"Human Zoo" (1/3): Overview

  Wikipedia's "Human Zoo" page is available in 30 languages ​​(as of October 19, 2025), but the Japanese page is quite different in content from pages in other languages.

 In Japan, a nationally broadcast history program aired footage and commentary alleging that the Meiji government "exhibited" indigenous Taiwanese people in a "human zoo." This caused controversy and led to a legal uproar. The indigenous Taiwanese people themselves denied the allegation, claiming it was defamation, and filed a lawsuit. NHK won the first trial. The indigenous people won the appeal court, and then the Supreme Court ruled in favor of NHK, resulting in a reversal of the ruling, and the situation has since changed several times.

Due to the influence of the above-mentioned uproar and other factors, the Japanese page is somewhat unique.

 I believe this issue is both old and new. Considering recent social and political trends in (parts of) the United States, parts of Europe, and parts of Japan (recent reports of ICE officers committing violent acts suggest they don't see immigrants and refugees as human beings, and have no intention of treating them that way to begin with...), I feel a distorted version of ethnocentrism is emerging.

 Ethnocentrist tendencies and xenophobic social psychology have manifested themselves in a variety of ways in various places and eras. They're also part of the human instinct to have a sense of territory. While I wouldn't call it "ethnocentrism," I believe there's a psychological undercurrent behind the countless atrocities Israel has persistently committed in the Gaza Strip (they want to protect their "homeland," and to do so, they dehumanize their "neighbors").

 This issue is both old and new.

 The English page is the most comprehensive, with an overwhelming amount of information, but the French and Spanish pages are also extensive, with numerous references and detailed discussions. 

 Only the Spanish page provides an easy-to-read table of historical background (although my Spanish vocabulary and reading comprehension skills were not sufficient for me to read it in that language).

 Contrary to my expectations (I was expecting a plethora of falsehoods, as Koreans do, to be inciting anti-Japanese sentiment, as I do), the Chinese page (as I'm Japanese, I have an advantage over Westerners when it comes to reading Chinese characters) is surprisingly simple and short. While it only contains an overview, the "Opinion" at the end states, as follows: Based on "Western hegemony," "white people" became "caretakers" of "zoos" as a way to justify their colonial rule.

 Contrary to my expectations, there's absolutely nothing about Japan.

　「一类反霸权主义的观点则将整个“西方统治下的世界”描绘成一个巨大的人类动物园，而白人身为“优等人种”可以在其中充当“动物园管理员”的角色——低等人类和非人类居民的管理者。 [8]」

　　A comprehensive view of the world under the control of the Western world'', a huge animal park, and a white man A person who is of the "superior class" in his/her body and who is considered a "wildlife park manager" -- a low-class, non-human class resident administrator. [8]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_zoo

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoo_humain

https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E4%BA%BA%E9%A1%9E%E5%8B%95%E7%89%A9%E5%9C%92

https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zool%C3%B3gico_humano

 I have my own personal opinions about the "human zoos" of the Meiji period, but I'll discuss that separately. First, I'd like to introduce the Japanese Wikipedia article. Since the content differs significantly from the foreign language pages (English, French, and Chinese) that I briefly read, I've translated it and presented it here.

"Human Zoo" (1/3)

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Zoo_(English_translation)

October 19, 2025 edition

Excerpts and translations:

 Human zoos (also known as "ethnological exhibits" or "human exhibitions") were exhibitions of the cultures and ecologies of people considered barbaric or uncivilized, rooted in social Darwinism, racism, evolutionism, and colonialism, which took place during the 19th and 20th centuries. While some pavilions were actually named "Black Villages," these exhibitions did not necessarily target Black Africans.

【Overview】

 As Charles Darwin's theory of evolution gained widespread acceptance, some began to see evolutionary stages in human society. Social Darwinism, which views modern Western society as the pinnacle of evolution, adopted a monolithic view of history (evolutionism) that assumes all humankind develops in the same way. This led to the portrayal of Asian and African societies as "backward" and "inferior." Human zoos, then, served as a means to observe the differences between the cultures of colonial peoples and Western civilization and to justify imperialism and colonial rule. They were popular as entertainment at various expositions and as a way to show off colonial operations.

 For example, the anthropological exhibits at the St. Louis World's Fair were designed with the following objectives:

 To display the world's least-known ethnic types, races, or sub-races, based on physical definition;

 To display the world's least-known cultural types, based on behavioral and psychological definition;

 To display the main methods and devices used in the study of human physical and mental characteristics;

 To provide typical evidence of the stages and processes of human evolution;

 To demonstrate the actual evolution of humans from barbarism and savagery to civilization, accelerated by integration and training.

 With these objectives in mind, actual traditional living spaces of various ethnic groups were created within the exhibition halls, and people were allowed to live there, creating folk crafts and performing traditional arts. Although there were restrictions on admission, the exhibits were not necessarily separated by cages like in a zoo, and interpreters were often provided to allow communication.

 The term "human zoo" first gained attention in colonial studies and became popular primarily in British and French cultural studies.[1][2][3]

 In the 1920s, with the rise of Franz Boas's cultural relativism and Malinowski and Radcliffe-Brown's functionalism, evolutionism fell out of favor in anthropology, and ethnographic displays began to move away from ethnocentrism.

 Many studies of human zoos attempt to critically examine the discriminatory perspectives associated with them. As a result, while there are issues with the actual exhibits and exhibitors' intentions not being considerate of human rights from a modern perspective, there are also criticisms that even when exhibits are merely entertainment-oriented and not based on an evolutionary perspective, they are overly labeled as "discriminatory devices," and that there is a lack of analysis of the impressions of spectators and exhibitors who have experienced human zoos. For example, at the French Colonial Exposition, a human zoo was set up between the zoo and the arts and crafts exhibits, and this was cited as proof of the organizers' and planners' belief in social Darwinism. However, Miyatake argues that in the exhibits at the St. Louis Exposition and the Japan-British Exposition, each participating country had its own human exhibit, and this does not necessarily prove Darwinism.[4]