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The Japanese Journal of American Studies, No. 16 (2005)

Transcending the Western Paradigm of
the Idea of Race

Yasuko TAKEZAWA*I INTRODUCTION
Did the idea of race originate in the United States, or is it a universal
idea?1 There is a long-standing debate on the origin of the idea of race,
particularly in regard to the question of whether the idea has been constructed in the modern West, or whether it has been found from ancient
times across different regions of the world. One dominant view is thatthe idea of race spread from the United States to the rest of the world.
This paper argues that the idea of race is not of American origin. It
also claims that it is neither a modern Western product, nor universal.
Due to the limited space, I will not review the literature nor discuss thepitfalls of previous studies in this paper. However, I propose an alternative understanding of race by taking into account non-Western experiences, including, among others, the Asian and the Paciﬁc experiences.
One of its ultimate goals is to promote dialogue among scholars specializing in race studies in different regions of the world, particularly,
between those working in the United States and in Japan.
There is a huge accumulation of research on race. Nevertheless, in thecourse of proceeding with my research by going through the literatureon race and exchanging views with researchers inside and outside Japan,
Copyright © 2005 Yasuko Takezawa. All rights reserved. This work may be used,with this notice included, for noncommercial purposes. No copies of this work
may be distributed, electronically or otherwise, in whole or in part, without
permission from the author.
*Professor, Kyoto University / Visiting professor, Harvard University

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I have come to feel uneasy about the gap between academic disciplines
and the rather narrow range of the idea of race as it has been developed
mostly in the U.S. and Europe, an idea which tends to emphasize modernity and the Euro-American experience. With these realities in mind, thispaper puts forward a hypothesis for an encompassing understanding of
this issue, ‘race,’ that has hitherto been discussed in the different terminologies of various specialized ﬁelds and geographical regions forresearch. By purposely bringing together into the same framework phenomena which appear to be different and incommensurable, the paper
attempts to identify fundamental features that they have in common.
Since problems regarding race are very complicated, an academic endeavor should be vigilant in taking up each problem in its spatial andtemporal contexts. Even the meaning of a single phenomenon changes
according to the time, the situation and its relationship with other phenomena. Likewise, discrimination is determined in multiple ways according to historical and social conditions, including the involvement ofgender and class. However, as Kenan Malik warns us in The Meaningof Race,2 if everybody clamors for its difference without trying to ﬁnd acommon language with which to talk about race (and numerous suchstudies exist, though they leave much to be desired), we may lose oursensitivity to assess whether or not present and future phenomena are
indications of racism, judging from a historical perspective. Unless weface this problem, we will end up merely observing the continued reproduction of the same racial discourses as those of the past. In this paper,
I attempt to explain ‘race’ (or what I refer to here as ‘race’), in terms of
three dimensions of the idea of race, namely ‘race in the lower case’(race), ‘race with a capital letter’ (Race), and ‘Race as resistance’ (RR).3
II

TOWARD A REINTERPRETATION OF THE IDEA OF RACE

The biological reality of ‘race’ has been denied in recent years and thepervading view now is that it is merely a social construction. The general view is that a race (even though it may be imagined) is a group identiﬁed by what are perceived to be physical differences. However, as longas aspects considered as visible physical features are the criteria for identifying race, only minorities discriminated against on the basis of theEuropean and American idea of race (namely the idea of race created by
the traditional Western world view and modern Western scientiﬁc racism) are likely to have social recognition as the victims of ‘racial discrim-1-Yasuko Takezawa(p5) 6/9 05.7.12 6:40 PM ページ 7

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ination’. Thus the need arises for a way to understand the idea of racethat actively takes into account the experience of regions other than
Europe and the U.S., including Asia and the Paciﬁc. We can point out
the following as the characteristics inherent in the idea of race.
Firstly, racial characteristics (visible and invisible physical features,
nature, ability, and so on) are believed to be “inherited” from generation
to generation, genealogically mediated by bodies, and determined by thelineage of a group, and they “cannot be (easily) changed” by environment or external factors.
Secondly, there is a strong tendency for subjects who draw the boundary between the self and other to exclude the other, and a clear hierarchy
is assumed between groups, especially between “races” in the classicalnineteenth century idea of race.
Thirdly, since exclusion and hierarchy manifest themselves in collusion with politico-economic or social institutions and resources, they are
not limited to a consciousness of differences based on simple prejudice
and ethnocentrism. That is to say, they are easily related to interests
through institutional differentiation.
Some previous researches have also presented deﬁnitions that are not
restricted to physical differences and include descent and aspects seen
as genetic differences.4 Blood and descent were the primary deﬁnitionsin the old usage of the English term ‘race’. However, it would not be an
exaggeration to say that these theories are constructed in terms of relationships such as those between whites and blacks according to the ‘onedrop rule’ in the U.S., or between whites and Jews in Europe. The characteristics of the idea of race I suggest have a wider signiﬁcance. As I
will go on to argue in this paper, I include ideas of race from the past to
the present, as they relate to discriminated groups in Asia and to the commercialization of the genome, in order to investigate the possibility of aholistic and cross cultural understanding of the idea of race.
III THREE DIMENSIONS OF THE IDEA OF RACEIn this section, I would like to propose a hypothesis that when we
abstract the highest common factors from the various phenomena constituting the idea of race, we can identify three dimensions which I callrace, Race and RR (Race as Resistance) respectively.
The names of these three dimensions are adopted only because of thedifference in the meanings of small and capital letters and convenience1-Yasuko Takezawa(p5) 6/9 05.7.12 6:40 PM ページ 8

