Multi-ethnic Japan (review)

Multi-ethnic Japan. By John Lie. Harvard University Press, 2001. 248 pp. Cloth, $35.00.

In this stimulating and challenging book, sociologist John Lie observes that like all nation-states, Japan contains within its population a number of ethnic minorities with distinct histories and cultures. In the process of modern nation building, Japan, like other world powers, forced its ethnic minorities — Koreans, Chinese, Ainu, Okinawans, Burakumin, people of mixed ancestry, and others — to assimilate into the national polity dominated by the majority Yamato population. As a result, Lie writes, "modern Japan was characterized by (multiethnic) imperialism, not (monoethnic) nationalism." He points out, however, that in both domestic and international discourses, postwar Japan has been predominantly characterized as monoethnic. How this can be explained is the simple but intriguing question Lie addresses in this book.

He does so through the use of sources drawn from the social sciences, humanities, and popular culture written in Japanese, English, and other languages (see his 52 pages of references). Based on his own hybrid upbringing in Japan, Korea, and the U.S., the author presents an intimate and lively cultural analysis of Japan's search for a new national identity. His conclusion is clear: "The myth of monoethnic Japan is fundamentally a post-World War II construct."

Chapter 1, "The Second Opening of Japan," introduces the topic of the book, citing the influx of Asian migrant workers in the late 1980s as having triggered an intense debate on the ethnic purity of the Japanese population. "The reality of multiethnicity . . . threatened and affirmed the belief in monoethnicity" (author's italics). Chapter 2, "The Contemporary Discourse of Japaneseness," challenges the myth of postwar social homogeneity of class, culture, and ethnicity by reference to published statistics and research. Regrettably, gender is omitted as a major basis for inequality.

Chapter 3, "Pop Multiethnicity," demonstrates the hidden ethnic and cultural hybridity of contemporary popular culture with a long list of national celebrities in sports, entertainment, and cuisine as cultural icons. Many Japanese have been unaware of ethnic diversity among familiar athletes, singers, and actors and would be taken aback to discover that these heroes are not "pure" Japanese. Chapter 4, "Modern Japan, Multiethnic Japan," discusses the roots of multiethnicity in its modern history, with brief accounts of the evolution of the five main ethnic minorities: Burakumin, Ainu, Okinawans, Chinese, and Koreans. This discussion will provide an excellent tool for teaching courses on contemporary Japanese society and culture.

Chapter 5, "Genealogies of Japanese Identity and Monoethnic Ideology," explains why and how the monoethnic myth and ideology became dominant in postwar decades. The author argues that their origins can be traced to the national discourse in the late 1960s, after the Japanese had achieved economic development, social egalitarianism, and therefore national integration. Citizens in all walks of life — intellectuals, politicians, and ordinary folks — were engaged in a search for a new identity suitable to a now affluent and peaceful country. According to Lie, emergence of monoethnicity as a major postwar belief allowed them to conveniently sever the present from a past damaged by war and colonialism. Chapter 6, "Classify and Signify," analyzes Japanese ways of thinking in the construction of ethnic and national stereotypes about cultural others. As a result, the author observes, passive racism is prevalent among Japanese citizens while human rights concerns regarding ethnic minorities are lacking in state policies and corporate practices.

With his lucid and self-reflective text, Lie's book boldly challenges, for the first time in English, the myth of monoethnic Japan. In so doing, he raises for his readers sober questions about Japan's postwar amnesia toward the recent past — an amnesia that has led to widespread dissemination of a revisionist history and uncritical acceptance of the deceptive self-image of ethnic homogeneity. Since the 1980s, however, Japanese scholars have begun to challenge this myth by publishing studies in Japanese on multiethnic nationalism and racial hierarchy before and during World War II and their legacies in contemporary institutions and ideologies. To debunk the monoethnicity myth, further...