Editors’ Introduction: Cultural Constructions of Race and Racism in China, Koreas, and Japan

Introduction

After the significant impact of the MENA/SWANA forum in 2021, the Cultural Constructions of Race and Racism Research Collective (CcRrrC) expanded its focus to include two other regions in the global conversation on racism and racial politics: the Caribbean and East Asia. In late 2022 and early 2023, as the East Asia committee was established within the project, the region was undergoing what scholars and journalists refer to as a “new Cold War.”¹ This term is used to describe the deepening political and ideological divide resulting from tensions between the US and China, both vying for control in the region.

This changing political landscape has given rise to the growth of ethnonationalism under the banner of national security, which has been used to silence dissent, with a particular focus on immigrants and refugees. At the same time, we have witnessed concerning signs of increasing conservatism, paternalism, and a shift towards right-wing ideologies in countries like China, Japan, and South Korea. This shift has manifested in acts of everyday violence against minority groups, including women, sexual minorities, individuals with disabilities, and those who identify as ethnoracial minorities in this region conventionally assumed as ethnically homogenous.

The East Asia section thus invites us to examine racism in the broader political and cultural context of t. This context is distinct from the Euro-American ideas of race, racism, and anti-Black violence. However, we also acknowledge the deep-seated relationship between the region and the cultural and political influence of the United States, and the West at large, which have shaped regional ethno-racial perspectives and awareness over time. The East Asia section editors began with several key questions from the outset of this project: Who are our readers and how do we convey discussions about race and racism when much of the available public and scholarly discourse is primarily in English, originating from the Euro-American context? Are we, as native informants based in East Asia, merely reporting on East Asian racism for an English-speaking audience, or are we creating a space that welcomes local and global participants interested in engaging in a dialogue on racism? How can we confront homegrown racisms without relying solely on US-specific frameworks, yet still ensure that we don’t use an aversion to US-centric perspectives to silence voices speaking out against racism? Indeed, we are very much in line with what Rayya El Zein noted in her edited 2021 MENA/SWANA issue that “accusations of US-centrism—since they frequently silence an often Black speaker—have largely suppressed anti-racist critiques” whenever a critical anti-racist discourse forms in non-US contexts.² 

Simultaneously, the East Asia committee takes a close look at the intricate connection between local ethnoracial dynamics and the specific focus of the CcRrrC, which revolves around critiquing anti-Black racism. However, in contrast to the Euro-American context, where discussions and debates about racism are plentiful, in East Asia, racism often goes underestimated, unnoticed, or even outright disavowed, often based on the argument that the term racism is a Western import and, therefore, a colonizing framework. In part, the difficulties and un-translatability of talking about race in East Asia stems from the fact that, as the following sections show, the imported notion of race is often conflated with the local articulation of nation and ethnicity. It is often the case that social discrimination against ethnic minority groups is discussed without referring to the framework of racism. 

These interpretive tensions are heightened by the fact that East Asia as a region is also a constructed entity vis-à-vis the centrality of the “West,” especially the US. Put differently, the conceptualization of East Asia is closely tied to the US-centric intellectual project about Asia developed out of the Cold War politics. As cultural studies scholar Kuan-Hsing Chen notes, the “United States has become the inside of East Asia, and it is constitutive of a new East Asian subjectivity” following the Second World War and the Korean War.³ By engaging with complex layers of racism and racial politics in East Asia, this section thus seeks to challenge and deconstruct the very concept of East Asia, noting that researching race and its complicated relationship to nation and ethnicity in the region, in turn, highlights the contested nature of East Asia itself. 

In addition, race as understood and applied to everyday life in East Asia is tied to East Asia’s modern history, which has forged an imbricated relationship with Western epistemology of race. Concurrently, race and racial politics have taken distinct, homegrown directions, reflecting local politics and dynamics. Considering this, we invite the readers to consider the complexity of research on race and racism in East Asia not as a limitation but a generative opportunity to pry open a space for overdue conversations around how race and racism are in fact essential to understanding everyday cultural practices across the region. Perhaps the first step to such an endeavor is to revisit the historical background and clarify how the contemporary cultural constructions of race and racism may be attributed to East Asia’s experiences in colonial modernity.

