Title

Excluded Presence : Shoguns, Minstrels, Bodyguards, andJapan's Encounters with the Black Other

Author(s)Russell, John G.

CitationZINBUN (2008), 40: 15-51

Issue Date

2008-03

URL

http://hdl.handle.net/2433/71097

Right© Copyright March 2008, Institute for Research in Humanities
Kyoto University.

Type

Departmental Bulletin Paper

Textversion

publisher

Kyoto University

ZINBUN

2007

No.40

Excluded Presence: Shoguns, Minstrels, Bodyguards,
and Japan's Encounters with the Black OtherJohn G. RUSSELL

Tropes of national identity are deployedin the serviceof essencefabricationand jockeyingsfor
relativepositionin a globalhierarchy.
DorinneKondo(1992)
Anthropologist Dorinne Kondo (1990) has described the Japanese Self as being "inevitably involved in a multiplicity of social relationships. Boundaries between self and otherare fluid and constantly changing depending on context and on the social positioning people
adopt in particular situations" (31). Kondo's observation may be extended to include Japanese racial identity as well. Just as Japanese selves are defined in and through relationships
of inside and outside, so too their racial identity has been crafted and recrafted in relation
to paradigmatic oppositions of Self and Other—"civilized/uncivilized,""pure/impure," "inner/outer"—which are similarly protean in their adaptation to social conditions and shifting relations of power between the self and various others. In the past, Japanese definedthese oppositions in relation to a Sinocentric worldview that mediated the internal and external world. By the 19th century, however, Japanese constructions of otherness acquired
new meanings—and new targets—within the framework of western colonial expansionism,
meanings that threatened Japanese notions of self by redefining them in terms of relationships of power between Japanese and Europeans and Europe's colonized subjects.
This paper discusses the Japanese discourses of the black other and their deployment
within the context of historical interaction between Japanese and black people, which here
is used primary to designate Africans and African Americans. Contrary to the contemporary discourse of Japanese anti-black racism, Japanese attitudes toward blacks have neither
been monolithic nor consistently negative. Nor has interaction between the two groups been
confined to the twentieth century. Rather these attitudes have evolved in conjunction withJapan's relationship with powerful, influential mediating cultural entities, such as China andthe West. On the other hand, black concern, disappointment and anger over widely reported
incidents of Japanese anti-black prejudice and racism mark a departure from long-held ex15

JOHN G. RUSSELL
pressions of affinity and solidarity with Japanese as a "colored race" and fellow victims ofwhite racism.'
The Black Shogun
In 1991, while working as a consultant on filmmaker Regge Life's documentary Struggle and Success: The African American Experience in Japan, I was invited to accompany
him and his Japanese assistant to a private viewing of the statue of Sakanoue Tamuramaro(758 - 811) at Kiyomizudera in Kyoto, the original of which is said to have been built by
Tamuramaro and his wife Takako in 778 after becoming devotees to the teachings of Avalokitesvara (Kannon Bosatsu), a Buddhist deity. Japan's first sei-i-tai shdgun (barbarian-subduing generalissimo), Tamuramaro, is noted for his successful military campaigns against the
Ainu. Japanese scholars generally concede that Tamuramaro was of non-Japanese descent(some argue for Korean or Chinese ancestry, others that he was himself Ainu). More controversial is the claim put forth by some black scholars that he may have been an African,
though the evidence they present is far from convincing.'
One of the earliest references to Tamuramaro's blackness appears briefly in W. E. B.
Dubois' The Negro (1915) in which he listed among a number of historically significant"men of Negro descent" who have "distinguished themselves abroad" "as rulers and war riors" (84).' A more detailed description appears in Distinguished Negroes Abroad (1946) byBeatrice Fleming and Marion J. Pryde. In a chapter entitled "The Negro General of Japan—
Sakanouye Tamuramaro," a fictional Japanese father relates the generalissmo's adventures
to his two young sons as they stand before statues of the Japanese warrior in Kiyomizudera.
After the father finishes his story, the eldest son exclaims:

1 SeeKearneypioneeringstudies1991, 1992,1994a,1994band 1998.
2 For a discussionof Tamuramaro'sethnicitysee Papinot 1972[1910]see under "Achino Omi," 3
and "Sakanoue,"532– 533;see also Takahashi1986;and Reischauerand Reischauer1967,46.
On his putativeNegroroots,see Dubois1915,84 Flemingand Pryde 1946,3 – 9;Rogers1946,20;
Hyman1989,1 – 4; Clemons1990,6 –10; Brunson1995,221;and Rashidi 2002.
3 Whilenot specificallycitedas such, DuBois'sourceis most likelyanthropologistAlexanderChamberlain'sThe Contributionof the Negroto Human Civilization(1911)monographfor theJournalof RaceDevelopment
which he lists as suggestedreadingin the Negro(1915)and whichdescribes
Tamuramaroas "a famous generaland a Negro." Duboiswas no doubt familiar with the paper
sincefour years after its publicationit was reprintedin SelectPapers on Race Problems,a collection of papers presentedin 1915at the TwentiethAnnual Conferencefor the Study of Problems,
sponsoredby Atlanta University,a seriesof interdisciplinaryconferenceson race and the blackconditionestablishedby DuBoisin 1896.
16

EXCLUDEDPRESENCE"Andto think [...]Tamuramarowas a Negro!""Whatof that?"counteredthe father, quickly.
"I was thinking that in Americaand someparts of Europesuch an annal wouldnot be possible. Yetthese countriesconsiderthemselvesmoreadvancedthan ours.""Haruo," advised the father,"Youhavebeeneducatedin Europeand America.Take the bestof what you have learned,but alwaysremembertoregard a man as a man,irrespectiveof race orcolor. Japan did not enslaveher captivesnor the alienson her shores in the timeof Tamuramaro.
True these wererelegatedtothe lowlyestateof serfdombut opportunitiestorise and succeedwere
ever present. SakanouyeTamuramarowas a Negroand true to his kind he provedhimselfa worthy soldier.He foughtwith and for us. Andfor is,too,he wonthe mighty victory.To us, therefore,
he is not an alien;we think of him not as a foreigner.He is our reveredwarrior of Japan!"(8—9)
Assertions of Tamuramaro's Negro origins also appear in Carter G.Woodson and Charles
Harris Wesley's The Negro in Our History (1946)and J. A. Rogers' World's Greatest Men ofColor (1946). The legend would later be elaborated upon by Cheih Anta Diop (1974),Mark
Hyman (1989),and Runoko Rashidi (2002). During fieldwork in Japan in the late-1980s andearly 1990s, some black informants expressed familiarity with the legend of Tamuromaro
based on references to it in Distinguished Negroes Abroad and the description of the statueof him at Kiyomizudera in Hyman's book: "As seen in the temple where he has [sic]honored,
Maro's [sic] statue was taller than his fellow contributors. His hair was curly and tight, hiseyes were large and wide-set and brown. His nostrils were flared, his forehead wider, his jaws
thick and slightly protruded" (4).
In fact, the statue of Tamuramaro at Kiyomizudera is normally closed to the public, andLife and I were excited by the prospect that the rumors of Tamuramaro's "African roots"
might be confirmed, though we remained somewhat skeptical as to what we would actuallyfind there. Arriving at the temple, we met with abbot Fukuoka ShWO who, although intrigued by our inquiries into Tamuramaro's alleged black ancestry, remained noncommittal.
We were then escorted to the KaisandO where the statues of Tamuramaro and his wife arehoused. Since the statues are sealed behind two imposing wooden doors, our suspense washeightened when the key used to unlock them failed to work. One of the Buddhist monks
who accompanied us went off to retrieve another key and, returning with it, finally unlocked
them. The doors parted and the statue was revealed. Alas, the statue of Tamuramaro displays none of the "Negroid" features described by Hyman [Fig. 1]. Since its construction in
778, Kiyomizudera has been plagued by numerous fires and rebuilt several times. According
to Abbot Fukuoka, the current statues of Tamuramaro and his wife are reproductions commissioned after one such fire in 1633. It is possible, then, that an earlier statue or statutes
may have depicted him differently and that Hyman's reference is to an earlier version.
I relate this encounter with the "Black Shogun" for several reasons. First, and most17

JOHNG. RUSSELL• km16,:741

1111111100.
111116mook_-

Fig. 1. SakanoueTamuramaro(photo:John G.Russell).
obviously,it suggests a pre-Europeancontact betweenJapaneseand Africans. Second,aspresentedin DistinguishedNegroesAbroad,the legendadheres to a popular belief among
blacks,and one findingfrequent expressionduring the SecondWorldWar and postwarperiod,that historicallyJapanesehavebeenless racist toward themthan whites. Third,setting
aside the reality of such claims,it also voicesthe suspicion,not without foundation,that
many blacks haveregarding howthe contributionsof Africaand Africansto worldhistory
have beenrecordedby white scholarsand those influencedby western scholarship,and thebelief that that history has been deliberatelyconcealedto advancewhite supremacy. For
examples they need only point to the resistance of white scholars to the notion that theGreat Wallof Zimbabwe'was built by black Africansand to theoriesof the pyramidsand
ancient Egyptian civilizationthat are more comfortablepositing an extraterrestrialorigin
than an earthly blackone (comparethe sales figuresand mediaattentiondevotedto Graham
Hancock'sTheFingerprintsof Godto MartinBernal'scontroversialBlackAthena).5Fourth,
In 1871explorerKarlMauch(1837—75)cameacrossmassivestoneruinsin Zimbabwe.
believed
to havebeenerectedbetweentheeleventhandfifteenthcenturies.FordecadesWesternscholars
refusedto acceptthat thesestructurescouldhavebeenbuiltby blackAfricans,maintaining
that
theyhadbeenbuiltbyPhoenicians,
Arabs,andEuropeans.
InJapan,translationsof Graham's
booksclimbedthebestsellerlistandbecamethe subjectof numeroustelevision
specials,wheretheyfedthe UFOboomof the 1980sand1990s.Incontrast,de18