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of abbreviations.5 Although each dimension is constructed through aprocess of its own, all the dimensions have the same foundation and areconnected as one dimension transforms into another. The dimensions of‘race’, ‘Race’ and RR do not exist monolithically. Each dimension includes plurality, multiplicity and variability. The three dimensions areinterconnected in a single sphere constituting the idea of race.
race in the lower caseFirst of all, the cases that I refer to by using the term ‘race’ in the lower
case are, for the sake of convenience, cases where differences observedin a particular society between socially differentiated groups are understood as those that are inherited over generations and cannot be changed(or easily changed) by the environment. These differences are represented in political, economic and social institutions accompanied by aclear hierarchy, and manifest an exclusive nature. Let me emphasize lest
there be any misunderstanding that this is not race as advocated by thetheory that race is a universal concept. ‘race’ in the lower case does notexist in human society across time and space and can only occur in contexts where social stratiﬁcation has developed to a certain extent. Moreover, ‘race’ is not a concept reducible to an ‘ethnic group’ or an ‘other’deﬁned by prejudice. Institutional changes in economics, religion, andpolitics come to mind as the main causes which transform prejudice into
race accompanied by institutionalized discrimination. However, it isparticularly difﬁcult to specify the time of emergence and the constituting factors, particularly in the case of ‘race’. ‘race’ is often distributed
unevenly across regions at the beginning of the group’s formation, andthus we rarely ﬁnd signs of its generation in society as a whole.
Race in the upper case‘Race’ in the upper case refers to race which circulates as a scientiﬁc
concept constructed through the mapping and classiﬁcation of the people of the world. By Race in the upper case, I do not intend to indicate
the universality of this idea but to emphasize the following two facts.
One is that it has been believed to be possible to classify people of theworld and make “specimens” in terms of universal language and universal principles under the name of science. Another is that for this reason the proposed theories circulate and are accepted in many regions of
the world. Herein lies the power of Race in the upper case. Although its
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is in some cases clear and in others unclear according to variations inmethodology or logic, the relevant point is the power of what is believed
to be ‘science’ (including scientiﬁc determinism) over discourses on
race.
Even if the objects of classiﬁcation are unique to a particular society
or named at different levels, such as ‘ethnic group’, ‘species’ and ‘tribe’,
they are considered as minor racial classiﬁcations of the world under
Race. Importance is given to the universality of the law of classiﬁcation.
Another signiﬁcant feature is that classiﬁcations do not spread to various regions of the world merely as imported concepts from the West.
They have their own unique development in a particular society in thecontext of nation building or colonialism. They are not just copies andthere is therefore what is called ‘originality of copy’. The power of Racedisplays a centripetal force, making people of various regions in theworld accept it. It also has as a centrifugal force making politico-economic leaders apply it in each society. In this sense, Race displays both
historical coevolution in different locations because of its great inﬂuenceat the global level and at the same time localized uniqueness of transformation as it unfolds in particular social contexts.
I would like to emphasize that although the object of research greatly
overlaps, the way the questions are posed here is different to the way
they are posed in the discussions of ‘race as a biological concept’ and‘race as socially deﬁned, based on physical characteristics’ in the modern period which circulate among existing researches on race.
Race as Resistance (RR)
The third dimension of the idea of race is Race as Resistance, or RR.
In the context of resistance against hegemony and domination, and of
independence and minority movements, racial hierarchies socially recognized by ‘Race’ (or ‘race’) awakened the proactive resistance of races
which were considered inferior in their respective societies. Not infrequently, the subjectivity of the minorities themselves is realigned
through solidarity. ‘Race as resistance,’ a concept with newly positive
meanings, is constructed as a result. There are many forms of RR. Someappear as a reverse of Race and others emphasize the politics of difference. RR indicates the use of race as a discursive strategy to expose existing (or contemporary) racial discrimination, to refuse assimilation
promoted by mainstream society, and to put identity politics into operation. In such contexts, racial identity is consciously employed in spite

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of the fact that in reality this identity is complicated by the existence ofseveral multilayered and plural identities.
IV

RACE IN THE LOWER CASE

The case of the burakumin in Japan is an illustrative example of ‘race’in the lower case. It has long been a taboo to consider the burakumin interms of race whether in terms of ‘race’ or ‘Race.’ This is understandable when we ﬁnd that race as a biological concept used to circulate as
an intellectual discourse in Japan. However, just as there is no biological reality in the idea of race, the discourse of an alien racial origin forthe burakumin is no more than a social construction. Having made thisclear, I would like to suggest a re-reading of the burakumin as racialized
race/Race/RR without fearing misunderstanding and go a step beyond
the analogy of buraku discrimination and racial discrimination.6 The reason why I focus on the taboo discourse of alien racial origin now is because I would like to present an example for analyzing the fundamental
problem of the idea of race by paying attention to this important aspect
which has long remained untouched.
Regarding the historical genealogy of the burakumin, there have beena vast number of discussions made from many angles, such as the political origin theory, occupational origin theory, and pollution concept origin theory. Here I will not go into details of these origin theories. What
I want to pay attention to is the following two facts, which are almost
unanimously agreed upon by researchers of buraku history. Both fulﬁll
what I have pointed out as the characteristics of the idea of race. First isthat the theory of the alien racial origin of the burakumin can be foundin pre-modern (medieval and early modern) literature.7 Second is that
there are historical sources indicating the subsequent institutionalizationof discrimination in statuary form by the sixteenth century. In otherwords, it is a very important fact in the literature of race that alien racial
origin theory and institutionalized discrimination already existed in the
pre-modern period in a society outside the west, namely Japan, though
they were later greatly transformed in the modern period.
Concerning the ﬁrst point, some scholars have noted that the word‘eta’ (lit. much pollution, the name used to refer to the group in pre-modern period) ﬁrst appeared in Chiribukuro just after the mid-thirteenth
century. Joganseiyokyakushikimoku (around 1405) and Inryokennichiroku(paragraph of 1488) have also been identiﬁed as the sources of discrim-1-Yasuko Takezawa(p5) 6/9 05.7.12 6:40 PM ページ 11

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inatory names.8 In the Seidan (Political Discussion) of Ogyu Sorai circa
1726, it says, ‘Yujo (courtesans) and kawaramono (eta) are considered
polluted and of low status both in Japan and China, in the past and thepresent. They (“Eta”) are polluted due to the difference in racial origin
and are ruled by Dan (head of eta, Dan) zaemon’. Here the reason for
low birth is sought in special racial names (emphasis mine).’9
Regarding the second point, it should be noted that discrimination
against these people was not just prejudice but legally enforced. Historical sources dated from the mid-sixteenth century indicate that there
were laws which censured any permission of joint eating and drinking
and also censured the absence of discrimination against them. For instance, Kagetaka Nakajo, a chief retainer of the house of Uesugi, put forward the following law in 1553 (22nd year of Tenbun) in the ‘law ofdivided countries’ of the feudal lords in the Age of Civil Wars: ‘Both
thieves and men and women who associate with Eta will be punished bystones being piled on top of them’.10 As Tetsuichi Niunoya explains, thiskind of ‘law of non-interaction’ forbidding social interaction with theburakumin ‘accurately expresses the status characteristics of the hinin’(lit. non-human). He points out that they have signiﬁed exclusion of“Eta” from marginal, peripheral and public spaces such as hills, riverbanks, markets and roads and have cut off ‘interaction with people’.11
Of course, there are many unknown factors regarding how many regions possessed or enforced this kind of written law. Nevertheless, it isworth noting that many researchers point out the existence of institutionalized discrimination in the medieval period, though the ﬁxing of thestatus system was a phenomenon of the early modern period. It is often
understood that ‘eta’ is a ‘status’ and thus not a matter of alien racial origin theory. But, from another perspective, it can be said that the discourseof alien racial origin in the case of the burakumin was concealed in theform of the status system in the early modern period, and that it emergedin different forms in the medieval and modern periods. In other words,
the status of these people should be seen not as a ‘status outside status,’completely excluded from the social system, but as connected to thelower parts of the power hierarchy and supporting the rulers. Such a viewis important when considering pre-modern race in the lower case.
It has been pointed out that a legal system was established in the Ageof Civil Wars in medieval Japan in order to break away from the systemof previous times. This was thought necessary due to the increase incontact between ‘eta’ and the outside society arising from an increase in1-Yasuko Takezawa(p5) 6/9 05.7.12 6:40 PM ページ 12

