Transcultural Society

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

TRANSCULTURAL SOCIETY Stephen Murphy-Shigematsu and David Blake Willis In F. Coulmas, H. Conrad, A. Schad-Seifert, G. Vogt (Eds.) The Demographic Challenge: A Handbook about Japan. Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers, 2008

At a recent gathering of our two families in Tokyo we marveled at the diversity in the room. There was Cheena, a woman from Hokkaido, who had lived in Mexico and California. Her sister-in-law Ann, came from Kenya five years ago after marrying her brother Taiji, who was studying at the University of Nairobi and working for Mitsubishi. There was Toshiko, who grew up in Tokyo, married an American and lived in Massachusetts for fifty years before settling into a lifestyle of spring and fall in Japan and summer and winter in the U.S. Her son Stephen was born in Japan, grew up in the U.S. and returned to Tokyo to become a national university professor and a naturalized citizen. His children, Sho and Gen, are second-generation mixes of Japanese and Irish ancestry and bearers of multiple passports who attend local public schools. David’s sons, Jeffrey and Luke, attended Japanese public elementary and junior high schools before moving to the U.S. for high school and college. Luke has returned to Japan and now works in Tokyo. Ironically, David, the one who is commonly identified by others as American, has spent more years in Japan than anyone else in the room. Like our families, the people who comprise Japanese society are an increasingly diverse group who continually redefine

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what the boundaries are of the supposedly stable category of “Japanese.” The identity assertions of these people reveal an expanding sense of what it means to be Japanese. They challenge stereotypes and create cognitive dissonance in the minds of many mainstream Japanese. This does not mean, however, that their identities are always validated by others. They often encounter doubters who claim that they cannot be Japanese if they have or don’t have a certain appearance, speak Japanese imperfectly or speak English perfectly, act in a particular way, or have a name that doesn’t sound typically Japanese. Still, their acts of selfdefinition create new meanings for what it is to be Japanese today. Japan is undergoing a remarkable transformation that began in its cultural borderlands and is now spreading throughout the country. The number of those who hold passports other than Japanese has more than doubled since 1990 to over two million in June 2006. Sojourners, immigrants, and long-term residents who are “Others” are now integral parts of the fabric of Japanese society. More and more residents, with or without Japanese passports, neither “look Japanese” nor “act Japanese.” Some have names that sound foreign and speak with impeccable English or equally fluent Japanese. More than 15,000 persons now naturalize each year and become part of Japan’s citizenry. There are Japanese citizens who are Other (Ainu, Burakumin, Returnees are some examples), too, and Others who are Japanese citizens (such as Koreans who have naturalized). For all of these individuals, questions of identity and place are common, as their lives in the cultural borderlands and transnational crossroads of Japan reveal the dynamic contradictions, complex textures, and multiple levels of reality found in contemporary society. New and complex contexts reveal a transcultural world overlooked in our preoccupation with conceptual dichotomies and dialectical oppositions. Rather than stable, bounded cultural wholes, transformations and innovative cultural formations are now occurring which create constellations of fluid and shifting social relationships (Crehan 2002). Instead of simply seeing those people who are different as separate ethnic communities, we now

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understand that the people on the margins bear tremendous significance for the mainstream. In a rapidly changing Japan, “the Japanese” themselves are being transformed as they confront a new range of diversity in their midst. The struggles of on-going multiculturalism in Japan can be seen in multiple and diverse narratives of personal and larger social change of Others who are both being changed by and who are changing Japan. Globalization and borderlands This is an historic moment in Japanese history as globalization and changing demographics bring great changes to Japanese society. The Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry announced the first decline in the Japanese population in October 2005, as the population of 126.76 million decreased by 20,000 (Yoshida 2005). Shōshika, the trend towards fewer and fewer children, is marked as well by late marriage, low fertility, and challenging economics. In December of the same year, the government declared that unless something is done soon, Japan's population would be cut in half in less than a century (The New York Times 2006; Reuters 2006). The rapidly aging population and a postmodern economy that has a range of labor requirements if it is to be maintained at or near present levels, have pushed the government and the media to undertake serious soul-searching (Ajima 2006; Arudou 2006; Hisane 2006). These discussions inevitably focus on foreigners and immigrant labor in Japanese society in ways that raise further questions about globalization and the cultural and psychological borderlands which accompany such changes. Some, like the former head of the Tokyo Immigration Bureau and now president of the Japan Immigration Policy Institute, Sakanaka Hidenori, are pressing for a clear and measured response by the government to the problem of the declining Japanese population. Business also recognizes the need for importing labor, as seen in Keidanren’s description of immigration as reinvigorating the Japanese economy. Leading opinion leaders

