Editors' Introduction

It is impossible to discuss race and racism in East Asia without accounting for its complex historical changes, shaped both by internal ideological and anti-colonial struggles as well as Euro-American imperialism in the last 19th century. The editorial introduction to the East Asia section of the CcRrrC contends that researching and producing knowledge about racism and racial politics in East Asia is ultimately a contentious act of translating both the term "race" itself and the implications of racism on the region primarily perceived as ethnically homogenous. The four pieces of the East Asia section underscore that understanding the constructions of race and racism as a matter of translation is an attempt at shedding light on how race is related to East Asia's complex relationship to modernity and its temporal disjuncture, which continue to shape present sociopolitical conditions. Writing on Japan, South Korea, and China, the four contributors explore racism in East Asia from various angles, including the Islamophobic anti-refugee racism in South Korea, Japanese modernity's invention of gaze at ethnic and racial "others," far-right racism against stateless Koreans, or Zainichi, living in Japan, and anti-Black as well as misogynist responses to African-Chinese interracial romance and marriage. Together, they highlight how a wide range of issues of race and racism in East Asia should be read in relation to the logic and technology of race-based violence at a global scale, repositioning East Asia within the transnational discussion around the cultural construction of race and racism.