Multicultural Japan
Multicultural Japan

Author: Donald Denoon

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2001-11-20

Total Pages: 316

ISBN-13: 9780521003629

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This book challenges the conventional view of Japanese society as monocultural and homogenous. Unique for its historical breadth and interdisciplinary orientation, Multicultural Japan ranges from prehistory to the present, arguing that cultural diversity has always existed in Japan. A timely and provocative discussion of identity politics regarding the question of 'Japaneseness', the book traces the origins of the Japanese, examining Japan's indigenous people and the politics of archaeology, using the latter to link Japan's ancient history with contemporary debates on identity. Also examined are Japan's historical connections with Europe and East and Southeast Asia, ideology, family, culture and past and present.

Multiculturalism in the New Japan
Multiculturalism in the New Japan

Author: Nelson H. H. Graburn

Publisher: Berghahn Books

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 266

ISBN-13: 9781845452261

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"...a valuable addition to the increasing literature on Japanese multiculturalism which has challenged the long-held homogeneous Japan thesis...A particular contribution of this ... book is to illuminate the ground-level process where hybridities emerge and group boundaries are redrawn in a particular local context...I greatly enjoyed reading [this book] from beginning to end. My undergraduate students who encountered it in their subject reading list also enjoyed it. I would recommend it highly for both undergraduate and graduate students studying Japanese society." - Japan Studies "This book importantly seeks out the meanings behind the nooks and crannies in which peoples from different cultures are juxtaposed within Japan. However the real work of living side by side, of respecting individual and cultural differences, of embracing diversity...remains a vital challenge to both Japan, as well as to scholars who stand poised to connect the dots of this critical and evolving picture. I recommend this volume as one further step toward that undertaking." - Asia Pacific World "...a very readable volume offering through its focus on the local a vivid picture of multiculturalism in Japan. All articles are ethnographically grounded and it is here, and not in systematic and theoretically exhaustive treatment of the subject of multiculturalism." - Zeitschrift für Ethnologie Like other industrial nations, Japan is experiencing its own forms of, and problems with, internationalization and multiculturalism. This volume focuses on several aspects of this process and examines the immigrant minorities as well as their Japanese recipient communities. Multiculturalism is considered broadly, and includes topics often neglected in other works, such as: religious pluralism, domestic and international tourism, political regionalism and decentralization, sports, business styles in the post-Bubble era, and the education of immigrant minorities.

Japan and Global Migration
Japan and Global Migration

Author: Mike Douglass

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2015-04-22

Total Pages: 330

ISBN-13: 113465510X

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This book contains the most up-to-date, original data on Japanese migrant culture available. Its inescapable conclusion is that the multicultural age has finally come to Japan.

Minorities and Multiculturalism in Japanese Education
Minorities and Multiculturalism in Japanese Education

Author: Ryoko Tsuneyoshi

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2010-09-13

Total Pages: 285

ISBN-13: 1136953655

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This book examines the interplay between multicultural groups, including the majority Japanese, in the Japanese school system and will help us to understand changes occurring in contemporary Japanese society as a whole.

Minorities and Education in Multicultural Japan
Minorities and Education in Multicultural Japan

Author: Ryoko Tsuneyoshi

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2010-09-13

Total Pages: 411

ISBN-13: 1136953647

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This volume examines how Japan’s increasingly multicultural population has impacted on the lives of minority children and their peers at school, and how schools are responding to this trend in terms of providing minority children with opportunities and preparing them for the adult society. The contributors focus on interactions between individuals and among groups representing diverse cultural backgrounds, and explore how such interactions are changing the landscape of education in increasingly multicultural Japan. Drawing on detailed micro-level studies of schooling, the chapters reveal the ways in which these individuals and groups (long-existing minority groups, newcomers, and the ‘mainstream Japanese’) interact, and the significant consequences of such interactions on learning at school and the system of education as a whole. While the educational achievement of children of varying minority groups continues to reflect their places in the social hierarchy, the boundaries of individual and group categories are negotiated by mutual interactions and remain fluid and situational. Minorities and Education in Multicultural Japan provides important insights into bottom-up policy making processes and consciously brings together English and Japanese scholarship. As such, it will be an important resource for those interested in education and minority issues in Japan.

Working Skin
Working Skin

Author: Joseph D. Hankins

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2014-07-26

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13: 0520283287

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Since the 1980s, arguments for a multicultural Japan have gained considerable currency against an entrenched myth of national homogeneity. Working Skin enters this conversation with an ethnography of JapanÕs ÒBurakuÓ people. Touted as JapanÕs largest minority, the Buraku are stigmatized because of associations with labor considered unclean, such as leather and meat production. That labor, however, is vanishing from Japan: Liberalized markets have sent these jobs overseas, and changes in family and residential record-keeping have made it harder to track connections to these industries. Multiculturalism, as a project of managing difference, comes into ascendancy and relief just as the labor it struggles to represent is disappearing. Working Skin develops this argument by exploring the interconnected work of tanners in Japan, Buraku rights activists and their South Asian allies, as well as cattle ranchers in West Texas, United Nations officials, and international NGO advocates. Moving deftly across these engagements, Joseph Hankins analyzes the global political and economic demands of the labor of multiculturalism. Written in accessible prose, this book speaks to larger theoretical debates in critical anthropology, Asian and cultural studies, and examinations of liberalism and empire, and it will appeal to audiences interested in social movements, stigmatization, and the overlapping circulation of language, politics, and capital.