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have called for the country to attract talent through such measures as recruiting foreign students and granting automatic permanent residence to them upon graduating from Japanese universities. This concern was stimulated by reports in January 2000 from the United Nations and the Japanese government which forcefully noted the impending need for large-scale immigration to maintain Japan’s labor force. Immigration has become a prominent new theme for Japan as the demographics of the relentless graying of the population and low fertility reveal grave needs. These reports made it clear that 380,000-600,000 new immigrants would be needed yearly, resulting in a foreign population in Japanese society of over 10,000,000 within 13 years. Various scenarios painted almost unimaginable forecasts that there might eventually be anywhere from 14 to 33 million people of foreign origin in a society of 120 million people by the year 2050. If the state seeks to simply add new members and force them to assimilate then an immigrant society which will “become Japanese” would appear to be the goal. The government’s once stubborn opposition to immigration is being replaced by a grudging resignation that immigrants will likely have to be admitted but should be kept at arms’ length. The term kyōsei shakai (a symbiotic society in which people live together harmoniously) is now being used in the media and by the government, replacing the buzzword of the early 1990s, kokusaika (internationalization) (Kajita 2001). Like kokusaika, this new term was created by elites to describe Japan’s relations with other nations. By the beginning of the 21st century kyōsei shakai began to be widely used domestically, echoing the policies of countries in Europe such as France, Germany, and Sweden, where the importation of labor had originally come with an expectation (and a hope) that the “foreigners” would eventually “go home.” However, immigration has been irreversible for these countries, as it will be for Japan. As Max Frisch so poignantly remarked on the guest worker program in Switzerland, “We asked for workers but human beings came” (Hollifield 2000: 149). Will “Otherblindness” lead to the kind of recent upheavals observed in France,

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America, and elsewhere? Human rights issues surrounding foreign workers are sure to grow in Japan, too, especially in terms of housing for migrants and schooling for children (Arita 2003), where discrimination is often said to be widespread. Despite the obvious economic trajectory and needs, no consensus has even been reached on whether it is desirable or necessary for more workers to come to Japan and no clear decision has been reached to pursue the goal of replacement migration. Sakanaka, who has said in the past that Japan has failed to address immigrant issues, has stated that the situation has been posed as a choice of only two options. One is to offset a decline in the Japanese labor force with an influx of foreign laborers and maintain the current economic power. The other is to keep tight control on immigration, which means to accept a smaller Japan in terms of economic power. While the media frames this as a choice between “A Big Japan” vs. “A Small Japan,” there appears to be a realization that at least some labor will have to be imported, given the pressing needs of service industries such as geriatric care, nursing, manufacturing, and even agriculture. There are other consequences as well. The depopulation of the countryside has meant not only a shortage of labor, for example, but of eligible brides for young farmers. Therefore, the questions of which foreigners and how many loom large for Japanese society. While citizens and government ponder the questions, people from other countries continue to come. As Japan moves relentlessly from a mythically “homogeneous society” to one in which somewhere between 8– 27% of the population will be of foreign origin, the society faces a dramatic, threatening transition. The data speak of a new Japan in need of a new understanding. We see the importance of doing the inverse of the path-breaking work of Harumi Befu and Sylvie Guichard-Anguis (2001) who have examined the global presence of the Japanese, by looking at the increasing presence of the global in Japan. Transcultural Japan