EXCLUDEDPRESENCE
an important element of the story as related by African Americans I spoke with in Japan isthat of deliberate concealment: material artifacts that would prove Tamuramaro's African origins are not open to public inspection. Again, one finds parallels in the Black Madonnas ofEurope, which also have been withdrawn from public view and in some cases even whitened.'
Finally, it suggests Japanese complicity in obscuring the early history of Japanese-African
contact. In the excerpt from Distinguished Negroes Abroad cited above, it is worth notingthat the Japanese family visiting Kiyomizudera takes pride in Tamuramaro's accomplishments, and, while recognizing him as a "Negro," accepts him "not as a foreigner" but "as ourrevered warrior of Japan." Such sentiments, my informants suggested, no longer existed incontemporary Japan where, they maintained, the statue is concealed because Japanese arenow "ashamed" that their national hero is a black man whose recognition as such challenges
both the myth of black inferiority and the myth of Japanese racial homogeneity.
Copies of Hyman's book and other materials referring to Tamuramaro's African ancestry are circulated and discussed by members of the black community in Japan.' On the other
hand, like monk Fukuoka, most Japanese with whom I have discussed the legend were unfamiliar with it. Indeed, many were skeptical, although there were those who did not rule out
the possibility, some pointing to the existence of black Buddhas throughout Asia and Japan.
Clemons (1990) captures the dilemma of many blacks who are confronted with the story andmore generally of black scholars confronted with inconclusive data that challenge historicalorthodoxy, given its anti-black bias:
Despitethe history of Africanleadersin Asiasuch as MalikAmbar,it appears that Diop'sproposition that Tamuramarowas Blackis basedon unsubstantiateddata. I find myself speculating
whetherthe informationavailableto the authors of Diop'sprimary source,DistinguishedNegroes
Abroad, was interpretedby its authors in such a manner,that the race of Tamuramarowas unclear. Moreover,I pondermyreasoningfor questioningDiop'sproposal.In questioningthe proposition that Tamuramarowas Black,am I demonstratingthe effectsof years of academicsocialization which has resulted from being taught in academicinstitutionsdominatedby non-BlackspiteJapan's so-calledblack boomof the 1980s,a translationof the first volumeof Bernal'sbook
did not appear until 2005,althougharticlescriticalof it drawinglargelyon dismissivereviewsin
AmericanmagazineslikeNewsweekand Time,had appearedwellbeforethen. Duringthis period,
reenactmentsof the building of the pyramids on popular Japanese televisionshows typically
cast Egyptians as white with nary a black (or brown)face in sight,although,the more frivolous
programs
showed"greys"of sometimes
alien abducteelore.them assistedby thoseubiquitousoval-headed,almond-eyedfoetal
6 See Begg 1996.
7 Today, of course, withthe rise of the internet,the discourseof the Black Shogunhas expandedto
includecommunitiesin cyberspace,generatingdiscussion,albeitlimited,inJapaneseblogs.
19

JOHN G. RUSSELL
thought (15).
Clemons points out the flaws in such racial reconstructions, noting the fact that others haveclaimed Tamuramaro as their own, including the Ainu themselves. For some blacks, thelegend of Tamuramaro is strategically deployed to counter stereotypes that associate blacks
with servitude and submission, after all, he is "warrior," the first shOgun of Japan, no less:He does not fit the usual stereotypes of Africans as slave and victim. As such, his presence
forces blacks to reconsider conventional constructions of history and the place of people of
African descent in it, meditations which cannot be pursued without serious consideration of
the social significance of race and place in modern society. Yet the mental decolonizationof the self may also entail a (re)coloniziationof the Other as racial and civilizational hierarchies are re-calibrated to enhance the cultural status of one's own group at the expense ofanother:
They [the Ainu]had becomeplantersof crops,after many years as primitivehunters. Although
they lived togetherin villages,and practicedcertaincustomswhich are usually characteristicof
civilizedpeoples,they still maintainedmany of their fierce,fighting qualities,and constituteda
dangerousfoe. Even their religiousserviceswerebarbaric(Flemingand Pryde, 4).

First Impressions
Whether apocryphal or not, the African roots of Sakanoue Tamuramaro raise the possibility that Africans arrived on Japanese shores prior to the arrival of Europeans and suggeststhat their presence in Asia was not confined to the role of manservant and slave. Chinese
scholars have traced African contacts with Chinese to as far back as the Han dynasty (206
B.C.—A.D. 220) (Harris, 1987, 92). The exact date of Chinese contact with Africa is unknown,
although official contacts are thought to have begun during the Ming dynasty (1368 —1644)
with the maritime expeditions of the eunuch Cheng Ho (1371—1433).
Scholars on both sides of the Pacific have tended to view Japan's encounter with the Westas almost exclusively one between Japanese and Europeans, ignoring the fact that nonwestern people were also present. In addition to Malays, East Indians, Indonesians and Southeast
Asians, there was also an African presence, consisting of blacks who accompanied the Europeans to Japanese shores as sailors, servants, interpreters, artisans, and slaves. Images ofthese dark-skinned foreigners, some depicting Africans, can be found in 17th-century namban
prints. While Japanese artists were not above demonizing foreigners, depicting blacks andwhites as oni (demons), many of these prints are devoid of overt caricuaturization, capturing in colorful detail the procession of Western power and the place of blacks within it [Fig.
20

EXCLUDED
ir+0"'v

PRESENCE,...0f.
av

a"":'Ig I.
er

0.7_we,•,,,

0,441.,. 4,,,4r.„2,,;4..,

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,

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ilk

11Pli/ .... 11,
•'

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Fig. 2. Momoyama Period namban (from Tokubetsuten Nanban Kenbun Ryoku, [SpecialExhibition, A Record of Encounter with the Namban Culture], Kobe City Museum).

2].8 In the mid-19th century artist Hashimoto Sadahide would depict the African servantsof the Dutch and French in Yokohama with sympathy, dignity and grace [Fig. 3]. A keenobserver, Sadahide's written impressions of the Africans he encounters stress the similarities
in customs between them and the Japanese. He describes African women as "rather charm' SeeRubin1967. I wouldadd that the tendencyamongsomecommentatorssee only"blackdevils"in these prints may betray the biases of modern-dayviewerswhoprojectupon them—andseek
historicalconfirmationof their own society'sview of blacks,a tendencySnowden(1983)has
detectedin modern interpretationsof black representationin Westernclassicalart: "[T]hereis
no reasonto concludethat classicalartists who depictedblacks in comicor satiricalsceneswere
motivatedby colorprejudice,Whitesof many races—evengods and heroes appearedin comic
21a

JOHN G. RUSSELL
ing" and as "bear[ing] themselves with a sort of female dignity,"declaring in the end that theAfrican servants are "no different in human nature, being kindly and compassionate" (quoted
in Meech-Pekarik 1987, 44). However, by the late-19th century and early-20th century such
sympathetic portraits would give way to broad caricature [Fig. 4].
The written archive has not totally ignored the African presence. Sporadic references to
Africans do appear, though for the most part they are limited to their roles as servants andslaves, as objects of Japanese fascination and derision who, we are lead to believe, the Japanese viewed as an inferior, barbarous people. This is, after all, what the contemporary discourse on Japan has conditioned us to expect from a group of people who are today saddledwith the stereotype of being xenophobic, hierarchical-minded, and racist. Sadly, we know
relatively little about how premodern Japanese viewed Africans or how the Africans in turnregarded their Japanese hosts. What contemporary records we do have come from Japanese
who had some contact with Europeans and whose views of the Africans may have beentainted by Western prejudices.

.

,

±1

.ftrawria $1,q

;i.
Ss
r.
-s„..4.--14

r "WAP.^ mMil ,0111^11•1101111111111•
11111PN .J1.74mor--;....11.87,70
•

00

a

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Fig. 3. Yokohama Slaves (fromJulia Meech-Pekarik, The World of the Meiji Print).
and satiricalscenes. Why shouldblacks havebeenexcluded?If Negroeshad been depictedonly
as comicor grotesque,or if satiricalsceneshad been the rule and not the exception,theremight
be somejustificationfor a pejorativeinterpretationof the Negroin classicalart. In the absenceof ancientevidenceto support such view,however,these suggestions must be regardedas theopinionsof moderncritics,not of the artists themselves"(80).
22,EXCLUDED PRESENCE,----- -. /iti:i .. ,Alt _V .. •-.v,, 4,-...,,,,,t' 44,1".. * i' -1)hilt!4”f-770.-?.
1

1' --.-!'f,".(''.---tz5(,77/'-`,,/."';',Cr--,e t:_.•^1?:::4
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1 ,14e). '..1glialr..C.7)all '

,

.

iL

114.....

k- A10 ,:Fig. 4. "Afurika no heitai-san" [African soldiers] (J6tO Ponchi [Punch Japan] October 15,1906).

Historians trace Japan's first contact with blacks to the arrival of Portuguese and Dutch
traders in the 16th and 17th centuries. However, some scholars speculate there may havebeen an African presence in premodern Japan as a result of Chinese trade with Africa during
the Tang (618 —907) and Song (960 —1279) dynasties." According to one Sinologist: "In 976
a great sensation was produced at the court of the Tang Emperor by the arrival of an Arab
envoy with a 'negro slave' in his suite; and after that date Chinese books repeatedly refer to`negro slaves' and, as has already been noticed, to the Arab Slave Trade which produced
CitingChinesesources,Duyendak(1949,23) posits an Africanpresencegoing back as far as theCh'in Dynasty (221BC—
420AD).See also Filesi 1962,Irwin 1977;Harris 1971;Diop1974;andRashidi1995.
23

i

.

