Debito Arudou - Embedded Racism: Japan’s Visible Minorities and Racial Discrimination

Embedded Racism

LEXINGTON BOOKS

Lanham Boulder New York London

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Arudo, Debito, 1965

Embedded racism : Japan's visible minorities and racial discrimination / Debito Arudou.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-4985-1390-6 (cloth : alkaline paper) -- ISBN 978-1-4985-1391-3 (electronic)

1. Japan--Race relations. 2. Racism--Japan. 3. Minorities--Japan--Social conditions. 4. Aliens--Japan--Social conditions. 5. Race discrimination--Japan. 6. Race discrimination--Law and legislation--Japan. 7. Physical-appearance-based bias--Japan. 8. Social isolation--Japan. 9. Nationalism--Social aspects--Japan. I. Title.

DS832.7.A1A78 2015

305.800952--dc23

2015033991

TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

This book is the product of nearly thirty years of researching and living in Japanfrom around the time I first visited in 1986 to the present day. I have always been intrigued by how some normalized images of Japan did not square with what I was experiencing in everyday life. Despite being friendly and hospitable to guests, very progressive in unexpected ways, and open enough to outside things to co-opt them (even the music for Japans national anthem was written by a foreigner), Japan has a palpable undercurrent of exclusionism. It is both subtle (e.g., ideas and proposals dismissed due to their lack of precedent) and overt (e.g., No Foreigners Allowed signsthe subject of my related book Japanese Only: The Otaru Hot Springs Case and Racial Discrimination in Japan). As I stayed longer, became fluent in Japanese, and felt acculturated and comfortable in Japanese society (to the point of taking Japanese citizenship and giving up my American), I saw the exclusionism more and moreand wanted to understand it.

As a social scientist, I like figuring out why societies behave in patterns, i.e., why people generally do this and not that. I eventually arrived at answers that transcended the tautological Japanese do this because they are Japanese, i.e., something cultural. I never liked culture as an explanation, since a) culture is hard to define, and eclipses individual choice and foible, b) it is often a black box that encages researcher curiosity, and c) I assume that people anywhere are generally rational: they do things that are in their own best interests. I do not think people are unthinking prisoners of culture. In most cases there is a systema collection of logics and incentivesthat occasions behavior. In this research, the system encourages people to behave inclusively or exclusively. Even if those belief systems initially made no sense to me, they made sense to someone. My quest in this book was to find out how they made sense, and to quantify how they were underpinned by rules, customs, mores, and procedures.

Exclusionism in Japan (especially that of the racialized ilk) has been one big puzzle, taking me decades to deconstruct, then reconstruct as a coherent picture of why a society as kind as Japans can be so unsympathetic towards people perceived as outsiders. One conclusion I would like readers to internalize from this book is that Japan should not be treated as specialagain, that Japanese do this because they are Japanese thing. Succumbing to that narrative invites all sorts of exceptionalism that is ungroundedand it causes enormous cognitive dissonance when Japan is called upon to observe (while, as we shall see in this book, officially claiming exception from) international standards of human rights under the international treaties it signed. This is not just a matter of normative principle. As I argue in the last chapter, Japans racialized nation-state membership processes are so exclusionary that they are undermining the very fabric of Japanese society: Japan is strangling itself demographically on its Embedded Racism.

In sum, Japan is no exception, especially to the worlds racialization processes, and it deserves similar critique for racism. I believe that Japanese society behaves like any otherit just does it with an internal logic that is special and unique in ways that all societies are special and unique. This book seeks to unspool the internal logic that justifies and embeds racism. I hope you find its arguments compelling.

I would like to express my gratitude to the many people who have been helpful in this research. Deservedly first, I would like to thank my doctoral dissertation committee at Meiji Gakuin University: Dr. M. G. Sheftall, Dr. Sven Saaler, Dr. iwa Keinosuke, Dr. ki Akira, and most of all Dr. Tom Gill for never giving up on me even when the project was in its (several) embryonic stages.

Next, there are colleagues who over the decades provided assistance ranging from the palliative (thanks) to the ego-bruising (ouch, but thanks): Ivan Hall, Chris Pitts, David Johnson, Eric Johnston, Sakanaka Hidenori, Yuma Totani, Mark Levin, Christine Yano, Chalmers and Sheila Johnson, Mark Selden, Ben Stubbings, James and Kumiko Eriksson, Karen Stafford, Chad Edwards, Michael H. Fox, Bern Mulvey, Rube Redfield, Goetz Heermann, Nick Hill, Tim Greer, Christopher and Amy Savoie, Paul Toland, Eric Kalmus, Paul Kallender-Umezu, Steve van Dresser, Mark Schreiber, Kaoru Miki, Jeff Kingston, David Edgington, Okamoto Masataka, mura Satoshi, Dave Spector, Higashizawa Yasushi, Shiba-ike Toshiteru, Moro-oka Yasuko, Doudou Diene, Ana Bortz, Tom Goetz, Pat OBrien, Robert Aspinall, Kirk Masden, Farrell Cleary, Joe Tomei, Alan Rosen, Cynthia Worthington, Daniel Kirk, Paul Beaufait, Gavin Anderson, Shawn Clankie, Simon Jackson, Richard Hopkins, Shouya Grigg, Mark Rosa, Ben Goodyear, Steven Herman, Colin Jones, Louis Carlet, Alex Kerr, Tilman Koenig and Daniel Kremers, David Hearn and Matt Antell, Tyler Lynch, Rue Birch, Heinrich Koechlin, Tokyo Sam, Stefan Stosik, Carl Polley and Beryl Yang, Kyle Cleveland, Rick Gundlach, Caroline Pover, Jon Heese, Anthony Bianchi, Susan Duggan, Edward and Aki Haig, Evan Heimlich, Randal Irwin, Chris Mackenzie, Daniel Walsh, Dave Gutteridge, Jens Wilkinson, Imtiaz Chaudhry, Mark Mino-Thompson, Ryan Hagglund, Ben Shearon, Elliott Samuels, Barry Brophy, Barbara Bayer, Monty DiPietro, Paul Murphy, Jay Klaphake, Douglas Shukert, Charles Kowalski, Jon Letman, Isabelle, David McNeill, Jim ONeill, Martin Fackler, Pio dEmilia, Larry Repeta, Skipp Orr, Ronald E. Hall, Shin Hae Bong, John Lie, T. J. Pempel, John Maher, Robert Whiting, Jim Brooke, Jeff Alexander, Mark West, Robert Pekkanen, Lonny Carlyle, Bob Huey, Dick Minear, Trent Maxey, Frank Upham, Keiko Yamanaka, In Ha Lee, Gabriele Vogt, Julian Dierkes, Curtis Millhaupt, John McLaughlin, Kawakami Sonoko, Thom Simmons, Gene van Troyer, Daniel Carolin, Peter Firkola, Steven Fylypchuk, Chris Gunson, Mark Smith, Steve Silver, Albrecht Stahmer, Garrett DeOrio, Ken Worsley, Bob Sanderson, Jon Dujmovich, Chris Flynn, John Lawrence, Murray Wood, Tony McNicol, Tim Hornyak, Steven Parr, Jim diGriz, Rich Fassler, Charles DeWolf, John Evans, Ken Sutherland, U. G. Valentine, Scott Hards, Steve McGowan, Fukushima Mizuho, Tsurunen Marutei, Charles McJilton, FRANCA, The Community in Japan, UMJ, The Buraku Liberation League, IMADR-JC, Mindan, the JCLU, W. E. B. Du Bois, my editors at Lexington Books, Brighid Stone and Hannah Fisher, and Kate Hertzog.