Table Of ContentMULTICULTURAL
JAPAN
Palaeolithic to Postmodern
EDITED BY
DONALD DENOON, MARK HUDSON,
GAVAN McCORMACK, AND TESSA MORRIS-SUZUKI
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
GAVAN McCORMACK
DCAMBRIDGE
v
UNIVERSITY PRESS
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First published 1996
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Transferred to digital printing 2006
Contents
List of Figures and Tables v
List of Contributors Vl
Abbreviations Vlll
Introduction Gavan McCormack 1
Part 1 Archaeology and Identity
1. The Japanese as an Asia-Pacific Population 19
Katayama Kazumichi
2. North Kyushu Creole: a language-contact model for the 31
origins ofJ apanese john C. Maher
3. Beyond Ethnicity and Emergence in Japanese 46
Archaeology Simon Kaner
4. Archaeology and Japanese Identity Clare Fawcett 60
Part 2 Centre and Periphery
5. A Descent into the Past: the frontier in the construction 81
ofJ apanese history Tessa Morris-Suzuki
6. The Place of Okinawa in Japanese Historial Identity 95
Richard Pearson
7. Ainu Moshir and Yaponesia: Ainu and Okinawan 117
identities in contemporary Japan Hanazaki Kohei
Ill
IV CONTENTS
Part 3 Contact with the Outside
8. Some Reflections on Identity Formation in East Asia 135
in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries
Derek Massarella
9. Siam and Japan in Pre-Modern Times: a note on mutual 153
images Ishii Yoneo
10. Indonesia under the 'Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity 160
Sphere' Goto Ken 'ichi
11. Japanese Army Internment Policies for Enemy Civilians 174
during the Asia-Pacific War Utsumi Aiko
Part 4 The Japanese Family
12. Modern Patriarchy and the Formation of the Japanese 213
Nation State Ueno Chizuko
13. The Modern Japanese Family System: unique or 224
universal? Nishikawa Yuko
Part 5 Culture and Ideology
14. Emperor, Race, and Commoners Amino Yoshihiko 235
15. Two Interpretations ofJ apanese Culture 245
Nishikawa Nagao
16. Kokusaika: impediments in Japan's deep structure 265
Gavan McCormack
Afterword: Diversity and Identity in the Twenty-First Century 287
Mark Hudson and Tessa Morris-Suzuki
Index 293
Figures
1.1 Pleistocene seashore lines in the Japanese archipelago 20
and the surrounding area
1.2 Scatter diagram of modern human populations from 25
Asia and Oceania on the basis of multivariable analy-
ses of body measurements
1.3 Dendogram showing the Euclidean distance relation- 26
ships of nine Asian and three Oceanic samples based
on cranofacial variables
1.4 Genetic affinity diagram among eighteen human pop- 27
ulations in the world based on the affinity network
analysis of twenty-three blood-polymorphic alleles
6.1 Okinawa and surrounding region 98
6.2 Major Rylikyli sites mentioned in chapter 6 100
Tables
6.1 Cultural chronology of Okinawa 103
11.1 Organisation of civilian internment camps 183
11.2 Cases tried before the Batavia Tribunal, by occupa 197
tion of defendant
15.1 Prerequisites and factors for national integration 249
v
Contributors
AMINOY OSHIHIKaO ,sp ecialist in Japanese history and one ofJ apan's best
known historians, teaches at Kanagawa University, Yokohama.
DONALDD ENOONi s professor of Pacific Islander History at the Australian
National University and specialises in economic and medical history.
CLAREF AWCETIha s carried out research into the social context ofJ apanese
archaeology, and now teaches in the Department of Sociology and
Anthropology at St Francis Xavier University, Antigonish, Nova Scotia,
Canada.
GOTO KEN'ICaHnI h,is torian of Indonesia, and especially of the period of
Japanese dominance during the Pacific War, teaches at the Institute
of Social Sciences, Waseda University, Tokyo.
HANAZAKKIO HEiis an independent scholar, formerly professor at Tokyo
University, specialising in the history of Japan's Ainu and Okinawan
minority peoples.
MARKH UDSONi s a Foreign Professor of Anthropology at the University
of Tsukuba where he specialises in the archaeology and biological
anthropology ofJ apan.
ISHIYIO NEO,a specialist in Thai history and editor and author of many
books on South-east Asia, teaches at the Institute of Asian Cultures,
Sophia University, Tokyo.
SIMONK ANERis Assistant Director of the Sainsbury Institute for the Study
of Japanese Arts and Cultures in the UK and is a specialist in Jomon
archaeology.
vi
CONTRIBUTORS vii
KATAYAMAK AZUMICHiIs a physical anthropologist who has conducted
extensive research in the Pacific Islands; he is a professor at the
Primate Research Institute of Kyoto University.
GAVANM cCORMACKi s professor of Japanese History at the Australian
National University and specialises in the twentieth-century history of
Japan and her East Asian neighbours.
JOHN c.M AHER is professor of Linguistics in the Department of Com
munication and Linguisitics at International Christian University,
Tokyo where he teaches general linguistics and sociolinguisitics. He
specialises in multilingualism in Japan, philosophical linguistics and
language and psychoanalysis.
DEREKM ASSARELLaA ,sp ecialist in early modern relations between Japan
and Europe, teaches in the Faculty of Economics, Chuo University,
Tokyo.
TESSAM ORRIS-SUZUisK aI professor of Japanese History at the Australian
National University and specialises in the economic and technological
history ofJ apan.
