Creating Racial Subjects: Eugenics, Psychiatry, and the Ainu

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article explores the development of psychiatric interest in the Ainu people of Hokkaidō Island within the socio-political context of Japan’s colonial expansion and the eugenics movement from the late nineteenth century to the end of the Second World War. Japanese researchers reinterpreted data on the Ainu – particularly as this related to racial categorization and blood-mixing – in reaction to the passing of the 1940 National Eugenics Law and the Japanese Empire’s geographic expansion. Their studies negated colonial reality and attributed psychiatric degeneracy to a racialized Ainu constitution, building off and reinforcing preexisting anticipated futures for Ainu people. The article ends by raising questions about the impact of eugenics ideology, its practices, and related laws on minoritized groups in the post-war period.