Japan's Invisible Race

Japan's Invisible Race PDF Author: Hiroshi Wagatsuma
Publisher: University of California Press
ISBN: 0520357302
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 464

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Book Description
Modern Japanese share a myth to the effect that they harbor in their midst an inferior race less "human" than the stock that fathered their nation as a whole. These pariahs, numbering more than two million, are segregated by caste just as firmly as the Negro is in the United States. The present volume, to which several Japanese and American social scientists have contributed, offeres an interdisciplinary description and analysis of this strangely persistent phenomenon, inherited from feudal times. Its main thesis is that caste and racism are derivatives of identical psychological processes in human personality, however differently structure they may be in social institutions. It finds that what it terms status anxiety, related to defensively held social values, leads to a need to segregate disparaged parts of the population on grounds of innate inferiority. Until the time of their official emancipation in 1871, the so-called eta were distinguished visibly by their special garb. Today few clues to their identity are visible; yet, they remain a distinguishable, segregated segment of the population and bear inwardly, in a psychological sense, the stigma resulting from generations of oppression. This volume traces the story of the outcastes in complete detail--their origin, their stormy post-emancipation history, and their present leftist political significance. Large populations of outcasts live in urban ghettoes within the major cities of south-central Japan. In some of these metropolitan centers they comprise up to 5 percent of the population but contribute 60 to 65 percent of unemployment and relief roles. They have periodic trouble with the police; they manifest a delinquency rate more than three times that of the ordinary population; their children do poorly in school; they are subject to various forms of job discrimination; and few marriages are successfully consummated across the caste barrier. Some try to escape their past identity by becoming prostitutes or by entering the underworld. Those who survive discrimination to achieve status in society either live in fear of exposure [if they are "passing"] or overtly maintain their identity in proud isolation. Some who live in rural communities have achieved equal economic status with their neighbors but not full social acceptance. In their theoretical closing discussion the authors offer a challenging critique of Marxian class theory in introducing the concept of "expressive" exploitation--that is, the psychological use of a subordinate group as a repository of what is disavowed by the values of a culture in a caste society--as distinct in form and function from the "instrumental" economic or political exploitation of subjected minorities in class societies. Contributors:Gerald BerremanJohn B. CornellJohn DonoghueEdward NorbeckJohn PriceYuzuru SasakiGeorge O. Totten This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1966.

Japan's Invisible Race

Japan's Invisible Race PDF Author: Hiroshi Wagatsuma
Publisher: University of California Press
ISBN: 0520357302
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 464

Get Book Here

Book Description
Modern Japanese share a myth to the effect that they harbor in their midst an inferior race less "human" than the stock that fathered their nation as a whole. These pariahs, numbering more than two million, are segregated by caste just as firmly as the Negro is in the United States. The present volume, to which several Japanese and American social scientists have contributed, offeres an interdisciplinary description and analysis of this strangely persistent phenomenon, inherited from feudal times. Its main thesis is that caste and racism are derivatives of identical psychological processes in human personality, however differently structure they may be in social institutions. It finds that what it terms status anxiety, related to defensively held social values, leads to a need to segregate disparaged parts of the population on grounds of innate inferiority. Until the time of their official emancipation in 1871, the so-called eta were distinguished visibly by their special garb. Today few clues to their identity are visible; yet, they remain a distinguishable, segregated segment of the population and bear inwardly, in a psychological sense, the stigma resulting from generations of oppression. This volume traces the story of the outcastes in complete detail--their origin, their stormy post-emancipation history, and their present leftist political significance. Large populations of outcasts live in urban ghettoes within the major cities of south-central Japan. In some of these metropolitan centers they comprise up to 5 percent of the population but contribute 60 to 65 percent of unemployment and relief roles. They have periodic trouble with the police; they manifest a delinquency rate more than three times that of the ordinary population; their children do poorly in school; they are subject to various forms of job discrimination; and few marriages are successfully consummated across the caste barrier. Some try to escape their past identity by becoming prostitutes or by entering the underworld. Those who survive discrimination to achieve status in society either live in fear of exposure [if they are "passing"] or overtly maintain their identity in proud isolation. Some who live in rural communities have achieved equal economic status with their neighbors but not full social acceptance. In their theoretical closing discussion the authors offer a challenging critique of Marxian class theory in introducing the concept of "expressive" exploitation--that is, the psychological use of a subordinate group as a repository of what is disavowed by the values of a culture in a caste society--as distinct in form and function from the "instrumental" economic or political exploitation of subjected minorities in class societies. Contributors:Gerald BerremanJohn B. CornellJohn DonoghueEdward NorbeckJohn PriceYuzuru SasakiGeorge O. Totten This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1966.

