Zainichi Koreans:
The Past, the Present, and the Future
Noboru Tomonari
Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus
Course Reader no. 11
2013

Zainichi Koreans: The Past, the Present and the Future

1

VOLUME EDITORNOBORU TOMANARI
Carleton College

SERIES EDITORLAURA HEIN
Northwestern University

EDITORIAL BOARD
Mark Caprio
Lonny Carlile
Parks Coble
Sabine Frühstück
Tom Grunfeld
Laura HeinJames Huffman
Jeffrey Kingston
Susan Long
Laura Miller
Mark Ravina
Mark Selden
Stephen Vlastos

Zainichi Koreans: The Past, the Present and the Future2

The copyright of all material in this course reader is held by the respective authors, except whereotherwise noted.

The volume editor can be contacted at ntomanar@carleton.edu.

Zainichi Koreans: The Past, the Present and the Future3

Zainichi Koreans: The Past, the Present, and the Future
Introduction

5Part I: Zainichi Korean Experiences
KANG Sang Jung

8

Kang Sang Jung, trans. Robin Fletcher, “Memories of a Zainichi KoreanChildhood,” The Asia-Pacific Journal, February 2, 2007.
Sonia Ryang

25

Sonia Ryang, “The Denationalized Have No Class: The Banishment ofJapan’s Korean Minority—A Polemic,” The Asia-Pacific Journal, June 8,
2008.
Part II: Koreans in the Japanese Empire
KOH Sunhui and Kate Barclay

53

Koh Sunhui and Kate Barclay, “Traveling through Autonomy and
Subjugation: Jeju Island Under Japan and Korea,” The Asia-Pacific Journal,
May 30, 2007.
Part III: Becoming Zainichi Koreans in Postwar JapanMark E. Caprio

79Mark E. Caprio, “The Cold War Explodes in Kobe: The 1948 Korean Ethnic
School ‘Riots’ and US Occupation Authorities,” The Asia-Pacific Journal
8.48.2, November 24, 2008.
Tessa Morris-Suzuki
Tessa Morris-Suzuki, “Invisible Immigrants: Undocumented Migration
and Border Controls in Early Postwar Japan,” The Asia-Pacific Journal,
August 31, 2006.

95

Zainichi Koreans: The Past, the Present and the Future

4Part IV: Living as Zainichi Koreans in Postwar Japan
John Lie

126

John Lie, “Zainichi Recognitions: Japan’s Korean Residents’ Ideology andIts Discontents,” The Asia-Pacific Journal, November 3, 2008.
Rumi SAKAMOTO

149

Rumi Sakamoto, “‘Koreans, Go Home!’ Internet Nationalism inContemporary Japan as a Digitally Mediated Subculture,” The Asia-Pacific
Journal 9.10.2, March 7, 2011.
KANG Sang Jung

172

Kang Sang Jung, trans. Mark Gibeau, intro. Tessa Morris-Suzuki,“Tunneling Through Nationalism: The Phenomenology of a Certain
Nationalist,” The Asia-Pacific Journal 9.36.2, September 5, 2011
Recommended for Further Reading189

Zainichi Koreans: The Past, the Present and the Future

5

Introduction“Historians and social scientists weave words together like nets to catch the truth;
and, like nets, the words leave spaces into which parts of that past continually disappear.
The life of a woman interviewed by Koh Sunhui, and the lives of uncounted others like her,are among the stories which have slipped unnoticed through conventional accounts ofJapan’s migration history. Looking more closely at these accounts, we can start to see someof the linguistic holes into which they have disappeared.” Tessa Morris-Suzuki
The above quote is from Morris-Suzuki’s article “Invisible Immigrants:
Undocumented Migration and Border Controls in Early Postwar Japan.” This course reader
brings together Morris-Suzuki’s and seven other articles from Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan
Focus that illuminate the experience of Zainichi Korean (Korean residents in Japan) inmodern Japan. As the quote shows, a number of discourses and policies in Japan haveundermined or repressed the lives of Koreans, whether those Koreans were forcibly
brought to Japan or came of their own free will. The Zainichi Korean issues illustratebroader problems of discrimination and of the Japanese propensity for essentializing“Japan.” The articles lay bare the contents of those discourses and policies, as well as theactual lives of Zainichi Koreans who have endured in such an environment.
Recent monographs by historians such as Jeffrey Bayliss, Takashi Fujitani and Ken
Kawashima have shed light on the history of Koreans in Japan before and during WorldWar II. The articles here cover the same issues and also extend the story to postwar Japan,
when they legally became foreign residents by becoming deprived of their Japanesecitizenship. The articles articulate the multiple origins of Zainichi Koreans: Koh-Sunhui andKate Barclay’s article discusses Jeju Island history, providing a background on colonialism,and explaining why many islanders migrated to Japan during the twentieth century.
Morris-Suzuki’s and Mark Caprio’s articles study how the bungled policies of the immediate
postwar Japanese government and the GHQ permanently marginalized this community.
They explain quite persuasively how the past and the present predicaments of Zainichi
Koreans materialized.
Morris-Suzuki’s words also shows the need to look at the accounts of Zainichi
Koreans themselves. Included in this reader are articles written by Zainichi scholars suchas Kang Sang-Jung and Sonia Ryang, who offer fresh and original thoughts based on theirexperiences. Drawing on their own lives, they counter hegemonic views on Japan and its
modern history that constantly undermine or sideline minorities, such as Zainichi Koreans.
They show that Korean ethnicity and origins were significant factors in determining the
lives of many people and communities in Japan. Zainichi Koreans provide the major casehistory in this, as they were the largest minority group in Japan for many years.
According to the article by Sonia Ryang in this reader, there were about 590,000
Koreans in Japan as of 1948. Sixty years hence, the number of Korean nationals in Japan has
remained similar as many Koreans opted to become a Japanese national. As Erin Aeran
Chung writes, Zainichi Koreans were the largest minority group in Japan until 2007, theZainichi Koreans: The Past, the Present and the Future

6

year that the Chinese nationals in Japan overtook them. There were 589,239 North andSouth Korean nationals plus about 300,000 naturalized Koreans in Japan of 2008.1
Some other articles critique not only the totalizing narratives of the Japanese nationstate but the notion of homogeneity that many Zainichi Koreans imposed on themselves;
some Koreans understood Zainichi Koreans to be a singular, homogenous entity. John Lieargues that what he calls “Zainichi ideology” came to be articulated as a reaction to thehegemonic Japanese narrative that claimed Japan was mono-ethnic. He writes that thisideology, which became a point of identification for many Zainichi Koreans in the early
postwar years, came to carry a negative connotation in that it functioned as a prism
through which Zainichi Koreans felt it necessary to evaluate their own lives. As a result,certain kinds of Zainichi lives and life choices came to be privileged over others. Lie argues
that with the evolution and transformation of Zainichi Korean lives, there is no longer asingular Zainichi Korean identity that subsumes all other identities. His article shows thatthe efforts to recognize and accept variances among the Japanese should also be extended
to Zainichi Koreans.
Morris-Suzuki also writes: “These ordinary everyday voices of the migrantexperience, by contrast, can speak to the present day in a way which, I hope and believe,
may help to redress, rather than to compound, the intrusive and dehumanizing process
through which they were recorded.” Together with the discussion of Zainichi Korean lives
in the past, some articles here foreground their present. Rumi Sakamoto article is analarming but important study on contemporary nationalism in Japan, expressed online inparticular, that has taken an anti-Korean or anti–Zainichi Korean stance since the 1990s.
The fact that these and other Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus articles make an online
counterargument at the very time when racism is raising its head anew among theJapanese in cyberspace merits special attention.
Furthermore, Zainichi Koreans and the authors here look ahead to our common
future. The second Kang Sang-Jung article refutes xenophobic nationalism based on theauthor’s experiences as a Zainichi Korean. Precisely because he himself and his own
community have pondered and identified with their own version of ethnic nationalism, hesees a crucial need to relativize or tame such an impulse through constructing a different
ideal and an object of identification. He envisions such an ideal to be a transnational East
Asian collective.
Taken together, the articles here provide information that is fundamental tounderstanding Zainichi Koreans. They employ the methodologies of various disciplines,
including sociology, anthropology, and history, to address issues such as ethnicity, social
class, migration, nationalism, multiculturalism, racism, and regionalism in and outside
Japan. Through recognizing and accepting Zainichi Koreans, all Japanese, Zainichi and nonZainichi alike, can mold and transform themselves further, just as Korean migrants came totransform themselves through being Zainichi. Thinking about Zainichi Koreans can help the1Erin Aeran Chung, Immigration and Citizenship in Japan (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University
Press, 2010), 5, 85.

Zainichi Koreans: The Past, the Present and the Future

7

whole East Asian region connect itself more fully and accurately to its past, its present, andits future, and hence further evolve in a peaceful, friction-less manner.

Zainichi Koreans: The Past, the Present and the Future

8Part I: Zainichi Korean Experiences“Memories of a Zainichi Korean Childhood”
Kang Sang-Jung
February 2, 2007
http://japanfocus.org/-Kang_-Sang_Jung/2343
Kang Sang-Jung (1950– ) may well be the most prominent Zainichi Korean
intellectual currently publishing in Japan. The first Zainichi Korean to become a faculty
member at the University of Tokyo, Kang has written extensively on political issues
concerning Zainichi Koreans and the social and historical circumstances that surroundthem. In the early 2000s, Kang embarked on two paths that have extended his readershipto those outside the academy. One was that with the 2004 memoir Zainichi, he started to
publish extensively on his family’s and his own experiences of growing up as a Zainichi
Korean. The other direction Kang took was that he increasingly came to write for non–Zainichi Korean Japanese, especially the young, offering them life advice and suggestions.
This article excerpts several key aspects of Kang’s memoir. Kang is a secondgeneration Zainichi who grew up in Kumamoto, Kyushu. His parents migrated to Japan
during the colonial era (1910-1945), his father in the early 1930s and his mother in 1941.
They were poor and struggled through the harsh environment of wartime and postwar
Japan, initially by brewing liqueur and keeping pigs. They both had little education, and his
mother was illiterate, but they were hardworking people living in the ghetto with other
Zainichi Koreans. The turmoil of the immediate postwar years and the Korean War kept
them from returning to the peninsula after the liberation of Korea.
When Kang was six, his parents started a scrap metal business that they maintained
well into the author’s adulthood. With this the family moved out of the Korean ghetto, but
still lived a life very much at “the very bottom of the society” (p. 6). Kang remembers thesense of camaraderie that his family shared with the Japanese on the margins, including
those at the nearby leprosarium, a hospital for the treatment of leprosy. The otherimportant people in Kang’s early life included two “uncles” whom Kang sees asrepresenting the dire conditions of the first-generation Zainichi. One was his father’s
brother, who was a member of the Japanese military police during World War II. After the
war he went back to Korea and built a successful career there as an attorney but left behind
his family in Japan in the process. The other “uncle” was a former yakuza member who
helped Kang’s father’s business after leaving his organization. An extremely compassionate
man, that “uncle” took care of Kang as the author was growing up.
Kang shows how the Zainichi Koreans around him demonstrated “a supremely‘human’ way of being in the face of adversity” (p. 17), an “adversity” that included living
through a deep “sense of division” between Japan and Korea. Kang also carried that sense
throughout his own life. Kang’s career is admirable for the adversity he had to overcome,and his article is testimony to the lives of Zainichi Koreans. It also shows why their lives
and issues remain relevant to any efforts to reflect on modern Japanese history and society.

Kang: Memories of a Zainichi Korean Childhood

9

Memories of a Zainichi Korean ChildhoodKang Sangjung
Translated by Robin Fletcher
This extract from Kang Sangjung’s autobiography Zainichi (Kodansha, 2004) describes theexperiences of first-generation zainichi Koreans in the city of Kumamoto, as seen from theperspective of a second-generation child growing up in the Japan of the 1950s. Now a professor
at the University of Tokyo, in the Graduate School of Interdisciplinary Information Studies,
where he specialises in politics and the history of political thought, Kang Sangjung looks back at
the people and places of his childhood. These personal memories provide a starting point forreflections on identity, ‘homeland,’ and the place of zainichi Koreans in Japanese society and in
the wider society of Northeast Asia.
Pigs, moonshine and warm-hearted people
I am supposed to have been born on 12th August 1950, the 25th year of the Showa Era. But infact, it seems that this is not my real birthday, since my parents apparently registered my birthaccording to the old lunar calendar. The sense of time indelibly imprinted on my parents’ minds
was that of the lunar calendar. Even today, the customs of the past still live on in my mother’s
notion of time. By remembering people’s birth, growth and death according to the old time of thelunar calendar, my parents perhaps found a way to affirm their connections to their homelandand their ancestors. In any case, I was born right in the middle of the Korean War, in a Koreansettlement1 close to the main station of Kumamoto City in Kyushu. My Korean name is Kang
Sangjung. My Japanese name is Nagano Tetsuo. This second name is my ‘public name’ [tsumei],
and it is the name under which I lived until I came of age. It was not until I was in my twenties
that I changed from being ‘Tetsuo’ to being ‘Sangjung’. For me as a second generation zainichi
Korean, the change in some ways marked a sharp dividing line through my life. Yet even today, I
sometimes feel an odd sort of nostalgia for ‘Tetsuo’. It is not simply a false name and a false life
to be rejected. It is also an inescapable symbol which says much about the living reality of who I
am. Living a life embracing that name is, I think, a significant element of my experience ofliving in Japan.
Local histories of Japan’s prefectures, cities and villages—and of the police forces —will tell
you that in those days, during the Allied occupation of Japan, many members of the Korean
community disrupted the Japanese economy by black-market and criminal activities. They werereferred to as ‘third country people’ [sangokujin]2, and were seen as destroying public order andmorality. There was virtually no recognition of any positive contribution of Koreans to theJapanese economy, society or culture. This was true of Kumamoto, too. Actually, since
Kumamoto had been a stronghold of militarism since before the war, prejudice, suspicion anddiscrimination against Koreans were particularly strong there.
Kumamoto had been home to the largest army detachment in Kyushu, and so sustained massive
damage from bombing raids during the war. By the end of the war, almost all the city from thestation to the Suizen Temple had been reduced to a burnt-out wilderness. Reconstruction did not
get underway properly until around the time of the Korean War, and even when I was born thedark scars of war still lay over the landscape.
Kumamoto in red

Zainichi Koreans: The Past, the Present and the Future

10

The place where I was born—the neighbourhood of Haruhi-machi, near Kumamoto Station—
was an area which seemed notably left behind by the reconstruction process. To the west side of
the railway line lies Hanoka Hill, famous as the place where 19th century westernisers
established the ‘Kumamoto Band’.3 The Korean settlement was crowded together on the gentle
incline of the neighbouring Banka Hill. In those days, over one hundred Korean families lived
shoulder to shoulder there, all living in shabby makeshift tenements.
The Korean people of the settlement supported themselves by keeping pigs and making‘moonshine’, illicit liquor [doboroku]. Scenes reminiscent of Gorky’s Lower Depths were playedout in the community day after day. The civil war in their mother country had torn away thehopes of the adults of the settlement, and destroyed their dreams of ‘liberation’. They had
nowhere to go, and their lives oscillated between sorrow and anger. The atmosphere in thesettlement was constantly seething like a pressure-cooker.
Communal life there was coloured by roars of laughter and anger, by lawlessness and misery.
Everyone was in a state of despair. Yet still they clung to faint wisps of dreams, and struggleddesperately to find some means of subsisting in the harshness of daily work. The only means ofsurvival left to them were brewing moonshine and keeping pigs.
Occasionally, when I was four or five years old, I would witness raids by excise officers on theillegal brewing operations. For some reason, I vividly remember one scene of a line of trucks
coming up the hill towards the rickety huts which served as stills where the moonshine wasbrewed. The whole settlement was thrown into turmoil, like a hive of angry bees. I can still hear
the cries of “aigo” [alas!] echoing across the hillside. I shall never forget the sounds of anger andgrief in the voices of those people whose meagre means of livelihood were about to be
destroyed. In my childish mind, I formed the sense that we were somehow living in an outlaw
world.
On that unforgettable day, my mother hurled a stone at one of the excise trucks. Its windscreen
shattered, and the vehicle was forced to come to a halt.
My mother, who was by nature the most nervous and sensitive of people, seemed for once tohave been seized by a fierce anger. Seeing her rage at the officials who were destroying people’s
lives took my breath away, and for a moment I couldn't utter a sound. Having hurled the stone,
my mother’s knees gave way and she fell to the ground, beating her chest with her fists andbreaking into sobs. “Why are we forced to endure such sorrow?” That, I think, was the screamthat lay beneath my mother’s weeping.
That day, my mother was taken away to the police station. I stayed close to my father, and,sensing from his anxiety that something terrible was befalling us, could not stop myself fromcrying. I cannot now remember exactly why—perhaps it was because the truck driver had
fortunately not been injured—but mother was soon allowed to return home. The incident shows
the courageous side of my mother. In these lower depths, life was driven by constant desperation,
but for some reason the grown-ups always treated me with kindness and I received muchaffection. At least as far as I am concerned, that place conjures up only fond memories.
It may have resembled the impoverished marginal communities depicted in Kumai Kei’s film
Apart from life, but I had the good fortune to experience the love and kindness of the adults, andKang: Memories of a Zainichi Korean Childhood

11

so the impression I formed of the archetypal zainichi landscape was of a kind and warm
community made up of unfortunate people.
How my parents became ‘first-generation zainichi’Not far from the settlement, there was a small construction company called Takadagumi. My
father worked there as a watchman. Takadagumi had operated since the prewar period, using
hired construction workers. Our home was a tiny free-standing house in the midst of thesettlement, towards the bottom of the hill. There I was born, and there our family of four lived—
my mother and father, a brother four years my senior, and myself. My father had come to Japanin the early 1930s, at the time of the Manchurian Incident.4 He was fifteen at the time, and cameto Japan by himself, with just the clothes on his back. My father was the eldest son of a typicalpoor tenant farming family from Namsan Village, Kyangwon District in the South Korean
province of Southern Kyongsang. He arrived in the ‘colonial mother country’ in response to thepressures of poverty. It was a classic exile’s story.
According to the prominent US historian of modern Korea, Bruce Cumings, during the 1930s
with the impact of the economic depression and the forced industrialisation of the Korean
peninsula, the majority of Korea’s farm population left agriculture and moved to cities andindustrial areas. As the boundaries of the Japanese empire grew dramatically following its war
with China, the flow of Korean migrants began to be directed overseas. By the year before
Japan’s defeat in the Asia-Pacific War, around twenty percent of Korea’s total population wasliving away from their place of origin. Most of these were people of working age, between
twenty-five and forty years old, so that in effect, forty percent of the adult population was living
away from their birthplace. Cumings suggests that there is perhaps no other country which has
experienced such a dramatic change in its population. The Depression and the concentration ofland ownership drastically affected the agricultural population, and a massive workforce wascreated from the surplus. Kyongsang Province was a particularly important source of thisoutflow of people.
My father was just one young man from a poor farming family who was caught up in thesufferings of this vast and chaotic movement of people. The heavy burden of the times lay on hisshoulders, condemning him to a harsh future. My father’s youth in Japan was so unsettled that I
don’t know how many times he shifted from one place and one job to another. Finally he moved
to Tokyo where he got a job in a munitions factory. By this time, the national mobilisation
system had been imposed on Korea as well, and forced labour was being recruited. Under theslogan ‘integrating Japan and Korea’ [naisen ittai], forced assimilation was proceeding apace,and finally the door was opened to the enlistment of colonial subjects in the Japanese army. In
order to look after his younger brother, who was climbing this ladder of ‘advancement’ within
the colonial system, my father worked day and night, barely snatching time to eat and sleep.
Father looked like the peasant farmer he was, stockily built, unsophisticated, and, perhaps
weighed down by the burden of unremitting hard work, relatively short. By contrast, his younger
brother (my uncle) was a tall and imposing young man with a handsome face. Remarkably for a
person from the colonies, he studied law at university and eventually became a member of theJapanese military police [kempeitai], serving in Kumamoto. As I will explain later, his urge forself-betterment had an influence on my life.

Zainichi Koreans: The Past, the Present and the Future

12

In the year the Pacific War broke out, my mother came over from her village of Chine, near thesouthern Korean city of Pusan, to visit her fiancé, my father. She embarked alone on the ferry in
Pusan and arrived in Shimonoseki at the very time of the outbreak of the war that would bringdisaster to Japan. She had nothing to guide her but my father’s address, and after travelling fromone place to another she finally reached the district of Sugamo Sanchome in Tokyo, where father
was living in the quarters where the factory lodged its workers. There she began her married life.
She was just eighteen years old.
My mother had been deprived of chances for education as a child and she was illiterate, unable toread or write Japanese or even her mother tongue. This devoted new bride, dressed in traditional
chima-jeogori5 and barely able to utter a few words of broken Japanese, seems to have been afigure of curiosity to those around her. Apparently she was often surrounded by groups ofneighbourhood housewives making scathing comments about her clothing, and all she could do
was stand there burning with embarrassment. The joy and sorrow of zainichi existence settled
like a sediment in my mother’s heart, from time to time bursting forth in the form of mournful
songs or of rushes of passionate emotion.
As the war situation grew worse and air-raids on Tokyo intensified, my parents, together withmy father’s younger sister and her husband, were evacuated to Ichinomiya in Aichi Prefecture.
Soon after, my parents’ first child was born. They named him Haruo—‘haru’ [spring] being alsopart of my mother’s Japanese name, ‘Haruko’. However, the family’s life was full of troubles.
The air-raids caused my father’s sister to lose her sanity, and Haruo, my family’s first-born son,died. My mother clung to her dead baby for several days, as if she had gone mad, refusing to let
his body be taken away from her. To this very day, when she is eighty, my mother has neveronce missed commemorating the day of Haruo’s death. The way she speaks of him makes me
think that perhaps for her the tragedy still seems like something which happened yesterday, and I
cannot help feeling that far from memories fading with time, on the contrary they actually recur
more vividly than ever.
Taking their son’s ashes with them, my parents moved from Ichinomiya through Osaka andHiroshima, eventually arriving in Kumamoto. By that time, Japan was already close to defeat.
Apparently my parents were intending to return to Korea, and wanted to say their farewells to
my uncle, who was stationed in Kumamoto with the military police. They were there when Japansurrendered. In the end, my parents gave up the idea of returning to their homeland, and myuncle returned alone. My parents ended up staying in the zainichi settlement.
For the colonies, Japan’s defeat in the war was a joyful day of liberation. The hearts of zainichi
Koreans were seized by a burgeoning and enduring hope that they would be able to return totheir homeland. But in 1948 the Republic of Korea was established in the South and the
Democratic People’s Republic of Korea in the North, and finally the Korean War broke out, with
unprecedented massacres and vast numbers of victims. The devastation of their homeland was a
crushing blow for the zainichi people. For those who had found shelter in the zainichi settlement
where I lived, the road home had been closed. Once again, they had to steel their hearts to endure
the experience of ethnic discrimination.
The settlement was looked on as a kind of ghetto, an alien space in the midst of Japan. Firstgeneration zainichi at that time all bore their own particular deep sorrows, growing bleary-eyedwith the struggle for survival. Finally, the movement for repatriation to North Korea took off,

Kang: Memories of a Zainichi Korean Childhood

13

and people from my settlement were among those who returned in large numbers to the North.
From 1959 onwards, more and more people left for the North. In the midst of it all, my parents
were urged to repatriate to the North, but they never agreed, choosing instead to stay in
Kumamoto. I am not sure precisely why they were reluctant to repatriate to North Korea, but I
think there must have been two reasons. First, my uncle, who had served as a judicial staff
officer during the Korean War, had strongly warned them against repatriation. My uncle’s
absolute feelings of anti-communism and hostility towards North Korea made my parents standtheir ground. The second reason was that they felt they could not abandon my father’s family’sancestral graves, which were in the South. Particularly for my mother, who had a powerful senseof respect for the ancestors, to move to the North would have been an immoral betrayal. So myparents remained in Japan.
Life amidst people of the ‘lower depths’
When I was six, our family left the settlement where I had been born, and moved to the foot ofMount Tatsuta, from which you can look down on the campus of Kumamoto University. We laidout the little money we had to buy a plot of land just about big enough to swing a cat, and set up
in business as ‘Nagano Trading Company’, a tiny family scrap business, collecting and recycling
garbage. Mount Tatsuta is a spot from which you can see the whole of the town centre, and aplace where the citizens of Kumamoto like to come for recreation. It is also the hill that appears
in Natsume Soseki’s famous novel Sanshiro.
Unlike my mother, my father was not entirely illiterate. He could read and write some Japanese.
All the same, it was really difficult for him to get a driver’s licence. I still recall the resolute
expression on my father’s face as he sat in bed first thing in the morning struggling with thequestions for the test. Every adult is supposed to be able to apply for a driver’s licence, but for
first-generation immigrants burdened with the handicap of dealing with a foreign language,acquiring a licence was undoubtedly a painfully difficult hurdle to clear. On his second try, myfather, remarkably enough, was successful and soon after our family acquired a little threewheeled vehicle called a ‘Midget’. After that, every day my father would leave home at the crackof dawn and not return until late at night. Day after day, he silently laboured away at his toughjob.
For me, life in this unfamiliar place was a big change. I was cut off from the communal life of
the zainichi settlement and plunged into the midst of a wholly Japanese environment. I felt alone,as though I had somehow become trapped on a remote island. For some reason, I missed theodours of pig-swill and dung, and the smell of brewer’s yeast. The environment and the people
had changed, but all the same a remarkable assortment of people made their way in and out of
our family’s garbage collecting business. Looking back, it truly seems like a human tragicomedy.
I think I became almost painfully aware of the sighs of people who were relegated to the verybottom of society and were desperately trying to keep body and soul together. This, moreover,
was a ‘lower depths’ different from that of the settlement where we had lived before. The
difference was that the main characters who appeared in our lives were now ‘Japanese’.
My mother, who could not read, had to take on a whole range of tasks, from calculating the items
and numbers and value of the scrap that was collected to single-handedly conducting businessnegotiations. For this purpose, she worked out a system of symbols which only she understood,Zainichi Koreans: The Past, the Present and the Future

14

and which she memorised in place of Japanese characters. I think her excellent powers ofmemory were probably the result of desperate efforts to make up for the handicap of illiteracy.
So, little by little, our family’s scrap business got underway. This precisely coincided with thestart of Japan’s period of high economic growth, following a postwar economic recovery spurred
on by the ‘windfall’ of Korean War procurements.
One thing that remains firmly fixed in my memory is the mass of military swords, helmets andother discarded weaponry which was heaped up in front of our house. It seemed uncanny to see
so many swords rusted reddish-brown together with bloodstains. They bore the unmistakablesmell of war. My mother, perhaps following Korean purification rites, would sprinkle salt aroundthem, murmuring prayers as she did so. Memories of war, reeking with blood, lingered on evenin a place like this. It was the business of garbage collectors to clear away the brutal carnage leftby history. I am sure my mother instinctively understood this.
My parents’ struggling family business was also sustained by another first generation zainichi
who came to live in our house as part of the family. This man, whom I knew from my earlychildhood as ‘Uncle’, had sworn an oath of brotherhood with my father, and thus become part ofour family. ‘Uncle’ became as much as or even more than a second father to me. Later, after‘Uncle’ had died, I learned for the first time that he had left a family of his own behind in Korea
and come to Japan by himself, his lot thereafter that of a man with no home of his own. He hadknocked about in the world of outlaws, and had at one stage apparently been quite an influential
figure. Subsequently he had fallen on hard times, though just how he had ended up living with
our family I do not know. However, as I shall explain later, ‘Uncle’ played an enormous part in
my education.
‘Uncle’ was just one of the wide variety of people whom I encountered in the world around meat that time. They all had their share of hardship, and it seemed to me that they all lived with
desperate intensity. Even today, I cannot forget them.
Across the street from our house was a man who could have stepped straight out of the textbook
ballad of “The Village Blacksmith.” In his roaring furnace he heated iron and shaped it to his
will, producing reaping hooks and hoes and other farm implements before your very eyes. He
was immensely skillful, and his wares were of the highest quality. He was a big, uncouth-looking
man, but a very gentle person. Every now and then, from over the other side of the road wewould hear an astonishingly loud sneeze, which told us that the blacksmith was busy at work
again today. It was somehow a reassuring feeling.
For one reason or another, the blacksmith and ‘Uncle’ got on well together. They didn’t havemuch to say to one another, but they seemed to understand each other nonetheless. “Tetsuo, that
uncle of yours is a good’un. True enough, he calls you ‘Teshio, Teshio’. But he’s still agood’un.” ‘Teshio’ was as near as ‘Uncle’ could come to pronouncing my name, and I thinkmaybe the blacksmith, who really understood ‘Uncle’s’ true nature, was trying to comfort me.
Not long after, however, the kind-hearted blacksmith was suddenly struck down by a heart attackand died. The sound of hammer on metal and the mighty sneezes fell silent.
It was Mr Iijima who gave me a glimpse of the horrors of the adult world.

Kang: Memories of a Zainichi Korean Childhood

15

In those days, wild dogs roamed around everywhere, and were a major nuisance. We used to callthe person who was employed by the dog pound to round them up ‘the dog killer’. The phrase
contained feelings of both fear and contempt. Mr Iijima, with his little moustache, seemedamiable enough, but when he came to our house our pet dog seemed to be overcome by terror. It
would make low whining noises and crouch ready to hide under the floor. “That there dog knowsa thing or two! It’s years since I was the ‘dog killer’, but I reckon the smell still hangs about.”
The events of a certain night made me wonder whether the smell of human blood, as well as thatof dogs, clung to Mr Iijima. He was very drunk, and began recounting how during the war in
China, he had raped a young woman and tortured her to death. There was a bitterness about Mr
Iijima’s mouth as, grinning but seemingly ill at ease, he made this confession. Afterwards, I had
a sense of regret that I had heard something I should not have, and could not help shuddering at
the knowledge of the cruelty within the adult world which surrounded me.
When I came to understand the memory of war as a political problem, I found myself often
thinking of Mr Iijima. It seems to me that the war memories of ordinary soldiers were carnal
sensations of slaughter remembered with great force throughout their bodies, and that when the
war came to an end, such things were not to be spoken of openly—at the most, they could bevented as a sort of confession in the midst of the droning nonsense which drunkenness allows.
There was no sense of guilt, but also no powerful sense of self-affirmation, just a sentimental
attachment to a sad and shabby experience, one which was only loosed by alcohol, history
recalled as a transient memory.
I don’t know what happened to Mr Iijima after that.
Writing of unforgettable people reminds of ‘Kaneko-san’, a good friend of ‘Uncle’s’. Perhaps
because ‘Kaneko-san’ was from the same zainichi background, he was in and out of our house
all the time.
To the north of our house, on the way to Yamanaga, was Keifuen, the famous leprosarium. The
Precautionary Measures against Leprosy [Raiyoboho] have now been repealed but in those days
the policy of isolation was in force and it seems that Keifuen even had rooms constructed forsolitary confinement as a disciplinary measure. Surprisingly enough, however, despite therigorous isolation policy of the times there were occasions when the inmates went outside. One
of my playmate’s parents ran an amazake6 and steamed bean-cake shop, and there were patientsfrom the leprosarium among their customers. My friend’s parents were good, kind people, so aparticular incident made an immense impression on me. My friend’s mother used chopsticks totake a hundred yen note that a customer with Hansen’s Disease held out between two fingers,
and then put it in the steamer. I think she also handed over the bean-cake in some sort of little
bamboo basket. This was forty years ago, but I remember the scene as if it were yesterday. I was
absolutely stunned that a usually admirable adult could behave so cruelly to those who in thosedays were literally treated as ‘untouchables’.
I seem to remember, though, that when ‘Kaneko-san’ came to our house, I would always scurry
off and take refuge in the back room. I didn’t know why, but some ill-defined fear just seemed tochase me away.
It was completely different with ‘Uncle’ and my parents, though. My father and ‘Uncle’ werequite comfortable about collecting garbage from the leprosarium, never showing the slightest

Zainichi Koreans: The Past, the Present and the Future

16

fear or hesitation. On occasion, they even shared the inmates’ meals, helping themselves fromthe same dish. They often invited them into our home, too. It seems to me that they felt sympathy
or something like kinship, perhaps because they shared the unfortunate consciousness of living
as ‘outsiders’ in Japan. They possessed an innate courage that made them unafraid of contact
with things the world considered ‘unclean’ or ‘unsightly’. Their kindness of heart was certainly
not erased by the harsh circumstances being zainichi; indeed, the very fact that they had to live inthat harsh environment may actually have strengthened their fellow-feeling with the unfortunate.
Both my father and ‘Uncle’ have passed away, and my mother, now eighty, spends much of her
time in bed. I hear that ‘Kaneko-san’, though, despite the Hansen’s Disease which used to befeared as an incurable, is still hale and hearty and seems set to live to a ripe old age. The
Precautionary Measures against Leprosy were repealed and the nation apologised, but prejudiceand preconceptions linger stubbornly in people’s minds, and it does not look as if they will beovercome in ‘Kaneko-san’s’ lifetime. If I could meet ‘Kaneko-san’ again, I would like toapologise sincerely for my own past—and I have come to wish that the two of us could together
retrace our memories of my father and ‘Uncle’.
A way of living as ‘zainichi’It was from the woman from Shimonoseki that I received the strongest image of ‘ethnicity’ atthat time. She was what is known as a mudang, or spiritualistic medium, similar to the itako ofnortheastern Japan.7 Most zainichi people had reverence for their ancestors, and the mudang’srepertoire of rituals were a type of shamanism, originating in ancestor worship, fused with
Buddhistic forms. My mother was a deeply devout woman, and the mudang was summoned from
Shimonoseki each year, along with two or three other women who provided the traditional
wailing accompaniment. They were all zainichi people.
The woman from Shimonoseki was very tall, and you could imagine from her clear-cut featuresthat she would have been a head-turning beauty when she was young. She held herself verystraight, her movements were crisp and energetic, and her gait deliberate and unhurried. One felt
she was a personality to be reckoned with. Her sidelocks were arranged to perfection, and she
dressed in a spectacular chima-jeogori and white rubber shoes called geomjeong. And thus shewould arrive in state at our house. It was undoubtedly a bizarre spectacle for the watching
Japanese. I found it unendurable, and when she was due I would run away as far as I could.
The woman from Shimonoseki would come once or twice a year without fail to tell our fortunes
for good or evil. For two or three days, my mother would dance to the accompaniment of gongand drums, moving about the house in a trance-like state, murmuring the words that would ward
off misfortune and foretell the course of events. At this one time, women were at the centre of all
the rituals; men were pushed aside into odd nooks and corners, sitting in formal posture andtrying to make themselves as small as possible. When misfortune was forecast, my mother would
be deeply afraid, and in order to avert it would set out for Mount Kinpo, where she would
perform religious austerities in a waterfall. This may have been because it was believed that
Mount Kinpo, which soars above Kumamoto in the distant west, had the appearance of a sacred
mountain.

Kang: Memories of a Zainichi Korean Childhood

17

The neighbourhood gossip was that there was something odd about young Tetsuo’s family—all
those gongs and drums. Perhaps his mother had a screw loose … All I could do was will those
few days and their ceremonies to be over as quickly as possible.
In my twenties, I discovered my name and that of my elder brother engraved on the small shrine
at nearby Suigenchi. This epitomised my mother’s concern for the security and good fortune ofher two children, and brought home to me once again how deeply she loved us. Years later, thewoman from Shimonoseki died and was succeeded by her adopted son-in-law. When my father
died, it was this ‘she man’ who made the final farewells at his cremation. It may at the same time
have been a message from the woman from Shimonoseki. At that moment, all my former
opposition was transformed into something akin to sympathy.
One can view this world of my mother, the woman from Shimonoseki and the others as a sacredspace governed by folkloric tradition, accessible only to women, who were otherwise forced tosubmit to the patriarchal system of the zainichi. It was a space charged with their deep love forfamily and their feelings for their homeland. Was this not perhaps for them the very way ofliving as zainichi?
The rituals did not end there. That is to say, regularly as clockwork, when the correct season
came, the woman from Shimonoseki would arrive. For a full two or three days, my motherwould have worked around the clock preparing mountains of special delicacies to be used asofferings. While feeling great nostalgia for these intensely zainichi memories, at the same time I
was also driven by a desire to distance myself from them. They were bitter-sweet experiences.
The people engraved on my memory, bound up in these complex feelings … When I look backnow, I see how they gave shape to my memories. It may be that my ‘homeland’ is to be found inmemories like these.

Kang Sangjung (front left) and his family
A member of the zainichi ‘elite’, who became a military policeman
In writing of my life so far, I cannot possibly neglect to mention my two uncles.
As I wrote briefly earlier, one of them was my father’s only younger brother, and so my uncle byblood; the other was not a blood relative, but the ‘Uncle’ who was virtually a second father tome. Both were first-generation zainichi, but their life circumstances could scarcely have been
more different.
My blood uncle, extraordinarily for a Korean during the war, received a Japanese university
education. The year before the war came to an end, he joined the military police and wasstationed in Kumamoto. When defeat was at hand, my uncle decided he would kill himself. He
had a Japanese wife and a little daughter. It was not until I was at university that I saw the family
photograph taken at the time he made his decision. In dull sepia, it shows an imposing youth inmilitary uniform, wearing the armband of the military police and a sword at his hip, and next tohim, a baby in her arms, an anxious-looking woman in Japanese dress.

Zainichi Koreans: The Past, the Present and the Future18

For a colonised people, the day of Japan’s defeat should have been a joyful day of liberation, but
for my uncle it was instead the ill-starred day he would meet his death. Although he felt cornered
and as if he had no alternative but death, perhaps because he nevertheless could not bring himself
to renounce the attractions of the world, my uncle let himself be talked out of it by my father andhid himself in the Mount Mannichi air-raid shelter to escape the pursuing army of occupation. I
don’t really know how it came about that my uncle returned to the family home….
Not long afterwards, my uncle returned to his homeland to ascertain how things were in his
mother-country. He went alone. The old country which my uncle encountered had been throwninto the tragic chaos of ‘contemporary history’ [gendaishi], disorder which lasted from the day ofliberation until the bitter civil war and the birth of the divided nation now known as the Republicof Korea and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. Caught up in this, my uncle again
donned army uniform, becoming a judicial staff officer and taking up military duties. Amidst thechaos and ruin, he gave up hope of ever seeing his family again. After the Armistice, he becamea lawyer, establishing a practice in Seoul. Whether it was due to the vitality with which he
wrestled with adversity and his indefatigable hard work or to his extraordinary adaptability,
before long my uncle married the daughter of an affluent family. They were blessed withchildren, and his feet were set on the path to a happy and successful life.
When the Osaka Expo took place in 1970, my uncle returned to Japan for the first time since thewar. He searched for the wife and child he had left behind in Japan twenty years earlier, but
without success. I was never far from his side during his visit, and he told me of his life since his
return to Korea. It was almost in the nature of a confession.
My uncle had wiped out all memories from before the war, of having been a member of the ‘proJapanese faction’ military police, of the wife and child he had left behind in Japan. By burying
his own past, he had been able to build a successful new life in his homeland. The sacrifice thishad required, though, had been separation from his family and the erasing of his memories. Suchwas the ‘buried past’ of an ‘elite’ colonial subject, able to survive by obliterating half his own
life. Another person who after liberation had a similar ‘buried past’ was, it goes without saying,
the great dictator and former president of South Korea, Park Chunghee.8 My uncle, though
nowhere near as much of a ‘big shot’ as Park, was clearly also a ‘mutant’ driven across theboundaries of Japanese and Korean history. Such ‘mutants’ were excluded from the body properof Japanese history and unable to find a place to exist peaceably within ethnic history. Even now,
it is as if they are hovering on the periphery. They have passed away, and history moves
uncaringly on.
After my father’s death, my uncle seemed eager to follow him. His family scattered, and his
spent his last years lonely and alone. How, I wonder, did those expunged memories of his time inJapan return to my uncle in his final hours?
I cannot find it in my heart to condemn my uncle’s ‘anti-ethnic’, ‘pro-Japanese’ past. Even
without such condemnation, the past has certainly exacted appropriate revenge through theburden of sad memories he bore throughout his life. While accepting this, I have thought thateven so I would like to bring to light once again the memories and history that my uncle blotted
out, and throw into relief the nuances of the intricate cross-grained relationships between the‘defeat’ and ‘liberation’, and Japan and the Korean peninsula. I regard this is the weighty taskthat has been left behind for me.

Kang: Memories of a Zainichi Korean Childhood

19

Kang Sangjung (centre) with his uncle (left) in Seoul, 1972
‘Uncle’ who lived as an exile in the shadows
In striking contrast was the life of my other ‘Uncle’. Unlike my father’s younger brother, ‘Uncle’
had no education to speak of, and remained illiterate all his life. He had been a yakuza and activein the outlaw world in his youth, but eventually his life fell apart and he finished up in my housedespite being no relation. Always having time for me, he stood in for my busy father.
‘Uncle’s’ name was Yi Sangsu. His Japanese name was Iwamoto Masao. For almost thirty years
I was completely unaware of ‘Uncle’s’ original name. He was always there, occupying such anincalculable place in my memories that it just never occurred to me to inquire about him. Sadly,
it was only when ‘Uncle’ died that I learned of Yi Sangsu for the first time. I am sure my father
felt with painful intensity that he wanted ‘Uncle’, who had no relations of his own, at least to beburied under his ‘real name’. This encapsulates the heartbreak of first generation zainichi like myfather and ‘Uncle’, who did not speak openly about ethnicity. When I learned that ‘Uncle’ was
Yi Sangsu, I felt a deep sense of shame at my own lack of awareness, and wept as I understoodthe depth of their sorrow.
It may well be that ‘Uncle’ was so good to me because he saw in me a trace of the child he had
left behind in the homeland.
‘Uncle’ was vigorous and tough, a man of few wants. Even so, at times his face would be
melancholy, shadowed by loneliness. When I think about it now, I am sure that at such times he
was looking back with regret at the man who had abandoned wife and child and lost his home.
‘Uncle’ did not grumble about his hard lot, however; his dauntless personality probably did not
permit it. I think he probably accepted it as something he would have to go on enduring stoically,and determined somehow or other to work his way through. Even so, his pent-up feelings would
sometimes burst out with passionate emotion—“My country has come to this … my life hascome to this … and yet I still feel ….” As his words came to a halt and he fell into silence, I
think ‘Uncle’ was mourning bitterly.
More than anything, ‘Uncle’ loved politics. When he talked about politics, ‘Uncle’, face flushed,
was in his glory. He would often be found lecturing ‘Kaneko-san’, whom I mentioned earlier.
‘Kaneko-san’, with his good will for the ‘North’, and ‘Uncle’, who believed in the possibility ofchange in the ‘South’, were both concerned about the well-being of their families as they intently
discussed the future of the mother-country. As I watched them from a distance, I felt there wassomething remote about the two absorbed figures. This ‘adult’ face was quite alien to the ‘Uncle’of every day.
‘Uncle’ sometimes told us about social conditions or international relations, based on the store of
information he had picked up from here and there. Such-and-such a politician was in a class of
his own… this politician was really somebody ... there was no politician nowadays who could
pull off a thing like that … and so on, and so on. In general, ‘Uncle’s’ interest was in the person,and based on that he added to his store of knowledge of events and circumstances. It seems to me
his critiques were often sufficiently accurate to take even a political analyst aback. He certainly
had a real political intuition.

Zainichi Koreans: The Past, the Present and the Future20

It wasn’t only political lectures—‘Uncle’ was also my guide to an unfamiliar world. At a time
when entertainment was scarce, when television was a luxury only to be dreamed of, movies
were the window onto the world of pleasure. ‘Uncle’ was a huge fan, and many a time he took
me along. Whenever I perched on the front of ‘Uncle’s’ bicycle as we headed for the cinema, myheart would beat with such excitement I could hardly breathe. And as we made our way along
the dark road home, ‘Uncle’ and I would grow quite heated as we discussed whatever film we’djust seen. As ‘Uncle’ pedalled cheerfully along under the bright moon, myself in front, there wasa kind of warmth deep in my heart.
‘Uncle’ worked alongside my family, collecting garbage and feeding the pigs. I stuck to ‘Uncle’
like glue, and loved helping him look after the pigs. The daily routine of preparing the food andcleaning was hard physical work, but ‘Uncle’ toiled on, silent and intent. His compassion forliving things was very evident when the sows were farrowing. His careful ministrations as theygroaned in their labour pangs made a lasting impression on me.
‘Uncle’s’ compassionate kindness was also directed to animals that met untimely deaths. Our
house faced a national highway, and was often littered with the pathetic carcasses of dogs andcats that had been hit by cars, victims of the rapidly rising volume of traffic. Everyone else
would avert their gaze, but it was always ‘Uncle’ who would unobtrusively go and pick up thebodies and carry them in a straw mat to the bank of the nearby river, where he would give them adignified burial. Did ‘Uncle’ perhaps identify with the lifeless bodies of those ‘dumb creatures’
which had met with a sudden, meaningless death? It made my heart ache to watch him the time
he returned from the riverbank after burying a dog he’d particularly loved, smoking in stonysilence.
‘Uncle’ got drunk on so little that his one indulgence was cigarettes. There was always a packetof ‘Peace’ jammed into his back pocket. I loved ‘Uncle’ when he was smoking, most of all as hesat tranquilly in a corner of the extensive stadium at the University, puffing away as his gaze
wandered idly over Mount Tatsuta before him.
‘Uncle’ and I would go each day to pick up leftovers from the kitchens of the student dormitories
at Kumamoto University to feed the pigs. We emptied the scraps into two kerosene tins, put thetins in the panniers of ‘Uncle’s’ bicycle, and wheeled it home. ‘Uncle’ would always park thebike in the corner of the University stadium, sit in the shade of a tree, and light up a ‘Peace’. As
he exhaled with a deep sigh, the purplish smoke would dance in puffs and disappear into theskies. As I chased after it, for some unknown reason I was absurdly happy. It may be that I had
never known such a feeling of boundless joy in my life. I still recall that scene sometimes today.
When I think about it now, though, I am sure that ‘Uncle’s’ heart was full of homesickness as hegazed silently into the deep recesses of the mountain.
‘Uncle’ died in hospital with a deep sigh, as if to breathe out all the hardships of this world. I
broke down and wept.
I want to meet ‘Uncle’ once again. I was not able to ward off his sadness—even if I knew
Iwamoto Masao, I did not know Yi Sangsu. There are times when I am haunted by the thoughtthat it could be said that I never met the real ‘Uncle’. I want to meet Yi Sangsu, once again.
Surely the only way to do so is to ‘go forward’ by facing the past. It seems to me that this feelingKang: Memories of a Zainichi Korean Childhood

21

will grow stronger with the years. It may even be that the motivation for my actions in speaking
on social issues is the strength of this feeling.
When ‘Uncle’ died, he had virtually no possessions. He left behind a pair of gumboots encrustedwith food scraps and pig dung, and a jar containing a few cigarettes. As I gazed at them, I asked
myself over and over again what ‘Uncle’s’ life had been, indeed, why on earth he had even beenborn. An exile from his homeland, ‘Uncle’ had lived out his life quietly in the shadows. When hewas suddenly felled by a stroke, he tried to brush away the helping hands, surely signalling that
he had had enough of living.

'Uncle' in Kumamoto
The two uncles who influenced me so deeply… When I compare their widely-different lives, I
finish up reflecting on what it meant to live as a first-generation zainichi. It is fine, as far as it
goes, to say that it was a cruel life imposed on them by historical forces. But it seems to me that
although battered by life, they both survived, doing the best they could with the means at hand.
My ongoing wish is to ensure that the memory of those ‘mutants’ who survived the rigours of
their lives does not disappear from the places where they lived.
Torn into pieces time and again
As one follows the traces of my two uncles, the misery of their lives, torn to pieces again andagain, surfaces. Their misery is intertwined with feelings of powerlessness and loss. But although
they were stricken with grief, they got on with their lives.
One thing they were denied was seeing their country united. What of second generation zainichi
like myself, who live on with memories of them? I have still not had the opportunity of seeing
my ‘homeland’ united. When I say ‘homeland’, it does not of course have the same sense of‘native place’ [patrie] as it did for my uncles. My ‘native place’ is Kumamoto, where I was bornand grew up. A ‘homeland’ which is not one’s ‘native place’ is a nebulous, insubstantial thing. It
does not make sense for me to write of the Korean peninsula, whether ‘North’ or ‘South’ as my‘homeland’.
And yet, I want to take the plunge and write of the Korean peninsula as my ‘homeland’. By
doing so, I wonder whether I may be able to re-discover bonds with my uncles. I wonder whether
perhaps I will be able to discover my ‘homeland’ in their memories. Of course, they are nolonger alive. Even so, the actuality of the division which was responsible for their misery still
continues. Might it not be that when that stark reality is confronted and ended, I will be able tomeet my uncles again and begin to say “at last the time has come when your heartache (han)9
can fade away.”
Today I am a university professor and have achieved a certain degree of public esteem. The
contrast with my uncles is obvious. I cannot rid myself of a feeling of shame that I perhaps neverreally met them, and even now I have not had the joy of seeing a unified Korea. I am comfortedby the demonstration my parents and my uncles gave me, a supremely ‘human’ way of being in
the face of adversity. This is perhaps what Cumings’ meant by “the Korean peninsula has both

Zainichi Koreans: The Past, the Present and the Future22

acquired much, and lost much” and that “it is a story remarkable for human triumph over
adversity.”

Kang Sangjung 2003
By the time I was in upper primary school, there was an intangible sense in society at large that
there was something almost criminal in the very fact of being zainichi, and even worse was thehard fact of division. Why was my parents’ and my uncles’ mother-country being divided? Why
was it fighting? Was the Korean race belligerent by nature? When I thought about it, I had toadmit that many of the first generation wore their hearts on their sleeves; they were aggressive,
abusive and quarrelsome—and so I supposed it might make sense that the country was divided
and members of the same race were killing each other. What a ‘barbaric’ people! Images andconcepts like these formed one after another, leaving me always heavy-hearted.
History and modern society lessons at school were truly wretched experiences for me. I wasseized by a feeling of desolation, as if I had been left all alone in the classroom. Why was I azainichi? Why were we ‘at the bottom of the heap’? Such misgivings troubled me deeply, butthere was no friend or teacher in whom I could confide. I had no alternative but to bury myanxieties deep within myself, and as a result, it was as if a dark cloud of disquiet hung over me.
I was good at both schoolwork and sport, and probably seemed a cheerful, mischievous boy. But
at times the cheerfulness would be erased by melancholy and disquiet. There was no realknowledge of or insight into the significance or the origins of division, but it definitely cast adark shadow. Zainichi—rootless like tumbleweed, deprived of the protective carapace of‘nation’, fighting among themselves even when in a foreign country, the country to which theyshould return split in two. In the popular mind, they were nothing short of ‘the dregs of history’.
Even the well-meaning people around me were probably unable to imagine how dark a shadow
this negative image cast over my young heart. And yet the division was not unrelated to Japanese
history.
Later, when I was studying in the former West Germany, I was aware that the division ofGermany cast a deep shadow on its people. There was no mistaking that people who live in a
divided country have to bear in the roots of their being the burden of negation.
One could perhaps in a way regard the division of Germany, with the weight of the dark legacyof Nazism bearing down on it, as history’s revenge. But the Korean peninsula had been thevictim of long-term forcible colonisation, and for that very reason, the history of division was all
the more heartbreaking and its influence the more profound.
When I retrace my childhood memories, I feel a melancholy deeper than simple nostalgia, amelancholy that has continued as I grow older. Why, I wonder? I cannot help but think that theanswer lies in the circumstances of being zainichi, of which division is the symbol.
There is a complex emotion in zainichi. Some of the younger generation talk of there being two
streams within themselves—the country they love most in the world is Japan and that they mostdislike is the Korean peninsula. Yet at the same time, the country they most love in the world is
the Korean peninsula and that which they dislike most is Japan. It is an extreme form of

Kang: Memories of a Zainichi Korean Childhood

23

expression, but I find similar feelings within myself— Japan is at once my favourite country, theone I should love, and at the same time the country I most dislike; the Korean peninsula too is
the country I most dislike and that which in a certain way, I should love. Why does such a statepersist in this way?
I think my melancholy usually arises from this sense of division. Division must be healed
through reconciliation, not force. It may be, indeed, that reintegration can never be fully
achieved. Yet surely it is possible to dispel insecurity by allowing the ‘other’ to enter oneself andco-exist with that ‘difference’? It may be that in the final analysis, it is simply impossible tospeak of fundamentally dispelling insecurity. But surely even if the insecurity cannot be
dispelled, the heart may be lightened by confronting its source, accepting it, embracing it?
I somehow feel that when even some small reconciliation takes place between the divisions
between ‘zainichi’ and ‘Japan’, ‘zainichi’ and ‘North/South’, ‘North/South’ and ‘Japan’, I will atlast be able to meet my uncles.
The unification and co-existence of North and South is not simply a matter of bringing together adivided country. The process of reconciliation is itself of great importance. Reconciliation of
North and South will necessarily also be bound up with simultaneous reconciliation with Japan.
When this happens, we will surely be able to farewell the cruel years of the twentieth century andface the new century. It will be a difficult assignment and there will doubtless be many ups anddowns, but I want to be on the spot when such reconciliation occurs. Born as I was during the
Korean War, this is my dream.
Translator’s postscript
The aging of the first generation of zainichi Koreans who are the main subject of this essay
brings sadness and the vanishing of individual histories, but also sometimes opportunities forremembering. On 3 April 2005, Kang Sangjung’s mother U Sunnam passed away peacefully inKumamoto. She was 80 years old. Shortly before, on a visit to his hometown, Kang Sangjung
had been able to make contact again with ‘Kaneko-san’, who is now very elderly but still has
vivid memories of the days described here. They met again after many decades, and were able toshare happy and sad recollections of the times and places described here—a corner of postwar
Japan which is often invisible in the big narratives of the nation, but whose traces still exert apowerful influence on the Japan of today.
This translation of the first part of Kang Sangjung’s autobiography Zainichi (Kodansha, 2004)
was first published in Japanese Studies Volume 26 Number 2 December 2006, pp 267-281.
Posted on Japan Focus, February 2, 2007.
Note on the translator
Robin Fletcher received her PhD from the Australian National University in 2005, for a thesis
entitled ‘Yaeko Batchelor, Ainu evangelist and poet’. In addition to researching Japanese history,
she has translated a number of Japanese works, including the collected works of Yaeko
Batchelor.
Notes to the translation

Zainichi Koreans: The Past, the Present and the Future

24

1 Korea was annexed by Japan as a colony in 1910. In the 1920s, there were periods of relatively
unrestricted entry for Koreans to Japan, and there was a great increase in the number of Koreans
working in Japan. Most were single men, employed on construction sites, in mines and factories.
Gradually their families joined them. They faced considerable racial discrimination and manycame to live in settlements of Korean people. Hundreds of thousands of Koreans were forcibly
relocated to Japan with the passing of the National Mobilisation Law (April 1938) and theaccompanying ordinance on the immigration of Korean labourers (effective September 1938).
By the end of World War II, the number of Koreans living in Japan, including those brought overforcibly during the War, had increased to over two million. (Translator’s note)
2 The General Headquarters of the Allied Powers (GHQ) declared that Koreans resident inJapan, whether of Northern and Southern origin, were neither citizens of the victorious countries
nor of the defeated countries, but were described as ‘third country nationals’.
3 In 1871, American teacher Leroy Lansing Janes established a school in Kumamoto, theKumamoto Yogakko, which offered a Western, Christian education. In 1876, thirty-five students
pledged themselves to the Christian faith and to missionary work among the Japanese. They
were known as the ‘Kumamoto Band’. (Translator’s note)
4 When a bomb of unknown origin ripped the Japanese railway near Shenyang (then known as
Mukden), in September 1931, the Japanese Kwantung army guarding the railway used theincident as a pretext to occupy South Manchuria. This led to the creation of the puppet state ofManchukuo. (Translator’s note)
5 Traditional dress for Korean women consists of a short upper-body garment, folded in front
similar to a kimono (jeogori), and a pleated long full skirt, gathered above the waist (chima).
(Translator’s note)
6 A sweet drink made from fermented rice, sometimes flavoured with ginger. (Translator’s note)
7 Itako, blind female shamans or spirit mediums, are renowned for their capacity to speak for thedead, through a ritual process known as kuchiyose.
8 Park Chunghee (1917-1979) was president of South Korea from 1961 to 1979. He had served
the Kwangtung Army (part of the Japanese Army) in Manchuria in colonial times. Park led amilitary coup in 1961. In 1971, he declared a state of emergency and suspended the constitution.
The following year, he introduced a revised constitution which increased his power to the extent
that it made him a virtual dictator. Having survived an assassination attempt in 1974, Park was
assassinated in 1979. (Translator’s note)
9 Broadly definable as a sense of deep sorrow and a desire for restitution invoked by the
sufferings and oppression of history, han is often seen as one of the defining elements of modern
Korean culture. (Translator’s note)Ryang: The Denationalized Have No Class

25“The Denationalized Have No Class: The Banishment of Japan’s Korean Minority—A
Polemic”
Sonia Ryang
June 8, 2008
http://japanfocus.org/-Sonia-Ryang/2776
Sonia Ryang possesses “double vision” in that she is a U.S.-based anthropologist as
well as a cultural insider who grew up as a Zainichi Korean. Her family supported
Chongryun (the North Korea–affiliated Zainichi Korean organization), which stood incontrast to the twentieth century’s other Zainichi Korean organization Mindan that wasaffiliated with South Korea., Zainichi Koreans during the last century was largely divided intheir identification either with Chongryun or Mindan. She reached adulthood after
attending Chongryun-run ethnic schools including the Korea University in Tokyo andworked as a journalist for a Chongryun newspaper before starting her graduate studies in
the United Kingdom. This background endows her Zainichi Korean studies with depths,
insights, and a distinctive ethos. In this article, she describes the contours of Zainichi
Korean history after 1945 and why “Zainichi Korean” as an ethnicity separate from
Koreans in Korea remains relevant today.
Ryang does not delve into her own history in her article, but her argument is clearlybased on her early life as a Zainichi Korean. This article opens with a quote that states thatsocial class categories have become more significant than ethnicity for Zainichi Koreans.
Ryang uses the whole article to counter that opinion and argues that ethnicity must remain
foregrounded in Zainichi Korean studies. One crucial reason is that in 1952 the American
occupation and the Japanese government withheld Japanese citizenship from the Koreans,a process that made the Zainichi “officially and completely extra-territorial” (p. 5) in Japan.
As a result, Zainichi Koreans were excluded from any social benefits offered by theJapanese government in the early postwar years, which in turn made them identify further
with Chongryun and Mindan. Chongryun in turn made it a policy to renounce any assertionof their rights in Japanese society, because they understood taking such a course of action
to be an intervention in Japan’s domestic affairs. In a vicious cycle, this made Zainichi
communities more insular.
The article also discusses changes that took place for the Zainichi during the next
few decades. With the easing of foreign travels, South Koreans started to arrive in Japan
from the peninsula again after 1988, and all Zainichi Koreans came to be granted a status of
special permanent resident. Unlike permanent residents in the United States, however, thespecial permanent status does not serve as a path to eventual Japanese citizenship. For thisreason, even though many Zainichi rose out of poverty in the 1980s, Ryang argues that
Zainichi Koreans remain largely “outside all of those (class) categories and largely
invisible” (p. 18) in Japan.
As these articles show, social class and economic factors largely determined which
Koreans migrated and became Zainichi Koreans during the twentieth century. Ryang
explains why any Koreans did so. She also show that mainland Koreans themselves wereguilty of exclusion and amnesia in regard to the Zainichi. Ryang’s article argues powerfullyZainichi Koreans: The Past, the Present and the Future

and persuasively that ethnicity remains relevant to this group of people, who have lived
steadfastly and continuously in Japan for nearly a century.