Historical Background 

Historicizing the constructions of race and racism in the East Asian region presents several key challenges, particularly due to the conceptual and discursive complexities in framing race and racism within and across diverse East Asian countries. The term “race,” or its equivalents like “人種” (rén zhǒng/injong/jinshu), was introduced to East Asia in the nineteenth century as part of the broader European intellectual influence, which was amplified by the global impact of Euro-American colonization. In a context where “race” was emerging as a concept to comprehend East Asians’ newly assigned place within the global racial hierarchy, another term, “民族” (mínzú/minjok/minzoku), gained prominence for its role in uniting and reinforcing ethno-national identities among people under colonial pressures. Nevertheless, the translation of 民族 into English as merely an ethnic group or ethnicity does not capture its full complexity. More specifically, its ideological blending of ethnicity with nation still wields significant influence in the countries discussed in this context and serves as a vital gauge in various aspects of ethnoracial discrimination.

Meanwhile, as much as delving deep into the history of race and racism in East Asia is important, it should be noted the historical context must be understood with a caveat that a nation-based exploration is inherently delimiting. The constructions of race and racism in each East Asian country have been profoundly influenced by interconnected dynamics, such as Japanese colonialism, Chinese dominance, and the Cold War division of the Koreas. Furthermore, East Asia’s contentious policies towards Southeast and South Asian countries in the twenty-first century, where migrant workers and refugees have increasingly become victims of ethnoracial violence in “destination” countries like South Korea and Japan, complicate discussions that solely focus on individual nation-states. Therefore, it is crucial to understand each country’s history of race and racism within the broader context of the constructions of race and racism in other parts of East Asia and more widely across Asia.

In the Chinese context, the comprehension of racial issues is multifaceted and can be situated along the continuum of the historical construction of racial identities both within the country and across Asia. This historical construction unfolds through at least four distinct stages. In his work The Star Raft, Philip Snow narrates numerous encounters between Chinese seafarers, traders, and officials with non-Chinese, non-Asian individuals, particularly during the Tang and Song dynasties.⁴ Julie Wilensky observes that Black individuals, in particular, were initially regarded in China as possessing mysterious and magical abilities.⁵ Subsequently, associations were made with the slave trade, leading to the dehumanization of Black people and their association with savagery. These encounters with “Otherness” during Imperial China were marked by a Sino-barbarian dichotomy, where Chinese civilization was often portrayed as culturally superior.

Modern concepts of race and scientific racism found their way into China during the late nineteenth century through interactions with the West and Japanese translations of Western political theory. The Sinification of racial ideas, however, was not merely a matter of translation; it resulted from a complex process of negotiation and adaptation. This process gave rise to a new worldview, complete with an associated racial hierarchy that placed white and yellow races at the apex. As the twentieth century unfolded, the Sinified notion of race became crucial for Chinese intellectuals seeking to make sense of the international system and to challenge it. This challenge manifested through the early emergence of Chinese nationalism, followed by the development of an anti-colonial discourse, and culminating in the formulation of a new mode of Maoist racial thinking among communist elites during the heyday of internationalism. Paradoxically, in this new mode, China positioned itself as the savior of the Third World, with a particular emphasis on assisting Africa against European invasions. Post-socialist racial thinking weaves together various threads in the historical construction of racial identities in China. Throughout the nation’s modern history, race and nationality have been intertwined in the discursive construction of the “Han race.” However, as Barry Sautman notes, one of the most defining aspects of post-socialist racial thinking is the (co)emergence of a process that strengthens Chinese nationalism, alongside with what some scholars, like Shanshan Lan, have referred to as “anti-Black racism,” or “institutional racism,” in the Chinese context.⁶

Meanwhile, in Japan, we encounter at least four distinct yet interconnected layers of racism and racial politics. The first layer has a considerably long history, tracing back to feudal times when discrimination was directed toward outcast groups stigmatized as eta and hinin, individuals associated with occupations involving animal carcasses and leather. These groups were compelled to live in segregated communities. After the Tokugawa caste system was dismantled during the early Meiji period, they were labeled as burakumin, literally meaning members of a hamlet. They endured ongoing stigmatization and discrimination, affecting their employment opportunities, marriages, and access to education.

