<論文>「名誉白人」によるレイシズム批判とその限界 : 連邦期南アフリカの人種政策と日本人の「白人性」をめぐって

Abstract

This paper examines protests against racism made by Japanese intellectuals and diplomats in the first half of the 20th century, highlighting from the perspective of whiteness studies how and why their objections had limitations in addressing white domination. In the Union of South Africa, the Immigrants' Regulation Act was enacted in 1913 aiming to restrict Asian immigrants, and under the Act the Japanese were listed as prohibited immigrants. In 1922 a Japanese scholar Shiga Shigetaka sent a letter to General Smuts, Prime Minister of the Union. In his letter, he expressed strong objections to South Africa's racial policy by putting emphasis on the economic and military contributions to the British Empire and to South Africa offered by Japan during the First World War. From the perspective of whiteness studies, the Japanese subjects were categoried as a group of Asians while being regarded as civilized as western people. In other words, they could be called non-whites in terms of a 'visible' aspect of whiteness, and near-whites in terms of an 'invisible' aspect of whiteness or civilization. In the concluding analysis, the paper suggests that anti-racists were easily turned into racists through a desire to be whiter by representing themselves as civilized, in contrast to other non-whites who were labelled uncivilized.