Japan

Abstract

Japan has been and remains a multiethnic society. The construction of the modern Japanese nation was coeval with the creation of ethnic diversity. The incorporation of northern and southern territories in the late nineteenth century generated Ainu and Okinawans as minority groups. Simultaneously, the emergence of modern citizenship created a new category of Burakumin, descendants of premodern outcastes. The expansion of the Japanese empire incorporated Koreans, Chinese, and others into the main Japanese islands. Yet the post-World War II understanding of Japan stressed its ethnic homogeneity, which was challenged only in the mid-1980s with the influx of foreign migrant workers and the renewed activism of existing ethnic minority groups.