The second layer of racism in Japan originates from its imperial history, during which it extended its dominion by incorporating neighboring regions and countries into the empire through both inclusive and exclusive measures. Japanese theorists adopted and internalized Eurocentric racial order, situating Japan as a leader of Asia to catch up with Western civilization. After the dissolution of the empire following Japan’s defeat, individuals who had relocated to Japan from former colonies like Korea and Taiwan found themselves stripped of their citizenship and placed in a liminal status—neither fully Japanese nor foreigners. They remained in Japan as Zainichi (stateless Koreans residing in Japan) and continued to be subjected to violent hate crimes. The emergence of a group known as the Civil Association against Privileges for Resident Koreans (Zainichi tokken wo yurusanai shimin no kai), founded in 2007, not only reflects the social unrest that accumulated during a prolonged economic downturn but also underscores Japan’s enduring colonial amnesia.

The third layer of racism in Japan, xenophobia and anti-Black racism, also has a longer history, and has much to do with Japanese self-identity as an ethnically homogeneous group. This line of racism sometimes takes the form of celebration of hafu (multiracial children), but only with white Euro-American backgrounds. More recently, new forms of racism have emerged to include exploitation of foreign technical intern trainees, primarily from Southeast Asia. This program, initiated in 1993 under the guise of technical exchange, but practically serving to address labor shortages in agriculture and care work, has exposed deep-rooted xenophobia within Japanese society. It highlights how Japanese society rigidly demarcates those deemed eligible to live and assimilate into Japan from those who face dire circumstances. Furthermore, the mistreatment of detainees seeking asylum in Japan at immigration centers underscores these xenophobic tendencies. The recent revision of the Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Act in 2023 further exacerbated the precarious status of refugees. Despite concrete evidence and surveys pointing to the existence of racism in Japan, there is a prevailing belief that there is no racial discrimination in the country. This absence of discussion on race and racism in Japan can be attributed to the propagation of the myth of Japanese racial homogeneity by political leaders, which has been widely disseminated in society. It is essential to recognize that this myth gained prominence mainly after World War II, following the collapse of the Empire of Japan and the loss of its colonies. It is worth noting that the post-war resurgence of nationalism and exceptionalism in Japan was closely tied to US Cold War expansionism, which utilized Japan as a client state. 

Japanese and Chinese historical formation of race and racism is imbricated in Korea’s history. During Japanese colonial rule over Korea (1910–1945), the concept of race was introduced to frame the position of Korean people within the global hierarchy. The notion of race was also interpreted within the framework of Social Darwinism, which was adopted as a means to alter the bleak future projected for Koreans as an inferior race. In this process, Blackness became a powerful metaphor for the plight of Korean people. Korean intellectuals and artists often articulated their ideas regarding the connection between colonized Koreans and enslaved Black individuals, portraying the dire circumstances of both as a shared challenge that Koreans needed to surmount.

Following the Potsdam Declaration in 1945, the Korean Peninsula witnessed a division by the US and the Soviet Union, with each occupying the southern and northern regions, respectively, until 1948. The impact of US military occupation significantly shaped the mid-twentieth-century perception of race and racism in South Korea. Notably, this influence was evident through the practice of Jim Crow laws within and near US military bases. For example, feminist historians have revealed that sexually trafficked Korean women faced violence from white soldiers if they socialized with Black soldiers, and the military bases imposed strict racial segregation.⁷ The era of US military occupation and the Korean War (1950–1953) resulted in a significant number of multiracial war children. Under the banner of “one nation, one ethnicity” (ilminilguk), then-president Rhee Syngman orchestrated a campaign that can be viewed as a form of ethnic cleansing, sending thousands of multiracial war children back to their fatherland. The emphasis on ethnic homogeneity was sustained and reinforced during Park Chunghee’s military authoritarian rule, during which the term minjok served as the guiding principle for anti-communist and nationalist narratives in the emerging postcolonial nation-state.