26

Ryang: The Denationalized Have No Class

27

The Denationalized Have No Class: The Banishment of Japan’s Korean Minority—A
Polemic
Sonia Ryang
1.
In a recent article by Bumsoo Kim entitled “Bringing class back in: the changing basis ofinequality and the Korean minority in Japan,” I read:“[…] this study shows that the legal/institutional and socioeconomic structural changes inJapan for the past few decades, by decreasing ethnic inequality between Koreans andJapanese while increasing class inequality among Koreans, have made class moresignificant than ethnicity in understanding the inequality problematic of zainichi Koreans[i.e. Koreans in Japan].”1
Perhaps it is logical that an oppressed and marginalized ethnic minority, once it begins to receive
the benefits of the affluence of the host society, albeit belatedly, would shed its markings of
ethnicity and begin to take on the markings of class. Perhaps it is also logical to think that in sucha situation class, rather than ethnicity, would become more relevant to forging identity.
Unequivocally, however, I remain unconvinced by the argument that a particular category
becomes “more significant” than certain others, since the marking of the oppressed is always
necessarily multiply compounded.

Young Koreans in Japan celebrate a wedding in traditional Korean style.

Nevertheless, what the above passage made me wonder—and what I found to be odd in it—was
this: Koreans in Japan have always had incorporated class stratification: throughout the colonial
period, during the US occupation and the entire post-war period, and to this day. The question is
why, then, do some researchers think that class (and here, I take that they mean, throughconflation, class consciousness and class differentiation) was not previously relevant to Koreansin Japan or, more precisely, when we think about Koreans in Japan. When did class disappear
from the rhetoric and understanding of and about Koreans in Japan to the extent that now
someone has to “bring class back in”?
These questions led me to think not so much about class as about being human—notably, about
when a human is not a human in Japan. I find that focusing on class (including classconsciousness and class differentiation) or, more precisely, the absence thereof, can provide aZainichi Koreans: The Past, the Present and the Future28

useful perspective when thinking about Japan as a nation-state in which non-nationals are notdeemed human.
2.
It is no news to Japan scholars that the concept of class does not always serve as a useful guide.
Having said this, class is not a unified category. Following the Neo-Marxist intervention inacademe, especially in the work of Louis Althusser and Pierre Bourdieu, no serious social
scientist has been content with a definition of class limited to economic relationships. Rather,cultural capital and ideological mechanisms as we understand them today carry as much
importance as socio-economic relations and income or wages.2
But there is also the problem of cross-cultural and cross-national compatibility of categories. For
example, the category of middle class captures a much broader population in the US thanin Britain. While in the latter, at least in popular and lay discourses of the everyday, the middle
class stands in clear distinction from the working class (the histories of which have been written;
for example),3 in the former, the middle class seems to encompass heterogeneous income groups
with vague nomenclatures, often including professionals, blue-collar workers, white-collar
workers, small business owners, and so on. Furthermore, in both the US and Britain, poverty
lines have often followed racial (in addition to ethnic and colonial) lines of division. Whileracialized economic borders have long divided the Korean minority from the Japanese majority,
the vast majority of Koreans and Japanese would today classify themselves as middle class—if
asked, that is. In other words, terms such as class are passé in popular discourse in Japan, just as
poverty deceptively appears to have vanished in the eyes of many.4
But did class disappear equally and identically for Japanese and Koreans? In other words, is themode of attrition of this concept from public consciousness the same for Japanese and Koreansin Japan, the former being members of the Japanese national polity, and the latter being outsiders
in relation to it? In line with this, my further proposition is that class stratification, including
membership of a certain class, should be understood as being premised upon national
membership. More crudely put, if one is not a member of a national polity, one is not a classmember: that is to say, the denationalized have no class. To a great extent, this is a truism, as
many cases, globally speaking, confirm this position. But the case of Koreans in Japan presents aparticularly clear instance of the phenomenon, as I shall show below.
I shall argue that there is an important mechanism at work here, involving legal, philosophical,
and cultural elements, such that Koreans do not qualify to be included when one talks about classformation in Japan. Such exclusion of Koreans is not new. Throughout the postwar era, Korean
residents in Japan have not been recognized as a sociological category, either in the context ofcensuses and surveys in Japan or from within the positionality of Koreans themselves.
The systematic exclusion of Koreans from Japan’s quantitative data, such as the national census,
however, has not been matched by a similar practice in the area of qualitative studies,particularly in the case of the literary print market. Koreans in Japan have been studied frommultiple angles, and their cases have been used to test many concepts that populate the margins
of Japanese society, including poverty and domestic violence. Strangely, however, these studies
have failed to touch upon the concept of class.

Ryang: The Denationalized Have No Class29

I do not attempt to fill this gap in the study of class among Koreans in Japan, but use thisomission to highlight an intellectual challenge. I do so by paying close attention to the limbo-likeontology of Koreans in Japan in relation to Japan and Korea. This concept has been explored byother writers, generally carrying the implication of a moral inferiority, or more precisely, an
inferior or lesser belonging in one terrain, presumably, Japan’s national entity. Instead, I shalltake banishment, or exile, as an important conceptual pillar in this exercise. This position
separates me from existing studies of Koreans in Japan that presuppose an inferior, incomplete
form of belonging of Koreans in relation to Japanese society: what I am saying is that there is nosuch form of belonging—complete exclusion or banishment is all that exists for Koreans inJapan. The banishment of Koreans from Japanese society is as much a reality as a usefulconceptual tool in clarifying why Koreans have not been studied from the perspective of classstratification in Japan. This, I shall argue, is a result of both internal and external perceptions; by
the Japanese government and researchers on the one hand, and by Koreans themselves on theother.
It will be necessary to start from the postwar process according to which emerging Korean
expatriate movements effectively segregated Koreans from the Japanese mainstream, rendering
them invisible in the context of Japan’s domestic statistics. This needs to be understood intandem with the legal exclusion of Koreans from the Japanese nation by a concerted effort of the
US Occupation authorities in the immediate postwar years and the Japanese authorities
thereafter. I shall then introduce a survey, possibly the only existing sociological survey
available in English, carried out using quantitatively appropriate methods among Korean males
in Japan by Kim Myungsoo in 1995, and shall further interpret its results.
My final goal is to address the question of what it is to be human rather than “Korean” or“Japanese.” The reader will recognize that I do not propose to conceptualize Koreans as holding
a transnational or supranational existence or, worse still, “cultural citizenship”— labels that in noway capture the fundamental reality of Koreans in Japan.5 I shall show that the reason why
Koreans in Japan continue to be viewed as irrelevant to, or not conforming with, class divisions
within Japanese society is that they are merely and nakedly human and not members of anational polity. As I shall demonstrate below, this is an example of what Giorgio Agamben calls
bare life, a form of existence that Hannah Arendt claims as the most perilous and precarious in
the modern world.6
3.
It should not take too much to persuade the reader that, for a long time in postwar Japan, Korean
residents were poor—poorer than their Japanese contemporaries, and poorer than Koreansin Japan are today. With a certain audacity, I might even claim that, for a substantial period,
Koreans in Japan had only two cultural assets—a culture of nationalism and a culture of poverty.
Koreans were poor, known to be poor, and expected to behave like poor people. This meant that,in the scheme of Japanese stereotyping of Koreans, they were associated with an array of
damnable, beastly, and barbaric characteristics including a benighted querulousness, lack of
education and intelligence, crude and slow wits, an easily excitable nature, opportunism,
dishonesty, and deceptiveness. These were distinctly colonial characterizations of Koreansin Japan by the Japanese media and authorities.7 But ironically, in the postcolonial selfunderstanding of Koreans in Japan, poverty and violence loomed large, as these formed part of
the unmistakable heritage that Korean expatriate decolonization in Japan had to deal with.

Zainichi Koreans: The Past, the Present and the Future30

And that violence, that ethnic Korean brand of violence, the intensity of which Japanese
sectioned off in urban ghettos such as Sanya or Kamagasaki, readily found its way into Korean
homes, fiercely inflicted upon weaker members of the family by the patriarch. The oft-quoted
figure of the areru chichi or violent father, however, was also seen as burning with the flames ofpatriotism—there was always a good justification for his actions, as he had been destroyed,
abused, exploited, and mentally injured by Japanese imperialism and colonial rule. Note that thisportrayal was not found in the writings of Japanese commentators, let alone state-commissioned
researchers, but in the writings of ethnic Korean writers in Japan.8
Strangely, however, the poverty of Koreans was not represented or perceived (by Koreans
themselves) as a class phenomenon. It was, rather, an ethnic property. Just as Japan’s so-called“untouchables,” the burakumin, were associated with poverty, Korean neighborhoods werereferred to as chōsenburaku or Korean hamlets (or ghettos, in more contemporary language).
These consisted of persons engaged in a range of activities (and lack of activity) associated withpoverty—raising pigs, collecting cardboard boxes and glass bottles, gathering old nails andmelting them in backyards, the ubiquitous day laboring, and chronic unemployment. Families
lived in shacks that sometimes had no running water, often using shared outhouses. Men were
often heavily dependent on alcohol, which consumed the meager earnings from their dailylabors. Women tried to cling to these paltry funds in order to provide for the children. Womenalso worked, often illegally and with a sense of humiliation, at times brewing rice wine orcollecting scrap metal on the streets, all the while nursing and raising children. I have perhaps
made the wrong emphasis here—humiliation was not foremost in their thoughts, rather they werepreoccupied with the desperate struggle for survival.
All of this, however, remained in the ghetto. Indeed, as long as Koreans did not try to takeadvantage of the limited forms of welfare offered by local municipalities, there was hardly
anything the Japanese government owed them—that is, speaking from the perspective of Japan’s
domestic law. This is because, following their 1952 forfeiture of Japanese nationality, Koreans
became officially and completely extra-territorials in the eyes of the Japanese government. Thatis, with the signing of the San Francisco Treaty between the US and Japan in 1952, Koreans lost
all the legal properties associated with national belonging in Japan. Instead, thereafter, they
became extra-national temporary residents, or sojourners, many of them stateless persons, to beprecise. Thus they came to be excluded from veterans’ benefits, atomic bomb victims’ benefits,disability benefits, the national pension plan, national government welfare, and all othernationalized forms of social security. To be sure—and this is important—many Koreans were therecipients of seikatsuhogo, “livelihood protection,” a rescue measure implemented by local
municipalities (not the national government). But no access was provided to national-level
benefits and welfare. As such, the poverty of this group did not constitute a domestic classproblem for the Japanese nation-state. The year 1952 therefore constituted an important juncturein the history of Koreans in Japan. I shall return to this point later.
4.
Historically speaking, Koreans played an important role in the formation of the modern Japaneseworking class, Japanese trade unionism, and the Communist movement, both during the colonial
and postcolonial periods. At the height of the Comintern’s intervention in the Korean andJapanese Communist movements during the 1920s, Korean communists in Japan, following theComintern policy of one party per nation, joined their Japanese comrades in the name of trans-

Ryang: The Denationalized Have No Class31

ethnic working class solidarity. The Korean comrades were famed for their level of commitment
and fearless determination, and their activities often led to injury or imprisonment.9
When the war ended, there were 2.4 million Koreans in Japan, most of whom were repatriatedduring the years immediately following Japan’s defeat. Repatriation took place in a chaotic
atmosphere, with virtually no administrative assistance provided by the Japanese or Occupation
authorities. By 1948, only about 590,000 Koreans remained in Japan.10 During the early years of
the US Occupation (1945-47), leftist movements in Japan regained momentum. Koreans joined
this wave by maintaining strong connections with working-class, progressive, and communist
forces. Throughout East Asia, activists worked under the assumption that socialist revolutions
would spread, domino-like, following the establishment of North Korea (1948) and the People’s
Republic of China (1949). On this premise, it was argued that if the Korean left wanted tosupport Korea’s socialist revolution and the goal of national unification under North Korea’s
leadership, it had to first join forces with Japanese communists in their efforts to bring down thecurrent reactionary Japanese government.11

The headquarter of Choryeon (top) and Mindan (bottom) in Tokyo

The above belief in itself had not prevented leftist Koreans from forming their own organization.
Within two months of the war’s ending, in October 1945, the League of Koreansin Japan (zainichi chōsenjin renmei in Japanese and chaeilbon choseonin ryeonmaeng in
Korean), commonly referred to as Choryeon, was founded. This body was soon to be confronted
with a rival nationalist organization, the Association of Koreans Remaining in Japan (zainichikankoku kyoryōū mindan in Japanese and chaeil hanguk keoryu mindan), commonly known
as Mindan. While it is conventionally (and not completely erroneously) understood that
Choryeon supported north Korea while Mindan backed south Korea (reflecting Korea’s partition
as of 1945 into a Sovietized north and an American Military Government-run south), theoperational mechanisms of expatriate politics reflected boundaries that were far more complex,
ambiguous, and unstable. For example, Choryeon had a Seoul office in South Korea. Moreover,the majority of Koreans remaining in Japan originated from the southern provinces ofKyeongsang, Cheolla, and Cheju, thereby rendering it somewhat unnatural that Choryeon
enjoyed support among this population, unless one remembered that Koreans (and others also) in
those days regarded the country’s partition as a temporary state-of-affairs soon to be resolved.

Zainichi Koreans: The Past, the Present and the Future

32

Koreans of both left- and right-wing persuasions shared fiercely anti-Japanese and nationalistic
sentiments and a strong desire to gain complete independence through a unified Korea. What
divided them were differing views on how best to achieve the common goal of national
reunification and independence from foreign occupation: one camp wanted to unify Korea underNorth Korean-style socialism, while the other wanted to free the peninsula from revolutionary
influences associated with the Soviet Union and China.
5.
The left sought to build a supra-national class coalition. Ironically, such possibilities wereaugmented by the suppression of the left by Japanese and Occupation authorities. In 1949,
Occupation authorities and Japanese military police responded to Choryeon’s support for North
Korea, by closing down Choryeon’s headquarters, outlawing it and confiscating its properties,
assets, and savings. This was the first application of the Prevention of Destruction Law or hakaibōshihō. Earlier, in 1948, Korean schools operated by Choryeon had been forcibly shut down
under the provisions of Martial Law, resulting in deaths and injuries.12
In the wake of these developments, Korean left-nationalists had no choice but to join theJapanese Communist Party, which had not been suppressed by the authorities. However, thismarriage of convenience soon showed signs of strain. The frustrations of Korean members
intensified following the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950, compounded by disillusionment
when the promised East Asian revolution failed to materialize. Fierce debate took place among
Korean members, some stressing solidarity with the international working class movement, andothers calling for prioritization of national goals and efforts to end the bloody conflict on thepeninsula. This debate was brought to an end unexpectedly by communiqués issued by the North
Korean Foreign Minister in 1952, which expressed North Korea’s willingness to enter into
normal diplomatic relations with the Japanese government currently in power.13
Following this development, Koreans withdrew en masse from the Japanese Communist Party
and, after a few years of internal purges and fierce debates, re-organized as the General
Association of Korean Residents in Japan, or Chongryun in its abbreviated Korean form. In
retrospect, the emergence of Chongryun in 1955 completed the process of banishment of
Koreans in Japan from the Japanese national polity first initiated through the 1952 forfeiture ofJapanese nationality. The classification of exiled Koreans as sojourners, rather than as membersof the society of the host nation, amounted to a postcolonial settlement in dual terms—for theJapanese government, which could now completely banish Koreans from any form of national
planning, and also for Koreans in Japan themselves, who thus freed themselves from the legacyof Japanese colonial subjugation while remaining in Japan. Indeed, in the latter case, it was
precisely because they continued to stay on in Japan that they had to self-exile themselves fromthe Japanese nation-state.
Chongryun, in contrast to Choryeon, renounced all forms of intervention in Japan’s domestic
politics. Instead, it declared itself to be the organization representing North Korea overseas. This
meant that Chongryun would not wage campaigns demanding civil rights, economic and social
benefits, provision of medical care, or other civic entitlements provided by the Japanese
government. It recognized these as rights reserved exclusively for Japanese citizens.
Furthermore, it renounced the use of unlawful violence in all aspects of its activities, anddeclared itself to be a law-abiding organization in Japan. This marked the virtual disappearanceof Koreans from Japanese left-wing movements. In exchange, Chongryun secured relative

Ryang: The Denationalized Have No Class33

autonomy to operate its own schools with its own academic curricula. As long as its schools
were not accredited as Level 1 schools, or ichijōkō, those classified by the Ministry of Educationas capable of issuing academic certificates and degrees, the pedagogical contents of programs
offered at these institutions would be left untouched by the ministry. At the same time, however,Chongryun schools would not be entitled to public subsidies, thereby freeing the ministry fromthe burden of having to finance the education of Korean students enrolled in Chongryun schools.
Chongryun enjoyed substantial support among Koreans in Japan. At the time of its founding,Japanese intelligence estimated that as many as 90 percent of Koreans in Japan sympathized withand supported North Korea.14

Ethnic Korean students study at a Chongryun-funded elementary school in Tokyo. 2007.

In short, by 1955, within three years of being deprived of Japanese citizenship, Koreansin Japan (or at least Chongryun and its affiliates, which accounted for the majority of Koreans at
the time) had banished or exiled themselves from the Japanese civic terrain. During the period
when their status had been ambiguous, that is to say, in 1949, when they were not legally
excluded from Japanese citizenship status under the Occupation, they were “outlawed”; in 1952,
they were excluded from Japanese civic entitlements; in 1955, Koreans themselves embraced
this marginalization by effectively declaring that they had no wish to be counted within Japan’s
civic life.
From then on, Koreans were erased from Japan’s national census, national surveys, GDPcalculations, and income charts. They were also denied veterans’ pensions, payments for medical
expenses for victims of the atom bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and welfare andsocial security payments. Further, they were denied access to national healthcare, the right tohold civil and public service jobs, and the right to vote, while they remained obligated to pay
taxes in a classical form of “taxation without representation.” Fundamentally speaking, their
exclusion (and self-exclusion) occluded them from class categorizations—there was, in otherwords, no way to include them in discussions and conceptualizations of socio-economic classformation and transformation in postwar Japan, since they had been stripped of civil status andprivileges. More figuratively speaking, being a member of a certain class stands on theZainichi Koreans: The Past, the Present and the Future

34

prerequisite of being a member of a national state polity: if one is not a national, one does notbelong to any class, either.
But that is not all. Up until 1965, Japan recognized neither the governments of South Korea nor
North Korea. Alien registration certificates carried by Koreans in Japan would include theterms chōsen (a general term for Korea; often used to refer to North Korea) or kankoku (South
Korea). However, the Japanese government’s immigration bureau is on record as stating thatneither term refers to a nationality.15 It may not be intuitively obvious to the reader today, but up
until 1965, Koreans in Japan had no official nationality available for them, since neither
kankoku or chō sen written on the Japanese alien registration certificate meant a nation. Since
1965, following normalization of diplomatic relations between Japan and South Korea, kankoku
came to be deemed as a nationality. But even today, a minority of Koreans in Japan continues tohave chōsen (Korea) entered in the space for “nationality” on their alien registration documents.
This term does not denote a nationality, since there is no nation simply called Korea in the world.
To this day, Japan does not recognize North Korea, which is often associated with the alien
registration status under the name chōsen; no precedent exists to the effect that the North Korean
government grants Koreans residing in Japan North Korean nationality. The oft-displayed
understanding that those whose alien registration bears the label chōsen are the citizens of North
Korea or the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea living in Japan, therefore, is preposterous.
Nevertheless, I emphasize, just as in the case of the 1955 self-banishment of (Chongryun)
Koreans from Japan’s national polity, the self-declaration of these individuals as being North
Koreans in Japan was a solid reality, if only on a rhetorical level, during the years immediately
following Chongryun’s emergence.
6.
The newly acquired name for the Korean left, “overseas nationals of the Democratic People’s
Republic of Korea,” ethnicized their identity. For them, the bedrock of their consciousness was
patriotism, not class-consciousness. Note also, that regardless of what Koreans thought theywere, they had no citizenship or nationality. Their idea of being “overseas citizens of North
Korea” was a baseless illusion recognized neither by North Korea nor by Japan, nor for thatmatter by any state or international organization.
North Korea does not issue passports to persons living overseas, and there is no documentationor paperwork inside North Korea that registers Koreans in Japan as citizens of the nation residing
abroad. The only time North Korea has officially acknowledged that Koreans in Japan could
potentially be North Korean nationals was when it entered into a formal agreement with theJapanese Red Cross so that Koreans could be repatriated from Japan to North Korea in 1959. It isextremely interesting to note that, as discussed in recent research by Tessa Morris-Suzuki, theJapanese government anticipated that the number of Korean would-be returnees to North Korea
would total around 60,000. This just happened to be the number of Koreans receiving
seikatsuhogo or “livelihood protection” (similar to, but not identical with, social security)
through the minimal benefits program offered by Japanese local governments in the 1950s, andMorris-Suzuki suspects that the numerical equivalence here is not totally coincidental. As such,for the Japanese government, the issue of the Koreans and their poverty was to be resolved byphysically eliminating them from Japanese soil.16
The repatriation of these individuals to North Korea, it should also be noted, became possible
through the active assistance of the International Red Cross. It is ironical to observe that an

Ryang: The Denationalized Have No Class

35

international human rights organization assumed that the final, best solution was to move people
from a country in which they had no claim to national citizenship to another where they were
thought to belong. Here again, the human rights of Koreans in Japan were activated only when
they were deemed as belonging to a certain country—even though there was no way of securing
their return trip due to the lack of diplomatic relations between Japan and North Korea. The
ensuing tragedy was that Koreans who thought that they were returning “home” to North Korea
found themselves marginalized, bereft of rights, and living under materially and politically harshconditions.
From 1959 to 1976, 92,749 individuals were “repatriated” from Japan to North Korea.
Considering that most Koreans in Japan originally came from the southern provinces, it was aninherently anomalous repatriation. Interestingly, no such mass repatriation of Koreans fromJapan to South Korea took place following the normalization of diplomatic relations between
Japan and South Korea in 1965, despite the fact that the majority of Koreans came originallyfrom southern provinces. It is important to register that, due to pronatalist population policies
that traced their origins back to the National Eugenics Law of 1940, Japan’s population
continued to grow until the late 1960s, thereby obviating the need for migrant workers. It should
also be remembered that postwar Japan was the destination for hundreds and thousands ofJapanese returnees from overseas colonies, including Sakhalin, Mongolia, China, southeast Asia,and of course, Korea. As the defeated party in World War II and a nation in ruins, the former
colonial master of Asia, Japan did not face an influx of (illegal) labor immigrants from outside.
This meant that former colonial subjects, the majority of whom were Korean, were the only
stateless persons in Japan.
As stated, it was not until 1965 that Koreans in Japan became eligible to adopt a nationality.
Following diplomatic normalization between Japan and the Republic of Korea, Koreans inJapan could apply for South Korean nationality. What is extremely interesting is that permanent
residence status in Japan was granted alongside South Korean nationality, and that this status
made Koreans eligible for public housing, public medical care, and other benefits. It is clearly
apparent from such an example that it is only when a person acquires a nationality that humanrights begin to be accorded to that person.
Morally speaking, this measure was, of course, unjustifiable: why should the Japanese
government only provide benefits to those Koreans in Japan who applied for South Koreannationality, while its colonial rule had subjugated the entire Korean peninsula? This remains anenigma until one considers the historical background of Cold War politics. As the dominant
force in the postwar East Asian geopolitical environment, the US wholeheartedly connived in theabove strategy. More fundamentally, the post-WWII global order presupposed a person’s
belonging to a national polity as the most important condition for that person to be considered
human—not the other way around. And this meant that the 1965 treaty left those Koreans who
did not opt to identify themselves with South Korea stateless and hence, non-human in termsof human rights. Here is another instance of what Arendt describes: “Man, it turns out, can lose
all so-called Rights of Man without losing his essential quality as man, his human dignity. Only
the loss of a polity itself expels him from humanity.”17 As long as the globe remains sliced up
into national sovereign states, non-nationals or the de-nationalized will remain stateless,homeless, and rightless. They are rightless not because they are legally discriminated against, but
because they are outside of the law. In a way, a convicted murderer has more normal humanZainichi Koreans: The Past, the Present and the Future36

rights than the denationalized. And the denationalized is disenfranchised from domestic nationalclass stratification: he has no class.
In this light, it should be clear how erroneous it is for many of those conducting research on
Koreans in Japan, and especially those with a political conscience and a passion for justice, toargue that Koreans in Japan are treated as sub-humans, second-class citizens, and discriminatedagainst inside Japanese society. For, they are not discriminated against inside Japanese society,since they are actually outside Japanese society, this arising from the fact that they are merely
and nakedly human, and not sub-human. Furthermore, to argue that they are treated like secondclass citizens would be to miss the central point that they are in no sense citizens in any classwhatsoever.
7.
Arendt once wrote:
Not only did loss of national rights in all instances entail the loss of human rights; the restorationof human rights, as the recent example of the State of Israel proves, has been achieved so far
only through the restoration or the establishment of national rights. The conception of humanrights, based upon the assumed existence of a human being as such, broke down at the very
moment when those who professed to believe in it were for the first time confronted with people
who had indeed lost all other qualities and specific relationships—except that they were still
human. The world found nothing sacred in the abstract nakedness of being human.18
But in Japan’s case and also, therefore, in the case of non-Japanese in Japan, there was anotherpeculiar twist, aptly depicted in the words of Zygmunt Bauman:
If birth and nation are one, then all the others who enter or wish to enter the national family must
mimic, or are compelled to emulate, the nakedness of the newborn. The state—the guardian andprison guard, the spokesman and the censor-in-chief of the nation—would see to it that thiscondition was met.19
It is more than interesting to remember that persons who are naturalized in Japan are referred toas shinnihonjin or “new Japanese,” as if to indicate re-birth or a new life or, even more
controversially, as kikajin, kika meaning a “return” to the correct state, implying that being
Japanese or becoming Japanese is fundamentally right (and good) for humanity. This is all too
deceptive, considering that a person who used to be only a naked human was not treated as
human, while a person who had become a national was now treated as human for the first time.20
The enthusiasm and sense of profound commitment with which former Japanese Prime Minister
Koizumi Junichirō (in power from 2001 to 2006) talked about the possible amendment of Article
Nine of the Constitution need to be understood in this context, since this amendment would
enable Japan to declare war against other nations: the possibility of war is the possibility ofemergency, and further, a state of emergency is a state in which non-nationals can be
exterminated more easily than at other times. Controversial behavior by the governor of Tokyo,
Ishihara Shintarō, should also be seen in this light, that is, as evidence of a craving to declare alegal civil war in order to eliminate undesirable elements. Of particular note is his 2000 reference
to foreigners and immigrants as daisangokujin, or “third country nationals,” a term used todenote non-Japanese, non-Allied nationals (i.e. former colonial subjects) in occupied Japan,
branding them as responsible for social unrest. (During the same period, public school teachersRyang: The Denationalized Have No Class

37

that were sympathetic to the Koreans and/or resistant to the singing of Kimigayo, Japan’snational anthem that reveres the Emperor, were criticized and punished).21

Ishihara Shintarō, the governor of Tokyo

For, the exception here derives from ex capere, meaning “outside,” and a state of exception is astate in which the law makes itself known by suspending itself. This is an effective way tocontrol a population that exists outside ordinary national law.22 Of course, undesirable elements
can include both nationals and non-nationals. The unknowable number of victims inconcentration camps in North Korea and the testimonials of those who have escaped attest to
this. Yet here, also, the degree of belonging to the nation became manifest in an unmistakableway: returnees to North Korea from Japan were often sent to camps that had been speciallyreserved for them, marking them out as a distinctly superfluous population, for example.23
Japan used to have a camp that was designated for the detention of illegal border crossers andoffenders of the Alien Registration Law (i.e. non-nationals) awaiting deportation. Ᾱōmura
shūyōjo, or the Ōmura camp, used to detain offenders for years without trial and no clear plans
for their placement—reminiscent of US Guantanamo Bay facility today.24 The majority of
Korean detainees at the Ōmura camp originated from the southern provinces that belong totoday’s South Korea. But, since the South Korean government refused to accept deportees
from Japan, they became wandering stateless persons and were placed in semi-permanent
protective custody.
This case points to an important factor in thinking about the bare life of stateless persons: insituations such as national emergencies or where certain decisions have been made at thenational level, a person can easily become stateless, even if deemed to be in possession of aproper nationality. This was the case for Japanese Americans in the US after Pearl Harbor, wheneven those who were US citizens were sent to camps.25 Not only that—inside the camps, they
were studied as some kind of naked species whose reactions were meant to be used to inform the
US government about the Japanese national character. Prominent anthropologists such as John
Embree participated in this endeavor.26 In other words, as stated above, states of emergency suchas wars make anything possible—the elimination of humans, detention of undesirable elements,
and deprivation of some citizens of their civil rights as the sovereign state sees fit.
The fact that the Ōmura camp has been relieved of its special duty as a place of detention for
Koreans does not mean that the possibility of being incarcerated in a similar institution in future
has been permanently removed. In the case of a national emergency, such as a war of the kind

Zainichi Koreans: The Past, the Present and the Future38

that Japan’s recent prime ministers were eager to have the option of participating in, it is nonnationals that would be the first to face detention in the name of national security.27
8.
In 1981, simultaneous with Japan’s ratification of the International Covenants for Human Rights
and joining the United Nations Refugee Convention, Koreans in Japan who did not have South
Korean nationality were given permanent residence in Japan. Their status was termed tokurei
eijūken, or special exceptional permanent residence, and the Japanese Immigration Bureau
subsequently issued such persons re-entry permits for Japan, allowing them to travel abroad.
Many Koreans whose family members had been repatriated to North Korea after 1959 were now
able to travel to North Korea to be reunited temporarily with their families. However, due toCold War tensions between the two halves of the Korean peninsula, it remained impossible tovisit both North and South—it was an either/or decision at that time.
It was during the 1980s that many situational (not structural) changes were made in the
topography of Koreans in Japanese society. First, there was an influx of Koreans from South
Korea after the 1988 liberalization of overseas travel by the South Korean government.
Secondly, inside the Korean expatriate movement, there was a considerable easing in the hitherto
confrontational positions held by pro-South Korea and pro-North Korea camps in light of moves
toward ending the global Cold War. Thirdly, and in connection with the above, it became
accepted inside the Korean community in Japan that the first generation’s myth of an eventual
return to the homeland was not going to be achieved. The generations born in Japan came torealize that they and their children would spend the rest of their lives in Japan.
In 1992, all Korean permanent residents, including those who had acquired permanent residence
following the 1965 treaty and those who had acquired it in the years following 1981, foundthemselves under a common classification as special permanent residents, or tokubetsu
eijūsha. This change was accompanied by a diverse range of improvements in the residential
status of Koreans in Japan, including a softening in deportation stipulations for those foundguilty in felony cases. But, it should be emphasized that, unlike US permanent residence, which
can be seen as a transient status which naturally bridges the gap between the status of foreign
national and that of US citizen, special permanent residence status in Japan is no guarantee of
eventual citizenship. Japanese citizenship which may only be obtained through naturalization, an
arduous process with no guarantee of success.
In the meantime, ambiguity remains the constant for Koreans in Japan in terms of their national
affiliations. Those with South Korean nationality differ from those living in the Republic ofKorea in that they do not have resident registration numbers, 13-digit IDs initiated about four
decades ago that combine birth date, gender, a code for the region in which the holder was firstregistered and their order of registration.28 This ID number is computerized and is required forthe completion of basic tasks such as internet registration. Unless one has a number that can be
identified in the Korean Information and Security Agency database, one is, for practical
purposes, not a national. Koreans in Japan who have South Korean nationality do not bear such anumber and do not appear in the database. For this reason, if the South Korean passport carried
by a Korean traveler from Japan expires while he or she is abroad, a South Korean embassy or
consulate in the given country cannot renew or reissue it. Current conditions under which
Koreans in Japan retain South Korean nationality also exempt them from military service andRyang: The Denationalized Have No Class

39

taxation. In exchange, they are not eligible to vote or stand for election. In other words, theirSouth Korean “nationality” is of a dubious sort.
On the other hand, those Koreans in Japan who do not have South Korean nationality,
numerically in the minority today, remain stateless. But, paradoxically, rather than being
recognized as stateless persons, often in popular consciousness, they are regarded as “North
Koreans.” There is no form of North Korean nationality recognized at any level of Japan’s legal
and juridical system, since North Korea is not recognized by the Japanese state. Yet, the Cold
War ideology of non-South Korean equaling North Korean lingers on, triggering abuse andviolence by Japanese perpetrators toward those not holding South Korean nationality and/or
those affiliated with the North Korea-supporting expatriate organization, Chongryun, whenever
there is any sign of hostility between the Japanese and North Korean governments. After the
September 17, 2002, revelation that North Korean agents had kidnapped a total of thirteen
innocent Japanese from Japan’s shores during the 1970s and 1980s, Koreans in this category
became the most vulnerable. It should also be emphasized that the North Korean government, inthe face of the persecution of the so-called “North Koreans” in Japan, made next to no effort toprotect them.
It would be this group of stateless Koreans, whose form of existence is nakedly human without
the official recognition of any nation-state, that would be the first to be loaded onto the trucks,
possibly after being given one hour’s notice to pack one item of luggage, and sent away to thecamps. The erasure of Koreans from Japan’s domestic socio-economic surveys has to beunderstood in this context. In other words, it should be clear that, far from enjoying the privilegeof belonging to the lowest strata in Japan’s class structure, Koreans have been, and continue tobe, fundamentally and unequivocally excluded from this structure. This is why their historicalpoverty must be considered ethnic poverty and vulnerability, and not a class phenomenon, in thecontext of Japan’s national order.29
9.
Turning our attention to internal class-consciousness, or the lack thereof, among Koreansin Japan, reference to Chongryun will illuminate the situation. Chongryun actively promoted theview that the poverty of Koreans in Japan was an ethnic problem, firstly caused by colonial
oppression, and later through continuing discrimination by the Japanese state. Rather thanplacing Koreans inside Japanese society, and subsequently demanding that the Japanese
government grant Koreans the appropriate economic, political, and basic civil rights, Chongryun
focused on raising the profile of North Korea among Japanese sympathizers on one hand, whileorganizing Korean affiliates as loyal followers of the North Korean regime and of Chongryun
itself on the other. Strategically, it thus formed a broad ethnic front, soliciting mass support foritself. Backgrounding its success was the image of a South Korean regime tainted by support
from the US and ruled by a military regime known for violently suppressing student and worker
protests.
In Chongryun’s official rhetoric, all Koreans in Japan were destined to “be embraced in thewarm bosom of our glorious socialist fatherland,” their sojourn in Japan only temporary innature. As such, internal differences among Koreans in Japan—be they related to level of
education or size of wealth—had to be disregarded. For, according to Chongryun, Koreansin Japan formed one united people dedicated to the eventual reunification of their fatherland andZainichi Koreans: The Past, the Present and the Future

40

the “liberation of their brothers and sisters in South Korea from the US imperialist wolves andtheir puppet clique.”Chongryun was able to sustain this notion for two decades or so due to the ethnic marginalizationof Koreans as a whole in Japan, and occasionally explicit and blatant acts of discrimination
specifically targeted at Chongryun and its affiliates. Chongryun’s political deprivation andimpotence in Japan actually strengthened its internal unity, the unity of an ethnic community thatwas discriminated against due to its political allegiance. This further delayed recognition of thefact that affiliates of the organization were, in fact, divided from each other in multiple ways as aresult of the uneven distribution of economic, political, and social capital.
Class divisions evidently existed among Chongryun followers from the very beginning. But thisreality was made part of the larger expatriate cause for the reunification of Korea under North
Korean initiative. Wealthy donors were decorated and highly praised by both Chongryun and theNorth Korean government, called aegukjeok sanggongin or patriotic industrialists andentrepreneurs. Their children received special treatment in schools, along with the children ofhighly ranked cadres. They were given offices in Sanggonghoe or the Korean Association ofIndustrialists and Entrepreneurs, an auxiliary organization within Chongryun. Indeed, they
played a key role in enhancing the morale as well as the economic foundation of Chongryun’s
endeavors. Here, class division was occluded and deemed secondary—patriotic commitment andloyalty toward North Korea’s leadership formed the utmost priority in Chongryun’s rhetoric andpractice.
It was from the early 1980s that inequalities and the uneven distribution of power inside
Chongryun, and within North Korea itself for that matter, became the subject of attention forChongryun affiliates on a number of levels. However, again, this was not done with reference toclass differentiation within Chongryun, but through criticism of its bureaucratization bydisgruntled voices within the organization. Such criticisms, however, ultimately proved to beineffective. This was due to the fact that if any Chongryun member wished to leave theorganization, there was virtually no sanction that the organization could actually place upon him
or her: all he or she had to do was to leave and continue to live on the margins of Japanesesociety, albeit disenfranchised, as he or she had done until then in any case. By the 1980s, theCold War mentality of “either with us or against us” had subsided, and unhappy individuals
inside Chongryun were prepared to leave the organization. Although this did not mean that theywould immediately support South Korea from that point on, the iron curtain, it was understood,
had been lifted, and elements of the Korean population in Japan, especially the younger
generations, looked to the middle ground.
We must remember that, whereas the transition from a labor-intensive to a capital-intensive
economy occurred during the 1960s for the Japanese mainstream, it only reached Koreansin Japan in the early 1980s. Nevertheless, such a transition did take place: the decades of hard
work and hardship (and I mean, literally, twelve hours or more a day of labor for starvation-levelwages, virtually no savings, and other aspects of the culture of poverty) that older generations
endured began to pay off, enabling them to leave Korean ghettos for decent residential areas,
provide their children with a higher education, and enjoy some real leisure. In short, the problemof Korean poverty was mainly resolved due to the endurance of the Koreans themselves, outside
the planning frameworks and concerns of the Japanese government.

Ryang: The Denationalized Have No Class

41

Post-poverty younger generations were altogether different. First off, they were employable inJapanese sectors, unlike their uneducated parents. In a cultural sense, too, they were no longer
brought up simply with nationalism, but were also well versed in Japanese contemporary popular
culture and socially accepted standards. Politically, in comparison with their parents andgrandparents, they no longer had such a fierce interest, nor such a deep personal and professional
investment, in homeland-oriented politics.
As stated above, by becoming permanent residents of Japan, Chongryun Koreans gained
documentation allowing them to travel abroad. Although the application procedures weremaddeningly cumbersome, this re-entry permit enabled Chongryun Koreans to leave Japan andreturn. The first destination many Chongryun Koreans chose to visit was, predictably, North
Korea, partly to be united with their repatriated family members, and partly to be educated “inthe bosom of the fatherland.” Various tours were offered—family reunion tours (long-term andshort-term), cadre re-education courses (two-week trips up to one-year stays), delegation visits(either based on political merit or monetary payment), professional training visits (for artists,
performing artists, musicians, Korean language teachers, and so on), and high-school tours (asprizes for best Youth League unit or winner of nation-wide athletic meets, for example), to cite
only a few categories.
Chongryun visitors to North Korea quickly discovered that the glorious socialist fatherland thatthey had adored and admired was very far from the “paradise on earth” they had expected tofind. Previously repatriated members of their families were not given the opportunity to fully
participate in nation building, suspected as they were of lacking in loyalty and seen as having
been contaminated by reactionary ideologies. Party supervisors assigned to Chongryun visitors
treated them in an arrogant and often sexist manner (in the case of male supervisors with respect
to female visitors). Chongryun visitors were not accorded freedom of movement; evenjournalists had to be accompanied by supervisors and were often denied access to fieldtrips forno clear reason.30
On a more personal level, Chongryun visitors were harassed, ridiculed, and simply treated withvery little respect: flaws in their Japanese-accented Korean were met with contempt, and even
their clothing, hairstyles and posture were monitored and pedantically corrected. For many,
following a wave of emotional upheaval during their initial visit, repeat visits only confirmed
their disillusionment. Chongryun Koreans, even including cadres, who had been born and grew
up in Japan, found harassment by the party in relation to such miniscule and insignificant areasof their personal lives not only irritating, but deeply insulting. They failed to understand the way
North Korean socialism worked—through heavy ideologico-cultural policing and incessantintervention by the state into the personal realm. This is because Chongryun Koreans, andespecially those of younger generations, are individuals that have cultivated a remarkable levelof competence in distinguishing between organizational and non-organizational spheres, having
spent all of their lives in Japan while remaining devoted to the success of North Korea.31 In away, the newly-granted right of overseas travel acted as an opening for the development of anew, critical vision of both North Korea and Chongryun itself.
Such looming skepticism coincided with changes in the economic status of Koreans in Japan.
Not everyone, of course, achieved the dizzying success of Son Masayoshi, a naturalized ethnic
Korean entrepreneur, but it is true that many second and third-generation Koreans succeeded in acompetitive market environment. Although many failed in the 1990s recession, for a good part ofZainichi Koreans: The Past, the Present and the Future42

the 1980s, younger Koreans acquired valuable experience as part of Japan’s economy, albeit
from the margins and in a more precarious position than their Japanese contemporaries. No
longer were they confined to running pachinko pinball halls and yakiniku (BBQ) restaurants, andwhen they did engage in such types of enterprise, young owners introduced fresh and innovative
commercial strategies that no longer bore the marks of a culture of poverty. Trendy, odor-free
BBQ restaurants became popular date spots for young couples in Tokyo, while pachinko halls
began catering to women players, featuring annexes with soft interiors and a children’s corner.

Son Masayoshi, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Softbank Mobile
as well as Softbank group. Son is one of Japan's richest entrepreneurs.

The trajectories of such individuals can be contrasted with those of Koreans newly arriving
in Japan in their hundreds and thousands at the beginning of the 1990s. The South Korean
government started to issue passports to ordinary citizens around the time of the Seoul Olympic
Games in 1988, and many visitors on various types of visa began pouring into Japanese cities,
coming close to replicating the Korean ghettos of earlier periods; that is, creating their own
enclaves for social gatherings. These typically included small restaurants or bars with nongeneric, Japanized names (of the kind often seen in business premises owned by earlier
generations of Koreans in Japan). However, such names might refer to a small country town orstreet, easily recognized as an “insider” location by Korean natives. Such eateries and bars mightalso often have Korean signage—an unmistakable sign of the newcomers.
More importantly, at least during the initial stage following their migration to Japan, kinship ties
and the circle of family friends served as the most effective sources of recruitment. Thus, earlier
generations of Koreans and their descendants (the “old-comers”) became the major employers of
the newcomer Koreans. This inevitably re-arranged the self-perceptions of long-term Korean
residents in Japan. Although confined within the ethnic sector, “old-comers” now faced thesomewhat bewildering realization that they were the preferred employers of newly-arrived
Korean workers.32 The arrival of these new Korean immigrants, whose Japanese proficiency waspoor, customs and mannerisms obviously different, capital insignificant and appearance foreign,
led to the noticeable gentrification of “old-comer” Koreans in Japan. This, of course,
paradoxically also meant that the latter became less easily distinguishable from the Japanese
mainstream in terms of class and ethnicity. Is this the case, though? Let us see.

Ryang: The Denationalized Have No Class

43

10.
I have dwelt so far on the topology of Koreans in Japan’s national landscape. In this final shortsegment, I shall look at the class morphology of Koreans in Japan—if there is any, that is. Given
the dearth of survey data pertaining to Koreans in Japan, Kim Myungsoo’s 1995 survey shineswith significance. While its sample is confined to a very narrow category of Korean men in
Japan who have South Korean nationality and are aged twenty and above, and a comparable setof Japanese men, the survey results shed light on correlations between economic status,
education, and social status. The responses of 889 Korean male permanent residents
in Japan were obtained in ten interviews conducted between February 1995 and October 1996.
These were compared with the responses of 1248 Japanese men aged between twenty and sixtynine, obtained through interviews conducted in October and November 1995. Kim finds
surprisingly that as the average Korean mean income slightly surpassed that of the Japanese.
Very little disparity was also noted in terms of years of education, with a mean of 12.01 years for
the Koreans and 12.35 for the Japanese.33
Where the Korean data deviates from the Japanese pattern is in the patterns for advancement insociety. Whereas for Japanese respondents, length of education correlated with social status,
education did not secure comparable upward mobility for the Koreans. At the same time, as
many as 70 percent of Korean respondents primarily depended on family and friends, that is,
ethnic connections in order to secure employment, and they predominantly ended up among theranks of the urban self-employed.34 In Kim’s sample, 42.3 percent of Japanese respondents arewhite-collar workers as opposed to 26.6 percent of their Korean counterparts, while 23.2 percent
of Japanese respondents are self-employed as opposed to 52.1 percent of their Koreancounterparts.35 Of particular significance is the fact that the educational level of Korean fathers
was not reflected in the degree of social advancement of their sons, demonstrating that cultural
capital does not have the same value for Koreans and Japanese once they are placed in theJapanese (national) job market.36 A key difference lies in the fact that Koreans are unable to turnto formal Japanese government agencies in order to secure employment given their non-national
status (I have already discussed what it means not to have national status).
The breakdown of occupations for Koreans is also indicative: 11.57 percent working inrestaurants, 16.07 percent in construction, 12 percent in simple manufacturing, and 8.3 percent
unemployed; hardly any are found in the professional or executive sub-class. Not surprisingly,
Kim finds that the older the Korean male, the more disadvantaged he is in the job market.37
Myungsoo Kim concludes “that employment opportunities and status attainment processes
among Korean minority members [in Japan] are in fact far from being fully equal in comparison
with the Japanese as the data analyzed in this article indicates, even though the outcome of
Korean minority status attainment here appears to have reached levels similar to those of theJapanese.”38 Compare this with Bumsoo Kim, whose words are quoted in the opening of thisarticle, arguing that class is becoming a more important factor than ethnicity when thinking
about Koreans in Japan. Both Kims hold that the livelihood and career achievement of Koreansin Japan today are improving and becoming comparable to their Japanese contemporaries. Yet,in contrast to B. Kim, who regards ethnicity as no longer being as relevant as class, M. Kim
shows that large disparities remain between Japanese and Koreans within the Japanese nation
state. How should one understand this?

Zainichi Koreans: The Past, the Present and the Future

44

We are dealing here with a parallel phenomenon: the job attainment, living standard, income
level and other quantitative indicators documented for Koreans in Japan stand on fundamentallydifferent mathematical (figuratively speaking, that is) footing than that of Japanese nationals.
Consider the fact that the government retirement plan is unavailable to many first-generation
Koreans in Japan. This makes the family savings of Koreans something other than simply money
saved, since it will have to finance elder care single-handedly with no government subsidies.
Consider also the fact that large numbers of Koreans continue to work in ethnic enclaves. This
makes for situations in which family income remains vulnerable, work hours are much longer,
and labor, much more intense and arduous for Koreans. Consider further the fact that the Koreanchildren grow up fully understanding that public service careers such as those of a government
official, diplomat or public school teacher are not an option. This renders their ethics ofsocialization, aspirations for job attainment, and economic goals altogether different than thoseof Japanese children.39 Why these differences? It is because the situation of nationals and nonnationals are not comparable since non-nationals not only are denied access to many career
avenues but are also excluded from many of the benefits provided to citizens in ways thatdifferentiate class stratification. In sum, as long as Koreans in Japan have no national
membership (not just in Japan, but also in Korea, North or South), they will be unable to fully
enter the system of class stratification in Japan or Korea.
It is true that many local governments have opened the door to Koreans and non-Japanese,allowing them to obtain low-ranking civil service jobs—perhaps a first step in altering theexcluded status of Koreans in Japan.40 But, a high hurdle remains in the quest for civil status, asJapan is not a federation or a union of states: as long as the central government strenuously
excludes Koreans in Japan, there is little that local municipalities can do. It came as no surprise,for example, that the Japanese Supreme Court upheld the decision by the Tokyo Metropolitan
Government to bar a civil servant from taking an exam for promotion to a managerial position
due to her South Korean nationality; that is, her not being Japanese.40 In other words, Koreanscan be civil servants so long as they stick to sweeping the floors and cleaning the bathrooms; ifthey wish to be supervisors or managers, they will need to be reminded of the fact that they are
merely human and not citizens.
As long as the system of nation-states governs our world, refugees, immigrants, and otherstateless persons have no place in the domestic class stratification within individual nation-states.
This does not mean that it is not possible (for scholars) to classify them or measure themaccording to national socio-economic classifications and surveys. Neither does this mean thatthey do not have class consciousness. But in the case of Koreans in Japan, who in effect have no
citizenship, or (South Korean) citizenship of a precarious kind, it is no wonder that their classposition has been ignored (even by themselves). Similarly, it is not surprising that factors such as
poverty, which could otherwise lead to class formation, are constantly ethnicized.
In the US, poverty is racialized with the result that unemployment, high crime rates, lack of
education, drug abuse, and other paraphernalia that fill the closet of poverty are associated with
non-whiteness and other ethnic markers. Nevertheless, poverty which disproportionately
confronts people of color and other minorities, is a national problem, one requiring the attentionof Congress, national and local government budgets, and the object of legal and institutional
reforms. Such is not the case for Koreans in Japan who remain outside all of these categories andlargely invisible. As such, their exclusion from Japan’s system of class stratification is not
because they are discriminated against as an ethnic minority or as second-class citizens

Ryang: The Denationalized Have No Class45

inside Japan, but because they are not there, inside: they exist outside Japanese society, that is,they are banished from it. Without bearing this point in mind, any discussion of ethnicity or classfactors, or the shifting weight of importance between these with regard to Koreans in Japan, will
prove to be one-dimensional.
Acknowledgements
This paper was originally prepared for a workshop in Ann Arbor, Michigan, organized by David
Slater and Hiroshi Ishida, on social classes in Japan. I’d like to thank them for their astutecomments, and other participants in the Michigan workshop for their constructive suggestions. I
am indebted to Youngmi Lim, who provided me with valuable information and materials,
including Kim Myungsoo’s article. Comments and suggestions by Tessa Morris-Suzuki and John
Lie were immensely helpful for the revision of this paper. As usual, Mark Selden’s criticalreading enhanced this article. And Don Cameron’s skillful copyediting benefited this paper
beyond measure.
Sonia Ryang teaches anthropology at the University of Iowa. She is the author of Writing Selves
in Diaspora: Ethnography of Autobiographics of Korean Women in Japan and the US, publishedby Lexington Books in 2008. Her research includes conducting a year-long, multi-sited research
project on healthcare disparity among Iowans of Asian heritage.
Notes
1

Kim (2008: 871).

2

Perhaps the best-known Althusserian class theorists would be Poulantzas (1973), Therborn(1986), and of course, Althusser (1984, 1990) himself. For Bourdieu, see (1977, 1984).
3

Thompson (1964) and, more classically, Engels (1993).

4

Of course, the increasing numbers of homeless in Japan’s cities are outside the domain of
popular perception.
5

I regard the view that facilely sees Koreans in Japan as “Korean Japanese” as unrealistic. See,for example, Tai (2004). Similarly, I include in this category authors who suggest that Koreansshould simply acquire Japanese nationality. These include Tei (2001) and Lee (1997).
6

See Agamben (1995) and Arendt (2000). See below in the text.

7

See Weiner (1989).

8

An array of historical and recent literary representations can testify to this effect, starting fromwriters such as Kin Kakuei (1970) and Ri Kaisei (1972), and later including Yang Seog-il(1998), and Kaneshiro (2000).
9

History testifies, however, that the Korean members had to work extra hard, risking their lives
and proving their bravery, in order to earn the trust of their Japanese comrades within the party,
while it was almost unheard of for a Korean to rise to high-ranking office within the trade unions
or the party in Japan. See Iwamura (1972) for example.
10

Wagner (1951: 95).

11

Kim (1946).

Zainichi Koreans: The Past, the Present and the Future46

12Martial Law was proclaimed in Kobe, which witnessed the fiercest resistance. Three Koreansdied—one teenager shot by the US military, one child dying from a head injury inflicted by thepolice, and one teacher murdered while in prison. See Inokuchi (2000) and Koshiro (1999) forsome details.
13

The North Korean initiative failed. The Japan-ROK treaty was not signed until 1965. Until
then, North Korea tried to preempt South Korea by making various gestures including the 1952
communiqués and the opening of repatriation in 1959. See text below and Ryang (2000a) withregard to repatriation.
14

Hiroyama (1955: 10).

15

Ryang (1997: 122).

16

Morris-Suzuki (2007). Morris-Suzuki discovered, by investigating newly de-classified papers,that the role played by the Japanese Red Cross was much more significant and decisive than had
been previously thought.
17

Arendt (2000: 38).

18

Arendt (2000: 41).

19

Bauman (2003: 130).

20

An average of about 10,000 Koreans are naturalized each year as Japanese citizens.
See Ministry of Justice statistics.
21

Ishihara made the reference to Koreans and other non-nationals in Japan today as
daisangokujin in front of the Ground Self-Defense Force. See “Mr. Ishihara’s Insensitivity,” The
Japan Times April 15, 2000. (Accessed May 29, 2008).
22

Agamben (2005). Much of Agamben’s ideas are derived from Schmitt’s notion of sovereignty(Schmitt 1922).
23

See, for example, Kang (2001). For a totalitarian society, see Arendt (2000: 119-145).

24

Pak (1969), Yoshitome (1979), and Pak (1983). Due to the South Korean government’s
reluctance to accept any deportees from Japan, the camp was already overcrowded by the 1950s,
and the Japanese government virtually gave up on the deportation of detainees (Tatsumi 1966).
This intensified the nature of their limbo status.
25

See for example, Kurashige (2002).

26

Ryang (2004: Ch.1) for a discussion.

27

Today Ōmura Detention Center is one of three detention centers under the Ministry of Justice,
Immigration Office, of Japan. Still based in Nagasaki, southwestern Japan, it functions as aconfinement and examination facility for illegal immigrants in Japan. Detainees usually end up
being deported. According to recent Ministry of Justice statistics, during the year 2006, 7,807
persons of Korean nationality, 2,987 Thai citizens, 850 Malaysian citizens, 658 Indonesian
citizens, and 480 Sri Lankan citizens were deported. (Accessed May 9, 2008).
28

Kim (2005).

Ryang: The Denationalized Have No Class

47

29

It needs to be added that there has been a huge increase in the number of Koreansin Japan being naturalized. In 1969, 1,889 Koreans became naturalized; by 1995, the figure had
jumped to 10,000. In 2001, the total number of naturalized persons (not only Koreans) exceeded
15,000 (See an article from Japan & Politics, March 11, 2002. Accessed May 8, 2008). These
individuals would be absorbed within Japanese census figures, but it must be emphasized thatdeep-seated prejudices in Japanese society would lead many to feel ambiguous and ambivalent
about being considered part of the Japanese national polity.
30

My two visits in 1985 as a reporter for the Chongryun media organ, Choseon Sinbo (Korea
Daily), attest to this. I was routinely tricked in relation to where I should meet my supervisor,
where to go, and whom to talk to, while my hotel rooms were randomly changed every one or
two days. I think this was done simply to confuse, exhaust, and harass me, so that I would not beable to properly complete my assignment covering the family reunions.
31

Ryang (1997) discusses this issue.

