What do you think?
Rate this book
The Affect of Difference: Representations of Race in East Asian Empire
The Affect of Difference is a collection of essays offering a new perspective on the history of race and racial ideologies in modern East Asia. Contributors approach this subject through the exploration of everyday culture from a range of academic disciplines, each working to show how race was made visible and present as a potential means of identification. By analyzing artifacts from diverse media including travelogues, records of speech, photographs, radio broadcasts, surgical techniques, tattoos, anthropometric postcards, fiction, the popular press, film and soundtracks―an archive that chronicles the quotidian experiences of the colonized―their essays shed light on the politics of inclusion and exclusion that underpinned Japanese empire.
One way this volume sets itself apart is in its use of affect as a key analytical category. Colonial politics depended heavily on the sentiments and moods aroused by media representations of race, and authorities promoted strategies that included the colonized as imperial subjects while simultaneously excluding them on the basis of "natural" differences. Chapters demonstrate how this dynamic operated by showing the close attention of empire to intimate matters including language, dress, sexuality, family, and hygiene.
The focus on affect elucidates the representational logic of both imperialist and racist discourses by providing a way to talk about inequalities that are not clear cut, to show gradations of power or shifts in definitions of normality that are otherwise difficult to discern, and to present a finely grained perspective on everyday life under racist empire. It also alerts us to the subtle, often unseen ways in which imperial or racist affects may operate beyond the reach of our methodologies.
Taken together, the essays in this volume bring the case of Japanese empire into comparative proximity with other imperial situations and contribute to a deeper, more sophisticated understanding of the role that race has played in East Asian empire.
One way this volume sets itself apart is in its use of affect as a key analytical category. Colonial politics depended heavily on the sentiments and moods aroused by media representations of race, and authorities promoted strategies that included the colonized as imperial subjects while simultaneously excluding them on the basis of "natural" differences. Chapters demonstrate how this dynamic operated by showing the close attention of empire to intimate matters including language, dress, sexuality, family, and hygiene.
The focus on affect elucidates the representational logic of both imperialist and racist discourses by providing a way to talk about inequalities that are not clear cut, to show gradations of power or shifts in definitions of normality that are otherwise difficult to discern, and to present a finely grained perspective on everyday life under racist empire. It also alerts us to the subtle, often unseen ways in which imperial or racist affects may operate beyond the reach of our methodologies.
Taken together, the essays in this volume bring the case of Japanese empire into comparative proximity with other imperial situations and contribute to a deeper, more sophisticated understanding of the role that race has played in East Asian empire.
374 pages, Hardcover
Published April 28, 2016
44 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
March 13, 2022
Introductions can be so annoying. Especially when they are nothing more than summary of the chapters to come!
Thankfully the rest of the book was a better read. The first author wrote about the sexual exploitation of Ainu women by japanese men, which was a topic that I hadn't heard mention in regard to japanese colonization of Hokkaido. And apparently Japan's multicentury conversion of Hokkaido entailed myriad experiments in eugenics, asimilation, and sexual colonialism"... oh boy.
The next author straight up contradicted many modern day thinkers when he stated that the use of imported foreign ideas involving somatological or linguistic criteria for racial classification did not produce racism in Taiwan but provided a new language game, or medium, for framing policy options that could exacerbate or mitigate preexisting forms of racism. And it is ironic how a photographer once may have created those photographs to battle notions of aborogines as savages but it was used for the opposite. And saying the aborigines are animals under international law... sounds familiar. And first the Japanese pressed for assimilation and then the KMT as well... great.... Albeit, it was interesting to read that the prior mentioned race card picture with the face marking has become so common among indigenous Taiwanese now.
From there the book switched to Japanese colonialims of Korean and how Japanese media was portraying colonized Koreans as lazy, unproductive, insular, and thus in need of Japanese colonial "guidance". That doesn't just remind me of other colonizers, but also the "even a Korean could understand it" that I sometimes heard from Japan. Sadly, I suspected that this author will use some "big" words. I already didn't get what "abject bodies" are supposed to be. The author quoted some guy who actually thinks that assimilation into the Japanese empire and culture changed the faces of the Koreans over 30 years and yet that sounds less insane and incomprehensible then what the author of this chapter spews out. In fact, he was a real problem. The information he presented could be really interesting, but the way he talked about photographies was so weird. It was a definitive downturn from earlier chapters and I was happy when the chapter was over.