The deeply ingrained sociocultural beliefs in ethnic homogeneity faced challenges as South Korea initiated the introduction of migrant workers and marriage migrant women from “developing countries” in the mid-1990s. This influx led to a transformation in demographics, with the emergence of a new generation of multiracial and multiethnic children. In response to this changing landscape, the South Korean government introduced the concept of damunhwa, often translated as multiculturalism. Over time, damunhwa has devolved into a derogatory label for immigrant, multiethnic, and multiracial individuals, especially children, who are often treated as perpetual outsiders. Simultaneously, neoliberal labor policies led to the influx of a low-wage labor force from China, with immigration priorities extended to Korean diasporic communities in China, whose ancestors had sought refuge from colonial hardships in the early twentieth century. Amid North Korea’s economic crisis and South Korea’s increased acceptance of North Korean defectors, the growing population of defectors has added diversity. Despite sharing the same ethnicity as South Koreans, these groups often face racially motivated hate crimes and discrimination, the case of which demonstrates Balibar’s concept of culture-based neo-racism.⁸ Most recently, South Korea has experienced increased Islamophobia and anti-refugee sentiments, particularly amid a surge in conservatism and far-right movements. 

As its modern history illustrates, East Asia, particularly in China, Japan, and Koreas, experienced distinct but closely related development of racism and racial politics mediated through Japanese and Western imperialism and colonialism. The myth of ethnoracial homogeneity has persisted in all three countries, but the rapid inflow of migrant workers and refugees into the region, prompted by neoliberal capitalism and “new Cold War,” has challenged the myth while triggering reactionary responses to ethnic and racial heterogeneity.

Critical Dialogue on Cultural Constructions of Race and Racism in East Asia

Given the historical background, how is the critical dialogue around race and racism unfolding? In China, the prevailing belief among Chinese citizens is that racial issues and racism are not the country’s inherent problems. This perception, as elucidated by Yinghong Cheng, finds its roots in the turbulent years of anti-colonial struggle. Cheng underscores how official discourse during this period intricately linked the concept of race to class struggle and oppression, contending that racism only emerged because of Western colonialism.⁹

Engaging in discussions about race and racism within China was met with skepticism, often dismissed as an effort to downplay the severity of Western racism or as an attempt to interpret Chinese societal and geopolitical realities through a Western lens. Much of the existing scholarship on the topic of race in China commences with the research of Dutch historian Frank Dikköter. Dikköter traces the impact of racial ideologies on the formation of a Chinese racial identity back to the waning days of the Qing dynasty.¹⁰ During this period, scholars and intellectuals grappled with reconciling the notion of a modern Chinese state within the racial hierarchies that emerged from colonialism. As previously noted, racial issues in the People’s Republic were predominantly viewed as external matters, leading Chinese scholars to refrain from addressing or acknowledging this subject for an extended period. However, over the past two decades, especially following the surge in foreign presence due to WTO accession, discussions surrounding racial issues, race, racism, and their intersections with nationalistic ideologies have gained relative prominence in public discourse.

 Notably, a series of contentious incidents related to the portrayal of Blackness in Chinese official and social media has garnered widespread attention in recent years. Lan Shanshan meticulously analyzed the cultural dynamics of race and racism in relation to media representation.¹¹ Chenchen Zhang’s work stands out in illustrating how contemporary racial discourses in China intersect with Western right-wing ideologies, informing the rise of a Chinese form of racial nationalism.¹² Simultaneously, Yinghong Cheng and others have highlighted the emergence of what many perceive as anti-Black racist rhetoric. This rhetoric often aims to construct Chineseness as an alternative to the globally dominant whiteness, suggesting that China’s ascendancy could reshape the global racial hierarchy.¹³