32

Ethnographic studies and other forms of research on Korean newcomers in Japan have been
actively carried out in Japan. See Ko (1995), for example. See also Ryang (2000b, 2002b).
33

Kim (2003: 8).

34

Kim (2003: 14).

35

Kim (2003: 9).

36

Kim (2003: 14-15, 12).

37

Kim (2003: 12, 11).

38

I discuss this matter pertaining to ethnic ethics of care and justice in Chapter 4 “Diaspora andthe Ethic of Care: A Note on Disability, Aging, and Vulnerability of the De-nationalized” ofmy Writing Selves in Diaspora: Ethnography of Autobiographics of Korean Women in Japanand the US (2008).
39

Ahn (2000).

40

Rusling (2005).

References:
Agamben, Giorgio (1995) Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, Stanford: Stanford
University Press.
Agamben, Giorgio (2005) State of Exception, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Ahn, Doek Keun Matthew (2000) “Reflections on Voting, Identity, and Self-Affirmation in
Japan,” Harvard Asia Quarterly Autumn 2000
Althusser, Louis (1986) “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes Towards an
Investigation),” Essays on Ideology, London: Verso.
Althusser, Louis (1990) For Marx, London: Verso.

Zainichi Koreans: The Past, the Present and the Future

48

Arendt, Hannah (2000) “The Perplexities of the Rights of Man,” The Portable Hannah
Arendt, London: Penguin.
Bauman, Zygmunt (2003) Liquid Love: On the Frailty of Human Bonds, Cambridge: Polity.
Bourdieu, Pierre (1977) Outline of a Theory of Practice, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Bourdieu, Pierre (1984) Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, Cambridge,
MA.: Harvard University Press.
Engels, Friedrich (1993) The Condition of the Working Class in England, Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Hiroyama, Shibaaki (1955) “Minsen no kaisan to chōsen sōren no keisei ni tsuite” (On the
dissolution of Minjeon and the emergence of Chongryun), Kōanjōhō 22: 5-11.
Inokuchi, Hiromitsu (2000) “Korean Ethnic Schools in Occupied Japan, 1945-52,” in Sonia
Ryang (ed.) Koreans in Japan: Critical Voices from the Margin, London: Routledge.
Iwamura, Toshio (1972) Zainichi chōsenjin to nihon rōdōsha kaikyū (Koreans in Japan and theJapanese working class), Tokyo: Azekurashobō.
Kaneshiro, Kazuki (2000) Go, Tokyo: Kōdansha.
Kang, Chol-hwan (2001) The Aquariums of Pyongyang: Ten Years in a North Korean Gulag,
New York: Basic Books.
Kim, Bumsoo (2008) “Bringing Class Back in: The Changing Basis of inequality and the Korean
Minority in Japan,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 31 (5): 871-898.
Kim, Myungsoo (2003) “Ethnic Stratification and Inter-Generational Differences in Japan: A
Comparative Study of Korean and Japanese Status Attainment,” International Journal ofJapanese Sociology 12: 6-16.
Kim, Tae-gyu (2005) “New individual identification system sought,” The Korea Times Feb. 24,
2005.
Kim, Tu-yong (1946) “Nihon ni okeru chōsenjin mondai” (The Korean question in Japan), Zenei
1: 14-19.
Kin, Kakuei (1970) Kogoeru kuchi [Frozen mouth], Tokyo: Kawadeshobō•.
Ko, Seonhui (1995) “’Shinkankokujin’ no teijūka—enerugisshuna gunzō” [The settlement of“new Koreans”—their energetic image], in H. Komai (ed.) Teijūka suru gaikokujin [Settlingforeigners], Tokyo: Akashishoten.
Koshiro, Yukiko (1999) Transpacific Racisms and the US Occupation of Japan, New York:
Columbia University Press.
Kurashige, Lon (2002) Japanese American Celebration and Conflict: A History of Ethnic
Identity and Festival, 1934-1990, Berkeley: University of California Press.

Ryang: The Denationalized Have No Class

49

Lee, Seijaku (1997) Zainnichi kankokujin sanseino muneno uchi [Inner thoughts of a thirdgeneration Korean in Japan), Tokyo: Sāshisha.
Morris-Suzuki, Tessa (2007) Exodus to North Korea: Shadows from Japan’s Cold War, Lanham:
Rowman & Littlefield.
Pak, Cheong-gong (1969) Ōmura shāūyājo (The āōmura camp), Tokyo: Nigatsusha.
Pak, Sun-jo (1983) Kankoku, Nihon, Ōmura shūyōjo (Korea, Japan, the Ōmura camp), Osaka:
JDC.
Poulantzas, Nicos (1973) Political Power and Social Class, London: New Left Books and Sheed
and Ward.
Ri, Kaisei (1972) Kinuta o utsu onna (The woman who filled clothes), Tokyo: Bungeishunjusha.
Rusling, Matthew (2005) “High Court Bolsters Japan’s Anti-Immigrant Image,” Asia Times
Online Feb. 8, 2005 http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Japan/GB08Dh01.html
Ryang, Sonia (1997) North Koreans in Japan: Language, Ideology, and Identity, Boulder:
Westview Press.
Ryang, Sonia (2000a) “The North Korean Homeland of Koreans in Japan,” in Sonia Ryang(ed.) Koreans in Japan: Critical Voices from the Margin, London: Routledge.
Ryang, Sonia (2000b) “Osaka’s Transnational Town: An Ethnography,” Korean and Korean
American Studies Bulletin 11 (1): 71-93.
Ryang, Sonia (2002a) “A Dead-end in a Korean Ghetto: Multiple Readings of a Complex
Identity in Gen Getsu’s Akutagawa-winning Novel Where the Shadows Reside,” JapaneseStudies 22 (1): 5-18.
Ryang, Sonia (2002b) "A Long Loop: Transmigration of Korean Women in Japan,”International Migration Review 36 (3): 894-911.
Ryang, Sonia (2004) Japan and National Anthropology: A Critique, London: Routledge.
Ryang, Sonia (2008) Writing Selves in Diaspora: Ethnography of Autobiographics of Korean
Women in Japan and the US, Lanham: Lexington Books.
Schmitt, Carl (1922) Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty, Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
Tai, Eika (2004) “‘Korean Japanese’: A New Identity Option for Resident Koreansin Japan,” Critical Asian Studies 36 (3): 355-382.
Tatsumi, Nobuo (1966) “Nikkan hōteki chii kyōtei to shutsunyūkoku kanri tokubetsuhō” (TheJapan-ROK legal status agreement and the special provision for the immigration control act),
Hōritsujihō 38 (4): 59-67.
Tei, Daikin (2001) Zainichi kankokujin no shūen (The end of Koreans in Japan), Tokyo:
Bungeishunju.

Zainichi Koreans: The Past, the Present and the Future

50

Therborn, Goran (1986) What Does the Ruling Class Do When It Rules?: State Apparatuses andState Power under Feudalism, Capitalism and Socialism, London: New Left Books.
Thompson, Edward P. (1964) The Making of the English Working Class, New York: Pantheon
Books.
Wagner, Edward (1951) The Korean Minority in Japan: 1904-1950, New York: Institute ofPacific Relations.
Weiner, Michael (1989) Origins of the Korean Community in Japan, 1910-1923, New York:
Humanities Press.
Yang, Seog-il (1998) Chi to hone (Blood and bone), Tokyo: Gentōsha.
Yoshitome, Roju (1977) Ōmura chōsenjin shūyōjo (The Ōmura Korean camp), Tokyo:
Nigatsusha.

Ryang: The Denationalized Have No Class

51

Part II: Koreans in the Japanese Empire“Traveling through Autonomy and Subjugation: Jeju Island under Japan and Korea 1”
Koh Sunhui and Kate Barclay
May 30, 2007
http://japanfocus.org/-Kate-Barclay/2433
A large number of first-generation Zainichi Koreans came from Jeju Island off thesouthern coast of the Korean peninsula. Koh Sunhui wrote two groundbreaking works on
the Jeju Islander Zainichi community based on extensive interviews. These workswere
published in Japan during the 1990s. Kate Barclay is a specialist on fishing communities in
the Asia-Pacific region. This article includes some materials from Koh’s publications inJapanese and explores reasons why some people became Zainichi Koreans. It argues thatJapanese colonialism and its exploitations played a crucial role in Jeju Islanders’ migration
to Japan during the twentieth century.
According to the article, Jeju Island from ancient times had claimed autonomy fromthe ruling Korean kingdoms. Jeju Islanders were in a position similar to Okinawans in thatthey saw themselves - and were seen by mainlanders - as somehow different. The article
argues that the mainlanders looked down on Jeju people as “wild and uncivilized” (p. 7)
and that the islanders in fact lived differently, depending upon more nuclear and lesspatriarchal family structures. With the island’s main industry being fishing, including on
the high seas, there was a longtime understanding that Japan also was a “part of Jeju
Island’s cultural sphere” (p. 8). The islanders’ relationship with the Japanese intensified
when Japan’s colonial period began, as the Japanese came to fish near Jeju Island in far
larger numbers and depleted the fish stock.
The depletion of fish was a severe blow to the islanders’ livelihood, and thedomination of Japanese fishing operations in the area became permanent thanks to theJapanese annexation of Korea in 1910. The article explains that the Japanese “fish catchfrom the colony of Korea grew ten-fold in the twenty-seven years” (p. 14) that followed.
The islanders’ weakened economic position led to a wage labor migration to Japan. But
Japan had positive attractions for them too. According to Koh and Barclay, “[m]odern
Japanese cities were alluring prospect for young Jeju Islanders curious to learn about theworld” (p. 15). Regular ferry service between Osaka and Jeju started in 1922, and by 1934,a mere twelve years later, “twenty-five percent of Jeju Island’s population resided in Japan”(p. 15). Jeju migrants to Japanese cities mainly worked in factories, where they came toparticipate in trade union activism and after the war, when it became legal in Japan, many
became members of the Japanese Communist Party.
In the immediate postwar years, their left-wing sympathies provided one of thereasons that Jeju Islanders in Jeju initially rejected the South Korean police and military,which led to the massacre of the islanders in the April 3rd Incident of 1948. Many Jeju
Islanders, following this tragic event on their home island, decided to remain in Japanafterward, thus constituting one main pool of Zainichi Koreans. Their autonomy as
maritime people, alienating them from the center of both the Japanese and the Korean
cultural spheres, nurtured the “multicultural” (p. 9) worldview they had carried for many

Zainichi Koreans: The Past, the Present and the Future

centuries. It remains a significant historical legacy that many Zainichi Koreans still carry
today.

52

Koh and Barclay: Traveling through Autonomy and Subjugation

53

Traveling through Autonomy and Subjugation: Jeju Island Under Japan and Korea1
Koh Sunhui and Kate Barclay
Summary
Despite centuries of subjugation by larger neighbours—Joseon Korea, Imperial Japan, and South
Korea—Jeju island society has maintained a distinct identity and a measure of autonomy.
Relations with both Korea and Japan have at times had devastating effects on the islanders, butalso contributed to the dynamism of Jeju island society and opened up new routes for islanders tocontinue traveling as a vital part of their social life.

Map of the Western PacificIntroduction
The centering philosophy of Chinese political culture (Zito 1997), in which space was imaginedin terms of a centre and its periphery, contributed to the fact that island societies in northeast
Asia, such as Jeju, were either ignored or dismissed as backwaters in the records kept by landbased larger powers on the Chinese mainland, Korean peninsula and Japanese archipelago. The
actuality of lively intercultural contact in the maritime areas through fishing, trade and travel was
thus elided from the historical record.2 In the modern era the centre-periphery political model has
been replaced by the nation-state ideal. Nation-state ideology, which came to dominate politicalspatial imaginaries globally in the twentieth century, also acted to obscure travelling practices ofmaritime peoples, because in the normative system of nation-states, transborder communal
identities are anomalous, and translocal ways of life existing across territorial borders are often
treated as illegal.

Zainichi Koreans: The Past, the Present and the Future

54

Recent historical work has addressed these biases by turning the focus away from ‘nations’ tomore local and regional social, political and economic entities, especially in (what we now call)
China, Korea, Japan, and the Ryukyu Islands (Wigen 1999; Kang 1997; Smits 1999).3 This paper
contributes to that body of work by adding a new historical perspective; that of Jeju Island. The
paper highlights Jeju’s contact with its two most significant neighbours, Korea and Japan, and isorganized chronologically into Joseon Korea, the Japanese Empire, Cold War South Korea andthe contemporary era.
Socially and culturally Jeju Islanders have been open to the peoples with which they came incontact, while the island was politically subordinated by its larger land-based neighbours. This
openness, in conjunction with political subordination, did not mean that Jeju Islanders
assimilated. Rather, they managed their political and cultural relations so as to maintain ameasure of autonomy and cultural distinctness. This history of Jeju Island contributes to theunderstanding of the nation-state from the perspective of minority ethnic groups, especially thoseliving across territorial borders.

Map of the Korean PeninsulaKoh and Barclay: Traveling through Autonomy and Subjugation

55

BackgroundJeju, made up of one main island with several small outlying islands, lies in the East China Sea,
to the west of the southern part of the Korean peninsula, and north of Japan’s Kyushu. Jeju was
first populated before the Bronze Age. In Jeju Island’s founding myth three men—Yang-ulla,
Ko-ulla and Pu-ulla—are said to have sprung forth from the Three Sacred Caves. One day a kingin Japan (which they called Pyongnang) sent an emissary with the king’s three daughters andfive koku of seeds. The three mythic ancestors of Jeju Island are said to have married these three
Japanese princesses, and with the five koku of seeds they founded the country.4
Jeju’s original population has been added to by immigrants from China and the Korean Peninsula
over the last thousand years. The waters around the island are rich in marine life, so fishing has
always been a mainstay of the economy. Jeju was also one of the main hubs of the East China
Sea trade routes from early times. It fell within the spheres of activity of the Ryukyu Kingdom(present day Okinawa) and the state called Yan in China’s Warring States period (323-222 BC)(Chun 1987). Around the period 14 BC to AD 23 the currency used by Jeju Islanders formaritime trade also circulated as far away as the Kansai region in Japan and the northern part of
the Korean Peninsula (Chun 1987, 11-45).
From as far back as there is evidence of human habitation on Jeju Island, fishing was animportant part of the economy. Archeological excavations of the island have found that fishingtechniques in the Bronze Age involved boats and nets as well as coastal shellfish gleaning (Kim
1969, 138). Fishing as an aspect of Jeju society shares many historical connections with Japan.
Japan and Jeju are two of very few places in the world where women have made a major part oftheir living by diving. From at least the fifteenth century Jeju women divers fished grounds
around Jeju and the Korean peninsula. Japan’s Engishiki records that the tribute commodities
presented to the Japanese Emperor by the countries of Higo and Bungo included ‘Tamlaabalone’, a Jeju specialty (Amino 1994).5 Jeju Islander kara-ama6 travelled to the Japanesearchipelago in around 900AD (Miyamoto Tsuneichi as paraphrased in Amino 1994, 95; Chun
1987, 37). Japanese writings on Jeju always discuss the women divers of Jeju Island, andJapanese researchers have explored Jeju for the origins of women divers as a regional social
phenomenon (Tanabe 1990, 708-709). This has led Habara Yukichi to assert that it is likely Jeju
Islanders and “at least one group of Japanese” share cultural origins. He feels that observing thewomen divers of Jeju “is like looking at ancient Japan or the customs of the Yamatai Kingdom
or the Ryukyu Islands and the Wajinden” (Habara 1949, 309).7 Jeju Islanders have also been
represented as racially linked to Japan; Kim Tae Neung identified the indigenous Jeju people as“the same as the small people (indigenous Japanese) who are thought to have inhabited the
Kyushu region of Japan” (Kim 1969, 140).
With a population of probably 10,000 – 20,000, Jeju was an independent country called Tamla
for several centuries, until in 1105 the island was incorporated into the Korean peninsula’s
Goryeo (AD918-1392) administrative district system. Politically Jeju was in a vassal relationship
to Goryeo, and late Goryeo administrations used the island as a place of exile for politicalprisoners. For about a century, from 1273, Jeju was a demesne of Mongolia. Jeju supplied
warhorses to the mainland and was also a place of exile for Mongolian criminals and Yunnan
nobility.
In being simultaneously politically connected to both a government on the Chinese mainland andone on the Korean peninsula, Jeju was similar to another island society in this maritime region,

Zainichi Koreans: The Past, the Present and the Future56

the Ryukyu Islands, which also juggled relations with polities on the Chinese mainland andJapanese archipelago.8 For these small island societies allowing the large land-based powers toclaim political domination protected them from annexation attempts by other larger powers, butformal subordination to the land-based powers did not substantially affect the day-to-day
activities of the islanders who retained functional autonomy.
Jeju’s status as a repository for exiles reveals that Jeju and its maritime world was viewed by its
larger land-based neighbours as a desolate place for people from the centre (Chun 1987, 11-45).
Ironically many of these exiles were prominent intellectuals from factions that had been on thelosing side in power struggles, so through them culture and ideas direct from centres on the
Chinese mainland and peninsular Korea diffused into Jeju society. But the (Neo-)Confucian
imaginary, in which political and cultural civilization radiated out from centres of civilization,
and agriculture was ranked over fisheries, made it difficult for the maritime areas to be seen as
anything other than peripheral from the land based centres.
Since the only early written records are those in Chinese by Confucian literati, these biases
peripheralizing the maritime areas permeate the historical record.9 Factual inaccuracies arisingfrom these biases include representations of Jeju Islanders as hostile to outsiders, when Jeju
Islanders’ travelling social life actually necessitated amicable contact with outsiders (Chun1987). Record-keeping literati overlooked Jeju’s history as independent Tamla, representing it as
always already a marginal part of the polity on the Korean peninsula (Chun 1987). The dynamic
cosmopolitan nature of the maritime areas between the land-based powers was thus omitted from
history.
Joseon Era
Despite having been annexed in 1105 Jeju remained quite independent of the peninsulathroughout the Goryeo period. Parts of the Korean peninsula such as Silla, Baekje and Goguryeo
had also been independent countries prior to unification under Goryeo, but their proximity toeach other as neighbouring parts of the peninsula facilitated effective centralization into one
polity. Jeju’s geographic distance from the peninsula enabled it to remain a somewhat separate
entity. At the end of the Goryeo period in the late fourteenth century Jeju islanders instigateduprisings led by people of Mongolian descent against Goryeo government control of the island.
Early rulers in the Joseon (or Yi) Dynasty (1392-1910) saw it as important to subjugate andKoreanize Jeju (Takahashi 1991, 41).
Sejong, the revered fourth Joseon king to whom the establishment of the Korean Hangeul
language is attributed, set about integrating Jeju more closely with the peninsula through its
system of governance. He established on Jeju a branch of the Hyang Gyo national Confucian
school (Yang 1992, 191-193). This generated a class of Jeju Islander Confucian scholar elites,
who formed a Confucian bureaucracy on Jeju, which was headed up by a bureaucrat sent out
from the peninsula. Jeju bureaucrats were also recruited to a special Jeju Island department of theadministration in the capital (the city now called Seoul). Other policies tying island elites to thepeninsula included assembling the children of island elites in the capital several times (from1394 to 1428) and involving them in the state apparatus in capacities such as court bodyguard(Takahashi 1987, 68).
This system of governance, however, failed to completely integrate Jeju into the Joseon politicalsystem. One cause of continued segregation was that Jeju Island was not included in the system

Koh and Barclay: Traveling through Autonomy and Subjugation

57of the higher civil service examinations to enter the mainstream Joseon bureaucracy.
Occasionally the first round of the exam was held on the island to offset the inequality resulting
from geographical isolation, but not regularly enough to mainstream Jeju bureaucrats (Yang
1991, 98-99). Jeju bureaucrats mostly only worked with other Jeju bureaucrats, both on Jeju
Island and in the Jeju department in the capital; they did not circulate throughout theadministration as did other Joseon bureaucrats.
Another way Sejong’s Koreanization strategy maintained a level of segregation was that Jeju
bureaucrats for the department in the capital were selected on the politically expedient basis thatthey were already leaders in Jeju society (Takahashi 1991, 41, 44). Instead of replacing
indigenous authority structures, Confucianism was thus laid over the top of, and drew part of its
authority from, indigenous authority structures. Indeed non-Confucian power brokers remained
influential in many important local matters. Jeju leaders felt strongly that Jeju was a distinct
polity under the Joseon administrative umbrella, so Jeju bureaucrats acted as intermediaries
between the Joseon government and leaders on Jeju Island in ways that were designed to protect
Jeju’s autonomy within the Joseon system. Koreanization policies that allowed Jeju Confucian
scholars to become bureaucrats but then only to work in Jeju or in the special department in thecapital, therefore, failed in important ways to reinforce the islanders’ sense of being part of thepolitical entity and culture based on the Korean peninsula. The Jeju Island ruling elite accepted
the Confucian thought that comprised Joseon political ideology, but had limited concrete
experience of belonging to the same polity as the peninsular Koreans, and had vested interests inmaintaining some measure of political autonomy.
Joseon attempts to Koreanize Jeju were limited not only in the extent to which Jeju Islanders felt
assimilated, but also in Joseon identifications of Jeju Islanders. Some Jeju bureaucrats in thecapital were greatly trusted by the kings of the time and rose to high prominence, being
appointed to important official positions (Takahashi 1991, 40). These bureaucrats were regarded
as part of the Joseon kingdom, but simultaneously treated as “people from overseas.” Jeju
Islanders were seen by the Joseon kings as being neither Japanese nor “Yeojin” (Jurchen10), but
as constituting another group also somehow different from the people of the central and southern
Korean peninsula, as bureaucrats from the country of Tamla, which was loyal to the Joseon
Dynasty (Takahashi 1991, 55 - 57). If bureaucrats and intellectuals who were educated in Joseon
thought and were nominally part of the Joseon government did not feel properly “Korean,” thegeneral Jeju populace felt even less so. Jeju was politically subordinate to Joseon, but theislanders maintained an identity as people of Tamla. They were engaged with the Joseon
administration as subordinate, but at the same time maintained a measure of autonomy.
The peripheralization of Jeju in peninsula Korean perceptions is visible in representations of
Jeju’s Confucianism. Despite the fact that a Confucian education and political system wasestablished on Jeju Island at the outset of the Joseon era, Joseon recorders represented Jeju aslacking Confucian yangban culture (Choi 1984, 12). The literati yangban class in Joseon society
was the group privileged to hold high ranking military and civil posts in the government. Schools
tended to be located in consanguineous villages that had the critical mass of yangban families tosustain a school. Consanguineous villages were thus seen as the basis of dynamic andsophisticated yangban society. In Joseon Korea yangban culture, Confucian education, andconsanguineous villages were all synonymous with civilization. Joseon record keepers werepredisposed to see Jeju as uncivilized, so it is not surprising that these record keepers failed torecognize yangban Confucianism on Jeju.

Zainichi Koreans: The Past, the Present and the Future

58

Jeju yangban
It is a matter of historical record that there were Jeju scholar bureaucrats throughout the Joseon
era, but could Jeju society as a whole be characterized as yangban culture? Chinju county andAndong county on the peninsula were famous for having many yangban families andconsanguineous villages. Statistics compiled by early Japanese researchers as part of the colonialadministration indicate that by the late Joseon era Jeju had at least as many yangban as these
districts, and the proportion of scholars in the population on Jeju was as high as anywhere on thepeninsula (Zensho 1935, 511; Zensho 1927, 96; Office of the Governor-General of Korea 1927,
113-114; Office of the Governor-General of Korea 1928, 514-515).11 Although being a
Confucian scholar did not mean upward social mobility within the Joseon bureaucracy for Jeju
Islanders, learning through village schools was connected to local power structures and it
brought prestige within the island society, so competition to acquire education functioned in Jeju
as it did in other parts of Joseon Korea, as an important stimulus to internal development inconsanguineous villages (Yang 1992, 203). As on peninsular Korea, Jeju’s consanguineous
villages were associated with the governing elite yangban and with Confucian education (Zensho
1935, 666). Jeju Confucian scholars did not mix and compete with scholars from elsewhere in
the Joseon bureaucracy, so we cannot assume their education was the same, but because Jeju
hosted political exiles we can assume that Jeju scholars were exposed to learning from the heartof Joseon yangban culture.
In addition to peninsula predispositions to see Jeju as uncivilized and the fact that scholar
bureaucrats were segregated from the mainstream Joseon bureaucracy, another reason Joseon
recorders may have failed to recognize Confucian yangban culture on Jeju was that it looked
different to that on the peninsula. On Jeju it was not unusual for non-yangban men to become
scholars. On the peninsula it was theoretically possible for non-yangban men (warriors, farmers,
artisans, or tradesmen) to become scholars (Zensho, 1927, 96), but wealth based on landownership was consolidated amongst yangban families, so in practice non-yangban did not havethe means to enable their sons to become scholars. On Jeju land holdings were not soconcentrated among the elite yangban group but tended towards families owning the small pieceof land they cultivated (Office of the Governor-General of Korea 1929, 83). Income was thus
more evenly distributed and it was feasible for non-yangban men to study (Office of theGovernor-General of Korea 1929, 148).
Family and gender relations were also vastly different on Jeju compared to the peninsula.
Families on the peninsula were usually extended, whereas on Jeju they were usually nuclear,with each generation setting up house on their own. Jeju women divers, which to outsiders
symbolized Jeju women as a whole, worked outside the house, earning money independently,
and wearing minimal clothing while diving. Their husbands stayed home looking after thechildren when the women were out working. Jeju women could own property and often kept
their income individually, using it as they chose. Before marriage Jeju women often travelledaway from home to work and save money. Peninsula yangban women were segregated from men
at an early age; men worked outside the house while women worked inside. Indeed, yangban
women could not freely leave their houses, especially before they married, and were clothed withextreme modesty from head to toe. Peninsula yangban women did not own wealth independently
from their families, and their husbands or male relatives undertook all economic activities
external to the house on their behalf. From the perspective of the peninsula, Jeju society seemedwild and uncivilized; the women seemed to have no sexual morals and the families appeared toKoh and Barclay: Traveling through Autonomy and Subjugation

59

have no structure. It was impossible for peninsula Koreans to conceive of civilized educatedfamilies allowing their women to behave as Jeju women did, so they concluded that there musthave been a lack of civilization and education.
On the peninsula yangban society was associated with strict patriarchy, rigid hierarchies andgreat wealth differentials between socioeconomic strata. Since on Jeju gender relations were lesspatriarchal, wealth differentials less marked, and boundaries between socioeconomic strata more
flexible, Jeju yangban culture looked different to yangban culture on the peninsula. Societies that
adopted Confucianism did all not assimilate into some kind of homogenous cultural entity; rather
Confucianism varied according to the social and cultural context in which it was adopted.
Confucianism was imposed on Jeju by the Joseon polity to which the island was subordinated. Itwas, however, then indigenised and adapted to local social conditions. Not all aspects ofConfucianism were altered through adaptation on Jeju in the same way as the educational
political systems. Confucianism as it pertained to weddings and funerals was preserved for
hundreds of years in virtually the same form as it was first adopted, without being noticeably
localized (Kaji 1993).12 One of the major features of Jeju culture affecting their indigenisation ofConfucianism was the fact that Jeju was a maritime society. Confucianism in other places was aphilosophy of sedentary, agricultural, land-based society, but on Jeju it became the philosophy ofa travelling maritime society.
Kaijin: Maritime Confucians
One way to think of the network of societies across the seas of the northwestern Pacific Rim is tothink of them as sharing an identity as kaijin, sea people. The Japanese term kaijin as used by
Tanabe Satoru refers to divers, fishers, salt manufacturers, and people who lived and traveled onboats; in short all men and women whose lives involved the sea (Tanabe 1990).13 From theperspective of a maritime society the sea is not a boundary that separates societies, but a force
that connects them.14
Jeju Island’s geographical location between the Korean peninsula, Japan and the Chinese
mainland made it a point of contact for peoples from all these places in medieval times. Jeju
Islanders moved outwards from their island base, and people from various places came acrossthe sea to Jeju (Takahashi 1992, 169). According to Takahashi in the early centuries of the
Joseon era Jeju Islander kaijin were called Todung Yagi. Takahashi’s study of records places the
Todung Yagi traveling through the East China Sea, the Yellow Sea, as far south as Hainan and as
far north as the Sakhalin Islands from the fifteenth century (Takahashi 1992, 177-181).15 Morethan twenty Jeju families were recorded as living on Herang Island, which lies on an extension of
the boundary between Pyongan Province and the Liaodong Peninsula and which was at the time
Ming territory. The Jeju Islanders on Herang were engaged in (illicit) trade with kaijin from
Ming territory (Takahashi 1992, 185-186). Several thousand Todung Yagi were documented as
appearing in the coastal areas of the peninsula in the Jeolla and Gyeongsang provinces andSachon, Kosong and Chinju during Sejong’s reign (1418-50) (Takahashi 1992). The populationof Jeju Island (including Jeju-mok, Jeongui-hyeon and Daejeong-hyeon) around this time wasrecorded as 18,897 (Office of the Governor-General of Korea 1927, 40). Censuses were carriedout on an irregular basis during the Joseon Dynasty and their accuracy is questionable, however,if “several thousand” were moving around Jeolla and Gyeongsang this suggests that a highproportion of the population was mobile.

Zainichi Koreans: The Past, the Present and the Future

60

The Todung Yagi’s clothing was described as being similar to that worn by Japanese, and theirlanguage was described as being neither Japanese nor Chinese. Their boats were described as
fast-sailing and sturdier than Japanese boats and their recorded occupation was diving for
abalone. They lived a mobile life from their boats, always in search of the best fishing grounds.
Abalone was an important tribute commodity so the Jeju abalone divers were protected, but it
was noted that if attempts were made to regiment or control the divers they simply moved on.
The land based powers surrounding the maritime area of the northwest Pacific Rim had limited
influence in the coastal and sea-going world the kaijin inhabited (Takahashi 1992, 171). Theirvery mobility made it difficult for administrative authorities to extend control over the kaijin.
Records of shipwrecks trace the movements of Jeju kaijin. Jeju islanders were recorded as being
shipwrecked in the Goto Islands, the Tokara Islands, the Ryukyu Islands and Chinese coastal
areas (Takahashi 1992, 188). Kaijin met up with each other and interacted in this coastal world
through shared aspects of kaijin culture. They built up relations of trust not constrained byterritorially bounded political entities. The identification with Japan visible in Jeju Island’sfounding myth shows that Japan has long been envisaged as part of Jeju Island’s cultural sphere.
Jeju Islander identification with Japan may be seen as a form of regional kaijin identity.
According to Takahashi, Jeju islanders who had been shipwrecked in the Ryukyu Islands
expressed their gratitude for the kindness of the Ryukyuans in ways that identified with the
Ryukyuans as fellow kaijin, rather than as Koreans or people of Tamla relating to the Ryukyuans
as foreigners (Takahashi 1992, 193).
Sixteen shipwrecks (ten Japanese and six Qing ships) were recorded on Jeju between 1848 and1884 (Koh 1993). One Japanese ship departed from Hirado Island in what is now Saga
Prefecture, four from the port of Kagoshima, two from Satsuma castle town (in what is now
Kagoshima City), two from Tsushima and one from the Abu district in what is now Yamaguchi
Prefecture. One Qing ship departed from Guangdong, three from Jiangnan, one from Shandong,and one from Zhejiang, that is from provinces ranging from north to south coastal China. Most ofthese boats had been engaged in trade, with the remainder engaged in fishing, piracy, searchingfor missing people, or the transport of tax monies. The Japanese ships carried Japanese and
Ryukyuans, while the Qing ships carried peoples of coastal Chinese groups, as well as French
and Russians trading in the area. The kaijin world of the northwest Pacific Rim in the latter halfof the nineteenth century was multicultural indeed.
Shipwrecks on Jeju were reported by the Jeju Island bureaucracy to the central Joseon
bureaucracy. The Jeju policy was to provide shipwrecked people with provisions, clothing andfuel. On receiving word of a shipwreck, local bureaucrats set out with interpreters to investigate
and provide assistance as needed. People from the nearest village prepared warm food, andprovided survivors with clothing and shelter. Funerary rituals were performed for dead bodies
washed ashore. In offering hospitality to shipwrecked people Jeju Islanders hoped the survivors
would talk about Jeju favourably on their return home, to ensure Jeju Islanders would be
similarly well treated when they were shipwrecked in their travels.16
But the kaijin world was not all cosmopolitan harmony. Piracy was an ongoing problem. Kang
(1997) cites numerous records of the Joseon government raising the wako piracy issue withJapan, which was seen by the Joseon administration as not being tough enough on the pirates
operating along their coastline. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries trade and fishingtreaties were signed between the Joseon administration and Japanese officials as part of Joseon

Koh and Barclay: Traveling through Autonomy and Subjugation

61

attempts to suppress wako pirates. The policy was partly successful in that purely piraticalactivity declined, but enterprises that were a mixture of piracy, trade and fishing correspondingly
increased (Yoshida 1954, 79-81). In addition, there was competition over fishery resources.
From the late Goryeo period many Japanese lived in Busan, one of the major trading ports on the
Korean peninsula (Yoshida 1954, 80). In 1418 permission was given by the Joseon King forJapanese people to reside in certain areas in waegwan (literally “Japan house,” meaning walled
compounds for Japanese) in Gampo in Ulsan County and Karyangjin in T’ong Young County. In
the same year the ports of Chaepo, Busan and Gampo were opened and waegwan establishedthere, Japanese were given permission for fishing from these ports. Meanwhile, Japanese from
Tsushima had established settlements in the Koje Island area, where they were involved inagriculture, fishing and the salt industry. They also traveled to other areas on the southern
Korean peninsula.
Japanese fishers did not fish only within the approved area from the three port bases but traveled
as far as the coasts of Jeolla and Chungcheong. Some Japanese fishing boats were armed andengaged in piracy as well as fishing (Yoshida 1954, 81). Tsushima fishers were given conditional
fishing permission by the Joseon government in 1441, perhaps because the government realizedthat if they were not permitted to fish they would resort to the use of force (Yoshida 1954, 83).
Most problematic of the Japanese fishing activities were those in the waters at the southwestern
tip of Jeolla Province. This area was a treasure house of marine resources, and many fishers fromthe Korean peninsula also operated there (Takahashi 1992, 174). Japanese fishers repeatedly
breached their agreements with Korea, both through illicit fishing outside the permitted area, andthrough piracy. Japanese fishers, especially abalone divers, were known for poaching around thesouthwest of the Korean peninsula, mainly Jeju (Yoshida 1954, 91-92). In 1608 a bilateral
dispute arose from Japanese fishers involvement in violent incidents outside the area permitted
under the treaty on the western side of the Korean peninsula (Yoshida 1954, 83). Problematic
relations with some Japanese kaijin throughout the Joseon era presaged more serious competition
over marine resources during Japan’s subsequent colonial expansion.
Japanese Empire
First Phase of Japanese Imperialism: Competition in Fisheries
Although Korea was not formally a Japanese colony until 1910, for the purposes of this paper
imperial encroachments began much earlier, in the 1870s, when Japanese fishers started coming
to Jeju Island in significant numbers (Yoshida 1954,159; Fisheries Bureau, Agriculture andCommerce Division, Office of the Governor-General of Korea 1910, 283). Since Japanesefishers from Tsushima in particular were unofficially operating off the Korean coastline since
medieval times, we assume that Japanese fishers were visiting Jeju during the Joseon period. Jeju
Island was a highly attractive fishing spot for Japanese fishers, being a major producer of
abalone, turbin shells, bêches-de-mer, and abundant in species of fish Japanese consumers
prized, such as bream (Kuba 1978, 169; Yoshida 1954, 207-208). Nakaya Tarokichi sailed with agroup from Saganoseki in Oita Prefecture via Goto and Tsushima in 1870 (Yoshida 1954, 159).
Takenouchi Genkichi from Nagasaki collected abalone from Jeju in 1874 and 1875 (Ministry ofForeign Affairs, Vol. 23, p. 283). Kuba Gokuro’s oral history includes a Japanese fisher who
remembers his older relatives going to Jeju to fish for bream in 1877 (Kuba 1978, 169).
According to one Japanese fisherman “long before the end of the war about one quarter of all
Japan was apparently making money from Jeju Island—a whole quarter of all Japan. That’s what

Zainichi Koreans: The Past, the Present and the Future

62

I’ve heard. There’s probably nowhere in the world with such rich fishing grounds as Jeju Island”(Kuba 1978, 190).
When this wave of Japanese fishing commenced, the coastal reefs around Jeju were said to havebeen covered in abalone, with some weighing over 800 momme (1 momme = 3.75 grams)
apiece. Japanese fishing boats were equipped with air compressors and hoses for breathing underwater, which meant they were devastatingly effective. Japanese divers had started using
underwater breathing equipment around Nagasaki. They quickly over harvested, leading toresistance from local villagers, and it was against Japanese regulations in any case, so they
moved on to new coastlines, including Jeju (Yoshida 1954, 207-208). Yoshimura Yozaburo from
Hagi in Yamaguchi Prefecture, thought to have been the first Japanese fisher to use underwater
breathing gear in Korean waters, commenced operations in the vicinity of Jeju in April 1879
(Yoshida 1954, 207-208). Jeju Islanders were no happier with the depletion of their resources
than the Nagasaki villagers had been, so at first Japanese diving boats were refused landing
rights in Jeju, and they had to base their operations in Tsushima.
Japanese fishers were armed on the pretext of defending themselves against pirates, but thedistinction between pirates and fishers was far from clear. Japanese fishers frequently used arms
against locals who resisted them. In the words of a Japanese fisher from this time: “I think it wasafter the Russo-Japanese war in the Meiji period … we used dynamite to catch fish [a practiceprohibited in Japan at the time], and we argued with the Koreans. We were running wild likepirates” (Kuba 1978, 128). According to another: “Ku-Ryong-po was another world … It was aplace where there were hundreds and thousands of ex-criminals. From all over Japan … Every
morning there were three or five people lying dead on the road” (Kuba 1978, 172-173).

Map of Jeju (Cheju) Island

Japanese government records note disputes on Gapa Island off Jeju resulting in the death of one
islander and injuries to several others (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Vol. 20, 300). Japaneserecords note that Japanese fishers frequently went to Gapa Island for abalone fishing, but theyalso forcibly entered people’s houses, raped women, killed dogs, stole vegetables, took chickens,Koh and Barclay: Traveling through Autonomy and Subjugation

63

and threatened people with their swords. Some Japanese fishermen organized into armed bandsof up to 200 to force islanders to obey them (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Vol. 20, 304).
Occasionally islanders were killed. More than 300 families were recorded as having left Gapa
Island because of these incidents (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Vol. 20, 304-9). The island wasthen used by the Japanese fishers as a base. Other islands off Jeju, such as U Island and Biyang
Island, became Japanese fishing bases under similar circumstances.
A fishing access treaty between Japan and Joseon Korea was signed in 1883. After this thenumbers of Japanese fishers in Korean waters rapidly increased. Diplomatic and trade relations
between Japan and Joseon Korea in the Meiji era were formally established with the Korea-Japan
Friendship Treaty concluded in March 1876, but this treaty contained no agreement on fishing.
Japanese fishing in Korean waters was formalized after the implementation of Article 41 of theJapan-Korea trade regulations agreed on in July 1883 (Yoshida 1954, 160). By 1884 Jeju
Islanders were suffering extreme economic hardship so they sought to have Japanese fishers
banned from their waters. First they appealed to the Joseon Governor (Moksa) of Jeju, but he hadno authority over Japanese fishers, so several tens of Jeju Islanders went to the capital to appeal
directly to the Joseon government (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Vol. 17, 377-9). They managed
to convince the Joseon government to take up their case with the Japanese government, arguingthat Jeju Island should not be included the fishing treaty of 1883 that permitted Japanese fishingin four provinces—Jeolla, Gyeongsang, Gangwon, Hamgyõng. The Japan side contended that it
was absurd to claim that Jeju was not part of Jeolla Province (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Vol.
17, 379), but eventually agreed to exempt Jeju from the treaty in exchange for mining patents on
the peninsula (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Vol. 20, 308-309).
Japanese fishers, however, ignored Jeju’s exemption from the fishing access treaty. They stopped
using the bases they established on Jeju and based themselves at Tsushima, but continued to fisharound Jeju. They also continued attacking Jeju Islanders. Islanders protested locally and lobbiedin the capital (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Vol. 20, 300). The Joseon government made repeatedrequests that Japanese fishers should respect the ban on fishing around Jeju but the Japanese
government refused to acknowledge that their fishers were flouting the ban. Indeed, Japanesefishers took advantage of their government’s position by asking their government forcompensation for lost fishing due to the ban. (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Vol. 23, 263).
Furthermore, in 1891 the Japanese government proposed lifting the exemption, saying Jeju
Islanders had enjoyed several years free of competition from Japanese fishermen and thatJapanese fishermen had been warned against violence (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Vol 23, 263,
267). But then it became clear that another Jeju Islander, Yang Jong Shin, the port official at Paeryung-ri (present-day Kum-rung-ri), had been killed by a Japanese fisher in 1890 (Kim 1987,
161). So the Japanese government agreed to extend the exemption by a further five months, but
the situation did not improve. In June 1891 Yim Soon Baek from Keonip-po was murdered, andin July Yi Tal Kyum from Kim Nyong Ni was killed and 17 other people were wounded.
According to the records of the Jeju Governor of the time, the violence and economic hardshipbrought about by the Japanese fishers had brought the islanders to a state of “indescribably
extreme wretchedness” (Kim 1987, 161). After the murder of Yang from Pae-ryung-ri, more thana hundred Jeju Islanders went to the capital and petitioned the Joseon government to enforce theban, arguing that Jeju could not support itself or continue to provide abalone for tribute if overexploitation of their fisheries by Japanese fishers were to continue (Ministry of Foreign Affairs,Vol. 23, 285).17 Considering transport methods and costs at that time, the expedition of more

Zainichi Koreans: The Past, the Present and the Future64

than a hundred people to the capital to lobby the government was an extreme measure. The
Islanders were desperate.
Despite continuing violence, the Japanese government unilaterally lifted the nominal exemptionof Jeju from the fishing access treaty in 1892, after which violence and forced occupation ofsmall islands off Jeju by Japanese fishers escalated. In April 1892 Japanese fishers called
Yamaguchi and Koyanagi led 144 fishermen to build a base at Seongsan on Jeju Island. As aresult of this occupation many women were raped and a villager called Oh was shot (Kim 1987,
163). A group of islanders went to the capital and called on the administrative official to have thehuts removed (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Vol. 25, 371). In this instance their demands weresuccessful, and the huts were (temporarily) removed. Around the same time two men from Hwa
Buk, Kim and Koh, were murdered, and in June two people from Tu Mo-ri by the name of Koh
were killed. Armed Japanese fishermen attacked Jeju Islanders many times that year.
While all this was going on Japanese naval vessels patrolled the waters around Jeju Island. The
main reason for the Japanese naval presence was concern for possible harm to Japanese fishers
and traders, because of a belief that Jeju Islanders were a militant barbaric people (Ministry ofForeign Affairs, Vol. 20, 302). The Japanese government’s views on Jeju Island reflected thoseof the Joseon government towards Jeju, and were exacerbated by the Japanese government’s own
bias regarding Koreans and the inhabitants of islands they saw as “remote.” Contrary to Japanese
government beliefs, however, Jeju Islanders did not respond violently to the Japanese fishing
incursions they were trying to prevent. When Japanese government officials investigatingcomplaints against Japanese fishers suggested that the islanders used violence in an attempt to
get rid of Japanese fishers, the Japanese fishers themselves rejected this suggestion, saying: “nosuch thing occurred” (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Vol. 25, 393-394). Japanese fishers said after
the murder at Seongsan in 1892 a Jeju Island official had given the Japanese fishers a verbal
instruction to remove their huts by a certain time, as has happened earlier with the huts on Gapa
Island (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Vol. 25, 390). Japanese fishers said that they did not usuallycomply with these instructions and then the Jeju bureaucrats’ course of action was simply tocome and repeat the verbal instructions, about every two weeks (Ministry of Foreign Affairs,Vol. 25, 393-394).
And where Japanese fishing activities were peaceful Jeju Islanders responded to the fishers as
openly as they always had to travelers. Takenouchi Genkichi from Nagasaki, who started
traveling to Jeju Island to gather abalone in the mid-1870s, said that between 1887 and themurder of Yang in 1890 there were very few incidents in the areas of Jeju he frequented, and that
relations between Japanese fishers and Jeju villagers were amicable. Jeju bureaucrats prohibited
any support of Japanese fishing activities because it was their position that the fishing was
illegal, but Japanese government records contain several references by Japanese fishers sayingthat Jeju Islanders provided water and fuel to Japanese fishers (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Vol.
23, 284).
The strategies employed by Jeju Islanders to resist incursions by Japanese fishers demonstratethat Jeju Islanders still felt themselves to be an autonomous polity within the Joseon
administrative system. After the escalation of Japanese fishing activities on Jeju following thefishing access treaty of 1883, locals realized their local Governor had no power over theJapanese fishers and went to the capital to lobby the Joseon government. They approached theimportant pro-modernization figure Kim Ok Kyoon, who had close ties to the JapaneseKoh and Barclay: Traveling through Autonomy and Subjugation

65

government, and persuaded him to take up their case (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Vol. 17, 378379). Islanders who had never been to the capital before were unlikely to have chosen such acanny target for lobbying, so it is likely they were advised by Jeju Islander bureaucrats in the
Jeju Island department in the capital. Other coastal areas of the peninsula were suffering
similarly from the onslaught by Japanese fishers, but none of them were granted a fishing treaty
exemption. Jeju Islanders agitated so effectively they not only had the Joseon government
demanding that Japan put an end to fishing in Jeju Island waters in August 1884, but that thewhole fishing access treaty be reviewed because the benefits and costs of the treaty were unequal(Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Vol. 17, 381; Kim 1987, 159).
Kim Ok Kyoon’s actions show that within late Joseon Korea Jeju was still considered somewhat
autonomous. He accepted the lobbying Islanders’ position that they were not part of Jeolla
Province but were a separate polity under the Joseon administration. Kim negotiated with Japanon this basis. Other government representations also show that Jeju was not seen as fully
Koreanized or fully under the control of the Joseon administration. Joseon officials declared toJapanese officials that “compared with home [the Korean Peninsula], the people of Jeju are
obstinate and difficult to reprimand” (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Vol. 22, 376). A documentfrom the Joseon government to Japanese fishers intending to fish around Jeju read: “Greetings.
Fishing at Jeju Island in our country is not permitted—they are not yet civilized people, so will
not obey orders from the our government.” The statement locates Jeju inside “our country” butalso refers to Jeju islanders as distinct from Joseon Koreans in that they are “not yet civilized”(Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Vol. 23, 267). The Meiji Japanese government held a similar viewthat “the customs of Jeju differ from those in [peninsular] Korea, the people are obstinate and do
not obey government orders” (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Vol. 20, 301).
During this first phase of Japanese imperialism Japanese fishing incursions had the greatest
impact on Jeju. Jeju Islanders’ strategies to cope with this onslaught included nonviolent andpersistent official protests against Japanese fishers on Jeju, while unofficially trading with someJapanese fishers. They engaged with the Joseon administration as an autonomous polity loyal to
the Joseon Dynasty, and were recognized as such, but ultimately were unable to protect theirfishing grounds from Japanese fishers. As they lost this struggle their engagement with Japan
moved into a new phase.
Second Phase of Japanese Imperialism: Wage Labor Migration
As Japan moved closer to annexation in 1910 Japanese fishing operations came to thoroughly
dominate fishing all around the Korean peninsula. In 1899 there were 25,000 people working on
approximately 1,000 Japanese fishing vessels along the coast of Gyeongsang and Jeolla
provinces alone (Mountains and Forests Bureau, Agriculture and Commerce Ministry of Japan1905, 28). The fishing was very good around the Korean peninsula; in 1908 the annual fish catchin Japanese waters was on average worth no more than 40 yen per person, whereas around thepeninsula the average for Japanese fishers was over 195 yen, and Joseon Koreans averaged morethan 45 yen (Yamaguchi 1911, 182). The fish catch from the colony of Korea grew ten-fold in
the twenty-seven years following Japan’s annexation, and the catch of sardines in Korea
multiplied eleven-fold in the six years between 1932 and 1937 (Aono 1984, 238). Japanesedivers, mostly from western Japan, put in a great amount of effort, with 120 boats setting out in
1893, increasing to 400 by 1907 (Yoshida 1954, 207-208). As a result fishing grounds such as

Zainichi Koreans: The Past, the Present and the Future

66

Jeju Island and So An Island were exhausted. Jeju Islander fishers and divers were pushed
further afield to make ends meet.
At the same time, Japanese traders were buying marine products from Jeju fishers and divers,
and selling them Japanese products. This meant that Jeju Islanders, who had previously been
largely self-sufficient, became ever more deeply enmeshed in the cash economy. This marked a
new epoch. In their new weakened economic position Jeju fishers went from being selfemployed to being the employees of Japanese companies, with lower wages than Japanesenationals. The empire thus subjugated Jeju Islanders, but also opened new opportunities for wage
labor migration in Japan.
Jeju women divers joined male and female diving groups from various parts of Japan working
the along the Korean peninsular coast (Kuba 1978, 205). When the colonial Korean fishingordinance was enacted in 1915 the Jeju women divers’ union acquired fishing rights along theentire coast of the peninsula (Masuda 1986, 67, 83). The Jeju women divers received lower
wages than the Japanese divers and were very productive, so by the early Showa period noJapanese divers were working the Korean coast. Japanese divers from Ise had been working the
Korean coast at Pang Oe Jin in Gyeongsang Province and Pohang (Jeong Ja-ri) in Ulsan County
since the mid-1800s, but after the Jeju divers went there in significant numbers in 1895 the Isedivers disappeared (Masuda 1986, 82).
Stories from Japanese people show the extent of the personal contacts being made across theregion through Japanese colonialism. One Japanese fisherwoman had her first baby at her headfamily’s house, her second at an inn in Korea, and her third was born in Dairen (Kuba 1978,183). Despite the colonial structure within which these personal relationships took place, they
were often characterized by openness and mutual respect. A young Korean man jumped in tosave a Japanese fisherwoman working in Korea who fell from a boat with her infant tied to herback (Kuba 1978, 198). When a Japanese fishing boat ran into pirates in Korean waters and mostof the crew were killed, the only survivors were “a kind-hearted Korean mother [who] took a[Japanese] child on her back and ran away... We saw that child ourselves. And the Koreans were
so good as to arrange funerals in their village” (Kuba 1978, 130-131). By 1911 fishing ventures
were employing Koreans regularly and often took Korean people back to Japan (Kuba 1978,
185). These Korean workers included children, some of whom were reportedly abducted, others
had been sold as domestic servants or fishing laborers by poverty-stricken parents (Kuba 1978,131).
Jeju Islanders were part of this flux of people throughout the Empire. The earliest record ofseasonal cash work in Japan by Jeju women divers is from 1903, when several went to
Miyakejima. The earliest record of Jeju fishermen engaging in wage labor migration is 1910,
when over 100 fishers arrived in Japan as crew on Japanese boats (Masuda 1986, 83, 108). Jeju
Islanders were hired for the season’s fishing by Japanese fishing boats and went with the boat
wherever the fishing took them; the Korean peninsula, Dairen, or Qingdao. When the boat was
ready to return to Japan it stopped off at Jeju, setting down the islanders who wished to returnhome. Islanders who wished to go on to Japan simply stayed on the boat for the final night’s trip
(Kuba 1978, 185-7).
Under the Japanese Empire Jeju Islanders’ travel and work settled into a pattern of seasonal workfor cash away from the island, interspersed with time on Jeju doing other things. By 1915 women
divers were spending six months or so out of every year away doing cash work (Eguchi 1915,

Koh and Barclay: Traveling through Autonomy and Subjugation

67168). Jeju Islanders also spent periods of several years engaged in manufacturing and trading
away from Jeju before returning home, while others remained on the island working in
agriculture, fisheries or commerce (Fisheries Bureau 1910, 441). Given their long history of
migratory kaijin lifestyles, it was not difficult for Jeju Islanders to adjust to this pattern ofseasonal work away from home, and soon they branched out into new kinds of work available in
the Japanese Empire.
Modern Japanese cities were an alluring prospect for young Jeju Islanders curious to learn about
the world. Japanese recruitment of industrial laborers from Jeju Island started in 1914. They went
particularly to Osaka but also to the Hanshin industrial belt and Kita-Kyushu. There was a
shortage of labor in these areas and the practice of hiring Jeju Islanders was already establishedin the fisheries sector. Industrial labor migration was behind the establishment in 1922 of aregular ferry service between Osaka and Jeju called the Hansai ferry. There had been regularferry services between Korea and Japan prior to that, but these were mainly a means of travel for
Japanese. By contrast, the Osaka-Jeju service clearly functioned as a means of bringing Jeju
islanders to and from Japan. Prior to the establishment of this route Jeju islanders moving toJapan had used the Kampu ferry between Shimonoseki and Busan, or fishing boats. The openingof the regular Osaka-Jeju service made it easy for islanders to move to Japan to work. By 1934
twenty-five percent of Jeju Island’s population resided in Japan (Masuda 1986, 111).
Although Jeju Islanders’ early efforts at resisting Japanese incursions into their fishing areas
failed and they moved on to adapting to the new political situation, more bursts of resistanceagainst Japanese rule followed in the 1930s (Yang 1996). Jeju’s women divers played a key rolein some of these movements (Fujinaga 1989). By then they had fishing rights to the whole
Korean peninsula and were used to organizing themselves economically, so although they had noformal schooling, it was a small step for them to form groups to actively agitate for change inareas where their rights were abused.

