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Can you ‘become’ Japanese?

• Extremely difficult to obtain Japanese nationality

• Those who are successful must denounce their original nationality

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014What does it mean to be

Japanese?

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Aim

• To introduce the general theme of identity,

• To address the role of ethnicity in the construction of Japanese identity,

• To analyse critically the concepts of ‘homogeneity’ and ‘heterogeneity’ as tools for understanding Japanese society.

Of the same kind,alike

Diverse in characteror content

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Objectives:

1) To discuss identity and national identity,

2) To introduce and critique the concept of ‘ethnicity’ at the heart of post-war Japanese identity,

3) To assess the degree to which Japanese society is ‘homogeneous’ or ‘heterogeneous’.

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Wat is “identity”?

• Can be understood in different ways: • Personal identity

GenderEthnicityOccupation, etc.

• National identityIrrespective of any other identities,Share a common identity based on: all being members of the same nationA common sense of belonging among the group.

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The nature of identityBenedict Anderson: Belonging to an “imagined

community” （ 1983/1991 ） : • We accept the idea of having things in common that

tie us together, despite differences (wealth, occupation...) and even though we may not know everyone in the community.

• There may be some innate differences between people based on race, but nothing fundamental.

• Rather, race is used as the basis to create ethnic identity.

the nature of identity is social, rather than biological.

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014Understanding Japanese

identity• More than / other than biological issue.

• Understanding the identity of the ‘Japanese people’ requires knowledge of historical and institutional circumstances in which Japanese identity has been constructed.

• Who the Japanese people are, and who has Japanese identity are both contested questions.

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The 3 essential elements

• Elements that make up the national identity of the Japanese people:• Ethnicity: Through blood lineage a particular

ethnicity is passed on to the next generation by the previous as a key element in that identity.

• Culture: Minimally, language. But morebroadly customs and ways of doing things that determine people belong to one cultural group and not another.

• Nationality: The legal definition of identity, as determined by the laws of the state.

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Nationality and identity

• A member of its community results from:• Being born within the territorial boundaries of a

state or the sovereign space claimed by the state (jus soli)The sovereign space may include being born on

board a vessel or plane flying the sovereign flag of that state

• Progenitors having the right to pass on their nationality to their off-springs (jus sanguinis)...but, this right may be circumscribed if the father

have the right to pass on nationality but not the mother, for example

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014Each of the 3 elements'

weight varies

• The 3 elements all differ in their importance depending on the people in question:• A greater degree of congruence amongst the 3

variables, compared to other national identities.• A crucial point about the case of Japan:

• Nationality is not determined by place of birth but rather by lineage, the mother and father of a child

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014How to balance the

3 essential elements? A matter of

nationality/law?

A matter ofEthnicity?

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The law and the lineage

• The revision to the Nationality Law and Family Registration Law took effect 1 January 1985: • Before then, the offspring of a Japanese father,

irrespective of the nationality of the mother, was entitled to Japanese nationality

• Under the revised law:• The offspring of a Japanese mother, irrespective

of the nationality of the father, is also entitled the Japanese nationality

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Legal nationality

• The offspring of an international marriage may have the opportunity to gain dual nationality: • In the case of Japan, the Nationality Law (Article

14) permits the offspring dual nationality up to the age of 22.

• After that, he/she has to choose either Japanese or the other nationality.

• Question: Do those who choose Japanese nationality, have Japanese national identity?

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Let's think it all over again

• Putting together ‘national’ and ‘identity’ may seem to bring a simple answer to the question: what is Japanese national identity.

• This splits people into 2 categories:• Those who possess Japanese nationality = who

are expected to have Japanese identity.• Those who do not possess Japanese nationality

= who are not expected to have Japanese identity.

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• Dividing people into two discrete groups simply gives us a legal definition of nationality, but not an understanding of national identity.

It is but a distinction between people based on having a passport of a country or not.

Japanese national identity also involves ethnicity and culture.

It involves how Japanese people are represented, and how they represent themselves.

Identity is opaque and fluid, not given, and constructed within a specific historical and institutional setting.

Nationality ≠ National Identity

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014National identity:

not predetermined

• A young person from an international marriage opts for Japanese nationality at 22:• Does he/she possesses Japanese national

identity? • Japanese nationality often relates on how the

offspring appears ethnically and culturally Japanese.