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What do we mean by transcultural in the Japanese context? We choose to use this word instead of multiculturalism, which has generated minefields of interpretation, denigration, and advocacy. The multicultural debate needs to be moved beyond a restrictive view of ethnic identity, typical examples of this discourse being found in the media and in numerous academic texts in English and Japanese about different ethnic communities in Japan. This view of rigid identities and indivisible ethnicities encounters numerous obstacles when faced with what is actually happening in individual lives and communities (Befu 2001; Goodman et al 2003). Multiculturalism is thus not simply the old concept of culture multiplied by the number of ethnic groups, but a new and internally plural “praxis of culture” within oneself and others. The word transcultural describes even more explicitly what is happening, as it indicates movement across time, space, and other cultural boundaries. This concept enables us to better understand the deeper workings of Japanese and other societies (Banks 2004 and 2006), the ‘tribalist’ preoccupation with boundaries misses the interactions and lives across and on the borders of cultures. While boundaries are maintained in many ways, at the same time there are those individuals who cross these boundaries and who can move freely into different contexts, mobilizing identities and enacting them fluidly according to the circumstances. A liberating theory of culture and multiculturalism is a theory about process and dialogue, not about reified tribes, nationalist religions, and communalist conformity. This processual approach, versus a materialist (identity as property) approach, is therefore something new in the debate about multiculturalism. Culture is not just something we have and are members of, but also something we make and shape. All identities are situational, and differences are relational rather than absolute. Cultures are multi-relational rather than one-dimensional. There are commitments, too, that reach across national boundaries as bonds of exchange and meaning. Transnational flows across borders are especially important. Families, politics, religions, and other bonds, moral as well as social and economic,

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help us to understand the diasporic exchanges occurring, not only between cultures of place but cultures of era, gender, and class. There are cross-diasporic exchanges as well, such as between Brazilians and Chinese, that we are only now beginning to glimpse and understand. Applying words like transcultural or multicultural to Japan is actually not new. Contrary to popular belief, Japanese history has been a multicultural and transcultural story, from the mass migrations in ancient times from the south and west that brought new and different peoples to these islands. Large numbers of people came to the archipelago from many places throughout medieval and colonial times, and the Japanese empire (1868-1945) itself was explicitly multiethnic. Nationality was granted to Koreans and Taiwanese, and people from Japan and its colonies moved in the millions: Japanese and Koreans to Manchuria, Okinawans to Nanyo and Taiwan, and large numbers of colonials coming to Japan to work, some as forced laborers. The multicultural empire and its emphasis on the unity of peoples in Asia under the Japanese flag included places like the colonies of Manchukuo and Nanyo which were depicted as multicultural paradises (Peattie 1992; Young 2001). Inclusion, however, did not mean equality, and a sense of Japanese superiority was maintained in a severe division between inside and outside distinguishing those closer to the center of “civilization,” and those further away, those who belonged and those who didn’t (Doak 1997; Clammer 2001), ideas inherited from the Chinese. This layering has often been problematized, too, as we see in the pre-war racial or ethnic classifications of colonial Manchuria (Tamanoi 2000). How Other cultures and their representatives are seen in Japan has been dramatically affected by this ebb and flow of looking inward or looking outward, of an open or a closed Japan. Others living in Japan after World War II, for instance, became invisible, with restrictions raising the bar too high for any significant immigration and state ideology stressing that homogeneity is one of the most positive Japanese characteristics (Tanaka 1995). Japan

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“became” a monoethnic nation, and the Japanese a singular ethnic group. This belief achieved the status of mythology and, though now challenged, our impression is that it continues to be widely shared, not just by scholars of Japan and the Japanese themselves, but also seemingly by virtually everyone else (MurphyShigematsu, 1993; Befu 2001). The new demographics are changing these “realities.” The demands of the economy from the 1980s have forced the gates to open to Iranians, Bengalis, Thais, Filipinos, and JapaneseBrazilians who wanted to work in Japan, particularly in the 3K jobs that had become available – kitanai (dirty), kitsui (difficult), and kiken (dangerous). The numbers of these peoples remained relatively small, especially in relation to the older populations of Zainichi Koreans and Chinese, but the presence of non-Japanese in the society continues to raise questions of ethnicity, identity, and the Other. Not only have the numbers of people in Japan who can no longer be characterized as ethnically or culturally “pure” Japanese now become considerable, but the reality that the Japanese themselves are a mixing of multiple cultures and societies is now becoming more accepted. Today, nearly two million foreign nationals reside in Japan, accounting officially for over 1.5% of Japan’s population. Coming from 188 countries, according to Justice Ministry statistics for 2005, their numbers are rising (Figures 1 and 2). The overall gain during the last ten years is almost 50% and nearly 40% of those non-Japanese living in Japan are now permanent residents. The largest group continues to be Koreans (607,419), followed by Chinese (487,570), Brazilians (286,557), Filipinos (199,394), Peruvians (55,750), and Americans (48,844) (Figures 3 and 5; Korean numbers have dropped, partly because of naturalization). Many of these people have lived so long in Japan that their dominant cultural background is more Japanese than anything else, while others are of Japanese ancestry, some of whom are actually returnees. Most Brazilians or Peruvians are Nikkei, people of Japanese ancestry. The large increases over time of some of these communities is noted in Figure 4. Of the foreign residents,