Contemporary Jeju women divers

Zainichi Koreans: The Past, the Present and the Future68

During the second phase of Japanese Imperialism over the first half of the twentieth century
Japan had become an important place in Jeju Islanders’ translocal regional way of life. This
posed significant problems for Jeju Islanders during the next historical phase examined in thispaper, following the defeat of Japan, when South Korea was established as a postcolonial
independent state and the Cold War started.
The Cold War
The Cold War brought about severe repression of Jeju Island within the Republic of Korea
established in the south. Because of the historical nature of their engagement within the Japanese
empire, which varied in important ways from other Korean experiences of being colonized, Jeju
Islanders had complicated and shifting allegiances in the first few years after World War II, as
the two Korean states came into being in a divided Korea. Jeju Islanders living in Japan wereconcentrated around the Kansai area and worked mostly in factories, whereas peninsula Koreanstended to work in construction. The Kansai factories were a hotbed of trade union activism in thedecades leading up to World War II, in which Jeju Islanders participated. Some Jeju Islanders
were active members of the Japanese Communist Party. Because the levels of education on Jeju
were high and because many Jeju Islanders had the opportunity for schooling in the colonial
system, the Jeju people in Japan were able to read newspapers and adapt to Japanese societyquite easily. The peninsula Koreans in Japan tended to have less schooling and lived incommunities that were more segregated from wider Japanese society. Before the war most of
Jeju intelligentsia spent periods of time in Japan experiencing life in the big city and soaking up
the newest ideas about social organization to take home to Jeju, including left wing ideas (Koh1996b, life history volumes). At the same time, while Jeju Islanders had long fought forautonomy under the umbrella of the Joseon administration, Jeju Islanders felt allegiance to thepeninsula as a polity, and were excited by the possibilities of an independent modern Koreanstate. Many Jeju Islanders felt strongly that the new Korean state should be unified, not divided
by foreign powers, and the influence of left wing ideas in prominent families meant that many
Jeju Islanders also strongly identified with the communist regime in the North [18]. Again, Jeju
Islanders did not simply accept an unsatisfactory state of affairs but agitated against south-only
elections. Some left wing groups took up arms left behind by Japanese military forces that had
been based on Jeju.
US military advisors, in the context of the unfolding Cold War, supported the South Korean
military and police in brutal retaliation against the islanders’ opposition to the elections. Thisoccurred on 3 April 1948, and is often referred to as the 4/3 Incident (forth month, third day). It
is difficult to know exactly how many people were killed, because the population of Jeju in thepost war years is unclear. Many people had returned from Japan, and many of these then moved
on again, but it is likely the population was around 300,000. Local records show 14,028 people
were registered as killed or missing that day, and since many more deaths would not have beenregistered it has been estimated that 20-30,000 people were killed (Jeju 4/3 Research Institute2005). A Korean security officer is reported to have said of Jeju at the time “if it’s for the goodof the Republic of Korea, sprinkle gasoline over the whole island and wipe out all 300,000 in onego” (Jeong 1988, 61).
The South Korean military dictatorship was not only rigidly anti-communist, anti-Japanese anticolonial sentiment was an important part of nation building in postwar Korea. In the immediate
post war it was not easy to be clearly anti-Japanese because most of the Korean ruling class had

Koh and Barclay: Traveling through Autonomy and Subjugation

69

been educated in Japanese language, many in Japan. Nevertheless overt continuing connections
to Japan were frowned upon. This had an effect on Jeju Islanders. As mentioned earlier, Jeju
Islanders identified with Japanese as fellow kaijin. In addition, during the colonial era Jeju
Islanders had established more connections to Japan through work, study and travel in thecolonial period than other peninsula Koreans. Many of the islanders who settled in Japan before
the war remained afterwards; proportionally Jeju Islanders made up a significant part of theethnic Korean population who chose to continue to live in Japan after the war. Families withmembers living in Japan were seen as potentially traitorous by other Koreans, and many Jeju
families fell into this category. Because of these close connections to Japan, as well as theirsuspected communist sympathies, Jeju Islanders were subject to surveillance by the South
Korean government until the 1980s.
One of the life histories researched by Koh Sunhui (1996b, life history volumes) demonstrates
the complex interaction of connections to Japan and communist sympathies that meant Jeju
Islanders were viewed with suspicion by the South Korean regime. This Jeju man was an activist
in the labor movement in Japan in 1928, becoming a member of the Japanese Communist Party
in 1948, and continuing with left wing activism until the 1980s. He visited North Korea threetimes via ‘illegal’ routes. He assisted his younger brother to go from Jeju to Osaka (without avisa) and from there to North Korea to live. Arrested three times by the Japanese government for
his activities, he spent time in prison, then was repatriated to South Korea. After his last visit toNorth Korea in 1980 he switched allegiance from the North to the South. Still, a committedsocialist, he began supporting South Korean policies regarding zainichi Koreans in Japan andstrengthening connections to his home village on Jeju, eventually taking South Korean
citizenship.
Contemporary Jeju Islander Identities
Anti-communist nationalism and modernization in the latter half of the twentieth century brought
about a greater degree of Koreanization of Jeju Island society than had been achieved by the
Joseon administration. The authoritarian South Korean government imposed an official versionof anti-communist Korean national identity on the islanders. Many aspects of culture thatdiffered from those of peninsular Korea, such as local language, were suppressed and were nottransmitted to younger generations. Mass education, mass media, economic development, themilitary draft system, and increased visits to and from the Korean Peninsula as a result of
improved transport, all contributed to Koreanization. Bureaucratic centralization was
strengthened under the military regime and rapid modernization was effected. More recently theSouth Korean government has moved towards decentralization, and there has been heightenedinterest in Jeju culture amongst Jeju Island public officials, the media and researchers. The strong
devaluation of Jeju identity and culture during the post war military regime, which wasinternalized by Jeju islanders, has to some extent been recouped since the early 1990s.
The forceful Koreanization of Jeju during the Cold War pushed islanders beyond their historicalcultural predisposition of openness to other societies, closer to assimilation. In the post war era
Jeju culture came to be less distinct from culture on the peninsula. This is evident in acomparison of post war Jeju Islander identities. Contemporary Jeju Islanders see themselves as
belonging both to Jeju Island—their country—and to peninsular Korea—their state. Whichidentity is foremost depends on the situation. In relations amongst themselves Jeju islanders
identify as belonging to the same country. In relations with Koreans from the peninsula, Jeju

Zainichi Koreans: The Past, the Present and the Future70

Islanders identify as belonging to the same state, while recognizing that there are culturaldifferences between themselves and other Koreans, and while recognizing that their status within
Korea is stigmatized (Koh 1998a and 1998b). In some senses this dual identity is similar to theidentity we have traced since annexation just before the beginning of the Joseon era. But when
we compare Jeju Islanders who have lived on Jeju in the post war era with Jeju Islanders who left
before the war and have since lived in Japan, the effects of political changes in Korea during thepost war era on Jeju identities are revealed.
Jeju Islanders who went to Japan before World War II and stayed there, and their Japan-residing
descendants, exhibit a vague and abstract sense of Koreanness. They have some sense of
belonging to Korea due to having been regarded since the end of World War II as “Korean
residents of Japan” by Chongryon (General Association of Korean Residents in Japan
representing communist North Korea) and Mindan (Korean Residents Association in Japan
representing South Korea), as well as by the governments and people of Japan, North Korea andSouth Korea. So if you ask these Jeju Islanders what their ethnicity is they usually answer“Korean.” But in interviews nearly every time they referred to “Korea” they were actuallyreferring to Jeju Island. When asked about Jeju Island and what it means to be from there, theiranswers are detailed and acute, but when asked about peninsular Korea and what it means to be a
Korean citizen their responses are vague.19 Islanders who have spent significant spans of time on
Jeju in the post war era, however, have a much more concrete sense of identity with peninsularSouth Koreans, because of shared experiences in the education system, in military service, via
the mass media, and so on.
Despite a certain amount of Koreanization, however, Jeju Islanders continue to exhibit anautonomous communal identity in their traveling practices. Contemporary Jeju migrants do not
simply merge into local immigrant Korean communities but recreate their version of Jeju society
wherever they are, by socializing together, and through establishing Jeju Island homelandsocieties. The homeland societies are not a strategic form of identity politics to distinguish Jeju
Islanders from Koreans, since most Jeju Islanders consciously identify as Korean. Nevertheless,
Jeju migration practices, including the homeland societies, sustain them as distinct from bothmainstream Korean migrant groups and their host society (Koh 1998b).
Within contemporary imaginaries historical perceptions of Jeju Island as peripheral anduncivilized remain salient. One manifestation of this is that contemporary peninsular Koreans
still tend to view Jeju Islanders as uneducated. Misinterpretation of different social educational
practices have continued through the modern era. In Joseon peninsula Korea, as mentioned
earlier, academic achievement was the only path to wealth and power. Education was thus
unambiguously linked to material gain, and the cultural values surrounding education reflected
the importance to strive for the highest formal qualification possible. In contemporary Korean
culture this is played out in credentialism; a competitive drive to achieve formal academic
qualifications. For Jeju islanders, however, academic achievement has historically not been the
only criteria for social status, and in any case socioeconomic hierarchies were not so pronounced
on Jeju. For these reasons Jeju Islanders have had a more expansive and less competitive view of
education. In the context of Jeju being a maritime society, education became entwined withtravel across the sea. Travel itself came to be seen as a form of education. Forty-eight per cent ofJeju islanders residing around Tokyo in the early 1990s responded in questionnaires and in life
history interviews that they came to Japan “to study,” although most of them were not enrolled inschools or university; they were working. They felt that traveling outside Jeju and living inKoh and Barclay: Traveling through Autonomy and Subjugation

71

another society for a while was a form of education in itself (Koh 1996a, 50). This informal styleof education, however, is not easily recognizable as education to peninsula Koreans.
During the twentieth century, especially with decolonization in the post-World War II era, thenation-state model came to dominate imaginaries of political and cultural space. The structuresand ideology of the nation-state system constrained Jeju Islanders’ regional practices. Whiletransport developments meant travel was technically easier in the post war era, the imposition of
territorial borders between the states of the region meant that Jeju Islanders’ travel was actuallymore restricted than it had been in either the Joseon or Japanese Imperial eras. China and North
Korea became effectively off limits. Officially Japan had become a separate state for which a
passport was required, and the South Korean government restricted overseas travel until the
1980s.
Patterns of living translocally in Japan as well as Jeju were so entrenched by the end of thecolonial era, however, that Jeju Islanders continued sojourning to Japan, despite this being
considered illegal by the governments of South Korea and Japan. Jeju Islanders owned properties
and businesses in Japan and had family members there. The economic situation in Korea wasdire until several years after the Korean War and the political situation on Jeju was unbearable
for many, especially around the 4/3 Incident. In continuing to sojourn to Japan, Jeju Islanders
were travelling as a way of life, as they had been doing for centuries. Now, however, thesepractices were criminalized and pushed underground. In the words of Tessa Morris-Suzuki, state
responses to unsanctioned travel to Japan in the post war era rendered that travel “invisible”(Morris-Suzuki 2004).
Conclusion
Contemporary Jeju Islander travels to and from Japan contain vestiges of Todung Yagi travels in
the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries along the Korean, Shandong and Liaodong Peninsulas. Jeju
society has for centuries existed in a spatial network across the maritime region of northeast
Asia. This network has expanded and contracted in various directions as political situations in
the region changed through the rise and fall of Joseon Korea, the Japanese Empire, and the Cold
War. The modes of travel and types of work have changed, as has Jeju culture, especially during
the twentieth century; still Jeju identities persist and Jeju culture flourishes distinct from othercultures.

Zainichi Koreans: The Past, the Present and the Future72

Jeju in relation to Korea, China, Russia, Japan and Okinawa

In Confucian philosophies maritime regions were peripheral to the land-based centres ofcivilization, and were thus ignored and/or misunderstood. The modern era’s territorial system ofnation-states made transborder ethnic identities such as kaijin are anomalous, and translocal
practices of living across borders were criminalized and pushed out of sight. The significance of
our failure to recognize these transborder identities and translocal practices is that we miss out on
important historical lessons. The history of Jeju Island highlights some possibilities and dangers
for small and marginalized ethnic groups. It demonstrates that contact with other peoples andcultures does not inevitably lead to homogenization, even for small politically subordinate
societies. Jeju Islanders managed to retain much cultural autonomy. That autonomy was mostthreatened by state assimilation policies during the Cold War, and contemporary systems ofeducation and media, but international norms have moved away from hard line anti-diversity
nationalism for some decades, and the effects of this are being felt in the recent regeneration of
local interest and pride in Jeju culture.
Being part of the Joseon administration, then the Japanese Empire and now the South Koreanstate has enabled Jeju to avoid invasion and domination by other powers. Administrative
subordination has thus been in some senses expedient, and Jeju Islanders maintained someautonomy under that subordination. One way they did this was simply to carry on as they were
without regard to the dominant administration wherever possible. Another way was throughpersistent and strategic lobbying through the dominant system. At times their activism was
unable to protect them, such as during the early Meiji Japanese fishing incursions, and during theworst excesses of the South Korean military dictatorship. And these strategies were unable toprotect Jeju Islanders from the material inequities associated with their subordinate status. But on
the whole, the strategy of accepting formal subordination to a larger power, while actively
maintaining some measure of autonomy, has met Jeju Islanders’ basic material needs, provided
outlets for personal growth and cultural expression, and enabled Jeju society to thrive as a
distinct system.

Koh and Barclay: Traveling through Autonomy and Subjugation73

KOH Sunhui is a Research Associate, Institute for International Studies, University ofTechnology Sydney. Kate BARCLAY (PhD) is a Senior Lecturer, Institute for International
Studies, University of Technology Sydney.
Notes
1Some of the historical material in this paper was first published in Japanese (Koh 1998a; and1998b). Judith Wakabayashi worked on initial translation into English. Koh Sunhui and Kate
Barclay updated and reworked the material for an English language audience. Translations from
Korean to Japanese are by Koh Sunhui. Translations from Japanese to English are by Judith
Wakabayashi and Kate Barclay. Earlier versions of this paper were presented at a joint
University of Technology Sydney and University of Guadalajara workshop on Globalization andRegionalization in January 2004 and the annual Centre for Research on Provincial China
workshop held in the Hunter Valley, New South Wales, Australia in June 2004. Thanks to John
McPhillips, David S.G. Goodman, Guo Yingjie, Peter Shapinsky and Jennifer Gaynor who
provided helpful comments on earlier versions of the paper.
2

For a brief discussion of histories focussing on this maritime region and references to longer
treatments see Batten (2003, 39-40, 184-185). For discussion of Japanese adoptions ofcentre/periphery ideology see Part 2 ‘Centre and Periphery’ in Denoon (et. al. 1996), also Batten(2003, especially 28-48) and Kang (1997, 42). In addition to ideological influences, politicaldevelopments on the mainland also affected perspectives on the maritime region. Ming Dynasty
rulers had been politically engaged with the seafaring trade with other Asian countries, but from1644 the Qing Dynasty rulers were more concerned with their territorial boundaries to thenortheast and west, so they oriented government activities inland and left control of the sea trade
to the merchants (Yanemoto 1999).
3

Over the period covered by this paper there were various polities on the Korean peninsula so it
is problematic to speak of ‘Korea’ as if the current idea of a Korean nation was salient in thosetimes. Where appropriate specific terms such as Joseon Korea, the Korean peninsula and Cold
War South Korea are used. For want of a better term ‘Koreanization’ is used in discussion aboutboth Joseon Korea and South Korea; we hope the reader will gather from the context what wemean by ‘Korea’ in these cases.
4This myth of origin was recorded by Korean scholars in the early twentieth century. The factthat the scholars were from the peninsula, where inaccurate conceptions of the island abounded,and the fact that they had Japanese colonial education, could be expected to have influenced theirrepresentations of this myth. There have, however, been no significant refutations of the myth by
Jeju Islanders, so we assume Jeju Islanders recognize the myth as theirs.
5

Abalone was a symbolically important tribute commodity in Japan. It has been the mostprestigious of offerings for Shinto deities, and even today is presented at the Ise Shrine. Abalone
from Jeju (Tamla) was considered especially precious.
6
7

Ama means women divers, kara means from the Korean peninsula.

Representations by Japanese academics of cultural identity between the Japanese andneighbouring peoples served strategic colonial purposes in the late 1800s and early 1900s. In
Taiwan and Okinawa these kinds of representations were explicitly used to justify colonial
invasion and domination by Japan.

Zainichi Koreans: The Past, the Present and the Future

74

8

The Ryukyu Kingdom also juggled relations with larger powers. It had informal trade relations
with polities in what we now call China from at least the twelfth century, which were formalized
into a vassal relationship under the Ming Dynasty, while concurrently the Japanese Satsuma
domain extended political control over the Ryukyus from the late sixteenth century (Pearson
1996; Smits 1999).
9

A Concise History of Jeju Island (Kim 1969) and The Early Years of Tamla (Kim 1918) are
canons of Jeju Island history, but both scholars were Confucian-educated and were unable tocritically uncover the Confucian ideology in the records to extrapolate from them a Jeju-centred
version of history; rather they transmitted the biases embedded in the original records, including
factual inaccuracies. According to Chun (1987) these biases in the historical record weretransmitted in histories of Jeju published as late as the 1980s. These biases in histories of Jeju
were not only ethnic, but also gendered and class based. Confucian-educated writers of records
were men, usually of higher socioeconomic status, although schooling was not as restricted bysocial strata on Jeju as it was on the peninsula. Women and lower status men were mostly
illiterate and had their own forms of historical traditions through story-telling and folk songs,
which continue today to be vital forms of historical transmission for illiterate Jeju Islanders.
More Jeju-focussed versions of history have emerged from studies of the language(s), folksongs
and oral traditions of Jeju. See for example the annual Tamla Munhwa (Tamla Culture),
produced by the Tamla Culture Research Institute of Jeju National University.
10

The Jurchen people from the northern part of the Korean peninsula had seen Goryeo as theirsuzerain but came under the influence of the Wan-yen tribe of northern Manchuria who wanted
to unify all Jurchen people, so from the late 10th to early 12th centuries the Jurchen fought with
Goryeo along its northern border (Lee 1984, 126-128).
11

For a compilation of all these figures see Koh (1998b).

12

Funerary culture developed from a form of Buddhism, and as such was not strictly ‘Confucian’but, in that there was a heavy emphasis on ancestor worship that bolstered Confucian visions ofsociopolitical order based in the structure of the family, these religious practices may be seen as
part of the cluster of practices that constituted Joseon Confucianism. Shamanism andConfucianism co-existed at funerals before being syncretised in Joseon Confucianism.
13

A similar term kaimin has been used by Amino Yoshihiko (1994) to describe as aspect ofJapanese society over history, which he feels has been as influential in shaping Japanese culture
as wet-rice agriculture. The word min carries the connotation of ‘common people’, which in ourview implies that maritime people were all of lower socioeconomic strata. Because this was not
the case we use the broader term kaijin.
14

Amino Yoshihiko (see 1994) has made this understanding widespread in Japanese history.
Epeli Hau’ofa (1994) has proposed that the idea of oceans as connecting phenomena isappropriate for conceptualising Oceania.
15

The records analysed by Takahashi contradict Masuda Ichiji who has stated that seasonal workon the Korean peninsula by the Jeju ama started only in 1895 (Masuda 1986, 79).
16

The hospitality extended to survivors may also have been rooted in less directly pragmatic
cultural values. According to Koh’s informants in the early twentieth century Jeju Islanders did
not take food with them when they travelled around the island, because it was expected that

Koh and Barclay: Traveling through Autonomy and Subjugation

75

when they needed food they simply asked for it from the nearest house, and Jeju houses always
had extra food on hand for this. “Compassion” was cited amongst the “good things about Jeju
Island” in a questionnaire conducted amongst Jeju islanders living in Japan in the twentiethcentury by Koh (1998) in the 1990s.
17

The murdered Yang was a descendant of one of the founding families of Jeju Island and also avillage official, and Pae-ryung-ri was a consanguineous village consisting of the Yang, Koh andYi families. This was part of the reason his death galvanized such a strong reaction.
18

Jeju Islanders made up a significant proportion of the Koreans "repatriated" to North Korea inthe 1950s from Japan, having made the choice that socialist North Korea was the right place forthem to live (Morris-Suzuki 2006).
19

In fact, some of these long term Japanese residents and their descendants have not chosen
Republic of Korea citizenship, for complicated reasons to do with the management ofrepatriation of ‘non-Japanese’ at the end of World War II, having lived outside Korea since theestablishment of the Republic of Korea, as well as objections to a divided Korea and sympathies
for the North through Chongryon, an organization that provided many practical and cultural
supports for Jeju Islanders living in Japan (Morris-Suzuki 2004).
References
Amino Yoshihiko. 1994. Nihon Shakai Saiko: Kaimin to Retto Bunka (A Reconsideration ofJapanese Society: Sea Folk and Archipelago Culture). Tokyo: Shogakukan.
Aono Hisao. 1984. Aono Hisao Chosaku-shu (The Collected Writings of Aono Hisao). Tokyo:
Kokon Shoin.
Batten, Bruce. 2003. To the Ends of Japan: Premodern Frontiers Boundaries and Interactions.
United States of America: University of Hawai’i Press.
Choi Jae-sug. 1984. Jeju-do i Chinjok Chojik (Kinship Structures on Jeju Island). Seoul: Il Jisa.
Chun Kyung Soo. 1987. Sang Go Tamla Sa Hwe i Gi Bongu Fo Wa Un Dong Bang Huang (TheFundamental Structure and Orientation of Ancient Tamla Society). In Jeju Do Yongu (Studies on
Jeju Island), Vol. 4. Jeju: Jeju Do Yongu Hwe.
Denoon, D. et al (eds). 1996. Multicultural Japan: Paleolithic to Postmodern, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Eguchi Yasutaka. 1915 (May). Saishu-to Dekasegi Ama (Seasonal Women Divers from Jeju
Island). In Chosen Gakuho (Research Publications on Korea). Seoul: Office of the GovernorGeneral of Korea.
Fisheries Bureau, Agriculture and Commerce Division, Office of the Governor-General of
Korea. 1910. Kankoku Suisan-shi (Korean Fisheries Journal), Vol. 1. Seoul: Printing Bureau of
the Office of the Governor-General of Korea.
Fujinaga Takeshi. 1989. 1932 Nen Saish-to Ama no Tatakai (Jeju Women Divers Fight Against
Japanese Colonial Occupation in 1932). In Chosen Minzoku Unodshi Kenkyu (Research into theHistory of Korean Ethnic Activism), Vol. 6.

Zainichi Koreans: The Past, the Present and the Future

76

Habara Yukichi. 1949. Nihon Kodai Gyogyo Keizai-shi (An Economic History of AncientJapanese Fisheries). Tokyo: Kaizosha.
Hau’ofa, Epeli. 1994. Our Sea of Islands. Contemporary Pacific 61, 150-161.
Jeju 4/3 Research Institute. 2005. Outline. www.jeju43.org/outline/outline-3.asp (viewed 21 May
2007).
Jeong Ga Woon. 1988. Kaerimiru Yon-san Jiken no Kako to Genzai (Looking Back on the Past
and Present of the 4/3 Incident). In Saishuto Yon-San Jiken to wa Nanika (What Was The 4/3
Incident on Jeju Island) edited by Saishu-to Yon-San Jiken 40 Shunen Tsuito Kinen Koenshu
Kanko Iinkai (Publishing Committee for the 40th Anniversary Commemorative Collection ofPapers on the Jeju Island 4/3 Incident), Tokyo: Shinkansha.
Kaji Nobuyuki. 1993. Jukyo to wa Nanika (What is Confucianism?). Tokyo: Chuko shinsho andChuo Koronsha.
Kim Ok Hee. 1987. Jeju do Cheonjuu Kyoi Suyong Cheong ke Kwa Cheong (The Acceptance ofRoman Catholicism on Jeju Island). Tamla Munhwa (Tamla Culture) No. 6. Jeju: Tamla
Munhwa Yongu So (Tamla Culture Research Institute), Jeju National University.
Kim Tae Neung. 1969. Jeju-do Yaksa (A Concise History of Jeju Island). Jeju Island.
Kim Seok Ik. 1918. Tamla Kinyon (The Early Years of Tamla). Jeju Island.
Koh Chang Sug. 1993. Jeju do Keerok ge Natanan Jeju Pyoto ka in i Shilte (Survey of
Shipwrecks on Jeju as Recorded in the Jeju Annals). Tamla Munhwa (Tamla Culture) No. 13.
Jeju: Tamla Munhwa Yongu So (Tamla Culture Research Institute), Jeju National University.
Koh Sunhui. 1996a Zainichi Saishuto Shusshinsha no Seikatsu Katei: Kanto Chiho wo Chushinni (The Lives of Jeju Islanders Residing in Japan: Focus on the Kanto Region). Tokyo:
Shinkansha.
---- 1996b Jeju Islanders Living in Japan during the Twentieth Century: Life Histories andConsciousness. Doctoral Thesis, Department of Sociology, Chuo University, Tokyo. Includes
volumes: Records of Life Histories Vol.1-3; Records about Illegal Immigration; Records ofInterviews with Jeju Islanders Living on “Skid Row” (yoseba); Records of Jeju Islander’sVillage Society Association.
---- 1998a. Saishutojin no Kokka/Kokumin Ishiki wo Megutte (On Jeju Islanders’ Consciousnessof State and Nationality). In Horumon Bunka, Vol. 8. Tokyo: Shinkansha.
---- 1998b. 20 Seiki no Tainichi Saishutojin (Jeju Islanders Living in Japan in the 20th Century).
Tokyo: Akashi Shoten.
Kuba Gokuro. 1978. Amakusa Gyomin Kikigaki (Transcripts of [Interviews with] Amakusa
Fisherfolk). In Gyomin (Fisherfolk), Kindai Minshu no Kiroku (Records of Modern Peoples)Vol. 7, edited by Okamoto Tatsuaki. Tokyo: Shinjimbutsu Oraisha.
Lee Ki Baik. 1984. A New History of Korea. Trans. E.W. Wagner and E.J. Schultz. Seoul:Ilchokak.

Koh and Barclay: Traveling through Autonomy and Subjugation

77

Masuda Ichiji. 1986. Chiiki Shakai no Hatten to Machizukuri (The Development of Regional
Society and Community Development). Tokyo: Seed Planning.
Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Japan). 1952. Nihon Gaiko Bunsho (Foreign Policy Documents),
Vol. 25. Tokyo.
Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Japan). 1963. Nihon Gaiko Bunsho (Foreign Policy Documents),
Vols.17, 20, 23. Tokyo.
Morris-Suzuki, Teresa. 2004. An act prejudicial to the occupation forces: migration controls andKorean residents in post-surrender Japan. Japanese Studies 24 (1): 5-28.
Morris-Suzuki, Teresa. 2006. Defining the Boundaries of the Cold War Nation: 1950s Japan andthe Other Within. Japanese Studies 26 (3): 303-316.
Mountains and Forests Bureau, Agriculture and Commerce Ministry (Japan). 1905. Kankoku-shi(Korea Journal), Tokyo: Tokyo Shoin.
Nihon Kokusai Rengo Kyokai (United Nations Association of Japan). 1963. Tokyo: Ministry ofForeign Affairs.
Office of the Governor-General of Korea. 1928. Chosen no Shuraku Kohen Dozoku Buraku(Korean Population Centers, Part II: Consanguineous Villages).
---- 1929. Seikatsu Jotai Chosa (Sono ni) Saishu-to (A Survey of Living Conditions: Part II: Jeju
Island).
Pearson, R. 1996. The Place of Okinawa in Japanese Historical Identity. In Multicultural Japan:
Paleolithic to Postmodern, edited by D. Denoon et. al., 95-116. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Smits, Gregory. 1999. Visions of Ryukyu: Identity and Ideology in Early-Modern Thought andPolitics. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press.
Takahashi Kimiaki. 1987. Chosen Gaiko Chitsujo to Higashi Ajia Kaiiki no Koryu (Diplomatic
Order in Korea and Relations in the Sea Region of East Asia). In Sekai-shi Ninshiki ni Okeru
Kokka (‘Nation’ in World History Consciousness). Reprinted from Rekishigaku Kenkyukai
Taikai Hokoku (Report of the Congress of the Historical Society of Japan).
---- 1991. Saishuto Shusshin no Kanryo Koh Teuk Jong ni Tsuite. (On the Bureaucrat Koh TeukJong from Jeju Island). Saishuto (Jeju Island) No. 4, edited by Tanra Kenkyukai (Tamla
Research Association). Tokyo: Shinkansha.
---- 1992. Chusei no Kaiiki Sekai to Saishu-to (The Medieval Sea Region World and Jeju
Island). In Higashi Shina-kai to Nishi-kai Bunka (The East China Sea and West Sea Culture),
Umi to Retto Bunka (The Sea and Archipelago Culture) Vol. 4, edited by Amino Yoshihiko.
Tokyo: Shogakukan.
Tanabe Satoru. 1990. Nihon Ama Dento no Kenkyu. (Research on the Tradition of WomenDivers in Japan). Tokyo: Hosei Daigaku Shuppankyoku.
Wigen, Kären. 1999. Culture, Power and Place: The New Landscapes of East AsianRegionalism. American Historical Review 104 (4).

Zainichi Koreans: The Past, the Present and the Future

78

Yamaguchi Toyomasa. 1911. Chosen no Kenkyu Okuzuke (Colophon to Research of Korea).
Tokyo: Kanshodo Shoten.
Yanemoto, M. 1999. Maps and Metaphors of the “Small Eastern Sea” in Tokugawa Japan (16031868). Geographical Review 89 (2):169-187.
Yang Jin Geon. 1991. Jejudo Wa Okinawa I Jeontong Kyoyuk (A Comparison of Traditional
Education on Jeju Island and Okinawa). Tamla Munhwa (Tamla Culture) No. 11. Jeju: Tamla
Munhwa Yongu So (Tamla Culture Research Institute), Jeju National University.
---- 1992. Choson Jeju Do Kyoyuk Shisol (Educational Facilities on Jeju Island, Korea). Tamla
Munhwa (Tamla Culture) No. 12. Jeju: Tamla Munhwa Yongu So (Tamla Culture ResearchInstitute), Jeju National University.
Yoshida Keiichi. 1954. Chosen Suisan Kaihatsu-shi (A History of the Development of Korean
Fisheries). Tokyo: Chosuikai.
Zensho Eisuke. 1927. Chosen no Jinko Gensho (Population Phenomena in Korea), Survey
Material No. 22. Seoul: Office of the Governor-General of Korea.
---- 1935. Chosen no Shuraku (Korean Villages), Part II. Seoul: Office of the Governor-Generalof Korea.
Zito, Angela. 1997. Of Body and Brush: Grand Sacrifice as Text/Performance in EighteenthCentury China. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Caprio: The Cold War Explodes in Kobe

79

Part III: Becoming Zainichi Koreans in Postwar Japan“The Cold War Explodes in Kobe: The 1948 Korean Ethnic School ‘Riots’ and US
Occupation Authorities”
Mark E. Caprio
November 24, 2008
http://japanfocus.org/-Mark-Caprio/2962
One marked turn in recent Zainichi Korean studies is the new attention to theconnections between prewar and postwar Japan. This has resulted in an understanding ofZainichi Koreans not only as victims but as agents playing a large role in asserting theirrights and putting their lives in order in Japan. In this particular article, Mark Caprio
emphasizes the agency of Zainichi Koreans as a group that stood up and contested policies
they came to regard as unjust during the occupation era in Japan.
Caprio, a historian, wrote a major book on prewar and wartime Japanese
assimilation policies in colonial Korea. In Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, he has written
several articles on American and Japanese policies during the occupation era and how theconflicts between Zainichi Koreans and those policies begun, how they evolved, and why
they matter to East Asian history. This article discusses the closing of the Korean ethnic
schools in major Japanese cities in 1948 by the American authorities and the Zainichi
Koreans’ protests against this policy. By using in part the letters sent home by Elizabeth
Ryan, an American court reporter in Japan at the time, Caprio lays bare the prejudices ofAmericans of the period.
According to Caprio, Korean ethnic schools emerged in Japan immediately after
Koreans in the mainland were liberated in 1945, meaning that Zainchi Koreans too were nolonger forced to obey assimilation policies in place until then. The end of the war also
resulted in a unilateral stripping of their Japanese nationality, made permanent through the
San Francisco Treaty of 1952. Unfortunately, however, the American authorities essentiallyaccepted and reflected the discriminatory views of Koreans carried by the Japanese. Caprio
writes: “SCAP (Supreme Command for the Allied Forces)’s education policies mirrored thiscolonial-era policy as they forced Koreans to accept a Japanese-centered existence while
treating . . . the Koreans and their culture as inferior to the Japanese” (p. 7). The founding
and running of those schools thus became the means for Zainichi to subvert such policies
and to assert their ethnic identity.
In fact, the American authorities tried to suppress Korean ethnic education. The
Americans increasingly came to identify with the Japanese view that the Koreans should be
repatriated to the peninsula and those who wished to remain should conform entirely, as
had been the case before 1945, to the norms of the Japanese. Caprio demonstrates that therebuilding of Japan during the occupation era created “Zainichi Koreans,” who had few
legal rights.

The Cold War Explodes in Kobe: The 1948 Korean Ethnic School “Riots” and US
Occupation Authorities

Zainichi Koreans: The Past, the Present and the Future

80Mark E. Caprio
Summary
In March and April 1948 Koreans across Japan rose up in protest after the Japanese
government began to enforce an order handed down to them by the American Occupation
administration to close Korean ethnic schools. One such protest took place in Kobe on April 24
when Koreans stormed the Hyogo Prefecture offices in an attempt to get the governor to rescindthe order to close the four Korean ethnic schools in the prefecture. American and Japaneseadministrations reacted harshly to the Korean actions. Police arrested thousands of Koreansand inflicted stiff penalties on the incident’s leaders. As was often the case, the Occupation
administration misinterpreted Korean intention to keep the schools open as a leftist attempt to
disrupt U.S. occupations in Korea and Japan. Here the incident is examined through the eyes of
one Occupation employee, Elizabeth Ryan, a 31-year old court reporter who included detailed
information on the incident and its participants in personal letters that she sent to her family in
the United States.
At around 10:30 on the morning of April 24, 1948 four men, three Koreans and one Japanese,stormed into the Hyogo Prefecture Building (kenchā) and demanded an audience with Governor
Kishida Yukio. Their purpose remained unchanged from previous attempts to see the governor—
to discuss his April 10 order that the four Korean ethnic schools in his jurisdiction cease
operations and that the students be transferred to Japanese schools. Kishida, who was at anothermeeting, informed their Japanese spokesman, Horikawa Kazutomo, that he would see them later.
One half-hour later, the governor was told that about one hundred Koreans had forced their way
into the building. He soon heard them yelling “Open up, open up. We will kill you,” as they
destroyed one of his outer offices. Then 50 to 60 Koreans forced their way into Kishida’s officeby breaking down the wall that separated his office from the outer office they had been
destroying. They cut his telephone lines, trashed his furniture, and began roughing up thegovernor and the mayor of Kobe, who had been meeting with Kishida.
The intruders then sat the governor at his desk and the three negotiators, Kim Daisam [T’aesam],
Kim Yongho, and Ryang Minseo [Minsō], presented their demands. Kishida was to rescind hisorder to close the Korean schools, release the 65 Koreans arrested during a previous incident at
the assistant governor’s office, and see to it that no one involved in the present incident faced
prosecution. At 12:30 three United States Military Police officers arrived and attempted to escort
Kishida to safety. However, a crowd of Koreans who had gathered in the building prevented
them from doing so. The crowd also roughed up the Military Policemen, lifting one “off his
feet.” When one of the policemen drew his pistol a Korean woman bared her chest and baited
him to “shoot here.” Negotiations finally ended around 17:00 when the governor agreed inwriting to release those arrested during the previous incident.
Throughout the day a crowd had been assembling outside the prefecture building. Captain Roy
M. Johnson reported that by 11:30 these people, who numbered over 3000, “had ceased to be a
crowd; [they had formed] a mob.” Their presence prevented help from entering the building until
a team of 150 policemen succeeded in physically dragging “actively resisting” people away androped off the area. When at 17:00 one of the intruders announced from a window that the
governor had rescinded his order to close the schools “the mob went crazy” and “marched down
Illinois Avenue” waving the Korean flag.1

Caprio: The Cold War Explodes in Kobe

81

Their jubilation was short-lived. That evening, SCAP [Supreme Commander Allied Powers],
which had ordered the schools closed in the first place, issued its first (and only) state of
emergency during its seven-year tenure in Japan. From midnight the Kobe police, acting onorders from Eighth Army Commander General Robert Eichelberger, went on a “Korean hunt”(Chāsenjin gari) that aimed to arrest anyone who “looked Korean.” The hunt rounded up 1,732
people, including Okinawans, Taiwanese, and Japanese, of whom 39 were tried for “leading
demonstrations.”2 Later that day, Japanese police entered the Korean ethnic schools, physicallyremoved the students, and nailed shut their doors.
Eichelberger also rescinded the promises that the governor had made to the Koreans on April 24.
In total, 75 people (including one Japanese) were brought to trial and, save for four acquitted
Koreans, all were found guilty of one or more of the following charges: unlawfully entering thegovernor’s office, destroying office furnishings, threatening the governor, detaining thegovernor, interfering with Occupation and Hyogo Prefecture communications, and assaulting
Occupation force members. The four people who initiated the incident, along with three other
Koreans, were tried by the U.S. Military Commission and received sentences ranging from 10 to
15 years of hard labor. Nine other Koreans, tried by the General Provost Court of Kobe, received
sentences that ranged from three months to four years and nine months of hard labor. Fifty-two
Koreans were fined 50 yen.3
The court summary provided explicit details of the destructive and violent actions of the Koreanparticipants, but failed to adequately consider the anger and frustration that fueled them. We
learn of the intruders’ primary motivation—to make the governor rescind his order to close theschools—only through the demands that they issued to the governor. The court summary did not
explain the reasons why SCAP ordered the schools’ closures. Nor did it offer explanation as towhy the Korean people might react to this order as they did. It also neglected to note the attempts
that Koreans had made to gain audiences with the governor prior to April 24, or the governor’s
stonewalling—his office had told the Koreans that the governor was out of town—to avoid
having to meet them.4
The tone of the court summary reflected the negative attitudes that Americans and Japanese
directed toward “uncooperative” elements in Japan at the time, among whom included Koreans
residing in both Japan and Korea. As today, the over 650,000 Japan-based Koreans thenrepresented the country’s largest alien population. The arrogant attitude that many Koreans had
adopted at the war’s end toward their former colonial masters had gained them a reputation as
troublemakers in the eyes of both American and Japanese authorities. Their insistence on
educating their children in Korean ethnic schools irked particularly the U.S. administration in atleast two ways. Americans first saw their recalcitrance as an insult to U.S. authority as it
blatantly defied SCAP orders that they integrate their children into the Japanese school system.
Secondly, it demonstrated again the generally uncooperative behavior that Koreans had
displayed throughout the duration of the Occupation to date, be it through working in black
markets or collaborating with the Japanese Communist Party. To many, the obvious solution to
the Korean problem was that they all be sent “home.” Yet, this was not easy for a number ofreasons, including the fact that many younger Japan-based Koreans knew of no other home thanJapan.
Letters sent by Elizabeth Ryan, a court reporter stationed in Kobe from 1947-1948, to her familyin Milwaukee, Wisconsin expanded on the court summary’s descriptions of the Kobe “riots” byZainichi Koreans: The Past, the Present and the Future82

articulating general impressions that Americans and Japanese held toward the incident, theKorean participants, as well as the Korean people in general.5 Her writing thus provides awindow that enhances our understanding of the incident from the Japan-based American
perspective. Ryan’s letters also suggest outside influence from her colleagues. Their content thus
informs us of the general conceptions (and misconceptions) that Occupation and Japaneseadministrations held toward Koreans in Japan, but also in southern Korea. Furthermore, theseperspectives contribute to our understanding of how the United States viewed long-held conflicts
between Japanese and Koreans, and the growing political unrest in southern Korea that
contributed to the outbreak of civil war in 1950.
The Korean “Rioters” Slapped Uncle Sam in the Face
The details that Elizabeth Ryan entered into her letters reflected positively those recorded in the
court summary outlined above, though she admitted that her information came primarily from ashortwave broadcast out of Los Angeles.6 She first addressed the “riots” in an April 27, 1948
letter that she sent to alert her family of her safety. Here Ryan described the incident and accused
the Koreans of insulting the United States—they slapped Uncle Sam’s face—by refusing to send
their children to Japanese schools as required by Japan’s recently promulgated constitution:
What it boils down to is this. The Japanese constitution, under which they are now to run
their country, was set up by SCAP (Supreme Commander Allied Powers, theorganization revolving around Mac [MacArther]) and it called for a certain schools
system with a certain curriculum, etc. The Japanese have accepted it and are putting it
into effect, which means closing the 4 Korean schools in Kobe. The Koreans don’t want
their children to go to Japanese schools and have protested. While that may be well andgood, it is really not the Japanese idea in the school but the American, and so indirectly aslap in the face for Uncle Sam because the Koreans have rejected the school system. On
Saturday morning 70 Koreans visited the Prefecture headquarters and really tore things
apart. The Governor had them put in jail—and that set off the fire.
The incident spread concern, as indicated by the power display that SCAP demonstrated in its
immediate aftermath, that it would spread throughout Japan. Ryan wrote that General Menoher’s
declaration of “minor state of emergency” bought the Occupation’s top officials to Kobe. Soon
after, orders went out to arrest “every last Korean.” Her observations here reflect the seriousness
with which SCAP viewed the incident, perhaps because of its generally negative impression ofJapan’s Korean population. She writes:
Headquarters Kobe Base (Shinko Bldg) looked for all the world like it might be the gold
deposit for the world—all the cars lined up in front in “stand by,” guards with helmets
and guns patrolling every 10 feet—an air of excitement all over. The order went out fromthe “brains” that every last Korean was to be arrested and by 4 o’clock last evening theyhad 1500 of them in jail.
Ryan predicted that the Koreans would be tried fairly, but then suggested that they may be madescapegoats so as to discourage the outbreak of similar incidents in the future:
Special courts and staffs of lawyers are coming down from Tokyo and Yokohama toassist in the speedy trial of these people. They will be tried in our Provost Court insteadof the Japanese court—and they probably will get it, but good. I have heard from some ofCaprio: The Cold War Explodes in Kobe83

the officers who were in the conference that it really wasn’t too bad, but if we let it go byunnoticed, the way things have gone in the rest of the world, this could be only the
beginning.
Ryan returned home just as the trials reached their conclusion and thus she does not comment
further on the actual sentencing of those involved. Her short reports of the incident are as
informative for what they contain as they are for what they omit. Her suggestion that the Kobe
incident might serve as the first of a series of riots across Japan curiously ignores the fact that the
Kobe incident was just the most recent of a series of similar incidents that took place inYamaguchi (March 31), Okayama (April 8), Hyogo (April 10), Osaka (April 12), and Tokyo(April 20).7 A second Osaka demonstration held on April 26 attracted 30,000 people.
Also striking is her contention that the Koreans violated United States, rather than Japanese,law—by rejecting the constitutionally authorized Japanese school system they slapped Uncle
Sam’s face. She elaborated on this point in a May 4 letter where she wrote “SCAP…set up a
constitution which was accepted by the Japanese and the allied powers as workable. In theconstitution it stated that a certain school system would be set up—the whole curriculum has tobe changed to weed out their former teachings against democracy, etc. The Koreans had theirown schools, 4 of which were in Kobe, and would not move out of their school buildings.”
Her claim that Japan’s postwar constitution legitimized closing the Korean ethnic schools is
problematic in a number of ways. First, this document had much to say about promoting a
democratic education system but nothing to say about the curriculum that would guide thiseducation. The constitution’s “education clause,” Article 26, reads as follows:
All people shall have the right to an equal education correspondent to their ability, as
provided for by law. 2) All people shall be obligated to have all boys and girls under theirprotection receive ordinary education as provided for by law. Such compulsory education
shall be free.8
If anything, this document, in requiring “equal education correspondent to their ability”
legitimized the Korean ethnic schools’ continued existence. Indeed, after receiving orders toclose these schools Japanese lawmakers debated whether this action would constitute a violationof this very document.9
The Fundamental Law of Education (Kyāiku kihonhā) passed in March 1947 reinforced therights guaranteed by Japan’s postwar constitution. Sometimes described as a revision of the 1890
Imperial Rescript on Education, this legislation’s preamble declared as Japan’s intention to build“a democratic and cultural state” dependent on the “power of education.” It stipulated in Article
5 that Japan’s education system would be compulsory (gimu), and that “nationals” (kokumin)would be guaranteed free access to this education. It further stipulated in Article 4 that thiseducation would provide “nationals” with “equal opportunities without discrimination by race,
creed, sex, social status, economic position, or family origin.”It was not until later that year, when the Japanese government passed the School Education Act(Gakkā kyāikuhā) that we find any mention of the language or content that this education was toassume. Article 21, no. 5 of this legislation stipulated as a goal students being able to “correctly
understand the national language (kokugo or Japanese) as necessary for their daily lives,” and tounderstand the present conditions and history of their country and villages. It was the formation

Zainichi Koreans: The Past, the Present and the Future

84of the postwar Ministry of Education, rather than legislation, which established the curriculum towhich, in SCAP’s eyes, the Korean schools should adhere. In January 1947 the Ministry, acting
under SCAP orders, notified prefectural governors of their inclusion. This order it had to repeat
one year later after the prefectures refused to enforce it.10
These documents specifying that their regulations applied to “nationals” (kokumin) further
complicated Ryan’s argument that the Koreans violated the constitution by refusing to send theirchildren to Japanese schools. Her neglect alerts us to the precarious position that Koreans inJapan faced, particularly regarding their legal status. Ryan might have been aware that in May
1947, just months prior to SCAP’s January 1948 announcement that Koreans would be treated as“Japanese nationals,” SCAP reversed course by subjecting Japan-based Koreans and Taiwanese
to its Alien Registration Ordinance. Mirrored after the U.S. Alien Registration Act of 1940, it
required all non-Japanese over the age of 14 to register their alien status and carry with them at
all times their alien registration passbook. It further stipulated that violators would facedeportation. This legislation served as the forerunner for the more comprehensive Alien
Registration Act of 1952 that introduced mandatory fingerprinting of foreign residents.11
The Koreans’ options were limited. To avoid having their children enrolled in Japanese schools,
the Kobe schools could have joined other Korean schools in applying for private school status.
This would have permitted their children to study with their Korean, rather than Japanese,counterparts. They would have remained subjected to a Japanese-based curriculum as private
schools, as well, were subject to Ministry of Education regulations. Their other option perhaps
met the general intentions of the two seemingly contradictory legislative actions by SCAP—torid Japan of its Korean problem. American residents in Japan, like Ryan, justified this responseby claiming that Koreans had no desire to assimilate into Japanese society—they were simply
interested in causing trouble—and thus had no business remaining in Japan.
Koreans have been “Pains in the Neck”
The harsh reaction by SCAP to the riots was partially fueled by their generally negative attitude
toward the Korean people. Since the beginning of the occupation they had been rather
uncooperative. Soon after the war’s end they, along with Japan-based Taiwanese, became activein black market activities. Many Koreans joined the left-wing Chaeil chosōnin yōnmaeng(League of Koreans in Japan) that maintained ties with the Japanese Communist Party. Reportson the Kobe incident emphasized that its leaders belonged to this group, and that their followers,
being people of limited intelligence, were easily swayed by this wayward influence. Elizabeth
Ryan echoed these views in her letters. On April 27 she remarked that these troublemakers, whowere driven by leftist agitators, provided the Japanese police with a test to prove their capacity tomaintain law and order:
The Koreans have been a pain in the neck all along. They have some strange notion thatthey are the Occupationaires, and really give these Japs a hard time. They go into shops
and board street cars with no intention of paying. The poor Jap was scared to do anything
about it because he got beat up. So finally, we had to tell them to settle the thing with
their own law enforcement agencies (have to let them stand on their feet) and we wouldback them up to quell rioting, etc. All this Korean business is Communist-instilled.12

Caprio: The Cold War Explodes in Kobe

85

In an undated letter she repeated the claim that “much [Korean] activity is Communistic” addingthat the recent “uprising…among Japanese and Koreans” was hardly unusual—“It happened all
the time.”
American images of Koreans had never been overly positive. Their negative views were evident
in the U.S. being one of the first to recognize Japan’s paramount position on the peninsula in1905, and among the first to bless its annexation of Korea five years later. Even after the U.S.
went to war with Japan, calls could still be heard for Japan to be allowed to keep Korea.13 A
report titled “Aliens in Japan,” completed before the end of the war, incorporated many negative
attitudes frequently seen in Japanese writing on Koreans:
The Koreans in Japan are, for the most part, a distinct minority group with a low socialand economic position. Koreans generally live apart from Japanese, do not intermarry,
and are not assimilated into Japanese life to any great extent. The traditional pattern of
Korean migration was based on the seasonal need for labor in Japan and the migrants’desire to return to Korea for the New Year holidays.
The report also borrowed images used by the Japanese (and other colonizers) to justify colonial
annexation: The people lacked the “Japanese fever for hard work [and] appear to be slowmoving and lazy.”14
American Consul Douglas Jenkins, who was stationed in Kobe, also viewed Koreans as leftwing troublemakers, and suggested that they marched to Moscow’s orders:
There are between 60,000 and 70,000 Koreans in Kobe. The great majority of them were
imported by the Japanese during the war for manual labor. They are of the low typegenerally, poorly educated and include among their number a high number of thugs androughnecks…. This large, boisterous and dissatisfied, alien group in the population of thecity is an easy prey to organizers and agitators. They are known to include among theirleaders a number of communists and quasi-communists who probably receive
instructions from Northern Korea or, if not that closely associated, certainly follow theparty line.15
Ryan and Jenkins’ appraisals of this minority suggest misconceptions of the people’s purpose forboth coming and remaining in Japan. The contention that the “great majority” of them came asforced laborers is probably inaccurate. Among the estimated 2.4 million Koreans in Japan at theend of the war, about one-third (or 700,000) were forced to come to Japan to perform hardlabor.16 After the war these people were given high repatriation priority. They thus lacked manyof the reasons that prevented Koreans with a more established existence from returning: theirinability to bring their entire estate to Korea and their insufficient knowledge of the Korean
language and culture. Those who characterized the participants in the incident as “thugs” or“roughnecks” emphasized their actions over their general purpose, to say nothing of theirfrustrations. Korean frustrations stemmed from having endured forced assimilation during thefour decades of colonial rule. To this people, SCAP’s education policies mirrored this colonialera policy as they forced Koreans to accept a Japanese-centered existence while treating themand the Koreans and their culture as inferior to the Japanese.
The belief that the “rioters” were “communists and quasi-communists [who toed] the party line”
also reflected an impression that SCAP officials had developed soon after the war’s end inZainichi Koreans: The Past, the Present and the Future

86

southern Korea, as well. In mid-September 1945, just weeks after the U.S. had established its
Military Government in southern Korea, Political Adviser H. Merrell Benninghoff included thefollowing in his “brief analysis of conditions in Korea”:
There is little doubt that Soviet agents are spreading their political thought throughout
southern Korea, and several parades and demonstrations in Seoul have admittedly beencommunist-inspired. Communists advocate the seizure now of Japanese properties andmay be a threat to law and order. It is probable that well-trained agitators are attempting
to bring about chaos in our area so as to cause the Koreans to repudiate the United Statesin favor of Soviet “freedom” and control. Southern Korea is a fertile ground for suchactivities because USAFIK lacks sufficient troops to expand its area of control rapidly.17
The connection with Japan came with the smuggling operations that Koreans and Japanesecarried out across the East Sea/Japan Sea. Occasionally concerns were voiced in government
documents as to whether these operations, in addition to illegally transporting rice, weapons,money, and even people, were solidifying Soviet-North Korea-Japan leftist connections.18
These slurs on Korean character neglected to consider why this people objected so strongly todecisions that forced them to live under Japanese jurisdiction despite the hardships they endured
under colonial rule. The majority had not been brought to Japan against their will, as Ryan
claimed. While, as the “Aliens in Japan” article explained, many of Japan’s Korean minority had
resisted assimilation over the last four decades, the actions and attitudes of Japanese had also
discouraged those Koreans who wished to live as Japanese. Koreans attending Japanese schools
faced discrimination, and upon graduating were generally limited to lower status jobs andpositions. After the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake the Japanese police spread baseless rumorsthat Koreans were committing acts of terror (such as polluting the well water) that encouraged
the senseless slaughter of over 7,000 Japan-based Koreans. Koreans were also prohibited fromentering their family registers in Japan and had to return to their Korean hometown wheneverchanges to this document were required.
Regardless of whether they planned to remain in Japan, as most eventually did, or return toKorea, for many, the most attractive short-term option was to enroll their children in the ethnic
schools. Yet, this decision made little sense to American occupation administrators who saw themost efficient means of encouraging Korean assimilation (or repatriation) to be their studying
alongside their Japanese counterparts. SCAP refused to see the Korean efforts for what they
were—attempts to protect the aspiration that their children develop or maintain a sense ofidentity as Koreans. Rather, SCAP interpreted them as efforts to encourage a larger cause—international communist revolution. Ryan joined other American officials in tying the “riots” tothe upcoming elections scheduled for May 10 in southern Korea. She wrote that SCAP had evendrawn up evacuation plans should Korean actions threaten American residents:
The Korean elections certainly have been watched from here with much interest for along time. The outbreak has been confined to the Communists and the Koreans, but for atime there was a great fear that the attack would be made on Americans and we wereready for it. Right after the first of the year hush-hush arrangements went on withpreparations to evacuate all Americans from Korea if a riot broke out prior to theelections. Kobe naturally would be the first haven for them. Ships came over from theStates loaded down with food and it was stored here…. A month ago all petroleum
products were cut off so that in case of evacuation there would be nothing left for theCaprio: The Cold War Explodes in Kobe

87

Reds to take over. Then Mrs. Keeney and her baby…got out of there the last part ofMarch as did many others. Many ships were out at sea ready to put in at Seoul and otherports in case evacuation became necessary even at the 11th hour.
She expressed relief that her suspicions this time came to naught: after “the elections have passed
that fear is over for the time being at least.”
Ryan’s opinions again reflected those of her peers in Japan, as we see in Douglas Jenkins’ letterto William J. Sebald. Jenkins suggested that Koreans were not especially concerned over the
future of their ethnic schools, but saw SCAP’s actions as an opportunity to protest a more
important issue, the upcoming elections:With the elections in Southern Korea imminent, any clash between Koreans in Japan andthe Occupation forces, which could be played up as demonstrating the Occupation
supporting the Japanese against the Koreans, would serve as useful propaganda
ammunition in Southern Korea, and could also be used throughout the world as a further
example of ‘American imperialism.’
The Korean leaders were presented with a ready made cause for mass protest by theclosing of Korean schools by the Japanese authorities for the failure of the schools tocomply with recently enacted education legislation. No doubt, had this eminently
satisfactory cause for protest not come to hand, the leaders would have invented anotherto obscure their underlying motive.19
SCAP officials might be excused for considering this possibility. The days leading up to the May
10 elections were filled with violence between left and right-wing factions. The G-II Periodic
Reports of April 28, the day Ryan penned her first letter on the Kobe incident, listed thefollowing acts of “civil unrest” in southern Korea. A “mob of unknown size threw a homemade
hand grenade into the home of a local election candidate”; the “South Korean Labor Party(SKLP) has issued instructions that all myōn (village) offices, police boxes and registration
offices must be burned to destroy election records. SKLP has also promised that arms sent by theNorth Korean Labor Party will be available by 10 May”; and “three members of the local
election committee were killed and one seriously injured when attacked by a mob of 20 terrorists
armed with spears and shotguns.” This report also carried news of mob attacks on school
principals, village heads, leaders of right-wing groups, and police officers.20 In addition, Violent
confrontations on a mass scale also broke out from April 1948 on the island of Cheju that left an
estimated 25,000 to 30,000 of the islanders dead, and forced as many as 40,000 people to flee toJapan.21
While acts of violence committed by leftists against rightists received much more publicity in the
U.S. reports, this bias probably better reflects the conservative tone of the reports than the actual
situation. Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC), for example, included in its report similar acts ofsabotage and violence that were instigated from both sides.22 The violence by left-wing groups
no doubt also reflected U.S. general oppression of this element from as early as February 1946,
when the Military Government passed the Political Party Registration Act (Chōngdang tungnokbōp), a law that Kim Kut’ae compares favorably to the colonial-era Peace Preservation Act.23
This oppression, and the fact that the election was limited to southern Korea strengthened thepolitical divide between the two Koreas, led many left-wing groups to boycott them altogether.

Zainichi Koreans: The Past, the Present and the Future88

Occupation officials interpreted the Korean actions as communist inspired. Koreans on thepeninsula addressed the incident from a much different perspective. A CIC report noted that bothleft- and right-wing Koreans viewed this “oppression of Koreans in Japan” as U.S. backing for arenewal of Japanese expansion in East Asia. It paraphrased one left-wing newspaper article thatreported “innocent Koreans [being] oppressed and murdered not only by the Japanese but also by
the US Army Forces in Japan.” The report continued: “US leniency toward the Japanese isresponsible for the renewal of brutality directed at the Korean people.” The future president of
the Republic of Korea (ROK), Syngman Rhee added that Koreans would have no difficulty inchoosing sides on this issue.24“Send them all Back to Korea”
Elizabeth Ryan’s solution to the problem—send them all back to Korea, and if they do not want
to return have them take out Japanese citizenship—was a simplistic solution to a much more
complex problem. Yet, it was one frequently offered by many in the Occupation and Japanese
governments. Upon arriving in Kobe, General Robert L. Eichelberger remarked that he wishedhe “had the Queen Elizabeth here to ship the whole lot of them [Koreans] to Korea.”25 JapanesePrime Minister Yoshida Shigeru suggested in a letter to Douglas MacArther that the U.S.
administration forcefully return all Koreans who were unable to “contribute to [Japan’s]reconstruction.” MacArthur, sympathized with Yoshida’s general aim to rid Japan of thisproblem, but was unwilling to force them to do so. He lamented that should he do so they “would
have their heads cut off” by the South Korean government as they were all “North Koreans,” inother words, communists.26
Such suggestions were impractical for a number of reasons. First, the idea that Koreans should“return” to Korea made little sense to this people, many of whom had been born and raised inJapan. The Japan-based Korean population consisted of a large number of first-generation
Koreans, but perhaps even more second- and third-generation Koreans. For these latter people
Japan was the only “home” they knew. 27 They had little or no knowledge of their ancestrallanguage and culture. Indeed, some who had been raised as Japanese during the prewar andwartime periods did not learn that they were of Korean ancestry until after Korea’s liberation.
These deficiencies complicated the efforts of many repatriated Koreans to integrate into Koreansociety, leading them to once again cross over (now illegally) into Japan. The 1947 Alien
Registration Ordinance categorized all Japan-based Koreans as “foreigner” (or alien), eventhough SCAP expected the people to go to schools of “Japanese nationals.”28 Feeling unacceptedin both Korean and Japanese culture, the ethnic schools provided Koreans with an opportunity toreorient their children to their ancestral culture.
Ryan and Eichelberger might have recognized that U.S. policy also complicated their return toKorea. Occupation policy severely limited the amount of belongings returnees (both Korean andJapanese) could bring. One provision restricted them to bringing back just up to 1,000 yen incurrency, not enough to survive a few weeks much less to restart their lives in a newenvironment.29 Additional problems awaited them upon arrival in southern Korea. The war’s end
and Korea’s division interrupted economic networks that Japan had nurtured throughout its East
Asian Empire. This caused acute shortages in food, energy, and natural resources in southern
Korea, which further curtailed the ability of all Koreans to procure basic living essentials(housing and food), and critically limited their opportunities for employment. U.S. Military
Government projections for improvement in these areas remained gloomy over its initial few

Caprio: The Cold War Explodes in Kobe

89

years of its administration of southern Korea. In addition, Koreans in Japan also received newsof political unrest in southern Korea and military confrontation with northern Korea increased
that also caused them to think twice before returning to the Korean peninsula.30
The Kobe “Riots” and SCAP’s “Reverse Course”
The question foremost on the minds of the Korean protesters—why the Japanese and Occupation
administrations decided to close the schools at this particular time—was the question that
Elizabeth Ryan and others failed to address in their commentaries. The Korean situation in Japan
represents one example where SCAP’s otherwise farsighted decision to funnel its orders througha Japanese administration worked to its disadvantage. Having the Japanese government order theethnic school to close only rekindled in Korean minds painful memories of Japan’s colonial rule,and the troubles that this regime had inflicted on this people over the past four decades.
The context under which these schools were closed cannot be divorced from other actions thentalking place in Japan. From 1947 SCAP initiated what has come to be known as the “reverse
course,” the U.S. rolling back occupation policies that promoted democracy and demilitarizationin Japan to concentrate efforts on Japan’s economic and political development. These changes
were influenced by the Truman Doctrine of March 1947. Truman vowed to “help free peoples tomaintain their free institutions and their national integrity against aggressive movements that
seek to impose upon them totalitarian regimes.”31 In Japan, the Truman Doctrine was manifested
in SCAP’s purging thousands of suspected leftists from positions of influence, and returning
purged Japanese to these positions, including a number of Class A war criminals. It also endedplans to dismantle Japanese conglomerates (zaibatsu) and initiated discussions urging Japanese
rearmament. The fear driving these changes was expressed by Director of the Policy PlanningStaff George Kennan, who during a March 1948 visit to Japan questioned whether “Japan’s
powers of resistance to Communism could be taken for granted.”32 As China slipped into
communism, the United States came to realize the paramount position that Japan would play inEast Asian political affairs. SCAP’s order to the Japanese to close Korean ethnic schools, which
it believed served as a breeding ground for communist indoctrination, reflected the spirit of thispolicy reversal.
The upcoming elections in southern Korea may also have factored in the timing of the schools’
closing. The formation of a democratically elected national assembly, and the anticipatedestablishment of a Korean government, would offer Japan-based Koreans the opportunity toregister as South Korean nationals, which in turn might expedite their repatriation. This scenario
was anticipated in the “Staff Study Concerning Koreans in Korea” dated August 16, 1948, one
day after the South Korean government was officially inaugurated. This study began by outlining
the problem: “There are about 600,000 Koreans in Japan; most of them were born in Korea or inJapan of Korean parents. It is estimated that on a monthly average 650 Koreans enter Japanillegally and that 400 are repatriated or deported to Korea.” It then summarized the efforts that
SCAP had made to repatriate Japan-based Koreans:
SCAP policy toward Koreans in Japan has been twofold: a) …Koreans have been treatedas liberated people and therefore strenuous efforts have been made to repatriate to Korea
all Koreans in Japan who wished to return; b) Koreans who voluntarily continued toreside in Japan have been presumptively considered for purposes of treatment as retaining
their Japanese nationality and are to be considered until such time as a duly established
Korean Government accords them recognition as Korean nationals.

