thropic Madame won national praise for exporting almost all of them to
America and Europe (Strong 1978). Carter observes, following Valentine
(1990) that such “hybrids,” like Brazilian Nikkei, are more “out” than com-
plete outsiders, yet sometime more “in” than other foreigners.
John Nelson emphasizes the regional nature of internationalism and
multiculturalism in Japan (see also Takezawa, Ertl, Okubo, and Graburn).
Cities such as Kagoshima, Nagasaki, Kobe, and prefectures such as Kago-
shima and Fukuoka are “imagined” as having special relationships with
different foreign cultures at various times in history. These popular narra-
tives form the fabric by which Japan is both woven together and regional-
ized. Some of these regions are associated with 16th century or modern
Christianity. While Christianity was originally thought to be a kind of Bud-
dhism, it has remained a markedly foreign-associated religion. Nagasaki’s
contemporary “distinctive regional culture” embraces: the coming of the
Portuguese, mass conversion and then banishment of Christians, trade
with the Dutch, and above all, memorializing the atomic bomb. Nelson
shows how church leaders are multireligious without losing their identity
by working together and positioning themselves as anti-establishment. In
Nagasaki, much is made of the added element of the instant death of over
15,000 Korean forced laborers in 1945; for Koreans Christianity is not so
“foreign-affiliated.” With 30 percent of the Korean nation, it was a main

source of organized resistance and fervor against the Japanese colonizers.
Nelson (1996, 2002) demonstrates that the Nagasaki humanistic ecumen-
ism is rare in Japan, but Christian actions against prostitution (Graburn
1983b) and remilitarization, continue to have far-reaching effects.
Kenji Tierney’s study of sumo centers upon a key topic for understand-
ing ethnicity and nationhood, as sports are an almost universal metonym
for cultural and political bodies, and stand at the heart of debates about
identity and belonging. Tierney shows that Sumo was cultivated as a na-
tionalist and imperialist entity, which spread along with the demographic
and colonial diaspora, and then was “cut off” at the end of the Second
World War. Since then Pacific Islanders and more recently Asian mainland,
Middle Eastern, and European wrestlers have participated in sumo. The
Sumo association has reacted with restrictive rules concerning belonging
to a heya (house, team), the ownership of a heya, or being a visitor or be-
coming “visibly” Japanese, or becoming Japanese national. Caught be-

tween chauvinistic feelings and a dearth of recruits, the “Asian,” and in
particular Mongolian, proportion has grown to the point that five of six re-
cent second level champions are “foreign,” one is Bulgarian and another
Georgian. Tierney straightforwardly asserts that this case throws into
question who is a foreigner and therefore who is Japanese. The constructed
nature of “nationality” is also reflected in other sports, for instance differ-
ent high school sports leagues have different rules (within the same sport);
in baseball Zainichi Koreans “are Japanese” hence not statistically visible,
whereas in soccer they “are foreigners” (Manzenreiter and Horne 2004).
Tourism can be an indicator of self-other and national-international re-
lationships. Nelson Graburn (1983a) initially studied domestic travel with
historical continuities from the Edo period. Although the structure of
travel arrangements was similar for domestic and overseas travel, the
destinations were separable. The nature of attractions in Japan has now
weakened this distinction. While overseas tourism is an expression of in-
ternationalization (kokusaika), domestic tourism has become a form of
“internal internationalization” (kokunai kokusaika). There has been a mas-
sive construction of “foreignness” in theme parks, as well as the enhance-
ment of touristic and regional identity of many formerly downplayed
aspects of foreignness, particularly concerning Korean cultural heritage,
Christianity both hidden and active, Meiji and Taisho foreigners’ houses,
and all things Dutch, as well as cuisines, clothing styles, and entertain-
ment. More than that, the search for humane social qualities that used to be
thought of as especially Japanese, such as furusato (native place) (Graburn
1995; Ivy 1995) are now eagerly sought abroad, in Prince Edward Island
and the Lake District (Rea 2000), and perhaps Bali and the United States
(Yamashita, chapter 5) or even in Korea-bound (hanryû) tourism. MacCan-
nell (1976) asserts that modern tourism stems from alienation at home, so
we can learn from today’s tourism what are positive and negative atti-
tudes about the self and others.
Conclusion
Communities of Acceptance
All over Japan there are individuals who choose to welcome foreigners
and to celebrate difference. A group has formed in Tokyo for “multicul-
tural exploration” to search out cultural difference and celebrate it (Yug-
inuma 2000). Many visible and even illegal foreigners are defended by
neighbors, not just by exploitative employers, and often the police do not
want to take action against them (Yamanaka, chapter 8; Kaneko 1998). De-
spite financial barriers (Yamaguchi 2003), NGOs and volunteers are cele-
brating cultural difference and helping foreign nationals to remain in
Introduction 19
Japan. In non-metropolitan areas organizations such as “Japan Tent” in