 Following this trajectory, Jamie Monson’s research on Africa-China historical relations, particularly by drawing on Claire Jean Kim’s framework of American racial triangulation between Asian Americans, Black Americans, and white Americans, has introduced a triangular perspective. Monson and other scholars suggest that comprehending the present-day (re)production of racist rhetoric and practices in China, as well as among Chinese communities in Africa, necessitates a triangular examination of how Blackness and Chineseness have evolved—in a co-constitutive manner—in relation to whiteness within the colonial context.¹⁴

Whereas in Japan, while the notions of race and ethnicity were always at the core of legitimization of imperial expansion, the topic has not been fully studied until recently, especially in scholarly works. In part, this is because Japanese intellectuals and politicians have avoided using the terms race and racism in relation to Japan’s imperial past.

Among those who explore race and racism in a historical context, Tessa Morris-Suzuki delineates how the Western notions of race and ethnicity were introduced, translated, and redefined in the early modern Japan.¹⁵ According to Morris-Suzuki, Japanese scholars like Shinmei Masaaki and Kada Tetuji, who studied in Germany, rejected the notion of race and instead adopted the notion of volk or minzoku (ethnicity) to criticize racism in Euro-American countries, to justify its own imperial expansion. This adoption also became the epistemological basis for the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, which aimed to build  economic-political units consisting of the same Asian minzoku, with Japan as its leader. In a similar vein, Eiji Oguma traces out a genealogy of the consciousness of identity of the Japanese from the beginning of the modern era to the early post-World War II period.¹⁶ It reveals how the myth of Japanese as a racially homogeneous group became dominant in the post-war period with Japan’s defeat and subsequent collapse of the empire, and how the myth led to Japanese forgetting of its imperial past.          

Although those works present a clear picture on how the politics of exclusion/inclusion were at play in drawing a boundary of “Japanese,” they do not fully capture what it means to those who were defined as “non-Japanese.” Ukai Satoshi, Sakai Naoki, Tessa Morris-Suzuki, and Lee Hyoduk’s edited volume presents the limitations and possibilities of “Racism Studies” in Japan by revisiting how race and racism have been studied in other parts of the world.¹⁷ Ryang Yong-Song further analyzes the peculiarities of Japanese racism by examining racialization of Zainichi within the Cold War geopolitics.¹⁸ Ryang argues that the enforcement of the San Francisco Treaty of 1952 and the New Immigration Law, which were modeled after the McCarran-Walter Act in the US, stripped the former colonized population of their Japanese citizenship, putting them into the precarious status as Zainichi.    

In South Korea, as the public responses to contemporary racial issues are becoming more vocal with the increase in migration beginning in the mid-1990s, the body of literature on racial politics is also growing. In addition to the complex history of how the idea of race has been brought about, one of the reasons for this slow development is the preconceived notion that issues that merit scholarly attention have little to do with race. For instance, discriminations against ethnic Korean migrant workers from China are understood and theorized as an outcome of neoliberal devastation of the economy and anti-Chinese sentiment rather than a racial matter. Thus, anthropologist Kim Hyunmee rightly points out that there is neither a singular theory nor method to understand racial issues in South Korea.¹⁹ Part of the conundrum for scholars is to both be critical of the Euro-American importation of critical race theories that may be Euro-American-specific, yet still recognize the long-term impact of Euro-American hegemony on the local constructions of race and racism in Korea.

So far, much of the local scholarship on race and racism has dealt with how European modernity and nineteenth-century pseudoscientific race research have shaped Euro-American colonial expansion. For instance, historian Yeom Woonok has published widely on the constructions of race and racism, but specifically from how they were shaped in the British Empire.²⁰ At the other end of the spectrum of research is Korean American scholars including Shin Gi-wook, Nadia Y. Kim, John Lie, Nancy Abelmann, and Ji-Yeon Yuh writing about the racialized experiences of Koreans immigrating to the US, where their ideas about Koreanness are deconstructed redeveloped as racial minorities in white hegemonic places.²¹

