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7 The Minority Experience in Japan A Comparative Perspective It is all too easy in hindsight to sneer at expedients, such as namechanging , to conceal ethnic identity. Some circumstances require them for economic survival. Constant exposure to prejudice can also have profound psychological effects that are especially devastating for children and youth. Yet concealing ethnicity can also cause internal conflict, erecting borders in the mind. George DeVos writes of “an internal duality involving a partially pejorative self-image.”1 In many societies, minority status carries associations of victimhood and powerlessness that can contribute to a negative self-image. Such feelings are sometimes alleviated by what both majority and minority perceive as a victory in armed conflict, political struggle, athletics, or other forms of competition . For Jewish Americans, such as this writer, U.S. press coverage of Israel’s victory in the 1967 Six-Day War seemed to mitigate the perception of Jews as weak and as the world’s perennial victims.2 The qualified success of the reversion movement represented a victory for many Okinawans, removing the psychological stigma of an “occupied people,” despite deep dissatisfaction over the bilateral agreement that perpetuated the disproportionate American military presence. Twenty-seven years later, younger Okinawans on the mainland recall feeling pride in being Okinawan after the Shō High School team won the nationwide baseball tournament in 1999, defeating all their mainland opponents. This psychological breakthrough came because, in the words of a magazine journalist, “we finally beat the Yamatunchu at something.”3 In the United States, minority status has recently been associated with the heroic struggles and landmark victories of the civil rights movement, although some Americans continue to oppose government policies to reduce discrimination. In 2009, African Americans celebrated the innauguration of President Barack Obama, which represented a historic political victory, although his election has by no means ended the structural inequality that The Minority Experience in Japan | 219 persists along racial lines in America. In Japan, there is a growing awareness of movements for equality, but minority status still carries associations of strangeness (or “otherness”) and inferiority. Activists seeking equal rights for minorities in Japan are admired by some, but seen as troublemakers by others. In many countries, a hierarchy exists that valorizes certain minorities while ranking others lower. This has led to efforts by some to conceal, or minimize, whatever puts them in a category currently out of favor, and to associate themselves, as much as possible, with the majority, or with a different , more favored minority. Kaneshiro Munekazu explains that some descendants of migrants on the mainland have denied or downplayed their connections with Okinawa, at least until recently, because they didn’t want to be associated with negative stereotypes, viewed as victims, or thought of as different from others. Many of them have parents or grandparents who suffered discrimination.4 Yet hierarchies can change as the perceived status of minorities rises or falls. The international movement for ethnic pride and the “Okinawa boom” in mainland Japan have raised the status of Okinawan ethnicity in the popular mind. Thus, despite unwelcome “praise” and misconceptions generated by the “boom,” far fewer Okinawans would conceal their origins today than in earlier decades. Perceived hierarchies of status can also operate within minorities. Among ethnic Koreans, people whose families came from Cheju Island sometimes feel marginalized by those whose families came from the Korean peninsula. Okinawans I interviewed in Greater Osaka who had migrated from the outer Ryukyu Islands reported that migrants from Okinawa’s Main Island considered them to be of lower status. Finally, the assignment of status to minorities can have paradoxical results. “Passing” as a member of the majority is not possible for people whose physicial appearance distinguishes them from the majority population. But while segregation was still the law in parts of the United States, blacks were sometimes welcomed in “whites only” hotels if they wore African garments and spoke with British accents. The management apparently made exceptions for black visitors from abroad whose status they considered higher than that of black Americans.5 Among minorities in Japan, “passing” varies as to both feasibility and desirability . Experiences vis-à-vis majority Japanese also vary for each group and for individuals within groups. The Okinawan experience differs most significantly from that of other minorities in Japan because Okinawans have an “internal homeland” of approximately 1.3 million inhabitants where, as the “majority,” they can shape their society, practice their culture without being gazed on as “different,” and exercise the legal...

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