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129,873 are students. Considering other factors besides nationality, Lie (2001) estimated the population of “non-Japanese” in Japan to be 4-6 million, numbers in considerable variance with the official statistics indicated in Figures 1-3. Lie included the Ainu (25,000300,000), Koreans (700,000-1 million), “foreigners” (150,000200,000), Chinese (200,000), children of mixed ancestry (10,00025,000), Okinawans (1.6 million), and Burakumin (2-3 million). Many in these groups are Japanese citizens, but Lie and some other scholars believe that they are considered different enough by many in Japanese society to the point of being culturally different and exotic, in the case of the Okinawans, or ineligible as marriage partners or workmates, in the case of the Burakumin. More than 60 years after the end of the Pacific War, the American military, along with their dependents and civilian workers, are another group of residents totaling 104,500. They mostly living on bases, especially in Okinawa, and are shorttermers, most gone in one to three years (GlobalSecurity.org 2006). There are also a large number of undocumented and “illegal” foreigners, officially 207,299, but perhaps numbering up to 400,000, mostly from other parts of Asia: Koreans 20.8%, Chinese 19.1%, Filipinos 14.8%, Thais 6.2%, Malaysians 3.6%, and others. Of these over-stayers, 67.3% came on short-term visas (Ministry of Justice 2006). The Ministry of Justice has been on a campaign the last few years to tighten visa regulations, eliminating or at least strictly defining visas for short-term trainee internships of 3-4 years and visas for those of Japanese ancestry. Many workers have entered the country since the early 1990s through these routes. How far the Ministry of Justice will succeed in this is very much open to question as they are in direct opposition to other ministries and the business community, who favor loosened regulations in order to increase the supply of skilled and unskilled labor. Regardless of how much and how quickly the numbers increase, what is especially revealing about the statistics is that they mean that more than 5% non-Japanese now reside in Japan,

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roughly the same level of diversity as the United Kingdom had in the early 1990s. We would even venture that, more broadly defined, Others in Japan already comprise up to 10% of the society of Japan. It hardly seems likely that a nation with this degree of diversity will be able to persist much longer in a portrayal of a society that is uniquely homogenous (tan’itsu minzoku) (Oguma 1998a, 1998b). For many Others in Japan, the official position, that those who are non-Japanese are those with non-Japanese citizenship, belies the reality of identities and lived experiences. In reality, there are people who are not legally Japanese who regard themselves as Japanese and there are people who have Japanese citizenship but do not classify themselves as Japanese. The figures themselves mask the considerable numbers of people who are culturally or ethnically diverse or otherwise Othered, but who carry Japanese passports. Characterizing people like these as “insider minorities,” Roth (2005) contrasts them with the more visible “outsider minorities” whose race, culture, or language distinguish them from mainstream Japanese (Guo 1999 and Komai 1994, 1996). Among these several hundred thousand “insider minorities” are returnees – children, men, and women whose long experience overseas makes them outsiders – and naturalized citizens, mostly formerly Korean. There are large numbers of people who are “different” in all parts of Japan now, and especially in the cities, as indicated in Figures 6-7 for the most important urban areas. This is not the same Japan that many have imagined where all of the people are similar. These figures also reveal different patterns of diversity and multicultural communities in different cities. Tokyo is not the same as Osaka or Yokohama, while Kobe has yet another different mix of peoples (Figure 4 and Figures 6-9). Along with the locations of jobs and the comfort factor of being near people who share a common language and culture is the continuing “Dejima mentality” of the Japanese foreigners being isolated in social enclaves like the small historical island of Dejima in Nagasaki Bay during the Tokugawa Era. This has, wittingly or unwittingly, meant that foreigners have clustered in

