Reischauer Institute Japan Forum
Co-sponsored by the Harvard Korea Institute and the Weatherhead Center Program on US-Japan Relations
Speaker: Kazuko Suzuki, Associate Professor of Sociology, Texas A&M University
Moderator: Karen L. Thornber, Harry Tuchman Levin Professor in Literature and Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University
Many of the theories and concepts in Race and Ethnic Studies are constructed based on racial and ethnic relations in the United States, which are not necessarily helpful in understanding non-Euro/American experiences. The talk explores the potential contributions that empirical studies of race and ethnic relations in Japan can make to this area. It demonstrates how racialization operates and is experienced in Japan, especially in the absence of visible racial markers between the dominant and minority groups. Race is ‘invisible’ in Japan in the sense that a non-apparent physical attribute demarcates the Japanese from the non-Japanese. The Japanese self-understanding in the postwar period involves a unique equation of nationality, culture, and lineage, in which the lineage as ‘Japanese blood’ takes a critical role in the construction of Japaneseness. Focusing on the case of Zainichi Koreans, this presentation shows their positionality in the Japanese state, where white supremacy is not seen as all-defining, and their never-ending social passing process in Japanese society.
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