Third Edition Spring 2013 - Institute of East Asian Studies, UC ...

a speech in which he referred to Japan as “one nation, one civilization,one language, one culture and one race. There is no othernation (that has such characteristics).” 9 This statement met withsome criticism, but the fact that Aso went on to become prime ministerdemonstrates that his sentiments were by no means rejectedacross Japan at the time.The theme of homogeny is part of a larger nationalist discoursein Japan in which a distinct Japanese ethnicity is tied tobeliefs about Japan’s past and present orientation to the world. 10To openly acknowledge a heterogeneous Japanese populationthreatens that identity; to openly acknowledge an extant Japanesepopulation pre-dating the so-called ‘ethnic Japanese’ thoroughlyundermines it. Unlike the West, theories of evolution in Japanwere not regarded as particularly controversial, something that isrecognized in Japan as a point of distinction. 11 Yet, theories of theancient settlement of the Japanese archipelago are tied to the notionof an unchanging ethnicity in which biological and cultural aspectsof Japanese identity necessarily coincide. 12 The formation ofAinu Studies in Japan corresponded to the establishment and earlydevelopment of anthropology and archeology in Japan, with Ainuserving as a counterpart to other indigenous, ‘uncivilized’ populations,and thus providing the opportunity for Japanese to asserttheir relative superiority by means of the ‘race science’ prevalentin the 19th and early 20th centuries.For centuries, Ainu were regarded as an uncivilized ‘other,’and Japanese military campaigns against them may have begunas early as the eighth century; the Nihon Shoki refers to “Emishi,”or barbarians, which is thought to be a possible reference to theancestors of contemporary Ainu, though this connection is not es-9 “Aso Says Japan is Nation of ‘One Race,” Japan Times, October 18, 2005, 2012,accessed November 1, 2012, http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/nn20051018a7.html.10 For an overview of the relationship between Japanese nationalism and sciencein the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, see: Joan H. Fujimura, “Future Imaginaries:Genome Scientists as Sociocultural Entrepreneurs” in Genetic Nature/Culture: Anthropologyand Science Beyond the Two-Culture Divide, ed. Alan H. Goodman, et al. (Berkeley,CA: University of California Press, 2003), 176-199.11 Ibid.12 See: Mark J. Hudson, Ruins of Identity: Ethnogenesis in the Japanese Islands(Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1999).tablished. The hierarchy of power between notions of civilizationversus barbarism was not a concept introduced to Japan by way ofWestern colonialism—it was instead very much a part of pre-modernChinese culture. Japan effectively spent centuries acquiringand developing a strong sense of what it was to be civilized so asnot to be considered barbaric in the eyes of the neighboring Chineseand Korean kingdoms. The later word, “Ezo,” by which Ainuwere called for centuries, is simply a modified pronunciation of thesame Chinese characters—‘barbarians.’ However, though regardedas an uncivilized other, Ainu identity did not become racialized asother until the advent of ‘race science.’ Western science played a directrole in making race scientific in Meiji and Taisho Japan (1860-1926).Japanese accounts of Ainu predate those of Western travelers,and Western science was known in Japan since the 18th centuryby way of Dutch contact, but it was Western ethnographers inJapan who first unified these approaches and viewed Ainu withinthis scientific framework. 13 The highly contextualized Westerntrope of the ‘noble savage’ thus entered Japan, and was received byan audience of academics, the first generation of Japanese scholarstrained in Western scientific disciplines, who were eager to establisha scientifically-verified Japanese identity. 14 This was a period ofintense change in Japan, accompanied by the equally intensive formationof a nation-state, or nation-civilization, identity. 15 Followingcenturies of relative isolation, the selective acquisition of Westernculture, including science, was identified as a means of gaining aplace at the table with ascendant Western colonial powers (andthereby avoiding a colonized fate). Under the privileged status ofscience, the debate over Ainu origins continued, and a biologicalsupremacy of Japanese over Ainu was constructed. Just as in theWest, bodily measurements were sought to “prove” this hierarchy. 1613 Richard Siddle, Race, Resistance and the Ainu of Japan. (New York: Routledge,1996), 78.14 Ibid., 81.15 See: “A Point Of View: Making sense of China,” BBC News, October 12, 2012,accessed November 1, 2012, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-19929620. ThoughJapanese history is strikingly different from Chinese history, the idea of civilization-stateas opposed to merely a nation-state is relevant when examining Japanese identity.16 Stepan, “Race and Gender: The Role of Analogy in Science,” 368-371. Stepan’s75 Valerie Black Ainu Indigeneity 76