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certain areas in Japan, as Blake Willis (2007) discusses, often around an international school. In spite of this clustering, at least in certain large urban areas, Japanese society has thus become heterogeneous and multi-ethnic. This has not, however, precluded a scattering of foreigners living throughout Japan. Many of these foreigners, especially Chinese and Koreans, are invisible, too, making blending in easier physically while they also bring new cultural diversity in other ways. One is no longer very far anymore, anywhere in Japan, from diversity. An exhibition at the National Museum of Ethnology in the spring of 2004, Taminzoku Nippon: Zainichi Gaikokujin no Kurashi (“Multiethnic Japan – Life and History of Immigrants”), reflected this reality, emphasizing that Japan was gradually becoming a multiethnic society. Pointedly translating Zainichi and Gaikokujin as “immigrants” rather than with the nuances of living here temporarily or being long-term stayers (Zainichi) or being outsiders (Gaikokujin or Gaijin), the exhibition made a political statement with which not all Japanese would find themselves in agreement. Being Other in Japan These are dissonant, contradictory times in Japan. Though historically antagonistic, Korea, at least South Korea, has recently become popular in some circles. A Korea boom that began with Winter Sonata (Fuyu no sonata), a syrupy melodrama from Korea, has extended to cuisine and pop stars and shows no signs of letting up. The other side of this story is of course the concerns of longterm Koreans in Japan regarding prejudice, discrimination, and their survival as an ethnic community. The number of foreign students is greater than ever. Most of these students are Chinese, yet at the same time local police warnings are out all over Japan about the menace of foreign (Chinese) gangs. Young people aspire to hip-hop styles, buying their clothes from Africans dressed like Gangsta American Blacks in Osaka’s Amerika-mura and Tokyo’s Harajuku. The courts

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continue to make statements now and again about race and difference in Japan, the most recent being rulings in the spring and fall of 2006. These court decisions first went against and then in support of the claims of Steve McGowan, an African-American designer from Kyoto, who says that he and a South African friend were denied entry to an eyeglass shop because of their skin color (Johnston 2006). Japan moves unsteadily forward, sometimes clinging to old ways, while at other times boldly engaging in new challenges. In terms of immigration, for example, she remains among the most restrictive societies, mired in the kind of contentious debate and inaction on long-term policies that is happening in many countries with regard to immigrants. But many of the more oppressive discriminatory rules and treatment have been removed, and there is a widespread awareness of the need for the protection of individual human rights against abuses by the society and the government. The Japan that we knew no longer exists and signs of the new demographics are everywhere. Some of this society’s diverse members are easily identifiable in faces and languages, whereas others are more invisible on the surface if not underneath. The stereotypical images of Others in Japan as either White Westerners or as victims of historical discrimination have given way to far more complex stories. Many Others in Japan today are themselves members of multiculturalized, Creolized families (Willis 2001a). So-called kokusai kekkon (international marriages) are numerous and growing, and only a minority are those stereotyped marriages of a Japanese woman and White Western man. There are, in fact, far more Japanese men marrying Other women, mainly Koreans, Filipinas, Chinese, and other Asians. The Other in Japan: globalization and changing ethnoscapes Japan has historically alternated between periods of celebration of a diverse, multicultural society and severe spells of xenophobia and persecution of the Other. Both forces, of open-ness and closed-ness, are of course present in any historical period. Leaders

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are re-introducing the idea of Japan as a multicultural society, but in ways that are more varied and contested than earlier imperial visions of a diverse nation (Tsuboi 2003). The existence of Others in Japanese society is gradually being recognized, with discrimination and exclusion occurring at the same time as inclusion and acceptance. What multiculturalism or transculturalism mean in this society is thus represented in the way the question of difference is newly addressed. Categories over time change, and we may be on the edge of such an important change now. Diverse forms of citizenship are being proposed, with some people advocating a new, broader sense of citizenship in Japan with the push for rights for “denizens.” The practices of democracy and citizenship in general show remarkable change, particularly at the local, community level where elections have seen former foreigners elected as officials and, in one case, a National Diet member (Brooke 2002, Morris-Suzuki 2002, Tarumoto 2003). Acknowledging that there are citizens who may have multiple identities, such as Korean-Japanese, Chinese-Japanese, or American-Japanese (Tai 2004) is a major step forward. But many questions have yet to be answered about Others in Japan: What are their memberships and social networks, local, ethnic, national, and transnational? What do these networks mean for identity and how might they conflict? To what extent are the issues of culture, ethnicity, religion, values, and the presentation of cultural autonomy or identities central to their experiences? How is the pursuit of meaning, psychological and spiritual, as well as material, carried out by those who are not “mainstream” Japanese? How has social change, in Japanese society and elsewhere, had an impact on their lives and lifestyles? Cultural differences are sometimes seen as either lasting and immutable or as giving way to a social homogenizing, assimilating process that is often defended as just and equitable. We see a greater complexity occurring that is multi-centered. While the privileging of pure cultural traits and assimilation, are of course occurring in the social landscapes of Japan, there is another view