The next one about Choson painters was better. And apparently they had to do portraits without making eye contact due to social conventions... that sounds potentially complicated. And apparently confucianism has a devaluation of picture and image making as well, Why? And in 18th century Korea it was forbidden to use eyes to make social contact... wow, some dramas got that really wrong then.
And for Taiwanese and Koreans speaking fluent, non-accented Japanese actually marked them as colonials in those times. And some man called Yamamuro referred to Manchukuo as an Auschwitz state.... wow. That really clashes with its multicultural image by other Japanese authors. Granred, there was lots of stuff about racial segregation, walls, militarism etc. But in what way could that be called a continental Auschwitz like mentioned at the start of the chapter?
And the chapter on the movie Nightingale was so boring that I was unable to remember it in any way.
The book "Hell of the Starving" by that Chang does sound interesting though. Allegedly it shows the defestating effects of Japanese reforms on the Korean countryside. Makes me also wonder why Chang switched so much to pro-Japanese later on. And apparently he justified Japanization of Korea by taking Anglicization of Ireland as a precedent. Hm... sounds familiar.
Naturally, the topic of cosmetic eye surgery came up... well it had to come up. However, it did sound interesting as the author didn't just attribute it to wanting to look white. And the mentioning of this situating of Japanese along the "racial-evolutionary ladder" and switching appearance to reflect that via surgery, reminds me of chinese stories where it is clear that animals have to attain human shape/become human to be able to reach enlightenment or that when they become gods they attain human form. If Japan had similar concepts, the recial hierarchy would have found fertile ground. The mere thought that beauty contests could be considered progressive and emancipatory and Japanese beauty standards considered superior to western ones would be completely unthinkable for so many progressives today.
And the statement in the mentioned novel that Japan is an unforgiving country where you can never let your guard down reminds me of modern day claims about it enforcing conformity, like with the hair in tokyo schools.
The chapter on a character called Little Black Sambo was interesting. After his early introduction, "Sambo" underwent a peculiar inversion or appropriation, from being a prominent name among the male slave population to an interpellation that supposedly encapsulated the very notion of the African male slave mentality. And based on modern sensibilities, that is what it has to stay forever. Apparently African Americans were peculiarly affected by the text, though initially, the response to Sambo among the black intelligentsia was affirmative. And it looks like an author named Iizawa fell awfool of his own rage and lack of care when he didn't realize that the author of Black Sambo was writing about an imagined American South and not Africa as Iizawa believed. And does Sambo go to India in the story or why does Iizawa claim the author conflated Africa with India?
And the author seems to have used Japanese Americans to somehow make Japanese people look as victims with the " I want people to know the reality of the masses of Japanese people like us who suffer at the hands of groundless discrimination, and that this is a problem that connects with the foundation of Japan's democracy." As if Japanese weren´t the ones who were historically the discriminators. And Sambo´s book was apparently so popular that there were bewildered librarians' accounts of the book being so popular that it was literally torn to shreds, to literary scholars arguing that Sambo is the paragon of children's literature, to the Japanese Ministry of Education and Technology sanctioned versions of Chibikuro, to parents forming concerned citizens committees, by 1988, Chibikuro had, to borrow the words of Ochiai Akiko, permeated Japanese society.
Sadly the book ended on a boring and weird chapter.
Thankfully the rest of the book was a better read. The first author wrote about the sexual exploitation of Ainu women by japanese men, which was a topic that I hadn't heard mention in regard to japanese colonization of Hokkaido. And apparently Japan's multicentury conversion of Hokkaido entailed myriad experiments in eugenics, asimilation, and sexual colonialism"... oh boy.
The next author straight up contradicted many modern day thinkers when he stated that the use of imported foreign ideas involving somatological or linguistic criteria for racial classification did not produce racism in Taiwan but provided a new language game, or medium, for framing policy options that could exacerbate or mitigate preexisting forms of racism. And it is ironic how a photographer once may have created those photographs to battle notions of aborogines as savages but it was used for the opposite. And saying the aborigines are animals under international law... sounds familiar. And first the Japanese pressed for assimilation and then the KMT as well... great.... Albeit, it was interesting to read that the prior mentioned race card picture with the face marking has become so common among indigenous Taiwanese now.