Ishikawa Prefecture invite foreigners to enjoy homestays, and present
them proudly at local events (Ertl, chapter 4). Resident and visiting for-
eigners are often invited to play public roles in matsuri (Shinto community
rituals) and municipal festivals. There are many Japanese who enjoy meet-
ing foreigners abroad and who try to entertain international visitors at
home. Some do criticize “boutique internationalism,” which is restricted
to food, fashion, and short home visits or to interaction between mid-
dle classes, leaving working class immigrants ignored or discriminated
against.
There are no clear answers about Japanese attitudes towards foreigners
in their country and there are a few dramatic cases of overt, sometimes vi-
olent discrimination, not all of which are directed against lower-class peo-
ple. One case described by Arudou (2004) occurred at Otaru Hot Springs
where a Caucasian Japanese citizen and his racially mixed family were re-
fused entry. When asked why, they were told that the business decided to
bar all Caucasians because some Russians had behaved inappropriately,
upsetting Japanese customers, and it would be unfair to discriminate just
against Russians. Arudou asked if the members of his family could enter,
and was told that only the darker, more Japanese-looking one of his two
daughters would be admitted, showing again how problematic Japanese
identity is becoming.
Throughout Japan there are still people who conflate the problems of
immigrant labor and foreign tourists with crime. For instance, in 2003 one-
third of respondents to a nationwide survey wanted no increase in foreign
tourists because they committed crimes (Mainichi 2003). Police reported
that “foreign crime” was up and sixteen thousand foreigners were prose-
cuted, but the irony is that 40 percent of their crimes resulted from cases of
“being foreign,” that include illegal entry or visa overstay. Discrimination
against foreigners, as well as against the disabled, frequently emerges on

the Internet as a source and measure of anonymous hostile feelings. Yet
there are counter-indications, such as the thirty-seven thousand petition
signatures against deporting Burmese refugee Khin Maung Latt in 2003
(Austin 2004).
Marriages
One major factor aiding the multicultural trend is intermarriage. One of
Burgess’s informants (chapter 3) said, “That’s real uchinaru kokusaika—
inside the family internationalism.” Not only are mainstream Japanese
marrying formerly avoided Burakumin and Koreans, but increasingly
they are marrying foreigners. Yamashita (chapter 5) shows that in parts
of Tokyo 10 percent of the marriages are “mixed,” when foreign women
marry Japanese men and Japanese women marry foreigners in Japan or
increasingly in Bali and California. Burgess explores how these multicul-
tural nuclear families have settled in Northeast Japan and negotiated a

