Recognition of Domestic Discrimination as the First Step for Recognizing Japanese Identity

The National Museum of Japanese History is a sprawling complex in Sakura, in the hinterlands of Chiba prefecture west of Tokyo. Its semi-rural location perhaps allowed the government and academic facilities that together set up a building complex that, albeit briefly, goes through the entirety of Japanese history from the pre-historic to the post-World War II era. It is an ambitious project challenging for both the curators and visitors alike. I started my tour of the facility at 11:45 am and had to rush through the last two sections of the museum just to make our exit before it closed at 5 pm. 

What was remarkable about this museum is not only its size but also the attempt to strip nationalism from the overall narrative of history. During its presentation, it makes no effort to downplay that Japanese history and culture advanced because of extensive borrowings first from Korea and China, and then from Europe and America. It placed emphasis on the lives of the common people, rather than elite individuals who are often placed front and center in the usual conversations about how Japan achieved its economic and military victories over its neighbors and large parts of the world.

And with the focus on the common people, there will inevitably be discussions on what made their lives difficult. Here the museum also does not downplay the fact that the lower classes were often the victims of larger historical developments. Shattering the simplistic view of two centuries of Tokugawa shogunate rule as a time of nationwide peace, it described the frequency of local peasant uprisings against onerous levies from their feudal lords. And it clearly portrayed the downside of Japan's rapid industrialization by describing workers in factories and residents nearby who suffered and died from toxins released in the industrial process.

Perhaps most remarkably in the description of social issues, the museum expended great lengths to show there being severe discrimination against minority groups. It featured the Ainu people of Hokkaido at various parts of Japanese history, showing them first as an equal trading partner and then condemning the Meiji government for forcefully removing them from their ancestral land and banning their language and cultural practices. It described how many Koreans who lived in Japan were indiscriminately killed in the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923 as even mainstream newspapers spread rumors that they were killing and stealing in the disorder after the quake.

The narrative of discrimination did not end with the non-ethnic Japanese. The museum also featured laws that subsequent governments marked out Burakumin, who were originally descendants of criminals but ended becoming a legally defined hereditary underclass that was shunned by mainstream society. It showed artifacts that detail how Burakumin created civic groups among themselves to launch organized movements that demanded equal treatment. In the same vein, the museum bluntly described the lower status of women even in the supposedly more democratic Meiji government and described women's movements in the early modern period.

The open description of such discrimination against minorities is impressive given that mentioning such inequalities remains taboo for many Japanese people. In a society that often speaks of "we the Japanese people..." and is educated to believe that everyone belongs in the middle class, to openly show that differences exist even among those truly born and bred in Japan for generations would not normally be socially accepted. But here, in this massive museum funded by the national government, such travesties are lied out in the open, with empirical evidence on display for people who remain skeptical.

It is difficult to say what visitors to the museum would think about such presentations. Given that it is not a well-known destination even for people who live in nearby Tokyo, those who decide to make the trip and carefully scrutinized the extensive collection available on its premises are perhaps already skewed in favor of those individuals who are willing to think carefully and objectively about what Japanese history really is. How influential these individuals are in the Japanese society at large is questionable, considering that popular history education has often been taken over by popular media like drama series and manga.

Yet, the effort by the government to recognize discrimination and other social issues that exist within Japanese society is a positive one, even if it is only in a remote museum in the hinterlands of Chiba. Just the Japanese government is gradually attempting to recognize, belatedly, the cultural uniqueness of Ainu and Okinawan peoples and save them from the brink of extinction, such museum exhibits can play a productive role in changing how Japanese people see themselves as a social group. As it narrates at length the history of Japan, this museum has quietly attempted to reshape the identity of each and every Japanese visitor.