• So, having the Japanese nationality may not mean the wider community accepts that person as having Japanese nationality identity.

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014Ethnicity and identity:

The Bathhouse Case• What of someone who naturalizes as a

Japanese, speaks the language and adopts the culture (to some extent), but is not ethnically Japanese? • In April 2005 the Supreme Court rejected an

appeal by a naturalized American for compensation for discrimination in a bathhouse.

• The bathhouse had a sign in English saying, ‘Japanese only’.

• Despite showing his driver’s license as proof of his Japanese nationality, the bathhouse refused him entry.

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What the case shows

• For the bathhouse owner, a Japanese passport (nationality) did not make him Japanese (national identity).• The Law states that Japanese nationality can be

acquired by birth or naturalization.• Clearly, someone can become a ‘Japanese

national’ through due legal process, • ...but the case shows that the law simply

distinguishes between Japanese nationals and non Japanese nationals.

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What the case implies

• The Nationality Law does not distinguish between Japanese nationals and those regarded as having Japanese identity This also means that Japanese identity is not only a

matter of self-definition but requires communal acceptance.

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014Nationality is not the

border• Changes in the legal system can and do make

decisions on who are nationals.• Who is Japanese or not according to the law is the

result of a political process, the making of policy, not the ethnic make up of a person.

• ...but, the ethnic make up of people can be used as a way to determine the border between Japanese people and others,

• ...and, that is irrespective of the nationality of people as Japanese..

the Japanese Identity is ethnicity. historical.

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014Post-war Japanese

identity: Ethnicity

• There are various ways of constructing identities.

• At the heart of Japanese identity is ethnicity• The idea of a consanguineous relationship as

the basis for people to join a community with the national identity, ‘Japanese’.

• The historical roots to this ethnic identity go back to the needs of the Meiji state to forge a nation.

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014During the Tokugawa or

Edo period (1600-1867)

• The population was divided into a feudal hierarchy: warriors, peasants, artisans, merchants (Shi-nô-kô-shô / 士農工商 ). • No sense of sharing a national identity as Japanese.• Stratified, the society were divided.• The country was split into different regions: people

spoke different dialects, strongly attached to locality, and divided amongst themselves.

• Sharing a common sense of all belonging to one nation, sharing a national identity was not commonplace.

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1868 Meiji Restoration

• With the arrival of Commodore Perry’s ‘black ships’ in 1853, and the possibility of Japan being colonized, the choice was how to respond to the arrival of Western imperial powers.

• With the restoration of the emperor and the start of the Meiji period in 1868, national leaders faced the task of knitting the nation together

• It was imperative for the Meiji elite to build up a sense of nation, of belonging to one community

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Importance of belonging

• The goal was to redraw the boundaries to include everyone in an all-embracing sense of belonging to the same group of people, the Japanese.

• Giving meaning to the symbolic boundaries amongst classes and people was not seen as a priority.

• Standard Japanese (based on Tokyo dialect) was promoted and local dialects were suppressed.

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Belonging to the nation

• A common culture was spread:The Japanese state was strengthened by including outcast

groups (Burakumin). The boundaries of the state was expanded.Ezo (and the inhabitants incl. Ainu) in the North, were

incorporated with the creation of the prefecture of Hokkaido in 1868.

Japan legally included the Ainu people within the national boundaries, as part of the Japanese ‘nation’.

But the Ainu were ethnically and culturally different.In 1879, Ryukyu Kingdom was abolished and was

incorporated into Japan despite differences in ethnicity and culture.

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014Integration and the

sense of nation

• Integration meant the promotion of standard Japanese language and the erosion of local culture.• In 1910, a sense of nation had been created by

identifying the nation with the Japanese Yamato ethnic group, seen to be superior to others.

• This, particularly when the boundaries of the Japanese state expanded further.

• Historically, the integration of Hokkaido and Okinawa was followed by the imperialist expansion of Japan.

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014Imperialist expansion of

Japan

Country/region Year How it was colonizedTaiwan 1895Karafuto (Sakharin) 1905 Russo-Japanese warKwantung (south Manchuria) 1905 Russo-Japanese warKorea 1910The Pacific Mandate Territories 1919 Assigned by the League of

Nations after WW IManchuria 1931 De facto controlNorth China 1937 De facto control

•With varying degrees of emphasis, Japanese language and culture were spread in the colonies.

