The Subaltern Subject and Early Modern Taxonomies: Indianisation and Racialisation of the Japanese Outcaste

AbstractPremodern Japanese and Western writers both pointed out the similitude between Indian so-called untouchables (poleas, candala, pariah) and Japan’s largest outcaste group (eta, kawata, kawaramono). These bodies of discourse also reveal another striking interpretative similarity: a move towards “racialising” whereby early modern Japanese outcaste difference came to be framed as originating in an alleged foreign-ness. Given the relative absence of sustained intellectual exchange between Western and Japanese writers during this period concerning questions of pollution, untouchability, and the origins of taxonomical divisions, these coetaneous strands of discourse are best interpreted as emerging out of distinct intellectual trajectories devised for varying political ends. What is more, prior to the emergence of these racialising discourses, outcaste groups themselves also fashioned “origin stories” that sometimes linked their ancestors to India through mytho-historical connections. These stories, init...