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The Construction of Racial Identities in China and Japan

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The Construction of Racial Identities in China and Japan The Construction of Racial Identities in China and Japan edited by Frank Dikotter consulting editor Barry Sautman Hong Kong University Press *1~*~.!I!Jm.ii'o± Hong Kong University Press The University of Hong Kong Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong © Frank Dik6tter 1997 ISBN 962 209 443 0 First published in the United Kingdom in 1997 by C. Hurst & Co. (Publishers) Ltd. This soft cover edition published in 1997 by Hong Kong University Press is available in Hong Kong, China and Taiwan. All rights reserved. No portion of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Publisher. Printed in Hong Kong by H & Y Printing Ltd. CONTENTS Acknowledgements page v The Contributors x Chapters Introduction Frank Dikotter 1 PART I. CHINA Racial Discourse in China: Continuities and Permutations Frank Dikotter 12 The reconfiguration if lineage discourse and the emergence if racial taxonomies 14 Racial discourse in Republican China 18 Racialised identities in contemporary China 25 Imagining Boundaries of Blood: Zhang Binglin and the Invention of the Han 'Race' in Modern China Kai-wing Chow 34 The politics of imagining the Han 'race' 36 Mobilisation if indigenous symbolic resources 38 Distinguishing surnames and the Han 'race' 41 The Yellow Emperor as the first ancestor if the Han 'race' 46 The Chinese as a Han 'race' and a nation 49 Youtai: The Myth of the Jew' in Modern China Zhou Xun 53 The Jew' in modern China 53 The emergence and comtruction of the Jew' at the turn if the century (1895-1911) 54 Representations if the Jew' in the early Republic of China (1911-1930) 62 Vll VIn Contents The Jews' and the 'science' if race (1915-1949) 64 Anti-Jewish policy in Japanese-occupied China (1937- 1945) 69 Old myths and new phenomena, 1949-1995 72 Myths of Descent, Racial Nationalism and Ethnic Minorities in the People's Republic of China Barry Sautman 75 The Dragon as primal ancestor 76 The Yellow Emperor as racial Jounder 79 'Peking Man' as Chinese everyman 84 The Great Wall as ethnic minority project 89 Racial nationalism and the Tibetan example 91 PART II. JAPAN The Invention of Identity: Race and Nation in Pre-war Japan Michael Weiner 96 The imagined community oj nation 100 Social Darwinism in Japan 105 The excluded Other 110 'Same Language, Same Race': The Dilemma of Kanbun in Modern Japan Kazuki Sato 118 The illusion if Doshu: The Chinese as a different race 120 Dobun comes under attack: Kanbun versus Kokugo 126 A new life Jor Dobun Doshu 130 The Ainu and the Discourse of 'Race' Richard Siddle 136 The growth oj Ainu studies 137 Character, blood and smell: Ainu studies, 1912-1945 142 Protection and education, 1890-1930 145 Fusion and the mixing if blood: Ainu policy, 1930-1945 148 Images oj the 'dying race' 150 Rethinking Race for Manchukuo: Self and Other in the Colonial Context Louise Young 158 Anti-Semitism in Japan: Its History and Current Implications David Goodman 177 Cultural origins 178 Japanese Christian theology 180 The Protocols of the Elders of Zion 181 Nazism and wartime anti-Semitism 182 Postwar identification and denial 185 Left-wing anti-Zionism 186 The recrudescence of anti-Semitism in the 1980s 187 Insecurity and anti-Semitism in the 1990s 189 The Marco Polo affair 191 Aum's poison gas attack 195 The Discourse on Blood and Racial Identity in Contemporary Japan Kosaku Yoshino 199 The Japanese race' as an imagined community 199 The association of race and culture, but not genetic determinism 202 Blood determinism, but not exactly racism 207 Changing but persistent features ofJapanese racial identity 209 Index 213 THE CONTRIBUTORS Chow Kai-wing is Associate Professor in History at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Frank Dikotter is Senior Lecturer in History and Wellcome Research Fellow at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. David Goodman is Professor in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign. Kazuki Sato is Assistant Professor at Sophia University, Tokyo. Barry Sautman is Lecturer in Politics at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. Richard Siddle is Research Fellow at the University of Sheffield, England. Michael Weiner is Senior Lecturer at the University of Sheffield, England. Kosaku Yoshino is Associate Professor in Sociology at the University of Tokyo. Louise Young is Associate Professor in History at New York Univer- sity. Xun Zhou is a doctoral candidate in Religious Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. x INTRODUCTION Frank Dikotter 'This yellow river, it so happens, bred a nation identified by its yellow skin pigment. Moreover, this nation also refers to its earliest ancestor as the Yellow Emperor. Today, on the face of the earth, of every five human beings there is one that is a descendant of the Yellow Emperor.'