Zainichi Koreans: The Past, the Present and the Future

90

However, those Koreans who remained in Japan were reluctant to return to Korea due in part tothe uncertain prospects in both halves of the peninsula. Yet, at the same time their continued
presence in Japan caused a number of problems:
Politically, Koreans have attempted to establish a large degree of autonomy in Japan.
Many of them have tended more and more to participate in communist activity, so that
now the League of Koreans Residing in Japan, the principal Korean organization in
Japan, is largely dominated by communists. Koreans move illegally between Japan and
Korea serve as the link between Japanese communists and those on the continent of
Asia—Korean, Chinese, and Russian….Socially the Koreans represent a group which
does not readily assimilate to the Japanese both because of the long-standing prejudice ofthe latter and because of the uneducated and generally underprivileged character of mostof the Koreans in Japan….The recent riots in Osaka and Kobe arising from refusal by the
Koreans to comply with orders of the Japanese Government afforded a test of the extent
of Korean autonomy in Japan….The riots have of course increased the bitterness between
Japanese and Koreans, and it is undeniable that the Japanese would be only too happy to
see all Koreans leave Japan.
The study then recommended changes to facilitate Korean repatriation that included increasing
the amount of currency with which they could return to 100,000 yen, offering better protection
for the part of their estate that exceeded this amount, and providing more convenienttransportation and better terms for repatriation. At the same time the Staff Study reportacknowledged that these measures alone would be insufficient to encourage complete
repatriation. Those who remained in Japan, it advised, should be treated as Japanese nationals
even if they registered as Koreans and held dual nationality, or if they reentered Japan after
resettling in Korea. The study did little to resolve the problems of Korean residents. With thelone exception of the recommendation to increase the amount of their estate with which Koreans
could return to Korea, SCAP made no changes in policy. It washed its hands of the problem,
leaving it for South Korean and Japanese governments to negotiate after Japan regained its
sovereignty. It would be 1965 before Japan and the Republic of Korea (ROK or South Korea)
signed both a treaty to normalize their diplomatic relations and an agreement that set conditions
for Japan-based Koreans to meet should they seek permanent residence in Japan. Japan-North
Korea relations have yet to be normalized.
The shock of the violent response by Koreans to SCAP’s order to close the schools initially led
to its harsh reaction. Yet, it also awakened SCAP to the need to negotiate with Korean leaders.
On May 5, 1948 the Asahi Shinbun declared the problem solved when the Osaka and Kobe
schools agreed to apply for authorization (ninka) as private schools.33 The Korean population
could only view this result as defeat, a compromise that benefited the Japanese as it createdseparate Koreans and Japanese schools. Koreans, on the other hand, did gain the right to educate
their children in a Korean environment and to offer them a limited Korean ethnic program. But it
was also an education that remained subjected to Japanese Ministry of Education directives.
Tension heightened after the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK or North Korea)
was established in September 1948. SCAP soon banned display of the DPRK flag at rallies,
subjugating violators to arrest and deportation to the ROK. Exactly one year later SCAP began
enforcing its April 1949 order for the League of Koreans to disband. On September 9, 500
Japanese police officers locked the doors of the organization’s headquarters. The JapaneseCaprio: The Cold War Explodes in Kobe

91

government again targeted ethnic schools by ordering 350 of them to close. Of those that applied
for private school status, only three were accepted. Other schools gained recognition as“miscellaneous schools” that were freed from Japanese influence, and thus able to develop a
Korean-based curriculum.34 A half-century later 90 percent of all Japan-based Korean children
received their education as minorities in Japanese schools, many obscured by the use of Japanesenames, fluent Japanese language abilities, and familiarity with Japanese culture andmannerisms.35
Mark E. Caprio is a professor of history at Rikkyo University in Tokyo and a Japan Focus
associate. He has recently completed a manuscript titled The Japanese Assimilation of Koreans,
1910-1945, which will be published by the University of Washington Press in early 2009. The
author would like to thank Mark Selden for suggesting this topic, Katalin Ferber for comments
on an earlier version of this paper, Lim Chol for valuable insights to questions about the incident
and Japan-based Koreans in general, and Ken Alley for permission to use the pictures of
Elizabeth Ryan and the Kobe court scene.
Notes
1

Unless specified otherwise, information on the riots is taken from “United States of America
vs. Kim Dai Sam [T’aesam] et al: Review of the Staff Judge Advocate,” Records of the U.S.
Department of State Relating to the Internal Affairs of Japan, 1945-1949, reel 3 (Tokyo:
Japanese Diet Library, microfilm).
2

Pak Kyonsik, Kaihā-go zainichi Chāsenjin undāshi [The history of post-liberation Japan-based
Korean demonstrations] (Tokyo: San’ichi shoten, 1989), 195.
3

“Sentences Imposed as Results of Kobe-Osaka Riots in April 1948,” Records of the U.S.
Department of State Relating to the Internal Affairs of Japan, 1945-1949, reel 3 (Tokyo:
Japanese Diet Library, microfilm).
4

Changsoo Lee, “Koreans Under SVAP: An Era of Unrest and Repression,” in Koreans inJapan: Ethnic Conflict and Accommodation, edited by Lee and De Vos (Berkeley: University ofCalifornia Press, 1981), 81.
5These letters, which totaled over 1000 pages, were recently discovered in a used bookstore in
Nebraska. Japan Times staff writer Reiji Yoshida has written a series of articles on them. I am
indebted to him for sharing with me the letters involving the Kobe riots along with otherdocuments that he collected involving the incident. His articles can be found at
6

This was probably due to her and “the boys” being restricted to camp, as she reported in her
April 27, 1948 letter.
7

Yi Wōlsun, “Zainichi Chāsenjin no minzoku kyāiku to zainichi Chāsenjin kyāiku” (Japanbased Korean ethnic education and Japan-based Korean education) in Pak Chongmyōng,
Zainichi Chāsenjin no rekishi to bunka (Japan-based Korean history and culture) (Tokyo: Akashi
shoten, 2006), 221.
8

“The Constitution of Japan,” Japan Institute of Congressional Law.

Zainichi Koreans: The Past, the Present and the Future92

9

Hiromitsu Inokuchi, “Korean Ethnic Schools in Occupied Japan, 1945-52,” in Koreans inJapan: Critical voices from the Margin, edited by Sonia Ryang (London: Routledge/Curzon,200), 150.
10

Both orders were originated by SCAP. Takemae Eiji, GHQ: The Allied Occupation of Japanand its Legacy, trans. Robert Ricketts and Sebastian Swann (New York: Continuum, 2001), 462.
11

Ibid., 450.

12

In another undated letter Ryan writes that the massive “Korean hunt” was a demonstration to
the Russians (who were suspected as “behind all this unrest”) to make them, as she put it, “stayout of our play pen here.”13

For example, Hugh Byas, Government By Assassination (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1942),
359-360.
14

Office of Strategic Services, “Aliens in Japan” (June 29, 1945), “Occupation of Japan” UnitedStates Planning Documents, 1942-1945, Volume III of set located in the Japanese National
Library, pp. 2, 15.
15Letter from Douglass Jenkins to U.S. Political Adviser William Sebald (May 4, 1948).
Records of the U.S. Department of State Relating to the Internal Affairs of Japan, 1945-1949,
reel 15 (Tokyo: Japanese Diet Library, microfilm).
16

See William Underwood, “New Era for Japan-Korea History Issues: Forced Labor Redress
Efforts Begin to Bear Fruit,” Japan Focus.
17

H. Merrell Benninghoff, “The Political Adviser in Korea (Benninghoff) to the Secretary ofState,” Foreign Relations of the United States VI (September 15, 1945), 1051. This attitude may
have been influenced by communications sent by the Japanese to Okinawa, where the occupyingarmy prepared for its new assignment prior to arrival. See Kobayashi Tomoko, “GHQ nozainichi Chāsenjin ninshiki ni kan suru ikkāsatu” (One consideration of GHQ’s perception of
Koreans), Chāsenshi kenkyÅ«kai ronbunshÅ« 32 (October 1994), 165-192. for a summary of
U.S. suspicions of communist influence in southern Korea. Bruce Cumings found little evidence
to support the often-heard contention that Soviet or North Korean sources were supplying
southern guerrillas. Cumings, Korea’s Place in the Sun: A Modern History (New York: W.W.
Norton, 1997), 245. He writes that although from around the time of Syngman Rhee’s 1948
election southern communists began receiving guidance from North Korean communists, it“cannot be said [they] were mere creatures of Kim Il Sung” (ibid., 218).
18

For discussion on the smuggling operations see Tessa Morris-Suzuki, “An Act Prejudicial to
the Occupation Forces: Migration Controls and Korean Residents in Post-Surrender Japan,”Japan Studies 24, no. 1 (May 2004): 5-28.
19“Letter from Jenkins to Sebald,” May 4, 1948. In Records of the U.S. Department of State
Relating to the Internal Affairs of Japan, 1945-1949 (Microfilm, Reel 15, Japan Diet Library).
For similar views see “General Dean’s Answer to Written Press Questions of May 6, 1948,” in
ibid.
20

G-2 Periodic Reports (April 28, 1948).

21

Cumings, Korea’s Place in the Sun, pp. 220-221.

Caprio: The Cold War Explodes in Kobe

93

22

CIC Reports carried statistics that suggested these acts to have been more balanced than theinformation included in G-II reports, which did not list right-wing acts against left-wing groups.
In its May 16 report it recorded 162 deaths of which 43 were members of left-wing groups, and59 members of right-wing groups. Counter Intelligence Corps Semi-Monthly Report (May 16,1948), CIC Pogoso (1945.9 – 1949.1) 3 (Seoul: Hallym University, 1995), 406-407, 424.
23

Kim Kut’ae, Migunchōng Ç”i Hanguk t’ongch’i (U.S. military administration’s rule in Korea)(Seoul: Pagyōngsa, 1992), 151-152. The Peace Preservation Act acted as a model for South
Korea’s National Security Law that is most frequently applied to anyone who demonstrates
sympathy to communism or to North Korea.
24

Counter Intelligence Corps Semi-Monthly Report (April 23-30, 1948), 15.

25

Lee, “Koreans Under SCAP, p. 82.

26

Changsoo Lee, “The Legal Status of Koreans in Japan,” in Lee and De Vos, eds., Koreans inJapan, p.138.
27

Richard H. Mitchell quotes Ministry of Justice figures to estimate that in 1950 just under half
(49.9 percent) of Japan-based Koreans were second generation in his The Korean Minority inJapan (Berkeley: University of California, 1967), 159.
28

Lee, “The Legal Status of Koreans in Japan,” p. 138. This was in part a decision based onpracticalities. Had SCAP granted Koreans the special status they demanded, they would havebeen eligible for special food rations and other privileges afforded peoples of United Nations
states. The sheer size of the Japan-based Korean population made this option rather impractical.
See Mark E. Caprio, “Resident Aliens: Forging the Political Status of Koreans in Occupied
Japan.” In Mark E. Caprio and Yoneyuki Sugita, eds. Democracy in Occupied Japan: The U.S.
Occupation and Japanese Politics and Society (London: Routledge, 2007), 178-199.
29

As I describe in “Resident Aliens,” more entrepreneurial returnees were able to circumvent
this restriction by exchanging money en route to Korea with Japanese returning to Japan. As weshall see below, even SCAP officials recognized this restriction as a formidable barrier to Korean
repatriation.
30

Bruce Cumings offers a more complete description of this violence. See his two-volume
Origins of the Korean War (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981, 1990). I reflect on theeffect that this violence had on Japan-based Koreans in “Resident Aliens.
31

Truman delivered this speech before Congress to request $100 million in aid for Greece andTurkey. Quoted in Warren I. Cohen, The Cambridge History of American Foreign Relations,Vol. IV: America in the Age of Soviet Power, 1945-1999 (Cambridge: UK, Cambridge University
Press, 1995), 38-39.
32

George F. Kennan, Memoirs, 1925-1950 (Boston: Little Brown and Company, 1967), Chapter
16. For a summary of this “reverse course” see Mark E. Caprio and Yoneyuki Sugita,“Introduction: The U.S. Occupation of Japan—Innovation, Continuity, and Compromise,” inCaprio and Sugita, eds., Democracy in Occupied Japan: The U.S. Occupation and Japanese
Politics and Society, pp.12-17.

Zainichi Koreans: The Past, the Present and the Future

94

33“Shiritsu de ninka shinsei: Chāsen gakkā mondai wa kaiketsu” (Korean school problem issolved: They will apply for authorization as private schools), Asahi shinbun (May 5, 1948).
Schools in Tokyo remained open but were absorbed by the Japanese schools system that supplied
the schools with Japanese staff and teachers. (Inokuchi, “Korean ethnic schools,” p. 154.
34
35

See Inokuchi, “Korean ethnic schools,” p. 153-155.

See Eriko Aoki, “Korean Children, Textbooks, and Educational Practices in Japanese Primary
Schools,” in Ryang, Koreans in Japan, p. 157.

Morris-Suzuki: Invisible Immigrants

95“Invisible Immigrants: Undocumented Migration and Border Controls in Early
Postwar Japan”
Tessa Morris-Suzuki
August 31, 2006
http://japanfocus.org/-Tessa-Morris_Suzuki/2210
Whereas some Koreans were coerced to work in Japan and elsewhere in theJapanese empire, many others voluntarily migrated to the Japanese mainland. This trend
continued on a more limited basis into the postwar era. Tessa Morris-Suzuki has written on
postwar migrations across Japanese borderlines in Exodus to North Korea: Shadows fromJapan’s Cold War (2007) and Borderline Japan: Foreigners and Frontier Controls in the
Postwar Era (2010). In Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, she has also offered her findings
and thoughts on the subject; this article is one example.
The common understanding concerning postwar Japan is that its economy reliedsolely on its domestic labor force for four decades after the war, and that it was only after
1980s that its economy began to depend on labor from overseas. This article argues thatwhile the ratio of foreign to domestic labor was low, it was not zero. Through careful studyof both primary sources and secondary works about the immediate postwar years, MorrisSuzuki argues that a steady stream of Koreans entered or returned to Japan. Between 1952
when the Koreans were unilaterally deprived of Japanese nationality and the treaty of 1965
between Japan and South Korea, Koreans could only smuggle themselves into Japan.
Many Koreans who were forcibly recruited to Japan at first were later repatriatedwithout the payments that were due to them and sent back without many of theirpossessions. This meant that they were seriously deprived of their means to survive backhome. Consequently some came back to Japan, even though that meant entering andresiding there illegally. As was the case in prewar and wartime Japan, they continued tooccupy the bottom rung in the postwar Japanese economy.
Contrary to popular belief, the reports of the Japanese Immigration Bureau show asteady flow of illegal immigration that “soared in the period from 1945 to 1955, stabilized
in the late 1950s, and started to decline gradually in the first half of the 1960s” (p. 12). Fearof arrest and deportation were constantly on the minds of those Koreans who entered
Japan at the time. SCAP transferred oversight of those illegal migrants to the Japanese
government in 1950, and in the same year the largest detention center was relocated toand expanded at Omura, near Nagasaki. A human rights group frequently complained about
the center’s treatment of detainees.

Zainichi Koreans: The Past, the Present and the Future

96

Invisible Immigrants: Undocumented Migration and Border Controls in Early Postwar
Japan
Tessa Morris-Suzuki“We got on the boat in Busan. Don’t know where we got off… We came on a fishing boat. A
little boat, it was. The waves were that high, and we went right over them. What month would it
have been? Can’t remember now.
They say you really get to know people when you go on a boat with them, or live with them. It
was so dark in that boat, you couldn’t even tell who was in there. Everyone jammed together inthis little space - so small, we were sitting right on top of one another. When people said theirkids were being smothered, they were just ignored. There were dozens of people—thirty or forty
in that little boat. That’s why we were sitting on top of each other. It was so crowded you
couldn’t eat rice or anything like that. Two nights we went without eating… Of course in thosedays it was a people-smuggling boat [yami no fune]. People came on those boats from Jeju or
Busan—that was when I was twenty-nine.”1
This story was told to researcher Koh Sunhui in 1993 by a woman, then in her late 60s, who had
arrived in Osaka in 1955 and lived there ever since, raising her family and doing outwork,
sewing slippers. When Koh interviewed her she had two grandchildren, and was attending nightschool to catch up on the school education which she had missed in her own childhood.
Growth Without Immigrants?
There is a theme which runs like a mantra through countless texts on Japan’s economy andsociety. It goes like this:“Japan’s economic boom after the Second World War did not lead to the recruitment of foreign
workers, as it did in western Europe.”2“Japan distinguished itself from many European labour importing countries by achieving
economic growth without attracting foreign workers. It was not in the 1960s but in the 1980s thatJapan’s economy became dependent upon foreign workers.”3“Unlike most European labour importing countries… Japan managed to achieve high levels of
economic growth without relying on foreign manual workers until the early 1980s.”4“Until the beginning of the 1980s Japan had never considered itself to be a host to immigrants
with the exception of the Korean and Chinese who were brought to Japan as forced labourers
before and during the Second World War.”5Interestingly, these quotations come from the writings, not of people who subscribe to larger
myths of Japanese ethnic homogeneity, but of researchers who are at pains to emphasise thepresence of diverse foreign communities in Japan. Looking back at my own work, I findstatements reflecting a similar assumption that immigration to Japan occurred in two quitedistinct waves: one during the colonial period up to 1945, and the other beginning around 1980. I
too unquestioningly accepted the notion that the years from 1945 to the last quarter of thetwentieth century constituted a “blank space” in the history of immigration to Japan.6 But recent
encounters with many stories, among them the account by the woman in Osaka of her arrival inMorris-Suzuki: Invisible Immigrants

97

Japan in 1955, have forced me to look again at that assumption. This article is a rethinking of the“blank space.”
Historians and social scientists weave words together like nets to catch the truth: and, like nets,
the words leave spaces into which parts of the past continually disappear. The life of the woman
interviewed by Koh Sunhui, and the lives of uncounted others like her, are among the stories
which have slipped unnoticed through conventional accounts of Japan’s migration history.
Looking more closely at these accounts, we can start to see some of the linguistic holes into
which they have disappeared.
One major English-language study of migrant labour in Japan illustrates the problem well. The
discussion moves smoothly from a statement that Japan’s economy did not become “dependent
upon foreign workers” until the 1980s, to the question: “how could Japan have successfully
achieved economic growth without importing foreign workers in the 1960s and 1970s?”7 In theprocess, two quite different assertions are elided. The first assertion, which still seems correct, isthat the Japanese economy did not “depend” on foreign labour in the high growth era. Whileforeign workers formed a substantial proportion of the workforce in some European countries
during the 1960s and 1970s, in Japan their number, in relation to the total size of the workforce,
was far too small to bear the weight of notions like “dependence.”
But this is quite different from saying that Japan achieved its high growth “without importing”
foreign workers. Migrants did come, and some also left again. Some stayed just a few months,
others for a lifetime. Most worked in Japan, and their presence demands acknowledgement forseveral reasons. First, the experience of migration had a formative effect on many thousands ofindividual lives. Second, postwar immigration and official responses to that immigration shaped
Japan’s migration and border control policies in ways which continue to have a profound impact
to the present day. Third, although their influence on macroeconomic growth may have beenvery small, postwar migrants made important contributions to the destiny of particular industries
and particular communities within Japan. Finally, a closer look at immigration to Japan between
the late 1940s and the 1980s opens up new ways of thinking about the nature of borders and ofJapan’s relationship with its closest neighbours.
The accepted narrative of Japan’s migration history, however, remains framed by that powerfulimage of Japan’s postwar development as “growth without migrant workers.” This narrative runs
roughly as follows. The prewar colonial period generated large-scale movements of people,
including mass emigration from Japan to the colonial empire and beyond, and the forced andvoluntary entry of Koreans, Chinese and others to Japan. As a result, there were over two million
Koreans, and smaller numbers of Chinese and Taiwanese residents in Japan at the end of the
Pacific War. Of these almost three-quarters were repatriated after the war, but their places in theworkforce were filled by the repatriation of more than six million Japanese from all over theformer empire, and by rural-urban migration within Japan. During the 1950s and early 1960s
there was a small outflow of Japanese emigrants to Latin America, and rather more significant
outflow of people from US-occupied Okinawa to the same destination. Other than this, however,postwar Japan was characterized above all by its lack of international migration at least until the
1980s (though a few scholars also note that the post-1980 migration boom was prefigured by an
inflow of female workers to the Japanese sex industry which began in the second half of the
1970s.8

Zainichi Koreans: The Past, the Present and the Future98

Immigration during the years from 1945 to the late 1970s is wholly missing from this story (as is
the post-occupation emigration of foreign residents from Japan). Yet such immigration certainly
occurred, and this essay seeks to explore its nature and its implications for our understanding of
migration history in the Japanese context. The exploration is, of necessity, preliminary andincomplete. As we shall see, it is impossible to provide accurate statistics of migrants whoentered Japan between 1946 and the late 1970s, but it seems clear that they numbered at least in
the tens of thousands, and possibly in the hundreds of thousands. Documentary material is more
readily available for the postwar occupation period and the 1950s than it is for the 1960s and1970s: a fact also reflected in the coverage of the discussion presented here.
This discussion also focuses mainly on migration from Korea, which was by far the largest
source of postwar immigrants. However, a variety of other smaller migratory flows also await
scholarly study. The postwar repatriation of Taiwanese and Chinese residents in Japan, and theentry of Taiwanese and Chinese migrants in the postwar decades, are important and littleexplored topics. Another neglected issue is cross border movement between Okinawa and therest of Asia. Since Okinawa was under US occupation until 1972, it operated under a migration
regime different from the one described here. Postwar immigrants to Okinawa included
Taiwanese workers brought in to cultivate pineapple plantations, and workers from thePhilippines employed in or around US military bases. The history of their lives both before andafter Okinawan reversion remain important topics of study. Many of the questions about borders,
nationality and Japan’s immigration policy raised in this essay are also of relevance to thesefurther dimensions of postwar migration which, for reasons of space, are not examined here.
For similar reasons, it is not possible to provide a comprehensive comparison of Japanesepolicies with those of other countries. As I indicate, however, Japan’s postwar migration controls
were not unique, but were in fact strongly influenced by US models. What was distinctive about
the Japanese experience, however, was how migration controls and nationality policies interacted
to produce a system that had particularly far-reaching consequences for the country’s largest
foreign community.
The Language of Invisibility
Statistics themselves have the capacity to render people invisible. Consider this description of the
background to contemporary migration issues in Japan, which accompanies a table showing thenumber of legally registered aliens in Japan between 1920 and 1991: “Since overrunning (but notcompletely exterminating) the indigenous Ainu and Okinawan cultures on the islands occupied
by Japan, the Japanese have enjoyed centuries of ethnic and cultural stability… Between 1950
and 1988 the percentage of foreigners in the total population of Japan was consistently about 0.6
percent.”9 The figures in the table support this image of stability: they suggest, to be precise, thatthe percentage of legally registered foreigners in the Japanese population was 0.72% in 1950,
0.68% in 1970, and 0.70% in 1985.10
But constant percentages do not necessarily mean an absence of movement or change. For one
thing, as we shall see, there was in fact a substantial exodus of over 70,000 Koreans in the years
1959 to 1961.11 At the same time, in a large and growing population, stable percentages representa growth in the actual number of registered foreign residents in Japan by over a quarter of amillion: by 109,852 between 1950 and 1970, and a further 142,064 between 1970 and 1985
(though this is partly accounted for by natural increase, since children born in Japan to foreign
fathers were also foreigners).

Morris-Suzuki: Invisible Immigrants

99

Furthermore, reliance on the official figures raises important problems. Faith in government datais particularly evident in studies of Japan, where the presence of a well-organized andstatistically-minded bureaucracy induces a ready acceptance of the official record. Yet in fact (asgovernment officials themselves occasionally admit) the apparently precise figures for registeredforeigners in postwar Japan bears an uncertain relationship to reality. The growth in the numberof documented foreign residents in Japan between 1950 and 1970 was at least partly a result of
the introduction of more rigorous registration procedures12; more importantly, most immigration
to Japan in the postwar decades took the form of undocumented “illegal” entry, and does notappear in the official record at all. Bearing that in mind, the postwar decades begin to look lesslike a time of stability and closure than a time of complex and poorly recorded cross-borderflows.
The very words that we use to speak of migration also create their own silences. In the Japanesecontext, the debate about post-1980 immigration has been framed by a conceptual division
between two groups. On the one hand, there are “old-comers,” Korean and other imperial
subjects who came to Japan in the colonial period, and their descendants, many of whom are now
third or fourth generation residents in Japan; on the other, there are recently arrived “newcomers,” members of the post-1980 wave of immigration from East and Southeast Asia andbeyond. These two groups, we are told, are “completely different from each other, not only intheir ability to speak Japanese but also in the labour markets in which they participate.”13 Thisdichotomy leaves us bereft of words with which to speak about the immigrants of the 1950s,
1960s and early 1970s, who (like the “oldcomers”) were mostly Korean, and in some cases had
lived in Japan before or during the war, but who were also (like many of the “newcomers”)“illegal migrants,” often employed for low wages in small firms.
More generally, in debating global migration issues, scholars repeatedly speak of “immigrantlabour,” “guest workers.” These terms dramatically simplify the complexity of the migrantexperience, reducing migrants to labouring bodies whose function in history is to contribute to
the growth of gross national product. Even in European countries with large “guest worker”
programs, such terms obscure essential aspects of migration history. Applied to postwar Japan,
they become even less helpful. The non-Japanese migrants who entered the country without
official documentation between 1946 and 1980, mostly from Korea, did so for a great variety ofreasons. Some came to join family already in Japan, some to escape poverty, others to enter highschool or university, to evade conscription or to escape from war, social disruption or politicalpersecution. Many came for a combination of several of these reasons.
Once in Japan, most became workers, generally employed for low wages and in small firms.
They came to be disproportionately concentrated in the Kansai region of western Japan, and in
manufacturing industries such as plastics, metal plating, garment manufacture, as well as in theentertainment industry, including the pinball parlour [pachinko] business—an industry which by
the end of the twentieth century was estimated to be larger (in terms of annual sales) than thesteel industry.14 Many undocumented migrants worked in companies run by other members of
the Korean community, but some were employed by relatively large Japanese companies. In theearly 1970s, for example, a Tokyo subcontractor producing steel products for a major Japanese
corporation was found to be systematically recruiting dozens of “illegal immigrants” from
Korea.15 A small number of such migrants even achieved promotion to senior managerial levels:in 1964, one of the leading managers of Coca-Cola Japan was “exposed” in the media as a
Korean illegal migrant, who had held a post in the South Korean bureaucracy before fleeing toZainichi Koreans: The Past, the Present and the Future

100Japan in a “people smuggling” boat at the time of the Korean War.16 Immigrants clearly
contributed to Japan’s postwar growth. But they were not viewed at the time as “guest workers.”
Rather, official documents and the popular media consistently referred to them as mikkôsha[stowaways, people who smuggle themselves into the country] or as senzai fuhô nyûkokusha[illegal entrants who live concealed lives], words laden with overtones of marginality,
invisibility, lives lived beyond the reach of the law.
The Origins of “Illegality”
Postwar immigrants have thus remained “invisible” to large areas of officialdom and to manyscholars of Japanese migration. Their absence from the official record was, of course, in part a
consequence of the fact that most were “illegal.” Their “illegal” status means that they were
never counted in government statistics, and that the migrants themselves - who lived in constantfear of discovery, internment and deportation - were unwilling to speak about their experiences.
Even today, many migrants from this era and their descendants are reluctant to discuss personal
histories in public. But there are nonetheless people both in Japan and in South Korea (fromwhere most of the migrants came) who have always been aware of their presence. The postwar
immigrants were generally conscious of being part of a complex and interconnected community,
and their presence was often visible to neighbours—particularly to people (whether Korean orJapanese) who lived in areas of Osaka, Kobe or Yokohama with large immigrant populations.17
Besides, “illegality” does not entirely explain the way that postwar migrants have been written
out of history, for, interestingly enough, there has been very widespread public and scholarly
discussion of post-1980s “illegal migration” to Japan. Since 1990, indeed, the government itself
has regularly published seemingly meticulous data on the numbers of “illegal migrants” in Japan.
In the year 2000, for example, the official figure was 224,067, the largest numbers coming fromSouth Korea, the Philippines and China (though this figure too is of course a guesstimate basedlargely on the number of visa overstayers).18 To understand both the “illegality” and the“invisibility” of postwar migrants it is therefore necessary to begin by looking a little moreclosely at the historical context in which they came to Japan.
Japan’s prewar colonial expansion, as we have seen, generated enormous cross-border flows ofpeople, both forced and voluntary. By the end of the Pacific War, there were not only over 2
million Koreans in Japan but also more than 2 million in Manchuria and other parts of China,
and an estimated 30,000-40,000 in the former Japanese colony of Karafuto [Southern
Sakhalin].19 As well as these mass migratory movements, there was a great deal of short-term
movement back and forth across the internal boundaries of the empire. For example, merchantsfrom northern Taiwan regularly came to sell their wares in the southernmost islands of Okinawa
Prefecture;20 divers from Jeju Island in Korea frequently crossed to dive for shellfish off Kyushu
and Shikoku;21 and residents of the Japanese island of Tsushima often sent their children toschool in the Korean city of Busan, which was nearer to their homes than any Japanese city.22
After the War, large parts of Northeast Asia were occupied by the victorious Allies, and Japanwas divided into two parts under separate occupation regimes. The major part of the country wasplaced under an allied occupation whose headquarters [the Supreme Command Allied Powers—
SCAP] exercised control through a Japanese administration, while the “Nansei [Southwestern]
Islands”23 were placed under direct US military rule. Meanwhile, the southern half of the newly
independent Korea was also occupied by the United States, which proceeded to install the right-

Morris-Suzuki: Invisible Immigrants

101

wing regime of Syngman Rhee, while Soviet troops moved in to occupy the northern half of the
Korean Peninsula.
The Allied occupation forces in Japan and South Korea tended to regard colonial migrants as“displaced persons,” and initiated massive repatriation programs to “re-place” them—to put themback where they belonged. It was generally assumed that repatriation would result in the returnto Korea of almost all the two million Korean in Japan. In fact, however, it soon became clearthat not all were immediately eager to return. Some had lived in Japan for most of their lives.
Besides, the extremely chaotic and unstable situation in postwar Korea meant that many had nohomes or jobs to return to.
Indeed, by the early months of 1946 it became obvious to the occupation authorities that a
considerable number of Koreans who had been repatriated were actually re-entering Japan insmall boats. As concern mounted about this uncontrolled cross-border movement, occupation
forces commissioned a Korean resident in Japan, Cho Rinsik, to examine the reasons for thisinflux of “stowaways” from Korea. After visiting a camp in Kyushu where “stowaways” weredetained, Cho reported that “these stowaways are all former residents of Japan, and 80%…cometo Japan on account of hard living and for the procuration of daily food.” In particular, Chopointed out that people repatriated from Japan to Korea had been forced to leave behind “realestate, property or savings and deposits in Japan,” and were permitted to take with them only
1000 yen in cash: “ and what is more, they had to pay up to 1000 yen for half a bushel of rice [inKorea]. This means that they could not live a month with the money they had brought withthem.” About 10% of the re-entrants, according to Cho, came to buy goods which were in scarce
supply in Korea, while a further 10% came because of “impelling circumstances.” Typical ofthese circumstances was the situation where “prior to their repatriation to Korea, a husband,parent or son first repatriated, leaving the family in Japan, in order to prepare family repatriationen bloc. So the ‘harbingers’ naturally wish to return to Japan after preparation is done or if theyfind that living in Korea is impossible.”24
In retrospect, the Occupation Authorities’ response to the “stowaway” problem seems
extraordinary. It is common for the break-up of empires to result in large cross-border
movements of people, particularly when colonizing power and colony are geographically close
to one another. In many cases, special provisions have been made to allow the reunion offamilies divided by new post-colonial borders.25 The occupation forces in Japan and Korea,
however, made no such provisions. On the contrary, during the first seven months of 1946 theyissued a series of ordinances prohibiting cross border movement between the two countries
without the express permission of the Supreme Commander Allied Powers. In practice, thismeant that it became impossible for ordinary Koreans to enter Japan, and this blanket ban
applied even to the re-entry of people who had lived all their lives in Japan, and who had left
their families behind there when they returned to Korea for visits that were supposed to last only
a few weeks or months.26
The tough approach to border controls was initially justified on public health grounds: in thesummer of 1946 there was an epidemic of cholera in Korea, and SCAP felt it necessary to close
the border to prevent this spreading to Japan. (Given the fact that large-scale repatriation ofJapanese from the colonies continued unabated, however, it was not surprising that several
hundred cholera cases were also reported in Japan in 1946). But (as I have noted in an earlier
essay) once in place, the border controls remained long after the cholera scare had ended.27

Zainichi Koreans: The Past, the Present and the Future102

Increasingly, they came to be justified, not in terms of public health, but in terms of the need toprevent the cross border movement of black-marketeers and, above all, of Communists and other“subversives.”
The practical problems which the closing of the border created for Koreans in Japan and theirfamilies are vividly illustrated by individual stories from a group of some 280 “illegal
immigrants” from Korea, arrested by Japanese police on the coast of Shikoku in October 1948.
One of those in the group, a 51-year-old man from Jeju, had come to collect the ashes of hiselder brother, who had lived and died in Osaka, for burial in his home village. Another, a 34year-old sewing machine salesman from Osaka, had returned to the family home in Jeju to visit
his dying mother, and was now trying to make his way back to the city where he lived andworked. Among the others were an eight-year old girl and her seven-year-old brother, trying torejoin their mother who lived in Japan. All, along with the rest of the border-crossers arrested in
the same area, were interned in Hario Detention Center near Nagasaki, and summarily deported
to South Korea without trial.28
As Cold War tensions heightened, indeed, the border between Japan and both halves of the
Korean peninsula became barricaded by restrictions from all sides. Both the Kim Il-Sung regimein North Korea and the Syngman Rhee regime in South Korea imposed tight constraints on exit,
making it impossible for most Koreans to obtain passports for overseas travel, while the Japanese
government, which regained control of immigration policy (except to Okinawa) from 1952,
maintained sweeping restrictions on entry. In 1947, urged on by SCAP, the Japanese government
introduced an Alien Registration Ordinance requiring foreigners in Japan (other than members of
the occupation forces) to carry identity cards at all times.29 Both SCAP’s entry controls and the
Alien Registration ordinance, it should be noted, were applied to Koreans and Taiwanese despite
the fact that they were at that time Japanese nationals in terms of international law. In thecolonial period, Korean and Taiwanese colonial subjects had possessed Japanese nationality(although this did not bring with it equal rights as citizens). Those who migrated to Japan andremained there after the war retained their Japanese nationality throughout the occupation.
By the end of the occupation, however, two measures had radically undermined their legal
position: these measures were the Migration Control Ordinance and the abrogation of theJapanese nationality of former colonial subjects. Japan’s 1951 Migration Control Ordinance[Shutsunyukoku Kanri Rei], drawn up after close consultation with US immigration experts,
made entry relatively easy for short term business migrants, journalists, missionaries and others,
but almost entirely prohibited the entry of foreign workers. It also said nothing at all about thestatus of Korean and Taiwanese residents in Japan, because they were not officially “foreigners”
at that time. Meanwhile, intense debates were taking place about the future nationality of former
colonial subjects living in Japan. Occupation authority legal advisors argued that Korean andTaiwanese residents should ultimately be given a choice of retaining Japanese nationality or
taking the nationality of their newly independent homelands.30
However, in part because of the complexities surrounding the division of the Korean peninsula,this choice was never offered. Instead, in April 1952, on the day when the implementation of the
San Francisco Peace Treaty ended the occupation, the Japanese government unilaterally revoked
the Japanese nationality of Taiwanese and Koreans in Japan. Those who lost their nationality
simultaneously lost a wide range of rights (including rights to public-sector employment and to
many forms of welfare). They were also left without any clearly-defined residence status or any

Morris-Suzuki: Invisible Immigrants

103

assured right to re-enter Japan if they travelled abroad. Their position was defined only by avaguely worded supplementary regulation passed in 1952, which allowed those who had lived inJapan continuously since colonial times (and their children born between 1945 and 1952) toremain until their status was determined under some other law.31
It was this “Catch 22” relationship between immigration law and nationality law which gave thepostwar Japanese migration regime some of its unusually repressive characteristics. In thiscontext, it is worth stressing that post-colonial settlements in a number of other parts of the world
made special provision for the residence rights of former colonial subjects who had migrated tothe colonizing power.32
Stolen Voices
Yet despite draconian border-control policies, the flow of people across the frontier continued.
Between April and December 1946, 17,787 “illegal entrants” to Japan were detained by police ormembers of the Allied Occupation Forces, and although the number fell in subsequent years, by
1951, the last year of the Allied Occupation, a total of 48,076 “illegal entrants” (45,960 from
Korea, 1,704 from the “Nansei Islands,” 410 from China and 2 from elsewhere) had beenarrested.33 The authorities were well aware that the real number of entrants was much higher,
since many undocumented entrants escaped detection. As SCAP officials noted with concern in
1948, “statistical studies indicate that approximately 50% of the illegal entrants are notapprehended, and only 25% of the ships involved in this traffic are captured.”34 Given the
chaotic nature of the times, the quality of the “statistical studies” is open to question, but there
can be no doubting the fact that a high proportion of “stowaways” escaped detection.
In the first two years of the occupation, a very large share of these undocumented migrants
appear to have been Korean residents in Japan who had been repatriated to, or made a visit to,
Korea after the end of the war, and were now trying to re-enter Japan. As time went on, however,
the motives for entry became more diverse. With Korea sliding towards civil war, a growing
number of people fled to Japan to escape political persecution or economic and social disruption
at home. A large number of migrants came from the southern Korean island of Jeju, which hadparticularly close social and economic connections with western Japan. After an abortive
uprising against the Korean government in April 1948, the island was plunged into prolonged
and bloody conflict in which tens of thousands of people were killed. The great majority of the“illegal entrants” arrested in western Shikoku in October 1948, for example, came from Jeju. The
police report on the interviews with those arrested made the following analysis of the migrants’
main reasons for entering Japan: 40% came to join relatives already in Japan; 16% to “escapeunsettled conditions in their own country”; 10% to escape bad economic conditions; 11%
because they were invited by friends or others; 8% because of better working conditions inJapan; 4% in order to study and 11% for other reasons.35
Some brief but vivid insights into the migrant experience during these years come from the massof private correspondence opened and read by SCAP officials during the occupation. According
to John Dower, SCAP’s Civil Censorship Detachment, in the course of its four-year existence,“spot-checked an astonishing 330 million pieces of mail and monitored some 800,000 private
phone conversations.”36 Amongst these were many letters sent between Korea and Japan. The
authorities assiduously translated and recorded passages which they believed contained evidenceof illegal entry, smuggling, or the unauthorized remission of money to Korea, before (in mostcases) re-sealing the letters and forwarding them to the unsuspecting addressees. The censorshipZainichi Koreans: The Past, the Present and the Future

104

records therefore contain some of the very few available traces of the voices of occupationperiod undocumented migrants. But these are stolen voices—words never meant for public
consumption, which the historian sees (as it were) only by looking over the shoulder of theanonymous censors as they pursue their shadowy trade. I quote them hesitantly and selectively.
Much of the historical archive is produced by police, migration officials and others who viewed
undocumented entrants as a menace or a nuisance to be controlled, suppressed and excluded.
These ordinary everyday voices of the migrant experience, by contrast, can speak to the presentday in a way which, I hope and believe, may help to redress, rather than to compound, intrusiveand dehumanizing process through which they were recorded.
Most of the extracts preserved in the SCAP archive are quite brief. They offer glimpses ofconnections to a network of friends and relatives in Japan, of determination to earn money or to
obtain an education: “I landed in Kyushu on 30 August, two days after my embarkation from
Masan. Now I am staying at Mr. A’s... If I get money here, I will return to Korea by October,but, if I cannot get it, I must put off my departure by two or three months.” “Though it was riskyon the sea, I arrived safely in Japan by a secret ship the other day. I will return home to South
Korea by the end of the year after finishing my business here. So I hope you will take care of mychildren during my absence.” “It was risky indeed to enter Japan by a secret ship, but I did it at
the risk of my life, keeping it secret from my parents in South Korea. I will study hard at school
here.” “I took a ship from Busan and reached Hakata. On board the ship, I had a very hard time
because I had no money. Although I have been living in E. for about two months, I came to
Osaka and entered the training school for technicians. Now I am living in a dormitory of theschool. Until I succeed, I will never return home. After graduation, I will enter some training
college.”
Many letters indicate how remittances from migrants were used to help support families in
Korea: “as to the money you sent to aunt on 5 July 1949, uncle bought a paddy field with part ofit”; “my father bought a paddy field for you and even completed the registration of it with themoney you sent here.” They also speak eloquently of the hardship faced by undocumented
migrants who, without official Alien Registration cards, were unable to obtain rations, medicalcare or basic services: “Since my arrival in Japan I have been staying at X’s… I have no prospectof returning for the time being. I am now in distress as I have no winter clothes, ration certificate,
Foreign National [i.e. Alien Registration] certificate. If there is any means of coping with mydifficulties, please let me know”; “I failed in my business at Y, Korea, so I came to Japan bysmuggling ship, but I cannot find a job here and am at a loss to know how to make a living. I
regret that I came to Japan. Please send me some traveling expenses. I shall return to Korea.”37
Migration in the High Growth Years
As the records make clear, the cross-border movement was two-way: many migrants came forrelatively short periods, to earn money, study or rejoin relatives. Some crossed back and forth
between Korea and Japan many times. In her detailed study of the Jeju Islander community inJapan, for example, Koh Sunhui recounts the story of a man who was born in Osaka in 1943 andtaken back to Jeju as a small child in 1946. In 1963, he tried to re-enter Japan to see his motherand other family members who had remained there, but was arrested as an illegal immigrant andforcibly returned to Korea. In 1964 he tried again, and managed to enter Japan, where he marrieda fellow immigrant from Jeju. However, in 1971, his illegal status was discovered and he wasarrested, interned and deported, although his wife and children (who had voluntarily given

Morris-Suzuki: Invisible Immigrants

105

themselves up to the migration authorities) remained in Japan. The family was thus broken up
and his wife disappeared. In 1976, he again entered Japan illegally to look for his wife andmanaged to find her. However, it proved impossible to restore their relationship, and his wife
later voluntarily returned to Korea. In the late 1970s he remarried in Japan to another womanfrom Jeju, and they had a child. A few years later their small child was injured in a fall, andwhen they sought medical treatment for the child, the father’s “illegal” status was discovered andhe was arrested. He was again deported to Korea. However, with the support of local residents in
the Osaka community where he had lived, and because his second wife had Treaty Permanent
Resident rights (discussed below), he was finally able to obtain a resident’s visa and return toJapan legally in 1987.38
Such post-Occupation border-crossings, however, are particularly difficult to document because,by contrast with the disconcerting abundance of information contained in the SCAP records,
Japanese government official records contain very little publicly available data on the topic. The
issue of the treatment of Korean and Taiwanese residents in Japan, and particularly of postwar“stowaways,” clearly caused the government some embarrassment. The status of all Korean
former colonial subjects living in Japan remained insecure until 1965, when Japan signed a treaty
normalizing its relations with the Republic of Korea. Under the terms of the treaty, colonialperiod Korean migrants to Japan (and their descendants) were offered special status as “Treaty
Permanent Residents” [Kyôtei Eijûsha].39 This status provided a greater measure of security thannormal permanent residence status and enabled them to re-enter Japan after traveling or studying
abroad. It also made it possible (for the first time) for family members to visit them in Japan, andgenerally provided protection from deportation except for those found guilty of serious
offences.40
However, “Treaty Permanent Residents” did not receive access to welfare, public housing etc.41
More importantly, individuals had to apply to become “Treaty Permanent Residents,” and could
acquire this status only if they were South Korean citizens. The new system therefore excluded
large numbers of Koreans in Japan who continued to identify themselves with the North Korean
regime, or who chose to define themselves as nationals of “Korea as a whole” rather than ofSouth Korea, and who remained stateless.42 The Treaty also did nothing to help the many Korean
residents who had “illegally” entered or re-entered Japan in the postwar period: indeed theagreement specified that the only people eligible to apply for Treaty Permanent Residence were
those who “have lived in Japan permanently from before 15 August 1945 to the date of theirapplication.”43 The Japanese government seems implicitly to have acknowledged the injusticewhich this did, particularly to those who had been transformed into “illegal migrants” because
they had traveled to Korea during the chaotic period of the early occupation. In June 1965, at thetime of the signing of the normalization treaty with South Korea, it announced its intention to
make “special provision” for Koreans who had entered Japan between 1945 and 1952.44
However, perhaps because border-crossers were still associated in the official mind with fears ofsubversion, the agreement ultimately negotiated between the Japanese government and the Park
Chung-Hee regime in South Korea was cautious and ambiguous, merely stating that Japan would“accelerate the processing of regular permanence resident permission for postwar entrants toJapan.”45
The numbers of such undocumented “postwar entrants” remains a matter for speculation. The
published figures of arrests and deportations of “illegal entrants” from 1952 onward are low.
Between 1952 and 1974, there were 31,622 arrests for illegal entry to Japan, an average ofZainichi Koreans: The Past, the Present and the Future

106

around 1,400 per year, with the number generally falling during the 1960s, but rising againslightly in the early 1970s (see Table 1). Even government officials, however, acknowledge thatthe actual numbers entering the country were much higher. According to an article published in
the Asahi newspaper in 1959, the Japanese Immigration Bureau unofficially estimated thenumber of undocumented migrants from Korea living in Japan in the late 1950s at 50,000 to
60,000, while the police estimate was almost 200,000.46 A 1975 Japanese Immigration Bureau
report on migration controls, which contains an unusually frank discussion of “illegal entry,”
noted that, although reliable statistics were unavailable, “tens of thousands” of undocumented
migrants were believed to be living “secret lives” in Japan, most in the Osaka andTokyo/Yokohama regions.

The report stated that “illegal immigration” had soared in the period from 1945 to 1955,
stabilized in the late 1950s and started to decline gradually in the first half of the 1960s. After theMorris-Suzuki: Invisible Immigrants

107

normalization of relations with South Korea in 1965, as legal entry to Japan became easier, there
had been a further decline in undocumented migration. However, “just in the last two or three
years there have been striking cases like the apprehension at sea of one boat carrying 50
stowaways. If we consider these together with the results of investigations of illegal migrants[senzai mikkôsha] and of various other studies, we can assume that now as before a substantial
number of stowaways are slipping through the hands of the investigating authorities and entering
the country in secret.” 47
The same point was re-emphasised by Sakanaka Hidenori, a Ministry of Justice official who has
played an important role in shaping Japan’s migration policies. Writing in the second half of the
1970s, Sakanaka noted that “despite the considerable energies devoted to controlling illegal
immigration to date, today there are said to be tens of thousands of illegal immigrants living insecret, and furthermore illegal immigrants continue unceasingly to arrive, particularly from
Korea. Since we are surrounded by sea, have a long coastline and many ports, and have an
inadequate number of immigration control officials, our capacity to apprehend illegal immigrants
at sea can not be described as satisfactory, and the vast majority of them join the pool of illegal
immigrants living in secret in our national society.”48 Taniguchi Tomohiko, one of the few
independent researchers to examine the issue during the 1970s, tried to follow up these publishedclaims by interviewing immigration bureau officials. Although he failed to obtain any moredetailed figures, he argued that the references to “tens of thousands” of illegal migrants wasprobably a bureaucratic underestimate, and that the real figure was more likely to be around
100,000.49
Both the 1975 report and the Ministry of Justice’s Sakanaka Hidenori point to a gradual shift inthe motives for migration. In the early 1950s, family connections to Japan and the impact of the
Korean War were major factors. The Korean War stimulated an economic boom in Japan, further
widening wealth gaps between the two countries. From the late 1950s onward, therefore, thesearch for better-paid employment became an increasingly important reason for undocumented
entry to Japan. For migrants from Jeju and other parts of the far south of Korea, after all,Japanese cities like Osaka were nearer than Seoul, and it was likely that many migrants had
closer networks of relatives and friends in Osaka than they did in the Korean capital.50 By themid-1970s, Sakanaka claimed, over 80% of undocumented migrants were coming to Japan for
employment purposes,51 though such stark figures probably do little justice to the complex
motivations involved in the risky decision to migrate to Japan.
The great majority of “illegal migrants” were said to be “stowaways” who came on cargo vessels
or fishing boats from Korea, often paying brokers hundreds of thousands of yen for thejourney.52 According to the Migration Control Bureau, the border crossings were generally run
by “people smugglers” based in points of departure such as the Korean port of Busan. “Some of[the organizers] are men, but in many cases it is middle-aged women who act as the mainintermediaries in people-smuggling, making contact with people who want to enter our country
in secret. After an agreement has been reached, these women, together with the ship’s crew,
conduct the stowaways to the people-smuggling boat.” Once in Japan, the Bureau noted, themigrants tended to find work in very small firms (often with less than five employees) producing
such things as plastic goods, slippers, machine parts, plate metal and vinyl. A 1974 survey of 279“illegal migrants” who gave themselves up to the Osaka migration authorities found that 70%
had lived in Japan for between 15 and 20 years and most had very low incomes, although ahandful were relatively wealthy people with assets of over 100 million yen. 53

Zainichi Koreans: The Past, the Present and the Future

108

Special Permission to Stay
One of the striking points to emerge from the data given in the 1975 report is the fact that a large
proportion (around one-third) of “illegal migrants” apprehended by the authorities were actuallypeople who handed themselves in to police or the Immigration Control Bureau.54 This fact sheds
important light both on Japan’s postwar border control system, and on the likely scale ofundocumented migration to Japan during this period. Studies like Taniguchi’s make it clear thatJapanese immigration officials and police exercised very wide-ranging discretion in theirdealings with undocumented migrants. Many cases of suspected “illegal entry” brought to thenotice of the authorities did not result in arrests.55 Besides, Japan’s immigration law contains aclause enabling the Minister of Justice to grant discretionary “special permission to stay” [zairyû
tokubetsu kyoka] to deserving cases. “Illegal migrants” who voluntarily reported to theauthorities were often hoping to obtain such “special permission.” According to the Immigration
Control Bureau’s figures, in all 27,563 “illegal immigrants,” and a further 12,218 foreigners
convicted of criminal offences, succeeded in obtaining such “special permission” between 1956
and 1979, with the figures peaking in the early 1960s and falling thereafter.56
Extensive administrative discretion was indeed a key feature of Japan’s postwar border control
system, and was in part a legacy of occupation policy. In the final years of the occupation, SCAP
had gradually transferred immigration control functions to a Migration Control Bureau57 attachedto the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In 1951 they also brought to Japan a retired senior
official of the US Immigration and Naturalization Service, Nicholas D. Collaer, who advised on
the drawing up of Japan’s postwar migration law. The resulting Migration Control Ordinance ofOctober 1951 (renamed the Migration Control Law after the end of the occupation) reflected
Collaer’s intense concerns about the “subversive” potential of immigrants at a time of rising
Cold War tensions. The law gave the authorities sweeping powers to deport, not only illegal
migrants and those with criminal convictions, but also any foreign resident who suffered from
leprosy or had been admitted to a mental hospital, as well as those whose “life has become aburden to the state or local authorities by reason of poverty, vagrancy or physical handicap” andanyone “determined by the Minister of Justice to be performing acts injurious to the interests andpublic order of the Japanese nation.”58 In practice, it seems that provisions for deporting thedestitute or mentally and physically ill were hardly ever applied to Koreans in Japan, but the very
existence of these legal provisions must surely have increased the sense of uncertainty whichsurrounded the lives of Zainichi Koreans.
Soon after the end of the occupation, in August 1952, migration control functions weretransferred from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to an Immigration Control Bureau [Nyûkoku
Kanrikyoku] located within the Ministry of Justice. The Bureau had branches in all major cities
and at key entry points to Japan, and was also responsible for the running of Japan’s migrant
detention camps. Immigration Control Officers [Nyûkan Keibikan] worked closely with thecoastguard, police, and the local officials responsible for implementing the Alien Registration
system.59 All local government officials were supposed to report anyone whom they suspected ofbeing an illegal immigrant, and members of the public were offered a 50,000 yen reward forreporting people who were found to be liable for deportation.60 The immigration authorities also
repeatedly conducted campaigns in coastal areas, mobilizing the local population to be on thewatch for suspicious strangers.61