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the demand for leather, the raw material for the samurai panoply. In the
Edo period, ‘eta’ was further ﬁxed as a status and the ﬁrst discriminatory
law against ‘eta’ status in the Edo period was promulgated in 1683: ‘The
clothes of the eta should be lined kimono, padded garment, cotton both
top and bottom in accordance with the occasion. Unlined kimono should
be of hemp cloth. Absolutely no other cotton garments should be worn’.12
This example from Japan shows how visible differentiation by clothing
was enforced due to the absence of physically distinguishable signs.
Next, let us consider some examples of race in the lower case fromother regions in Asia. Common factors have been pointed out between
the burakumin and the pekuchon of Korea,13 as well as the untouchablesof India, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Bali of Indonesia (though they have disappeared in Bali). However, these similarities have been discussed inprevious studies not in terms of race but ‘discrimination based on occupation and descent’.14
In China, there is a group who call themselves the Nosu among the Yi(the name of an ethnic group recognized by the state) living in Liangshan
in Sichuan province. Inter-marriage between the high caste nuoho(black) and the low caste quho (white), who are considered to be polluted, is avoided even today. The quho, who were domestic labor slaves
until the beginning of the twentieth century, are considered to be of different descent and it is also considered possible to identify them fromtheir outward appearance. Ann Maxwell Hill has pointed out that “their
exploitation was linked more directly to their alien, non-kin status, rather
than to the material greed and production goals of their masters”. Thissuggests that it is not merely a matter of politico-economic ‘status’ (emphasis mine).15
Other examples of race in the lower case include the slavery systemof the Toba Batak of Southeast Asia,16 the Micronesian low caste who
engage in ‘polluted’ work and cannot own land,17 and the socially low
status Milingai of Yap island who are ‘impure’ and also cannot own
land.18 It is interesting that all these groups have certain features in common. They are considered impure by society, are recognized by boththemselves and others as having different descent, and the discrimination against them is institutionalized, involving land or other kinds ofresources. What these afﬁnities, observed over a wide region, signify is
a subject for further inquiry in the future.
‘race’ in the lower case can also be found in Europe. ‘race,’ established as a secular concept, existed at least in medieval Europe. Examples

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include the Irish looked at from the English (the earliest example inwhich the term ‘race’ was used in today’s sense referred to the Irish) andthe Jews in various parts in Europe. The Jews and the Moors in medieval
Spain were even forced by law to wear clothes that marked their difference visibly as in the case of the burakumin in early modern Japan.19 The
racialization of blacks and whites in order to split the labor in the U.S.
at the end of seventeenth century, as Audrey Smedley shows, can also
be understood as ‘race’ before the emergence of ‘Race’.20
Today, the immigrants from South Asia and the black diaspora, thetargets of new racism in Europe, can be understood as one form of racein the lower case. ‘race’ may be applied to cases of migrant workers inmany regions of the world, including Japan and Korea, discrimination
against whom has become a social problem. However, in contrast to thepre-modern period, it is today certainly mixed with the already established aspect of Race, that is to say, with the idea of modern hierarchical ranking.
The examples above show that there is a dimension of “race” that cannot be explained by the modern Western origin theory or the universal
theory. As discussed earlier, this dimension cannot be reduced to ethnicity or mere prejudice. Many of these cases of race in the lower casebecame transformed into Race with a capital letter, which will be discussed next.
V

RACE IN THE UPPER CASE

As I mentioned at the beginning of this section, Race has twin aspects—with historical coevolution having a global impact—and uniquetransformation in each social context after the impact: so-called ‘originality of the copy’. Let me begin by discussing the aspect of historicalcoevolution.
Historical coevolution
The ﬁrst signiﬁcant point is the great number of writings regarding
racial classiﬁcation that were published from the 1880s to the ﬁrst halfof the twentieth century, covering almost every region of the world.
Those at my hand include Races of Britain (1885) by John Beddoe(British), Anthropologie (1888) by Paul Topinard (French), Races andPeoples (1890) by Daniel Brinton (American), Races of Europe (1899)
by William Z. Ripley (American), The Races of Man (1900) by J.

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Deniker (French), Ethnology (1901) by Augustus H. Keane (British),The Mediterranean Race: a Study of the Origin of European Peoples(1901) by G. Sergi (Italian), The Peoples of Asia (1925) by L. H. Dudley
Buxton (British), Races of Africa (1930) by C. G. Seligman (British),and a series of works edited by Sir James G. Frazer (British), The Native
Races of Asia and Europe, The Native Races of Australia, The Native
Tribes of Central Australia and The Native Races of Africa andMadagascar (1938).
Let us look at the global impact of Race by taking the example ofJohann Friedrich Blumenbach’s ﬁve-fold classiﬁcation. The idea of racein general usage today was introduced to Japan by scholars of Dutch
learning and missionaries at some point before the end of the Tokugawa
period in the nineteenth century. A representative example is Uchida
Masao’s Outline of World Geography (published from 1870) including
a ﬁve-fold classiﬁcation of Mongolian, Caucasian, Ethiopian, Malay andAmerican in line with Blumenbach. Blumenbach’s ﬁve-fold classiﬁcation was also presented in detail in the translation of one of the British
encyclopedias published by the Ministry of Education in 1874, Encyclopedia: Race (translated by Kotaro Akiyama). This came to symbolize
the beginning of race studies in Japan.
The knowledge of this kind of mapping of various human groups in
the world played an important role in forming the worldview of the people at the time. This can be seen from the geography textbooks used inordinary primary and secondary schools from the beginning of the Meiji
period to the beginning of the Showa period, a limited number of which
I was able to obtain. The textbooks paid a great deal of attention to racialclassiﬁcation, as if in response to questions emerging in the process ofconstructing a worldview, such as how many people lived in which areasof the world, what kind of physical appearance and features they had,
how they were classiﬁed in terms of race and what kind of charactersand dispositions they shared. Representative proponents of racial classiﬁcation of the Enlightenment period such as Blumenbach and Cuvier
were repeatedly introduced in these school textbooks.
In China, too, Blumenbach had a tremendous inﬂuence on the construction of racial classiﬁcations and idea of race. Blumenbach’s theoryof the ﬁve-fold classiﬁcation of race was introduced as the ‘theory of ﬁve
classiﬁcations of mankind’ in the illustrated scientiﬁc magazine, The
Chinese Scientiﬁc Magazine (1892) edited by a missionary, John Fryer.
Missionaries were not the only media for introducing these western con-

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cepts and philosophies. Chinese students studying in Japan, for instance,
Liang Qichao, also served as media.
In the case of the U.S., we can ﬁnd Blumenbach listed as the sourceof the terms under the headings ‘Caucasian’ and ‘Mongolian’ in several
different editions of Webster’s Dictionary around the turn of the century.
Blumenbach’s ﬁve-fold classiﬁcation is also employed in the discussionof racial classiﬁcation based on physical features in the Dictionary ofRaces or Peoples, one of the reports compiled by the Immigration Commission (1907–1910) which had a direct inﬂuence on immigration policies. The report states, “the author deemed it reasonable to follow theclassiﬁcation employed by Blumenbach, which school geographies havemade most familiar to Americans” (emphasis mine).21 From these examples, we can infer how widely Blumenbach’s ﬁve-fold classiﬁcation permeated American society as well.
The above examples only deal with the global impact of one Germanscientist of the Enlightenment period, Blumenbach. The inﬂuence of others, including French researchers such as Cuvier, Broca and Topinard,
and American researchers such as Morton, Knot and Glinton, was also
enormous.
From the mid-nineteenth to the beginning of the twentieth century,
race studies, which developed rapidly at this time mainly in the U.S.,
France, Britain and Germany, were spread to various regions of the world
not only by missionaries but also as a result of the development of printing technology, the movement of intellectuals, and exhibits of ‘primitive
peoples’ in world’s fairs.
Race constructed in these contexts interacted with the awareness ofthe existence of a variety of human groups in the world and rode on the
wave of the great popularity of social Darwinism at the time. For thehegemonic mainstream whites, these “scientiﬁc” racial classiﬁcation
theories enabled them to conﬁrm ‘scientiﬁcally’ where their own group(‘race’) was in the mapping, or more accurately which category of‘whites’ they belonged to and how high they were ranked in the hierarchy, and supported the construction of their own subjectivity.
‘Originality of copy’: Transformation of Race in various societies
Now, although this Race in the upper case had an impact at the global
level, what we must pay more attention to is the fact that Race did morethan just spread to various regions of the world as a modern scientiﬁc
concept. When considering the idea of race, we must not underestimate