JOHN G. RUSSELL
them" (Coupland,quoted in Filesi 1962,21). Duyendak (1949),citing a contemporary Chinesesource, asserts that "thousands of them are sold as foreign slaves" (23).
It is not inconceivable that Africans had arrived on Japanese shores via China as earlyas the tenth century.1°Wagatsuma (1967)cites an intriguing reference to a black, presumably
African, from a document produced in the late 1670s which suggests an African presence inJapan by way of Korea.
In the country of Inaba [Tottoriprefecture]therewas a man of sevenfeet height. He was fromthe country of `kuro: He had been capturedin the Koreanwar [1592—1598]and brought overto
Japan. His colorwas that of soot and peoplecalledhim kurombd(43).
Beginning in the 16th century, one obtains documented evidence of Japanese contact with
Africans. In 1546Portuguese captain Jorge Alvarez brought Africans to Japan. According toAlvarez, Japanese initial reaction to them was primarily one of curiosity: "They like seeing
black people," he wrote in 1547, "especially Africans, and they will come 15 leagues just to seethem and entertain them for three or four days" (Cooper,66). The most well-documented caseis that Yasuke, a Mozambican brought to Japan by the Italian Jesuit Alessandro Valignano(1537—1606)who was presented to daingO Oda Nobunaga in 1581. The first Japanese reference to Yasuke appears in Ota Gyfichi's (1527—1613) Shinch6 KOki (Chronicleof the Life of
Oda Nobunaga, 1600),wherein he is described as a robust young man of around sixteen orseventeen years of age, black as a bull, and of fine character (Fujita 1987a). An account ofJapanese reaction to Yasuke written in 1584by the Portuguese Jesuit Luis Frois (1532—1597),
who accompanied Valignano to Kyoto,describes an incident in which the townspeople, clamoring for a glimpse of the African, broke down the doors of a Jesuit residence, the ensuing melee resulting in the death and injury of several of the participants. Upon seeing theAfrican Nobunaga had him stripped and bathed to determine for himself if his skin color
was natural (Cooper, 71). Perhaps more extraordinary is that Yasuke's story does not end
here. Retained as an attendant by Nobunaga, he later accompanied him into battle against
the rival lord Akechi Mitsuhide (1528?—1582)who upon defeating Nobunaga at Horyuji,
spared the African and subsequently released him."
Tohoku University professor Fujita Midori places the number of Africans temporarily
residing in Japan during the 16th century at several hundred. Some came to Japan as slaves," Snow(1988)notes that Chinesescholarsmaintainthat Chinahad already establishedtrade relations with the African kingdomsof Kush and Axum, during the Han dynasty, though "African
scholarstend to take a rather moreskepticalview"(2).
EndOShrisaku'snovelKurombd(Nigger,1973)offersa comicalretellingof Yasuke'snarrative inwhichthe titular character(renamedTsumpa)is reducedto a cowardly,infantilebuffoon.
24

EXCLUDEDPRESENCE
servants, valets, sailors, soldiers, and interpreters. Their roles were not limited to serving Europeans. Like Yasuke, a number of Africans were employed by daimy6 in various capacities,
as soldiers, gunners, drummers, and entertainers." Whatever their position it appears they
attracted the curious. During the Edo Period (1603—1867)a small number of black Africans
lived in the Dutch settlement in Deshima. Despite the policy of national isolation, records
reveal that black Africans mingled freely among the Japanese visitors and were allowed occasionally to leave the island, as were their European masters. Mansell Upham, a South African historian and former diplomat at the South African Embassy in Tokyo researching thegenealogy of "white" European families in South Africa, has discovered a property inventory
documenting the sale of one "Anthony Moor from Japan," registered as the son of a Japanese mother and a "Moor" father, to a European settler in Capetown in 1701.13Although theterm "moor" is racially ambiguous and Upham has not found documentation confirming that
Anthony Moor was in fact a black African, the finding does raise the question of the extent
to which Africans mingled with the Japanese in premodern times, including miscegenation
between Japanese and black Africans. Clemonssuggests that privileged African and East Indian slaves in Japan kept Japanese slaves and mistresses, as did their European masters prior
to the ban on Japanese slavery by Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1536—1598)in the late 16th century(33 —34). Indeed, as late as 1598 the Portuguese missionary Luis Cerqueria reported: "Eventhe very lascars and scullions of the Portuguese purchase and carry [Japanese] slaves away.
Hence it happens that many of them die on the voyage, because they are heaped up uponeach other, and if their masters fall sick (these masters are sometimes Kaffirs and negroes of
the Portuguese), the slaves are not cared for. These scullions give a scandalous example byliving in debauchery with the girls they have bought, and whom some of them introduce into
their cabins on the passage to Macao" (Murdoch, 243).
Significantly, the ban on the traffic in Japanese slaves applied to all foreigners, white andblack alike. Equally significant is the fact that the Africans were allowed to have Japaneseslaves at all, since, if Japanese considered blacks inferior, it is unlikely they would have permitted them to own Japanese slaves. By the seventeenth century, however, restrictions wereintroduced that specifically prohibited Africans from consorting with courtesans, though
there is some doubt as to the degree it was enforced (Fujita 1987b).
Contemporary records reveal that in some instances the Africans were involved in criminal activities, mostly involving smuggling and the theft of animals and food, perhaps dueto their mistreatment by the Dutch and that they were sometimes abetted by sympathetic
Japanese who were charged as accomplices. Indeed, some Japanese were shocked by howcheaply the Dutch valued the lives of their black slaves. Physician Hirokawa Kai provides a
12SeeLeupp 1995, 2; and Fujita 1987a,30—33.
13Japan Times, 16December1993,3, and personalconversation1993.
25

JOHN G. RUSSELL
description of the Africans and their mistreatment by the Dutch in Nagasaki:
The kurobo(blacks)are broughtby the Dutch and are treated as their slaves from a land called
Kaburi,(Africa)a large land which liesto the southwestof India. There is no king,rather eacharea has its ownchief. The climateis veryhotso their skin is black,and thus we callthem kurobOor kurosu. If they stay a few years in our country their skin lightens and becomesno different
from the complexionof dark-skinnedJapanese. In Kaburi it never snows. When the kurobOin
Japan see snowfor the first time,they are quite surprised. The kurobOpossessa fine character.
They performbackbreakingand dangeroustasksfor their masters without complaint.They work
hard, climbingthe masts of ships without the least displayof fear. The kOmOjin["red-hairs';i.e.,
the Dutch]havebroughtmany of themhere. I cannotfathomthe ways of the red-hairs,who workand lash [theirslaves]as if they werebeasts and whokill the youngand the strongwho resist andthrow their bodiesinto the sea (quotedin Fujita 1987b,253).
Elsewhere he notes that sick blacks seldom received medical treatment and that when theircondition deteriorated their Dutch masters poisoned them. Another writer reports that if
the ailing blacks did not respond to treatment, they were poisoned or kicked to death (252).
Another witness writes that the Dutch "valued the lives of their blacks less than their dogs"(kurodo no inochi wa kono ku yori karozu) (252). However, Dutch contempt was not reserved
for their African slaves; according to a contemporary account by the Swedish botanist Carl
Pieter Thunberg, the Dutch in Deshima also treated the Japanese with scorn and condescension: "[T]he pride which some of the weaker minded officers in the Dutch service very imprudently exhibit to the Japanese, by ill-timed contradiction, contemptuous behavior, scornful
looks and laughter, which occasions the Japanese in their turn to hate and despise them; ahatred which is greatly increased upon observing in how unfriendly and unmannerly a stylethey usually behave to each other, and the brutal treatment which sailors under their command frequently experience from them, together with the oaths, curses and blows with which
the poor fellows are assailed by them. If the Dutch sailors were frequently assailed withoaths, curses and blows by their officers, it can easily be imagined what sort of treatment
was meted out to erring slaves by their owners" (quoted in Boxer 1965, 267 —268). Dutch arrogance and abuse may explain why Japanese were willing to befriend beleaguered Africanslaves.
With the importation of Rangaku (Dutch Learning) came not only knowledge of western geography and science but also western prejudices against Africans and other subjected
races. Geographic references to Africa based on conversations with the Dutch were on thewhole unfavorable, depicting its inhabitants as salacious, savage, stupid, inferior, and cannibalistic. It is important to recall that few of those writing on Africa had ever visited there.
Their accounts were filtered through information, much of it second hand, provided by Eu26

EXCLUDEDPRESENCE
ropeans merchants and missionaries and reflected European sensibilities and biases. Even
when Japanese set foot in Japan, their perceptions of the land and its peoples were coloredby the teachings of their European mentors. For example, the first Japanese to visit theAfrican continent in 1586,a delegation of four teenage Japanese Christian boys returning toJapan via Africa following an audience with the Pope in Rome, disparaged the Africans as an"incompetent" (munO), "uncivilized" (soya),and "barbarous people" (kydydmo naku yaban na
minzoku),though the criterion for judging them was based on whether or not they accepted
Christianity (Fujita 1987a, 37). Although intrigued by the black-skinned outsiders in their
midst, and sometimes ridiculed their appearance and found their language and costumes
humorous, on the whole Japanese did not hold any strong animus toward them (Fujita 1987b,
279).
The process of seeing blacks through Western eyes is repeated in the 19th century when
Japan is exposed to white American antiblack stereotypes. In 1854, less than a decade after
its emergence as a national entertainment, Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry, returningto Edo Bay to conclude a commercial treaty with Japan, treated Japanese negotiators to a
blackface minstrel show—"a serenade of pseudo-darkies" as one witness to the performanceput it (McCauley1942, 77) — performed aboard the flagship Powhatan [Fig. 5]. In a log entry
dated 27 March 1854, Perry writes:
Previousto the dinner hour the commissionerswith their attendants visited the Macedonianand

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Tokyo).
27:

JOHN G. RUSSELL
saw the crew of that ship at generalexerciseand also witnessedthe movementsof the enginesof Powhatan,put in motionpurposelyfor their examination.They were saluted by Macedonian,Mississippi,and Saratoga,and after retiringfrom the table wereentertainedon deckwith the performancesof the very excellentcorps of Ethiopiansbelongingto Powhatan. Even the gravity ofHayashi[the chief commissioner]
couldnot withstandthe hilarity which this most amusingexhibitionexcited. He and his coadjutorslaughedas merrilyas ever the spectatorsat Christy's" havedone. At sunsetthey all leftthe ship with quiteas muchwine as they couldwell bear. Matsuzaki[anothercommissioner]threwhis arms aboutmyneckand repeated inJapanese as interpretedinto
English:"Nipponand America,all the same heart,"and in his drunkenembracecrushedmy new
epaulettes(Perry1968,189).
Perry's "Ethiopian minstrels," as they were called, performed in several locations throughout Japan, including the ports of Hakodake, Shimoda as well as in Macao and Hong Kong.
In 1853, a year before Perry's return to Japan, his minstrels, whose repertoire included "Mr.
Buck's recitation (inNigger character)" and "Walkyour chalks Ginger Blue' in first-rate style"
had performed in Macao (Wiley 1990, 368). According to William Heine, acting master's
mate and the principal artist of the expedition,Japanese were quite delighted by the comical,
cavorting "blacks." In Hakodate, the minstrels performed "songs and dances of plantation
blacks of the South." They were also a hit at another reception held for the commissioners of
Matsumai and other ranking Japanese officials. "They applauded in every possible way andshouted again and again: `Kussi!Kussi!' That word signifies the greatest degree of pleasure,mental and physical" (Heine 1990, 154—155).
And again, in the Ryakyfis:
Twodays beforewe left Loo Choo[Okinawa]the commodoregave still another farewellbanquet
for LooChoo'sregent. Our "Ethiopianminstrels"put on an evening if theatrical entertainment
afterward.The guests all seemedpleased—theylaughed a lot—butwhy?"Perhaps eventhey did
not knowwhy (169).
Real blacks did serve aboard the Powhatan, but little is known about them, historians being more concerned with Perry's Euroamerican officers and crew. We also know that during
Perry's reception in the village of Kurihama on July 14, 1853 two ornate foot-long rosewood
boxes containing Perry's credentials and letter to the Japanese "Emperor" from President Millard Fillmore were borne by two (apparently white) cabin boys who in turn were "guarded bya couple of tall, jet-black Negroes, completely armed" (Perry 1968, 98),who opened the boxes,
14Christy'sMinstrels;a popular blackfaceminstreltroupe foundedby E. P.Christyin the 1830s.
28

