At a press conference in September 1986, former Japanese prime minister Nakasone Yasuhiro 中曽根康弘 (1918-2019, in office 1982-1987) created quite a stir when he claimed that Japan’s superior educational achievements were due to its nature as a “ethnically homogenous nation” (tan’itsu minzoku kokka単一民族国家). This comment was the target of both domestic and international criticism. Despite Nakasone’s assertion, however, Japanese society is ethnically heterogenous. Alongside the “Yamato Japanese” majority, the Japanese islands are home to such ethnic minorities as the indigenous Ainu, Okinawans, the descendants of the first Polynesian settlers of the Ogasawara Islands, ethnic Chinese and Koreans, and third/fourth generation Japanese “returnees” from South America. In this course, we will examine these minority groups from numerous perspectives, including historical, anthropological, sociological, linguistic and legal to gain a better understanding of the challenges they face, as well as the contributions they have made, to contemporary Japanese society.