Japan is conceived as a country of homogeneous culture, nationality and language, a position supported by nationalist discourses on the part of the Japanese political class. Current Deputy Prime Minister Taro Aso, for example, described Japan in 2005 as the only country with a single nation, civilization, language, culture and race. The land of the rising sun is the home of the Yamato ethnic group, also known as wajinthe majority ethnic group.
However, there are also indigenous minorities that challenge the concept of a one-nation country. Two of them are the Ainu of Hokkaido, in the far north, and the Ryukyuenses of Okinawa, in the far south, who have their own customs, culture and languages. There are also the burakumin and the Koreans zainichi, minorities punished for their past different from that of the Yamato. Minorities make up about seven million people, approximately 5% of the Japanese population, a percentage that rises to 10% in the Kansai region, which includes cities such as Osaka, Kyoto and Kobe.
The Japanese citizen is familiar with the regional differences of the country, made up of 47 prefectures and four main islands, in addition to the Ryukyu Islands, to the south. Stereotypes between a Japanese from Osaka and another from Tokyo, for example, are commonly used in jokes. However, despite the differences between these two, there is a notion that they are both ultimately Japanese. On the other hand, when it comes to minorities, the Japanese population in general ignores them and sometimes even discriminates against them. This misinformation is partly due to the rather poor education they receive regarding national minorities. Only in the last decade, and more especially since 2019, have steps been taken so that the legacy of minorities such as the Ainu are more reflected in textbooks.
Having been discriminated against for generations, many members of these minorities choose to renounce their roots, take refuge in the anonymity of large cities like Tokyo and even change their surname when it gives clues to their origin. Discrimination encompasses many aspects of everyday life: finding a good job, buying a home, or marrying someone who is not a member of your minority. The relationship between Japan and its minorities is such that Japan did not ratify until 1995 the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination that the UN had adopted in 1965.
To expand: “The diplomacy of sushi: Japanese soft power”, Teresa Romero in 2019
Koreans zainichi
One of the Japanese minorities discriminated against is the Koreans zainichi (from the Japanese ‘residents in Japan’), who are concentrated in the Kansai region. The vast majority of zainichi They arrived during the period of Japanese occupation of the Korean Peninsula (1910-1945), when Japan annexed all of Korea, Taiwan, and the Chinese region of Manchuria. Many of the zainichi They emigrated to Japan to find a better life when the Japanese took their land, and others were recruited and sent there as cheap labor during World War II. Regardless of how they arrived in Japan, many were granted citizenship. Once the war was over, almost three-quarters returned to Korea, which was not yet divided between north and south, but around 600,000 decided to stay.
However, after Japan signed the 1952 San Francisco Peace Treaty, officially ending World War II, the Japanese government withdrew the zainichi Japanese nationality. Those Koreans who decided to stay in Japan after the war did so as foreigners with Korean nationality. According to official statistics, this minority amounted to around 450,000 people in 2019, who have been granted the status of “special permanent resident” since 1991. Despite having lived in Japan for up to four or five generations and being completely integrated, having Japanese as their mother tongue, Japanese legislation does not allow them to obtain nationality at birth.
Map of the Japanese Empire during its maximum extension, when it occupied the entire Korean peninsula.
Obtaining Japanese nationality is complicated. By being governed by ius sanguinis, nationality is acquired as long as one of the two parents is a Japanese citizen. Although there are other ways to obtain nationality, the applicant is forced to renounce his or her original nationality. Furthermore, the zainichi They faced another obstacle, since between 1940 and 1945 they were also forced to change their Korean surname to a Japanese one. Still, many of them feel Japanese and have lost contact with their relatives in Korea for decades. In the last two decades, many Koreans zainichi have applied for Japanese nationality, especially young people, and currently about 380,000 have it.
Whether they have Japanese nationality or not, the minority zainichi is subject to discrimination and racism, which are aggravated by the threat of North Korean missiles or the trade dispute between Japan and South Korea in 2019. Not only do they have difficulties finding good jobs or housing, but they have arrived to be threatened, as happened in January 2020 in Kawasaki, when an anonymous person sent a letter to a community center zainichi threatening to exterminate this minority.