EXCLUDEDPRESENCE
removed their contents and displayed their seals before the Japanese (Wiley,318 –19). These
black stewards also served as Perry's personal bodyguard. Six armed blacks escorted him
when he landed in Edo Bay in 1854. Blacks also held responsible positions as captain of thegun. How Japanese reacted to them and how they in turn regarded the Japanese is unknown.
It may be argued that their role was simply ornamental, yet the commodore's decision to use
blacks in these roles is significant given the emphasis he places on their physicality and his
use of their bodies as a two-fold projection of American power: The blacks are imposing,yet not so powerful that they have escaped domestication, since they serve—and protect—awhite master. Indeed, during the Kurihama reception, Perry seemed intent on out-pomping
the Japanese. Heine notes that unlike the Dutch and the Russian emissaries before them, theAmericans did not "kneel and crawl, backward and forward, time after time" to their Japanese hosts. Perry would have none of that; the Americans would enter the reception pavilion
standing erect, for "the commodore has made up his mind; no disgraceful humiliation would
be inflicted on him" (73; original emphasis). The Japanese could but only comply.
True, the Japanese had objectedto our survey of [Uraga]bay and to our anchoringwhereverit
suited us. They had tried to justifytheir gesturesof resistance:"Youhavecontradictedthe wishesof our government,and we must do as weare told." But we retorted:"Weare honoringthe wishesof our government,and we must do as we are told. Besides,we are accustomedto behavethis way
all overthe world. So we shallbehavethis way here,too!" Wealso declared,however,and at thesame time, that the UnitedStatesfelt nothingbut friendshipfor Japan. At any rate, theJapanese
could do nothing but comply,thoughour actionsbe new to them. For,in the end,small boatsand
twelve-poundcannonwould havebeena squeakagainst the roar of our mightysteamshipsandheavy artillery (173;originalemphases).
The impact of Western attitudes toward blacks on Japanese attitudes is also suggested in the journals of delegates of the 1860 Embassy to the United States and Loanda (theCongo)and the 1871 Iwakura Mission to the United States. Stopping in Loanda on a return
trip to Japan from America, a delegate to the 1860 mission wrote: "The faces of these natives are black as if painted with ink and resemble those of monkeys.... According to theAmericans, they are the incarnation of apes" (Dojinwo miru ni kau-iro sumi wo nuru gotoku
saru gotoshi....Beijin no kata nite dojin wa saru no kesshin nari to zo (Wagatsuma andYoneyama 1980, 64).15Miyoshi has characterized the attitude of the delegation toward theAfricans they encountered in the Congo as monotonously contemptuous: "All remarks about
the Africans are more or less the same, sneering at their bare bodies and black skins, occa15Oddly, Wagatsuma'sEnglish translationin Daedalusomits referenceto "the Americans"(Beijin);cf.Wagatsuma1967,415.
29

JOHN G. RUSSELL
sionally adding further details concerning their body odor and movement, their tattoos andornaments. Some describe the chain gangs of slaves, but none expresses any sympathy forthe captives; nor do they deplore the inhuman treatment of the Portuguese" (Miyoshi 1979,
60 —61). This is a significant departure from the Japanese condemnations of Dutch slavery
in the 17th century.
Beasley (1995)points out that many of the negative statements about Africans during
this period relied less on first-hand observation than on hearsay, reflecting not only the attitudes of their hosts, but the degrading social conditions in which the nonwhites they encountered lived under western domination and the fact that as diplomats the Japanese were
spared similar treatment.
So was the picturewhich the travelerstook homewith them of non-westernpeoples and societies. Starting with YanagawaMasakiyo'scommentson the blacks in 1860and IchikawaWataru's
distaste for Egyptian flies and dirt in 1862,the records contain a string of referencesto "ugly"
Africansand "lazy"Asians,contrastingwith vastlysuperiorAmericansand Europeans. All thismightbe describedas an accountof the worldseenfromthe first-classcabinson the Far East run,or from the salons of westerncapitals. If Indiansand Arabs were poor and oppressed,the Japanesewere told they lackedthe qualitiesto be otherwise.The Pacificcrossingfor its part induceda ready contemptfor Chineseemigrants,taking passagein the steerageclass. That impression
was inno way changedby a sight of conditionsinHongKongand Shanghai. The Chinese,in fact,
were commonlyseen, not as the representativesof a civilizationfrom which Japan had taken asuperiorculturein the past, but as decadents,justlymade victimsof the West'simperialismin thepresent....Againstsuch a background,manyJapanesebegan to see themselves,in the phrase thatwas sometimesused to describethemin the twentiethcentury,as "honorarywhites."This was oneof the less attractiveaspectsof their voyaging(215—216).
Significantly, such attitudes do not seem prevalent among members of the Iwakura
Mission. In Tokumei zenken taishi Bei-6 kairan jikki (Journal of the Envoy Extraordinary
Ambassador Plenipotentiary's Travels through America and Europe, 1878),Kume Kunitake(1839—1931),the private secretary of chief ambassador Iwakura Tomomi (1825 —1883),describes the African slave trade in somewhat more critical terms, noting the harsh treatmentof African slaves and commenting favorably on efforts by whites to establish schools forformer slaves whom, he notes, received instruction not only in the three R's but also in Greek,
Latin, and the sciences (213). After visiting one of these Negro schools in the South, Kume
remarks that blacks had made considerable progress, noting their election to congress andthat some had amassed sizable fortunes (216). He goes on to write, "A considerable numberof blacks possessed brilliant intellects against which uneducated whites stood no measure"(kokujin ni mo eisai haishutsu shi, hakujin no fugaku naru mono wa, yaku wo taru ni itaran),
30

EXCLUDEDPRESENCE
and concludes "skin color has no relation to intelligence" (hilu no iro wa, chishiki ni kankei
nai koto) (216). Such enlightened sentiments may have been offeredas a testament to the civilizing powers of Western learning; they may have also reflected the tutelage of progressive
whites. Whatever their motivation, they offered the assurance that if Africans in America
had the potential to obtain equality with whites by mastering western learning so, too, did
the Japanese.
The attitude of Japanese adventurers in Africa toward blacks during the Meiji Period isequally ambivalent. Although they were not averse to accepting the dehumanizing portraitsof Africans painted by whites, their travel logs also offer accounts of oppressive, raciallystratified colonies where their own subordination to whites was a source of consternation
and resentment.
thinkI
the blacks who are oppressedin this so-calledcivilizedcountryare miserable.I wouldlike
to challengethese realities for the sake of humanity. I wouldliketo ask the English who liketo
act as if this were normal,is thereany differencein the intrinsicworth of blacks and whitesas
human beings? If I couldreceivea clearanswertomy question,I wouldrevisemy opinionof themwithout hesitation. But if they couldnot answer,I am afraid my respectfor the Englishmenof
South Africa woulddisappear.
At any rate, evenif it were impossiblefor blacks to have the same socialstatus as whites,
where is the cruel necessityfor separatetrain cars? Is it not the weak whom we shouldpity? I
would like to point this out to the wise Englishmenand I shall nevercease to hope that they will
striveto care for the blacks and to add to theirwelfare(quotedinAoki 1993,75—76).
The majority of Japanese were in no position to witness the situation of blacks for themselves. Their isolation insured that they would remain dependent on information about blacks
from external sources, this time from the Americans,which was no less distorted than that of
the Europeans with whom they shared a system of institutionalized slavery and an unmitigated contempt for blacks based on an ideology of white supremacy, an ideology backed bya technological and military might that seemed to justify it. As DeBarry (1958)puts it, "In
the mind of many in the rising generation of Meiji intellectuals] the word of a Western philosopher or sociologist would carry more weight than all the classics of the East" (131). Thiswas particularly true when it came to defining culture and civilization. The privileging ofWestern discourse is evident in the writings of Fukuzawa Yukichi (1834 —1901),a europhilewhose discussion of the hierarchy of cultures in Bunmei-ron no gairyaku (An Outline of a
Theory of Civilization, 1875) replicates contemporary Western racial hierarchies, privileging the West as the apotheosis of "civilization" (bunmet), viewing Asia as "semi-civilized"(hankaz)and Africa as "barbaric" (yaban) (Fukuzawa, 24). Although Fukuzawa's europhilia
was qualified with the caveat that Japan acquire only the most useful elements of European
31