! If, in contemporary Germany, a leading intellectual were to identify the people of that country according to physical features ('blond hair and blue eyes') and represent them as a homogeneous descent group (,the Aryans'), he would be considered to be contributing to the invention of a German racial identity. Unlike other group identities, racial discourse essentialises presumed biological features. Racial theories attempt to root culture in nature, to equate social groups with biological units, and give primacy to the imagined or real congenital endowments of people. In Su Xiaokang's recent definition of China given above, human beings do not have a common descent: 'Of every five human beings there is one that is a descendant of the Yellow Emperor.' 'Chineseness' is seen primarily as a matter of biological descent, physical appearance and congenital inheritance. Cultural features such as 'Chinese civili- sation' or 'Confucianism' are thought to be the product of that imagined biological group: they are secondary and can be changed, reformed or even eradicated. Confucian scholar or socialist cadre, Hunanese peasant or Hong Kong entrepreneur, one will always, according to Su Xiaokang, be 'Chinese' by virtue of one's blood. Because it is considered politically embarrassing, the importance 1 Su Xiaokang, 'River Elegy' in Chillese Sociology and Allthropology, 24, no. 2 (winter 1991-2), p.9. 1 2 Frank Dikotter of racialised identities in East Asia has so far been deliberately ignored. However, far from being a negligible aspect of con- temporary identities, racialised senses of belonging have often been the very foundation of national identity in East Asia in the twentieth century. In their opposition to the systematic investigation of racial discourses and practices in East Asia, some social scientists have argued that 'racism', however defined, cannot be found in 'Asian culture'.2 For instance, the anthropologist Charles Stafford maintains that 'race' is not a 'Chinese' concept, hence 'racism' can only occur in 'the West'. 3 Let us take an example. Kang Y ouwei (1858-1927), one of the most acclaimed philosophers of the late nineteenth century, judged that Africans, 'with their iron faces, silver teeth, slanting jaws like a pig, front view like an ox, full breasts and long hair, their hands and feet dark black, stupid like sheep or swine', should be whitened by intermarriage, although he feared that no refined white girl would ever agree to mate with a 'monstrously ugly black'. 'Whites' and 'yellows' who married 'blacks' as a contribution to the purification of mankind should therefore be awarded a medal with the inscription 'Improver of the race', whereas 'browns or blacks whose char- acteristics are too bad, whose physical appearance is too ugly or who carry a disease should be given a sterilising medication to stop the perpetuation of their race. ,4 In his description of Mricans, Kang Y ouwei used the terms renzhong ('human breed', 'human race') and zhongzu ('breed', 'race') but, according to Charles Stafford, 'to translate these [terms] as race is to impose a Western reading on what are supposed to be Chinese cultural constructs. ,5 The virulent racial discourse of a prominent reformer has been transformed into an inconsequential utterance which does not 'belong' to 'Chinese culture'. 'Racism', it is argued, like 'human rights' is a 'Western concept' with no equivalent in China. At recent meetings in Geneva of the United Nations Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination Chinese delegates have upheld precisely the same argument, a rhetorical strategy 2 For instance David Y.F. Ho, 'Prejudice, colonialism, and interethnic relations: An East-West dialogue',Journal of Asian and African Studies, 20 (1985), pp. 224-5. 3 Charles Stafford, 'The discourse of race in modem China', Mim: The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 28, no. 3 (Sept. 1993), p. 609. 4 Kang Youwei, Datongshu (One World), Beijing: Guji chubanshe, 1956, pp. 118-22. 5 Stafford, 'The discourse', p. 609. Introduction 3 used to delay the introduction of clear definitions of racial dis- crimination into the country's legal system. However, racial discourse cannot be reduced to the mere ap- pearance of the word 'race'. In English, for instance, the word has had a number of very different meanings and connotations since the Middle Ages; only during the nineteenth century did it begin to refer to alleged biological differences between groups of people.6 Nor is it a necessary precondition to use the word 'race' in order to construct racial categories of thought. At the tum of the century, many authors in Britain used the word 'nation' to sustain racial frames of analysis; the 'nation' was thought to correspond to a biologically homogeneous unit which could be improved through selective breeding.
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