Given this, there is a curious lack of theorization of the local and culturally specific racial politics and how they manifest in literature, performance, social activism, and everyday life. One exception is a recently widening research area in the Korean social sciences fields including anthropology and sociology, where racial issues are theorized in the context of the South Korean political structure, the impact of multicultural and neoliberal economic policies, and social actors responding to racial issues as part of the everyday social fabric. For instance, feminist anthropologist Kim Hyunmee has extensively written about neo-racism against Southeast Asian marriage migrant women and Muslim refugees in South Korea across different political climates between the conservative and the progressive. Kim conceptualizes, borrowing from Zygmunt Bauman’s theory, that South Korea’s liquid state has rendered itself a “patriarchal authoritarian state” where the racial, gendered, and ethnic hierarchy is assembled according to the heteropatriarchal order.²²

Social science research on the constructions of race and racism in South Korea, however, has not necessarily theorized specifically on how the constructions of race and racism are deeply entangled with affect, corporeality, and aesthetic articulations of racial visibility, and how they play out in the mundane. This is where the necessity of humanities research, especially cultural studies research, on the constructions of race and racism plays an important role in diversifying the still growing field of race theory and research in Korea.

Navigating the Complex Local Cultural Terrain

The four essays presented here shed light on the multifaceted and, at times, contentious nature of race and racism in the region. They explore issues related to ethnocentrism, nationalism, gender, language, and the challenges of theorizing racial politics within each culture. Notably, three out of the four pieces are written in the authors’ native languages, Korean and Japanese, not only to critique Anglocentrism but also to emphasize the authors’ commitment to highlighting the local cultural nuances and critical aspects of racial politics that can be lost in translation. This reflects our recognition that our readers may not all be English speakers and encourages their active participation in this crucial conversation about race and racism. English translations follow.

Turning our focus to China, Kudus Oluwatoyin Adebayo explores the emerging trend of interracial relationships in China. He delves into the lives of Femi and Mei, a Nigerian-Chinese couple living in Guangzhou. Adebayo’s narrative vividly portrays the challenges they face and the societal resistance they encounter due to their unconventional relationship. It explores the emotional journey they undertake, addressing both the joys and hardships of transcending racial boundaries in a society marked by racial sensitivity and discrimination. Adebayo’s piece prompts readers to contemplate China’s readiness to embrace its Afro-Chinese future, raising pertinent questions about how this distinctive identity may shape future racial dynamics in the country. Through Femi and Mei’s story, Adebayo provides a sincere insight into the complexities of love, family, and race in a society where such boundaries are closely scrutinized, offering a thought-provoking reflection on the resilience and determination of those who transgress racial lines in pursuit of love and family in contemporary China.

Shifting our focus to South Korea, Park Kyungjoo presents an insightful discussion on how racialized anti-refugee sentiment evolved in South Korea following the 2016–2017 Candlelight Protests, which ultimately led to the impeachment of President Park Geun-hye. While the Candlelight Protests and their outcomes symbolize South Korean civil society’s capacity to champion democratic values, Park argues that the process, as well as the new progressive administration that relied on the civic power mobilized through the movement, were deeply nationalistic, excluding migrants, ethnic minorities, and refugees from the political agenda. In fact, due to concerns about national security and the consolidation of the nation following the Candlelight Protests, refugees are now increasingly seen as a hindrance to South Korea’s political progress. Park’s essay sheds light on how global politics of refugee rights are both reproduced and complicated by local racial politics, and why refugee issues in South Korea are connected to larger issues of global anti-Muslim racism.

For Japan, Ryang Yong-Song examines the geopolitical and historical context in which racism against Zainichi has emerged and been exacerbated in recent decades. According to Ryang, two factors, neoliberalism and the “1952 system,” have jointly shaped the development of what he calls the “Zainichi Privilege Myth.” This myth is the belief that the Zainichi unfairly enjoy state welfare and alleged privileges. The 1952 system, which granted Japan’s official independence from American Occupation through the San Francisco Peace Treaty of 1952, simultaneously stripped former colonized populations of Japanese nationality. Instead, Zainichi Koreans were granted special permission to reside in Japan. Ryang investigates how this arrangement continues to govern non-Japanese nationals and, as a result, has become the basis for persisting structural racism against Zainichi Koreans.

