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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Through analysis of trends and policy options, combined with interviews with 21 female role models from business to the arts, Bill Emmott takes an optimistic look at how a society with an extreme level of gender inequality, an ageing population, and slow economic growth can achieve greater social justice and sustainable prosperity for the future.