How Can We Criticize Racism in Japan? Racist Discourse of "Zainichi Special Privileges" as Our Clue

Is it possible to conduct research on Japanese racism in the same way as we do for racism in the West? In this essay, which is written as a short accompanying piece to a longer research article titled, “Racism in Japan and ‘The 1952 System’: Japanese Immigration Control Laws and the Rise of the ‘Zainichi Privilege’ Myth,” Yong-Song Ryang argues for the conceptual fine-tuning of racism as necessary for those who practice critical anti-racism as well as for understanding the relationship of knowledge and power as inseparable from such practices. Based on his case study of right-wing organization Zaitokukai (short for Zainichi tokken o yurusanai shimin no kai, literally, the Association of Citizens against the Special Privileges of the Zainichi [diasporic Koreans in Japan]), Yong-Song Ryang offers a critical overview of the existing works on racism in Japan. Ryang calls for a more nuanced understanding of right-wing movements and the racist myth of ethnic minorities as privileged. He does so by taking into consideration the entangled effects of postwar Japanese nationalism, Japanese immigration law, and neoliberalism, both in the specific local context as well as the global context.