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too, that of a mix, of a hybrid of possibilities, generating new differences in the process. As Japan confronts the dilemmas brought on by the new demographics, she is moving in two seemingly contradictory directions at the same time. One the one hand, we see signs of increasing isolation in the sharpened discourse on crime and foreigners, the two commonly linked, with a particular reference to Chinese. There has been the appearance of virulent racism, not limited to Tokyo’s Governor Ishihara Shintaro, who has made scurrilous, race-baiting remarks against foreigners in the society, targeting Chinese and Koreans (Shipper 2005). The UN Human Rights Commission Report of Japan (Diene 2006) has brought renewed attention to these issues of racial discrimination and xenophobia. On the other hand, we can observe the opening of doors, symbolic and real, and an embracing of Others. NPOs and NGOs advocate for the rights of foreign workers. Trajectories, trends, and flows thus emerge in ways both positive and negative, for Others in Japan, for the Japanese themselves, and for the Japanese context. Citizens call for more flexible immigration and supportive policies for foreign laborers. Former Prime Minister Koizumi demonstrated both sides of the discourse on April 7, 2006, when he ordered government officials to look into measures to help society accept foreign workers, saying that, “Whether we like it or not, there are many foreigners who want to come to Japan. We must think about how we can accept those who want to work or settle in Japanese society without friction.” But then he added, “If we accept foreigners beyond a certain scale, there must be friction. We must think how to improve the environment and education system in order to let foreigners work comfortably as a steady labor power (Ajima 2006). The challenge Japan faces is how to integrate those who it does allow to settle in the country. Minorities have either not had a voice or have had their voice softened to a whisper (MurphyShigematsu 2002). Others have had strong, vocal representation,

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such as Koreans and Burakumin, in areas where their numbers are greater but they have still been marginalized and ignored. Education is a place where this challenge is seriously apparent, in the plight of the children of foreign workers, now over 20,000, many of whom do not attend school. There is no legal obligation for them to be in school, and bilingual or multicultural education programs are practically nonexistent. Moreover, many undocumented foreign workers are extremely vulnerable to human rights abuses as they are denied health and welfare benefits. Others, with working visas, avoid joining health and social welfare schemes because of the onerous premiums, which would detract from their overall wages. We are looking for the meanings of globalization in Japan through these diverse communities and individuals. These are not harmonious, utopian communities by any means, as they are formed in contexts, both global and local, of unequal power relations. We see the multiple processes associated with globalization leading to a larger hybridization, to a global mélange of social, cultural, political, and economic forces and the emergence of what could be called trans-local Creole and Creolized cultures (Willis 2001b). Creolization, a powerful act of cultural creation, transmission, and mixing almost seen as taboo in earlier eras in Japan (and the West) can now be viewed as an important force in Japanese society. Seeing Japan as increasingly diverse reveals new layers of meaning where Others encounter Japanese society. As Jan Nederveen Pieterse has shown for other parts of the world (1995, 2004), globalization does not mean homogenization; just the opposite is usually the case. Moving beyond static conceptions of ethnic groups and minority politics reveals border crossings, borderlands, and border zones. Boundaries have become more contingent and permeable, their meanings altered with the fluidity of politics and power. This has made boundary fetishism both more pronounced and less visible, more pronounced in the political landscape and less visible in the economy, society and daily life, which are increasingly globalized.