NISHIKAWNAA GAO,w ho teaches comparative cultural studies and is a
prominent scholar in contemporary European and Japanese history,
is an Emeritus Professor ofRitsumeikan University, Kyoto.
NISHIKAWYAD Ko,a social historian specialising in the history of Japanese
women, is Professor in the Faculty of Humanities, Kyoto Bunko
University.
RICHARDP EARSONis a specialist in East Asian archaeology, residing in
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
UENO CHIZUKOa, sociologist specialising in feminist studies and cultural
criticism, teaches in the Department of Sociology, Tokyo University.
UTSUMIA IKO,an historian of Japanese colonialism and war, teaches at
Keisen Women's College, Tokyo.
Abbreviations
ACA Agency for Cultural Affairs
ANU Australian National University
ASEAN Association of South-East Asian Nations
BG Bankon-Gudojati
BP Before Present
DCHE Deliberative Council on Historical Environments
DCPCP Deliberative Council on the Protection of Cultural
Properties
DNA deoxyribonucleic acid
EC European Community
ICU International Christian University
LDK Lounge, Dining, Kitchen
LDP Liberal Democratic Party
MFP Multifunction Polis
MITI Ministry of International Trade and Industry
NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization
NHK Uapanese Broadcasting Corporation)
OJ Old Japanese
POW Prisoner(s) of War
UN United Nations
viii
Introduction
GAVA N McCORMACK
Japan is conventionally seen as a monocultural society. Located at the
eastern extremity of the Eurasian land-mass and separated from it by a
sea that is wider and more dangerous than that which divides the
British Isles from the same land-mass at its western extremity, it is
apparently distinguished from the countries nearest to it both in its
pre-modern institutions (often called 'feudal') and in its modern
economic dynamism (sometimes called 'miraculous'). The proposition
that Japan is unique and monocultural seems plausible.
Throughout Japanese history, prominent figures have insisted on
the distinctness of Japanese identity, from the 'National Learning'
(Kokugakusha) scholars in the eighteenth century with their stress on
a pure and untrammeled (that is, non-Chinese) Japanese essence to
late twentieth-century statements by Nakasone Yasuhiro (Prime
Minister in the 1980s) that Japan is a homogeneous 'natural
community' (as distinct from a Western-style 'nation formed by
contract'), and the 'Yamato race' which he insisted had been living
'for at least two thousand years . . . hand in hand with no other,
different ethnic groups present [in these islands]' .1 The belief that
Japan is a homogeneous, monoracial state is deep-rooted and, as Ivan
Hall notes, has long been 'openly sanctioned by the intellectual
establishment, public consensus, and government policy'.2 Unlike
other societies which are mixed (o-majiri), especially the United States
with its 'many Blacks, Puerto Ricans and Mexicans', Japan is thought
to be pure and homogeneous, and therefore to have had an easier
time becoming an 'intelligent society'.3
In the modern (pre-1945) state, the ideology of Japanese
homogeneity and superiority was encapsulated in what was described
as kokutai (national polity), by which the Japanese people were seen as
2 MULTICULTURAL JAPAN
a unique family state united around the emperor. Though discredited
by defeat and the collapse of imperial Japan and the Greater East Asia
Co-Prosperity Sphere (but not of the imperial line nor of its myths),
neither the Occupation nor the post-war Japanese liberal and
progressive forces paid much attention to questions of identity. The
former concentrated on eradicating militarism while shoring up the
imperial institution, and the latter on analysing class while ignoring
ethnicity and assuming that a strengthening of individualism and
democracy would result from steadily increasing modernisation. The
ethnic implications of the aboriginal inhabitants of Japan (the Ainu),
or other groups such as the large Korean minority, were reduced to
considerations of universal human rights. Deep-rooted assumptions
about 'Japaneseness' therefore survived intact.4
From the 1980s two phenomena have proceeded on parallel tracks
which show no sign of converging: internationalisation and the
clarification of Japanese identity. Kokusaika -internationalisation -has
been a Japanese national goal for over a decade. Trans-border flows of
capital, goods, technology and people have reached new heights, and
essays and books on kokusaika proliferate. For all of this inter-meshing
with the outside world, the task of analysing 'Japaneseness', and how
notions of it might be reconciled with a kokusaika world, remains both
complex and sensitive. The stronger the belief in Japanese
distinctiveness, the deeper became the concern at the consequences of
'internationalisation' as economic super-power status led to the
opening, first of the economy and then of the society, and an influx
of migrant workers.
This desire to clarify identity is the local manifestation of the
worldwide phenomenon of identity politics. During the 1980s Japan's
roots were increasingly traced back to the Jamon hunting and
gathering culture which lasted for about 10 000 years prior to the
fourth century BC. Influential statements of the 'true' untrammeled
Japanese identity in such terms have been uttered by prominent
academics and by political figures such as Ozawa lchira, who revealed
his romantic inclinations by declaring that Jamon Japan was not only
Japan's own true essence but also the solution to the problems of
contemporary civilisation.5
In the 1980s the Nakasone government took renewed interest in the
task of articulating Japanese 'culture' as an arm of diplomacy. The
establishment in Kyoto in 1987 of the International Research Center
for Japanese Culture, commonly known by its abbreviated Japanese title
of 'Nichibunken', was one expression of this desire to clarify what
'Japaneseness' meant.6 The founding of Nichibunken was surrounded
by controversy, reminding many of the 1930s kokutai meicho (Clarifying
