Japan and the Rise of the Idea of Race: The Meiji Era Fusion of Foreign and Domestic Constructions
The notion of race, and notably the anxiety over the global hierarchy of the races alongside doubts about the capacity for survival of the Japanese ‘race ’, were a matter of unprecedented concern in Meiji era Japan. It was essentially a mere chance that t
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Japan and the Rise of the Idea of Race: The Meiji Era Fusion of Foreign and Domestic Constructions Rotem Kowner
Abstract The notion of race, and notably the anxiety over the global hierarchy of the races alongside doubts about the capacity for survival of the Japanese ‘race’, were a matter of unprecedented concern in Meiji era Japan. It was essentially a mere chance that the forced opening of Japan and the subsequent process of modernization carried out according to the Western model coincided with the rise of scientific racism in the West. Nonetheless, Japan had had its share of rudimental racial worldviews much earlier, including a certain degree of ethnographic knowledge of the Other and an indigenous sense of xenophobia. This chapter seeks to examine the interaction between the domestic and foreign views of race in Japan during the Meiji-era (1868–1912) and the way in which they amalgamated to form a national discourse surrounding self and the Other.
Keywords Meiji era japan National identity Westernization Modernization
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Race Racism Blood purity
Introduction
In late nineteenth-century Japan, questions of race loomed crucial. More than an interest in the theoretical aspects of this concept, it was the global hierarchy of races, doubts about the survivability of the Japanese “race,” and the role of race in the newly constructed national identity that led to major concerns, if not occasional anxiety. Race was closely associated with modernization and with the entire notion of modernity. It was not only a relatively new concept in the West—a modern albeit distorted view of humanity—but also offered a radical gauge of human progress, evolution, and eventually the capacity for modernization. An oft-neglected aspect of Japanese modernization, the local perceptions and interpretations of race and the
R. Kowner (&) The University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2016 Y. Sugita (ed.), Social Commentary on State and Society in Modern Japan, DOI 10.1007/978-981-10-2395-8_3
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responses to foreign racism that emerged during this period were one of the forces that would shape society and culture throughout the twentieth century. Unsurprisingly, several decades earlier, during the Bakumatsu years (1854–1868), race had assumed a far lesser degree of significance, if any, in the intellectual and political life of Japan. At the time, the concept of race had been virtually unknown and the desire for social and political change suppressed or inexistent. Now, however, Japan was in the midst of a dramatic transformation, turning from an isolated, rural, and feudal country into an open, modernizing, and increasingly expansionist state. Both its forced opening and the subsequent process of modernization based on the Western model coincided with the rise of scientific racism in the West. Thus, the encounter with concept of race should not be surprising, nor should be the changing attitude towards it. This chapter seeks to examine the
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