Volume 14, Number 2: Spring 2017 Volume 14, Number 2 • Spring 2017
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Volume 14, Number 2: Spring 2017 Volume 14, Number 2 • Spring 2017 CENTER FOR ASIA PACIFIC STUDIES EDITORIAL BOARD: Melissa S. Dale Ezra Vogel, Professor Emeritus, Harvard University Editor, Executive Director Thomas Gold, Professor, UC Berkeley Leslie A. Woodhouse Margaret Kuo, Assistant Professor, CSU Long Beach Assistant Managing Editor Rachel Rinaldo, Assistant Professor, University of Virginia John Nelson, Professor, University of San Francisco CONTENTS EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION Melissa S. Dale ....................................................................... 2 ARTICLES Eurasians and Racial Capital in a “Race War” W. Puck Brecher ......................................................................4 Erasure, Solidarity, Duplicity: Interracial Experience across Colonial Hong Kong and Foreign Enclaves in China from the Late 1800s to the 1980s Vicky Lee ..........................................................................20 The Language of “Racial Mixture” in Japan: How Ainoko became Haafu, and the Haafu-gao Makeup Fad Okamura Hyoue ..................................................................... 41 THOUGHT PIECES The Asian Turn in Mixed Race Studies: Retrospects and Prospects Emma Teng ........................................................................ 80 Political and Social Contexts of Multiethnic Relations and Individuals in Japan and South Korea Keiko Yamanaka .....................................................................86 The “Human Duty” to Deracialize Nationality Okamura Hyoue ..................................................................... 91 BOOK REVIEW Racial Ambiguity in Asian American Culture, by Jennifer Ann Ho Kristin Roebuck ......................................................................95 ©2017 University of San Francisco Center for Asia Pacific Studies Volume 14, no. 2 ~ Spring 2017 Editor’s Introduction By Melissa S. Dale, Executive Director, Center for Asia Pacific Studies We are pleased to announce the publication of the Spring 2017 issue of Asia Pacific Perspectives . This issue presents the latest research on the history and life experiences of mixed race individuals in China, Japan, and Korea. Impressed by the exciting research presented at the University of San Francisco’s symposium “Negotiating Identities: Mixed Race Individuals in China, Japan, and Korea,” we decided to dedicate a special issue to the topic. Our goal for this issue is fourfold: to highlight some of the latest research coming out in the field, to stimulate academic conversations on the topic, to promote greater understanding of the cross- cultural encounters that led to the creation of interracial families, and to encourage further research on how mixed -race individuals living in East Asia have negotiated their identities both historically and today. The themes highlighted in these papers – including definitions of race (both historical and contemporary) and issues of class, gender, identity, citizenship, and legal rights – reveal the importance of mixed race studies to our understandings of society as a whole. Mixed race studies involves the movement of peoples and the sharing of cultures at the most intimate levels of society – within families. Many of the individual and family histories discussed in this volume were a result of relationships that challenged societal norms. As society questioned their origins and identity, multiracial children – and their descendants – have negotiated their identities and faced challenges, ranging from society’s constant questioning of their social belonging, to legal issues (especially citizenship), to their personal senses of self and identity. By examining the roles played by families, societies, and governments and the reception (or lack thereof) which multiracial individuals have encountered in their lives, these authors reveal how mixed race is more than an individual matter: it is a reflection of the workings of society, the nation, modernity, war, transnationalism, and globalization. We begin the issue with W. Puck Brecher’s exploration of the treatment and experiences of mixed-race individuals living in Japan during the Pacific War as a lens for understanding racial attitudes during the war. Tracing the experiences of Eurasians living in wartime Japan, Brecher adds another layer of understanding to the race war discourse and encourages us to reconsider characterizations of the war as being fueled by Japanese-Caucasian racial hatred. Next Vicky Lee examines the diversity of lived experiences among Eurasians in Hong Kong and China during the late 1800s to the 1980s. For these individuals living in colonial Hong Kong and foreign enclaves in China, negotiating their identity necessitated