stable multicultural identity and societal transformation.
Japanese international marriages grew from a trickle to very visible
trend in the 1980s. The rural exodus to take less onerous jobs in towns and
cities drained farming areas of young unmarried women; in some villages
there were only three unmarried women for every ten unmarried men.
Though men were stoic and maintained their local livelihoods, advancing
age (40s and 50s) made them think seriously about the need for heirs and
getting wives from outside Japan. For instance, the local government in
Tozawa, in rural Tohoku, helped send local men to visit nearby countries
looking for spouses. A series of marriages ensued with mainly Korean but
also Chinese and Filipina wives. The village celebrated their international
friends and it became a mild tourist attraction, much as the place Burgess
studied. Before the Korea-boom spawned by Winter Sonata, the in-marry-
ing Korean wives said that Korean men were stiff and arrogant and Japa-
nese men were gentler. Similar trends, at first mainly with Filipina wives
(Faier 2003; Suzuki 2000), then Koreans, and more recently a majority Chi-
nese resulted from the efforts of over two hundred travel agencies, as well
as personal visits and online computer searches.6 Many Japanese consid-
ered the flow benign or amusing and thought that Japanese and other East
Asian matches are compatible because the children do not stand out, even
though Tokyo’s right-wing Governor Ishihara declared that this was “ge-
netic pollution of the nation” (Komai 2003).
In order to assess the impacts on multiculturalism, we must carefully
separate out the different kinds of “international” marriages. Probably the
largest single portion comprises the marriages between highly assimilated
Zainichi Korean nationals and non-Korean Japanese of the same class. These
have the least impact because such a couple is hardly “multicultural,”
even if they continue to have more positive feelings about Korean culture
than others around them, which may continue even when the Korean na-
tional becomes Japanese (Hester, chapter 7). However, the children of such
couples may completely assimilate to Japanese ethno-nationality. The chil-
dren of the common second kind of international marriage, between East
Asian immigrants and Japanese, could go either way (Okubo, chapter 9).
Because most are physically similar to Japanese, their children could eas-
ily assimilate so long as they leave behind their language, their native
names, and some of their cultural habits of food and child rearing. They
may however maintain a lingering, positive cultural interest in their over-
seas ethno-nationality. Okubo implies that Chinese-Japanese marriages are
less likely to produce children who want to assimilate because of their
strong orientation as Chinese, as opposed to Vietnamese who came to
Japan as refugees and never expect to return to Vietnam.
More striking if less common are other kinds of international marriages,
those of Japanese with non-Mongoloid Asians and those with Caucasians.
Introduction 21
Marriages of Japanese women to South Asian men, like marriages to

American Blacks, are rather uncommon and may be looked down on by
their families. Children of these marriages would always be conscious of
their biracialism and biculturalism (Carter and Hunter, chapter 10) and
may have difficulty adjusting to life in Japanese communities. Those ad-
vocating against hybridity frowned upon marriage with Caucasian men in
the past too, although it has become fairly prevalent among middle-class
women today. The personal account published as a manga (illustrated) book
Dârin wa Gaikokujin (My Darling is a Foreigner) (Oguri 2002) has been fol-
lowed a number of kokusai kekkon (international marriage) manuals, and
among this class of people, children of dual nationality are considered
prestigious. The common word for mixed children hâfu (a half) is being
replaced by daburu (double), expressing an advantage rather than a defi-
ciency. Such children could undoubtedly become bicultural in a positive
way and would circulate easily among the middle classes of both parental
cultures, furthering the multiculturalism of both. Additional multicultural
and bilingual children emerge from the experience of kikokushijo, those
children that return to Japan after long periods of life and education
abroad (Goodman 1990). These children have gone from being considered
severely disadvantaged because of their poor Japanese language and cul-
tural skills to being eagerly endeared as future global leaders.
Though international marriages form about 5 percent of all marriages in
Japan and 10 percent in Tokyo, their effects on the next generation are going
to be much higher because international marriages (however defined)
have a 2.9 fertility rate7 (Curtin 2002), more than twice the overall Japan-
ese fertility rate of 1.3. In Tokyo, for instance, the next generation of school-
children8 should be about 25 percent non- or half-Japanese, a dramatic
change from anything in the recent history of Japan.
Construction of National Identity

