Toward a New Anthropology of Japan: A National Frame of Study and Its Potential Use in the Study of Japan as Biopower—with the Focus on the Figure of the Korean

Abstract

The Anglophone anthropology of Japan started as part of the wartime enemy studies. As such, its primary reference frame has been and continues to be the national state; even when the regional or local communities are studied, national characteristics and national culture provided the cross-reference and comparative standard. Against this backdrop, this article argues that the national framework of the Japan anthropology can be useful in studying Japan as biopower and specifically, this article attempts to do so by focusing on the figure of the Korean in Japan in the last one hundred years.