Morris-Suzuki: Invisible Immigrants

109

More broadly, Japan’s postwar migration system can be seen as encompassing a range of otherindividuals and groups: courts and lawyers who were responsible for handling disputed cases;
community groups like the South Korean affiliated League of Korean Residents in Japan(commonly known by its abbreviation Mindan) and the North Korean affiliated General
Association of Korean Residents in Japan (commonly known as Sôren in Japanese or Chongryunin Korean), who intermittently lobbied for migrants’ rights and took up the cases of individual
members; and NGOs such as the Japan Red Cross Society and the International Committee of
the Red Cross. The last two bodies worked to improve the conditions of detained “illegal”
migrants, but the Japan Red Cross Society also played a central, complex and morally
questionable role in the mass return of Korean residents to North Korea (discussed below).62
The postwar migration control system combined comprehensive controls with great discretionary
power, which allowed authorities to deport anyone they considered “undesirable,” while taking amore “benign” approach to others. It is important to emphasise that the discretionary power
given to the state to determine individual cases was not unique to Japan. Similar discretion was
built into the Cold War era immigration laws introduced in a number of countries, including theUnited States. Indeed, Nicholas Collaer’s influence ensured that many aspect of Japan’s
Migration Control ordinance resembled the 1952 US Immigraiton and Naturalization Law (morecommonly known as the McCarran-Walter Act), an early draft of which was being debated by
Congress while Collaer was in Japan. What was distinctive about the Japanese system was not somuch the Migration Control Ordinance itself, but rather the way in which migration controls andcitizenship policy interacted. The restrictive features of the ordinance were magnified by thepresence of large groups of people who had been Japanese nationals when the ordinance wasintroduced but were unilaterally defined by the state as “foreigners” soon after.
When former colonial subjects were stripped of their Japanese nationality at the end of theoccupation, the Japanese government hastily issued “Law no. 126,” stating that Koreans andTaiwanese who had entered Japan before the start of the Allied Occupation would be “allowed toremain in Japan, even though they still had no official residence status, until such time as theirresidence status and period of residence has been determined.”63 In effect, this situation left theauthorities free to choose which clauses of the Immigration Control Law they would apply to
Koreans and Taiwanese in Japan, and which they would not.
The resulting system was highly arbitrary: official responses to undocumented migrants varied,both from individual to individual and from one immigration office to another. As an official
who served in the Immigration Control Bureau during its first years later recalled, “in those days
I think the Bureau lacked the actual capacity to carry out thorough investigations. Treatment ofpeople varied hugely. For example, Yokohama and Tokyo were said to be lenient in giving
people residence permission, but Nagoya and Kansai were said to be relatively strict.” The
official went on to suggest that although regulations later became more rigorous, in the early
1950s it was relatively easy “even for people who had smuggled themselves into the country”[mikkô shite kita mono demo] to obtain residence documents “just by completing and submittingsome sort of questionnaire.”64
Even in the late 1950s and 1960s, when the bureaucracy of border controls was more firmly
established, there is evidence of the exercise of wide discretion by officials. In 1962, forexample, immigration control officials received 28,531 reports of suspected “unlawful” foreign
residents. Of these 1,710 reports were found to be without foundation, and 4,853 wereZainichi Koreans: The Past, the Present and the Future110

investigated further, ultimately resulting in deportation orders being issued in 589 cases. Of therest, a small number of cases were dismissed after further investigation and some were referred
to other departments, while over 70% of the total - 20,106 cases - are listed as “investigation
stopped or given special treatment.”65 “Special treatment” included some of the 2,500 cases
where undocumented migrants were granted “special permission to stay,” but what happened in
the remaining cases is unclear.
These intriguing figures suggest two important points. The first is the possibly substantial
number of undocumented migrants in Japan. While some of the reports received by the police
were probably mistaken or malicious, it is also likely that the actual number of undocumented
migrants in Japan would have been several times the number reported to the authorities in any
given year. The second point to note is that official diligence in pursuing investigations varied
greatly from case to case, and that, as well as the official granting of “special permission to stay,”
simply dropping an investigation in mid-stream, appears to have been a rather common practice.
Bureaucratic discretion is a double-edged sword. At times it was undoubtedly used to resolve
cases of real personal hardship. The story recorded by Koh Sunhui of the thrice-deported migrantfrom Jeju is just one of those cases. As Koh notes, a heartening feature of such stories was theway in which friends, neighbours, employees and workmates—Japanese as well as Korean—sometimes rallied round to support undocumented migrants in their struggle to obtain “special
permission to stay.” The material she collected in her research on Jeju migrants includes several
examples of such grass-roots community support for individual immigrant families.
Typical of this support are letters addressed to the immigration authorities in 1984 by theneighbours and employer of a man who had been detained as an “illegal migrant,” and thentemporarily released pending determination of his fate. The man, a farmer from Jeju, had entered
Japan as an undocumented migrant in 1969, and now lived in Osaka with his wife and young
daughter. He had joined a very small printing works as one of its three employees in 1979. The
firm’s owner writes in his letter of testimony, “we start work at 8.30 am and finish at 5.15 pm,
but X was always at work by 8.15 am, and did overtime every day until about 6.30pm.
Moreover, in the five years he has worked here he never had a day’s sick leave, and of course
was never absent without reason…It came as a bolt from the blue to hear that X had beendetained. I want X to continue working for me, and have re-employed him since his release fromdetention.”66 Occasionally, local people initiated public campaigns, involving petitions andrallies, on behalf of undocumented migrants threatened with deportation.
However, the complete absence of clear guidelines surrounding “special permission to stay”
meant that the outcome of such campaigns was always uncertain, and must often have been
influenced by the personal whims of the officials involved the case. Most of the immigration
officials interviewed by Taniguchi in the 1970s insisted that requests for special permission were
judged entirely on a “case-by-case” basis.67 One official, though, observed that decisions were inpractice influenced by “the extent to which [immigrants] have a fixed attachment to Japan: forexample, whether or not they have blood relatives here.” [honpô e no teichakudo—tatoeba
ketsuen no umu]68
Letters from migrants and their supporters appealing for special permission to stay often stressintegration into the local community—the fact that undocumented migrants had lived in Japanfor years, had children at local schools and were active in events like street-cleaning and crime
prevention campaigns.69 All of this suggests a perception that officials were likely to look moreMorris-Suzuki: Invisible Immigrants

111

favourably on individual cases if they could be persuaded that the migrants were not only “goodcitizens” and model workers, but also highly assimilated into Japanese society. But assessmentsof such things as “degree of fixed attachment to Japan” were inevitably subjective, and the lackof transparent guidelines for obtaining permission to stay left many postwar migrants profoundly
insecure.
Sakanaka Hidenori observed that “for illegal migrants, whether they are deported to their own
country or are able to remain in Japan is an issue which determines the entire course of theirlives. They therefore take desperate measures such as seeking to have influential power-brokers[yûryokusha] take up their cases in order to obtain the special permission to stay from the
Minister of Justice.” This situation must have made some migrants highly vulnerable to pressure
from the very authority figures whose help they sought. Besides, as Sakanaka observed, it mightmean that “even though the period of their illegal entry and their family circumstances are almost
identical, one foreigner may obtain special permission to stay because of lobbying by a memberof parliament or other power-broker, while another foreigner is forcibly deported. If such things
take place, it is obvious to everyone that this must cause the foreigners concerned, and citizens ingeneral, to experience an almost irreparable loss of confidence in the migration control
system.”70
Detention and Deportation
Yoon Hakjun fled from South Korea to Japan in 1953, during the political turmoil following the
Korean War. He arrived on a five-ton fishing boat along with some 35 other “stowaways.”
However, even before they could set foot on Japanese soil, their boat was stopped by thecoastguard and they were arrested and taken to Karatsu in Kyushu for questioning. While they
were being held on the second floor of the local coastguard headquarters, Yoon escaped byclimbing out of a window and sliding down a roof to the ground. After his escape, he managed tomake contact with members of the Korean community in Japan, who eventually helped him to
obtain work in a pachinko parlour. He also succeeded in obtaining an Alien Registration
Document under a false name. With this, he entered college in Tokyo, and later married and hada daughter.
Like many of the other tens of thousands of undocumented migrants in postwar Japan, however,Yoon lived in constant fear of discovery. As he later wrote, “I would want to run away the
moment I saw the shape of a policeman, even in the distance, and I was startled even if I
encountered the uniformed figure of a guard on a train.”71 In the 1970s, after his daughter enteredprimary school, she began to question why her father had two names. Concerned at the prospectof raising a family under a false name, in July 1976 Yoon went to the immigration office inTokyo’s Shinagawa Ward and handed himself in to the authorities. Eventually, after paying a
300,000 yen bond, Yoon was allowed to stay in Japan, and became one of the very few postwar“stowaways” to publish an account of his experience. Although he was one of the “lucky ones”
who obtained permission to stay, Yoon’s account sheds important light on the fear of detention
and deportation which haunted undocumented migrants.
Those who handed themselves in to the authorities were, like Yoon, questioned at length about
their entry to Japan. Since this had often occurred many years earlier, it was not always easy toprovide the information desired by immigration officers. While Yoon was detained, waiting for
his wife to pay his 300,000 yen bond, his belongings, belt and tie were removed and he wasZainichi Koreans: The Past, the Present and the Future

112

thoroughly body-searched before being placed for observation in a holding pen surrounded byiron bars. It was, he observes wryly, “a most valuable experience.”72
For those who were unable to obtain permission to stay, this experience was just the beginning ofa long odyssey. Official regulations stipulated that illegal migrants arrested by police could beheld for between twelve and twenty-two days before being indicted. They were then to bebrought to trial within a year. If found guilty, they might be sentenced to a maximum punishmentof three years’ hard labour, though in practice sentences often seem to have been commuted.
During or after these police proceedings, the Immigration Control Bureau conducted its own
inquiries which consisted of a preliminary investigation, an oral hearing by a senior Immigration
Control Officer and (in some cases) an appeal for clemency to the Minister of Justice. Those who
were able and willing could take the option of speeding the process by paying for their own
deportation. But those whose appeals for “special permission to stay” were rejected and who
were unable or reluctant to pay for their own deportation would ultimately be transported bytrain, handcuffed and under heavy police guard,73 to the detention center where they mightremain for weeks or (in some circumstances) for years, waiting to be included in one of the massdeportations organized by Japan’s Immigration Control Bureau.
etween October 1950 (when the Japanese government took control of deportations) and 1979,
45,210 foreigners were deported, of whom 33,598 were Korean and 4,516 were Chinese. Of
these, 19,847 people (all Korean) were returned to South Korea as part of mass deportations.74
The largest number were illegal migrants, although the figure also includes a number of people
expelled after completing sentences for criminal offences.
The reasons for the heavy security surrounding deportees on their journey to detention werevividly explained by one official who worked as a detention center guard in the early 1950s: “theso-called ‘criminals’ had actually served their sentences, and the illegal immigrants—well, they
hadn’t done anything so terrible. They were less trouble than ordinary criminal defendants orconvicts. The real problem was something much more serious than that. If they were deported,
their futures would be destroyed. It was better to commit a crime in Japan and serve two or three
years in prison than to be deported. Or in some cases, though this wasn’t publicly discussed, they
had committed political crimes or thought crimes. If they went back there [to South Korea], theapproach of the Syngman Rhee regime, which was in power then, was to take a very tough linewith political criminals or thought criminals. So there were many deportees who had deep innerfeelings that we guards didn’t know about. Well, for some people it was better to die than toreturn…”75
Japan’s first postwar migrant detention centres were established in great haste by the allied
occupation authorities, as they sought to clamp down on the surging return flow of migrants from
Korea in 1946. The two main camps were at Senzaki in Yamaguchi Prefecture and at Hario near
Sasebo, the latter being just part of a much larger centre which was also used to process Japanese
being repatriated from the former empire. Conditions, particularly in the Senzaki camp, which
was run by the British Commonwealth Occupation Force, soon became chaotic, as facilities were
overwhelmed by an influx of “illegal migrants.” By the end of July 1946 the camp, designed tohold 400 detainees, contained 3,400, of whom 1000 were being held on a transport vessel in
Senzaki harbour. Hygiene conditions had become appalling, and dozens of detainees contracted
cholera.76 Soon after, the Senzaki camp was closed and its inmates were moved to Hario, which
was run by the US 8th Army.

Morris-Suzuki: Invisible Immigrants

113

In 1950, as SCAP transferred border control duties to the Japanese authorities, the running ofHario Detention Centre was handed over to the Japanese government, and in December of thatyear the camp was relocated to Omura, near Nagasaki.77 A second detention centre wasestablished in Yokohama, but the functions of the two camps were distinct: as an Immigration
Control Bureau report states with startling candour, “while Omura Migrant Detention Centre wasestablished for interning Korean deportees, Yokohama Migrant Detention Centre was set up tointern other (mostly European, American and Chinese) detainees.” After inspections by foreign
consular officials, who complained that the its facilities were not up to international standards,
the Yokohama camp was relocated to a new site in Kawasaki city, and housed in a “two storey
steel-framed building with beds, a refectory, shower rooms, an infirmary and clinic etc.” thus
becoming a “detention centre which would not cause embarrassment even before the eyes ofinternational observers.”78
Not many international eyes, however, were directed at Omura. The handover of detention
powers from the Occupation forces to the Japanese authorities took place in great haste and some
confusion. Omura, a former naval airbase, was rapidly converted to house an influx of detainees.
Since it was officially intended only as a temporary holding-place for people soon to bedeported, facilities were initially basic. The camp, which was surrounded by a barbed-wire fence,
had large common living and sleeping areas shared by all detainees—men and women, exconvicts and undocumented migrants, adults and children. Some attempted to gain a small
measure of privacy for themselves and their families by using blankets to create a curtain aroundtheir living space.79 The detention centre guards had received little training, and their senior
ranks were largely recruited from the “foreign service police” who had helped to maintain
political order in China and other occupied territories during the war.[80] In the words of one
Omura inmate, who fled to Japan after deserting from the South Korean army to avoid fighting
in the Vietnam War, the camp’s atmosphere was permeated by “the dark shape of Japan’s past
imperialism.”81
But the process of deporting Korean detainees from Omura proved more difficult than theauthorities had anticipated. Until the normalization of relations in 1965, Japan and South Korea
had no formal agreement about the treatment of Korean residents in Japan. In May 1952 theJapanese authorities attempted to deport 160 “illegal migrants” and 125 Koreans convicts from
Omura to Busan in South Korea. However, the South Korean government refused to accept thosewith criminal convictions, claiming that they were the responsibility of the Japanese government.
The Japanese side was left with no option but to ship them back to Omura. At this point protest
demonstrations broke out, as the 125 detainees and their supporters demanded their release.
These were, after all, people who had already completed their sentences in Japan. While it may
have seemed acceptable to accommodate them in the detention centre while they awaited
deportation, protestors argued that it was wholly unjust to return them to detention when there
was no certainty when or if they could be deported.82
From 1952 on, therefore, Omura began to hold a growing number of Koreans who had served
prison sentences and were now caught in a limbo between the policies of two governments, withno clear prospect of an end to their detention. Some ultimately spent as long as five years in
Omura.83 As the number detained grew, from 118 at the end of March 1952 to 549 at the end of
October of the same year, authorities recognized the need to expand the camp. Between 1952
and 1953 Omura was extensively rebuilt: the old barracks were replaced by ten new buildings
capable of housing a thousand people, and the barbed wire fence gave way to a five-meter highZainichi Koreans: The Past, the Present and the Future

114

ferro-concrete wall. Worsening relations with South Korea, however, intensified the conflicts
surrounding deportation. In the second half of 1954 and again in 1956 and 1957 Korea
temporarily stopped accepting all deportees, including undocumented migrants. As a result, by
December of 1957 the number in detention had soared to over 1,700, and some detainees werebeing held in a hastily-created overflow camp at Hamamatsu.84 After a settlement with South
Korea in 1960, which saw the Korean government agree to resume accepting deported “illegal
immigrants” in return for a Japanese commitment to release many of the convict detainees “onparole,” numbers fell again. (See Table 2). However, by September 1970 22,663 people had
spent time in Omura detention centre.85 By 1965 sixteen babies had also been born there.86

Figures outside brackets are totals; figures in round brackets ( ) are those with criminal convictions; figuresin square brackets [ ] are those held in Hamamatsu. Homusho Nyukoku Kanrikyoku ed., Shutsunyukoku Kanri
to sono Jittai—Showa 39-nen, Tokyo, Okurasho Insatsukyoku, 1964, p. 114.

Morris-Suzuki: Invisible Immigrants

115

The conflicts with South Korea over detainees also had another cause, reflecting the division of
the Korean peninsula. Although the vast majority of Koreans in Japan came from the southernhalf of the peninsula, a substantial proportion chose to identify themselves with the North
Korean regime, which many viewed as having greater political legitimacy than the US-backed
Syngman Rhee regime and its successors, and which optimists of that period envisaged asoffering a prospect of socialist equality and development. Omura detainees who were known
opponents of the Syngman Rhee regime were terrified of deportation to South Korea, where theyfeared imprisonment or even execution, and some pleaded in great desperation to be deported to
North Korea instead. This problem became connected with a wider movement, which emerged
within the Korean community in 1958, for return to North Korea.
Though there can be no doubt that a considerable number of Koreans saw North Korea asoffering an escape from the discrimination and legal uncertainties surrounding the position in
Japan, recently declassified documents have shown that the Japanese government, working
closely with the Japan Red Cross Society, covertly encouraged the return movement, which it
saw as a means of reducing the size of an unwelcome ethnic minority. Between December 1959
and the end of 1961, 74,779 people (the vast majority ethnic Koreans, but also including several
thousand Japanese spouses) left Japan for a new life in the Democratic People’s Republic ofKorea, and the total number of those who had “returned” to North Korea by the end of therepatriation scheme in 1984 was over 93,000.87 Among those who “returned” to the North wereover 200 deportees from Omura.88 From the late 1960s onwards, many of the “returnees” fromJapan became the targets of political repression in North Korea. A considerable (though
uncertain) number disappeared into labour camps or were executed.89
As struggles for the political allegiance of detainees raged within Omura, authorities tried toretain control by increasingly draconian regulation of the lives of its inmates. In many cases, thismeant holding politically vocal detainees (particularly those identified as supporters of North
Korea) in “protective custody” in Block 6, the camp’s isolation unit. A Korean student held in
Omura in the 1960s, in a letter addressed to a Japanese university newspaper, described how one
such detainee was held in isolation for over 150 days, unable to speak to fellow inmates anddenied the right to leave Block 6 even for medical treatment in the camp clinic.90
Yoshitome Roju, a journalist who visited Omura three times between the 1950s and the 1970s,
noted that, although the detention centre continued to be officially defined merely as a gathering
place where people awaited deportation boats, not as a place of punishment, a significant
transformation took place over time. While the solidity of the buildings and the range of facilities
improved, “the realities of the detention camp became ever more prison-like.”91 The concrete
walls of Omura came to be plastered with a mass of rules and regulations which governed
everyday life: everything from prohibitions on gambling and the use of matches or lighters to the
instructions, “do not make unnecessary requests and demands to the authorities” and “unless you
have received permission, it is forbidden to make contact, meet or have private conversations
with inmates from other blocks.”92
In the enlarged and reconstructed camp, detainees were held ten to a cell, with a space equivalent
to one tatami mat space per person. Describing the camp in the late 1960s, Itanuma Jiro reported
that the cells, whose windows were heavily barred by metal grills, each contained a basic toilet
and wash place, but that hot water was in short supply and available only for brief periods.
Women and children were held separately from men: an arrangement which may have increasedZainichi Koreans: The Past, the Present and the Future

116

their security, but also resulted in the separation of families. Men were allowed to be reunited
with their wives and children for approximately 30 minutes once every two weeks, during whichtime they were instructed to communicate in Japanese.93 During the 1960s and 1970s, Omura
Detention Centre was the subject of repeated complaints by human rights groups, who pointed topoor food standards, inadequate medical care and dehumanising treatment of detainees, and in1969 the camp became the target of large demonstrations by Japanese student and peace groups.
Oguro Shuntaro, who was a guard at Omura in the 1950s, later recalled - apparently withamusement - a letter which had arrived at the camp during his time there. The writer, a Korean,
had addressed the letter to “Omura Detention Centre” [Omura Shuyojo], but had inadvertently
used the wrong characters to write the word Shuyojo, whose literal meaning translates roughly as“receiving and holding place.” On the envelope, the syllable shu was written with the character
meaning “prisoner,” and the syllable yo with the character meaning “to rear animals.” Oguroadds, “It doesn’t seem that they were poking fun at us. Koreans actually gave [the centre] thatname.”94
Enduring Legacies
Debates about “migrant labour” and “guest workers” are commonly based upon several
assumptions. They assume that there is a firm line distinguishing “nationals” from “foreigners”;
that there is a clear distinction between “legal” and “illegal” migration; and that politicalrefugees and economically motivated “immigrant workers” can be unambiguously placed inseparate categories. But in Japan’s postwar history, there were moments when each of theseassumptions was destabilized.
Japan’s postwar migration control system was part of a wider world order. Like migration
controls elsewhere, it was shaped by the concerns of the Cold War and, as we have seen, wasstrongly influenced by US models. However, the particular circumstances surrounding thetransition from colonial empire to Cold War in East Asia resulted, in the Japanese case, in a
migration control system with distinctive features, many of which survive to the present day. In
this essay, I have sought to suggest that the distinctive features of the Japanese system weremuch less the products of a unique “Japanese culture” than they were of the specific historicaland geopolitical circumstances in which Japan’s postwar immigration laws were framed.
During the occupation period, the treatment of former colonial subjects as “foreigners” waslegally dubious, and the process by which returnees to Japan were transformed into “illegal
immigrants” was highly arbitrary. These problems were compounded, rather than resolved, by
the Japanese government’s post-Occupation decision unilaterally to revoke the Japanesenationality of Korean and Taiwanese former subjects, and to impose tight migration restrictions,which prevented family reunions. In practice, the very harshness of the official policy made it
impossible for the letter of the law to be strictly enforced. Rounding up and removing every“illegal immigrant” who had crossed the border between Korea and Japan from 1946 onward
would have been both extremely inhumane and utterly impractical. In tacit recognition of thisfact, the Japanese authorities therefore developed a system where a highly restrictive official
policy on immigration went hand in hand with a great deal of “administrative discretion.”
Officials quietly accepted the presence of tens of thousands of undocumented migrants, anddeveloped informal channels through which at least some could eventually acquire legal
residence rights. In this way, the events of the postwar decades laid the basis for Japan’scontemporary “illegal immigration policy”: a policy under which official entry requirements

Morris-Suzuki: Invisible Immigrants

117

remain highly restrictive, while the government selectively turns a blind eye to the entry ofhundreds of thousands of “illegal migrants” whose presence serves economic or other purposes.
Post-1980 “illegal migrants” from Korea, China, Southeast Asia and elsewhere have followed
paths blazed by the postwar “stowaways,” often finding employment in similar small factories
producing metal goods, machine parts etc.95 There is even evidence of a “globalization” of thevery routes which brought undocumented migrants from South Korea to Japan in the 1950s and1960s: today some Chinese, Iranian, South Asian and other migrants go first to Korea before
crossing by boat from Busan to Japan.96
Meanwhile, though Omura remains in operation, it has become just a small element in a wider
archipelago of detention centers. In June 2001, for example, 1262 people from a diverse range ofcountries were being held in Japan’s four main migrant detention centers: 453 in Tokyo; 302 in
the Eastern Japan Migration Control Centre in Ushiki, Ibaraki Prefecture; 269 in Omura and 240
in the Western Japan Migration Control Centre in Osaka.97 There were also smaller temporary
detention centers such as Narita Airport’s controversial “Landing Prevention Facility,”98 while in2003 the Migration Control Bureau opened a new and greatly enlarged detention center inTokyo’s Minato Ward, capable of holding 800 people.99
During the 1950s and 1960s, the difficulties of enforcing Japan’s exclusionary immigration
policies were compounded by the fact that considerable numbers of entrants from Korea were to
all intents and purposes refugees as defined by the Geneva Convention of 1951. However, until
1967 the Convention did not cover events such as the Korean War and its political aftermath—itapplied only to displacements caused by “events occurring before 1 January 1951” and its
coverage was largely restricted to Europe. Besides Japan did not ratify the Convention until
1981. As a result these migrants were not officially acknowledged as refugees, and many joined
the pool of labourers working for low wages in small firms. While circumstances in postwar
Western Europe made it possible to maintain a (partly fictional) conceptual distinction between“migrant workers” and “refugees,” public discourse in postwar Japan melded all into theshadowy category labeled mikkôsha—“stowaways.” Today, as the circumstances of the post
Cold War world again erode the political boundaries between “migrant worker” and “refugee”—
and as recurrent panics over “people smuggling” become a worldwide political phenomenon—it
is important to look back at Japan’s postwar experience and consider its lessons for the present.
“Bureaucratic discretion” may be used with compassion and imagination to mitigate humansuffering. But the combination of a highly restrictive formal immigration policy with arbitrary
and non-transparent “discretion” can also be a source of injustice, violence and (potentially)
corruption. By the 1970s, some of those familiar with Japan’s migration control system werecalling for reforms which would liberalize immigration law and offer a blanket amnesty to“stowaways” who had arrived before a certain date, while also making the guidelines
surrounding the implementation of the law more transparent.100 In spite of incremental reforms
since 1981, however, the official framework of migration policy remains highly restrictive, while
the day-to-day practice of border controls and the treatment of migrants remain realms ofenormous discretion and considerable arbitrariness. More fundamental reform is a still
unfulfilled task for the twenty-first century.

Zainichi Koreans: The Past, the Present and the Future

118

Perhaps the most profound source of problems in the treatment of postwar Korean migrants toJapan was the nature of relations between the governments of Japan and the two Koreas. A fullaccount of undocumented migration in postwar East Asia, indeed, would require a close
examination of the sending communities, and particularly of the South Korean government’s
policies towards emigrants. It has been impossible within the scope of this essay to explore thatside of the story. However, the history outlined here indicates some important aspects of the roleof international relations in determining the fate of migrants. Relations between Japan and North
Korea were non-existent, while the relationship between Japanese and South Korean regimes
was strained for much of the period. Both the South Korean and the Japanese governments
regarded border crossers as an irritation and a likely source of subversion, and neither showed
any serious interest in protecting their rights. Undocumented migrants and others (like the Omura
detainees) intermittently became pawns in wider power-games between the two states. These
postwar problems highlight the need, not just for global treaties to protect the rights of migrants,
but also for regional collaboration between migrant sending and receiving countries:
collaboration which creates scope for the voices of migrants and their communities to be heard,
rather than simply providing a means for governments to cooperate in sealing borders against thesubversive potential of mobile populations.
Despite the confusion and denial surrounding postwar migration, and despite the individual
sufferings which it often involved, the continuing cross-border movement of people hassustained a close network of personal connections linking particular parts of Osaka and otherJapanese cities to particular regions of Korea, such as Jeju. In the past decade, the vitality andfuture possibilities of these cross-border social networks have begun to be acknowledged.101 As
such networks come to link Japan more closely to Korea and to many other parts of Asia, they
may provide a basis for increasing collaboration, not just between national governments, but also
between the local communities which send and receive migrants, and between the local groups
which advocate and support migrants’ rights. These developments might in turn provide astarting point for a more imaginative, less oppressive and less opaque approach to the crucial
contemporary issues of migration and border controls. They might also open the way for a futurein which migration can be recognized as a part of Japan’s postwar history, and in which thememories of the postwar migrants can more readily be spoken aloud.
Tessa Morris-Suzuki is Professor of Japanese Studies, Research School of Pacific and AsianStudies, Australian National University. She is author of Reinventing Japan: Time, Space,Nation.
This is a revised and expanded version of an article first published in Journal of JapaneseStudies, Vol. 32, no.1, Winter 2006. Posted at Japan Focus August 31, 2006.
Notes
1

Interview recorded in Koh Sunhui, Seikatsushi no Shiryo 3: 1946-nen iko Rainichi,
unpublished appendix to Koh Sunhui, 20 Seiki no Tainichi Chejudojin: Sono Seikatsu Katei to
Ishiki, Tokyo, Akashi Shoten, 1998, pp. 127-128. I am very grateful to Professor Koh forallowing me access to this material.
2

Myron Weiner, “Opposing Visions: Migration and Citizenship Policies in Japan and the UnitedStates,” in Myron Weiner and Tadashi Hanami eds., Temporary Workers or Future Citizens?

Morris-Suzuki: Invisible Immigrants

119Japanese and US Migration Policies, New York, New York University Press, 1998, pp. 3-27,
quotation from p. 93Hiromi Mori, Immigration and Foreign Workers in Japan, London, Macmillan, 1997, p. 32.

4

Yoko Sellek, “Nikkeijin: The Phenomenon of Return Migration,” in Michael Weiner ed.,Japan’s Minorities: the Illusion of Homogeneity, London, Routledge, 1997, pp. 178-210;
quotation from p. 178.
5

Y. Kuwahara, “Japan’s Dilemma: Can International Migration be Controlled?,” in Myron
Weiner and Tadashi Hanami eds., Temporary Workers or Future Citizens? Japanese and US
Migration Policies, New York, New York University Press, 1998, pp. 355-383, quotation from p.
355.
6

For example, Tessa Morris-Suzuki, Re-Inventing Japan : Time, Space, Nation, New York, M.
E. Sharpe, 1998, pp. 175-176
7Mori, Immigration and Foreign Workers in Japan, p. 32.

8

For example, Wolfgang Herbert, Foreign Workers and Law Enforcement in Japan, London,
Kegan Paul International, 1996; see also Hiroshi Komai (trans. Jens Wilkinson), MigrantWorkers in Japan, London, Kegan Paul International, p. 2.
9Wayne A. Cornelius, “Japan: The Illusion of immigration Control,” in Wayne A. Cornelius,
Philip L. Martin and James F. Hollifield eds., Controlling Immigration: A Global Perspective,
Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1994, pp.375-410; quotation from p. 375.
10

I have calculated these percentages by comparing the figures for legal registered aliens given
in Cornelius loc. cit. with the figures for the total Japanese population given in Tsuneta Yano
Memorial Foundation ed., Nippon: A Chartered Survey of Japan 1989-1990, Tokyo, Kokuseisha,
1989, p. 43.
11

Homusho Nyukoku Kanrikyoku, Shutsunyukoku Kanri to sono Jittai – Showa 46-Nen, Tokyo,
Okurasho Insatsukyoku, 1971, pp. 95-96.
12

As we shall see, more rigorous registration also made it more difficult for “illegal migrants” toobtain residence documents. However, its principal effect seems to have been to ensure theregistration of previously unregistered “legal” foreign residents.
13

Kajita Takamichi, “The Challenge of Incorporating Foreigners in Japan: ‘Ethnic Japanese’ and‘Sociologial Japanese’,” in Myron Weiner and Tadashi Hanami eds., Temporary Workers or
Future Citizens?, pp. 120-147, citation from p. 139.
14

ibid., p. 131.

15

Ochiai Eishu, Ajiajin Rodoryoku Yunyu, Tokyo, Gendai Hyoronsha, 1974, p. 22.

16

Asahi Shimbun, 8 May 1964 (evening edition), reproduced in Fujisaki Yasuo, Mikkosha,
Tokyo, Rokufusha, 1977, pp. 213-214.
17

See for example Sugihara Toru, Ekkyo suru Tami: Kindai Osaka no Chosenjinshi Kenkyu,
Tokyo, Shinkansha, 1998.

Zainichi Koreans: The Past, the Present and the Future

120

18

Japan National Police Agency website, www.npa.gov.jp/kokusai2/hakusho/14a/siryo.pdf ,accessed 9 September 2003.
19

Jeanyoung Lee, “Ethnic Korean Migration in Northeast Asia,” in Tsuneo Akaha ed.,Proceedings of the International Seminar “Human Flows Across National Borders in Northeast
Asia,” Center for East Asian Studies, Monterey Institute of International Studies, Monterey Cal.,
2-3 November 2001, p. 120.
20

Yakabi Osamu, “’Kokkyo’ no Kengen: Okinawa Yonaguni no Mitsuboeki Shusoku no
Haikei,” Gendai Shiso, September 2003, pp. 186-201.
21

Sugihara, Ekkyo suru Tami, p. 80.

22“Outlying Tsushima Islands,” report by Yaguchi Rokuzo, Chief of the Immigration Service
Division, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 15 October 1949, in GHQ/SCAP Records RG 331, box.
no. 380, folder no. 15, “Korea File no. 3, 1 April 1949 to 30 December 1949.
23

The Nansei Islands included the Amami Islands and the Ryukyu Archipelago [Okinawa]. The
Amami Islands were re-united with Japan in 1953, but the Ryukyu Archipelago was not returned
until 1972, and even then the US retained a large network of military bases in the Archipelago.
24“Report on Stowaways,” attached to the memo “Korean Stowaways in Japan” from Lt. Col.
Rue S. Link, Kyushu Military Government Headquarters, Fukuoka, to Commanding General, I
Corps, APO 301, 19 August 1946; in GHQ/SCAP Records RG 331, Box no. 385, Folder no. 014,
“Civil Matters, Binder #1, 2 January 1946 thru 19 January 1948 (Japan, Korea, Miscellaneous),
pp. 1-2.
25

For example, after Ireland obtained its independence, free movement across the border
between Ireland and the UK continued to be permitted, while the 1962 Evian Accord between
France and Algeria acknowledged the right of Algerians to enter the former colonial power.
26

See for example Homu Kenshujo, Zainichi Chosenjin Shogu no Suii to Genjo, Tokyo,
Kohokusha, 1975, 76-77.
27

See Tessa Morris-Suzuki, “An Act Prejudicial to the Occupations Forces: Migration Controls
and Korean Residents in Post-Surrender Japan,” Japanese Studies, vol. 24, no. 1, May 2004, pp.
4-28.
28

“CSDIC Translations BCOF – Illegal Entry into Japan,” AWM 114, 423/10/42, 1948,
Australian War Memorial, Canberra.
29

For further details of SCAP’s role in the introduction of the Alien Registration Ordinance, see
Tessa Morris-Suzuki, “An Act Prejudicial to the Occupations Forces.”30

For example, Memorandum for Chief, Diplomatic Section from Alva C. Carpenter, Chief,
Legal Section, “Japanese-Korean Nationality Conference,” 22 October 1951, in GHQ-SCAP
Records, microfiche held in National Diet Library, Tokyo, fiche no LS 24687-24688; see also
Kim T’ae-Gi’s Sengo Nihon seiji to Zainichi Chôsenjin mondai: SCAP no tai-Zainichi Chôsenjin
seisaku 1945-1952, Tokyo, Keisô Shobô, 1997; Chikako Kashiwazaki, “The Politics of Legal
Status: The Equation of Nationality with Ethninational Identity,” in in Sonia Ryang ed., Koreansin Japan: Critical Voices from the Margin, London, Routledge, 2000, pp. 13-31.

Morris-Suzuki: Invisible Immigrants

121

31

Quoted in Sato Katsumi, “Shutsunyukoku Kanrirei to Zainichi Choasenjin: Nyukokuho oRikai suru ni atatte – sono Ni,” in Sato Katsumi ed., Zainichi Chosenjin no Shomondai, Tokyo,
Doseido, 1971, pp. 238-264; quotation from p. 241; see also Sakanaka Hidenori, Nihon no
Gaikokujin Seisaku no Koso, Tokyo, Nihon Kajo Shuppan, 2001, pp. 44-47.
32

The British Nationality Act of 1948, for example, allowed former colonial subjects to enter,live and work in Britain on the same terms as all other British citizens. This measure was, ofcourse, designed as a means to maintain Britain’s political influence over its former colonies, andthe rights it bestowed were gradually removed from the 1960s onwards. However, the Act did inpractice protect former colonial subjects living in Britain from some of the dislocation andinsecurity experienced by Koreans and Taiwanese in Japan. For further details, see Kathleen
Paul, “Communities of Britishness: Migration in the Last Gasp of Empire,” in Stuart Ward ed.
British Culture and the End of Empire, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2001, pp 180199.
33

Homusho Nyukoku Kanrikyoku ed., Shutsunyukoku Kanri to sono Jittai – Showa 39-nen,
Tokyo, Okurasho Insatsukyoku, 1964, p. 16.
34

Memorandum for Chief of Staff, 8th Army, “Suppression of Korean Illegal Entry,” 15 May
1949, in GHQ/SCAP Records (RG 311, National Archives and Records Service), Box no. 380,
Folder no 15, Korea File no. 3, 1 April 1949 to 31 December 1949.
35“CSDIC Translations BCOF,” p. 14.

36John W. Dower, Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II, New York, W. W.
Norton / The New Press, 1999, p. 407.
37

Extracts from Civil Censorship Detachment intercepts, held in the GHQ/SCAP archive.

38

Koh Sunhui, 20 Seiki no Tainichi Chejudojin, p. 210.

39

In 1991, “Treaty Permanent Residence” was replaced by the rather more comprehensive“Special Permanent Residence” status. See Kim Ilhwa, “Zainichi Chosenjin no Hoteki Chii,” in
Pak Chongmyeong ed. Zainichi Chosenjin: Rekishi, Genjo, Tenbo, Tokyo, Akashi Shoten, 1995,
pp. 189-232; citation from p. 210.
40

However, the treaty specifically provided for the deportation of those involved in offences
against foreign governments or embassies—a measure clearly designed to be used against
Koreans in Japan who engaged in political acts hostile to the South Korean government.
41

Kim, “Zainichi Chosenjin no Hoteki Chii,” p. 209. Greater access to welfare, housing etc.
became available to foreign permanent residents after Japan ratified the United Nations
Convention on the Status of Refugees in 1981.
42

Ibid., p. 208; see also Sonia Ryang, “Introduction: Resident Koreans in Japan,” in Ryang ed.,Koreans in Japan, 1-12; citation from p. 4. The nationality of Koreans in Japan was divided
between Kankokuseki—citizenship of the Republic of Korea (South Korea), and Chosenseki.
Those with Chosenseki include people who define themselves as citizens of the Democratic
People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) and a substantial number who defined themselves
above all as nationals of a future re-united Korea.
43

Quoted in Yoshitome Roju, Omura Chosenjin Shuyojo, Tokyo, Nigatsusha, 1977, p. 38.

Zainichi Koreans: The Past, the Present and the Future

122

44

Homusho Nyukoku Kanrikyoku, Shutsunyukoku Kanri no Kaiko to Tenbo: Nyukan Hassoku
30-shunen o Kinen shite, Tokyo, Homusho Nyukoku Kanrikyoku, 1980, p. 289.
45

Ibid. p. 293.

46

“Mitsunyukoku Chosenjin – go-rokuman kara nijumannin,” Asahi Shimbun, 16 June 1959.

47

Homusho Nyukoku Kanrikyoku, Shutsunyukoku Kanri: Sono Genkyo to Kadai, Tokyo,
Okurasho Insatsukyoku, 1975, pp. 120-121.
48

Sakanaka Hidenori, Kongo no Shutsunyukoku Kanri Gyosei no Arikata ni tsuite, Tokyo,
Nihon Kajo Shuppan, 1989, p. 131. (original published in 1977).
49

Taniguchi Tomohiko, “Senzai Kyojusha ni Zairyuken o!,” Chosen Kenkyu, no. 190, June
1979, pp. 25-35, citation from p. 28.
50

Koh, 20 Seiki no Tainichi Chejudojin, p. 184.

51

Sakanaka, Kongo no Shutsunyukoku Kanri Gyosei, p. 129.

52

The Immigration Control Bureau claimed that in the mid-1970s some “stowaways” were
paying up to one million yen for their journey to Japan; Homusho Nyukoku Kanrikyoku,
Shutsunyukoku Kanri: Sono Genkyo to Kadai, p. 119. However, another source gives a figure ofabout 100,000 to 200,000 yen as the going rate; Ochiai, Ajiajin Rodoryoku Yunyu, p. 22.
53

Homusho Nyukoku Kanrikyoku, Shutsunyukoku kanri: Sono Genkyo to Kadai., p. 126-127.

54

Ibid. p. 127.

55

Taniguchi, “Senzai Kyojusha ni Zairyuken o!” p. 30.

56

Homusho Nyukoku Kanrikyoku, Shutsunyukoku Kanri no Kaiko to Tenbo, p. 157; 5,109
people also received “special permission to stay” between 1952 and 1955, but at this stage
published figures do not show what proportion were “illegal immigrants” and what proportion
were people convicted of other offenses.
57

Shitsunyukoku Kanricho, renamed the Nyuûkoku Kanricho in 1951.

58

Sato ed., Zainichi Chosenjin no Shomondai, quotation from p. 295.

59

The Justice Ministry took over migration control functions from the Foreign Ministry, which
had operated an Immigration Control Office [Nyûkan Kanrichô] from October 1951; see
Homusho Nyukoku Kanrikyoku, Shutsunyukoku Kanri no Kaiko to Tenbo, pp. 266-268.
60

Homusho Nyukoku Kanrikyoku, Shutsunyukoku Kanri to sono Jittai– Showa 39-Nen, pp. 9899.
61

Ochiai, Ajiajin Rodoryoku Yunyu, p. 24; see also Morris-Suzuki, “An Act Prejudicial to the
Occupation Forces.”
62

I have discussed the role of the Japan Red Cross Society in these repatriations in more detail in
Tessa Morris-Suzuki, “Tokubestushitsu no naka no Chinmoku: Shinhakkutsu Shiryo ga Kataru
Kota Chosen Kikan Jigyo no Shinso,” Ronza, November 2004, pp. 172-182 and Tessa Morris-

Morris-Suzuki: Invisible Immigrants

123

Suzuki, “Exposing Japan’s Dark Role in Korean’s Return,” Herald Tribune Asahi, 26 November
2004.
63

Quoted in ibid., p. 207.

64

Nakamura Shokichi, former head of the Immigration Control Bureau’s Yokohama office;quoted in Homusho Nyukoku Kanrikyoku, Shutsunyukoku Kanri no Kaiko to Tenbo, p. 377.
65

“Homusho Nyukoku Kanrikyoku ed., Shustunyukoku Kanri to sono Jittai – Showa 39-nen, p.
103.
66

Letter reproduced in Koh Sunhui, Senzai Kyojusha Shiryoshu, unpublished appendix to Koh
Sunhui, 20 Seiki no Tainichi Chejudojin, p. 113; See also Koh Sunhui, 20 Seiki no Tainichi
Chejudojin, p. 210.
67

Taniguchi “Senzai Kyojusha ni Zairyuken o!,” p. 31.

68

Ibid p. 32.

69

See for example Koh, Senzai Kyojusha Shiryoshu, p. 111.

70

Sakanaka, Kongo no Shutsunyukoku Kanri Gyosei, p. 137.

71

Yoon Hakjun, “Waga Mikkoki,” Chosen Kenkyu, no. 190, June 1979, pp. 4-23, quotationfrom p. 5.
72

Ibid., p. 5.

73

See Itanuma Jiro, “Omura Shuyojo Teppai no tame ni,” in Pak Seongkong ed., Omura
Shuyojo, Kyoto, Kyoto Daigaku Shuppankai, 1969, pp. 1-42, citation from p. 24.
74

Homusho Nyukoku Kanrikyoku, Shutsunyukoku Kanri no Kaiko to Tenbo, pp. 158-159. In
addition to mass deportations and those who paid for their own deportation, a small number ofdeportees—usually sailors who had failed to reboard their ships—were deported at the expenseof the transportation company which had brought them to Japan.
75

Tanaka Tomizo, former head of the Osaka Migration Control Office, quoted in Homusho
Nyukoku Kanrikyoku, Shutsunyukoku Kanri no Kaiko to Tenbo, p. 351.
76

Laurie Brocklebank, Jayforce: New Zealand and the Military Occupation of Japan 1945-1948,
Auckland, Oxford University Press, 1997; Telegram on “Epidemic of Cholera on LST Q076,”
from 9th NZ Inf. Brg. To 8th Army, 6 August 1946, the file “[BCOF, Japan – General:]Communications and Reports Dealing with Illegal Entry of Koreans into Japan,” Series no.
AWM114, Control symbol 130/1/34, 1946-147, held in the Australian War Memorial archives,
Canberra; see also Morris-Suzuki, “An Act Prejudicial to the Occupation Forces.”
77

Homusho Omura Nyukokusha Shuyojo ed., Omura Nyukokusha Shuyojo 20-Nenshi, Tokyo,
Homusho, 1970, p. 1.
78
79

Homusho Nyukoku Kanrikyoku., Shutsunyukoku Kanri to sono Jittai – Showa 39-Nen, p. 109.

Tanaka Tomizo, quoted in Homusho Nyukoku Kanrikyoku, Shutsunyukoku Kanri no Kaiko to
Tenbo, p. 362.

Zainichi Koreans: The Past, the Present and the Future

124

80

Oguro Shuntaro, former head of the Yokohama Migrant Detention Centre, quoted in Homusho
Nyukoku Kanrikyoku, Shutsunyukoku Kanri no Kaiko to Tenbo, p. 343.
81

Quoted in Yoshitome, Omura Chosenjin Shuyojo, p. 982

See account by Tanaka Tomizo, who was at that time in change of deportations from Omura,in Homusho Nyukoku Kanrikyoku, Shutsunyukoku Kanri no Kaiko to Tenbo, pp. 360-361; also
Yoshitome, Omura Chosenjin Shuyojo, pp. 46-47; Homusho Omura Nyukansha Shuyojo ed.,Omura Nyukansha Shuyojo 20-Nenshi, p. 95.
83

See Homusho Nyukoku Kanrikyoku, Shutsunyukoku Kanri no Kaiko to Tenbo, p. 370.

84

Homusho Nyukoku Kanrikyoku ed., Shutsunyukoku Kanri to sono Jittai– Showa 39-Nen, pp.
108-114.
85

Homusho Omura Nyukokusha Shuyojo ed., Omura Nyukokusha Shuyojo 20-Nenshi, p. 56.

86

Itanuma, “Omura Shuyojo Teppai no tame ni,” pp. 40-41.

87

Kim Yongdal and Takayanagi Toshio eds., Kita Chosen Kikoku Jigyo Kankei Shiryo, Tokyo,
Shinkansha, 1995, p. 341. Sonia Ryang, North Koreans in Japan: Language, Ideology and
Identity, Boulder, Westview Press, 1997, pp. 113-115; Sonia Ryang, “The North Korean
Homeland of Koreans in Japan,” in Ryang ed., Koreans in Japan, pp. 32-54; Kang Sangjung,
Niccho Kankei no Kokufuku, Tokyo, Shueisha Shinsho, 2003, pp. 70-79.
88

Homusho Omura Nyukokusha Shuyojo ed., Omura Nyukokusha Shuyojo 20-Nenshi, p. 97.

89

For further information on the repatiration to North Korea, see Kim and Takayanagi, Kita
Chosen Kikoku Jigyo Kankei Shiryo; Takasaki Soji, “Kikoku Undo to wa nan datta no ka” Part
1, Ronza, May 2004, pp. 114-143; Wada Haruki, “Kikoku Undo to wa nan datta no ka” Part 2,
Ronza, June 2004, pp. 132-143; Sonia Ryang, North Koreans in Japan: Language, Ideology and
Identity, Boulder, Westview Press, 1997, pp. 113-115; Sonia Ryang, “The North Korean
Homeland of Koreans in Japan,” in Ryang ed., Koreans in Japan, pp. 32-54; Kang Sangjung,
Niccho Kankei no Kokufuku, Tokyo, Shueisha Shinsho, 2003, pp. 70-79 ; Tessa Morris-Suzuki,“A Dream Betrayed : Cold War Politics and the Repatriation of Koreans from Japan to North
Korea,” Asian Studies Review, vol. 29, no. 4, December 2005, pp. 357-382; Tessa MorrisSuzuki, Exodus to North Korea: Shadows from Japan’s Cold War, Boulder, Rowman andLittlefield (forthcoming).
90
Itanuma, “Omura Shuyojo Teppai no tame ni,” pp. 36-37.
91

Yoshitome, Omura Chosenjin Shuyojo, p. 14.

92

Itanuma, “Omura Shuyojo Teppai no tame ni,” pp. 27-28.

93

Ibid., pp. 14-15 and 37-39.

94

Oguro Shuntaro, quoted in Homusho Nyukoku Kanrikyoku, Shutsunyukoku Kanri no Kaiko to
Tenbo, pp. 377-378.
95
96

See for example Herbert, Foreign Workers and Law Enforcement in Japan, pp. 72-75.

See for example Hokkaido Shimbun, 23 July 2001; Mainichi Shimbun, 24 January 2003;
Asahi Shimbun, 20 November 2003.

Morris-Suzuki: Invisible Immigrants

125

97

Nyukan Mondai Chosakai ed., Nyukan Shuyo Shisetsu: Sueden, Osutoria, Rengo Okoku.
Soshite Nihon, Tokyo, Gendai Jinbunsha, 2001, p. 12.
98

In a public statement issued on 7 August 2000, Amnesty International detailed complaints ofserious human rights violations by guards at the Narita Landing Prevention Centre.—see
http://www.incl.ne.jp/ktrs/aijapan/2000/08/000801.htm (accessed 24 Dec. 2003)
99

See Tokyo Yomiuri Shimbun, 31 January 2003.

100
101

For example Taniguchi. “Senzai Kyojusha ni Zairyuken o!”

See for example Koh, 20 Seiki no Tainichi Chejudojin; Sugihara, Ekkyo suru Tami. On thepotential of cross-border Korean networks, see also Hyun Mooam, “Takokuseki Minzoku
Kyodotai no Mosaku: Tenkaki no Kankoku Nashonarizumu no Henyo to sono Yukue,” inNishikawa Nagao, Kang Sangjung and Nishi Masahiko eds., 20 Seiki o ikani Koeru ka: Tagengo,
Tabunkashugi o Tegakari ni shite, Tokyo, Heibonsha, 2000, pp. 144-174.

Zainichi Koreans: The Past, the Present and the Future

126Part IV: Living as Zainichi Koreans in Postwar Japan“Zainichi Recognitions: Japan’s Korean Residents’ Ideology and Its Discontents”
John Lie
November 3, 2008
http://japanfocus.org/-John-Lie/2939
Sociologist John Lie has written extensively on multiculturalism in Japan andelsewhere. He authored two books on Zainichi Koreans in 2008, and this article is adaptedfrom a chapter in Zainichi (Koreans in Japan): Diasporic Nationalism and Postcolonial
Identity. His other book is Diaspora without Homeland: Being Korean in Japan, which heedited with Sonia Ryang, whose article is also included in this course reader.
Lie’s understanding of Zainichi Koreans stands in contrasts to one of Ryang’s key
arguments. Ryang writes that Zainichi Koreans need to be understood primarily in terms of
their ethnicity and their collective circumstance. She understands that Zainichi Koreans all
experienced systematic exclusion by the Japanese government, and that this experiencegives them a shared identity. However, Lie argues that such a view totalizes Zainichi
Korean identity, and that this supposedly “shared identity” could not and should not
subsume all of the forms of subjectivities and identities that this ethnic group carries.
Lie categorizes views such as Ryang’s as “Zainichi ideology,” which he sees as having
appeared first in the 1970s in Japan. He understands it as a form of diasporic nationalismthat is a reaction to the racism the Zainichi faced in Japan. According to Lie, the problem
that such an ideology carries is this: “Zainichi ideology erects a prison-house of Zainichiness, a collective confinement to ethnic essentialism. Beyond establishing the fundamental
pillars of Zainichi identity, it also projects an idealized Zainichi self that mirrors Zainichi
historiography: the dialectics of oppression and resistance, poverty, and struggle” (p. 9).
Lie believes that such an ideology was necessary at one point, but that it came tosuppress the voices of some Zainichi Koreans who were minorities in their community,
voices that are now rapidly becoming mainstream. To make his argument, Lie brings up acolorful and varied array of Zainichi writers that includes authors of fiction such as
Kaneshiro Kazuki, Yu Miri, Gen Gegetsu, and Ijuin Shizuka, as well as Zainichi intellectuals
such as Yoon Keun Cha and Kyo Nobuko. Through them he argues that the neglect ofZainichi in Japan started to recede in the 1980s and that third- and fourth-generation
Zainichi Koreans developed various forms of dissent from “an idealized Zainichi self,”which had been a pillar of Zainichi ideology.
Lie is “skeptical that ethnicity has a determining impact on one’s self or personal
identity” (p. 21), and he stresses multiple points of view and identities. Although the harshhistorical circumstances that produced Zainichi Koreans should not be forgotten, and someJapanese express anti-Zainichi opinions in the twenty-first-century (see Rumi Sakamoto’s
article included in this course reader), Lie’s view reminds us to recognize and to accept
contradictions, differing points of view, and varying identities among Zainichi Koreans.

Lie: Zainichi Recognitions

127

Zainichi Recognitions: Japan’s Korean Residents’ Ideology and Its Discontents
John Lie

Go: Kaneshiro Kazuki's
best-selling novel was
made into an awardwinning film, providing
a fresh image of Zainichi

In Kaneshiro Kazuki’s Go (2000), the protagonist, Sugihara, opens thenovel with a description of his communist, North Korean father, theJapanese colonization of Korea, and the family’s desire to visit
Hawaii—a vacation that requires switching their nationality from
North Korean to South Korean (and shifting their membership from
North Korea-affiliated Soren to South Korea-affiliated Mindan). The
stuff of the novel’s first five pages has been recounted countless times
by Japanese and Zainichi writers, but no one would have imaginedthat it would make a best-selling novel. Reciting Bruce Springsteen’s“Born in the U.S.A.”—though observing that Springsteen grew up in apoor family whereas his family is well-off—Sugihara sings his own
refrain of “Born in Japan.” At once erudite and violent, he is highly
individualistic and antiauthoritarian; he is the proverbial nail thatshould have been hammered in. In the 1960s and 1970s, Zainichi was
all seriousness and suffering: as the pejorative slang would have put it,“dark” [kurai]. The unbearable burden of Zainichi being traumatized,
Zainichi life-course and discourse. Instead, Kaneshiro’s prose andprotagonist exemplify a striking mode of being cool [kakkoii] incontemporary Japanese culture.

Who Am I?
Kaneshiro’s book—made a year later into an acclaimed film—capped decades of Zainichi ethnic
ferment in which the question of identity was paramount. Inevitably one reflects at times on
existential and ontological questions: “Who am I?” “Where do I come from?” “Where am I
going?” Such questions are, as I argued in Modern Peoplehood (2004), essentially irresolvable.
Only the dead may aspire to definitiveness, but since the deceased cannot represent themselves,
even that aspiration is foreclosed. Any adequate narrative of a life, moreover, demands nothing
less than a Victorian triple-decker (and what truly matters often eludes even the longest memoirs
or biographies), yet most readers, most of the time, require brevity: vita longa, ars brevis. That
questions of identity may be irresolvable may merely make them all the more urgent, and they
are especially pressing for people whose place in society is challenged and whose belonging is
unsettled. The soul frets in the shadow as it struggles to recognize itself and to be recognized byothers. The self invokes collective categories and public discourses even if its ultimate task is toexpress the private. In the age of modern peoplehood—when membership in an ethnonationalgroup is at once legally mandated and emotionally indispensable—it is not surprising that extant
nations should be the principal predicates of identity claims. For Zainichi, it left three plausible
identity possibilities in the postwar period: North Korean, South Korean, or Japanese. The
implausibility of return, the obstacle of naturalization, and the naturalness of nationalism madeother solutions politically infeasible or conceptually anomalous. Zainichi identity arose as theZainichi population transcended the division of the homeland and the binary of Korea and Japan.

Zainichi Koreans: The Past, the Present and the Future128

The inevitable instability and complexity of identity
paradoxically generate expressions of ethnic fundamentalism:
the notion that one’s ethnic background should disclose
profound and meaningful truths about oneself. It would bebizarre to believe that one’s peoplehood background was
irrelevant; the country, the people, and the life produced the self
for which any expression cannot possibly expunge them. The
condition of disrecognition tempts the disrecognized to reverse
the imputed, indubitably pejorative attributes and to crystallize
them as the memory of the struggle itself and the essentialist
template of recognition. What remains in the first instance is therecollected and rehearsed history of disrecognition and thestruggle for emancipation. Furthermore, just as Japanesedisrecognition of Koreans portrayed them in the general, thePacchigi: recapturing in film the
Korean recognition of themselves capture themselves in thebrighter moments of the Zainichi
general, though the substantive judgments are antipodal. Thus,
decades of disrecognitionsome Zainichi would articulate a short litany of essential
Zainichi-ness, such as the history of enforced migration and thereality of discrimination, which constitute what I call Zainichi ideology: the flip side of Japanesedisrecognition and a generalized solution to the question of Zainichi identity.
The quest for a simple and fixed notion—the desire for definitiveness and certitude—is no lesscommon among social scientists. Consider the straitjacket of identity offered in the mostelaborate Anglophone social-scientific work on Zainichi: De Vos and Lee claim that Koreans inJapan “tend to feel more conflict about committing themselves to any purpose,” but several
pages earlier they assert that “Koreans in Japan have responded to their present conditions by anethnic consolidation not dissimilar . . . to . . . the black American population.” Elsewhere they
write: “The maintenance of Korean identity invariably implies some conflict over assumption or
avoidance of responsibility and guilt.” This would apply to virtually any group. Beyond
contradictory assertions and banal generalizations, they note that “the family relationships
themselves become bonds of aggressive displacement, of mute frustration, and of inescapable
ignominy. The family is not a haven but a place of alienation.” One may quote the poet Philip
Larkin —”They fuck you up, your mum and dad. / They may not mean to, but they do”—as areminder that family alienation is commonplace, but De Vos and Lee blithely assert its specificattribution to Zainichi.

Lie: Zainichi Recognitions

129

Zainichi population, 1910-present.
Figures exclude Korean residents who became naturalized Japanese citizens

The condition of possibility of Zainichi identity was the transcendence of the two received
binaries: the stark choice between repatriation (exile) or naturalization (assimilation), and theconflicting allegiances to North and South. That is, ethnic Koreans in Japan regarded Japan as
home, rather than as a place of exile, and tended to conceive of themselves as a coherent entity.
As a form of diasporic nationalism, Zainichi ideology fractured precisely at the point of its
crystallization.
Discriminated Fingers and Lost Names
By the early 1980s Zainichi had become a “problem” that was no longer ignored outright or
discussed sotto voce. As books and articles on Zainichi proliferated, the anti-fingerprinting (orfingerprinting refusal) movement sought to transform the gaze of disrecognition to that ofrecognition. Recognition entailed not only distinction—the categorical autonomy of Zainichifrom Japanese and Koreans—but also connection—the solidarity of diasporic Koreans in Japan.
That is, recognition at once cleaved Zainichi from Korea and Japan (repatriation or
naturalization) and allowed Zainichi to cleave together. Zainichi movements and discourses
transformed the population into a peoplehood identity that was also acknowledged and acceptedby Japanese people.
The anti-fingerprinting movement began with a “one-man rebellion” by the Zainichi Tokyo
resident Han Chongsok in September 1980. The narrow contention was that forced fingerprinting[shimon onatsu] during alien registration was a violation of human rights and dignity. The wider
concern was the systematic discrimination against Zainichi and other non-ethnic Japanese people
in Japan. If Pak Chonsok’s suit against employment discrimination by Hitachi had opened thepossibility of legal struggles to combat disrecognition, then the anti-fingerprinting movement
denoted its popular political realization.