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the fact that intellectuals and leaders of each local society which accepted
Race did not just import and copy but created ‘originality of copy’, transforming and incorporating it in their social thought and employing it ininternal and external policies while merging it with nationalism or colonialism. This point will become clear if we consider Race in the upper
case in light of the rich studies on societies of Latin America, Southeast
and South Asia, Oceania and Africa. Just as race in the lower case isplastic in society, classiﬁcations and concepts of Race in the upper casecannot be maintained beyond time. This is so even in the case ofBlumenbach’s ﬁve-fold classiﬁcation and Georges Cuvier’s three-foldclassiﬁcation. Race was greatly transformed in each society while mutually reinforcing itself with social Darwinism (or eugenics in some periods and places).
In the late-nineteenth century to early-twentieth century, American
society was in the middle of heated debates over the abolition of slavery
and massive migration of people from Eastern Europe, Southern Europe
and Asia who were considered ‘impossible to assimilate’. The internalcolonialism in the U.S, along with the colonialism of the British Empire
in the Victorian era, provided the greatest receptacle for Race. Let us
consider the following two cases of transformation in the U.S.
Samuel George Morton, known for the extensive collection and measurement of skulls in the mid-nineteenth century, disseminated the ideaof Blumenbach’s ﬁve-fold classiﬁcation in the U.S. with his ﬁrst book
Crania Americana22 before the publication of the English translation ofBlumenbach.23 In the text of Crania Americana, where various characteristics based on Blumenbach’s ﬁve-fold classiﬁcation are described,
the following notes are added which draw our attention. Morton casually
writes, “It will be observed, however, that the word race is substitutedfor variety” (emphasis original).24 In spite of the fact that Blumenbach
himself emphasized that the human race is one and that clear boundaries
cannot be drawn within it, Morton changed the wording from ‘variety’to ‘race’ which implies ﬁxity and deﬁnite difference. Stephen Jay Gould
reveals that the differences between races, with whites positioned at the
top of a hierarchical system and blacks at the bottom, supposedly proved
by Morton through indications of differences in cranial size, were createdand exaggerated by intentional and unintentional ‘mismeasurement’.25
Morton’s study on the skull was consumed by defenders of slavery andracial segregation policies as scientiﬁc proof of the inferiority of thebody, ability and character of blacks in the context of the period in which
he lived.

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Another example concerns the dynamics of ‘whiteness’. Here let us
take up three works which had great social inﬂuence. Races and Peoples
by Daniel Brinton, who had an outstanding inﬂuence in the formative
period of anthropology, mainly discusses the hierarchy between thewhite race and black race. In the detailed classiﬁcation of the white race,
he classiﬁes the English in the ‘Teuton type’ which “features blonde hair,high stature, and blue or gray eyes” and the Irish in the ‘Celt type’.26
After this, Races of Europe by William Ripley, which classiﬁed Europeans into three races, attracted attention when immigrants from Eastern
Europe and Southern Europe became a social problem. It is interestingthat while Ripley placed Southern European immigrants such as Italians
in the lowest ranking, ‘Mediterranean race’, he classiﬁed the Irish, who
had been clearly differentiated from the English in Brinton’s inﬂuential
work, in the same high ranking ‘Teuton race.’27 However, since he wasanti-Semitic, his main interest was to classify the Jews into the Mediterranean race and from the description it does not seem that he attachedmuch meaning to the classiﬁcation of the Irish.28 The Passing of the GreatRace by Madison Grant, which almost reproduced Ripley’s book, had agreat social impact. Grant did not merely classify the Irish in the same“race” category as the English, but further emphasized the hierarchy
presented by Ripley, changing the name from ‘Teuton race’, the namewidely recognized within anthropology, to ‘Nordic race’, a term morefamiliar and appealing to the sense of historical honor.29 There was infact a political intention hidden behind this manipulation. Grant and his
eugenicist colleagues established the Galton Society (1918) in the midstof the rise of nativism. As George W. Stocking, Jr. has shown, this Galton
Society successfully used political pressure to get the infamous immigration law aimed at the exclusion of immigrants from Eastern Europe,
Southern Europe and Asia passed in 1924.30 The Irish could not beignored in terms of numbers and were already established in society and‘assimilated’ compared with the immigrants from Eastern and Southern
Europe. Including them in the highest rank among whites as the Nordic
race was a strategy to gain widespread support for the exclusion of immigrants. In this way, in the U.S., Race as a universal scientiﬁc principle
strongly supported the construction of whiteness in the beginning of thetwentieth century.
Let us again take a look at the transformation of racial classiﬁcationin Japan in textbooks of the Meiji period. I have already mentioned that
Blumenbach’s name appeared frequently at least until the late 1930s.

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The references below clearly follow Blumenbach’s ﬁve-fold classiﬁcation and its terms.
‘Amongst the ﬁve races, the two races European and Asian are developed inintellect, enlightened or partly enlightened, but the other three races are mostly ignorant and many are primitive and uncivilized.’ (‘Introduction’ by
Hisashi Terao, Seijiro Shin, Secondary Education: World Geography, 1891)‘Amongst the ﬁve races, only the two races, Europeans and Asians, are intellectually developed and advanced to the stage of enlightenment or half enlightenment. The others are mostly barbarian primitives.’ (Tamotsu Shibue,
Higher Elementary Education: World Geography, 1893)‘We the Japanese, and the Chinese’ are . . . ‘the most developed’ . . . among
the yellow race.’ (Yonekichi Miyake, Secondary School Foreign Geography,
1896)‘The European race . . . are the most advanced culturally and have the mostpower’. ‘The Asian race . . . apart from our Yamato race are in generalbecoming weaker’, ‘many of the African race . . . are still now unable to get
out of their ignorance and uncivilized state.’ (Society for the Study of Geography, New Geography: An Outline for Secondary Schools, 1913)(All emphases are mine)

As can be seen at a glance, ‘intellect’, ‘progress’ and ‘power’ are attributed to the ‘Asian race’, the ‘Japanese’ and ‘we the Yamato race’, noneof which were in Blumenbach’s original descriptions. It can be seen thatnationalism and the consciousness of foreign countries, which arosefrom around the time of the Sino-Japanese War, permeated even into
secondary and higher primary school textbooks. As Shin’ichi
Yamamuro31 argues, ‘race’ was one of the axes of Japan’s understanding of Asia and a concept critical for supporting her imperialism andcolonialism.
On the other hand, race was also a force which determined how to
exclude or encompass domestic minorities and those on the national borders in relation to ‘Japanese’ subjects. As Ichiro Tomiyama argues, Racewas used as an instrument of investigation into ‘the problem of how torepresent people within the territory which had just been established’.
People on the northern borders were named ‘Ainu’ or ‘Aino’ and thoseon the southern borders ‘Ryukyu’ or ‘Okinawan’ by anthropologists.
‘Signs’ were ‘discovered’ to distinguish them from others through measurements of the human body.32
Race was also employed against the burakumin who were supposed

