Studying Race and Racism in South Korean and Japanese Contexts

Abstract This commentary introduces cases in Japan similar to those depicted in the five contributions to this forum and discusses the necessity of attending to the local concept of race to study race and racism in South Korea and Japan. The five articles evoke two cases that occurred in Japan. Like South Korea, Japan is well known for its strong and persistent myth of homogeneity despite the presence of diverse ethnic/racial (or racialized) minority groups: the Indigenous Ainu, Okinawans (or Ryūkyūans) who ran an independent kingdom across many small islands before Japan colonized it in the late nineteenth century, Koreans who migrated to Japan against the backdrop of Japan's colonization of the Korean Peninsula, return migrants from Brazil and Peru, increasing numbers of migrants from China and other Asian countries, “mixed-blood” persons, and many others. The myth of South Korea or Japan as a monoethnic/racial nation has played a significant role in racial problems in both countries. Intersecting race with gender, nation, class, science, military, and memory, the forum contributors raise many other important issues. However, this commentary focuses on the local concept of race, which is tied to the myth of monoethnic/racial nationhood and the author's research interests.