Embedded Racism: Japan's Visible Minorities and Racial Discrimination

Debito Arudou

Lexington Books, Nov 6, 2015 - Social Science - 404 pages

Despite domestic constitutional provisions and international treaty promises, Japan has no law against racial discrimination. Consequently, businesses around Japan display “Japanese Only” signs, denying entry to all 'foreigners' on sight. Employers and landlords routinely refuse jobs and apartments to foreign applicants. Japanese police racially profile 'foreign-looking' bystanders for invasive questioning on the street. Legislators, administrators, and pundits portray foreigners as a national security threat and call for their segregation and expulsion. Nevertheless, Japan’s government and media claim there is no discrimination by race in Japan, therefore no laws are necessary.

How does Japan resolve the cognitive dissonance of racial discrimination being unconstitutional yet not illegal? Embedded Racism carefully untangles Japanese society’s complex narrative on race by analyzing two mutually-supportive levels of national identity maintenance. Starting with case studies of hundreds of individual “Japanese Only” businesses, it carefully analyzes the construction of Japanese identity through legal structures, statute enforcement, public policy, and media messages. It reveals how the concept of a “Japanese” has been racialized to the point where one must look “Japanese” to be treated as one.

The product of a quarter-century of research and fieldwork by a scholar living in Japan as a naturalized Japanese citizen, Embedded Racism offers an unprecedented perspective on Japan’s deeply-entrenched, poorly-understood, and strenuously-unacknowledged discrimination as it affects people by physical appearance.

Contents

• 1 Racial Discrimination in Japan: 3
• 2 How Racism Works in Japan: 15
• Japanese Only Examples of Racial Discrimination: 35
• 3 We Refuse Foreigners: 37
• The Construction of Japans Embedded Racism: 77
• 4 Legal Constructions of Japaneseness: 79
• 5 How Japaneseness Is Enforced through Laws: 129
• 6 A Chinamans Chance in Japanese Court: 167
• 7 From Foreign Fetishization to Fear in the Japanese Media: 183
• Challenges to Japans Exclusionary Narratives: 245
• 8 Maintaining the Binary: 247
• Discussions and Conclusions: 269
• 9 Putting the Concept of Embedded Racism to Work: 271
• 10 So What?: 287
• Glossary: 307
• Sakanakas Big Japan vs Small Japan: 313
• This Researchs Debt to Critical Race Theory: 321
• References: 325
• Index: 339
• About the Author: 351

About the author

Debito Arudou is author of Handbook for Newcomers, Migrants, and Immigrants to Japan and creator of the award-winning online archive on life and human rights in Japan, www.debito.org.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Embedded Racism: Japan's Visible Minorities and Racial Discrimination
• Author: Debito Arudou
• Edition: illustrated
• Publisher: Lexington Books, 2015
• ISBN: 1498513913, 9781498513913
• Length: 404 pages
• Subjects: Social Science / Discrimination; Social Science / Ethnic Studies / General; Social Science / Minority Studies; Social Science / Sociology / General