From there the book switched to Japanese colonialims of Korean and how Japanese media was portraying colonized Koreans as lazy, unproductive, insular, and thus in need of Japanese colonial "guidance". That doesn't just remind me of other colonizers, but also the "even a Korean could understand it" that I sometimes heard from Japan. Sadly, I suspected that this author will use some "big" words. I already didn't get what "abject bodies" are supposed to be. The author quoted some guy who actually thinks that assimilation into the Japanese empire and culture changed the faces of the Koreans over 30 years and yet that sounds less insane and incomprehensible then what the author of this chapter spews out. In fact, he was a real problem. The information he presented could be really interesting, but the way he talked about photographies was so weird. It was a definitive downturn from earlier chapters and I was happy when the chapter was over.
The next one about Choson painters was better. And apparently they had to do portraits without making eye contact due to social conventions... that sounds potentially complicated. And apparently confucianism has a devaluation of picture and image making as well, Why? And in 18th century Korea it was forbidden to use eyes to make social contact... wow, some dramas got that really wrong then.
And for Taiwanese and Koreans speaking fluent, non-accented Japanese actually marked them as colonials in those times. And some man called Yamamuro referred to Manchukuo as an Auschwitz state.... wow. That really clashes with its multicultural image by other Japanese authors. Granred, there was lots of stuff about racial segregation, walls, militarism etc. But in what way could that be called a continental Auschwitz like mentioned at the start of the chapter?
And the chapter on the movie Nightingale was so boring that I was unable to remember it in any way.
The book "Hell of the Starving" by that Chang does sound interesting though. Allegedly it shows the defestating effects of Japanese reforms on the Korean countryside. Makes me also wonder why Chang switched so much to pro-Japanese later on. And apparently he justified Japanization of Korea by taking Anglicization of Ireland as a precedent. Hm... sounds familiar.
Naturally, the topic of cosmetic eye surgery came up... well it had to come up. However, it did sound interesting as the author didn't just attribute it to wanting to look white. And the mentioning of this situating of Japanese along the "racial-evolutionary ladder" and switching appearance to reflect that via surgery, reminds me of chinese stories where it is clear that animals have to attain human shape/become human to be able to reach enlightenment or that when they become gods they attain human form. If Japan had similar concepts, the recial hierarchy would have found fertile ground. The mere thought that beauty contests could be considered progressive and emancipatory and Japanese beauty standards considered superior to western ones would be completely unthinkable for so many progressives today.
And the statement in the mentioned novel that Japan is an unforgiving country where you can never let your guard down reminds me of modern day claims about it enforcing conformity, like with the hair in tokyo schools.
The chapter on a character called Little Black Sambo was interesting. After his early introduction, "Sambo" underwent a peculiar inversion or appropriation, from being a prominent name among the male slave population to an interpellation that supposedly encapsulated the very notion of the African male slave mentality. And based on modern sensibilities, that is what it has to stay forever. Apparently African Americans were peculiarly affected by the text, though initially, the response to Sambo among the black intelligentsia was affirmative. And it looks like an author named Iizawa fell awfool of his own rage and lack of care when he didn't realize that the author of Black Sambo was writing about an imagined American South and not Africa as Iizawa believed. And does Sambo go to India in the story or why does Iizawa claim the author conflated Africa with India?
And the author seems to have used Japanese Americans to somehow make Japanese people look as victims with the " I want people to know the reality of the masses of Japanese people like us who suffer at the hands of groundless discrimination, and that this is a problem that connects with the foundation of Japan's democracy." As if Japanese weren´t the ones who were historically the discriminators. And Sambo´s book was apparently so popular that there were bewildered librarians' accounts of the book being so popular that it was literally torn to shreds, to literary scholars arguing that Sambo is the paragon of children's literature, to the Japanese Ministry of Education and Technology sanctioned versions of Chibikuro, to parents forming concerned citizens committees, by 1988, Chibikuro had, to borrow the words of Ochiai Akiko, permeated Japanese society.
Sadly the book ended on a boring and weird chapter.
Displaying 1 of 1 review