Multiethnic Japan?: The Ethics of Introducing the Ainu and the Ryūkyū Kingdom when Teaching “Japanese Art”

Thinking globally about Asian art compels us to interrogate the nation-state structure of art history. For example, “Japan” as we know it is a modern construct. Yet, most current textbook discussions of Japanese art suggest that Japan’s geopolitical boundary has been largely stable through time and that “Japanese art” is a homogeneous category. In actuality, the social identity of so-called “Japanese” (or Yamato) people was in flux. Moreover, the Ainu to the north and the Ryūkyū Kingdom of the southern islets maintained independent presences on the archipelago for much of their history. They thrived within their own Asian spheres of culture and commerce, and their ethnic distinctiveness was never a question. Retaining the agenda of the post-1868 modernization that included the assimilation of the Ainu and Ryūkyū Kingdom, present popular discourse on Japanese art is often exclusively about Yamato. Canonical Japanese art history, therefore, blankets over the violence inflicted upon those who the Yamato “Japanese” perceived as their ethnic other.

At many universities, a survey course fulfilling general education requirements is often the only chance to introduce Japanese art to students. This presentation discusses the ethical dilemma of including (or not including) a unit on the cultures of the Ainu and Ryūkyū Kingdom within a discussion of “Japanese art.” While omitting it makes the course complicit in the erasure of a complex and multiethnic cultural history of the archipelago under the illusion of homogeneity, including it risks further marginalization of present ethnic minorities within the predominant discourse of Japan=Yamato.