daily strategies ranging from erasure, to solidarity, to duplicity. Highlighting the lives of Eurasians living through the Pacific usfca.edu/center-asia-pacific/perspectives War and Cultural Revolution, Lee’s study reminds us of the challenges Eurasians faced as they endeavored to be accepted by society, especially during periods of violence and political upheaval. In our third article, Hyoue Okamura traces the history of the labels used in Japan to refer to “mixed race” individuals and explores the Haafu-gao makeup fad. Focusing on the late 19 th century to the present, Okamura’s study traces the terms used to refer to racial mixture and how “ haafu” has Downloaded from from Downloaded Asia Pacific Perspectives Volume 14, no. 2 ~ Spring 2017 become the most common label today. Okamura’s cautions that labeling racializes “Japanese” and “foreigners” and results in the categorization of racially mixed people in Japan as not fully Japanese. We’ve included three important think pieces in this issue to stimulate discussion and encourage further academic research on the topic of “mixed-race” peoples in Asia. Emma J. Teng ’s essay encourages us to reflect on how far we have come in the study of mixed-race peoples by examining popular perceptions and academic discourses. Noting the increase in recognition of mixed identities in Asia since the 1990s, Teng notes that “Scholarship on intermarriage, mixed race, and other mixed identities in Asia is flourishing.” Keiko Yamanaka’s essay aims to explore the historical, political and social contexts that have contributed to the interracial/interethnic encounters in Japan and Korea. Yamanaka stresses the importance of understanding multiracial and multiethnic relations over the past 50 years in order to better understand “the emerging multiculturalism and tolerance of ethnic and cultural diversity in East Asia.” Hyoue Okamura’s essay issues a call to action to readers to exercise their “human duty” to “deracialize nationality.” Okamura stresses that racialization and racialist acts have consequences and encourages people to think before they speak and act about how our “acquired habits” contribute to “racializing others”. Continuing upon a theme first emphasized at the Center’s symposium, of the need for scholars in Asian American Studies and Asian Studies to increase dialogue with one another, we end this issue with Kristin Roebuck’s review of Racial Ambiguity in Asian American Culture by Jennifer Ann Ho. On behalf of the journal and our authors, I would like to thank Dr. Leslie Woodhouse (Assistant Managing Editor) for her care and dedication in ensuring that our work continues to meet the journal’s high standards. – Melissa S. Dale, Editor usfca.edu/center-asia-pacific/perspectives Downloaded from from Downloaded Asia Pacific Perspectives EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION – Dale • 3 Eurasians and Racial Capital in a “Race War” By W. Puck Brecher, Ph.D., Washington State University For many, contemplating the Eurasian experience in Japanese history evokes the dilemma posed by the thousands of “occupation babies” fathered by Allied personnel stationed in Japan after the Pacific War during the Allied Occupation (1945-52).1 The discrimination faced by these orphans is well documented. Both Japan and the U.S. avoided either acknowledging or ameliorating the problem, feeling that to do so would be to admit responsibility for it. Occupation authorities (SCAP) neither extended aid to nor acknowledged legal responsibility for the unwanted children. SCAP denied requests from American personnel to bring their Japanese brides and biracial children to the U.S. by citing the 1924 Immigration Law blocking the immigration of Japanese and half-Japanese. It also forbade Japan’s Welfare Ministry from conducting a census of occupation babies. 2 In June 1948, Saturday Evening Post journalist Daniel Berrigan published a critique of American GIs for fathering illegitimate babies and Occupation authorities for failing to take responsibility for them. SCAP responded by expelling Berrigan from the country and censoring any further media coverage of the issue.3 Japan’s government complied with and reciprocated the U.S. position. American and Japanese joint abhorrence and disavowal of the occupation baby problem thus amounted to what Yukiko Koshiro describes as “diplomatic collaboration in tolerating mutual racism. Their mutual hatred of miscegenation drew them closer.”4 The Japanese public echoed the state’s abhorrence for this population of biracial babies. Whereas Japanese enthusiastically embraced cultural mixing with the U.S., they rejected biological mixing outright, seeing mixed-race babies as a threat to their racial purity and tantamount to an assault on the Japanese race itself. Black-Japanese babies were especially despised, but all biracial mixtures encountered