The history and experiences of mixed-race Japan have long remained almost invisible in a country that believes in its own myths of homogeneity, despite a history that extends backwards to the 8th-century emperor Kammu Tenno (who was part Korean) through to Japan’s first female physician (part German) during the 19th century, and forward to the present day, when 1 of every 30 Japanese babies are born to families with one non-Japanese parent. Hapa Japan: History (Volume 1) is the first substantial collection of essays to survey the history of global mixed-race identities of persons of Japanese descent.

Edited by Duncan Ryuken Williams, the founder of the Hapa Japan Database Project and Associate Professor of Religion and East Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Southern California., this groundbreaking work unsettles binary and simplistic notions of race by making visible the complex lives of individuals often written out of history.

“Now, more than ever, Hapa Japan is essential reading for all citizens of our transcultural, transnational, boundless, borderless, beautifully mixed-up world.” —Ruth Ozeki

See also: Hapa Japan: Identities (Volume 2)

Published by Kaya Press, 2017

Softcover, 500 pages, 21 black and white images, 6 × 9 inches

ISBN 978-1-885030-53-5