Japan's Minorities: The Illusion of Homogeneity

The second edition of Japan's Minorities identifies and explores the six principal minority groups in Japan: the Ainu, the Burakumin, the Chinese, the Koreans, the Nikkeijin and the Okinawans. After years of marginalization, many of these hidden minorities in Japan are now challenging this image by reasserting their cultural identities. Examining the ways in which the Japanese have manipulated historical events, such as Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the contributors reveal the presence of an underlying concept of Japaneseness that excludes members of these minorities. The themes addressed include the role of this ideology of race in the construction of the Japanese identity; historical memory and its suppression; contemporary labor migration to Japan; the three-hundred year existence of Chinese communities in Japan; mixed-race children in Japan and the feminization of contemporary migration to Japan. Japan's Minorities provides both a clear historical introduction to the formation of individual minorities, followed by an analysis of the contemporary situation based on original research. It is still the only cholarly examination of issues of race, ethnicity and marginality in Japan from both a historical and comparative perspective. The result is a challenge to the nationalist myth of a homogeneous Japan and as such this book is essential reading for scholars and students of Japanese studies, ethnic and racial studies, culture and society, anthropology and politics.Weiner, Michael is the author of 'Japan's Minorities: The Illusion of Homogeneity' with ISBN 9780415772631 and ISBN 041577263X.