JOHN G. RUSSELL
culture, his schema leaves no doubt about the place of Africans and other non-Europeans on
the ladder of cultural development."
A New World OrderJapan's encounters with the West in the 19th century were defined in the context of
power relations in which Japan occupied the subordinate position. One means of acquiring
power is to appropriate and symbolically ingest those objects (material as well as ideological) thought to contain it, though their consumption may produce disturbing side-effects. In
Japan, as in most of the colonizedworld, Western ideophagy produced a mixture of contempt
for and admiration of Westerners as well as feelings of self-hatred. By the Meiji Period, Japanese had come to admire the very "hairy barbarians" whose ways they had once ridiculedand scorned, appropriating and adapting those ways toward their own ideological ends. At
the same time, their adoption produced self-doubts and insecurities, inviting a self-reflexiveawareness through which Japanese began to adjust their own worldview to accommodate thegrowth of Western cultural authority.
The influence of Western "scientific"and popular racist discourse on Japanese racial attitudes has not received the attention it merits. "The introduction of Darwinist thought in theearly Meiji period (1868—1912)would see common-senseJapanese notions of Self and Other
increasingly influenced by the Western paradigms of "race" (Siddle 1996, 10). The American
zoologist Edward Sylvester Morse (1837—1925),a professor at Tokyo University, introduced
Darwin to Japanese audiences in the 1870s. Several translations of Darwin's Descent of Man
were published during the Meiji period (trans. 1879). Even more widely translated were theworks of Herbert Spencer, of which around 30 translations appeared between 1877—1900.17
Other works translated during this period include Thomas Huxley's Lectures of the Origin
of Species (trans. 1879) and Thomas Buckle's (1821—1862)widely read History of Civilization in England. According to Siddle, school textbooks also helped spread stereotyped racial
images and related ideas such as environmental determinism, in which the characteristics of"races" and nations were attributed to geographic and climatic factors (12).
Western scientific notions of "race" were not imposed on Japan from the outside but em16A similarranking of races can be seen in a articleby an anonymousJapanese journalist in the
Kanayomi Shimbun(1876):"the highest race is that of the whites (European and Americans).
In the middleis the yellowrace (Chinese,JapaneseKoreans,Ryukyuans and other Asians),and
lowestare the black and red races (aboriginalpeoplesof Africa,Australia,and South America"(Leupp1995,9).
17Shimao1981. The first abridgedJapanese versionof Darwin's Descentof Man (Jinsoron)was
publishedin 1881. The first completeversion,Seibutsushigen ichimeishugen-ron,appeared in
1896. From 1881to 1929at least 15 versions,translatedunder varioustitles, werepublished.
32

EXCLUDEDPRESENCE
ployed by Japanese intellectuals to support various, often conflicting domestic agendas, ranging from nationalism and socialism to anti-Christian and anti-Buddhist ideologies (Shimao
1981: 94 – 95). Some reformers used Darwinism to attack Christianity and Buddhism as
part of a movement to replace them with state Shintoism. For others it provided a means
to account for—and reproduce—the conditions which gave rise to Western power and influence. Nationalists had only to survey the condition of their Asian neighbors to see what fatebefell those who were unable to compete in the struggle for the survival of the fittest. At
the same time, Social Darwinism offered a scientific basis for Japanese notions of hierarchy
and proper place as well as spurring a growing preoccupation with the question of where
Japan ranked in the social evolutionary scheme of things. Within Japan, the "science ofrace" was employed to justify policies directed at the subjugation of its own internal minorities. The Ainu were not only racialized, but became a "dying race," whose culture had to be"preserved"—deposited in research laboratories, warehoused in museums, placed on exhibition—before they completely vanished. With the support of Heinrich von Siebold and other
Westerners, Japanese scholars launched their own "scientific"forays, inaugurating Ainugaku(Ainu Studies) which embraced them with the same kind of "imperialist nostalgia," to borrow Rosaldo Renato's term, that Westerners had displayed toward other "primitive" peoples
whose time had passed." As an "inferior race," the Ainu were forced to assimilate throughthe enactment of paternalistic laws ostensibly aimed at their "protection."If for the Japanese the Ainu represented the "lowest rung" on the evolutionary ladder
within Japan, the precepts of social Darwinism left little doubt as to the positioning of Africans and their descents. Racist caricatures of Africans as primitive exotic were not confined
to scientific discourse; they were also to be found in Western popular culture imported toJapan. While Japanese intellectuals were extolling the virtues of Hegel and Spencer (whose
reasoned contempt for Africans was if anything far from implicit),the masses thrilled to such
scientific romances as Jules Verne's Five Weeksin a Balloon (Japanese trans. 1880),Henry
Morgan Stanley's Through the Dark Continent and In Darkest Africa (Japanese trans. 1890
and 1899, respectively) and other works that cultivated the image of Africa as a mysterious,
savage "dark continent" (ankoku tairiku), imagery that would eventually serve as a templatefor Japanese adventure story writers, illustrators, and armchair explorers.

" "The Ainu have repeatedly told me that they fear that the customsand way of lifeof the Ainu
havepassed down from the remotepast will be lost due to the wajin(Japanese).In fact, the Ainu
may face the same fate as the AmericanIndian. Alreadythe Imperialgovernmentof Japan hasbannedthe customof tattooingand ear-piercingas inconsistentwith the principleof civilization.
... In the end,as timepasses the days of freedomand happinesswill certainlydisappear."(Siebold
1996[1881]20). See also Oguma 1995,72—86 for a discussionof the impact of Darwinismon
anthropologicalstudiesof the Ainu.
33

JOHN G. RUSSELL
Particularly influential were the Tarzan films, beginning with the Elmo Lincoln silent
Tarzan of the Apes (1918)which was released in Japan in 1919. Their impact is evident in
Shimada KeizO's&ken Dankichi (The Adventurous Dankichi, 1933—1939),a children's bookthat depicts the adventures of a Japanese child shipwrecked on an island in the South Pacificinhabited by black-skinned primitives who crown him their king. The black "bankO"(primitives) Dankichi encounters are drawn in the Sambo mode, comical entities with round, bulging eyes and bulbous white lips, a depiction not noticeably different from those of Africans
in American animated cartoons and European storybooks of the same period [Fig. 6]. Therecan be little doubt, however, Western images of Africa inspired its imagery, for in addition
to caricatured black-skinned primitives this South Pacific island is also populated by fierce
lions. Another work, &ken Ken-chan (The Adventuous Ken), a comic strip advertisement
touting the hygienic benefits of Lion Brand toothbrushes serialized in TokyoAsahi Shimbun
in 1934,clearly shows the influence of Shimada, though the savages its depicted are decided-

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34

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ly African [Fig. 7]. A more direct influence can be seen in the work of Tezuka Osamu,Japan's"Cartoon King" and the "Walt Disney of Japan," whose Africans in Jyanguru Taitei (Jungle
Emperor, 1950 —1954) show the stylistic signature of his namesake, as well as Shimada's,whose work he much admired [Fig. 8]. Like Shimada, Tezuka follows the imaginary geography laid down by Western views of Africa and its inhabitants, borrowing inspiration fromthe Tarzan films of the 1930s and 1940s, a genre he attempted to imitate in early works suchas Jyanguru rnakyO(Jungle World of Devils, 1948),Taruzan no himitsu kichi (Tarzan's SecretBase, 1948)and other works.
Apart from their imagery, these works reveal how Western colonialist iconography wasadapted to Japan's own colonialist project. On the one hand, visions of conquest and supremacy were personified in the form of male children whose mission is to reform the worldin line with Japan's proper place cosmology. In these imaginary geographies only Japaneseand whites are recognized as human, as torchbearers of civilization. The island upon which
Dankichi is shipwrecked is described as "mujin-tó" (uninhabited), despite the presence of its
black-skinned inhabitants. This is Japan's Orient, for like the inhabitants of Palestine, theindigenous inhabitants of the island are invisible, an "excluded presence," to borrow from
Said, who are transformed into "dojin" (natives) only after they have been domesticated by
Dankichi, received from him the gifts of civilization and enlightenment, taught by him to
speak the language of "men" [Japanese], to follow their customs, and to accept his benevolent rule. Ironically, although it was common during the 1930s and 1940s for apologists
for Japanese colonialism to express solidarity with their subjects as fellow people of color,
35

1

JOHN G. RUSSELL
Shimada himself makes no pretense about the pigmentation of his diminutive hero. Afterlanding on the island and discovering its ebony-skinned cannibalistic inhabitants, Dankichi
disguises himself as a "kurombO"by covering his body with mud, only to be restored to his"original white self" (moto no shiroi Dankichi) during an ill-timed tropical shower.
The hero of Tezuka's Jungle Emperor, Shin'ichi, is also white, or at least partly so, since
he is the product of an interracial union between a Japanese woman and a white American
man and as such is living proof of the superiority of white-Japanese hybrids, realizing, if
only in fiction, the aspirations of eugenic-minded Meiji intellectuals who advocated miscegenation between Japanese and whites as the ultimate solution to Japanese inferiority.
Naturally, Shin'ichi is vastly superior to the black Africans, infinitely better looking, and, like
Dankichi, speaks the language of men.'' A similar conceit is seen in Minami YOichi'sBaffiba

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Jyanguru TaiteiVolII,Tokyo:Gakken,1990:19).
'" Languageand its renderingplayan importantpart in the constructionof the Otherin Japan,
particularly
in manga(comic
books).Oneconvention
is to renderthe speechof Africansinmeaninglesssymbols,an indication
notonlythat theirlanguageis incomprehensible
butthat theyare
barbariansin the classicalGreeksense. MangaartistsmayalsorenderJapanesewordsspoken
36t

EXCLUDEDPRESENCE
no bdken kata-me Ogon shishi (The Adventures of Baluba and the One-Eyed Golden Lion,
1948). Standing two meters in height, Baluba, the son of an American pharmacologist anda Japanese woman, is an imposing figure who, with his "high, narrow nose, tight, thin lips,
and long black hair" resembles a god-like figure "out of Greek mythology" (Fujita 1990, 344).
Like Edgar Rice Burroughs' original ape-man, he is raised in the jungles of East Africa by aband of apes and protects the animals against the savage Masai.
One can imagine the excitement of young Japanese readers who had once thrilled tothe adventurers of Caucasian god-kings, and who, after the war, were compelled to confront
the god-like presence of white Americans in occupied Japan. In the pages of these stories,
Japanese could momentary escape the humiliation of their defeat and identify through theirhybrid heroes with a former enemy whose fantasies they shared, for here one could be white
and Japanese, too.
As in premodern times, the Meiji preference for white skin is linked to perceptions of
power and status: "White" skin alone would not suffice only that which most closely approximated the "purity" of European skin, shrouded in other markers of elite status andWestern cultural capital (European clothes, architecture, knowledge). These changes inaesthetic tastes could not, however, disguise the fact that Japanese who had been exposed
to Western ideas now regarded themselves and other people of color as inferior and ugly.
The acceptance of Western racial hierarchies even prompted some Japanese intellectuals
like Mori Arinori (1847 —1889) to advocate abandoning the Japanese language in favor of

