Denying Difference: Japanese Identity and the Myth of Monoethnic Japan
Abstract
In this thesis, I tackle the notion of identity within the very specific sociocultural
space of Japan. I critique the conception of Japanese identity as it has emerged in
concert with the West through the 19th and 20th centuries. Though there exists a plurality
of identities in Japan, there also exists a dominant ideology that selectively denies
difference in favor of a monolithic “Japanese” people. Tracing the historical factors
leading to its creation, I examine the (naturalized) exclusionary practices that serve
to mediate the perception and marginalization of certain bodies within Japan. I bring
this problematized “Japanese identity” into the zone of close contact with the experiences
of black women in contemporary Japan. Using the methodology of black feminist autoethnography,
I explore the ways in which one specific “non-Japanese” body is marked out and not
permitted to fully participate in this Japanese space. My own autoethnographic analysis
is placed in concert with stories gleaned from other diasporic black women. I choose
black women because our stories have a history of invisibility and erasure, and our
bodies represent the “extreme Other” with respect to conceptions of Japaneseness.
I conclude by returning to the persistent challenge that marks this thesis: the critique
of the carefully nurtured ideology of Japan as a homogeneous nation. I argue that
Japan has been multiethnic since at least the late 19th century, and that ideas of
monolithic Japanese identities were developed in reaction to Western threats, and
further that these notions of “Japaneseness” can – and should – be deconstructed.
In striving for a more inclusive definition of “Japanese,” we allow for a much larger
number of people to coexist within this Japanese sociocultural space in relative harmony.
Type
Honors thesisDepartment
Asian and Middle Eastern StudiesPermalink
https://hdl.handle.net/10161/10247Citation
Powell, Jaya Z. (2015). Denying Difference: Japanese Identity and the Myth of Monoethnic Japan. Honors thesis, Duke University. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/10247.Collections
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