Xenophobia in Shōwa Japan

Xenophobia in Shōwa Japan refers to xenophobia and racial discrimination displayed toward non-Japanese during the pre-1945 Shōwa era.

Racial discrimination against other Asians was habitual in Imperial Japan, having begun with the start of Japanese colonialism.Herbert Bix, Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan, 2001, p.280. The Shōwa regime thus preached racial superiority and racialist theories, based on sacred nature of the Yamato-damashii. According to historian Kurakichi Shiratori, one of emperor Shōwa's teachers :«Therefore nothing in the world compares to the divine nature (shinsei) of the imperial house and likewise the majesty of our national polity (kokutai). Here is one great reason for Japan's superiority.» Peter Wetzler, Hirohito and War, 1998, p.104

According to , a 1943 report of the Ministry of Health and Welfare completed on July 1, 1943, just as a family has harmony and reciprocity, but with a clear-cut hierarchy, the Japanese, as a purportedly racially superior people, were destined to rule Asia “eternally” as the head of the family of Asian nations.

Attacks against Western foreigners and their Japanese friends by ordinary citizens, rose in the 1930s under the influence of Japanese military-political doctrines in the Showa period, after a long build-up starting in the Meiji period when only a few samurai die-hards did not accept foreigners in Japan.Wakabayashi, Bob...
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