by foreignersin katakana,the syllabaryreservedfor onomatopoeticexpressionsand Westernloan
words (verymuchas foreignwordsare italicizedin English),a visualtelegraphingof their otherness. It is not uncommonfor Japanesetelevisionshowsfeaturingforeignerswhospeak clearand
fluent Japanese to caption their Japanese in katakana. Defendersof the practicepoint out thatthe speech of Japanese is also captioned(usuallyto telegraphimportant remarks,mark humorous expressionsand aid underabilitywhenthe audiois indistinctor the speaker is using dialect);they convenientlyfail to mention,however,that in such instances it is not renderedin katakana.
The link betweenlanguageand civilizationor sophisticationis observedby translatorKanaseki
Hisao,a professorof Americanliteratureand cultureat Tokyo'sKomazawaUniversity,whonotes
the conventionof renderingsouthern black dialect into Kita KantO-ben,or danbe-ch6,a dialect
foundin northeasternJapanthat is consideredbumpkin-ishand inferiorto standardJapanese(SeeKanaseki1989,204—205). A similareffectis achievedwhen Japanesestudios dub the voicesof
blacks who appear in foreignfilms or televisionshowsusing voicesthat mimicthe cadencesof"blackspeech"or that seemsuitedto thephysicalcharacteristicsof the actor;evenwhenthe original voicelack these qualities.Thus, oneoftenhears dubbedblack actorsspeakingJapanesewith
the resonating,boomingvocal timbresof a JamesEarl Jones,or "jiving"in a high pitchedwhine.
(SeeRussell 1991,17). Such practiceshelp to maintainthe alterity of the Other,snugly keeping
them in their proper place as outsiders,evenas they transgress deep-seatedJapanese constructions of the foreign.
37

JOHN G. RUSSELL
more "logical" and "progressive" European languages while others like Takahashi Yoshio
and Kate) Hiroyuki (1836 – 1916)advocated intermarriage with whites in order to "improve
the Japanese race." Presumably, others, like Taguchi Ukichi (1855 – 1905),saw little advantage in miscegenation since they maintained that as members of the Aryan race Japanese
were already white."Japan's encounter with the West forced it to re-evaluate fundamental assumptions about
its place in the racial order of things. Japanese would attempt to secure racial self-esteem, political rights and power by appealing to Western scientific discourse on race in such a way as
to bestow upon them a racial genealogy that located them within the "white race." Genealogical cuckoldry was not confined to Japan. In 1922Takao Osawa unsuccessfully argued, before
the U.S. Supreme Court that legislation denying American citizenship to Japanese was unjust
because as descendants of the Ainu, then regarded by many Western scholars as proto-Caucasoid, Japanese belonged to the white race (Kearney 1991, 108). Austrian anthropologist
Josef Kreiner notes that a similar argument was used by the Nazis to justify Germany's political alliance with Japan (Umehara and Fujimura 1990,32 – 35). Similarly,Japanese scholars,such as linguist Kinda IchikyOsuke(1882 – 1971),largely accepted European racial theories
that classified the Ainu as white, some employing them to promote forced assimilation government policies and to justify their persecution as non-Japanese.
Just as the Western discourse on differenceinfluenced Japanese concepts of its own racial otherness, it also assisted Japanese constructions of the Black Other. An analysis ofJapanese representations of blacks suggests that these images evolved in tandem with—not
independent of—Western hegemony in Asia and Japan's increasing exposure to Europeanand American antiblack racial stereotypes. Japanese attitudes toward blacks do not so much
reflect a unique, culturally encoded disdain for dark-skinned races, as much as an awareness of status inequalities as defined and shaped by the realities of Western power. Japan,
hungry for Western acceptance and recognition as worthy of donning the mantle of civilized
peen adapted Western racial hierarchies to its own distinctive but by no means unique preoccupation with rank, hierarchy and proper place. Western subjugation of blacks provided
an analog of Japan's own system of social stratification. That Japanese writers of the 19th
century should equate black slaves and Native Americans with senmin (base people) andeta/hinin outcastes, is not simply a matter of color symbolism but a reflection of the factthat these groups occupied analogous positions within similar hierarchies of power. Wrote
Kimura Tetsuya, another member of the 1860 mission of American racial segregation: "Thelaws of the land separate the blacks. They are just like our eta caste. But [the whites] employ the blacks as their servants. The whites are of course intelligent, and the blacks stupid.
20For a discussion of the Meiji discourseon white supremacy, see Oguma 1995,172 —185;andMinami1994,23—28.
38

EXCLUDEDPRESENCE
Thus the seeds of intelligence and unintelligence are not allowed to mix together" (quoted in
Miyoshi, 61).
These changes in Japanese perceptions of blacks may reflect the "blackening" of slavery in Japan. European slavery in Japan was not confined to Africans; Japanese were also
sold into slavery until the practice was banned in the late 16th century, though Cocks' diarysuggests that Japanese were still retained as paid indentured servants. Whereas during theearly decades of Japanese contacts with Europeans, Africans and other dark-skinned people
served as crew, valets, indentured servants, and interpreters; by the mid-17th century "theonly blacks brought to Japan were either slaves or employees treated as slaves" (Leupp 1995,
6). The banning of Japanese slavery and the creation of Deshima may also have contributed
to the rise in negative perceptions of Africans. With Japanese no longer available as slaves,
Europeans would have had to rely increasingly on non Japanese slaves, increasing their
numbers in Japan and, consequently, the opportunity for selected Japanese to witness theirdegradation at the hands of their white masters. The 16th-century ban on Japanese slavery,
Clemons points out, ultimately resulted in a hierarchy based on skin color in which Africans
were "relegated to the lowest status because [Japanese] were no longer participants in thesystem of hierarchy" (30). Moreover,by confining foreigners to Deshima, and restricting theavailability of non-Western sources of information about Africans as well as opportunities
for Japanese to interact with them as they had prior to the isolation degree. "This scenario
may have been the most damaging situation imaginable for an early Japanese understandingof Africans. Formerly, when Europeans had provided erroneous information about Africans,
Japanese had the opportunity to interact with the people themselves and compare the European reports with their own personal experiences. There was no such interaction after 1639"(36). The presence of African slaves in Japan may also have served as a humbling reminder
to Japanese themselves that they themselves had once been sold into European slavery.
Shifting Hegemonies

and Hierachies

of Difference

Japanese attitudes toward blacks have never been static, monolithic, or universally negative. Rather they have evolved in tandem with Japan's exposure to outside cultures, principally those of the West whose own attitudes toward blacks and other dark-skinned peoples
were decidedly negative when it encounteredJapan in the 16th century. Cultural reductionist
models that attribute Japanese anti-black racism to deeply embedded, remarkably static "traditional values" tend toward an ahistoricism that retreats from interrogating power relations
and the role Western paradigms of race have played in the global invention of blackness.
They do not explain why racially ascribed characteristics such as laziness, stupidity, andhypersexuality which had been ascribed to other outsiders regardless of skin color, largely
came to be associated with dark-skinned people, nor why—unless one is prepared to posit a
39

JOHN G. RUSSELL
universal negrophobia—these traits are virtually identical to those ascribed to blacks in theWest." Following the same color-codedlogic, color symbolism does not explain how whites,
who, one assumes, would have been privileged by virtue of their skin color were nonetheless despised as uncivilized hirsute barbarians and feared and mocked as demonic tengu(long-noses)during the early stages of Japanese-European contact, but gradually came to be
regarded as the embodiment of civilization, sophistication and physical beauty."
The line separating Japanese discourse on people of African descent from Western discourse is a difficult one to draw, given the fact that Japanese-language accounts about themwere written after contact with Europeans. Miyoshi notes the revulsion they felt toward
black skin, citing journal accounts of Japanese envoys dispatched to the United States in the
19th century (60). In his discussion of modern Japanese attitudes toward blacks, anthropologist Wagatsuma Hiroshi, writes, "Although they are ambivalent toward Caucasian physicalcharacteristics, the Japanese are unequivocallyand unanimously negative toward the negroid
features of black Americans and Africans" (Wagatsuma 1978, 121; emphasis mine).
The general scholarly consensus has been to characterize Japanese perceptions of blacks
as decidedly negative. Wagatsuma and Yoneyama (1980) attribute the phenomenon to cultural values involving traditional Japanese color symbolism, noting that in Japan the color
black has long carried negative connotations (e.g., death, illness, disease, misfortune andevil). While I recognize the existence of a symbolic dislike of the color black in Japan, I am
doubtful of the extent to which it informed premodern Japanese perceptions of "black" peo" This primordialtheory has beenput forwardby Snowden,with whom I disagree. For those who
wouldargue that skin colorsymbolismis associatedwithfears of darknessprogrammedinto thehuman psychesince primordialtimes,I offerthe observationsof MarcoPolo who,describinghis
visit to SouthIndia,wrote:"The darkestman herethe most highly esteemedand consideredbetter
than the other who are not so dark. Let me add that in verytruth these peopleportray and depict
their gods and their idols blackand their devilswhite as snow. For they say that God and all thesaintsare black and the devilsare all white"(MarcoPolo1958,276).
22An intriguingquestion posed by the authors' research is whether premodernJapanese viewed
Europeansas "white." The authors observethat prints depictingPortuguese do not distinguishtheir skin colorfrom that of Japanesemales(thoughJapanesewomenare often depictedas lighter
skinned)and postulatethis may becausethe Portugueseand Spanish were not as fair-skinnedas
northern Europeansor because their skin had been darkenedthrough exposureto the elements
duringtheir longjourneytoJapan. In contrast,the Dutchare depictedas white or grayish in color.
Nonetheless,in one illustrationdepictinga Japanese woman standing beside a Dutch man, thewomanis renderedas whiter. The authorssuggestthat the skin color of Europeansdoes not becomean importantelementinJapaneseconstructionof Westernbarbarians untilJapanesecontact
with the fairer skinnedDutch. What seemsto haveimpressedtheJapanese more were differencesin hair textureand color,height,the shapeand colorof the eyes,and hirsuteness(Wagatsumaand
Yoneyama,53 —54). "Hairiness"was alreadya featureof the BarbarianOtherassociatedwith not
onlythe Ainu, but Chineseand Koreansas well. SeeLeupp 2003,86.
40