A nation constructs its identity in contrast to opposing nations. Regions on
the other hand construct their identity in comparison with surrounding lo-
cales. The poles of self-other are not opposites but are relational, as the
other becomes the self in changing circumstances (see Bachnik 1998;
Kondo 1990). While Japan has long made claims to an ideal of homogene-
ity, Japanese people are well aware of their internal differences. It is only
in contrast to other nationalities that Japan becomes an essential homoge-
neous category. Japan may appear to be “one nation, one race” in an inter-
national context, but within the nation, and particularly between localities,
individuals maintain multiple categories that distinguish themselves from
one other. The unique contribution of this volume is that its authors ap-
proach the theme of Japanese multiculturalism through an examination of
how distinctions between self-other are worked out between people of na-
tional and ethnic differences in specific local settings.
At the national level Japan has begun to change its stance regarding its
ethnic makeup. When Japan signed the United Nations Charter of Human
Rights in 1979, it followed with a declaration that there were no unrecog-
nized minorities in Japan. This stance was officially reversed with the ac-
ceptance of the ethnic difference and special status of the long-assimilated
Ainu people in 1996. During this period the increase in foreign immigrants
has been generally greeted as a welcome addition to the state. This changes
the tune of Japanese national solidarity from mechanical to organic, in that
Japan has become a functional nation of many ethnically and nationally
different people. But this distinction may not change the category of
“Japanese” as far as race-ethnicity-culture is concerned, as Japan is now a
place where Koreans, Chinese, Ainu, Burakumin, and Brazilians live
alongside native Japanese.
There is a danger in treating these categories in the singular—as for
example when Chinese or Filipino immigrants are perceived to be of a cer-
tain language and culture, and more importantly seen as coming to Japan
for similar purposes. Okubo’s analysis of school practices and Tsuda’s in-
terviews with Japanese and Brazilian Nikkeijin immigrants highlight the
stereotyping of other groups’ attitudes and behavior. The Japanese state
welcomes its minority populations but in the process keeps them at a dis-
tance through the distinction that they are awarded. It is an awkward po-
sition for the national government as its old policies of either assimilation
or disregard for minorities have given way to a new discrimination, mostly
positive in intent, through its fervent recognition and classification of mi-
norities. Thus this allows Japan to protect the category of Japanese ethnic-
ity from rupture while garnering international respect for its recognition of
minority rights (see Hale 2002).
This book illustrates that there are very important differences in how
Japanese municipalities and local citizens categorize and interact with for-
eign residents. Non-Japanese are not simply set aside as separate from
everyone else, but are participants in many spheres of activity that consti-
tute the community. While there are obstacles for foreigners in acclimating
to Japanese society, this is a two-way process in which local residents are
forced to learn about their new international neighbors. This is particularly
evident in Burgess’s contribution in which the immigrant wives work to
gain acceptance on their own terms from their neighbors. Old boundaries
created by Japan’s policy of segregating foreigners through political dis-
tricting are being broken down, as Takezawa relates in the case of the Han-
shin earthquake when neighbors came together to help one another
ignoring the political boundaries that separated Korean and Japanese res-
idents. At the grassroots level, Japanese and international residents are
joined in solidarity based on residency rather than citizenship or national-
ity. As members of a community, foreigners are often welcomed and in-
cluded, bound together by a singularity, not by race, but by common goals
Introduction 23
for the good life. Solidarity is a unity of purpose and direction, in which
residence and participation are the only prerequisites for membership.
This is particularly evident in rural municipalities struggling to develop
new forms of community based not on old ties to land—as with the old
jichitai (self-governing structures) divisions—but on a sense of common
humanity and equality (Ertl, chapter 4).
Our contributors span the range of hopefulness. Burgess is most opti-
mistic that Japan has reached a critical point at which acceptance of
the multicultural ideal is already underway. His work, along with the Ya-
manaka and Nelson chapters and other works (Douglass and Roberts
2000; Komai 2001, 2003) show that the seeds can be planted by a small mi-
nority of economic or marital immigrants aware of the ideal and of the
human rights discourse behind it, who not only defend themselves but en-
gage the local population to fuel a new atmosphere of positive curiosity
and acceptance. If Komai’s (2001) claim that the Japanese hatred of for-
eigners is partly retribution for having been defeated by them in World
War II, that memory should be diminishing. At the other side, the con-
clusions of Tsuda and Okubo are more dubious (see also McCarty 1997;
McCormack 1996). Tsuda says his Japanese informants were somewhat
tolerant of Brazilian Nikkeijin but verbally less welcoming of other immi-
grants, and Okubo demonstrates that teachers’ efforts to avoid assimila-
tion of Asian children forces the children to remain foreign subjects and
thereby reinforce the visible cultural boundaries.
Japan has changed over the past twenty years and it will never again be
able to hold on to an unchallenged model of homogeneity. Like many in-
dustrial countries Japan needs a constant stream of immigrants just to keep
the labor force from plummeting. The fertility rate is far below replace-
ment9 and will not rise much, any more than the numbers of elderly who
need to be supported will diminish. Japan needs a steady increase of new
workers annually to maintain its economy and national population, and it