•The defeat (WWII) ended the Japanese colonial and administrative domination, but the idea of the ethnic core of Japanese identity in the form of Japan as a homogenous nation continued.

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The post-WW II period

• The postwar period saw a lot of introspection...• Despite the sense of the Japanese as superior

and unique, the war had been lost.• Intense interest was developed in trying to

understand the Japanese, illustrated by what became known as discourse on the Japanese:Nihonjinron

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Are Japanese different?

• Focus: Japanese, as a race, are different from other people.• Some argue on Japan as a group society, with

hierarchical links between people.• This makes Japanese different from the

‘individualist’ West.• Many argue on the ‘uniqueness’

of the Japanese, their history, the difficulty of the language, etc.

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014Creating a sense of

homogeneity• IMPORTANT: the promotion of a discourse on

‘the Japanese’ reinforced the self-representation of Japanese people as different and unique.

• ... and influenced the way Japanese people perceive themselves in terms of ethnicity.

• Nihonjinron served to reinforce the sense of

Japan as a homogeneous nation.

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Is Japan homogeneous?

• The portrayal of Japan as a homogeneous nation pays attention to the majority of people in Japan in terms of ethnicity, the Yamato people.

• Why does it matter if Japanese people believe their society is homogeneous? • It is based on the premise that, due to the belief in

the homogeneity of Japan, minorities do not exist.• That is, a discourse of a homogenous Japan

makes certain groups of people ‘invisible’.

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No minorities?

• In Sept. 1979, Japan ratified:the UN International Covenant on Economic,

Social and Cultural Rights and the UN International Covenant on Civil and

Political Rights.• In 1980, the Japanese government submitted

a report (as required under Article 40 of the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights) declaring that, as defined, minorities in Japan ‘did not exist’.

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Politicising homogeneity

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Stats and facts

• It is difficult to offer accurate statistics on how many of Japan’s 127 million people are a ‘minority’.• Should the number just be based on those of

non-Japanese nationality, or include e.g. Burakumin, Ainu and Okinawan (Ryūkyūan)?

• Whatever measure is taken, the percentage is small: foreign nationals in 2011 rated 1.98% of the population, accounting for 2,533,441 people (excluding Burakumin, Ainu, and Okinawan) .

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Foreign nationals in Japan

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

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014Second, third and fourth

generations• The vast majority of Korean and Chinese

minority in Japan are the second, third or fourth generation born in Japan.

• Some of them were naturalized, while others seek to maintain a Korean or Chinese culture.

• Portraying Japan as homogeneous downplays the heterogeneous nature of Japanese society.

• This heterogeneity can and does take many forms.

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Heterogeneity revealed

Ethnically different Example: Anglo-Saxon foreigners

Ethnically close to Japanese but seen as different

Resident Chinese/Koreans who speaks and culturally behave as Japanese

More than one overlapping identities

May pass as Japanese but maintain their own background culture

Japanese nationals but not seen as mainstream Japanese Ainus, Okinawans

Japanese nationals but historically suffered discrimination Burakumin

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Challenges to homogeneity• A policy of assimilation has eroded differences.

...but ethnic or cultural identity may be the base of a challenge to Japanese national identity.

Societal level: minorities may promote the idea of Japan as a multicultural society.

Individual level: legally “Japanese” by nationality with separate languages and cultures Ainu and Okinawans may:

Prioritize such identities in Japan and abroad.When asked if they are Japanese “No. I’m Okinawan”

politicize Okinawan identity.

Build up a sense of the existence of minority groups in Japan.

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• If prioritizing heterogeneity over homogeneity, what is the basis for national identity?

• The critics of Japan as a homogenous society argue that, rather than a society based on the idea of homogeneity, • Japan should recognize diversity and

heterogeneity.• Move towards the creation of a multicultural

society.

Foundation to Japanese national identity

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The choice

• If we accept the existence of minorities with a different culture or language...Should these groups be assimilated into the

mainstream? ORShould multiculturalism be the policy pursued by

the government, where the mutual acceptance of difference is promoted?

• Yet, if the issue is viewed in terms of homogeneity or heterogeneity, the point to bear in mind is the flexibility in the boundaries of legally defined nationality, in tension with ethnicity and culture.

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Conclusion

• The construction of Japanese identity• Identity and national identity• The concept of ‘ethnicity’ in post-war

Japan• Is Japan ‘homogeneous’ or

‘heterogeneous’?