Transcultural Japan: At the Borderlands of Race, Gender and Identity
2009; Oxford University Press; Volume: 12; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1093/ssjj/jyp033
ISSN1468-2680
Autores Tópico(s)Migration, Ethnicity, and Economy
ResumoThis compilation of essays on contemporary Japan re-examines race, gender and identity, consciously choosing to shift the prism of analysis that contends Japan is multicultural or multiethnic to one that stresses the transcultural nature of Japanese society, and in particular its interconnectedness with the world. The rationale for this deliberate shift is centered on the argument that our current conception of Japan needs to be reconsidered, due to the fact that the flow of people, ideas and information is altering the landscape of how Japanese view the ‘Other’. Furthermore, understandings of the Other have been complicated through international marriage, education abroad and the settlement of large numbers of immigrants in Japan, including many of whom are ethnically Japanese. The authors argue that the increasingly complex web of familial, lineage-based connections, educational linkages, and identity-based associations have weaved a transnational and transcultural tapestry between race, ethnicity, gender, identity and Japaneseness. Whereas Michael Weiner's Japanese Minorities: The Illusion of Homogeneity examines Japanese race and identity through an inquiry of existing minorities, such as the Ainu, burakumin, zainichi Koreans and nikkeijin, Willis and Murphy-Shigematsu expand the discussion of the social construction of Japanese identity to include gender, and those that fall into ‘identity purgatory’; e.g. those individuals that are paradoxically neither Japanese nor the Other, yet are labeled Japanese or Other depending on location, time and place.
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