MULTICULTURAL JAPAN Palaeolithic to Postmodern EDITED BY DONALD DENOON, MARK HUDSON, GAVAN McCORMACK, AND TESSA MORRIS-SUZUKI WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY GAVAN McCORMACK DCAMBRIDGE v UNIVERSITY PRESS CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, Sao Paulo Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 2RU, UK Published in the United States ofA merica by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521550673 ©Cambridge University Press 200 I This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions ofrelevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission ofC ambridge University Press. First published 1996 First paperback edition 200 I A catalogue recordf or this publication is available from the British Library ISBN-13 978-0-521-00362-9 paperback ISBN-IO 0-521-00362-8 paperback Transferred to digital printing 2006 Contents List of Figures and Tables v List of Contributors Vl Abbreviations Vlll Introduction Gavan McCormack 1 Part 1 Archaeology and Identity 1. The Japanese as an Asia-Pacific Population 19 Katayama Kazumichi 2. North Kyushu Creole: a language-contact model for the 31 origins ofJ apanese john C. Maher 3. Beyond Ethnicity and Emergence in Japanese 46 Archaeology Simon Kaner 4. Archaeology and Japanese Identity Clare Fawcett 60 Part 2 Centre and Periphery 5. A Descent into the Past: the frontier in the construction 81 ofJ apanese history Tessa Morris-Suzuki 6. The Place of Okinawa in Japanese Historial Identity 95 Richard Pearson 7. Ainu Moshir and Yaponesia: Ainu and Okinawan 117 identities in contemporary Japan Hanazaki Kohei Ill IV CONTENTS Part 3 Contact with the Outside 8. Some Reflections on Identity Formation in East Asia 135 in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries Derek Massarella 9. Siam and Japan in Pre-Modern Times: a note on mutual 153 images Ishii Yoneo 10. Indonesia under the 'Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity 160 Sphere' Goto Ken 'ichi 11. Japanese Army Internment Policies for Enemy Civilians 174 during the Asia-Pacific War Utsumi Aiko Part 4 The Japanese Family 12. Modern Patriarchy and the Formation of the Japanese 213 Nation State Ueno Chizuko 13. The Modern Japanese Family System: unique or 224 universal? Nishikawa Yuko Part 5 Culture and Ideology 14. Emperor, Race, and Commoners Amino Yoshihiko 235 15. Two Interpretations ofJ apanese Culture 245 Nishikawa Nagao 16. Kokusaika: impediments in Japan's deep structure 265 Gavan McCormack Afterword: Diversity and Identity in the Twenty-First Century 287 Mark Hudson and Tessa Morris-Suzuki Index 293 Figures 1.1 Pleistocene seashore lines in the Japanese archipelago 20 and the surrounding area 1.2 Scatter diagram of modern human populations from 25 Asia and Oceania on the basis of multivariable analy- ses of body measurements 1.3 Dendogram showing the Euclidean distance relation- 26 ships of nine Asian and three Oceanic samples based on cranofacial variables 1.4 Genetic affinity diagram among eighteen human pop- 27 ulations in the world based on the affinity network analysis of twenty-three blood-polymorphic alleles 6.1 Okinawa and surrounding region 98 6.2 Major Rylikyli sites mentioned in chapter 6 100 Tables 6.1 Cultural chronology of Okinawa 103 11.1 Organisation of civilian internment camps 183 11.2 Cases tried before the Batavia Tribunal, by occupa­ 197 tion of defendant 15.1 Prerequisites and factors for national integration 249 v Contributors AMINOY OSHIHIKaO ,sp ecialist in Japanese history and one ofJ apan's best­ known historians, teaches at Kanagawa University, Yokohama. DONALDD ENOONi s professor of Pacific Islander History at the Australian National University and specialises in economic and medical history. CLAREF AWCETIha s carried out research into the social context ofJ apanese archaeology, and now teaches in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at St Francis Xavier University, Antigonish, Nova Scotia, Canada. GOTO KEN'ICaHnI h,is torian of Indonesia, and especially of the period of Japanese dominance during the Pacific War, teaches at the Institute of Social Sciences, Waseda University, Tokyo. HANAZAKKIO HEiis an independent scholar, formerly professor at Tokyo University, specialising in the history of Japan's Ainu and Okinawan minority peoples. MARKH UDSONi s a Foreign Professor of Anthropology at the University of Tsukuba where he specialises in the archaeology and biological anthropology ofJ apan. ISHIYIO NEO,a specialist in Thai history and editor and author of many books on South-east Asia, teaches at the Institute of Asian Cultures, Sophia University, Tokyo. SIMONK ANERis Assistant Director of the Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures in the UK and is a specialist in Jomon archaeology. vi CONTRIBUTORS vii KATAYAMAK AZUMICHiIs a physical anthropologist who has conducted extensive research in the Pacific Islands; he is a professor at the Primate Research Institute of Kyoto University. GAVANM cCORMACKi s professor of Japanese History at the Australian National University and specialises in the twentieth-century history of Japan and her East Asian neighbours. JOHN c.M AHER is professor of Linguistics in the Department of Com­ munication and Linguisitics at International Christian University, Tokyo where he teaches general linguistics and sociolinguisitics. He specialises in multilingualism in Japan, philosophical linguistics and language and psychoanalysis. DEREKM ASSARELLaA ,sp ecialist in early modern relations between Japan and Europe, teaches in the Faculty of Economics, Chuo University, Tokyo. TESSAM ORRIS-SUZUisK aI professor of Japanese History at the Australian National University and specialises in the economic and technological history ofJ apan. NISHIKAWNAA GAO,w ho teaches comparative cultural studies and is a prominent scholar in contemporary European and Japanese history, is an