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continent. Both archeology and historical records attest to a broad flow of peoples from northeastern Asia
through the Korean Peninsula into Japan, especially during the first seven centuries of the Christian era.
120 There may also have been an earlier flow of people or at least cultural traits from more southerly regions,
which gave rise to certain «southern» characteristics that Japanese culture shares with the peoples of
Southeast Asia and the South Pacific. An early diffusion of peoples and cultures may have occurred from
125 South China southward but also eastward to Japan by way of Korea. These «southern» strains may account
for some of the mythology of Japan, the flimsy, tropical nature of its early architecture, and the fact that
Japanese in physical build are more like the South Chinese than their somewhat taller and sturdier
neighbors in Korea and North China.
130 (10) Scraps of the historical record suggest that there was some ethnic diversity in western Japan up
until the eighth century, and at that time the whole north was still in the hands of the ancestors of the Ainu.
135 But there has been no major infusion of new blood into Japan since that time. In fact, for over a thousand
years immigration of any sort into Japan has been only infinitesimal. There has thus been a long time for
racial mingling and the development of a high degree of cultural homogeneity. This process was no doubt
140 aided by the artificial seclusion of Japan from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries and has been
further fostered by strong centralized rule since then. But long before this the Japanese had developed a
picture of themselves as a racially distinct and pure group, often portrayed in terms of a single great family.
145 It is a concept more frequently encountered among primitive tribal peoples than among the citizens of a
large modem nation.
(11) Japan's imperial conquests in modem times and its present global trade have attracted some
foreigners into the islands in recent decades. The only sizable group, however, is a Korean community of
150 about 600,000 left over for the most part from the much larger numbers imported during World War II to
replace Japanese workers gone off to war. There are also a few tens of thousands of Chinese, mostly
merchants, from Japan's former colony in Taiwan or from the mainland, and a few thousand other
155 outlanders from more distant parts of Asia and the West.
(12) Altogether, these outsiders number much less than 1 percent of the population, and only the
Koreans constitute any sort of a real ethnic problem. Since they are physically all but identical with the
160 Japanese and are closely allied to them in language, they could be readily absorbed both culturally and
racially, and Koreans bom in Japan usually do lose the language of their parents in much the same way as
people ofnon-Englishspeaking origin become linguistically absorbed in the United States. The Japanese, in
165 their extreme ethnocentrism, however, tend to reject Koreans as full members of their society, while the
Koreans, resentful of this attitude and of Japan's colonial domination of their homeland in the past, often
cling to their ethnic identity. In fact, the Korean community injects a disruptive element into Japanese
170 society and politics by its passionate adherence to one or the other of the two rival Korean regimes and the
respective supporters of these regimes in Japanese politics. The Korean problem, however, is a tiny one
compared to that of ethnic diversity in North America or even the problems caused by floods of recent
175 immigrants and industrial workers into the countries of North Europe.
(13) The extraordinary exception to Japanese homogeneity, however, deserves mention. This is the
survival from feudal times of a sort of outcast group, known in the past by various names, including the
180 term eta, but now usually called burakumin, or «hamlet people», a contraction from «people of special
hamlets.» This group, which may number about 2 percent of the population, probably originated from
various sources, such as the vanquished in wars or those whose work was considered particularly
185 demeaning. Clearly they included people engaged in leather work or butchery, since the Buddhist prejudice
against the taking of all animal life made others look down on such persons, though, it should be noted, not
on the butchers of human life in a feudal society dominated by a military elite.
190 (14) The burakumin have enjoyed full legal equality for more than a century, but social prejudice against
them is still extreme. While they are in no way distinguishable physically from the rest of the Japanese and
195 are not culturally distinct except for their generally underprivileged status, most Japanese are loath to have
contact with them and are careful to check family records to insure that they avoid intermarriage. In the
highly urbanized Japan of today, the burakumin are becoming progressively less
200 recognizable, but their survival as an identifiable group is a surprising contrast to the otherwise almost
complete homogeneity of the Japanese people.
(15) One final point should be made about Japan's isolation. It is now entirely gone. Japan, in fact, is in
a sense the least remote of all nations today. None is more clearly dependent on a massive worldwide flow
205 of trade simply to exist. As a result, it has developed strong trade relations with almost all parts of the