alf of one percent are ethnic Koreans. Approximately 885 thousand foreigners reside in Japan, while approximately 498 thousand Japanese citizens reside outside of the country.6 Adjusting for these residence patterns still leaves the resident popula tion of Japan 98.4 percent ethnically Japanese.
Japan, in the last quarter of the twentieth century, is "the most thoroughly unified and culturally homogeneous large bloc of people in the . . . world, with the possible exception of the North Chinese,"7 where the population is almost exclu sively Han.8 Any significant infusion of new ethnic strains into the Japanese population ceased in the eighth century, when the Ainu began to be absorbed into the country's dominant eth nic group.9 Out of an ethnic Japanese population of 121.7 million in the early 1990s, less than 20 thousand Ainu survive as a culturally identifiable population group.
...