Emeritus Professor ofRitsumeikan University, Kyoto. NISHIKAWYAD Ko,a social historian specialising in the history of Japanese women, is Professor in the Faculty of Humanities, Kyoto Bunko University. RICHARDP EARSONis a specialist in East Asian archaeology, residing in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. UENO CHIZUKOa, sociologist specialising in feminist studies and cultural criticism, teaches in the Department of Sociology, Tokyo University. UTSUMIA IKO,an historian of Japanese colonialism and war, teaches at Keisen Women's College, Tokyo. Abbreviations ACA Agency for Cultural Affairs ANU Australian National University ASEAN Association of South-East Asian Nations BG Bankon-Gudojati BP Before Present DCHE Deliberative Council on Historical Environments DCPCP Deliberative Council on the Protection of Cultural Properties DNA deoxyribonucleic acid EC European Community ICU International Christian University LDK Lounge, Dining, Kitchen LDP Liberal Democratic Party MFP Multifunction Polis MITI Ministry of International Trade and Industry NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization NHK Uapanese Broadcasting Corporation) OJ Old Japanese POW Prisoner(s) of War UN United Nations viii Introduction GAVA N McCORMACK Japan is conventionally seen as a monocultural society. Located at the eastern extremity of the Eurasian land-mass and separated from it by a sea that is wider and more dangerous than that which divides the British Isles from the same land-mass at its western extremity, it is apparently distinguished from the countries nearest to it both in its pre-modern institutions (often called 'feudal') and in its modern economic dynamism (sometimes called 'miraculous'). The proposition that Japan is unique and monocultural seems plausible. Throughout Japanese history, prominent figures have insisted on the distinctness of Japanese identity, from the 'National Learning' (Kokugakusha) scholars in the eighteenth century with their stress on a pure and untrammeled (that is, non-Chinese) Japanese essence to late twentieth-century statements by Nakasone Yasuhiro (Prime Minister in the 1980s) that Japan is a homogeneous 'natural community' (as distinct from a Western-style 'nation formed by contract'), and the 'Yamato race' which he insisted had been living 'for at least two thousand years . . . hand in hand with no other, different ethnic groups present [in these islands]' .1 The belief that Japan is a homogeneous, monoracial state is deep-rooted and, as Ivan Hall notes, has long been 'openly sanctioned by the intellectual establishment, public consensus, and government policy'.2 Unlike other societies which are mixed (o-majiri), especially the United States with its 'many Blacks, Puerto Ricans and Mexicans', Japan is thought to be pure and homogeneous, and therefore to have had an easier time becoming an 'intelligent society'.3 In the modern (pre-1945) state, the ideology of Japanese homogeneity and superiority was encapsulated in what was described as kokutai (national polity), by which the Japanese people were seen as 2 MULTICULTURAL JAPAN a unique family state united around the emperor. Though discredited by defeat and the collapse of imperial Japan and the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere (but not of the imperial line nor of its myths), neither the Occupation nor the post-war Japanese liberal and progressive forces paid much attention to questions of identity. The former concentrated on eradicating militarism while shoring up the imperial institution, and the latter on analysing class while ignoring ethnicity and assuming that a strengthening of individualism and democracy would result from steadily increasing modernisation. The ethnic implications of the aboriginal inhabitants of Japan (the Ainu), or other groups such as the large Korean minority, were reduced to considerations of universal human rights. Deep-rooted assumptions about 'Japaneseness' therefore survived intact.4 From the 1980s two phenomena have proceeded on parallel tracks which show no sign of converging: internationalisation and the clarification of Japanese identity. Kokusaika -internationalisation -has been a Japanese national goal for over a decade. Trans-border flows of capital, goods, technology and people have reached new heights, and essays and books on kokusaika proliferate. For all of this inter-meshing with the outside world, the task of analysing 'Japaneseness', and how notions of it might be reconciled with a kokusaika world, remains both complex and sensitive. The stronger the belief in Japanese distinctiveness, the deeper became the concern at the consequences of 'internationalisation' as economic super-power status led to the opening, first of the economy and then of the society, and an influx of migrant workers. This desire to clarify identity is the local manifestation of the worldwide phenomenon of identity politics. During the 1980s Japan's roots were increasingly traced back to the Jamon hunting and gathering culture which lasted for about 10 000 years prior to the fourth century BC. Influential statements of the 'true' untrammeled Japanese identity in such terms have been uttered by prominent academics and by political figures such as Ozawa lchira, who revealed his romantic inclinations by declaring that Jamon Japan was not only Japan's own true essence but also the solution to the problems of contemporary civilisation.5 In the 1980s the Nakasone government took renewed interest in the task of articulating Japanese 'culture' as an arm of diplomacy. The establishment in Kyoto in 1987 of the International Research Center for Japanese Culture, commonly known by its abbreviated Japanese title of 'Nichibunken', was one expression of this desire to clarify what 'Japaneseness' meant.6 The founding of Nichibunken was surrounded by controversy, reminding many of the 1930s kokutai meicho (Clarifying