Another perspective from Japan comes from Hikaru Fujii, whose oeuvre as a visual artist critically responds to contemporary social issues. Fujii employs extensive research and fieldwork to investigate existing systems and structures in contemporary Japan, on the premise that art is produced through its intimate relationship to society and history. Fujii’s piece illustrates his installation works, which explores how the racialized concept of Japaneseness has consistently defined and perceived its otherness. Using images and videos of installations, readers will experience the historical journey from the sixteenth century to the present, in which the label of “Japanese” has constantly drawn and redrawn boundaries between “us” and “them.” Fujii’s piece raises essential questions about what art can do to expose and combat persistent racism.

While the authors come from various backgrounds (Adebayo as a social science researcher, Park as an activist, Ryang as a researcher of language culture, and Fujii as a visual artist), all of their pieces contribute to cultural studies by navigating the locally specific cultural terrain, in which online speech, visual art, and popular media discourses reinforce, but are also used to combat, racism shaped by local politics. They clearly attest to how constructions of race and racism in East Asia are direct results of culturally produced racist images of Black people on popular media, of Muslims and Zainichi through misinformation on social media, and of various ethnic others in paintings and curatorial practices. This local specificity of cultural constructions of race and racism, however, also points us to how the minoritarian subjects discriminated against by racist policies and community responses mobilize their own practices to critique the normative structure of racism and ethno-nationalism, which continue to shape East Asia. Participants in Fujii’s media and performance works, for instance, make visible, through their voices and embodied movements, how the interiority of the everyday racist aggression has deep roots in the modern history of Japan, thereby offering a critique not commonly available in (or accepted by) its society. Adebayo’s interlocutors, Femi and Mei, use their storytelling skills to critically reevaluate the popular discourses present in China, as well as in Nigeria, against interracial couples but also to educate their children to embrace their identities in a challenging environment hostile to multiracial children. Combatting online hate speech, subjects discussed in Park and Ryang’s pieces, especially Muslim refugees and stateless Koreans, show, though perhaps not explicitly, how they consistently document threatening text messages they receive, misinformation abound on social media, or sites of right-wing protests as their own way to archive a long and arduous process of anti-racist activism. Even though these are locally specific examples from East Asia, they resonate with the question of how to combat racist online misinformation, which has triggered and, in part, contributed directly to large-scale violence in various parts of the world including the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Palestine, Syria, and Yemen among others. Ryang specifically points to how understanding modern and contemporary racism in Japan in the context of Western modernity can be a crucial tool for linking East Asia to the broader issues of racism globally, especially in the cases like the genocide in Palestine. 

With this, the East Asia section editors of the CcRrrC are critically aware of the two blindspots in this section: the relative underrepresentation of the rest of East Asia (e.g. North Korea, Mongolia, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, and Tibet) and the lack of women writers, and subsequently, limited if not scant discussion of gender and sexuality in the constructions of race and racism in East Asia. Particularly regarding the latter, the East Asia section editors observed both welcoming and worrying signs regarding women activists, journalists, artists, and cultural practitioners working within East Asia on the relationship between gender and race, anti-Black discrimination, and Islamophobia. The women writers we initially approached were, in general, overworked and highly in demand, constantly responding to media and research inquiries about race relations in East Asia and taking on an enormous amount of activist and research works, as race and racism have become an urgent topic worthy of scholarly attention in the region. While increased visibility of these authors’ presence across different fields is certainly encouraging, the hurdles we faced as editors to commissioning women authors, especially non-academics, further raises critical questions about gender dynamics, hierarchy, and labor within the field of race and ethnicity research itself in East Asia. We, the editors, consider this a learning moment and an urgent call to multiply spaces like the CcRrrC to diversify voices while also strengthening intersectional approaches to the cultural constructions of race and racism in East Asia.

Notes