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to have been guaranteed equality of status in the modern period by the
promulgation of the Law of Liberation in 1871. The old discourse ofalien racial origin reappears in the guise of new racism due to the equalization of status. As the title of Kansuke Fujii’s article, ‘Eta must be
aliens’ that appeared in The Tokyo Journal of Anthropology in 188633
plainly shows, some Japanese anthropologists measured the skulls andcheek bones of the burakumin just as some American anthropologists
had measured the skulls and the bodies of blacks and native Americans.
Race, established by race studies, was used to look for new ‘signs’ distinguishing the burakumin as the old visible signs were erased with theabolishing of the status system.
Brazil is often credited with the myth of being a country with little
racial prejudice. However, during the period between the two world
wars, it used the idea of Race in the upper case and social Darwinism aspretexts for the formation and development of the nation state. The leaders of Brazil sought the answer to the question of how to become likethe civilized countries of Europe in making its people ‘whiter’. That is
to say, they sought to make the people’s blood closer to that of ‘whites’
by welcoming immigrants from Europe and restricting or excluding
those from Asia and other regions.34 Also in colonial Southeast Asia andIndia, Race, which had not existed in traditional local societies, wasintroduced when the census began around the 1870s. In spite of the factthat previously language, religion and custom had played the role ofsigns for recognizing others, various groups, including people living in
the hinterlands who came to be called “tribes”, were reorganized in ahierarchy with the introduction of Race. Not only was the ranking with
the Europeans at the top institutionalized but the various groups in local
society came to be ranked in connection with access to economic resources and political ruling.35
From the above examples, we can understand how Race was transformed in each social context while swaying between science and politics. In this way, modern Race spread to many regions of the world,
especially during the latter half of the nineteenth century to the ﬁrst halfof the twentieth century, and showed coevolution at the global level. Furthermore, it was accepted in various societies around the world, transformed and developed until it displayed the ‘originality of a copy’. Racewas used as a ‘scientiﬁc’ stamp which could legitimize exploitation andoppression and practiced in various policies regarding minorities.

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Race in the age of the genome
The examples above are all from the modern period, but Race is alsoa contemporary issue in the age of the genome. In autumn 2003, a major
health equipment company in Japan announced the development of software that recognizes the characteristics of the bone structure, eyes andnose of a face entered into a software program and ‘automatically detects
race (Asian, European, African)’. Although the term ‘race’ is rarely used
so casually in this sense in the U.S., the reality is that in this case terms
indicating regions such as ‘African’, ‘European’ and ‘Asian’ are used inplace of race. In fact, Race pervades everywhere even today.
The most conspicuous phenomenon related to genome information is
its alarming commercialization. According to Deborah A. Bolnick, there
are at least 17 companies which conduct genetic tests for the general public in the U.S., Britain and other European countries. In the U.S., over
30 million Americans set up websites tracing their family histories, andgenealogy has become the second most popular hobby. For example, theAmerican company DNAPrintTM genomics sells a service which calculates the constitutive ratio of ‘European’, ‘native American’, ‘East
Asian’ and ‘South/Middle East Asian’ in the DNA of the ancestors for$200 or so. A British company, Oxford Ancestors, advertises that they
can identify whether a person’s ancestors are Celts, Anglo-Saxons or
Vikings by a special test of Y chromosomes (termed the ‘tribes ofBritain’).36 These are all criticized as scientiﬁcally ungrounded.37
Furthermore, the police and the FBI in the U.S. have gathered DNA
racial proﬁling data of suspects. The targets are African and Latino/aAmericans, and there are many cases in which the racial proﬁling data
are accumulated without being disposed of after the cases are closed.
Studies have begun in an attempt to ﬁnd genomes relating to crimes,
drugs, violence and other so-called criminal behavior. It is said to be amatter of time before these are linked to racial proﬁling.38
All these examples show how Race remains deeply rooted in society
and in people’s minds while changing appearance in today’s age of the
genome.
VI RACE AS RESISTANCE=RR
Transnational cases
When W.E.B. DuBois organized the ﬁrst Pan African Congress in1900 at London, he was already aware that the construction of what is1-Yasuko Takezawa(p5) 6/9 05.7.12 6:40 PM ページ 21

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today called transnational African solidarity was a key to progress in rectifying discrimination against people of African descent. There, he madea famous speech calling for whites to give up the rule which had led toEuropean expansionism. Pan Africanism, with DuBois at the head, became a major movement after World War I, aimed at a kind of transnational RR.39
Negritude and Afrocentrism can also be understood in terms of RR.
Senghor’s Negritude pointed out the unique innate racial characteristicsof the black race that differed from those of the white race. Cesaire, on
the other hand, after accepting the ‘old Negritude’ which had lost thestrength to resist after the days of whipping, tried to establish the freedom and pride of the black race on the basis of the great civilization of
Africa with the renewed idea of Negritude. If Senghor’s Negritude wasa reversal of Race, Cesaire’s was a concept entrusted with the reconstruction of black subjectivity and hope without ‘hatred towards otherraces.’40
Transnational black solidarity has a new aim in today’s world politics. At the United Nations World Conference against Racism, Racial
Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance held in Durban,
South Africa in 2001, the question of ofﬁcial apologies and compensation for slavery and the trans-Atlantic slave trade in the past was one of
the two major items on the agenda, together with the issue of Zionism
of Israel. It is interesting that the term ‘African descendants’ appeared
publicly for the ﬁrst time at this world conference, the term which was
generated in the preceding conferences to prepare their demand for reparations for the past slavery and the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Without
the framework of resistance against ‘whites’, it would be difﬁcult to
explain what this term symbolizes conceptually and the solidarity which
the agent of the movement constructed in reality. Moreover, this is not
opposed only to the slave trade and the colonialism of the past. It indicts
the Western exploitation of cheap African labor and material resources
under today’s globalization (which is intimately related to colonialism).
It is noteworthy that a discourse emerged in these discussions among
non-whites that emphasized the common experience of oppression byreferring to Asians along with Africans and reconstituting their relationship with Europeans in terms of a dichotomous framework of thevictims versus the guilty.
A unique philosophy on race as resistance to white hegemony also
developed in East Asia at the beginning of the twentieth century. In

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Japan, extreme nationalism and ethnocentrism turned into colonialism
under the slogan of the construction of transnational solidarity and unity
against White rule. Nation-building was the urgent agenda for Japan atthat time and it was planning to expand its territory. In this context, it
required a basis for a single racial identity to integrate various races andpeoples under its internal and external colonial rule. On the other hand,
the theory of ‘Yellow Peril’ had spread sensationally throughout theWest coast region of the U.S. and the exclusion of Japanese immigrants
was intensiﬁed after the Japanese victory in the Russo-Japanese War.
Japan took seriously the establishment one after another of racist laws
mainly targeting Japanese immigrants on the west coast and tried todenounce racism in the U.S. by putting the problem of the exclusion ofJapanese immigrants on to the international agenda. However, Japan’s
hope to include the ‘article for abolishment of racial discrimination’ at
the peace conference at Versailles after World War I (1919) did not materialize due to strong opposition from the U.S. and its allies. This was amost important turning point for Japan. Having experienced a great setback, it abandoned the ideology of leaving Asia and joining Europe.
Later, as is well known, it moved instead towards the plan of the Great
East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere on the pretext of securing the natural
resources of the southern seas.
This process involved a convoluted psychology, such as racial reformof Japanese people through intermarriages with Euro-Americans living
in Japan, the idea proposed by some intellectuals such as Yoshio
Takahashi in the latter half of the nineteenth century, and can be understood as a reorganization in the form of RR made against the great powers. However, it included the self contradiction that, placing themselvesat the top, the Japanese internalized the Race hierarchy constructed by
the west, and encompassed and ruled over other races of Asia which theyplaced lower in the hierarchy. This point resonates with the argument
put forward by Horne in the recently published Race War! According to
Horne, one factor which led to the British ﬁghting against Japan in WorldWar II was white supremacism. As a result, this provided the basis forJapan to proclaim the solidarity of the colored races and facilitatedJapan’s invasion into China and other parts of Asia.41 Yamamuro focuseson the racial concept of the ‘Turan race’ invented by Japan and points
out its supra-state tendency. That is to say, Japan tried to advance into
central Asia by considering people from Hungarian Eurasia all the way
to Japan as part of one ‘Turan race’. This was an idea of race that ex-