Japan's Invisible Race

Japan's Invisible Race PDF Author: George A. De Vos
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN:
Category : Buraku people
Languages : en
Pages : 462

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Book Description


Embedded Racism

Embedded Racism PDF Author: Debito Arudou
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1793653968
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 515

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Book Description
Despite domestic constitutional provisions and international treaty promises, Japan has no law against racial discrimination. Consequently, businesses around Japan display “Japanese Only” signs, denying entry to all 'foreigners' on sight. Employers and landlords routinely refuse jobs and apartments to foreign applicants. Japanese police racially profile “foreign-looking” bystanders for invasive questioning on the street. Legislators, administrators, and pundits portray foreigners as a national security threat and call for their segregation and expulsion. Nevertheless, Japan’s government and media claim there is no discrimination by race in Japan, therefore no laws are necessary. How does Japan resolve the cognitive dissonance of racial discrimination being unconstitutional yet not illegal? Embedded Racism untangles Japan's complex narrative on race. Starting with case studies of hundreds of “Japanese Only" exclusionary businesses, it carefully analyzes the social construction of Japanese identity through laws, public policy, jurisprudence, and media messages. It reveals how the concept of a “Japanese" has been racialized to the point where one must look “Japanese" to have equal civil and human rights in Japan. Completely revised and updated for this Second Edition (including landmark events like the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, the Covid Pandemic, and the Carlos Ghosn Case), Embedded Racism is the product of three decades of research and fieldwork by a scholar living in Japan as a naturalized Japanese citizen. It offers a perspective into how Japan's entrenched, misunderstood, and deliberately overlooked racial discrimination not only undermines Japan's economic future but also emboldens white supremacists worldwide who see Japan as their template ethnostate.

Japan's Invisible Race

Japan's Invisible Race PDF Author: Hiroshi Wagatsuma
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520310845
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 464

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Book Description
Modern Japanese share a myth to the effect that they harbor in their midst an inferior race less "human" than the stock that fathered their nation as a whole. These pariahs, numbering more than two million, are segregated by caste just as firmly as the Negro is in the United States. The present volume, to which several Japanese and American social scientists have contributed, offeres an interdisciplinary description and analysis of this strangely persistent phenomenon, inherited from feudal times. Its main thesis is that caste and racism are derivatives of identical psychological processes in human personality, however differently structure they may be in social institutions. It finds that what it terms status anxiety, related to defensively held social values, leads to a need to segregate disparaged parts of the population on grounds of innate inferiority. Until the time of their official emancipation in 1871, the so-called eta were distinguished visibly by their special garb. Today few clues to their identity are visible; yet, they remain a distinguishable, segregated segment of the population and bear inwardly, in a psychological sense, the stigma resulting from generations of oppression. This volume traces the story of the outcastes in complete detail--their origin, their stormy post-emancipation history, and their present leftist political significance. Large populations of outcasts live in urban ghettoes within the major cities of south-central Japan. In some of these metropolitan centers they comprise up to 5 percent of the population but contribute 60 to 65 percent of unemployment and relief roles. They have periodic trouble with the police; they manifest a delinquency rate more than three times that of the ordinary population; their children do poorly in school; they are subject to various forms of job discrimination; and few marriages are successfully consummated across the caste barrier. Some try to escape their past identity by becoming prostitutes or by entering the underworld. Those who survive discrimination to achieve status in society either live in fear of exposure [if they are "passing"] or overtly maintain their identity in proud isolation. Some who live in rural communities have achieved equal economic status with their neighbors but not full social acceptance. In their theoretical closing discussion the authors offer a challenging critique of Marxian class theory in introducing the concept of "expressive" exploitation--that is, the psychological use of a subordinate group as a repository of what is disavowed by the values of a culture in a caste society--as distinct in form and function from the "instrumental" economic or political exploitation of subjected minorities in class societies. Contributors:Gerald BerremanJohn B. CornellJohn DonoghueEdward NorbeckJohn PriceYuzuru SasakiGeorge O. Totten This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1966.