Multiculturalism in the New Japan
Multiculturalism in the New Japan

Author: Nelson H. Graburn

Publisher: Berghahn Books

Published: 2008-03-01

Total Pages: 262

ISBN-13: 0857450255

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Like other industrial nations, Japan is experiencing its own forms of, and problems with, internationalization and multiculturalism. This volume focuses on several aspects of this process and examines the immigrant minorities as well as their Japanese recipient communities. Multiculturalism is considered broadly, and includes topics often neglected in other works, such as: religious pluralism, domestic and international tourism, political regionalism and decentralization, sports, business styles in the post-Bubble era, and the education of immigrant minorities.

Multiethnic Japan
Multiethnic Japan

Author: John Lie

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2009-07

Total Pages: 268

ISBN-13: 9780674040175

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Multiethnic Japan challenges the received view of Japanese society as ethnically homogeneous. Employing a wide array of arguments and evidence--historical and comparative, interviews and observations, high literature and popular culture--John Lie recasts modern Japan as a thoroughly multiethnic society. Lie casts light on a wide range of minority groups in modern Japanese society, including the Ainu, Burakumin (descendants of premodern outcasts), Chinese, Koreans, and Okinawans. In so doing, he depicts the trajectory of modern Japanese identity. Surprisingly, Lie argues that the belief in a monoethnic Japan is a post-World War II phenomenon, and he explores the formation of the monoethnic ideology. He also makes a general argument about the nature of national identity, delving into the mechanisms of social classification, signification, and identification.

Readings on Diversity Issues: From hate speech to identity and privilege in Japan
Readings on Diversity Issues: From hate speech to identity and privilege in Japan

Author: Lisa Rogers

Publisher: Lulu.com

Published: 2016-10-30

Total Pages: 208

ISBN-13: 1365456196

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Japanese society is now in the midst of a dramatic transformation. An extremely low birth rate and rapidly aging society is resulting in a declining Japanese labor force, fueling a need for non-Japanese laborers and others to maintain economic growth. However, despite a sense of impending crises, Japan continues to be ill equipped to accept non-Japanese workers and add to the diversity already existing within its borders. Currently, many of the benefits of inclusive societies, which lead to a more innovative and fulfilling society, are being curtailed by a pervading notion that Japan is monocultural and that diversity leads to too many problems. Readings on diversity issues: From hate speech to identity and privilege in Japan examines the state of diversity in past and present-day Japan and how Japanese people and the government navigate JapanÕs multicultural society, as well as the way cultural minorities negotiate their lives in a country which still has difficulty accepting diversity.

Cultural and Social Division in Contemporary Japan
Cultural and Social Division in Contemporary Japan

Author: Yoshikazu Shiobara

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2019-07-30

Total Pages: 278

ISBN-13: 1351387871

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The recent manifestation of exclusionism in Japan has emerged at a time of intensified neoliberal economic policies, increased cross-border migration brought on by globalization, the elevated threat of global terrorism, heightened tensions between East Asian states over historical and territorial conflicts, and a backlash by Japanese conservatives over perceived historical apologism. The social and political environment for minorities in Japan has shifted drastically since the 1990s, yet many studies of Japan still tend to view Japan through the dominant discourses of “ethnic homogeneity (tanitsu minzoku shakai)” and “middle-class society (so ̄churyu ̄-shakai)” which positions the exclusion of minorities as an exceptional phenomenon. While exclusionism has been recognized as a serious threat to minority groups, it has not often been considered a representative issue for the whole of Japanese society. This tendency will persist until the discourses of tanitsu minzoku shakai and so ̄churyu ̄-shakai are systematically debunked and Japan is widely recognized as both multiethnic and socio-economically stratified. Today, as with most advanced capitalist countries, serious social divides occasioned by the impacts of globalization and neoliberalism have destabilized Japanese society. This book explores not only how Japanese society is diversified and unequal, but also how diversity and inequality have caused people to divide into separate realities from which conflict and violence have emerged. It empirically examines the current situation while considering the historical development of exclusionism from the interdisciplinary viewpoints of history, policy studies, cultural studies, sociology and cultural anthropology. In addition to analyzing the realities of division and exclusionism, the authors propose theoretical alternatives to overcome such cultural and social divides.