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panded from the nation to the supra-state, and was a kind of ‘race as resistance’ that twisted what I call ‘Race with a capital letter’.42
Chinese intellectuals also expressed a similar reaction in philosophical terms. According to Sakamoto, for a China forced to become awareof the threat and domination of the ‘white race’ by the advancement of
the great powers and the exclusion of Chinese immigrants in America,
the idea that ‘Four hundred million people of the yellow race have all
become slaves of the white race’ was a nightmare.43 China had to avoid
becoming like the Ainu, American Indians or blacks “races” (groups atleast seen as races) which were left behind, degenerated or becoming
extinct according to social Darwinism. Thus China tried to ‘portray self
awareness as the “yellow race”. It tried to construct through political
reform a “yellow race” that could counter the “white race”. In order toresist rule by the great powers, China mobilized the mythical ‘Yellow
Emperor’, placed itself at the center of the Yellow Race and argued forits superiority against races of other ‘colors’, the races fated to decline
according to social Darwinism. The historical process of this period in
China showed a contradictory development, in the same way as Japan,of establishing RR by transporting itself to the top of the hierarchy ofRace with a capital letter while accepting the hierarchy of Race regarding races of other ‘colors’.
Next, let us consider cases of Race as Resistance within the same
region. Eisei Kurimoto describes the internal disputes in contemporary
Africa and the racism projected therein. The media tends to portray the
antagonism between the Tutsi and the Hutu as an inherent tribal conﬂict.
Having pointed out the continuity with the premodern period, Kurimoto
argues that this conﬂict internalizes a racial hierarchy based on Race.
The Ham hypothesis established in Europe in the past still exists in Africa
today, and according to Kurimoto, this lies at the basis of the conﬂict, as‘reverse racism’.44
The case of the Bougainvilleans of Papua New Guinea is also interesting. It is said that since independence after World War II, theBougainvilleans used the color ‘black’, with which they had been previously negatively marked by the Europeans, positively as a politicalsymbol. When conﬂicts of interest emerged over the development ofmines after independence, the Bougainvilleans came to establish a collective identity as a single ethnic group. Several originally separate
groups came together and reorganized themselves to counter the opposition group which belonged (or were said to belong) to the Austronesian1-Yasuko Takezawa(p5) 6/9 05.7.12 6:40 PM ページ 24

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language group. The symbol chosen for this ethnic identity was the‘black’ skin color. ‘Black’ was adopted at the beginning of the 1970s as
a sign of differentiation from other Papua New Guineans and used as apolitical symbol among the intellectual class.45 Of course, this blackness
is also an identity the Bougainvilleans established as resistance mediatedby Race in the upper case, namely the ‘Austronesian language group’.
RR can also be seen amongst the burakumin in Japan. During the formation of ‘buraku, the special race’ in the Meiji period, even the theoryof alien racial origin was inherited by a burakumin discourse of ‘special
race’ used for the establishment of subjectivity from their own position.46
Moreover, the famous slogan, ‘The time has come when we can be proudof being Eta’ in the ‘Suiheisha Manifesto’ (1922), can be understood asa form of resistance by the ‘burakumin’, the special race, against forced
assimilation into society. ‘Our Race’, which was declared in Love
Brothers published in 1921 by the ‘Ethnic self determination group’organized in the Taisho period, was also a group established as a formof resistance against discrimination stimulated by the world trend in ethnic self determination.
‘People who still follow feudal customs and bad bourgeois ethics call our
people “hinin, the lowly people” and “base animal like non-humans” . . . attach racial class discrimination and show extreme social abuse. . . . Let ourpeople trust in “the power or our people”. . . . Our brothers and sisters scattered all over the country unite, be prepared for liberation from hundreds ofyears of abuse, and strive towards the construction of a new society based on
freedom and equality.’ (emphasis mine)47

There are many other examples of RR. For instance, the arguments ofracial minority leaders in discussions of multiculturalism in Britain andcolor consciousness debates in the U.S. today are based on RR. There
are already many studies on this topic but what I want to emphasize hereis that although Kwame Anthony Appiah and Paul Gilroy may argue thatrace has no philosophical legitimacy,48 there is the undeniable reality that“race, or racialized identitites, have as much political, sociological andeconomic salience as they ever had”.49 One ﬁeld in which this can beclearly seen is that of discussions regarding public policies based on race.
People who oppose public policies based on race argue that a truely antiracial society is a society in which each individual can enjoy equal opportunity and access to resources based on the original principle of ‘equality’
without being restricted by the framework of racial groups. On the other
hand, minority leaders argue that in actual situations where racial dis-

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crimination still exists, a ‘politics of difference’ based on groups is a necessary means for rectifying discrimination and the way to achieve ‘equality’ in the true sense in society. As many researchers have already pointed
out, this kind of discourse hides the plurality within groups and createsa homogenized and essentialized group image. Floya Anthias also warns
that the most important issue regarding racism in Europe is the racist situation in which minority groups claim preferential allotment of state
resources in education and welfare by presupposing differential treatment based on language, culture and ethnicity in the name of multi-culturalism.50 However, from the point of view of the minority leaders, aslong as racial discrimination is depriving various individuals of opportunities, encouraging solidarity within groups and demanding rights andresources on a group basis is the way to maximize the interests of individuals within the groups in the end. It becomes strategically importantto refer to themselves as a reorganized ‘race’ for the struggle against
racial discrimination, the enhancement of racial identity and the practical securing of resources. In this way, RR provides minorities with animportant position for voicing and practicing identity politics.
VII

INTERCONNECTEDNESS OF THE THREE DIMENSIONSHow then should we understand the relationships between the three
dimensions? A schema along a temporal axis of development from raceto Race to RR is in one sense the clearest kind of relationship. Indeed
the examples given above can be seen in terms of a developmental framework from premodern race to modern Race to mainly twentieth century
RR.
Before assuming such a temporal axis of development, however, it
should be noted that there was mutual interaction and a common project
linking Europe and the colonies. Akio Tanabe argues that modern race
was by no means created by the west alone and was born from a common project of the Europeans and those in the colonized India. Two
genealogies of racism interacted, namely the enlightenment philosophyborn in Europe and the romanticism constructed by orientalists based ona philosophy indigenous to India. Thus the idea of race was constructed
through interaction between race and Race in two different continents inthe colonial context.51 On the other hand, Kumie Inose shows that theprocess of reorganization of race into Race was not just a matter of Racegoing in one direction from Britain to colonial India. Colonizers feeling1-Yasuko Takezawa(p5) 6/9 05.7.12 6:40 PM ページ 26

