Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Yamamoto, Beverley Anne
• Louis, Brett St
• Alexander, Claire
• Kaur, Raminder

Titel

From structured invisibility to visibility: is Japan really going to accept multiethnic, multicultural identities?

Ist Teil von

• Mapping Changing Identities, 2014, p.57-68

Auflage

1

Ort / Verlag

Routledge

Erscheinungsjahr

2014

Quelle

Alma/SFX Local Collection

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• The ascendancy of a discourse of the multicultural coexistence society has to be viewed in the context of Japan’s desire to stay globally competitive, especially in the face of a declining and hyper-ageing population. This chapter offers an interpretation of the changes in the light of hitherto less inclusive positioning of ethnic minorities. It considers their likely impact on the identities of both minorities and the majority Yamato Japanese. The chapter argues that in the context of a shift away from the dominant post-war discourse of homogeneous nation to multicultural coexistence society, a space is opening up for greater acceptance of, and thus freedom to express, difference in Japan. With the advent of a discourse of internationalisation in the 1990s, the predecessor of the multicultural coexistence society discourse, the requirements for naturalisation were eased and the possibility of a Korean-Japanese or Taiwanese (Chinese)-Japanese identity started to be explored, albeit tentatively.