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We are thus concerned with transnational spaces, with difference, and marginality (Iyotani 2001; Vertovc 2001; Yoshimi and Kang 2001). Likewise, society and change in Japan, especially in terms of cultural identities, cultural transformations, and globalization, are important themes for us. Moving beyond the grand meta-narratives of Japan as either homogeneous or multiethnic, we are interested in conveying the voices and experiences of people who reflect the complexity and breadth of Others in Japan who have been crossing borders in provocative, new, and imaginative ways. Contested terrain: transnational Japan Strange things are happening in Japan today. During the Fall Sumo Tournament of 2005 the Emperor’s Cup was decided in a match between Asashoryu, a Mongolian, and Koto-oshu, a Bulgarian. At the same time, across the Pacific, at a talk given at Stanford University by the late former Prime Minister Hashimoto Ryutaro, shortly before his untimely death, he sharply rebuked a questioner who spoke of “Japan’s monoethnic society” by saying pointedly, “Japan is NOT a monoethnic society.” Simultaneously, Aso Taro, at the time one of Japan’s leading aspirants to become the next Prime Minister, was telling an audience in Kyushu how lucky it was that Japan was one nation with one race, one language, and one culture. These words, of course, echo the controversial remarks made by former Prime Minister Nakasone and others back in the 1980s. Aso apparently had not checked the sumo ranks recently, as 12 of the top 42 sumo wrestlers in this kokugi (national sport) are foreign-born: seven Mongolians, two Russians, one Bulgarian, one Georgian, and one South Korean. The shifts are dramatic and undeniable. Many outsiders are now becoming insiders in Japan. The managers of the winning teams in the Japan Series in 2005 and 2006 were widely admired Americans Bobby Valentine and Chris Hillman. Nissan was turned around by Carlos Ghosn, a CEO with a Lebanese-Brazilian-French background. And in an article titled “Japan’s New Insider Speaks Up for the Outsiders,” we learn of Tsurunen Marutei, a naturalized

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Japanese of Finnish origin and the first blue-eyed Japanese to sit in the Diet (Brooke 2002). Less obvious but all the more real for being in people’s everyday lives are those numerous “foreigners” integrated across the landscape, in factories, restaurants, universities, schools, and local governments. At the same time, Ainu, Okinawans, and Other “insider minorities” in Japan’s midst are now more assertive and visible than ever before. To be different in Japan is now fashionable and not just outwardly with a change of hair color or clothing styles, but in terms of individual attitudes, approaches, and personal life directions. The heroes of anime and the objects of cool travel desires are now Others and their cultures, be they Vietnamese, Korean, or African-American (Carruthers 2004, Solomon 2005). Food, fashion, music, and dance are now being joined by vibrant new expressive cultures and an expansive new individuality and there is a de-emphasis on homogeneity, coherence, and timelessness in Japanese society today. Multiculturalism in Japan has thus turned the spotlight onto culture itself in Japan, as Morris-Suzuki (1998) notes, forcing us to reconsider previous images of stability and harmony which the word culture seemed to imply and emphasizing the necessity of recognizing the multiple identities of individuals. The transnational cultures and peoples have done more than that, standing the stereotypes of cultural essentialism on their head, revealing streams of meaning that embrace networks of complexity in human relations. Culture in Japan, as in many countries, has thus become an increasingly contested terrain as new and old immigrant cultures begin to permeate society and new hybrid forms and identities have emerged which synthesize multiple, older, and more traditional forms of culture. Japanese culture being transformed by the increasing inter-penetration by non-mainstream societies and cultures as society finds itself caught in the swirl of global cultural transition and deep transformations. The world is now in Japan, just as Japan is in the world. What Japan shares, or does not share, with other societies has important implications far beyond the

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borders of this island nation. How Japanese society has responded to these changes and challenges thus offers us new perspectives on the Other and how to respond, or not to respond, to difference in an age of globalization and the transformations of a transcultural/transnational world. Bibliography Ajima, Shinya (2006): “Japan Rethinks Immigration Policy.” Crxcross News Japan, http://www.crisscross.com/jp/comment/933 (found May 22, 2006). Arita Eriko (2003): “Japanese Discrimination Against Korean and Other Ethnic Schools.” article from The Japan Times, April 12, 2003, http://japanfocus.org/article.asp?id=031 (found May 21, 2006). Arudou, Debito (2006): “The Coming Internationalization: Can Japan Assimilate Its Immigrants?” Japan Focus, http://www.japanfocus.org/article.asp?id=496, (found May 21, 2006). Banks, James A., ed. (2004): Diversity and Citizenship Education, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Banks, James A. (2006): Race, Culture and Education: The Selected Works of James A. Banks, London: Routledge. Befu, Harumi (2001): The Hegemony of Homogeneity: An Anthropological Analysis of Nihonjinron, Melbourne: Trans Pacific Press. Befu, Harumi, and Sylvie Guichard-Anguis, eds. (2001): Globalizing Japan: Ethnography of the Japanese Presence in Asia, Europe, and America, London: RoutledgeCurzon. Brooke, James (2002): “Yugawaramachi Journal; Japan’s New Insider Speaks Up for the Outsiders.” The New York Times, March 8,

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