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afﬁnity for the ornamentalism of the Indian upper classes (though they
were people ranked as the highest Race in India) tried to construct theirsubjectivity by turning their gaze back to their homeland. Inose also
focuses on the resistance found in portraits which were supposed to bea medium for Race where the object of the painting changed into the subject who in fact arranged the obedient appearance gesture.52
The simultaneous transformation of different dimensions of race canoccur even today. For example, it would not be surprising for a remark
by Shintaro Ishihara, the Governor of Tokyo, regarding ‘cruel crimes’,committed by the ‘Chinese’ to manifest as actual racist policies at any
time. (Rather, in Tomiyama’s words, the ‘premonition of violence’makes us stand on guard).53 It might not be an overstatement to say that
this situation is a sign of the formation of race in the lower case. If ‘theDNA of the Chinese’ in Ishihara’s words were to be linked with the
genome studies, it could easily lead to a false scientiﬁc determinism ofcrimes. In another context, we can imagine that race might be created if
the exclusion of RR becomes too prominent. For example, there is a highrate of certain illnesses such as Tay-Sachs disease among the Ashkenazi
Jews. If there were discrimination in life insurance subscription againstthem as a group, this could become Race with a capital letter in today’ssociety. The history of discrimination against leprosy patients and theirfamilies in Japan shows us that if human groups are classiﬁed according
to the human genome, a situation can easily develop where certain
groups are seen as dangerous and discriminated against on the pretext ofconquest of genetic diseases under the slogan of ‘progress of mankind’.
This is precisely why it is not appropriate to understand race in the lower
case and Race with a capital letter simply as past, developmental stagesof the idea of race.
Today, these dimensions sometimes interconnect with each other in amore complex way. Let us take as an example the debates in California
in the fall of 2003 over Proposition 54. Proposition 54 proposed to abolish all kinds of data gathering related to race and ethnicity. In otherwords, it was extremely color blind. The proposition was opposed by
two thirds and supported by one third. This result, however, cannot betaken at face value. Among those who opposed, there were some who
supported the orientation of a color conscious society on the grounds ofa belief that if such data gathering were abandoned altogether, there
would be no way to identify racism. In other words, this was an argument made from the viewpoint of Race as Resistance. However, it was

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not just this group which opposed the proposition. Drug and medical
companies made an extensive campaign to stress the signiﬁcance of raceand ethnicity data gathering, claiming that there are real and signiﬁcantgroup differences in terms of frequencies of susceptibility to certain
diseases and effectiveness of certain medicines. These commercial companies’ standpoint can be opposite, depending on the analyses and interpretations of these group differences, but much of the discourse
surrounding Proposition 54 emphasized differences from the viewpointof Race with capital letter.
On the other hand, those who supported the proposition included liberal intellectuals like Appiah and Gilroy and others who, fully aware of
the deep-rooted nature of racism, argued that only color blindness canchange the current racist society. However, at the same time, supporters
also included people who believe that the differences between whites
and blacks are innate and cannot be changed by the environment and thus
take the position that afﬁrmative action and other public and social welfare policies for minorities are wrong and a waste of taxes. In otherwords, they supported the proposition from the viewpoint of Race witha capital letter. Thus the split reﬂected in this Proposition 54 is not thesimple kind of dichotomy between liberals and conservatives that we
saw in the old days. It is in fact a matter of RR plus Race vs. AgainstRace plus Race. This example shows that RR is not the mere reverse ofRace.
The examples mentioned in this paper differ in social scale, ideology,
economic basis and historical period. So I expect that there may be criticism regarding whether they can be discussed on the same level. But theaim of this section is not to compare the ideas of race and the phenomenon of racial discrimination in each society, as many comparative
studies by American and European researchers, comparing the U.S. andBrazil and South Africa have done. What is important is that since theidea of race has three dimensions which are linked with each other, one
dimension is able to change into another according to social conditions
and there is always the potential of transformation. From a different perspective, we can say that even if RR is seen as a threat to social integrationand the establishment of a color blind society, in which racial frameworks and racial awareness do not exist, is hoped for, there will be difﬁculties as long as Race in the upper and race in the lower case are notsocially resolved. RR has also become a powerful conceptual tool for
identifying racism and for the practice of identity politics by minorities.

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As long as essentialism based on race and Race do not disappear, just as
race is a powerful concept for the essentialists, it remains a concept indispensable for understanding the politics of anti-discrimination struggles.
NOTES
1This paper is the English translation of part of Sections One and Three of my introduction chapter to Jinshu Gainen no Fuhensei wo Tou: Seiyoteki Paradaimu wo Koete(Is Race a Universal Idea?: Transcending the Western Paradigm) (Kyoto: Jimbun shoin,2005). I would like to thank Loring Brace, Steve Harrell, Charles Keyes, Jon Marks,
Audrey Smedley, and the reviewers of the Japanese Journal of American Studies fortheir insightful comments. Many thanks also go to Tumiko Tokita for her professionaltranslation It goes without saying that I am responsible for the entire argument of thisarticle.
2
Kenan Malik, The Meaning of Race: Race, History and Culture in Western Society(London: Macmillan Press, 1996).
3
The reason why the word ‘dimension’ is used here rather than ‘meaning’ or ‘type’
is because I am not arguing that the meaning differs according to context as race isdeﬁned in dictionaries and introductory books or that they can be put into speciﬁc categories as particular ‘types’.
4
For example, see John Rex, Race and Ethnicity (Milton Keynes, England: Open
University Press, 1986); Robert Miles, Racism (London: Routledge, 1989).
5
However, this is similar to the way ‘History’ and ‘history’ is contrasted by Robert
Young who critically analyzes the existing framework of European epistemology inWhite Mythologies: Writing History and the West (London: Routledge, 1990). But Race
differs from ‘History’ in the sense that it does not propose the universality of the ideaof race. ‘Race’ in RR can be ‘race’ in some cases. Here I will write RR in capital letters.
6
For the studies that discuss buraku discrimination and racial discrimination, seeMidori Kurokawa, Ika to Doka no Hazama (Tokyo: Aoki Shoten, 1999); “Burakusabetsu
to Jinshusabetsu,” in Jinshu Gainen no Fuhensei wo Tou, 276–297.
7
Alien racial origin theory argues that the ancestors of the burakumin were immigrants from the continent such as China and Korea, and of course no researchers support this today when the myth of the single origin of the Japanese has collapsed. The
following mistaken theories were behind this discourse: that the etymology of ‘eta’ originated from the ‘eta’ (whose job was to gather hawk’s food) who were a part of ‘takako’in the ancient Ritsuryo system, and that many of them descended from immigrants fromabroad. It is commonly thought that the alien racial origin theory already existed in the
medieval period and became widespread in the middle early modern period and stronger
in the modern period. Tomohiko Harada, Hisabetsu Buraku no Rekishi (Tokyo: Asahi
Shimbunsha, 1975), 32–33.
8
See Harada, Hisabetsu Buraku no Rekishi, 32; Tetsuichi Niunoya, Kebiishi: Chuseino Kegare to Kenryoku (Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1986), 162; Satoshi Uesugi, Yomigaeru
Burakushi (Tokyo: Shakai Shisosha, 2000), 36.
9Uesugi, Yomigaeru Burakushi, 36.
10
Niunoya, Kebiishi: Chusei no Kegare to Kenryoku, 130; Uesugi, Yomigaeru
Burakushi, 35–45.
11
Niunoya, Kebiishi: Chusei no Kegare to Kenryoku, 513. The ‘law of non-interaction’ can be found in historical sources as early as the twelfth century, and there is also