will not be able to do so with immigrants that are all physically and cultur-
ally similar. As Japan’s population declines, it will appear visibly increas-
ingly hybrid, especially as it is the ethnically “homogeneous” Japanese
who are decreasing fastest. In this era of changing demographics and in-
creasing cultural diversity, the character of Japanese identity will undergo
further transformation. With multiculturalism as the ideological backbone
of Japanese public policy, diversity and intercultural exchange will con-
tinue to be promoted over practices of assimilation and homogenization.
While multiculturalism holds great promise for forming positive affection
towards ethnic and national minority groups, it brings with it the potential
to proscribe status upon individuals that may be inappropriate or unwel-
come. However, the many chapters in this volume illustrate that national-
ethnic distinctions are not the only markers of identity, and are possibly
becoming increasingly less deterministic, as the specific exchanges and
encounters that take place in local settings are leading to new pluralized
communities in Japan that are inclined to incorporate diversity rather than
ignore or remove it.
Notes
1. Of course, what is judged a positive direction depends upon the reader. The
authors of this book, both Japanese and non-Japanese, share a culturally and
politically liberal outlook and promote the appreciation of cultural diversity
within Japan and the alleviation of discrimination and cultural or racial hier-
archy, especially the feelings of degradation, anger, and despair that often re-
sult from the latter. In part this work is an antidote to “Japan bashing” and
does not even wish to castigate Japanese for believing the “myth of homo-
geneity,” as we prefer to emphasize the models that replace the myth.
2. Van Wolferen (1989) and others claim that the “new” governments consisted
of the same old people in new clothing, owing, in part, to the collusion of the
occupying forces—strengthening the argument about self-redefinition in rela-
tion to and in competition with the geopolitical “other.”
3. Actually some had predicted the “bubble burst” at least a decade before
(Hamada 1980) and in hindsight we may say that the signs were there as the
system “hollowed” by cronyism, inexorable demographics, and blind opti-
mism, much as Yurchak has shown for the late Soviet Union (Yurchak 2005).
4. Durkheim’s analysis was framed as a guide to reforms in France, which was
at the time fraught with labor strikes and emerging anti-Semitism. His analy-
sis, while correct in focusing on the complex division of labor, failed to note
that “superior” societies were also held together in part by the “mechanical
solidarity” of manufacturers’ associations, political parties, and labor unions,
and, conversely, all “primitive” societies were also bound together by that
prototypical form of organic solidarity, the marriage alliance, a fact on which
his heir Claude Levi-Strauss based his work.
5. Ganguro, literally “black face,” is the Japanese name for teenagers and young
women who darken their skin, wear very light colored mouth and eye make-
up and often wear outlandish clothes (Miller 2000).
6. Though South Korea also has as strong set of values about homogeneity and
keeping the blood “pure,” Korean men are also seeking and finding overseas
brides, in China and Vietnam, and 8 percent of Korean marriages were to for-
eigners in 2003. Though this was said to have started with farmers in Japan, in
Korea it is a more urban phenomenon of the non-affluent. Yamashita writes
about the flight of Japanese women overseas (see also Kelsky 2001), and there
are now reports that middle-class Japanese women are employing match-
making agencies to meet with well-to-do men in European cities.
7. Unfortunately “international” marriages have a higher breakup rate than mo-
noethnic ones. This is particularly true of those who marry American GIs and
there are thought to be about four thousand children of dual nationality
whose fathers abandoned them in Okinawa.
8. Exactly the same phenomenon is beginning to be seen in the classrooms of
major European cities whether the differential birth rate is the same, but there
are fewer mixed marriages, so most children are direct offspring of the immi-
grants and refugees.
9. Replacement rate is 2.1 total fertility rate (number of live births per woman in
her lifetime). Japan at less than 1.3 is similar to the countries of Eastern, South-
Introduction 25
ern, and Iberian Europe. Many Northern and Western European countries
have even lower fertility rates (Galicia, Spain recently recorded the record low
for peacetime humans, at 0.89), but those countries, like it or not, all have con-
tinuing legal or illegal labor migration. Even Canada has a policy of recruiting
at least sixty thousand a year to keep up its workforce.
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INTRODUCTION:

