Japan exercised colonial rule over Korea from 1910 to 1945 and many Koreans emigrated to Japan during this period. Today, these Korean migrants and their descendants, who are referred to as Zainichi Koreans, constitute one percent of the total population making them the nation's largest ethnic minority. Culturally different from both Korean nationals in Korea and majority Japanese, the young second and third generation Korean residents have developed a complex ethnic identity through their struggles with Japanese racism. Based on 'life-history interviews' with a number of young Zainichi Koreans in Japan, this study identifies their five broad types of ethnic identity: the pluralist, nationalist, individualist, naturalizing, and ethnic solidarity types. The study also presents case studies of young ethnic Korean women living within Japanese society. Pointing the way towards the eradication of racism, Fukuoka's book will appeal to anyone interested in contemporary Japan or minority studi

Lives of Young Koreans in Japan (Japanese Society Series)

History

Fukuoka, Yasunori

Asia

Trans Pacific Press

Analysis of Japanese society has been hampered by its use of static models: by its assumption that there is a unique and unchanging structure explainable by reference to a handful of native terms. That approach was always suspect, and has been further undermined by the fact of globalization, in which interactions between Japan and the rest of the world have become faster and further-reaching than ever before. This collection of papers, by a varied team of anthropologists and sociologists, is a bold attempt to come to terms with change, by putting a wide range of aspects of contemporary Japanese society under the microscope. Some of the studies look at macro phenomena such as patterns of international migration (Befu), business internationalization (Sedgwick), educational reform (McVeigh) and trends in values revealed in statistical surveys (MÃ?Â?Ã?Â¶hwald). Others examine ground-level change as experienced by particular social groupings: women in the workplace (Bishop), casual laborers (Gill), yakuza gangsters (Herbert) and members of the Burakumin community of former outcastes (Davis). Two papers examine the impact of globalization and change on aspects of traditional culture: the craft of making Buddhist altars (Eades et al) and the practice of ascetic mountain worship (Riessland). A concluding chapter takes a broader perspective, on the issue of how various theoretical approaches to Japanese society have attempted to interpret emotions (Clammer).

Globalization and Social Change in Contemporary Japan (Japanese Society Series)

Harumi Befu

J. S. Eades

Tom Gill

Traditionally the Japanese have shunned those not fitting the majority heterosexual mould. Those with a homosexual orientation have always endured an uncomfortable existence in a culture which condones blatant public scorn and ridicule being directed towards them and which doesn't question the pernicious stereotyping of gays. In Japan these traditions have survived into the twenty-first century and remain a deeply rooted part of the national psyche. It was in such a hostile environment that two men, in defiance of the prevailing social norms, saw fit to take a stand and declare that they were different from the mainstream, different from all the imagery they had ever been exposed to, and not orientated to fit the rigid, positively sanctioned mould presented to them by society. This book gives a human focus to the nascent struggle for social acceptance and dignity being waged by homosexuals in Japan. It describes the authors' coming out to society and their subsequent appeals, on both a personal and public level, for the acceptance of homosexuality by the wider society. It is a highly personal account of the authors' experiences - their fears, despair, self-loathing and rejection, aspirations, traumas and triumphs.

Coming Out in Japan (Japanese Society Series)

Self-Help

Yanase, Ryuta

Ito, Satoru

This book explores Japan's relationship with Asia and the world, examines contemporary Japanese thinking about Japan's "others" and how this impacts on local discourses about uniqueness, modernity, internal minorities and "postmodern" conceptions of Japanese culture, religion and psychic make-up. Taking local knowledge seriously, the author pursues the "centrality of the emotions" as a viable avenue for understanding Japanese society and enriches the scope of cultural studies and sociology of Japanese capitalism by presenting a comparative and non-Western perspective.