Zainichi Koreans: The Past, the Present and the Future

130

For Zainichi and other long-term foreign residents in Japan, a passport was necessary to navigate
life within Japan: the Certificate of Alien Registration [gaitosho]. Often reviled as “dog tags,”
Zainichi noncompliance frequently led to harassment and even arrest by police officers. As one
Zainichi man told me in the mid-1980s: “One thing I hate most about being Zainichi is the fearof police harassment. If I forget my ‘dog tag,’ then I am a goner [hotoke, or Buddha].” In a
scatological scene in Yan Sogiru’s Takushu kyosokyoku [Taxi rhapsody, 1981], a barroom brawl
ends in a police arrest. After finding two ethnic Koreans without their certificates, police officers
threaten them with arrest and deportation. One of the Zainichi men ponders: “The memory,
attentiveness, and behavior themselves of Zainichi are already seen as criminal.” The othermerely daubs his fresh defecation over all the police files: Zainichi shit over bureaucraticbullshit.
The certificate was a reminder at once of Zainichi criminality and illegitimacy. The mandatory
nature of the “dog tag” and the literally incriminating character of fingerprinting were often at
the forefront of Zainichi consciousness as emblems of Japanese disrecognition. The Japanese
authorities claimed the authority of science—Henry Faulds had developed the first classificatory
system of fingerprinting while working in Japan—to justify fingerprinting for identification
purposes. The inevitable question was why Zainichi needed to be identified beyond the ways inwhich ethnic Japanese were identified. The all-too-common answer pointed at once to theJapanese presumption of Korean criminality and the Zainichi presumption of Japanese tyranny.
Han Chongsok, the “one-man rebel,” observed that the Alien Registration Law was “nothing but
an instrument to suppress Zainichi.”
The growing incidence of civil disobedience—refusing to be fingerprinted during alien
registration—generated media coverage and even popular debate. As one middle-aged Japanese
woman said at the time: “If Koreans don’t like discrimination, then why don’t they
[fingerprinting refuseniks] go home?” The compelling xenophobic logic had been shared by themainline ethnic organizations. The acceptance of Zainichi status as foreign explains in large partthe general compliance with forced fingerprinting in particular and the alien registration law ingeneral. Coming to terms with their present and future in Japan, however, some Zainichi, withothers sympathetic to their cause and to general human rights and dignity, engaged in thesymbolic and legal struggle to resist the fingerprinting. Attending several rallies to support thefingerprinting refusal movement in the mid-1980s, I was struck most by the preponderance of
second- and third-generation Zainichi in their twenties and thirties. Most of them said that they
were seeking at once to eradicate their shame—being a member of an inferior group or hiding
one’s ancestry—and to assert their ethnic pride as Zainichi.
The anti-fingerprinting movement generated momentum through the 1980s, gaining the supportof the major ethnic organizations. Ethnic Korean organizations in Japan began tentatively toengage with diasporic concerns from the 1970s. In the last three months of 1983, Mindan waged
a campaign that collected 1.8 million signatures—90 percent of them by ethnic Japanese—
protesting the fingerprinting. Soren also entered the campaign. Eminent Zainichi intellectuals,
such as Kim Sokpom, became “refuseniks.” Kim stressed the unification of Korea as the ultimate
goal, but the momentum of the movement prompted him to participate in a domestic ethnic
movement.

Lie: Zainichi Recognitions

131

The resistance to fingerprinting was bound up withother means of asserting ethnic existence. As early as
the late 1960s there were sporadic initiatives to use
ethnic Korean names in Osaka, and individual“comings-out”—to use one’s “real name” [honmyo]
instead of Japanese name [tsumei]—occurred
throughout the 1970s. As a 1970s pamphlet stated,“the use of tsumei itself is clearly a form of ethnic
discrimination.” Arguing against the practical benefits
Mindan-organized anti-fingerprinting rally of of passing, activists sought not only to promote ethnic
15,000 at outdoor Hibiya Hall, Tokyo in 1983 pride but also to extirpate discrimination. The “realname” initiative marked the limits of passing in the
struggle for recognition. As one man told me, he decided to use his real, Korean name in highschool because he wanted to claim pride in his ancestry. Son Puja reclaimed her “real name” asshe became involved in a Kawasaki group to fight ethnic discrimination. For most ethnic
Koreans, “coming out” would occur either at graduation from high school or at college, whereethnic groups and friends, as well as progressive climate, would encourage and support “realname declaration” [honmyo sengen]. Another dimension of the “real name declaration”
movement was the use of Korean pronunciation. In 1975, a Zainichi minister requested the
Korean reading of his Korean name, but NHK, the main television network, refused and used theJapanese reading. It was only in 1983 when the South Korean singer Cho Yong-p’il was
introduced by that name that NHK had relented from its rigid practice of using the Japanesereading of Chinese characters in Korean names.
The “real name” initiative was diffuse and sporadic; its first organizational manifestation
appeared belatedly in 1985 when the Association to Take Back Ethnic Names [Minzokumei oTorimodosukai] was formed in Osaka. One of its members exemplifies some of the backgroundthat spurred Zainichi activists in both the anti-fingerprinting and “real name” movements. Pak Sil
was born in Kyoto in 1944. Haunted by discrimination and passing in Japan, he believed that
Korea signified inferiority. His sister’s job offer was rescinded after her school reported her
Korean name to the company. In order to marry his Japanese girlfriend, he was naturalized.
Learning about Japanese imperialism, he realized that he had committed a major fault[ayamachi] and betrayed his mother. After his child was born, he decided to assert his Korean
identity. “Nationality is Japanese, name is Japanese, I didn’t know Korean, and I don’t know thetaste of kimchi. I have nothing in the form of ethnicity.” He therefore resolved to learn the
Korean language and to participate in Korean cultural activities. Although other Zainichi did not
welcome him—he was even accused of being a spy—he participated in the movement to use
ethnic names as Japanese. By 1987 he won a court victory to use his Korean name. Pak Sil
thereby achieved the hitherto oxymoronic idea of being a Japanese citizen with a Korean name.
Similarly, in 1989, Yun Choja, who had grown up with her Japanese mother’s name as aJapanese citizen, won the right to use an ethnic name: “If there were no discrimination, my father
would have been legally married and I would have my father’s surname. . . . Because there wasdiscrimination, I became a ‘bastard’ [shiseiji] and was given Japanese koseki [household
registry; and effectively nationality].”
The mid-1980s ethnic political mobilization capped at least a decade’s worth of the Zainichi civilrights movement. If Pak’s 1970 employment discrimination suit was the first well-publicized use

Zainichi Koreans: The Past, the Present and the Future132

of legal mechanisms to protect and advance Zainichi rights, it was followed by Kim Kyongdok’s
effort to become an attorney and Kim Hyondon’s struggle to receive the national pension, denied
to Koreans on the ground that they lacked citizenship. There were other, less-heralded attempts
to protect and promote ethnic Koreans’ rights and benefits in Japan, from the establishment of
Seikyosha in Kawasaki in the 1970s to the rise of the “rights and benefits” movement by Mindan
in the late 1970s. Numerous local initiatives—ranging from Osaka teachers’ 1971 proclamation
against ethnic discrimination and assimilationist education to progressive local authorities’attempts to ensure access to welfare benefits and public housing in the mid-1970s)—boundconcerned Japanese citizens with ethnic Korean individuals and organizations. By the early
1980s, Osaka, with the highest concentration of Zainichi, among other local authorities, started
to hire Korean nationals for civil service positions—a right that was denied immediately after theend of the war.
Along with the anti-fingerprinting movement and the effort touse Korean names, some sought to create a Koreatown—
emulating Chinatowns and Koreatowns in the United States—in Kawasaki, whereas others sought to win local suffragerights for Zainichi. Each step of the way, the Zainichi legal
and political struggle for legitimacy and recognition pricked
the conscience of ethnic Koreans and ethnic Japanese.
Zainichi disrecognition in Japanese public life was clearly inretreat by the 1980s.
Zainichi Ideology
In the context of ethnic ferment, there was something close toa party line that emerged in the 1970s that I call Zainichi
ideology. Informed by an internal critique of Soren ideology –the ideology of return – it sought to supplant the ideology that
Koreatown in Osaka
had dominated the Zainichi population in the 1950s and1960s. The notion that Zainichi constituted a relatively
autonomous community was alien to the dominant ethnic organization’s homeland orientation,
which was a systematic misrecognition of Zainichi actuality. The disjuncture is encapsulated in
the question of language. Against Soren’s espousal of the mother tongue, the primary languageof the postwar Zainichi population had always been Japanese, as evinced by early postwar ethnic
Korean literary periodicals such as Chosen bungei and Minshu bungei. The subjugation ofliterature to politics, which included the question of language, incited some of the earliest
resistance to Soren by the late 1950s, for instance among writers around the journal Jindare.
Kikan sanzenri continued in spirit the work of Jindare, but these critics’ intellectual formationand ethnonational worldview were profoundly shaped by Soren and would leave their mark in
Zainichi ideology. Like its leading proponents, men of the left such as Kim Sokpom and Lee
Hoesung, Zainichi ideology retained a strong link to the North Korean homeland even as it cameto embrace and at times celebrate the Zainichi population’s place in Japan.
Zainichi ideology fractured almost from the moment it crystallized not only because of theimpossibility of formulating an essentialized identity but also because it was an intellectual
construct that faced the withering criticism of rapid obsolescence and ultimate irrelevance. As a
product of parthenogenesis—albeit with the long genealogy of Soren and ex-Soren

Lie: Zainichi Recognitions

133

intellectuals—it was disengaged not only from the dominant ethnic organizations but also fromthe experiences and longings of the people who sought to counter Japanese disrecognition, suchas those who participated actively in the fingerprinting refusal movement and the ethnic namemovement. Zainichi ideologists retained faith in intellectuals as the secret legislators andrepresentatives of the people when it was no longer fashionable or viable to do so in Japaneselife.
Let me discuss the work of Yoon Keun Cha, born in 1944, because of its systematic andparadigmatic character. In “Zainichi” o ikirutowa [To live as Zainichi, 1992], Yoon locates theappearance of the very term Zainichi in the late 1970s. It “has been recognized as a particular
philosophy [shiso], demonstrating a young generation’s way of living and ideology, including
historical meaning.” As “the historical product of Japanese rule of colonial Korea,” that meaning
is in a chronicle of vexing events from colonial rule, the division of the homeland, and the
Korean War: “Up to today it is unhappiness itself. For the second- and third-generation Zainichiof today, the suffering and the sadness of poverty, losing the family, the inability to meet
departed parents again constitute the heartache, which is nothing but ‘chagrin’ [kuyashisa].” Ascolonial subjects and their descendants, Zainichi belong to the category of oppressed Third
World people. Bereft of a stable home and a place of repose, they are also “liminal people”[kyokaijin]. After criticizing Soren and the unsavory character of South Korea in the 1960s and1970s, he bemoans the division not only of the homeland but Zainichi society.
Yoon defines the first generation as those “who spent their childhood in Korea and came to
Japan before the defeat of Japan in August 1945. . . . In essence, the major part of their spiritual
formation was ‘Korea,’ and not ‘Japan’ as ‘imperial subject.’“ The first generation was definedby “anti-Japanese sentiments of the colonial period” and “strong ethnic consciousness.”
Reprising the received Zainichi historiography—itself pioneered by intellectuals critical ofSoren—he characterizes Koreans in colonial Japan as being “pushed into the context of absolute
discrimination in terms of ethnicity and class. . . [as] low-waged workers at the very bottom ofJapanese society.” Japan, in short, was “hell.” Living in Korean ghettoes [Chosenjin buraku]—
he identifies the first-generation as “the period of ‘Korean ghetto’“—they longed for theancestral homeland but lived with “discrimination and oppression.” The heroic narrative begins,then, from their suffering and “naked labor” and supported by the philosophy [shiso] of “worktwice or thrice as hard as Japanese, don’t give in to discrimination, protect your rights, let’screate school, let’s unify homeland.” For them, “ancestral land [sokoku] or ethnicity, Heimat[kokyo], family were dream and hope. . . . That’s all they had.” In fact, many equated ethnicorganization, especially Soren, with ethnicity and homeland. Although he acknowledges
diversity—the Japanized Koreans who supported the Japanese war effort and theentrepreneurially successful Mindan members—he is committed to the singular narrative of
exploitation, suffering, and resistance. He can only describe the first-generation Zainichi “whowere forced to remain in Japan” as having led lives of serious “suffering in the situation ofJapanese political and economic confusion.” When he points to the problems of the Zainichi
community, such as patriarchy and the dysfunctional family, he is quick to trace their cause to
Japanese imperialism.

Zainichi Koreans: The Past, the Present and the Future

134

Generational transition began in the early 1970s. The idea of“to live as Zainichi” criticized the first generation’s
homeland orientation and emerged as a self-conscious
appellation in the late 1970s. Recognizing that there was no
realistic possibility of return in the immediate future yetinsisting on the impossibility of naturalization, Yoon had
earlier advocated a “permanent” status of permanent
residency. Neither Japanese nor Korean, Zainichi constitute a
relatively autonomous diasporic culture. The category of thediaspora is appealing precisely because it points to thepossibility of an independent existence. Zainichi ideology,
then, is a form of diasporic nationalism.
Yoon is acutely conscious of the economic and social
diversity of younger Zainichi and their contrast to the first
generation: better educated but largely ignorant of the
Korean language, increasingly atomized and fragmented
Chi to Hone: Rethinking therather than being concentrated in the Korean ghettoes, andpatriarchal undercurrent of firstgeneration Zainichimuch more diverse than the largely monochromatic first
generation. He speculates that Zainichi consciousness isbased less on genealogy or tradition and more on the “strongly rooted discrimination of Japanesesociety.”“To live as ‘Zainichi’ is to live in opposition to discrimination,” though he again traces
its cause to Japanese imperialism.
Yoon fears the lure of assimilation, especially for the thirdgeneration. Whether for Lee Yangji or Kyo Nobuko, ethnicity
pales in significance to the self that is common to both
Japanese and Koreans. By ignoring the essentially historicaland political character of Zainichi existence, he argues that thethird-generation philosophy strengthens the exclusionary
character of Japan. Rather, it is imperative to incorporate the“consciousness of misfortune” [fugo no ishiki]: thepopulation’s origins in Japanese imperialism and its
destination in Korean unification.
Unification of the two Koreas and of the Zainichi population
remains the essential goal for Zainichi in particular andKoreans in general. Some Zainichi intellectuals insist on the
category Chosen as a nationality. As Kim Sokpom argues,
unification is the “ultimate task” of Zainichi and the advocacyof Chosen nationality is an expression of the Zainichi
commitment to unified Korea. Knowing full well that such a
Yoon Keun Cha
country does not exist, a character in Lee Hoesung’s story“Ikitsumodoritsu” admits that it is “simply a sign,” but one
that seeks to “transcend the era of division [bundan jidai]. The commitment to unification intheory is in turn related to greater ideals that were once associated with Marxism andcommunism, such as peace and progress. Rather grandiosely, Zainichi ideology strives for theethnic sublime: the desire for praxis and ultimate universalism.

Lie: Zainichi Recognitions

135

In summary, Yoon suggests two basic preconditions for being Zainichi: first, “to think about themeaning of being Zainichi, to protect the pride of ethnicity, and strive to gain citizens’ rights”;
and, second, “to be involved in some way in unification.” To be Zainichi means to reflect on
Zainichi-ness and to seek unification: to retain historical memory and critique of Japaneseimperialism, to sustain oppositional consciousness that is tantamount to anti-Japanesesentiments, and to resist assimilation and naturalization. Zainichi ideology inherited the Soren
critique of Japanese imperialism and fervent essentialist ethnonationalism, but rejected its
partisan loyalty to the North and homeland orientation.
Yoon’s formulation of Zainichi ideology does not command universal assent, but many of his
points were reiterated by leading Zainichi intellectuals in the last quarter of the twentiethcentury. An overview of Zainichi history, for example, discusses the “common consciousness”
forged by the historical experience of liberation and independence, the shared desire to repatriate
and to build a new country, and the overarching goal of unification. Beyond a consensus on
Zainichi historiography—the narrative of forced migration, exploitation and discrimination, andheroic resistance—there are shared political goals. In seeking an alternative beyond repatriation(at least in the short run) and assimilation, the impetus is to create, promote, and protect a distinct
Zainichi culture. Sustaining ethnocultural pride means rejecting repatriation and assimilation.
Zainichi Ideology and Its Discontents
Zainichi ideology is a form of diasporic nationalism. Like Japanese or South Korean monoethnic
nationalism, it envisions the ethnonational group as homogeneous. The conflation of theindividual and the collective—ontogeny recapitulating phylogeny—and the inevitably politicalnature of Zainichi existence that legitimate propounders and protectors of Zainichi identity toprescribe and proscribe Zainichi belief and action.
As an ethnic imperative, Zainichi ideology defines the terms and theories of Zainichi identity.
Private meditations necessarily draw on historically and sociologically given categories andconcepts. The very prevalence of Zainichi identity rests on the dissemination of Zainichi as acategory of both population and thought. There are, then, inevitably ethnic entrepreneurs or
identity intellectuals who propose what it means to a representative member of the proposedgroup. They are tuteurs of the people: at once teaching them and protecting them. Inventors andguardians of identity prescribe and proscribe actions and beliefs, even going so far as to judge
who belongs to the group in the name of the people. In the case of formal organizations such as
Soren, there were explicit norms and institutional means to mandate conformity. Dissidents werereprimanded and even expelled. In the case of Zainichi ideology, however, there were no formalorganizations to articulate beliefs or to supervise behavior. Instead, identity intellectuals spoke
and wrote on behalf of their co-ethnics to the mainstream Japanese media and organizations,which in turn purveyed their ideas to the co-ethnic audience. Zainichi ideology was widely
discussed and disseminated in informal clubs and groups or by isolated individual readers, mostfrequently in universities. The declining hold of the mainline ethnic organizations generated an
audience to receive the reformed ideology of Zainichi identity.

Zainichi Koreans: The Past, the Present and the Future

136

In promoting diasporic nationalism, Zainichi ideology
erects a prison-house of Zainichi-ness, a collective
confinement to ethnic essentialism. Beyond establishing
the fundamental pillars of Zainichi identity, it also
projects an idealized Zainichi self that mirrors Zainichi
historiography: the dialectics of oppression andresistance, poverty and struggle. It also prescribes, like
Soren ideology, cultural nationalism, such as learning
Korean language, history, and culture, and retains
instinctive suspicion of Japan and discourages
assimilation.
Whatever the individual articulation of the ideal Zainichi
self, it is clear that many fell short of it. It was something
Dear Pyongyang: an award-winningof a common sense among Zainichi in the 1970s anddocumentary that is part of areconsideration of Zainichi affinity
1980s that there was a natural hierarchy. In one
toward North Korea
classification, the top are the activists, with a commandof Korean; the middle are those with ethnic pride and aknowledge of Zainichi history and ideology; and the bottom are the vast majority, with Japanesenames. In one of Lee Yangji’s earliest essays, she writes of “not knowing true poverty, theshame of not knowing.” Reminiscent of Simone Weil, Lee in fact confesses her deviation fromwhat she takes to be the prototypical Zainichi experience of poverty and discrimination that she
missed as a middle-class, naturalized Japanese girl. Even as Zainichi may have faced harassment
from classmates or police officers, the specter of Panchoppari—of being incomplete, or failed,Zainichi—weighed heavily, at times forcefully pounded in by bullying fellow Zainichi students
at Soren schools. Many Zainichi, in effect, failed to be Korean or Zainichi. Language was aninsurmountable hurdle for many. The second-generation Zainichi Kim Hiro, who “speaks
Japanese better than Japanese” but did not know any Korean, regarded his “generation” as a“deformity.” If the Korean language proved to be an unrealistic parameter of Zainichi-ness, thenthe critical criteria were the adoption of one’s ethnic name and the resistance to naturalization.
The presumption that any “decent” Zainichi should use one’s Korean name led the critic Takeda
Seiji to use a Japanese pseudonym: his act of resistance to Zainichi ideology. Kyo Nobuko foundthe argument against naturalizatio—the impossibility of maintaining ethnic Korean, or Zainichi,
identity as a Japanese citizen—deeply problematic.
Zainichi ideology valorizes and validates some people at the expense of others. Prewar, proJapanese ethnic Koreans are uniformly reviled, as are those who do not condemn the evils ofJapanese imperialism. Ethnic Koreans who have become Japanese citizens are also beyond thepale. Just as the postwar ethnic Korean organizations sought to distance themselves from thecrimes of Ri Chin’u and Kim Hiro, Zainichi ideologists criticize or exclude those who do not fit
into their scheme of Zainichi history and identity. The hold of Zainichi ideology can be seen in
the received understanding of Zainichi literature, which almost always excludes the author
Yasumoto Sueko, even though her Nianchan (1958) is the book by a Zainichi writer on Zainichi
life that has reached the largest Japanese readership. Japanese literary scholars, to be sure, makea cardinal distinction between “pure” [jun] and “popular” [taisho] literature; Nianchan, if only
because of its vast readership, is not really literature in this line of thinking which valorizes theLie: Zainichi Recognitions

137“pure”. Yet it is nonetheless surprising to find a systematic effacement of the best-selling
postwar book by a Zainichi author.
Much the same can be said about Ijuin
Shizuka’s Bildungsroman Kaikyo
trilogy [Strait, 1991–2000]. Althoughpeopled by non-Japanese charactersand written by a self-identified ethnic
Korean, Ijuin’s oeuvre is usually
excluded from the discussion of
Zainichi literature because of its
overtly apolitical nature and popularorientation. The mystery writer Rei Ra
is similarly excluded from the ambit ofZainichi literature. The valorization of
the political and the collective
eschewed the stress on the personal
and the private: hence, the critical
From the film of Nianchan
praise for the work of Kim Sokpom
and Lee Hoesung over that of Kin Kakuei. Not surprisingly, the champion of Kin’s work has
been Takeda Seiji, a self-conscious rebel against Zainichi ideology. Yet those who remained
faithful to Soren, such as Yi Unjik (1967–68) and his epic trilogy on the politics of Korean
liberation, are also neglected. Narrow is the gate to Zainichi-ness.
As a form of diasporic nationalism, Zainichi ideology, like
Soren ideology, rejects the category of ethnic minority.
Soren ideology postulated that ethnic Koreans were torepatriate. Zainichi ideology does not share the ideologyof return (at least in the short run) but it also rejects Japanas Heimat. Indeed, anti-Japanese sentiments may be more
fiercely expressed among Zainichi ideologists than Soren
ideologists, presumably because Soren ideology beckoned
Zainichi to look to North Korea whereas Zainichi ideology
forces Zainichi to consider Japan as a more or lesspermanent domicile. Kim Sokpom regarded anti-Japanesesentiments as a critical pillar of his life philosophy. Suh
Kyung Sik characterizes Zainichi as “half” refugees in thetitle of his book. Elsewhere, he categorizes them as“nation” rather than “ethnicity.” Beyond the conceptual
Ijuin: Some best-selling authors are selfidentified Zainichi, but somehow fail to be confusion, the category of ethnic minority is rejected inorder to avoid the incorporation of Zainichi in Japanese
included in the canon of Zainichi
literaturesociety. Yet the ideological resistance faces therecalcitrant reality of cultural assimilation. The similar
distance between ideology and reality can be seen in Zainichi ideology’s valorization ofunification.
The misrecognition characteristic of Zainichi ideology, with its essentialist categories, extends to
its genealogy and development. Generational distinctions and transitions are Zainichi clichés,Zainichi Koreans: The Past, the Present and the Future

138

which of course means that the thesis has a grain of truth. Most obviously, first-generation
Zainichi with roots to the Korean peninsula—and the mastery of Korean language—aredifferentiated from second-generation Zainichi without any experience growing up in Korea or
having Korean as the natal tongue. Yet these schematic classifications obfuscate more thanilluminate. Kim Dalsu, born in colonial Korea in 1919, in fact had no choice but to write inJapanese. Kim Sokpom was born only six years later but in Osaka. Though Lee Hoesung and
Kin Kakuei are coevals—born in 1935 and 1938, respectively—their attitudes toward ethnic
identification could hardly be called alike. Kin presciently pointed to a position beyond
repatriation or naturalization and uncannily illuminated the instability or even the impossibilityof solid and stable identity. At the same time, Lee Hoesung sounded nationalist and socialist
tunes. Yet one does not necessarily reprise youthful melodies. By the mid-1990s, Lee registeredcompletely different notes, singing paeans to diasporic solidarity. A few years later, he became anaturalized South Korean. Yan Sogiru’s thinly veiled fictional double muses, “I was born inJapan, a second-generation Zainichi who grew up in Japan,” but is baffled to be taken as a firstgeneration figure. He concedes that perhaps he is close to the first generation, though he does not
speak Korean well and feels viscerally different from them. Concrete but fluctuating selfconceptions and the inevitable diversity of the population hew poorly to the line of Zainichi-ness
adumbrated by Zainichi ideology.
Zainichi Ideology, Zainichi Diversity
Against diversity and dynamism, Zainichi ideology posed a party line that was impervious todeviations and transformations in Zainichi thinking about themselves and their places in Japan.
Quite simply, the majority of the Zainichi by the late 1970s did not belong to Soren; they also
had little interest in homeland politics. The modal Zainichi existence by then was not one ofpathetic poverty and corrosive disrecognition. Far from being a solidaristic and homogeneous
population, Zainichi were separated and diverse.
Ancestry is a rather thin and fragile basis to build an identity and a culture. Hence, the stressremained very much on imagined commonalities, such as the history of enforced migration, thesociology of ethnic discrimination, and the political ideal of unification. Yet a more solid, thickfoundation for identification was lacking. In the prewar period, Korean language was the lingua
franca among immigrants who lived in relatively isolated communities. In the immediate
postwar decades, ethnic organizations, especially Soren, provided the infrastructure to protect
their rights or facilitate sociality and uplift. By the 1970s, however, language or community,
religion or culture did not unite ethnic Koreans. Hence the importance of clinging to shards ofthe remembered past and the declining but undeniable reality of discrimination constituted
Zainichi solidarity. Yet the path of ex-Soren intellectuals and movement participants was often
orthogonal to that of the silent majority who were neither professional intellectuals nor
committed activists. There is more: whereas the Soren leadership could legitimate, whether
through North Korea or itself, its right to represent the membership (and at a stretch the Zainichi
population), there was no compelling rationale for Zainichi ideologists to represent the Zainichi
population. Those who grew up before the war were, with some frequency, unschooled and even
illiterate. They may be highly articulate and eloquent but, whether by inclination, habit, or force,
they rarely expressed their idiosyncratic outlooks ahead of those of the mainline ethnicorganizations. In contrast, those who came of age in the 1960s and later were not only schooled
and literate but—sharing in the prevailing Japanese belief in democratic rights and individual

Lie: Zainichi Recognitions

139

dignity—were willing and capable of expressing their own views. They could and did represent
themselves.
Recent Zainichi narratives corroborate the systematic deviation of Zainichi voices from Zainichi
ideology. They are exemplary not in the sense of expressing a random or representative sample,
or of being the best and the most noble expressions of Zainichi people, but, rather, because they
articulate individual experiences without excessive recourse to preconceived categories or
received formulas.
Hwang Mingi grew up in a poor area of Osaka notable for a concentration of ethnic Koreans.
Living in a tenement house [nagaya] in an ethnic enclave, his family and their neighbors
experienced a strong sense of community, remarkably devoid of a sense of victimization or ofwhat some social scientists call the culture of poverty. He is critical of poverty tourists, who
portray the Korean neighborhood as a site of otherness. Beyond the conglomeration of ethnic
Koreans, unlike Chinatown in Yokohama or Harlem in New York, “the town has no special
characteristics.” For him, the area is simply where he grew up and for which he has fondmemories.
Hwang nowhere discusses his Korean or Zainichi identity, but his childhood cannot be
understood apart from the situation and concern of the Zainichi population. The news of the 1958
Komatsugawa Incident deeply disturbs his father, and affects him and his buddies enough to stopthem when they see the image of Ri Chin’u on television in the streets. Teachers in his school
appear to know the real (Korean) names of Hwang and his friends, even though they use
Japanese names. Although the four “heroes” of his childhood are all ethnic Koreans—”Queen”
Misora Hibari (singer), “Emperor” Kaneda Masaichi (baseball star), “Don” Yanagigawa Jiro (alocal yakuza boss), and “Japan’s brilliant star” Rikidozan (wrestling champion)—they are notexplicitly identified as being of Korean descent. It is difficult to discern whether they are heroes
because of their Korean ethnicity, or because they are able to succeed in “ordinary” Japanesesociety in spite of their ethnicity. Certainly, the fact of Korean descent marks the lives of Hwang
and his friends. One boyhood acquaintance takes part in the repatriation project, another commits
suicide (possibly over the breakup of a relationship, which may have been due to his Korean
descent), and yet another joins an ethnic Korean yakuza.

Legendary enka singer, Misora
Hibari

Nonetheless, Zainichi life is immersed in the larger Japanesesociety. Popular culture references in fact would not havedistinguished Hwang and his friends from most other Japaneseyouths at the time. They constantly talk about the popularsuperhero series Gekko kamen [Moonlight mask] andHollywood movies and stars such as Elizabeth Taylor andAudrey Hepburn. Explicitly Korean names and events are“foreign” to them: the North Korean Foreign Minister Nam Il
becomes “nameru” [to lick or, as slang, to make fun of]. Even
the adoration of violence and the allure of gang life give way
to the valorization of the intellect and educational attainment
in the context of “the extinction of ‘dirtiness’ and ‘poverty’“ inthe neighborhood in particular and Japan in general during theera of rapid economic growth. From their seemingly
unpromising beginnings as juvenile delinquents, some ofZainichi Koreans: The Past, the Present and the Future

140

Hwang’s friends become successful: one becomes a medical doctor, Hwang becomes an“intellectual of sorts.” As one of his friends tells Hwang: “At the funeral, I felt first that I am not
Korean [Chosenjin]. And confirmed that I don’t want to and couldn’t die like my father. . . . I
haven’t chosen Japan. I merely ceased being Korean [Kankokujin].”Having come of age in the late 1950s, Hwang and his friends are unquestionably Zainichi, evenas meditations on Zainichi identity remain peripheral. He claims that he is far from special; he
was neither physically powerful nor intellectually brilliant. His childhood is characterized byexperiences of boyhood solidarity—jokes and pranks. Growing up in an ethnic neighborhood, heexperiences Korean and Japanese people and cultures. Yet when he returns to his hometown, hefinds massive changes in the neighborhood, which is replete with “new Zainichi from South
Korea and Japanese people with Korean interests.” This disappearance of the past is the
background of Gen Getsu’s “Kage no sumika” [The habitat of shadows, 1999], where thepatriarch is one of the few prewar Koreans left and the past is literally crumbling. Yet, as Hwang
realizes, what remains are uncertain recollections: “I learned that my memory of place names,
personal names, and of the time was almost completely unreliable.”
Unlike Hwang, Kyo Nobuko was reared in an affluent Yokohama household. As a child, she had
virtually no knowledge of the Korean language, very little familiarity with Korean culture, andlittle contact with other ethnic Koreans. Celebrating New Year’s Day with her ethnic Japanesehusband, she can only count the Korean-style rice cake and a diluted form of ancestor worship[chesa] as marks of her Koreanness. She cannot, for example, answer elementary questions
about Korean culture. She cannot, for that matter, eat “authentic” (i.e., spicy) Korean food.
Kyo cannot but ponder the meaning of being Zainichi (more accurately, Zainichi Kankokujin,
associated with South Korea), but in temporally distinct ways. She harbored distinct emotional
reactions to her ethnic identity. As a child, she was thrilled to learn that she was a “foreigner,”but by the time she reached fourth grade she reckoned: “Perhaps it is a bad thing that I am
Korean. Perhaps I should hide it.” She was never bullied in school, but she used a Japanesename. When her classmate suspects that she may be of Korean descent, she lies about being“mixed-blooded” [haafu], from a Korean father and Japanese mother. Slightly later, she begins
to “avoid and forget” about South Korea and “becomes angry at Japanese.” By the time she is inhigh school, she feels close to, but “fears that she would be beaten up” by fellow ethnic Korean
high-school students. At the University of Tokyo, she uses her Korean name and becomesinterested in Korean affairs and culture. However, she is alienated from the prevailingenthusiasm for Marxism, nationalism, and the “deification” of ethnicity. She disagrees with other
Zainichi students who advocate unification and condemn assimilation.
Kyp’s narrative places her apart from Koreans, Japanese, and Zainichi. She becomes “consciousof the long distance between South Korea and her” when she realizes that “surprisingly, the placename of my grandfather’s place of origin has disappeared.” She is ignorant of both North andSouth Korea; both are “foreign countries.” She is comfortable in Japan but she can neither shed
the past—stories of Japanese misdeeds toward South Koreans that her grandmother told her—nor stop worrying about the future—such as the possibility of worsening Japanese–South Korean
relations. In between, her friends drop derogatory comments about Zainichi. She finds herself introuble when she confronts the authorities without her Certificate of Alien Registration. Her
desire to become a teacher is dashed when she realizes that non-Japanese nationals are excluded
from the profession. She faces employment discrimination despite her stellar academic record asLie: Zainichi Recognitions

141

a graduate of the prestigious Law Faculty at the University of Tokyo. As much as she feels close
to her ethnic Japanese husband, she is aware of how ignorant he is—and, by extension, otherethnic Japanese are—about such Zainichi issues as employment discrimination. Yet she cannot
identify with other Zainichi students, especially those who are proud of their “ethnicity”[minzoku]. One of them exclaims: “I cannot forgive those who naturalize. They are not humanbeings. They shouldn’t live.” She is aware that some Zainichi believe that, along withnaturalization, “marrying Japanese is to betray ethnicity,” but she hesitates only briefly before
marrying her Japanese husband.
Kyo’s “policy is to live naturally without hiding my Zainichi status.” And she insists on thedesirability of living “normally” [futsu]. “It is not my style to raise my voice in protest or to live
quietly without saying anything. I don’t pretend to be Japanese, and I don’t stress my ethnicity. I
want to lead an ordinary life in Japan as Zainichi.” She goes so far as to regard her group as a“new species of humanity,” despite her alienation from many other Zainichi youths. At one
point, she regards the difference in their nationality as something akin to “being tall, looking
good in green, having an extroverted personality.” Her attempt to downplay ethnic distance or tolive “normally” [futsu] is problematic. If nothing else, her Tokyo University diploma makes hereven more distinct from ordinary Japanese people than the fact of her Korean descent. She
nonetheless insists on her identity as a not particularly exceptional individual. As in the title ofher book, she is an “ordinary Zainichi,” although she considers herself to be quite different fromother Zainichi college students.
Yu Miri’s 1997 narrative Mizube no yurikago [Cradle by the waterside] begins in doubt and ends
by affirming the fictive nature of the past. She is born into a family of secrets; she is not sure ofher father’s age or whether her mother was born in Japan. Her parents’ past is a “dark tunnel”
that is closed on both ends by “silence.” Her family life, which is a constant theme in her plays
and stories, was tempestuous—a violent father, a mother who runs off with another man—but
she acknowledges that she was loved by parents, even incurring her sister’s envy. She grew up
playing with Rika-chan dolls (Japanese Barbie dolls), but her childhood was marked by her
exclusion from group life. Other pupils bullied her from early on, the first time in kindergarten
when she came with a different hairstyle. In part she blames herself for being unfit for group life.
“I was conceited and I thought that I was a chosen person. I thought I was special.” At the sametime, bullying seems inextricable from her Korean ancestry: “For me, bullying and kimchi aresomehow linked.”Zainichi Koreans: The Past, the Present and the Future142

Yu characterizes herself as a runaway [toposha], as someone who
flees not to hide but simply to run away. Her adolescence—
though common enough among adolescents—is a series ofshameful, embarrassing moments and memories. She is ashamedof her aunt, whom one of her friends mistakes for a beggar, as
well as the meager lunch she takes to school. She is troubled byher mother taking up a lover and abandoning home for days at atime. Enrolling in a prestigious middle school at her mother’srequest, she merely yearns to leave. Although she finds friends
from time to time, she feels closer to dead writers than to any
living people. “I was closer to the dead than to the living. In my
bag were books by [the poet] Nakahara Nakaya and [the novelist]
Dazai Osamu, and I could only talk easily with the dead. The
living inevitably hurt me, but the dead forgave and cured me.”
She develops a crush on a classmate but is rebuffed: “I don’t
Yu Miri: a best-selling author know what I wanted from her. It was not to become closer or totouch her body or to be touched. Thinking about it now, perhaps I
and a figure of controversy
was inviting her to die with me.” She “woke up every morningwith self-hatred and regret. I didn’t know what I hated and regretted but in any case I hated
everything. I wanted to cut my ties to family and school and drop out of life.” The desire to dropout manifests itself in skipping school, running away from home, and attempting to kill herself.
After she is expelled, she contemplates immigrating to the United States.
Yu’s memoir is motivated by a long-standing desire to bury her past. When she moves from herelementary school, her homeroom teacher gives her an antique music box and a handkerchief.
She buries them, because “I wanted to change, to become a different person. I didn’t needsouvenirs.” Certainly, there are many eminently forgettable memories: a neighbor who molestsher, classmates who engage in vicious pranks, and other acts of inhumanity and betrayal. But she
also writes in part because she wants to create her own “reality.” Joining a theater company, she
discovers the “possibility of rewriting my past.” She decided to write her memoir while in her
twenties because she wanted to “leave herself far behind,” to entomb the past. She ends on an
ambiguous note: “everything is a fact, everything is a lie.” Her memoir is a “sedimentation ofwords.”
These narratives are Japanese not only in the (by no means trivial) sense that they are written in
Japanese, but also in the deeper sense that they presume broad familiarity with Japanese culture.
Precisely because popular-culture names, events, and objects are ephemeral and particular, they
provide robust sources of identification with a concrete time and place. Furthermore, they
exemplify Japanese cultural repertoire. The postwar idea of cultural homogeneity valorized theideal of normalness or ordinariness [futsu], at once an expression of egalitarianism and arejection of prewar heroics. Kim Hyandoja, for example, opens her book by stating that there is“nothing particularly special about my way of living or thinking. . . . I am a particularly ordinary[goku futsu] Zainichi.” However far apart in their upbringing and outlook, Hwang and Kyo bothregard themselves as not just “ordinary” but “particularly ordinary.” Around the time Kyo wrote
her recollections, I was at a Tokyo restaurant where my affiliation with the University of Tokyo
was mentioned. Middle-aged women at the next table promptly stopped their conversation,
turned to me, and then begged me to tutor their children. My fifteen seconds’ worth of celebrity

Lie: Zainichi Recognitions

143

expresses the unusually high regard in which that university has been held in the postwar era.
Hwang’s childhood is also anything but “ordinary” for contemporary Japanese people. Only Yu
is conscious of her difference and her alienation from group life, but her life is unusual from any
perspective.
What in fact unites these three writers beyond their Japanese provenance? The pervasiveness ofdisrecognition seeps into various spheres of social life. But the reception of discrimination is far
from uniform. Neither Hwang nor Kyo mentions being bullied. Although Yo is convinced thatbullying and her Korean ancestry are intertwined, she is far from certain that ethnic
discrimination is primary. Recall De Vos and Lee’s generalization about Zainichi family
alienation. Yu appears to be a paradigmatic case. The violent father is an enduring character typein Zainichi literature, but Yu’s love for him differentiates him from Kin Kakuei’s or Yan
Sogiru’s patriarchs. But Hwang’s and Kyo’s narratives do not fit very well into De Vos andLee’s scheme. Kyo’s seems deviant precisely in achieving the exalted but rarely realized state ofagape among family members.
The structure of biography is biology: a prosaic and predictable trajectory from birth to death. It
would be odd indeed not to encounter numerous points of similarity among coevals in the same
society. Yet diversity, not uniformity, marks the narratives. Consider the question of ethnic
identity. Although Kyo struggles with it, she feels alienated from Zainichi who are passionate
about Zainichi causes. Hwang, in contrast, is keenly aware of being Korean, but because he grew
up in a Korean neighborhood he does not probe its significance. In a different way, YÅ«’s senseof self literally makes her a character from a play, endowed with certain propensities, such as thedesire to flee, but unmarked by her ethnic heritage or Japanese racism.
If we consider the impact of Korean or Japanese culture, then we again find no obvious
commonality. In Hwang’s world, Korean and Zainichi cultures and events appear here and there.
In contrast, Kyo grew up ignorant of Korean and even Zainichi culture. Yu grew up playing with
Rika-chan dolls and communicating with dead male Japanese writers. Although almost always
described as a Zainichi writer, her literary ancestry betrays almost no Zainichi influence.
Diversity also manifests itself in naming preferences. Hwang is a Korean pronunciation of a
Korean name. Yu is a Japanese rendition of a Korean name. Kyo Nobuko has a Japanese readingof a Korean surname and a common Japanese given name (though possibly Korean) in Japanese
pronunciation. Another woman uses the Korean reading of a Korean surname with a more or lesspurely Japanese given name: “although my identity is Korean, I am completely different from
Koreans in the homeland. I am Zainichi. I am almost like a different ethnicity. And I haveJapanese nationality.”Zainichi Koreans: The Past, the Present and the Future

144

Hwang, Kyo, and Yu are Zainichi, but they reveal little
commonality. Surely, we can seek their differences in part intheir divergent backgrounds: gender, region, class, and so on.
These social differences exist alongside different courses andcontours of their lives. But this is precisely the point. Beyond
the sheer diversity of Zainichi professions and personalities,
genders and generations, likes and dislikes, we should notforget that an individual is neither unitary and homogeneous
nor stationary and unchanging. Virginia Woolf observes inOrlando that “a biography is considered complete if it merely
accounts for six or seven selves, whereas a person may wellhave as many as a thousand.” Although “the conscious self . . .
wishes to be nothing but one self . . . ‘the true self,’“ it cannot
squelch distinct moments and conflicting recollections,ambiguities and multiplicities. Kyo would expend
considerable time studying and living in South Korea, andthereafter exploring the distinct trajectories of the Korean
Zainichi diversity among thediaspora across Asia. Yu would also learn Korean and go on to
famous and the popular
write novels and stories with strong Korean and Zainichi
themes and characters. In other words, temporaltransformation is commonplace. Kim Kyongdok, who was the first non-Japanese citizen to
become an attorney in postwar Japan, wrote when he was thirty-six years old that he was only
thirteen years old as a Korean. This is because “I used a pseudonym (Japanese name) until I was
twenty-three and pretended to live as a Japanese person”; he was, then, “non-Korean” for the
first twenty-three years of his life. Only in college did he come to affirm his ethnic ancestry andidentity. After becoming an attorney, he spent over three years studying in South Korea “as thenext step to regaining my ethnicity.” Kim Hiro is often regarded as a hero of ethnic pride or acriminal of violent sensibility. After 1968, he spent some thirty-two years as a “model” prisoner
and seemed to be leading a fulfilling life in Seoul when he committed another violent crime.
Recidivism notwithstanding, he married again and sought to seek “love” as a way of life.
Whatever the truths about Kim Hiro, it doesn’t make much sense to call him essentially this, that,or other.
Zainichi diversity goes well beyond these narratives. Whereas Lee Chongja articulates Zainichi
identity through classical Japanese poetic forms, other Zainichi writers avoid the question
altogether. Among the latter, some, such as Ijuin Shizuka, do not hide their Korean descent,while others do. Some Zainichi writers explore the historical legacy of Japanese imperialism, butothers wish to transcend the past. Consider music. Some Zainichi eagerly take up traditional
Korean music and recite sinse t’aryong. Kyo feels that sinse t’aryong “that is full of ethnic
feelings is not for her,” but she would also explore traditional Korean music after her initial
meditation on her Zainichi identity. Chon Wolson, a second-generation Zainichi who attended
Soren schools, is an opera singer, whereas Ryu Yong-gi, a third-generation Zainichi who studied
at a seminary, is a hip-hop singer. Both experienced discrimination as Zainichi but it would be
difficult to generate useful generalizations from their shared background or experience. To saythat they are musicians is rendered nearly meaningless by the distance separating the two genresof opera and hip-hop.

Lie: Zainichi Recognitions

145

The search for the least common denominators of Zainichi identity is futile. Although certain
common questions are raised, they are answered in distinct ways. To the extent that there areconvergences, they teeter on becoming rather generic to all human beings. Zainichi ideology,
like the earlier nationalist allegiance to North or South Korea, proffered an essentialist
understanding of the self, such that Kim Dalsu could write: “In my case, experience in literaturemeans, needless to say, experience as Zainichi.” The confident “needless to say” contrasts withthe brash pronouncement of post-Zainichi self-representations in writers such as Gen Getsu orKaneshiro Kazuki. Rather, beyond Korean ancestry, what dominates Zainichi writings is thebroad background of Japanese society. Viewing the animated manga “Kyojin no hoshi” [Thestar of the Giants], Shin Sugok experiences a shock of recognition viewing a paradigmatic scene
I mentioned earlier—the drunk and violent father overturns the dining table and slaps theprotagonist—and wonders whether the family is not in fact Zainichi. Wherever Zainichi turned,
there was Japan. Although many commentators see in Zainichi suicides their secret anguish as
Zainichi, suicide is much more in the Japanese cultural repertoire than in the Korean. Most
encompassing was the language. When the pioneering Zainichi writer Kim Dalsu observes that“experience in literature means, needless to say, experience as Zainichi,” he elides thefundamental condition of his authorship: his inescapable reliance on the Japanese language. As
the Zainichi poet Kim Sijong remarked: “Japanese—Japanese that is a foreign language—
created the foundation of my consciousness.”
Paradoxically, the absence of essences does not abjure the necessity of cognition andrecognition. Repressing the inevitable questions of identity in a society of disrecognition is liable
to generate the revenge of the repressed or, more mundanely, misrecognition and disrecognition.
The protagonist of Gen Getsu’s Oshaberina inu [Talkative dog, 2003] insists, “For me, it doesn’t
matter ‘who I am.’“ As much as he attempts to be a former Zainichi—though he insists that he is“not ‘former’ anything”—he cannot help but conclude that his impotence is related to his status
as a “former” Zainichi. The aforementioned Kim Kyongdok recalls that: “[I] could notcomprehend the background of Koreans’ poverty and fighting, the illegitimacy of Japanesediscrimination. . . . [I] wanted merely to flee from everything Korean.” Certainly, the “inferiority
complex” of being Korean or Zainichi in Japan is a commonplace recollection among theZainichi baby boomers.
If we can identify Zainichi essences, they reside in the two terms of their category—Korean
descent and Japanese livelihood—and in the persistence of Japanese discrimination that does notallow people of Korean descent to be legitimately Japanese or assume a new form of hybrid
identity. The dominant belief in Japanese monoethnicity stipulates that to be Japanese means
inevitably to be ethnic Japanese. Pace Kyo’s title, then, it was impossible to be “ordinary”(Korean) Japanese when she was growing up in the 1960s and 1970s. Given that hybridity andheterogeneity had no place in the dominant Japanese discourse in the postwar period, the fact of
Korean descent renders necessary the individual and collective struggles for a viable place andidentity in contemporary Japanese society for Zainichi. That Zainichi sometimes struggle
together does not mean, however, that there is a simple, static, and homogeneous ethnic identity.
Identity as Diversity
Why should we expect perhaps a million people of Korean descent in Japan to be homogeneous?
What more can we say than that they share the category of Korean descent and their culturalZainichi Koreans: The Past, the Present and the Future146

citizenship in Japan? And how important should these factors be in the personal definition ofcontemporary Zainichi people? How many people would have their epitaph be “Zainichi”?
There was a growing group of Japanese-born Koreans already by the late 1930s. As self-serving
and culturally imperialistic as prewar Japanese policies were, efforts to integrate and assimilate
ethnic Koreans engendered a cadre who identified themselves as Japanese government officials,
military officers, and intellectuals. Class differentiation, not surprisingly, separated the privileged
and educated Koreans from their impoverished and illiterate counterparts. Gender andgeneration, region of origin as well as of destination, fractured the presumed unity of ethnic
Korean identity. Whether one considers the length of stay or the vagaries of individual
experience, it is bewildering to believe that there should be anything so singular about the
Korean experience even during the colonial period. As a youth (around 1940), O Rimjun read aJapanese book that depicted virtuous Koreans. He was moved by the story—and could not detect
any racial prejudice—but he also empathized deeply with ordinary Japanese people in otherstories. It would be facile to consider O as a brainwashed pro-Japanese traitor, but there is no
doubt that that category included many ethnic Koreans. The eminent South Korean poet Kim Soun spent some thirty-two years in Japan and recalls “good Japanese people” who redeemed thecountry for him, despite colonial racism and the dominant anti-Japanese ideology in South Koreaof the 1970s and 1980s. O and Kim are hardly a small minority of national traitors and ethnic
betrayers.
By the early twenty-first century, there were still significant barriers in terms of employment,
marriage, and civic participation for Zainichi. However, it is safe to conclude that they did notconstitute a uniformly inferior group. Furthermore, many of them were second-, third-, and evenfourth-generation Japanese residents who grew up speaking Japanese, watching Japanese
television, playing with Japanese children, attending Japanese schools, and so on, such that
virtually the sole source of social differentiation from ethnic Japanese is the fact of Korean
descent. Even in the case of those who attended and still identify with the North Korea–affiliatedschools and organizations, the overwhelming cultural influence was often no different from thatof other Japanese children. As the North Korea orientation of Soren-affiliated schools waned, thefact of cultural Japaneseness became all the more inescapable. For all the incidents of Japanese
intolerance and even racism—such as the 1994 Chimachogori Incident, in which female ethnic
school pupils’ ethnic costumes were slashed—Soren schools were known and even admired by
the Japanese public for their athletic prowess.
In making sense of a racial, ethnic, or national group—categories of modern peoplehood—one
usually looks to language, religion, or custom and culture. Yet Zainichi lacked these elementarybases of distinction from the larger Japanese society by the 1970s. Second-generation Zainichi
were Japanese speakers. Although Soren school graduates knew a great deal of the Korean
language, they effectively spoke the Soren language, thereby distinguishing themselves fromboth native North and South Koreans. The basic fact, however, was that they were inevitably
much more comfortable in wielding their native Japanese-language facility. By the time a newgeneration of Korean migrants arrived from South Korea in the 1980s, there were no major
concentrations of ethnic Koreans where Korean was the lingua franca.
Religion did not separate Zainichi from ethnic Japanese, either. One may plausibly suggest that
Soren followers practiced a form of secular religion, but in the postwar decades there were many
committed Japanese communists who were at once like Soren communists and unlike otherLie: Zainichi Recognitions

147

Japanese people. Although Shinto adherents were unlikely to be Zainichi, the major world
religions, ranging from Buddhism to Christianity, had faithfuls among both ethnic Korean andethnic Japanese populations. First-generation Koreans engaged in ethnically distinct Buddhist
temples and other ritual practices, but they were clearly on the wane by the 1980s. Prewar ethnic
Koreans tended to practice rituals of ancestor worship [chesa]. Although almost universally
practiced by the first generation, the Confucian ritual became vitiated and transformed undersuccessive generations. Younger Zainichi either simplified or abandoned chesa.
Finally, custom and culture—from food and clothing to material and cultural consumption—
poorly differentiated ethnic Koreans from ethnic Japanese. Already by the 1940s, ethnic
Koreans’ public appearance was similar to their ethnic Japanese counterparts. Ethnic costume
was primarily worn by the elderly and women, who tended to stay within the perimeters of
ethnic Korean ghettoes. The Zainichi novelist Lee Hoesung wore traditional Korean clothes[hanbok] for the first time in his mid-sixties, in 2001. The propensity to use garlic and chili or tobarbecue meat rendered Korean cuisine distinct from the Japanese. The Japanese-born KoreanCanadian writer Ook Chung has the narrator remark: “I understood that I was Korean the day I
discovered that I couldn’t do without kimchi.” Or, as the Zainichi writer Shin Sugok notes, thedesire to eat kimchi is “the proof of my grandmother’s existence.” To be sure, we have alreadyencountered Pak and Kyo, who did not consume kimchi regularly, and it is a common Zainichi
experience to find “real” Korean food too “spicy.” Sagisawa Megumu retrospectively identifies
her family’s signature dish as a permutation of the Korean p’ajon (savory pancake): an
unacknowledged trace of her hidden Korean ancestry. Yet in the course of the postwar decades
there was a striking convergence. Ethnic Koreans adapted to local produce and cuisine; ethnic
Japanese, especially after the 1980s, found foreign cuisine delectable. By then, ethnic costume
was worn on special occasions and by female students attending Soren schools. Although there
were ethnic Korean publications and media, most second-generation Zainichi were weaned onJapanese popular culture. The prevalence of Zainichi stars in sports and music may havegenerated co-ethnic preferences, but Rikidozan and Miyako Harumi were representative
Japanese celebrities.
The undeniable source of distinction was ancestry, recorded in family registries and official
documents, and the readily available marker was name. Koseki and tsumei constituted the two
weak links in any Zainichi effort to pass as ordinary Japanese. Furthermore, given the pervasive
prejudice and discrimination against people of Korean descent in Japan, the fact of Korean
descent has a significant impact on Zainichi identity.
Yet ancestry or descent do not pass on as a homogeneous trace. Many Zainichi belong to ethnopolitical organizations, but many are regionally based, such as those for Zainchi people fromChejudo. The relative autonomy of Chejudo identity—certainly distinct culturally from theirmainland Korean counterparts—manifests itself frequently in assertions of difference from other
Zainichi and Koreans. Regional diversity made a mockery of the essentialist claim of
Koreanness.
Other social conditions, such as economic or regional background, vary tremendously. What
unites Son Masayoshi, Japan’s wealthiest man of Korean origin, and a homeless, and sociallyfaceless, Zainichi man? Or consider regional diversity within Japan: a Zainichi man who grew up
in Tokyo writes of Zainichi in Osaka as people “who are clearly a different species, an aliencultural group.” When he first went to Ikaino (a Korean area in Osaka), he wondered whether heZainichi Koreans: The Past, the Present and the Future148

was still in Japan. Yet Ikaino proclaimed itself to be “Koreatown” in 1987 and a spiritual home
for the Zainichi population.
The diversity of Zainichi identification also excluded traditionalists who continued to embrace
Korean identification and exilic status. Soren Koreans have long rejected the very label Zainichi.
Ko Yon-i, who teaches French literature at the Soren-affiliated Chosen University, writes: “Ireject Japanese people calling me ‘Zainichi’ [because I am] essentially Korean [Chosenjin].” In
contrast, Sagisawa Megumu was not alone in rejecting ethnic identification altogether: “I
personally think that ethnicity is fiction.” Gen Getsu says in an interview that Zainichi “don’t
have any identity” and likens it to “floating weed.” Disidentification from Zainichi identity—
perhaps the dominant identification among ethnic Koreans from the 1980s—was commonplacefrom its very birth.
Thus, ethnicity in and of itself cannot in any sense predict the concrete contours of individual
identity. Needless to say, their lives variously reflect the traces of ancestral genes or memes andthe persistence of Japanese disrecognition against ethnic Koreans, but it would be difficult toconclude that ethnic ancestry and experience leave consistent marks on individual lives, andprovide insights into Zainichi as a singular group. I am skeptical that ethnicity has a determining
impact on one’s sense of self or personal identity. It is a factor—and it can become the dominantfactor for some people at some time—but only one among many. And self-identification may
change dramatically over a life course. The usual social-scientific approach—to use social
backgrounds or factors as the independent variables and individuals and their identities as thedependent variables—does not work very well. Concrete lives resist simple, reductionist, andessentialist characterizations. Zainichi ideology mischaracterized and misrecognized Zainichi
realities.
John Lie was born in South Korea, grew up in Japan and Hawaii and attended Harvard
University where he received a B.A. and Ph.D. He is currently Class of 1959 Professor ofSociology and Dean of International Area Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. His
books include Multiethnic Japan and Modern Peoplehood.
This article is adapted from chapter four of Zainichi (Koreans in Japan): Diasporic Nationalism
and Postcolonial Identity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008). All the references canbe found therein. Posted on Japan Focus on November 3, 2008.

Sakamoto: ‘Koreans, Go Home!’

149‘Koreans, Go Home!’ Internet Nationalism in Contemporary Japan as Digitally
Mediated Subculture”
Rumi Sakamoto
March 7, 2011
http://japanfocus.org/-Rumi-SAKAMOTO/3497\
While other articles in this course reader treat the earlier forces that created andframed Zainichi, Rumi Sakamoto’s article deals with the discourse in contemporary Japan
concerning Zainichi Koreans. As John Lie recognizes in his article, many Japanese still view
Zainichi Koreans with racist animosity; this is also the case in cyberspace.
Sakamoto analyzes the racism and xenophobia in Japan posted online by theJapanese users in the twenty-first century. Many of the authors do not condemn the
Zainichi Koreans per se, as they do not bother to distinguish Zainichi Koreans frommainland Koreans. But some groups, such as Zaitokukai (Citizens’ Group against Special
Rights for Korean Residents in Japan), make Zainichi Koreans their special objects of wrath.
Zaitokukai argues that reverse racism is occurring and that Zainichi Koreans viciously
dupe, exploit, and take advantage of the Japanese.
Sakamoto’s article singles out 2-channeru as the popular online site where such
racist postings predominate, and she analyzes the postings as well as their origins.
Sakamoto argues that very little rational discussion takes place on such sites, and that thepostings are characterized by cynicism and fragmentation. Many of those postings,
moreover, are marked by a dichotomy of Japanese versus non-Japanese “Others.” Sakamoto
sees the insecurities of the Japanese economy circa the 1990s and a decrease in the numberof stable jobs as significant contexts behind the postings.
This article was posted in March 2011, and things have evolved since then. The
article argues that unlike online nationalism in China, Japanese online nationalism rarely
spills out into the street, but that is no longer the casein 2013; some groups, including
Zaitokukai, have started to demonstrate in Korean areas in some large Japanese cities,
expressing anti-Korean messages and shouting insults such as “Koreans, get out of ourcountry!” With the recent deterioration in relationships between Japan and its East Asianneighbors, anti-Korean (and anti-Chinese) xenophobia is something that is mirrored bysome right-wing Japanese mainstream media. Restraining that hate speech has become anissue for some concerned Japanese legislators and activists. The future contours ofcontemporary Japanese nationalism and hostility toward the Zainichi, in cyberspace andoutside of it, are matters of grave concern to many in Japan and those outside the country.

