| Abstract: | By the twentieth century, Black intellectuals envisioned Japan as a beacon of their own possibilities. Japanese perceptions of this bond are typically implicitly assumed in most research on the subject. In this essay we argue that Japan saw Black America as a symbol of strategic not substantive solidarity. With its entrance onto the international scene in the nineteenth century, Japan encountered an international racial hierarchy, and struggled in formulating an emergent self-identity that would allow it to rationalize its rightful place alongside White Western powers. On the eve of the Second World War, Japan's national/racial identity is a complex set of influences: a merging of its own indigenous perceptions of race, an importation of outside racial ideology, and contextual needs linked to still trying to insert itself as an equal to Western powers. |