Japan and Its Others: Globalization, Difference and the Critique of Modernity (Japanese Society Series)

Clammer, John

This book presents a counter-argument to the widely held view that the Japanese have believed that they are a homogeneous nation since the Meiji period. Eiji Oguma demonstrates that the myth of ethnic homogeneity was not established during the Meiji period, nor during the Pacific War, but only after the end of the war. The study covers a large range of areas, including archaeology, ancient history, linguistics, anthropology, ethnology, folk law, eugenics and philosophy, to obtain an overview of how a variety of authors dealt with the theme of ethnicity. It also examines how this myth of homogeneity arose and how the peoples of such Japanese colonies as Korea and Taiwan were viewed in the pre-war literature on ethnic identity. This is the first English translation of A Genealogy of "Japanese" Self-Images, which won the Suntory Culture Award in 1996.

A Genealogy of Japanese Self-Images (Japanese Society Series)

Eiji, Oguma

Much of the misunderstanding by foreigners about Japan arises out of their acceptance of certain stereotypes about the Japanese. Harumi Befu spearheaded the critique of the stereotypical and the essentialized characterization of the Japanese and their culture, often referred to as Nihonjinron. He now presents his summary statements in this book by reviewing the whole gamut of the Nihonjinron literature, ranging from ecology, rural community structure, personality, language, values and ethos. He shows the roles Nihonjinron plays for the identity formation of the Japanese and as the idealized norm of the society in orienting the public. Elaborating on the way in which Nihonjinron functions as a civil religion, the book outlines how a period of positive self-identity has alternated with a period of negative self-identity since the Meiji period.

Hegemony of Homogeneity: An Anthropological Analysis of Nihonjinron

Befu, Harumi

This book overviews the present situation of foreign migrants in Japan, based on the latest and most comprehensive available data, and presents necessary policy recommendations. Special attention is given to workers under the economic recession, along with the condition of non-workers such as pseudo-exiles, self-actualization seekers and marriage/family oriented people. The study presents an analysis of deprivation and discrimination against migrants and examines human rights violations in areas including subsistence, residence, liberty and freedom, social life, culture and political participation. Hiroshi Komai, a foremost scholar in the studies of foreign residents in Japan, demonstrates the progress of settlement and the formation of ethnic communities. Examining the potential of migrants to transform Japanese structures, he proposes a policy to give migrants degrees of citizenship corresponding to the extent to which they have settled.

Foreign Migrants in Contemporary Japan (Japanese Society Series)

Komai, Hiroshi

The Peripheral Centre: Essays on Japanese History and Civilization (Japanese Society Series)

The main theme of the book is the complex relationship between the patterns of Japanese modernity and the civilizational legacy on which they continue to grow. The author discusses the East Asian regional context of Japanese civilization, deals with the dynamics of state formation and the attendant cultural transformations in pre-modern Japan, and suggests ways of comparing the Japanese experience to the West. Presenting Japan as a test case for relating the emerging problems of multiple modernities to civilizational perspectives, the book examines the economic foundations as well as the philosophical self-interpretations of Japanese modernity.

Arnason, Johann

An Ecological View of History: Japanese Civilization in the World Context (Japanese Society Series)

This is the first English version of Tadao Umesao's classic, published first in Japanese in 1957, with a full description of his ecological theory of civilizations of Eurasia. Dividing the Eurasian continent into three major ecological zones consisting of Western Europe, Japan, and the region between them, he shows how the first two are basically similar and demonstrates fundamental differences between Japan and China. In 1964 a jury of ten intellectuals chose this treatise as one of the 18 most influential treatises since 1945 from among more than a hundred which were considered. In 1998, when an influential monthly, Bungei Shunju, solicited the ten most impactful books in the twentieth century from more than 170 intellectuals in Japan, this book won the third highest vote among 67 books that were nominated.

Umesao, Tadao

This title is the first volume of a comprehensive, four-volume survey which documents the miraculous growth of Japanese science and technology from post-war devastation to its attaining a leading global status. A team of more than fifty Japanese experts labored for ten years in assembling the unique materials into a monumental work of careful scholarship. The study won the prestigious Mainichi Publications Award in 1997.

A Social History of Science and Technology in Contemporary Japan: Volume 1: The Occupation Period 1945-1952 (Japanese Society Series)

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