Race in Transnational Asian Studies: with a Focus on Japan and Korea
February 17 & 18, 2025
The concept of race, it has been said, is “the unconscious” of Asian Studies, an academic discipline that emerged reflecting the postwar US hegemony in the world on the one hand and the need to understand the enemy cultures during the Cold War on the other. More classically, the origin of Asian Studies in the West has been dominated by the fascination with strange yet exotic “Orientals.” These historical conditions have created a conspicuous void in studying race in East Asia from at least three missing perspectives: 1) the post-WWII and the US military hegemony in East Asia framing the issue of race into a “black and white” issue, obfuscating the racial diversity and complexity in the region; 2) historical subtext and practice of racialization in East Asia that does not just rely on skin color but other factors such as status, caste, gender, lineage, and the science of national eugenics; and 3) diverse experiences of “Western” imperialism and colonialism in connection to modernity. In the twenty-first century, Asian Studies continues to fail in competently and critically dealing with race and racism-related issues and the complexity of uneven relations of power in Asia.
This workshop approaches the formation of history and practice of race issues, racialization, and racism in Japan and Korea as a process that has been created not only through mutual engagement and contestations between the two nations (given the history of the Japanese Empire and Korea as a colony in the early twentieth century) but also through an ongoing presence of the US military, political, and economic interest. Looking at Japan and Korea will offer another interesting angle—each nation insists on its racial homogeneity, unlike any other nation in East Asia. We have yet to see a scholarly work that comparatively explores implementations of national-racial homogeneity as Japan and Korea practice and its implications in academic, cultural, and political domains. This workshop proposes to fill the current void and assert a set of effective and new tools to academically research race in Asian Studies with a focus on Japan and Korea. By doing so, the workshop aims to make a meaningful intervention to the current discourse on race and racism on a global scale.
Session One
The Japanese Monarchy and Global Racism | Takashi Fujitani (University of Toronto)
Koreans in Japan and State Racism | Sonia Ryang (Rice University)
Session Two
Who is Yamato? And Where is Heaven? Race, Religion, and Identarian Debate in Japan circa World War II | Kristin Roebuck (Cornell University)
Fathers and Fatherlands: Paternity, Race, and Place in Pure and Mixed Korean Bloodlines | Inga Kim Diederich (Colby College)
Hyperinvisibility: Representing Mixed-Race Black Japaneseness in Occupation-Era Japan | Marvin Sterling (Indiana University)
Session Three
You Are What You Eat: Hot Peppers, Colonial Gynecology, and Female Frailty in Colonial Korea | Hoi-eun Kim (Texas A&M University)
Race to Culture, Empire to Nation: Japanese Brazilians and the Invention of Postwar Japan | Sidney X. Lu (Rice University)
Session Four
Imaginations of Europe, Refracted Racism, and Islamophobia in South Korea | Sohoon Yi (Korea University)
The Mediated Construction of Racial Identity and Hierarchy in South Korea | Han Sang Kim (Ajou University)
This workshop was funded by the Creative Ventures Fund (Office of Research, Rice University), the Conference Fund (Chao Center for Asian Studies, Rice University), and the Conference Grant (NEAC, the Association for Asian Studies).