Confronting diversity: Africans challenging Japanese societal convictions

Abstract

This paper examines how sub-Saharan Africans in Japan challenge three Japanese societal convictions: the myth of Japanese homogeneity, ideas concerning contemporary blackness, and inclusivity into Japanese self-identity. The analysis is based on participant-observation fieldwork and in-depth interviews with members of Japan's African communities. As will be shown below, the particular conditions surrounding African migration are notably different from those of other minority groups in Japan. The African population embodies a phenotypically disparate population that has settled in Japan and engages in work within the core of mainstream society. Additionally, in contrast to other minority groups, African-Japanese children lack a strong ethnic consciousness. As a result it is increasingly likely they will demand greater acceptance into mainstream Japanese identity, thereby questioning some of the essential criteria of what it means to be Japanese.

Making African Places in Japanese Space

“…By the 2000s, they established themselves as a particularly profound presence in Japan's nightlife districts. Today, Africans are most recognized for their role as street touts who stand on street corners and sidewalks and attempt to attract pedestrians into the establishments for which they are working (Capobianco ; Cybriwsky ).…”

“…There are also a further set of circumstances facing Africans that link elements of racial discrimination with those of class. For example, Africans are often conceptualized and engaged differently than African Americans or Jamaicans (Capobianco ). Although African Americans and Afro‐Caribbean culture in Japan is often conceptualized as cool, chic, fashionable, and subversive, Africans are often conceptualized as impoverished, underdeveloped, and backward (Kelsky ; Russell , , ).…”

“…There have been scholars who have discussed the topic of race in Asia and in Japan specifically (Russell , , , ; Sterling ), with John Russell (, ) demonstrating that Japanese understandings of race have been heavily influenced by Western racial ideas, which has engendered a particularly stereotypical image of Blacks that have become commonplace throughout Japanese racial perceptions (Russell , 5). Elsewhere, I have explored the difference between Afro‐Western and African blackness in the Japanese context (Capobianco , 198). To understand the conditions facing Africans in Japan, one must therefore understand how Japanese society engages the circulation of Afro‐Western blackness in racialized ways that serve specific purposes and contextualize how these engagements build on and appropriate Western racialized ideas in localized ways (see Condry ; Cornyetz ; Kelsky ).…”

“…However, it is important to recognize that the form of blackness these scholarly works address is a discretely Western form of blackness in Japan (i.e., the African American or the Afro‐Caribbean experience). This form of blackness is in many ways distinct from African blackness from the African continent, which is engaged by Japanese society somewhat differently (Capobianco ; Russell ; Wakabayashi ). While stereotypes of Africans may share some similarity in terms of racial perceptions, the stylish, liberating, and fashionable elements of Western blackness imagined in Japan nevertheless typically does not extend to tropes of African blackness, which is often envisioned as more primitive, backward, and underdeveloped.…”

Migration and identity

“…These depictions staunchly contrast with the ways Japanese society conceptualizes Africans from the African continent. In this case, Africa is associated with poverty, war, backwardness, primitiveness, and underdevelopment (Capobianco 2015;Russell 2011;Wakabayashi 1996). Because of this, it is not uncommon for Africans in Japan to portray themselves as being from America and saying that they are American.…”