To expand: “North Korea’s nuclear program”, Andrea G. Rodríguez in 2019
The caste burakumin
However, you do not have to be a “special permanent resident” to be subject to discrimination. Citizens belonging to minorities and holders of Japanese nationality such as hafu —children of a single Japanese parent and a foreign parent—or those known as burakumin They are also discriminated against. The one of the burakumin (from the Japanese ‘villager’) is a very peculiar case. This minority is the result of the caste system in force during the Tokugawa shogunate (1603-1868), a time in which Japan was governed by generals, or shogun, from the Tokugawa clan and which was characterized by its feudal authoritarianism and by isolating Japan from the rest of the world. The caste system was abolished during the Meiji Restoration, when the United States, eager to sign a trade treaty with Japan, forced its rulers to modernize the country and leave behind more than two centuries of isolationist policies.
To expand: “The Meiji Restoration and the Creation of Modern Japan”, Sandra Ramos in 2017
The burakumin They constituted the lowest layer of that system to the point of not being part of it, being excluded like the Dalits, or untouchables, from the caste system in India. Its members were subdivided between eta (from the Japanese ‘covered in dirt’), people with menial jobs such as tanners and day laborers, and hinin (from the Japanese ‘non-human’), beggars and executioners. Although they are Japanese citizens of the majority Yamato ethnic group and the caste system is no longer in force, being descendants of the excluded still affects the lives of the burakumin, since the belief that they belong to a lower social class is still quite widespread. Although there are no exact figures, it is believed that there are currently between one and three million burakumin in Japan.
Generally, this minority usually has few resources, their school success rates are lower than the national average and illiteracy is still present among them, especially among burakumin of the third Age. They are also discriminated against at the workplace, with low-paying jobs, and at the social level: it is frowned upon for Japanese people who do not belong to this minority to marry burakuminwho continue to traditionally live in secluded communities or even ghettos.
As if that were not enough, the location of these ghettos used to be common knowledge, as they appeared in official records and were in the public domain. United to kosekithe Japanese family book, which contains information about where you were born and where your family comes from, this system allowed any person or company to know if someone was part of the minority burakumin, opening the door to discrimination. To combat stigma, the Japanese government passed an anti-discrimination law in 1969. In addition, associations such as the Burakumin Liberation League made official records privately accessible starting in 1976. Today, stigmatization does not reach the levels of yesteryear, but Japanese legislation still seems to have a long way to go.
To expand: “Classes, castes and tribes in India. Discrimination as a custom”, Álvaro Fernández in 2016
The Ainu, the first inhabitants of Japan
Talking about minorities in Japan requires mentioning the Ainu, the indigenous people of northern Japan. Of disputed origin, the Ainu have inhabited for centuries a territory that today encompasses two countries: the north of the island of Honshu and the island of Hokkaido in Japan, and Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands in Russia. Throughout history, the different Yamato Japanese clans that controlled most of Honshu tried to appropriate their territory, although in northern Honshu you can still find several place names of Ainu origin. However, during the Meiji Restoration, between 1871 and 1876, the Japanese government banned the language and culture of the Ainu and requisitioned their lands to become public property. With these nationalist policies, the Japanese Government sought to assimilate this minority into the growing Japanese Empire.
According to a 2017 Hokkaido prefectural government survey, around 13,000 people of Ainu descent still live on the island, although many more are known to live in other parts of Japan, especially Tokyo. After more than a century of discrimination and oppression, many Ainu left their roots behind to lead new lives with better opportunities, sometimes outside Hokkaido. So much so that there have been cases of people who grew up not knowing that one of their parents was Ainu and have only discovered it once when they grew up, or even people who deny those roots.
The Ainu language, which is not linguistically related to Japanese, is considered by UNESCO as a language at risk of disappearing. In fact, according to the same survey, only 325 people know how to speak this language, which has no written form. These alarming figures are the product of aggressive assimilation policies such as the Law for the Protection of Ancient Wild Indians of 1899, which was not abolished until 1997. Organizations such as the Hokkaido Utari Association promote their learning and the preservation of Ainu culture, which It is rooted in nature, fishing, animist rituals, folklore and oral tradition.
Thanks to the work of associations such as Utari, the Ainu minority has gained representation in Tokyo and laws have been passed to recognize and…