In reply to Midford's post, the dominant 'academic'
view of Japan is multicultural and even multi-ethnic Japan in contrast to popular common-sense understanding of Japan as a (relatively) homogeneous society.
Academics often claim that Japan is a multicultural and/or multi-ethnic society by rejecting the Nihonjinron literature. Academic works that argue for multicultural and/or multi-ethnic Japan include Graburn et al. eds. 2008, Lie 2001, Maher and Macdonald 1995, Denoon et al 1996 and Weiner 1997 (and many more). In my previous post, I emphasised that it is important to have a comparative perspective to discuss the nature of Japanese society in terms of homogeneity and diversity.

Midford says 'Japan and Japanese are very diverse, which is true' but compared to which country? Can he say that Japan and Japanese are very diverse compared to, say, Australia, Brazil, the USA, Russia and the UK?

In fact, multiculturalism has different meanings. If we understand multiculturalism as the existence of 'sub-culture' and 'social differences', every nation including Japan is multicultural and culture has little to do with nationality or skin colour as Helary mentions in his post. However, if we understand 'multicultural' as equivalent to 'multi-ethnic' or 'multi-racial', Japan is not so multi-cultural (or
multi-ethnic/racial) as many countries, especially immigrant countries in the New World such as the US, Brazil and Australia but also countries such as the UK, France (with a large number of North and Western Africans and some Asians among others) and even Italy (with a large number of Albanians and a quite large number of Africans, given their geographical proximity and/or relative easiness to learn Italian language).
Japan is more multi-cultural or multi-ethnic compared to 30 years ago but relatively speaking, it is not multicultural (in the second meaning), multi-ethnic or multi-racial compared to many other countries. The Index of ethnographic fractionalisation mentioned in Alexander's post also proves this reality (Japan is ranked second only after Korea as a country where it is the least likely that a resident encounters someone speaking another language).

Midford adds that the foreign population in Japan is under-estimated, given that 'hyphenated' Japanese such as 'Korean-Japanese' (and 'American-Japanese'?) are not counted as foreigners in Japanese statistics, according to which Japan's foreign population is less than 2%.
But if we apply this logic to immigrant countries such as the US and Australia and count 'Chinese-Americans', 'Irish-Americans', 'Iranian-Americans', etc. as foreigners (in the American case), would there be any 'American' left? All the US population would be foreigners.

As Kinmoth mentions, Japan before WWII seemed more multicultural, as the Japanese empire had Taiwan and Korea as colonies and Manchukuo as its puppet state.
However, we should not forget that imperial Japan was not interested in promoting multiculturalism at all, and especially in the period of mobilisation for total wars from the 1930s until the end of WWII, Japan intensified its assimilation policy in its colonies and Manchukuo by using brutal methods. In addition, despite a greater degree of assimilation, these non-Japanese people were still discriminated against.

Finally, I understand Kinmoth's question about the
(increasing) use of 'Nippon' instead of 'Nihon'. One of my Chinese colleagues told me some time ago that Nippon was used by right-wing Japanese. Although this is not always the case, we can identify the tendency by right-wing Japanese to use 'Nippon' instead of 'Nihon'.
'Nippon' has patriotic connotation, as can be found in the use of 'Dai-Nippon Teikoku' (Great Japanese Empire). While the use of 'Nippon' is not necessary nationalistic when Japanese people support their national teams in volleyball etc. and the sound of Nippon may fit better in this case (like 'Nippon cha cha cha, Nippon cha cha cha'), it is also patriotic and collectively emotional. When I asked a number of NHK staff around 5 years ago about why they almost always used Nippon, their official answers were that Nippon is the official title of the country. However, what is remarkable was their insistence on using 'Nippon' even after I told them that most Japanese people use 'Nihon'
instead in their conversation. I wonder if this NHK policy and patriotic responses were due to the influence of the chairman Ebisawa at that time. I have also noticed recently, however, that NHK has increasingly using seireki (western era) instead of Japanese (imperial) era (like Heisei) in contrast to sometime ago when they almost always used Japanese era.
It also seems that NHK does not use 'Nippon' as frequently as before. In any case, the (still frequent) use of Nippon by TV (and other mass media) is quite different from the use of 'Nihon' by many Japanese people in a daily conversation.

Hiro Watanabe

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Dr. Hiroaki Richard Watanabe, D.Phil. Oxford Lecturer, School of East Asian Studies, University of Sheffield

http://www.shef.ac.uk/seas/staff/japanese/watanabe.html
http://www.wreac.org/people/WREAC-People/Core-Researche
rs/Watanabe%2C-Hiroaki-Richard/details