EXCLUDEDPRESENCE
ple. Certainly, this is not to suggest that Japanese were "color blind." A variety of terms wereused in premodern Japan to refer to dark-skinned outsiders, including kurobO, kurobashu,
and kurosu, the last employed in the 16th century to identify black Africans but which by
the Edo period (1615 —1867) had grown to include all dark-skinned people (Fujita 1987b,
240, 243). Another Japanese term, konrondo, "black slaves" is derived from the Chinese
ideograms kunlun-nu (W,-413Z,slaves from Kunlun), kunlun-W)originally referring to afabled mountain range that was believed to span parts of Tibet and later India but which by
the fourth century came to be applied to frontier tribes, Khmers and, in the eighth century,
Malaysians and Africans. Originally konrondo referred to East Indians, but like its Chinese
cognate later grew to include Arabs and Africans (244). Duyvendak (1949) notes that "theChinese applied the term ... to peoples, mostly of the Malay race, whom they found at theends of the earth. At first chiefly confined to the races of the South-West, later, as the geographic knowledge of the Chinese expanded, the same term was applied to the native racesof the countries around the Indian Ocean, including the negroes" (23)." The derivation of
kuromber,a pejorative term for blacks and dark-skinned people often glossed in English as"nigger" or "darkie," is somewhat obscure.24 Citing an unidentified philologist, Wagatsuma
contends that the term was derived from Colombo,Ceylon (Sri Lanka) since the dark-skinned
servants aboard the Dutch ships were "identified as people from Colombo"(Wagatsuma 1967,
432). Philologist Suzuki TOzO(who may, in fact, be Wagatsuma's unidentified source) makes
essentially the same claim.25 While these terms sometimes conflated Africans with Malays
23Irwin (1977)rightly cautions that given the ambiguityof the term as a racial marker those "described as kunlun in medievalChineseaccountscannotbe assumed to be African unless otherevidencesupports that conclusion"(170).Thus, whilethe term was also used as a sobriquetfor
a fourth century priest and a Chineseconsort,it may simply have been bestoweddue to theirdark-complexions.Still, it suggeststhat despitetheir dark complexionthese individualsenjoyedpositionsof powerand privilegein pre-modernChina.By the tenth century,however,accountsof
kunlunwith "frizzy"or "wooly"hair wouldsuggestan Africanorigin.
24Unlikethe neutral kokujin("blackperson"),the termkurombd("blackboy,black one")is pejorativeand belittlingand is customarilyglossedas "nigger."The adjectival/verbalsuffix"-mb6"connotes
childishnessand immaturity. Such connotationscan be seen in terms such as okorimb6("hothead"),wasurembe)("absent-minded
one");abarembO("violentone"),amaemb6("pamperedone"),kechim6("skin-flint"),chorimbd(a derogatoryterm for burakumin)and shiromb6("whiteone,""whitey"), an appellationonceappliedto Caucasians.It may also be used to express endearment,
as in akambO("baby"),thoughthe term is consideredbelittlingwhenappliedto adults. Kuromb6isalso applied to naturally dark-skinnedand tannedJapanese. It is interesting,though purelycoincidental,that despitedifferentetymologicalroots,thewesternterm of black belittlement,"sambo,"
fits snugly within this familyof Japanesepejoratives.
25See Suzuki 1992, 102;The bookis a reprint of KotobaMonogatari(The Story of Words),NishiNihonShimbun,1961).
41

JOHN G. RUSSELL
and other dark-skinned peoples, such was not always the case. A letter written in 1618 describes the konrondo slaves on the Dutch ships as originally coming from Kaburi (Africa),
adding that the Dutch called them suwaruto yongozu (zwartzejongen;black youth)."Whatever the nature of Japanese premodern sensibilities, they do not appear to inform
Japanese modern constructions of blackness. Rather, it is the lineage of Western-inspired
imagery that survives. When I have asked Japanese informants what images come to mind
upon hearing the term "kokujin" (black person), most mentioned "Chibi kuro Sambo" (Little
Black Sambo), Gone with the Wind's "Mami" (Mammy), and "Tomu Ofi-san" (Uncle Tom),figures drawn from neither Japanese mythology nor literature, yet icons familiar to virtually
all educated Japanese. Also problematic to the understanding of Japanese constructionsof blackness and attitudes toward blacks is the fact that the historical conditions out of
which Western images of blacks evolved did not exist in Japan, whose own colonial projects involved neither the systematic exploitation of Africa nor the barbarities of the slave
trade. This is not to suggest that mechanisms of othering based on culturally meaningful
categories of difference, including skin color, did not exist in Japan prior to European contact or that contemporary manifestations of Japanese racialism are entirely Western derived:
Japan's treatment of its internal and colonial subjects (Ainu, Ryilkynans, Koreans, Chineseand Southeast Asians) as well as burakumin testifies to the prior existence of such systems.
However, they do not entirely account for negative black imagery in the absence of projects
specifically aimed at their subjugation and oppression and the fact that changes in that imagery closely parallel those taking place in the West.
An objection may be made that by focusing on Western influences my analysis neglects
Chinese influence, since China's contact with African slaves spanned fifteen centuries, fromthe fourth century A.D. to the eighteenth century. DikOtter (1992) argues that premodern
Chinese held Africans in contempt, viewing them as an inferior, ugly and savage people andhad acquired African slaves well before its contact with Europeans. Given these encounters
and China's historical ties with Japan, the possibility of a Chinese influence on Japan imagesof blacks predating exposure to European influence cannot be ruled out. Indeed, in the caseof skin color; Japanese preference for white skin had been influenced by Chinese aesthetics:
The Japanese practice of oshiroi (cosmetic skin whitening) originated among the court eliteof the Nara (710—794) and Heian Periods (794—1185)in imitation of the Chinese aristocracy,
though among the elites of both societies, skin color served as a symbolic marker of class not
racial difference. The association of dark or black skin with slave status predated Chinesecontact with Africans, having its roots in the treatment of dark-skinned Chinese peasants
who had acquired their "black" skin toiling in the sun.
However, the question remains whether even these negative attitudes toward Africans
26Tsitka'ichiran(TransitSummary)Vol. 239,Osaka:AobunclO
shuppan 1914,717.
42

EXCLUDEDPRESENCE
derived from Chinese color symbolism or were mobilized by Chinese to justify their own,
albeit limited, enslavement of Africans. There is some disagreement among scholars as tothe precise nature of premodern Chinese attitudes toward Africans. While Dikater describes
them as primarily negative, others suggest they were more ambivalent, even favorable. In
his discussion of premodern Chinese contacts with Africans, Philip Snow (1988) has pointed
out that Tang dynasty Chinese regarded Africans with "a mixture of admiration and awe"(18),particularly with regard to their physical skills, discipline, and power. Tang literatureoften depicted black Africans as resourceful, magical, and heroic beings, though certainly notequals of the Chinese (Harris 1987, 92; Filesi 1962, 19; Irwin 1977, 172). Song accounts also
reveal that Chinese were impressed with their skills as seamen on Chinese ships (centuries
later Japanese commentators would be equally impressed with the skills of the korosu aboard
Dutch vessels). Most scholars agree, however,that by the Song dynasty, with the growth of
the African population in Canton composed, in part, of runaway slaves, Chinese images ofAfricans turned increasingly negative.
These slaves of Cantonare no longerbeingglimpsedthrough the blurred fancy of a short-story
writer but scrutinized,for the first time,by the ordinary citizen. To understandhis reactionweneed only recall the impact of large-scaleslaveryin Europe. Europeans in mediaevaland earlymodern times lookedon Africansrespectfullyas inhabitantsof hazy but imposinglands. When
the African slave trade reachedits peak in the seventeenthand eighteenthcenturiesthey ceased
to feel that respect. They saw at closequartersAfricanvictimsof slavery,helplessand therefore
contemptible;and they extendedtheir contemptin due courseto Africansin general.In China,fortunately,the slavetrade neverspread. There is no sign of mass slaveryanywhereexceptCanton,
and no sign that the presenceof slaves inCantonaffectedChineseattitudes to Africanswho were
not slaves themselves(Snow1988,19).
Significantly, many of the disparaging remarks made by Chinese about Africans citedby Dikotter as examples of pre-European contact anti-African imagery are drawn from Songdynasty accounts, a period during which "reports on the Arab slave trade became more common" (15). It is possible therefore that these negative images of Africans were acquired
from Arab and Persian slave traders in very much the same way Japanese acquired theirs
from Europeans centuries later. It is particularly noteworthy that some Chinese terms forblacks were transcriptions of Arabic words such as the term Ts'engchi and T'seng-po, which
are derived from the Arabic Zinj ("Negro")and Zanizibar (Zanguebar, "land of the blacks"),
respectively. As DikOtter himself points out, "The equation of 'black' with 'slave,' an important factor in the development of racial discrimination [in the West] was thus realized at a
relatively early stage in China" (16). Pointing to the role of Arabs and Muslims as middlemenin Chinese trade with Africa, and its dependence on them for information about the continent43

JOHN G. RUSSELL
long before actual physical contact, Dathorne (1996) suggests Chinese saw Africans, whowere unknown to them, through the eyes of Arab and later Muslim intermediaries and speculates that Cheng Ho, who was a Muslim himself and whose father had made the pilgrimage
to Mecca, may have influenced by Arab constructions of Africans (78, 85). More intriguing
is his suggestion that these second-hand accounts dovetailed with Chinese conceptions ofprimitive kunlun barbarians as the ultimate Other. Noting that even prior to actual contact
with Africans, the concept of kunlun had lost its magical connotations and came to be associated with generic barbarian tribes without specific regard to skin color (76). Thus, whether
one is dealing with Persian, Arab, Muslim, Chinese or later European African slavery, thecommon denominator is the historical condition of slavery and the perception of slaves as
inferior to their masters. While Europeans were not the first to enslave Africans, by the 17th
century the West dominated the trade in black bodies.
As in premodern China, there is evidence to suggest that attitudes toward dark-skinned
people in premodern Japan were not as uniformly negative as some scholars maintain andthat changes in their depiction were and continue to be—influenced by social and historical factors. Blackness also had positive associations. The practice of nesshi, blackening theteeth, is believed to have entered Japan from Southeast Asia and, like oshiroi, was practiced
by the aristocracy and central to Japan's aesthetic universe until it was banned by decree in1868 (Wagatsuma 1967, 436). In 1683, an English visitor to Japan, Christopher Fryke wrote
Japanese that aesthetic notions were "directly opposite to ours, taking Black to be the Liveryof Mirth and Pleasantness, and white of Grief and Mourning" (quoted in Leupp 2003, 93).
SomeJapanese representations portrayed the Buddha as both black and African. Describing
the image of Sakyamuni Buddha in a letter to King James, merchant Richard Cocks wrote in
1616: "[I]n a littell Closet or Cubbard, was a negro or a blackamore's image, wch they tould
me was the Idoll of Shacka [Shaka; the Buddha], the Cheefe god the[y] Adore...." (quoted
in Leupp 1995, 4). Indeed, the association of black Africans with the Buddha lasted wellinto the 19th century, though by then some Japanese had begun to doubt the wisdom ofvenerating the representative of an "inferior" people. Consider the diary entry of Muragaki
Awaji-no-Kami,a member of the 1860mission, recorded during a stopover in the Congo on
its return to Japan:
In makinga closerstudy,we cometo discoverthat the natives of India and of Africaboth belong
to the same tribe,of whomthat Buddhamust havebeena chieftain. If so, methinksit is absurd toworshipBuddhaor Amithabhaat our altar; perhapsmoreabsurd it is that our priestsshave theirhead inimitationof these natives'frizzledhair,wear a surpliceof goldbrocadein the samefashion
as these natives coverthemselveswith shawl-likecloths,and carry their bowl of offeringin thesame manneras these nativesuse coconutcups to eat their food from(quotedin Clemons,53).