Red and Yellow, Black and Brown

Red and Yellow, Black and Brown PDF Author: Joanne L. Rondilla
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 0813587328
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 387

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Book Description
Red and Yellow, Black and Brown gathers together life stories and analysis by twelve contributors who express and seek to understand the often very different dynamics that exist for mixed race people who are not part white. The chapters focus on the social, psychological, and political situations of mixed race people who have links to two or more peoples of color— Chinese and Mexican, Asian and Black, Native American and African American, South Asian and Filipino, Black and Latino/a and so on. Red and Yellow, Black and Brown addresses questions surrounding the meanings and communication of racial identities in dual or multiple minority situations and the editors highlight the theoretical implications of this fresh approach to racial studies.

Diaspora without Homeland

Diaspora without Homeland PDF Author: Sonia Ryang
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520916190
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 236

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Book Description
More than one-half million people of Korean descent reside in Japan today—the largest ethnic minority in a country often assumed to be homogeneous. This timely, interdisciplinary volume blends original empirical research with the vibrant field of diaspora studies to understand the complicated history, identity, and status of the Korean minority in Japan. An international group of scholars explores commonalities and contradictions in the Korean diasporic experience, touching on such issues as citizenship and belonging, the personal and the political, and homeland and hostland.

From White to Yellow

From White to Yellow PDF Author: Rotem Kowner
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
ISBN: 0773596844
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 707

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Book Description
When Europeans first landed in Japan they encountered people they perceived as white-skinned and highly civilized, but these impressions did not endure. Gradually the Europeans' positive impressions faded away and Japanese were seen as yellow-skinned and relatively inferior. Accounting for this dramatic transformation, From White to Yellow is a groundbreaking study of the evolution of European interpretations of the Japanese and the emergence of discourses about race in early modern Europe. Transcending the conventional focus on Africans and Jews within the rise of modern racism, Rotem Kowner demonstrates that the invention of race did not emerge in a vacuum in eighteenth-century Europe, but rather was a direct product of earlier discourses of the "Other." This compelling study indicates that the racial discourse on the Japanese, alongside the Chinese, played a major role in the rise of the modern concept of race. While challenging Europe's self-possession and sense of centrality, the discourse delayed the eventual consolidation of a hierarchical worldview in which Europeans stood immutably at the apex. Drawing from a vast array of primary sources, From White to Yellow traces the racial roots of the modern clash between Japan and the West.

Asian American Dreams

Asian American Dreams PDF Author: Helen Zia
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 9780374527365
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 372

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Book Description
" ... about the transformation of Asian Americans ... into a self-identified racial group that is influencing every aspect of American society."--Jacket.

Invisibility by Design

Invisibility by Design PDF Author: Gabriella Lukács
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 1478007184
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 147

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Book Description
In the wake of labor market deregulation during the 2000s, online content sharing and social networking platforms were promoted in Japan as new sites of work that were accessible to anyone. Enticed by the chance to build personally fulfilling careers, many young women entered Japan's digital economy by performing unpaid labor as photographers, net idols, bloggers, online traders, and cell phone novelists. While some women leveraged digital technology to create successful careers, most did not. In Invisibility by Design Gabriella Lukács traces how these women's unpaid labor became the engine of Japan's digital economy. Drawing on interviews with young women who strove to sculpt careers in the digital economy, Lukács shows how platform owners tapped unpaid labor to create innovative profit-generating practices without employing workers, thereby rendering women's labor invisible. By drawing out the ways in which labor precarity generates a demand for feminized affective labor, Lukács underscores the fallacy of the digital economy as a more democratic, egalitarian, and inclusive mode of production.

24 Bars to Kill

24 Bars to Kill PDF Author: Andrew B. Armstrong
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 178920268X
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 203

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Book Description
The most clearly identifiable and popular form of Japanese hip-hop, “ghetto” or “gangsta” music has much in common with its corresponding American subgenres, including its portrayal of life on the margins, confrontational style, and aspirational “rags-to-riches” narratives. Contrary to depictions of an ethnically and economically homogeneous Japan, gangsta J-hop gives voice to the suffering, deprivation, and social exclusion experienced by many modern Japanese. 24 Bars to Kill offers a fascinating ethnographic account of this music as well as the subculture around it, showing how gangsta hip-hop arises from widespread dissatisfaction and malaise.