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a description in the Konjakumonogatari (vol. 16, verse 34) that ‘when people stop interacting with others according to the law of non interaction, that means becoming beggars
which could also be amusing.’ Tetsuichi Niunoya, Nihon Shakai no Mibun to Shakai(Tokyo: Hanawa Shobo, 1993), 508.
12
Uesugi, Yomigaeru Burakushi, 123.
13
Pekchon are people who were involved in slaughter and leatherworks from the Choson period in Korea and were considered the lowest in status. There was strong discrimination against them in residential areas, and intermarriage and registration withpeople of another status were not allowed.
14
For example, see Kazumitsu Okiura, “Indo no Kasutosei to Nihon no Burakusabetsusei,” in Chikyukibo de toraeru Kasuto Sabetsu, Burakusabetsu no Ima (Osaka:
Hyuman Raitsu Osaka, 2003), 28–57; Hiroshi Noma and Kazumitsu Okiura, Ajia no Sei
to Hi: Hisabetsumin no Rekishi to Bunka (Kyoto: Jimbun Shoin, 1983).
15
Ann Maxwell Hill, “Captives, Kin, and Slaves in Xiao Liangshan,” The Journal of
Asian Studies 60 no.4 (2001): 1037.
16
Anthony Reid, Slavery, Bondage and Dependency in Southeast Asia (St. Lucia:
University of Queensland Press, 1983).
17David A. Chappell, “Paciﬁc Island Societies,” in Macmillan Encyclopedia of World
Slavery, Vol.2, Paul Finkelman and Joseph C. Miller, eds., (New York: Simon &Schuster Macmillan, 1998), 665–666.
18
Iwao Ushijima, Yapputo no Shakai to Kokan (Tokyo: Kobunkan, 1987).
19
Audrey Smedley, Race in North America: Origin and Evolution of a Worldview(Boulder: Westview, 1993), Chapter 3.
20
Smedley, “The Ideology of Race in North America.” Jinshu Gainen no Fuhensei
wo Tou, 151–181.
21
United States Immigration Commission, Dictionary of Races or Peoples (Washington:
Government Printing Ofﬁce, 1911): 3.
22
Samuel George Morton, Crania Americana; or, A comparative view of the skulls of
various Aboriginal nations of North and South America, to which is preﬁxed an essayon the varieties of the human species (Philadelphia: Dobson, 1839).
23
Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, “Natural Variety of Mankind,” in AnthropologicalTreatises of Johann Friedrich Blumenbach. Thomas Bendyshe ed. (London: Longman,Green, Longman, Roberts, & Green, 1865[1775]).
24
Morton, Crania Americana, 5.
25
Stephen Jay Gould, The Mismeasure of Man (New York: Norton, 1981).
26
Daniel G. Brinton, Races and Peoples: Lectures on the Science of Ethnography(New York: N. D. C. Hodges, 1890).
27
The remaining one is the Alpine race.
28
William Z. Ripley, The Races of Europe: A Sociological Study (New York: D.
Appleton, 1899).
29
Madison Grant, The Passing of the Great Race; or, the Racial Basis of European
History (New York: Charles Scribner‘s Sons, 1916).
30
George W. Jr. Stocking, Race, Culture, and Evolution: Essays in the History of
Anthropology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968).
31
Shin’ichi Yamamuro, Shiso Kadai toshiteno Ajia: Kijiku, Rensa, Toki (Tokyo:
Iwanami Shoten, 2001).
32
Ichiro Tomiyama, Boryoku no Yokan (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2002), 83.
33
Genpachi Minosaku, “Eta no Fuzoku,” The Tokyo Journal of Anthropology no.6
(1886).

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Thomas E. Skidmore, “Racial Ideas and Social Policy in Brazil, 1870–1940,” in The
Idea of Race in Latin America, 1870–1940. Richard Graham ed. (Austin: University ofTexas Press, 1990).
35
Sumit Guha, “Lower Strata, Older Races, and Aboriginal Peoples: Racial Anthropology and Mythical History Past and Present,” The Journal of Asian Studies 57 no.2
(May 1998): 423–441; Charles Keyes, “ ‘The Peoples of Asia’: Science and Politics in
the Classiﬁcation of Ethnic Groups, in Thailand, China, and Vietnam,” The Journal of
Asian Studies 61 no.4 (2002): 1163–1203.
36
Information on ‘ancestors according to DNA’ and ‘tribes in Britain’ can be foundin http://www.ancestrybydna.com and http://www.oxfordancestors.com respectively.
37
Deborah A. Bolnick, “ShowingWho They Really Are”: Commercial Ventures in
Genetic Genealogy. Paper presented at the American Anthropological Association 2003
annual meeting.
38
Pilar Ossorio and Troy Dustor, “Race and Genetics: Controversies in Biomedical,
Behavioral, and Forensic Sciences.” Paper presented at the AAA Race and Human
Diversity conference, 2004.
39
Roy Preiswerk, “Race and Colour in International Relations,” in The Year Book ofWorld Affairs 197, (London: Stevens and Sons, 1970) (Published under the Auspices of
the London Institute of World Affairs), 54.
40
Aime Cesaire, Kikyo Noto: Shokuminchiron (Tokyo: Heibonsha, 2004).
41
Gerald Horne, Race War!: White Supremacy and the Japanese Attack on the British
Empire (New York: New York University Press, 2004).
42
Shin’ichi Yamamuro, “komento,” in Is Race a Universal Idea?: Colonialism, Nation
States, and a Myth Invented, Yasuko Takezawa ed. (Kyoto: Institute for Research in
Humanities, Kyoto University, 2003), 267–273.
43
See Hiroko Sakamoto, “On the Idea of Race in Chinese History,” in Is Race a
Universal Idea? 182–204.
44
Eisei Kurimoto, “The Residue of Racist Images of Africa,” In Jinshu Gainen no
Fuhensei wo Tou, 356–389.
45
Jill Nash and Eugene Ogden, “The Red and the Black: Bougainvillean Perceptionsof Other Papua New Guineans,” Paciﬁc Studies 13 no.2 (1990): 1–17.
46
Takehiro Kobayashi, “ ‘Tokushu Buraku’ ni okeru Koso to Shutai,” Gendai Shiso
27 no.2 (1999): 96–114.
47
Institute of Research on Buraku Problems, Suihei Undoshi no Kenkyu vol.2 (1977):
120–121.
48
Kwame Anthony Appiah, In My Father’s House: Africa in the Philosophy of Culture(New York: Oxford University Press, 1992); Paul Gilroy, Against race: imagining political culture beyond the color line (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard
University Press, 2000).
49
Linda Martín Alcoff, “Philosophy and racial identity,” in Ethnic and Racial Studies
Today, Martin Blumer and John Solomos eds. (London: Routledge, 1999), 31.
50
Floya Anthias, “Connecting ‘Race’ and Ethnic Phenomena,” Sociology 26 no.3
(1992): 421–438.
51
Akio Tanabe, “Two Genealogies of Modern Racism and Their Intersection,” inJinshu Gainen no Fuhensei wo Tou, 205–226.
52
Kumie Inose, “Accommodated Imperial Perspectives,” in Jinshu Gainen no
Fuhensei wo Tou, 205–226, 415–433.
53
Tomiyama, Boryoku no Yokan.