44

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The reification of skin color into fixed racialized entities would not take shape until the arrival of Europeans on Japanese shores, and vice-versa, where exposure to racial inequality
reinforced status symbolism. Had Chinese hegemony continued well into the 17th century
a stronger case might be made for the Chinese origin of antiblack prejudice in Japan. Traditional Japanese skin color preferences alone do not account for Japanese attitudes toward
white-skinned Europeans. Wagatsuma and Yoneyama'shistorical analysis itself reveals thatearly Japanese attitudes toward "white-skinned" Caucasians were at best ambivalent. Although their contention that Japanese traditionally found such physical characteristics asfrizzled hair, thick lips and broad noses unattractive prior to the arrival of Europeans andAfricans strongly suggests a pre-existing cultural aversion to blacks, they fail to explain why
despite the valorization of white skin Japanese nonetheless initially regarded Europeans asrepulsive and animal-like. According to the authors, European "white" skin was perceived
as qualitatively different and generally inferior to their own, being described, variously, as"coarse" (kime ga araku), "wrinkled" (shiwa ga ooz),"dirty" (kitanaz), "unpleasant" (iya na
kanjz),"ugly" (minikuz)and even "colorless"(iro ga naz),and its texture equated with the hideof animals (Wagatsuma and Yoneyama,68). Unfortunately, the authors' nuanced discussionof skin texture does not extend to black skin, but instead fixates on the subjective feelingof physical revulsion and symbolic pollution: That black skin may also have been thought
to have certain textual qualities valued by Japanese escapes their analysis. Yet since theapparent textural "deficiencies" of Caucasian skin did not lead to the uncategorical recognition of white-skinned Westerners as full human beings, one should not assume a priori thattraditional Japanese negative attitudes toward the color black have conditioned Japanese to
reject dark-skinned peoples. I would argue that more is involved here than symbolic color
significations and that the social significance of skin pigmentation evolved through power
relations between Japan and the West in which the "white skin" of Caucasians, like that of
the leisured Chinese aristocrats before them, came to signify status and power.
Despite their initial repulsion, in a little more than three centuries Japanese had somehow managed to overcome it. By the TaishO Period (1912—1926)straight black hair, once sodesirable, had been replaced by the pageboy style popularized by Clara Bow and would later,
during the postwar period, be permed and dyed in imitation of white Hollywood stars. At
the same time, the adoption of European aesthetic values produced self-doubts and insecurities, inviting a self-reflexive awareness through which Japanese began to adjust their own
worldview in the shadow of growing Western cultural authority and power. Nowhere is thisadjustment more apparent than in Japanese attitudes toward their own physical appearance,
which they now began to be regarded as "flawed,"an unacceptable deviation from European
standards of beauty. As the following passage from Tanizaki Jun'ichiro's (1886—1965)In'ei
raisan (In Praise of Shadows, 1933)makes clear, the recalibration of aesthetic sensibilities was
facilitated by, ironically, invoking indigenous aesthetics as a rationale for its acceptance.
45

JOHN G. RUSSELL
From ancient times we haveconsideredwhite skin more elegant, more beautiful than dark skin,and yet somehowthis whitenessof ours differsfrom that of the white races. Taken individually
there areJapanesewhoare whiterthan Westernersand Westernerswhoare darker than Japanese,but their whitenessand darknessis not the same....Forthe Japanese complexionno matter how
white is tinged by a slight cloudiness....Thus it is that when one of us goes among a group ofWesternersit is likea grimystrain ona sheet of whitepaper. The sight offendsevenour owneyes
and leavesnone toopleasanta feeling(31—32).
As Tanizaki develops his argument, it becomes clear that power relations in the formof racial status relationships are not far from his mind. In the passage which follows, bothwhites and blacks function as self-reflexivesymbols through which Tanizaki attempts to rationalize feelings of racial inferiority toward whiter skinned Westerners by identifying withthem, while he commiserates with blacks as objects of white racial contempt.
Wecan appreciatethen the psychologythat inthe past caused the whiteraces to rejectthe colored
races. A sensitivewhiteperson couldnot but be upset by the shadowthat evenone or two coloredpersonscast overa socialgathering.What the situationis today I do not know,but at the timeof
the AmericanCivilWar,when the persecutionof Negroeswas at its most intense,the hatred andscorn weredirectednotonlyat full-bloodedNegroes,but at mulattos,the childrenof mulattos,and
eventhe childrenof mulattosand whites. Thosewiththe slightest taint of Negroblood,be it but
half,a quarter,a sixteenth,or a thirty-second,had to be ferretedout and made to suffer.Not eventhosewho at a glancewereindistinguishablefrom pure-bloodedwhites, but amongwhose ancestors twoor threegenerationsearliertherehad beena Negro,escaped the searchinggaze,no matter
howfaint the tingethat lay beneaththeir white skin.
And so we see how profound is the relationshipbetween shadows and the yellow races.
Becauseno one likesto showhimselfto bad advantage,it is natural that we should havechosen
cloudycolorsfor our foodand clothingand houses,and sunk ourselvesback into the shadows. I
am not saying that our ancestorswere consciousof the cloudinessof their skins. They cannot
have knownthat a whiter race existed. But one must concludethat something of their sense ofcolor led themnaturally to this preference(32—33).
Having rhetorically adopted the point of view of whites, Tanizaki concludes that the preference for white skin is "natural," even though Japanese do not become aware of the "cloudinessof their skins" until after their exposure to lighter skinned Westerners, and he finesses thepoint by positing some vague ancestral memory to account fOr this preference. His observations on the status of blacks, however,should chasten those who would decry Japan's blood
chauvinism and preoccupation with racial purity. Tanizaki's narrative is explicit about theAmerican racial hierarchy and the Japanese place within it. Having more or less accepted it,
46

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he is left with little recourse but to urge Japanese to resign themselves to their impurities andcompensate for them by, as it were, praising shadows. Not only are "white-skinned"Japanese
unable to compete with the whiteness of Europeans, by the end of the passage they are nolonger white but "yellow,"and rejected by Caucasians as a colored race.
The impact of Western views of race had (and continues to have) a profound impact on
both Japanese views of blacks but also on themselves, an impact not limited to "scientific"
discourse on the subject. Much of the impact was provided though displays of cultural capital, like those displayed at Ritsumeikan described by Tanizaki. It would also come to manifest itself in the early prewar and postwar years in American popular culture. In Tanizaki's
era, Hollywood provided the template of fashion, behavior and beauty that was adopted by
Japanese women and men who, modeling themselves on Western movie stars, respectively,
redefined themselves as "modern girls" (moga) and "modern boys" (mobo). Hollywood not
only furnished them with its version of modernity but of primitivism as well, reproducing, if
in a more subtle and thus more easily digestible form, the racist hierarchies of the social sciences. If Japanese were encouraged to identify with Tarzan and Jane and to view Africans as
threatening and comic savages, they also identified with Rhett Butler and Scarlett O'Hara andshared their bemusement at the comical darkies that populated their palatial estates. In 1949
and 1950 translations of Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind (1939)ranked second andthird, respectively, on Japanese best-seller lists." An even greater influence would be wieldedby television, which as a new medium for the circulation of American films and television
programs perpetuated the myth of America as a essentially "white nation" in which blacks
served as mindless buffoons, if they appeared at all.x
27Shuppannenkan(Publisher'sAnnual)1979, 80. The filmversionremainsextremelypopular.Polls
of Japanese consistentlyrank the film as the one of the popular film inJapan. In 1993,the allfemaleTakarazuka Revuestaged a musicalproductionof the film versionto commemoratethe
revue's80thanniversary. Interestin bothbookand film was rekindledwith the publicationof Alexandra Ripley'ssequelScarlett(1991),
whichwas serializedinJapaneseeditionsof Cosmopolitan
and spurred Atlanta tourism,withJapanesetravelagenciesoffering"GoneWith the Wind"tours
and VivienLeigh look-alikesvisitingJapanto promotethe city. The popularityof both film andbookpromisedto be a boonto Atlantatourismduringthe 1996Atlanta Olympicsas Japanesetourists made plannedpilgrimagesto "TheDump,"thehotelwhereMitchellcompletedher manuscript,
onlyto havethem dashedwhen it was burned tothe ground in September1994,an eventsolemnly
reported by the Japanesemedia.
28From 1955to 1974over 100Americantelevisionprograms were broadcast in Japan, includingSuperman (1956),Lassie (1956),I LoveLucy(1957),Father KnowsBest (1958),The LoneRanger(1958),Bonanza(1959),Perry Mason (1959),
Rawhide(1959),The Untouchables(1961),TheMickey
Mouse Club(1961),The Little Rascals(1961),Ben Casey(1962),Mr Ed, The Ed SullivanShow(1965),Tarzan (1966),Bewitched(1966),Star Trek(1969);and Columbo(1973)(GekkanAkurosu
Henshilshitsu1989,21).ImportedAmericantelevisionfare continuestoprovideJapaneseaudienc47

JOHN G. RUSSELL
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