INTERNAL BOUNDARIES AND MODELS OF

Introduction: Multiculturalism in the New Japan

for a multicultural society in the world, as the concept of multiculturalism

Endnotes for this chapter begin on page 24.

immigration and intercultural diversity. The many chapters in this volume

Multiculturalism in the Anthropology of Japan

multiculturalism as an ideal for public policy, aimed towards reversing

are often traced to the publication of Ruth Benedict’s Chrysanthemum and

reinforced the image of Japanese homogeneity, as representations of “Ja-

changing stance to the study of diversity. Instead of arguing that notions of

the increasing narratives on the multifaceted nature of culture and identity

Japan is a nation best understood or defined by its relation to powerful oth-

However, the Burakumin Liberation Movement reformed, aided by home-

both positive intercultural relations and the reification of ethno-national

“My … point concerns the co-existence of cultures, or multiculturalism.…

Komai Hiroshi, an Advocate for Immigrants in Japan

“The most admirable thinkers within the scholarly community … do not

Japanese multiculturalism would be little more than a fanciful flight of

about how to think about and act in “international” situations. Involved

widely dispersed and highly qualified, with a strong tendency to settle in

patrols to pick up “illegals.” Katsu Yoshinari, head of the pro-immigrant

Immigration Law accepted NGO demands that treatment of immigrants

executive Ghosn who performed a miracle turnaround, and at the same

John Ertl focuses on the interrelated national policies of international-

foreign language and culture education and form a cosmopolitan coun-

segregation, as it forces these children to act publicly as visible subjects,

“foreign-affiliated.” With 30 percent of the Korean nation, it was a main

coming “visibly” Japanese, or becoming Japanese national. Caught be-

Japan. In non-metropolitan areas organizations such as “Japan Tent” in

against foreigners, as well as against the disabled, frequently emerges on

tural nuclear families have settled in Northeast Japan and negotiated a

Marriages of Japanese women to South Asian men, like marriages to

Construction of National Identity

workers annually to maintain its economy and national population, and it

“Nihonjinron.” Melbourne: Trans Pacific Press.

Durkheim, Emile. 1893. La division du travail social. Etude sur l’organisation

nese Labor Management.” Asian Survey 20 (4): 397–406.

Iyotani, Toshio. 1995. Cross-national Labour Migration in Asia and Regional

———. 2001. Foreign Migrants in Contemporary Japan. Melbourne: Pacific Press.

———. 1978. Tateshakai no rikigaku [The dynamics of the vertical society].

Shoﬂji, Hiroshi, ed. 2004. Taminzoku Nihon-Zainichi Gaikokujin no Kurashi

Valentine, James. 1990. “On the Borderline: The Significance of Marginal-

Yoshino, Kosaku. 1992. Cultural Nationalism in Contemporary Japan: A Soci-

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