Multiethnic Japan and the Monoethnic Myth Journal article by Stephen Murphy-Shigematsu; MELUS, Vol. 18, 1993

Some minority group organizations also silence those who have written or would write about them by condemning what they see as stereotyping that contributes to negative images. In some cases, they censor and intimidate. those who publish anything that they feel is not favorable to them or does not endorse the terminology that they have decided is acceptable. This is especially true of the Buraku Liberation League, which has used denunciation tactics and careful watchdogging of any references to burakumin. For example, they attempted to stop sales of the book that introduced Japanese minorities to many foreigners, Japan's Invisible Race, edited by George De Vos and Hiroshi Wagatsuma. Most recently, the group attempted to censor passages in the Japanese translation of David Kaplan and Alec Dutbro's Yakuza and in The Enigma of Japanese Power by Karel van Wolferen.

This censorship has pressured some publishing to delete references to burakumin in Japanese translations of English literature. The publisher an Wolferen's book who is also publishing a translation of Nnchael Crichton's Rising Sun was apparently intimidated enough to ask the author if he would object to deleting the lines in Which reference is made to burakumin. The Japanese translations of books such as Edwin Reischauer's The Japanese and James Clavell's Shogun were partly or entirely stripped of their references to burakumin, despite translator's statements that they are complete and accurate.

Concerns over "political correctness" and attempts to completely control the images presented and terminology used have limited the amount of non-ideological literature on the topic Of minorities. For example, after showing initial interest, a major publisher rejected a colleague's scholarly book on minorities because of the author's insistence on including burakumin. In another case, a writer's proposed article on Japanese of mixed ancestry was rejected by a newspaper supposedly because the topic was "too sensitive." Japan Air Lines recently canceled an already printed in-flight magazine and then reprinted it without a story that mentioned burakumin (Wetherall 8 November 1992, and personal communication). This suppression of information contributes to the ignorance that some Japanese claim of the minorities within Japan.

The largest minority in Japan, the burakumin, are physically and linguistically indistinguishable from majority Japanese but exhibit the political and cultural traits of an ethnic group. They are the as many as three million descendants of the eta, a subclass legally distinguished during the Tokugawa period (1600-1868) and until their emancipation in 1871. The atomic bomb survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the hibakusha, and their descendants are a new minority group who, like the burakumin, may be plagued by fears that they are genetically defective or contaminated.

In all, about five percent of the Japanese population, or some six million persons, are minorities who suffer much the same fate that ethnic and other minorities do in America and Europe (De Vos, Wetherall, and Stearman). While they each have their own unique history of separation and oppression, and distinct cultural, class, or genetic background, all have encountered barriers of discrimination in employment and marriage. This discrimination limits their opportunities in life and encourages those who can hide their identity to "pass" as majorities. Most of Japan's minority groups have higher rates of unemployment, welfare, and crime, and lower levels of income and educational attainment, than the majority population.

The monoethnic myth is credited with giving majority Japanese a secure sense of belonging and safety. It is also seen as providing impetus for the masses to subjugate personal desires and individual Will and sacrifice for the group and for the country. This myth is regarded by many as the philosophical foundation of the immensely successful postwar economic recovery. However, as in all consciousness-altering substances and philosophies, there are inevitable side effects. The ability to see reality as others do becomes impaired. Feelings of being different easily lead to a sense of inferiority and compensating assertions of superiority. Beliefs about being unique often nurture an inability to relate to others. Besides making the lives of minorities more difficult, the monoethnic myth contributes to what a number of recent writers refer to as Japan's separateness in the world.

Japanese are often accused of being racialistic and racist. Excessive concern about race is not necessarily racism, but it is potentially close. The tendency to homogenize and to deny differences among Japanese, while maximizing the differences between Japanese and gaijin (foreigners), is dangerous because exaggerating differences between one's group and others, while also blurring the diversity within one's group, is a way of thinking that leads to prejudice. The constant distinguishing between Japanese and non-Japanese is extended far beyond cultural differences into the realm of human physiology. Statements by people at many levels of society indicate beliefs that Japanese and non-Japanese have different human gestation periods, body temperatures, intestinal length, brains, and general body composition Taylor 1983).

That such racializing is closely related to prejudice and discrimination is not often recognized. Since there are not supposed to be minorities in Japan, these topics are not legitimized. They are associated with South Africa or the United States, but rarely with japan. Discrimination is practiced openly and without apology, as though it required none. In explaining his unwritten policy of hiring only "pure" Japanese, an employer is likely to justify his action as an attempt to avoid konran (confusion). The right to practice discrimination in housing might be defended by realtors as atarimae proper, reasonable), or tozen (natural, deserved, matter-of-fact), or simply as shikata ga nai (it can't be helped). Discriminatory practices can even be dignified as shukan (social custom) or tetsugaku philosophy). That they are a social custom and philosophy of discrimination is not stated and is perhaps not noticed by some. In this way of thinking, discrimination is not recognized as morally reprehensible; in fact, it is not recognized at all. As a Japanese social activist once lamented about the difficulty of fighting discrimination, "most people don't even know what discrimination is."

In Japan today, there is a wide range of efforts to educate people about the multiethnic nature of society. Minzoku kyoiku (ethnic education) has existed in the form of Korean schools since the end of World War II, and there are still more than one hundred schools ranging from kindergartens to universities. Groups of public-school teachers have developed their own educational materials and activities of ethnic education about Koreans and Okinawans which they utilize in after-school programs. Although its methods, results, and the teacher's abilities and attitudes are sometimes criticized, dowa kyoiku, officially approved education about burakumin, is carried out in public schools in localities with organized buraku.

Despite more than a century of legal liberation, burakumin are still subjected to investigative efforts to identify their origins and encounter subsequent discrimination in employment and marriage. Although all minorities suffer less oppression and enjoy more freedom in modern Japan, as do minorities in other relatively free countries, the elimination of most legal barriers to equality does not protect them from prejudice and discrimination in society at large.



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