Zainichi Koreans: The Past, the Present and the Future

150‘Koreans, Go Home!’ Internet Nationalism in Contemporary Japan as a Digitally MediatedSubculture
Rumi Sakamoto
Introduction
On 18 September 2009, a person using the online name of ‘xegnojw’ posted a four-minute video
on YouTube entitled ‘Japanese Racists Hoot Down Korean Tourists in Tsushima’.1 It depicted
members of a Japanese nationalist group harassing Korean tourists on Tsushima, a Japaneseisland 138 km from Fukuoka and 50km from Busan.2 This island has been attracting attention
from Japanese nationalists because of the increasing presence of Korean tourists and Korean
investment since the 2002 opening of high-speed ferry service between Busan and Tsushima.
Nationalist campaigns over the island intensified when Korea’s Masan City adopted the‘Tsushima Day’ bill in 2005, claiming that Tsushima should be a Korean territory, thereby
countering Shimane prefecture’s ‘Takeshima Day’, establishing Japanese claim to Korea’s
Dokdo island.3 The YouTube video in question captured several flag-holding Japanese men andwomen yelling: ‘Go home, Koreans!’ and ‘We won’t allow a Korean invasion!’ at tourists fresh
off the ferry from Busan. Though not physically violent, the atmosphere was tense anddisturbing.
This episode is just one expression of Japan’s new grassroots nationalism, which has gained
force over the last decade against the backdrop of increasingly vociferous historical revisionism
and neonationalism.4 As seen in the recent conflict over the Senkaku Islands5 as well as Japan’s
hard-line response to the North Korean attack on South Korea, nationalistic sentiments seem to
be increasingly dictating Japan’s foreign policy and public opinion. Contrary to what issometimes assumed, contemporary Japanese nationalism is not a monolithic entity, for it isproduced by multiple participants and groups with different ideas and modes of communication.
The kind of blatant jingoism and narrow-minded xenophobia seen above, though still largely
marginalised in the official discourses of the state and public media, has found a niche in Japan,
especially in cyberspace. New groups such as Zaitokukai (Citizens’ Group against Special Rights
for Korean residents in Japan)6 and Shuken kaifuku o mezasu kai (Citizens’ Group that seeks
Recovery of Sovereignty),7 however outlandish their stances, have successfully extended
influence through effective use of the Internet, incorporating YouTube and its Japaneseequivalents such as Niko-niko dōga (‘smiley videos’) and PeeVee TV to spread their messages
and publicise their activities. Channeru Sakura (2004-), which distributes conservative andnationalistic content via satellite TV and Internet, also provides a significant virtual space forneonationalist perspectives. Without the Internet, it is doubtful that an extreme nationalist
group’s foray into direct action on the peripheral island of Tsushima would have reached an
audience beyond the group itself. As it happened, however, the video clip was immediately taken
up by Japan’s largest online forum, 2-channeru, prompting a barrage of nationalistic responses
there. A site ‘not for the faint of heart’,8 this unmoderated forum is known to be the main outlet
for revisionism and xenophobic neo-nationalism of the internet generation.9[Online article includes an embedded YouTube video, available as of June 30, 2012 at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7eZGD292us:
Zaitokukai on YouTube: ‘Kick out Koreans from Tsushima!’]Sakamoto: ‘Koreans, Go Home!’

151

This article offers an analysis of the online discourse of anti-Korean nationalism sparked by the
aforementioned YouTube video on 2-channeru. It aims to examine the characteristics of thenationalistic postings and the online construction of Korea as Japan’s other.10 The case offers
insight into contemporary Japan’s so-called netto-uyo (net right-wingers . . . uyoku)
phenomenon, which has rarely been discussed in English language scholarship.11 It is often
pointed out that today’s Japanese youths are increasingly nationalistic and that the Internet isplaying a part in this trend.12 In considering how the technology and culture of the Internet
influenced the formation of nationalism in cyberspace, this article engages with the idea of a‘cyber public sphere’. What internet-specific elements have contributed to the particular nettouyo shape of nationalism? How might we understand the paradox of the borderless technology of
the Internet producing an insular community and xenophobic nationalism?
To answer these questions, after a brief look at 2-channeru and the netto-uyo phenomenon, thisarticle offers a content analysis of nationalism in the Tsushima threads, focusing on theconstruction of ‘Korea’ as Japan’s other. It then considers this case’s implication for the notionof a ‘cyber public sphere,’ and discusses some Internet-dependent factors relevant to the nettouyo formation of the nation as an imagined community before finally considering some uniquecharacteristics of Internet nationalism in contemporary Japan. But first, let us briefly look atsome existing approaches to nationalisms in cyberspace to put this study into a context.
Nationalisms in Cyberspace
In the early days of the Internet, some predicted that, as a global and borderless technology, theInternet would become a homogenising force that challenged and eliminated chauvinism andnarrow-mindedness. Today’s optimistic observers also emphasise the potential of cyberspace toprovide something akin to Habermas’ ‘ideal speech situation’ and ‘autonomous public sphere,’13
in which citizens/individuals communicate rationally and democratically, without the constraintsof ethnic, gender, class or other real-life inequalities. If we follow these insights that the Internet
provides an ‘autonomous public sphere’ and ‘eradicates differences,’ then we may conclude that
the Internet challenges, and might even eventually end, sectarian nationalisms. Nicholas
Negroponte in Being Digital, for one, famously stated that with the Internet ‘there will be no
more room for nationalism than there is for smallpox’.14
Such a prediction, however, seems, at best, decidedly premature. While the Internet has certainly
created an extensive global network and promoted the exchange of ideas, it has hardly created a
global democratic consciousness. Even a cursory survey reveals that nationalistic andxenophobic commentaries thrive on the Internet. And yet, in contrast to the abundant scholarshipon nation and nationalism, Internet nationalism remains an understudied phenomenon. In
particular, the important question of how the Internet as a new medium affects the nature ofnationalism and national imaginary deserves further investigation.
One strand of current scholarship on Internet nationalism focuses on the diasporic communities’
online ‘long distance’ nationalism.15 Such studies look at how, for example, the Palestinians,
Kurds, or overseas Chinese maintain and reinforce their national identities through the Internet.
As Thomas Eriksen points out, the aims of ‘virtual nations’ are ‘of a classic nation-building
kind’.16 In other words, they aim to create and sustain the nation as a unified entity in the context
of geographical dispersion of the population beyond national borders. Japanese netto-uyo internet
nationalism, on the other hand, has no agenda for creating a transnational national identity
among the overseas Japanese. It is much more inward-looking and far less inclusive. Netto-uyo’s

Zainichi Koreans: The Past, the Present and the Future152‘we the Japanese’ does not even include all ethnic Japanese, as those who do not share theirvalues (liberals, left-wingers, feminists, supporters of non-Japanese residents’ rights, Korean TV
drama fans etc.) are all considered potential enemies of the nation.
Another relatively well-publicised and studied case of Internet nationalism is Chinese online
nationalism that emerged around the 2005 anti-Japanese movement.17 Japanese Internet
nationalism is quite different from the Chinese counterpart. First, while Chinese online
nationalism has been widely viewed as supporting or enabling on-street nationalism, the nettouyo variety of Japanese Internet nationalism this article addresses has largely stayed within
Cyberspace, rarely spilling out onto the street. Secondly, scholars of Chinese online nationalism
have (in somewhat Habermasean spirit) typically located it within the framework of civil society
and citizens’ activism, reading online activities as a sign of Chinese civil society as anindependent sphere from the communist state. As one scholar put it, ‘civil society and theInternet energise each other in their co-evolutionary development in China’.18
As we will see, however, one can hardly suggest that Japanese internet nationalism embodies a
democratic civil society. Not only does it fall short of producing on-street politics, but it is also
confined within niche online communities, hardly representative of civil society. Perhaps forthese reasons, Japanese Internet nationalism has received much less attention than Chinese ‘civil’
nationalism has done in English-language scholarship. Though less visible than the Chinese
examples and definitely not mainstream, Japanese Internet nationalism is a significant recent
phenomenon that indicates the formation of a shared space where people engage withxenophobic nationalism and offers an opportunity for exploring the interface between theInternet and nationalism. Besides, even though much scholarship on Chinese online nationalism
focuses on its role in offline activism, it is quite conceivable that there also exist a large numberof Chinese Internet users who participates in, for example, online anti-Japanese discussions
without ever taking to the street. If so, this study could offer a framework for comparison withsuch phenomenon.
2-channeru and Netto-uyo
2-channeru, or 2-chan for short, is Japan’s most popular online community, with around ten
million users accessing it each day.19 In this community the majority of posters post as‘anonymous’.20 2-chan does not require user registration or email verification – a standardpractice for many English-language online forums. There is hardly any moderation, either. The
forum consists of about 700 ‘boards’ such as ‘cooking,’ ‘business news,’ or ‘hacking’. Each‘board’ contains several hundred ‘threads,’ with a maximum of 1,000 posts per thread. Once thenumber of posts reaches 1,000, a new thread is created, and the old thread is archived. Some
discussions are serious; many aren’t. Depending on the board, posts can be utterly banal,
discriminatory or extreme, hence 2-chan’s nickname as ‘public toilet graffiti’. At the same time,with more users than any other single media site in Japan,21 2-chan is an important medium, withconsiderable social influence. It has had impact on mass media, too, as mainstream journalists
sometimes use 2-chan as a news source.
Since its establishment 10 years ago, 2-chan has developed an idiosyncratic online culture,
vocabularies and styles of interaction. Racism and nationalism have been part of this 2-chanculture; participants of certain boards have developed an explicitly nationalistic discourse (inparticular, ‘World History,’ ‘East Asia News,’ ‘News Far East’ and ‘Hangul’), earningthemselves the collective name of netto-uyo, or ‘net right-wingers’. While this does not mean

Sakamoto: ‘Koreans, Go Home!’

153

that the majority of the users share such sentiments, there is a clearly noticeable subculture
within this site shared by those who gather on specific boards. Mirroring the post-1990s
historical revisionism, netto-uyo exhibit xenophobia towards immigrants, depict Korea andChina negatively, and uphold revisionist history, justifying and glorifying Japan’s wartime
actions. They also support political leaders’ official visits to Yasukuni Shrine, revision of Article
9 of the constitution, and patriotic education. Although netto-uyo is not exclusive to 2-chan, 2chan is the main playground for netto-uyo, where this phenomenon developed.22 They became
visible through a number of Internet-generated controversies that erupted around 2002-2004 suchas those over the World Cup Soccer hosted by Korea and Japan, ‘Hate-Korea’ comic books, theso-called ‘Nanjing Massacre comic book’23 and Dokdo/Takeshima, to name just a few.
Though it is hard to establish who they really are, netto-uyo are generally thought to be
individual ‘heavy’ net users who are sympathetic to right-wing/nationalist views, but few are
real-life activists or members of right-wing/nationalist organisations.24 While they are extremely
vocal online and clearly identifiable as a discursive group, when it comes to real-life politicalactions, netto-uyo’s involvement is limited to occasional net-driven phenomena such as dentotsu(‘phone attack’ – organised phone complaints on specific issues to government offices, leftleaning media etc.), matsuri (sudden and extreme concentration of postings in a specific thread
for a limited time) and enjō (rush of critical or accusatory comments and trackbacks to a specificblog or SNS site) targeting left/liberal opinions and sites. Netto-uyo essentially remain genronuyoku [‘right-wing by speech’]25 in cyberspace; in fact, some action-oriented right-wingers havecriticised netto-uyo for their lack of action and hiding behind anonymity.26
Netto-uyo as an Expression of Social Anxiety of Post-recession Japan
Since the emergence of netto-uyo coincided with the marked lowering of the average age of 2chan users in 2003-200427 as well as the deepening of social problems related to Japanese youth(e.g. NEET, freeter, hikikomori [withdrawal from society]), netto-uyo nationalism has often been
associated with unemployed, low-income or reclusive youths.28 Linking netto-uyo and young
unemployed people is common among Japanese commentators. For example, a Japanesesociologist, Takahara Motoaki, has suggested that recent youth nationalism – including Internet
nationalism – is an expression of the social anxiety of marginalised and discontent youths whoare struggling in the recession and the resultant social marginalisation.29 According to him,nationalistic youths displace their anxiety onto imaginary external enemies, while identifying
with the fantasy of strong Japan temporarily relieves their anxiety.30
During the 1970s and 1980s, when the Japanese economy was strong and life-time employment
and seniority systems were widespread, ‘company’ identity served as a reservoir for Japanese
men’s national identity, as loyalty to the company was conflated with loyalty to the state as theprotector of the prosperity of the companies they worked for.31 The majority of today’s youths,
however, are denied secure ‘company’ membership because of the new norms brought by therecession. Downsizing, restructuring, outsourcing, flexible employment systems – thesestrategies that companies have introduced in response to the recession that followed the burstingof the bubble have meant that many young people fail to obtain stable jobs on completion of
their education. They have come to constitute a large ‘new lower class’ sector notable for casual
service labour, which is unstable and badly paid.32 Under such circumstances, constructing andattacking the external enemy figure in cyberspace seems to offer one way of dealing with social
frustration and anxiety. I would, however, add that the ‘nationalistic’ identity of netto-uyo is notZainichi Koreans: The Past, the Present and the Future154

a direct or necessary consequence of the forum participants’ economic circumstances or theirpre-constituted identity as the ‘new underclass’. Rather, I believe that their netto-uyo identity isconstructed discursively, by engaging in the types of practice I will describe in the following.
The Tsushima Threads
Consider the nationalistic postings on the threads that started with the YouTube video mentioned
earlier. These threads appeared in September 2009 on the ‘East Asia News+’ board, one ofseveral netto-uyo boards. At the time of the research, most of the threads on these boards were on
Korea-related topics. The Tsushima thread in question started with a posting on a Koreanlanguage site Kukinews report on a Youtube clip of the aforementioned incident as theincreasing number of Korean tourists agitated right-wingers. Normally insignificant in Japaneseminds, this small island came to attract the attention of some popular media and the netto-uyo
especially following a report on the Korean territorial claim on the island in reaction to Shimane
prefecture’s ‘Takeshima Day’ and continuing conflict over Dokdo/Takeshima issues.33
The thread I examined attracted 7,000 postings extended over seven threads in 4 days. The usual
limit for postings per thread is 1,000 and the majority of topics stays well within this limit; so
7,000 reflects a significant level of interest. In many ways, these postings were typical netto-uyo
chatters. First, the thread started with a report of minor news that involved Korea, rather than any
major international news widely reported on national mass media such as TV and newspaper. 2chan ‘news’ boards often have a different pattern of framing and agenda setting from those of
TV and newspaper news, partly because of its self-awareness as an ‘alternative media’ thatchallenges mainstream media and their ‘hypocrisy’. Typically, a small ‘news item’ like this one
is found in a Korean, Chinese or sometimes an English language source,34 and is translated into
Japanese and posted. The preferred source is popular global media, in this case the YouTube
video clip. This particular clip was uploaded with an introduction in three languages: Japanese,
English, and Korean. Secondly, the discussion quickly turned into a repetition of well-rehearsed
netto-uyo stances, issues and concerns, not necessarily related to the original posting. This isexactly what happened with the Tsushima thread, as we will see. Certain vocabularies,
enunciation patterns and discursive structures define netto-uyo chatters, and we can find themregardless of the thread. The presence of visual content that points to emotionally potent issues(in this case theYoutube clip of a xenophobic protest), is also very common.
‘Us’ and ‘Them’Netto-uyo postings on this thread were intense, many exhibiting unrestrained hostility towards
Korea and Koreans. Given 2-chan’s lack of regulation and total anonymity, the tone is often
extreme. Taboo derogatory terms are routinely used. Koreans are associated with excrement,
rubbish, public urination, stealing, prostitution, violence, illegal activity and obscenity. Vulgar
and callous statements that would not be found in the mass media and other public spaces
abound. Typical postings read: ‘Koreans are cancer of Japan and should leave Japan’; ‘Koreans
are the world’s shame; ‘parasite rubbish race Koreans should die’, and even ‘let’s massacre thestupid Koreans now’. Such virulent statements were abundant throughout the 4 days I observed
this particular thread, and are commonplace in netto-uyo chatter in general.
Collectively, the 7,000 postings produced and reinforced the negative image of Korea andKoreans far beyond the Tsushima issue. Forum participants brought up a multitude of Korearelated issues which had nothing to do with Korean tourists on Tsushima: the ‘special tax andSakamoto: ‘Koreans, Go Home!’

155

welfare privileges’ that zainichi Koreans allegedly enjoy, the ‘illegal occupation’ of TakeshimaIsland’, kimchi with parasite eggs, or crimes by Koreans in Japan and overseas. Links were madeto a TV news item about a Japanese boy who was attacked in Korea, snapshots of anti-Japanese
artwork by Korean school children, a Youtube clip on a rape by a zainichi Korean, 2-chanthreads on zainichi pension entitlement and welfare benefits, shocking images of anti-Japanesedemonstrators slaughtering pheasants (Japan’s national bird) in front of the Japanese Embassy,
and many more. These and other unrelated events and images are linked together under theunifying but empty sign of the ‘Koreans’.
The result is to depict Koreans as violent, unethical, overly emotional and irrational people, who
are a ‘threat’ to Japan. In comparison, ‘we Japanese’ are portrayed as a moral, rational, polite andtoo tolerant people who are being taken advantage of—and victimised by—the Other’saggression, slyness and lack of morality. There is a certain irony here, of course, that whileaccusing the Other of lacking morality, such posts are rife with crude xenophobic verbal abuse of
the Korean Other that is hardly moral. ‘Koreans’ in this forum are a symbol of negativity and arepository for its participants’ hostility, rather than real ‘Koreans’ in the sense of the citizens ofSouth Korea. Its function is to construct antagonisms between ‘us’ and ‘them’. The ‘Korea’ or‘Koreans’ simply operate as a sign that carries negative values such as ‘inferior’, ‘dirty’,‘shameless’, ‘primitive’, ‘violent’, and ‘irrational’. The posts served as triggers for invoking andrepeating a clear and antagonistic us/them relationship.
In reality, this ‘us’ and ‘them’ boundary is a product of rewriting history, for Japan and Korea
have a deeply intertwined history dating back to ancient times; Tsushima Island itself is a
repository of numerous traces of extensive Korea-Japan relations.35

A stone monument for Korean embassies to Japan during the Edo period in Tsushima. The bilingual
explanation board says that the Korean visits brought Japan sophisticated knowledge, art and culture, andtalks of deep respect towards the Koreans. (Author’s photographs)

As Oguma Eiji has emphasized, Korea was part of the Japanese Empire until 1945.36 But the
netto-uyo posts conveniently forget the colonial history, favouring ahistorical and essentialised
representations of homogeneous ‘Koreans’ as Japan’s inferior Other. This is consistent with theZainichi Koreans: The Past, the Present and the Future156

postwar myth of homogeneity and general hostility towards Koreans and zainichi Koreans. It isalso consistent with recent revisionist-neo-nationalist promotion of anti-Korean xenophobia.
The participants typically blurred distinctions between South Koreans, North Koreans andzainichi Koreans (Korean residents in Japan, mostly second, third, and even fourth generation).
Just eight minutes after the original posting about the YouTube video, someone wrote: ‘Zainichi
Koreans should get out of Tsushima Island’. This is an odd thing to say because the Korean
tourists captured in the Youtube video stepping off the ferry are most likely South Koreans, notzainichi Koreans. The right-wing activists on the video themselves certainly seem to think so,
judging from what they are screaming. But no one points this out. Far from it, people join in
accusing zainichi of heinous crimes. As the days pass and comments accumulate, more and more
postings assert zainichi should leave Japan and go back to their ‘homeland’.
Over the course of the four days, the forum’s participants extended the target of xenophobiccommentaries from Koreans to foreigners in general. Some postings criticised North Koreans.
Even ‘Chinese’ were attacked a few times. They repeated crude messages like ‘Japan belongs to
the Japanese. Korea belongs to the Koreans. Koreans, go home’ and ‘foreigners should stay outof Japan’. Some pointed out how European nations that had accepted immigrants are now
suffering the consequences. Others argued against granting suffrage to non-Japanese residents.37
Of course, the threads were not entirely homogeneous. Some marginal minorities did attempt toinsert different views. For example, one participant says of the rightist activity: ‘Japan’s shame; I
cannot accept such a stupid action that will lower Japan’s international standing’. But this kind ofstatement is curtly dismissed, ignored, or identified as intrusion by a ‘Korean spy’. The
conversation then goes on as if they did not exist. There is no engagement, no argument, and no
discussion. This partly has to do with 2-chan’s culture of cynicism, where taking other posters’
opposing views seriously and engaging them is considered uncool. Engaging or taking things
seriously is a common ‘mistake’ novice participants are often caught making. In this forum
participants are expected to ‘read the air’ and carry on by adding to the existing conversation
with slight variation of themes. To use a 2-chan net slang, the quality of mattari—or being laidback, slow, and not causing trouble—is valued.
‘Race’
Interestingly, although racism and xenophobia characterise 2-chan’s netto-uyo discourse, itsconstruction of ‘us’ and ‘them’ contains very few comments on racial traits of Korans orJapanese. Race is assumed but not argued for. This is noteworthy in light of the fact that
historically, Japanese nationalism and national unity have been conceptualised around the notionof ‘racial’ homogeneity and purity, in particular, stressing the notion of blood.
Even though Japanese and Koreans are both ‘Asians’ and therefore racial markers are less clear
than those for ‘whites’ and ‘blacks’, for example, historically speaking, attempts to decipher andarticulate subtle ‘racial’ differences between Japanese and Koreans have not been uncommon. It
is always possible to read differences into real or imagined slight shades of skin colour or the
shape of eyes and essentialise them into racial differences. Indeed one might argue, as with
Freud’s “narcissism of small differences”, that the desire and obsession for locating subtle
differences could even be stronger when two groups are apparently alike. 2-chan posters,
however, do not seem interested in discussing ‘racial’ features, possibly because their ‘Koreans’
are largely symbolic, and not real-life flesh and blood ‘Koreans’.

Sakamoto: ‘Koreans, Go Home!’

157

Being an online community, 2-chan lacks corporeality and any physical marker of racialdifferences. This means that there is no way of knowing for certain whether participants are infact racially ‘Japanese’. What’s on the screen, ultimately, is digitised data and text, not flesh andblood. It is impossible to identify the participants’ ‘racial’ or ‘ethnic’ identities. The posters to
the Tsushima threads showed considerable suspicion and paranoia over cyber ‘racial passing’.
They seemed particularly vigilant toward trolling—anonymous non-Japanese participants
planting provocative postings to stir up and disrupt online discussion—and other identity
deceptions along racial lines. For example, fear over the Other’s seeping into the online
community was expressed in their speculations that some posters were pretending to be
Japanese, to be Koreans or even to be Japanese pretending to be Koreans pretending to be
Japanese.
In their attempt to identify the infiltrating Other, participants sometimes said to the suspected
posters: ‘What’s your passport number? [a non-Japanese, passport number would look different]’‘Your grammar is a bit funny [therefore you must be non-Japanese]’. ‘No Japanese would
specially claim that to be Japanese [since you say you are Japanese you must be non-Japanese]’and so on. There was even a posting suggesting that the original YouTube clip was planted byzainichi Koreans, thus rendering the whole thing a kind of joke played on the Japanese.
Such suspicions on one level reflect the fact that the Internet is a deterritorialised space that isopen to the whole (IT-literate) world; information, images, and participants themselves can comefrom anywhere, their origin and identity blurred, hidden or unknown. Unlike the physical world,‘Japanese’ identity online is easy to perform and assume, as long as linguistic competency exists.
In addition, the anxiety over the ‘true’ identities of the participants is further promoted by the
aforementioned 2-chan culture of anonymity and cynicism, which makes pretending and otheridentity plays an accepted practice in this particular online community. The use of ‘Korean’
voice and stance by Japanese users to achieve an ironical and mocking effect (say, by inserting
Korean words like uri nara38 or nida39 here and there) for example, is fairly common in nettouyo postings. Uncertainty of ‘Japanese’ identity thus plagues the seemingly confident nationalist
voice.
Does History Matter?
While the posters regularly refer to historical and political issues between Japan and Korea,
many do not seem to have much interest in actual history or politics. For example: ‘Korea is anenemy country that is invading Takeshima; Japan is at war with Korea’; ‘In Tsushima Koreans
are doing every evil thing imaginable, including raping Tsushima women’, ‘Koreans have ahistory of massacring Tsushima people … Historically you Koreans owe Tsushima Islanders
more than you can ever repay’. Clearly, accuracy is not a major concern for these participants; it
seems that these statements are not even meant to be a representation of reality. Strong words
like ‘evil’, ‘war’, ‘massacre’, ‘rape’, and ‘invasion’ are exchanged as empty signs without any
historical or evidential basis. Disturbing visual images are also circulated, for example, bleedingpheasants laid on a rising-sun flag, Korean children’s ‘fuck Japan’ art exhibition, or a YouTube
clip of ‘a Korean attacking a Japanese boy’. However, it is unclear which war, which invasion, or
which massacre these postings refer to. In many cases they have no referent to reality and no one
seems to mind. The comments are discursively productive, consolidating the ‘us’/‘them’antagonism and maintaining the moral superiority of the Japanese who are constructed as a
victim.

Zainichi Koreans: The Past, the Present and the Future158

It seems that dehistoricised and decontextualised images and symbols are gathered together not
to represent reality but to produce new humiliation, new trauma, and new victimhood for Japan.
In this sense they are similar to Baudrillard’s ‘simulations’ or ‘self-referential signs’, which are‘objects and discourses that have no firm origin, no referent, no ground or foundation’ other thantheir own.40 They operate outside the logic of representation, and hence are immune to rationalist
critique.41 Baudrillard’s point was that simulation proliferated as a result of the new media likeTV, but the Internet as a participatory medium carried this trend even further. 2-chan users are
not just passive consumers of such signs provided by the mass media but are producing,performing, and exchanging referentless, decontexualised signs to generate a sense of belonging
to a cyber community and a fantasy ‘Japan’.
With the Internet, gathering and producing information and images is easy, fast and cheap. We
can access far more information far more quickly than we could before, and we do not have torely on mass media. If one wants to find out how “terrible” Koreans (or any other group) are,such information is only clicks away, within seconds. Information is available for‘superdistribution’ to anyone interested, where the content spreads quickly and effortlessly via
digital technology without being limited by national borders, defamation laws or distribution
costs.
Not Quite a Public SphereAs briefly mentioned earlier, advocates of the so-called ‘virtual public sphere’ have emphasised
the Internet’s potential to promote liberatory practices.42 Building on Habermas’s notion of
public sphere, defined as a network for communicating information and points of view, they
have argued that electronic communication media have ‘unique capacities to create democratic,
participatory realms in cyberspace devoted to information and debates’.43 Many studies ofcyberactivism around human rights, peace movements, racial equality and so on, seem to suggest
the democratic potential of the Internet technology.
Our example from 2-chan, however, makes clear that the technology and culture of the Internet,
far from promoting public value or mutual understanding, sometimes contributes to theformation of a unique expression of nationalism. As we have seen, 2-chan online exchanges
appeared highly regulated and patterned, allowing little room for democratic discussion. On the
one hand, the potential for democratic communication certainly seems to be there, as the 2-chanforum clearly provides an infrastructure for an information network and open communication,and it has a large number of participants who speak anonymously, free of class, gender and otherconstraints. The participants seemingly have political interest and intent, too. And yet 2-chan is a
far cry from a ‘virtual public sphere’. It does not function as a communication network forexchanging information and viewpoints to promote democratic values. If anything, what goes on
there resembles private in-group gossiping, insulated from competing views and reinforces
insiders’ identity by excluding/ostracising outsiders. It seems similar to what Rheingold has
called ‘single-niche colonies of people who share intolerances’.44
2-chan’s xenophobic nationalism could be a product of a phenomenon known as ‘grouppolarisation’, which refers to a pattern where discussion among people who share similar views
tend to radicalise each individual’s original position, leading the group as a whole to thinking thesame thoughts in a more extreme fashion. According to one study, group polarisation isespecially strong with anonymous online communication.45 This may at least partially explain
what we have observed: that netto-uyo are individuals with xenophobic and racist sentiments

Sakamoto: ‘Koreans, Go Home!’

159

who gather on specific online forums, where their views are reinforced via interacting withothers of the same persuasion.
At the same time, we need to caution against seeing 2-chan nationalism merely as a more intense
version of pre-existing, real-life46 nationalism. Human behaviour is influenced by theenvironment in which it occurs, and the Internet offers a unique environment, where people often
behave differently from the way they do in the real world. Correspondingly, discourses thatdevelop on the Internet may exhibit different characteristics from those that form outside theInternet. In the following I look at how internet-related elements have contributed to the specificarticulation of 2-chan nationalism and point out that online nationalism challenges us to rethink
our standard understanding of nationalism.
The Internet’s Role in the Formation of 2-chan Nationalism
Nationalism is usually associated with modernity and nation-states.47 The collective identity ofnational ‘we’ emerged with industrialisation to support the newly unified nation-states in Europe,and this model spread to the rest of the world from the late 19th century onwards. In this process,modern national media has played a significant role. Benedict Anderson’s classic study ofmodern nationalism, Imagined Communities, for example, analyses nationalism in terms of thenational and territorial imagination supported by nation-wide print capitalism. Reading a
newspaper each morning, Anderson suggests, is an (imagined) shared experience, which
contributes to the formation of national consciousness.48
In contrast, the nation imagined via the subculture of online netto-uyo community isdeterritorialised and does not exactly coincide with the national boundary. And the media content
2-chan users consume can be quite different from that of national media. As mentioned earlier,2-chan users are highly critical of mass media, and tend to gravitate towards alternative andextreme perspectives that have little place in national newspapers or TV.
Today’s digitised media environment means that we are no longer reading the same newspaperin the same way. As Cass Sunstein suggested with concepts such as the ‘Daily Me’ and‘customisation’,49 with the Internet and portable digital devices such as mobile phones, laptops
and iPhones, each of us is constantly clicking away to ‘filter in’ what we want to see and ‘filter
out’ what we do not want to see. Every time we access the Internet we are customising andpersonalising our exposure to topics and viewpoints that fit our interests and proclivities. This isa different activity from the ritual of reading the same ‘national’ newspaper with everyone else,
every morning. With the personalised media of ‘Daily Me’, we are unlikely to be creating asingle imagined community for a single nation-state. Chances are, by accessing a customised andpersonalised set of news and information each day, we are producing many, partiallyoverlapping—but never identical—imagined communities both within and without the physicalborder of a single nation-state.
As Yoshimi and Kan have argued,50 digital media have eroded the national imaginary maintainedby national media such as TV and newspaper. Mobile phone, laptop, iPod and other portabledevices let people constantly access information of their choice and encourages non-territorial
and/or deterritorialised imagination. Further to this, the new digital environment means that weare no longer passive consumers of media; unlike mass national print media, which offers oneway communication, the Internet allows each of us to create our own set of information and evenfeed it back to the public space of the Internet for others to consume, process, and pass on, all inZainichi Koreans: The Past, the Present and the Future160

bite-size. And unlike the national newspaper, in which we inevitably encounter news that we did
not intend to read, or ideas we do not agree with, each of our ‘own set of information’ we collectonline can be highly personalized, narrow and fragmented.
2-chan nationalism can be seen as one such technologically mediated small-scale site ofimagination. It is not a nation-wide imaginary that is supported by national media and stretches
as wide as the national territory. Rather it is a fragmented and customised ‘Daily We’nationalism, representing a small sector and an extreme view. With the Tsushima threads, byconstantly monitoring, gathering and consuming Korean news of an anti-Japanese nature, itsparticipants were customising their information so as to reinforce the view that ‘they’ hate ‘us’,in turn justifying that ‘we’ hate ‘them’. The Internet’s role here is crucial, because without
digitised electronic communication, it is difficult to efficiently access and distribute the small, inmany ways insignificant, news articles and images that have become central to netto-uyo chats.
2-chan Nationalism as Postmodern and Subcultural Nationalism
Implicit to many theories of nationalism is the existence of the modern subject who voluntarily
identifies with and commits to the nation. For example, one of Japan’s most influential politicalthinkers, Maruyama Masao, asserted that ‘modern nationalism is characterised by its members’autonomy and subjectivity’.51 When Anderson talked about the ‘will to kill and die for thenation,’52 he was alluding to the same point that nationalism arises out of a modern subject with acommitment to national solidarity.
In contrast, what we find on 2-chan is a postmodern subject characterised by fragmentation andcynicism. Even though the netto-uyo discourse has a strong affinity with revisionist politics,
there is little sense of netto-uyo commitment collectively to any fixed position (that is, beyond
the basic xenophobia discussed earlier), including nationalist and right-wing positions. In fact,
the posters in the Tsushima threads tended to distance themselves from the existing right-wingers
and nationalist organisations. The occasional attempts of such organisations to recruit netto-uyo
via 2-chan were largely ignored. Announcements of right-wing demonstrations did occasionallyappear in Tsushima threads; but they never produced enthusiastic responses. Netto-uyo are far
too cynical. In response to invitations to join right-wing activities outside cyberspace, theysuggested things like ‘right-wingers are in fact zainichi Koreans’ and ‘right-wingers and Koreansshould both leave Japan’, maintaining a distance from real-life nationalists.53 Netto-uyo’s antiKorean sentiments do not necessarily mean they identify with nationalist political activists, as isseen, for example, in the following comment on the original YouTube video of the right-wingdemonstration on Tsushima: ‘There go the bloody right-wingers again. They are no different
from the crazy Korean guy who set a rising-sun flag alight’.
Overall, the Tsushima threads were dominated by fragmented, decontextualised and bite-sizedimages and statements. Despite the abundant nationalistic vocabulary and sentiments that
positioned ‘Japan’ over ‘Korea’, these fragmented postings did not develop into a coherent
narrative that legitimates and promotes the modern nation-state.54 There was a strong
undercurrent that everyone and everything be relativised rather than committed to or taken
seriously, which renders 2-chan nationalism postmodern. The historical lack of a modern subject
in Japan has often been pointed out. Masao Miyoshi, for example, has observed that ‘thedispersal and demise of modern subjectivity … have long been evident in Japan, whereintellectuals have chronically complained about the absence of selfhood’.55 It is possible that 2chan nationalism is simply reproducing this ‘Japanese’ tendency online. It is also likely that thisSakamoto: ‘Koreans, Go Home!’161

is combined with the Internet’s tendency to promote a postmodern subject. Mark Poster’s work,
which examines the link between postmodern subject and electronic media, for example,
suggests that ‘electronic communications constitute the subject in ways other than that of the
major modern institutions,’56 rendering them ‘unstable, multiple, and diffuse’ (Poster 1995). In
Cyberspace, markers of social belonging such as ethnicity and gender are invisible and irrelevant(as they say, ‘On the Internet nobody knows you are a dog’). Subjects are virtual anddisembodied. One can assume and experiment with multiple subjectivities, and Cyberspace has
become a ‘significant social laboratory for experimenting with the constructions andreconstructions of self that characterise postmodern life’, where one could try on different
identities and personalities.57 Such an environment encourages speaking from a position without
full commitment and without letting that position subsume one’s sense of identity and belonging.
With 2-chan, too, the possibility that some of the posters are ‘experimenting’ with nationalist
subjectivities there, while trying out other types of subjectivities on other sites, cannot be entirely
rejected.
The lack of modernist commitment and weak sense of subjectivity means that perhaps we cansee 2-chan nationalism as a ‘subcultural’ and ‘apolitical’ nationalism that is akin to a leisurepursuit, hobby or style that functions to create an in-group feeling of belonging to this online
community. The obsession and attachment to the fantasy Japan in this discourse, I suspect, is not
the real, existing nation-state, Japan, but ‘nation as a fetish,’58 which is highly media-led, andimage-oriented. It is not the classic kind of nationalism based on national pride and belonging to
the imaginary community of fellow Japanese. Rather, the driving force behind it is the failure toenter the mainstream resulting in frustration and anxiety, which is then projected on the ‘enemy’figure and imaginary fictionalised and idealised Japan.
Conclusion
To conclude, netto-uyo nationalism is aggressive and shrill, but fragmentary. Its coherence
mainly comes from the symbol of the ‘Koreans’ as Japan’s detested Other. While the hostility
towards Korea, as well as towards China and North Korea is a shared trend among all variants of
neo-nationalism and revisionism in post-1990s Japan, there are some elements that are unique to
netto-uyo nationalism: it is a postmodern and subcultural nationalism aided by digital media andglobal accessibility to information. A product of borderless Internet technology, 2-channationalism also exhibits parochial principles of nationalism. Rather than a virtual public sphere,
the global and transnational electronic network has in this case produced an inward-looking andxenophobic nationalism with little awareness of the outside world. The oft-pointed out
democratic potential of the Internet has, in this instance, been aborted.
While I am hardly suggesting that the Internet ‘caused’ nationalism, I hope to have shown thatcertain Internet-specific elements (such as anonymity, speedy information exchange, easy
monitoring of global news) have contributed to the particular style of online neonationalism.
Netto-uyo nationalism is not the archetypal unifying ideology of the nation-state that is
reproduced through a different channel and challenges us to rethink our understanding of
nationalism in the age of global electronic media. As electronic media and the global information
network is turning the imagination into a global affair, Japan as an ‘imagined’ community is also
being deeply affected.
Of course, the bigger questions of if, and how, such a subcultural, postmodern and online
neonationalism is linked with more directly political nationalist ideas and movements outsideZainichi Koreans: The Past, the Present and the Future

162

cyberspace, needs to be examined further to assess its political efficacy. Although netto-uyo
nationalism currently remains largely within cyberspace, and although cynicism seems to prevailover modernist commitment to a fixed meaning, the potential for its politicisation andmobilisation exists. As Slavoj Zizek argued in his work on ideology and postmodern cynicism,
the lack of conscious commitment does not stop one from acting as if there is such acommitment: ‘even if we do not take things seriously, even if we keep an ironical distance, weare still doing them.’ As one of the many strands of nationalisms that constitute contemporary
Japan’s neonationalist landscape, 2-chan online nationalism should not be dismissed as mere
chatter.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Matt Allen, Stephen Epstein, Manying Ip, Matthew Penney and Mark
Selden for their valuable feedback on the earlier versions of this paper.
Appendix: typical netto-uyo chats – from a thread about the rejection of Korean rescue team toenter New Zealand following an earthquake in February 2011.
1 ： [―{}@{}@{}-] Korean Monkeys φ ★：2011/02/25(Fri)
ID: ???
Earthquake-hit New Zealand rejects Korean rescue team due to a concern with foot and mouthdisease.
660 ： Rokudaimhamadadenzaemon◆AKUMA/.c.o ：2011/02/27(Sun) 10:22:22.44
ID:Cg4n2goz
This shows that today’s Korea is a real source of trouble.
661 ：（´・ω・｀）（｀ハ´）：2011/02/27(Sun) 10:24:56.64

ID:H4GeBAxG
The Japanese are ostracising us Koreans. (partially written in mock Korean)
662 ：（´・ω・｀）（｀ハ´）：2011/02/27(Sun) 13:12:29.58

ID:FqpSFRYw
Koreans will behave disgustingly to get praise, which will only lead to their bad
reputation. If accepted help from Korean, NZ will forever demanded to thank Korea.
New Zealand knew this and that’s why they rejected Korean team.
Korean monkeys have vanity, but not sincerity, modesty, respect towards others.
Even though half of Korean population are Christians, their Christianity has produced
evil Christians who are totally different from Christianity.
There are no other shameful people like this.
663 ：（´・ω・｀）（｀ハ´）：2011/02/27(Sun) 13:20:48.40 ID:iYOJxnTz

No country wants Koreans to come.

Sakamoto: ‘Koreans, Go Home!’

664 ：（´・ω・｀）（｀ハ´

163）：2011/02/27(sun) 14:02:23.53 ID:TXghT97S

Concern with looting, rape, rescue dog eaten, using pet medication.
665 ：（´・ω・｀）（｀ハ´）：2011/02/27(Sun) 14:04:39.41 ID:xKeHh4np

Japan should ban Koreans.
666 ：（´・ω・｀）（｀ハ´）：2011/02/27(Sun) 14:17:39.64 ID:H4GeBAxG>>664
You exposed us. (in mock Korean)(￣∀￣)667 ：（´・ω・｀）（｀ハ´）：2011/02/27(Sun) 17:51:41.19 ID:6t+ujcZr

Let’s ban Koreans from Japan.
668 ：（´・ω・｀）（｀ハ´）：2011/02/27(Sun) 18:22:48.49>>660
No, now just now but also the past.
669 ：Asahiruyasuzakijouha＠FREE
19:23:12.80 ID:IHRyVVDZTIBET ◆giKoK4gH6I ：2011/02/27(Sun)>>662
There was a Korean who died in trying to save a Japanese person at a train station. I have notintention to speak badly of him.
670 ：（´・ω・｀）（｀ハ´）：2011/02/27(Sun) 19:43:02.18

We don’t need looters.
Rumi Sakamoto is a senior lecturer in the School of Asian Studies, the University of Auckland,
New Zealand, and a Japan Focus associate. She is the coeditor with Matthew Allen of Popular
Culture, Globalization and Japan.
References
Anderson, B. (1991) Imagined Communities. London: Verso.
Bakker, P. (2001) ‘New Nationalism: The Internet Crusade’, Paper presented for the 2001
International Studies Association Annual Convention, Chicago, IL, 20-24 February 2001.
Bureuilly, J. (1994) Nationalism and the State. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Candan, M. and U. Hunger (2008) ‘Nation Building Online: A Case Study of Kurdish Migrants
in Germany’, German Policy Studies 4 (4): 125-153.
Card, J. (2006) ‘A Chronicle of Korea-Japan Friendship’, The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan
Focus.

Zainichi Koreans: The Past, the Present and the Future

164

Chan, B. (2006) ‘Virtual Communities and Chinese National Identity’, Journal of Chinese
Overseas 2 (1): 1-32.
Eriksen, T. H. (2007) ‘Nationalism and the Internet’, Nations and Nationalism 13 (1): 1-17.
Gellner, E. (1983) Nations and Nationalism. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Gries, P. H. (2005) ‘Chinese Nationalism: Challenging the State?’, Current History 104 (683):
251-256.
Habermas, J. (1984) The Theory of Communicative Action. Boston: Beacon Press
Honda, Y. (2007) ‘Focusing on Contemporary Japan’s “Youth” Nationalism’, Social Sciences
Japan Journal 10 (2): 281-286.
Iida Y. (2003) ‘Shikaku ideorogī to fetisshu to shite no nashonarizumu [nationalism as a visual
ideology and fetish]’, Gengobunka kenkyū kiyō 15 (1): 91-104.
Iwasaki M. et al. (2008) ‘The Topology of Post-1990s Historical Revisionism’, positions 16 (3):507-538.
J-Cast News (2009) ‘2 channerā: igaina jituzō [unexpected reality of 2-chan users]’, [online]
Available here [Accessed: 4 Feb 2011].
Kimura, M. (Interview) ‘Uyoku wa netto-uyoku o dō miteirunoka [right-wingers’ perspectives
on netto-uyo]’, in D. Kobayashi (ed.) Netto-uyoku tte donna yatsu? [Netto-uyoku - who are
they?] Tokyo: Takarajimasha: 128-131.
Kondo, R. and A.Tanizaki (2007) Netto-uyoku to sabukaru minshu-shugi [netto-uyoku andsubcultural democracy]. Tokyo: San’ichi shobō.
Kosugi, R. (2006) ‘Youth Employment in Japan’s Economic Recovery: “Freeters” and“NEETs”, The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus.
Langman, L. (2005) ‘From Virtual Public Spheres to Global Justice: a Critical Theory ofInternetworked Social Movements’, Sociological Theory 23 (1): 42-74.
Liu, S-D. (2006) ‘China’s Popular Nationalism on the Internet: Report on the 2005 Anti-Japan
Network Struggles’, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 7 (1): 144-155.
Gavan McCormack, G. (2011) ‘Small Islands – Big Problem: Senkaku/Diaoyu and the Weight ofHistory and Geography in China-Japan Relations’, The Asia-Pacific Journal 19 (1. 1) January.
Maruyama, M. (1964) Gendai-seiji no shisō to kōdō [thoughts and actions in contemporary
politics]. Tokyo: Miraisha.
McLelland, M. (2008) ‘“Race” on the Japanese Internet: Discussing Korea and Koreans on “2channeru”’, New Media & Society 10(6): 811–829.
Miyamoto, M. (2009) Tsushima ga abunai [Tsushima under threat]. Tokyo: Sankei-shimbun.
Miyoshi, M. (1989) ‘Against Native Grain’, Miyoshi, M. and H.D. Harootunian (eds.)
Postmodernism and Japan. Durham: Duke University Press: 143-168.

Sakamoto: ‘Koreans, Go Home!’

165

Morris-Suzuki, T. (2011) ‘Guarding the Borders of Japan: Occupation, Korean War and FrontierControls’, The Asia-Pacific Journal 9 (8. 3).
Negroponte, N. (1996) Being Digital. London: Hodder & Stoughton.
Nimiya, K. (2003) Koeni dashite yomenai netto keijiban [Internet BBS that cannot be read
aloud].Tokyo: Chukō shinsho rakure.
Oguma E. (1995) Tan’itsu minzoku shinwa no kigen [The origin of the homogeneity myth].
Tokyo: Shinyōsha.
Oguma, E. and Y. Ueno (2003) Iyashi no nashonarizumu (Nationalism as Healing). Tokyo:
Keiōgijuku-daigaku shuppankai.
Ogura, T. (2005) ‘Sengo nashonarizumu no shūen to arata na nashonarizumu no taitō [the end of
the postwar nationalism and the emergence of new nationalism]’, in Ishizaka, K. et al. Higashiajia: kōsakusuru nashonarizumu [East Asia: intermingling nationalism]. Tokyo:
Shakaihyōronsha: 168-211.
Poster, M. (2001) (ed.) Jean Baudrillard: Selected Writings, Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Poster, M. (1995) ‘Postmodern Virtualities’, [online] Available here [Accessed: 10 Feb 2010].
Rheingold, H. (1993) The Virtual Community. Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley.
Rheingold, H. (2003) Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution: Ttransforming Cultures andCommunities in an Age of Instant Access. New York: Basic Books.
Sanstein, C. (2001) Republic.com. Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press.
Sasada, H. (2006) ‘Youth and Nationalism in Japan’, SAIS Review 26 (2): 109-122.
Seto, H. (2008) ‘Watashi wa naze netto-uyoku o shuchō surunoka [why do I insist on being a
netto-uyo?]’, in D. Kobayashi (ed.) Netto-uyoku tte donna yatsu? [Netto-uyoku – who are they?].
Tokyo: Takarajimasha: 73-78.
Sia, C-L., B. C. Y. Tan and K-K. Wei (2002) ‘Group Polarization and Computer-MediatedCommunication: Effects of Communication Cues, Social Presence, and Anonymity’, Information
systems Research 13 (1): 70-90.
Slater, D. (2010) ‘The Making of Japan’s New Working Class: “Freeters” and the Progression
From Middle School to the Labor Market’, The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus.
Takahara, M. (2006) Fuan-gata nashonarizumu no jidai [The era of anxiety-type nationalism].
Tokyo: Yōsensha.
Tanimichi, K. (2005) ‘The Youthful Face of Japanese Nationalism’, Far Eastern Economic
Review 168 (10): 33-36.
Tsuji, D. (2008) ‘Intānetto ni okeru “ukei-ka” genshō ni kansuru jisshō kenkyū: chōsa kekka
gaiyō hōkokusho [An empirical study of right-leaning phenomenon on the Internet: a summary
report]’ [online] Available here [Accessed: 4 Feb 2011].

Zainichi Koreans: The Past, the Present and the Future

166

Turkel, S. (1997) Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet. New York: Simon &Schuster.
Yamamoto, K. (2010) Kokkyō no shima ga abunai [Islands at national borders are under threat].
Tokyo: Asuka-shinsha.
Yang, G. (2003) ‘The Co-evolution of the Internet and Civil Society in China’, Asian Survey 43(3): 405-422.
Yoshimi, S. and S-J Kang (2001) Gurōbaru-ka no enkin-hō: atarashii kōkyō-kūkan o motomete[Perspectives on globalization: in search of a new public space]. Tokyo: Iwanami shoten.
Slater, D. (2010) ‘The Making of Japan's New Working Class: “Freeters” and the Progression
From Middle School to the Labor Market’, The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus.
Wada, H. (2005) ‘Takeshima/Tokdo - A Plea to Resolve a Worsening Japan-Korea Dispute’, The
Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus.
Zhou, Y., Y-C. Chuang et al. ‘Living on the Cyber Border: Minjian Political Writers in Chinese
Cyberspace (1)’, Current Anthropology 46 (5) 779-804.
Zizek, S. (1989) The Sublime Object of Ideology. London; New York: Verso.
Notes
1

Link (Accessed on 19th Feb 2010; this video has since been removed due to a copyright claimby the nationalist group that organised the Tsushima campaign.)
2

Tsushima is about 700 square kilometres in area, and has a population of about 30,000 (as of2010). It is the closest Japanese territory to any foreign country; on a fine day, one can actuallysee Busan from Tsushima (it is, in fact, the only place in Japan one can see a foreign territory
with the naked eye.). For an example of recent conservative/nationalist take on Tsushima as a‘national defense issue’, see Miyamoto (2009); Yamamoto (2010)
3

The city council in Masan passed the ‘Tsushima Day’ bill, commemorating June 19 as the day
when a 15th century general led forces to take over Tsushima.
4

See Oguma and Ueno (2003) for Japan’s grass-roots nationalism; for Japan’s historicalrevisionism, see Iwasaki et al. (2008).
5

McCormack 2011.

6

Zaitokukai was established in 2007 and now boasts several thousand members (according to its
website) and many branches throughout Japan. Its original focus was the so-called ‘special
privileges’ of Korean residents in Japan; but their target has now expanded to foreigners inJapan.
7

Shuken kaifuku o mezasu kai was established in 2006, with a stated goal of ‘fighting against theattempts of China and communism to invade and colonise Japan’ (from the group’s website).
8
9Tanimichi 2005.

In Appendix I have provided a short translation from a typical anti-Korean thread on anothertopic, to show 2-channeru’s style, visual quality and subcultural mode of expression.

Sakamoto: ‘Koreans, Go Home!’

167

10

While China and North Korea, too, are routinely othered and demonized, Korea is 2channeru’s favourite other. Responses to Korea-related topics are almost guaranteed on 2channeru. This focus on South Korea in contrast with offline neo-nationalists’ focus on China
and North Korea (and the US) as Japan’s threat, is likely to be a product of the earlier context for
the emergence and crystallization of netto-uyo. Examples include 2-channeru users’ heatedonline indignations at South Korea’s rough play and the referee’s bias towards South Korea inthe 2002 World Cup Soccer, Korean netizens’ 2004 cyber ‘attack’ on 2-channeru overDokdo/Takeshima in 2004, the phenomenon of the ‘Hate-Korea’ web comic in 2005 which waslargely about 2-channeru users’ backlash against the extreme popularity of Korean TV dramaand other cultural imports in early 2000s (Sakamoto and Allen 2007).
11

An important exception is Mark McLelland (2008), who challenges the ‘Anglophone’
understanding of the online discourse of ‘race’ by closely examining the 2-channeru discussions
on Korea and Koreans. He concludes that 2-chan racial thinking is more preoccupied with thelink between ‘blood’ and ‘cultural competence’ than that in multicultural societies like the US orAustralia, where ‘Asian race’ is conceptualised as a single category.
12

Sasada (2006); Honda (2007).

13

Habermas (1984).

14

Negroponte (1996: 236).

15

For example, Bakker (2001); Chan (2006); Eriksen (2007); Candan and Hunger (2008).

16

Erikson (2006: 6).

17

Gries (2005); Zhou et al. (2005); Liu (2006).

18

Yang (2003: 405-406). Another view is that the Chinese government manipulates cybernationalism to put pressure on Japan without letting anti-Japanese demonstrations get out of
hand.
19

For example, Mixi, Japan’s most popular social networking service has about 5 million users,
which is about half the number of 2-chan users. It is also the case that while 2-chan has been
described as the world’s largest BBS, the number of YouTube or Twitter users exceeds 2-chanusers. See Net Rating/Nielsen Online (Nov 2008) [online] Available here [Accessed 7 Oct 2009].
20

From 2003 IP addresses of the users have been recorded, so strictly speaking 2-chan is nolonger entirely anonymous. A vast majority still post as ‘anonymous’, while some choose to use
pseudonyms.
21

McLelland (2008: 821).

22

Tsuji (2008: 11).

23

Motomiya Hiroshi’s historical comic, Kuni ga moeru (The Country is Burning), which
included depiction of the Nanjing Massacre, became a target of criticisms from netto-uyo andsome conservative politicians, ending with an apology, termination of the series and deletion ofreferences to the Nanjing Massacre when the comic was published in book form.
24

Seto (2008); Tsuji (2008).

Zainichi Koreans: The Past, the Present and the Future
25

Kondo and Tanizaki (2007: 156).

26

Seto (2008: 76); Kimura (2008: 129-30).

168

27

2-channeru (2006: 177). A majority of 2-chan users are said to be youth and young adults(Sasada 2006: 119; Nimiya 2003: 5); but this view has been challenged by one recent survey thatfound that the largest age group of the users has gone up to 33-44. See J-cast News (2009).
28

Nimiya (2003: 11-13).

29

Takahara (2006).

30

Kondo and Tanizaki hold a similar view (2007: 156-165). For a general discussion of youth
employment problem, freeters and NEETs in Japan, see Kosugi (2006) and Slater (2010).
31

Ogura (2005: 188).

32

These are examples of jobs often taken by immigrant workers in countries like Europe, USA,
UK, New Zealand and Australia.
33

A city council in Masan passed the ‘Tsushima Day’ bill in 2005, commemorating June 19 as
the day when a 15th century general led forces to take over Tsushima (Card 2006). For an
overview of the Takeshima-Dokdo issue, see Wada (2005). Following the nationalists-right wing
campaigns and publicity via right-leaning media, there have been mainstream reports about the
Korean presence on the island, too.
34

Often minor news starts the netto-uyo conversation. Examples include an anti-Japanesestatement made by a Korean blogger; a Korean media’s critique of a YouTube video of Korean‘foul play’ in the 2002 World Cup; or someone crossing out ‘Japan Sea’ and writing ‘East Sea’on a world map exhibited in a museum in Berlin.
35

In this respect it is interesting to note that the Korean presence in Tsushima is regarded asexternal pollution and invasion, despite the historical Korean presence in Tsushima.
Contemporary nationalist discourse seems to be attempting to purge the historical presence of
Korea and the islands’ memory of it by newly reconstructing Korea as an external figure.
36

Oguma (1995). War-time multiculturalism was quickly forgotten after the war. See MorrisSuzuki (2011), for example, for Japan’s postwar border control against illegal Korean entry in
the immediate postwar period. Even though many such Koreans were former residents returning
to Japan after decolonisation, they were treated as problematic outsiders and foreigners.
37

If indeed netto-uyo are economically and socially disadvantaged young people, as has beensuggested, this type of anti-Korean sentiment may share something with the well-documented
pattern of the underprivileged national self blaming the immigrant Other – ‘they’ are stealing‘our’ jobs.
38

A Korean word for ‘my country’.

39

A Korean word to mark a polite ending of a sentence.

40

Poster (2001: 1).

41

Poster (2001: 7).

Sakamoto: ‘Koreans, Go Home!’

169

42

Rheingold (2003); Langman (2005).

43

Langman (2005: 44).

44

Rheingold (1993: 207).

45

Sia et al., 2002.

46

In this article by ‘real-life’ I simply refer to non-electronic environments outside cyberspace.

47

Gellner (1983); Anderson (1991); Breuilly (1994).

48

Anderson (1991).

49

Sunstein (2001).

50

Yoshimi and Kan (2001).

51

Maruyama (1964).

52

Anderson (1991).

53

This attitude is reciprocated by the traditional neonationalists, who tend to be dismissive of
netto-uyo for their lack of rigorous ideology as well as their hiding behind anonymity, which
they consider to be a sign of netto-uyo’s lack of commitment.
54

A number of core posters attempted to do this, but they failed to define the overall discourse.

55

Miyoshi (1989).

56

Poster (1995).

57

Turkle (1995: 180).

58

Iida (2003: 93).

59

While Korea is constructed as Japan’s Other in the Tsushima threads discussed here, ‘China’and ‘tokutei-ajia (‘certain Asia’; a 2-chan slang that refers to China, South Korea and North
Korea) appear similarly othered in netto-uyo discourse in general.
60

Zizek (1989: 33).

Zainichi Koreans: The Past, the Present and the Future

170“Tunneling through Nationalism: The Phenomenology of a Certain Nationalist”
Kang Sang-Jung
With an introduction by Tessa Morris-Suzuki
September 5, 2011
http://japanfocus.org/-Kang-Sangjung/3595
In the 1990s East Asian experienced a turn toward nationalism that includes anextremist, xenophobic wing, which expanded further during the 2000s. This is true in all
three of the major countries in the region; Japan, China, and South Korea. In Japan, forexample, Abe Shinzo, whose platform calls for hawkish foreign policies and the rewriting of
the postwar constitution based on cultural nationalism, returned as the prime minister in2012. The anti-Korean slanders that were limited earlier to cyberspace, as discussed by
Rumi Sakamoto in her article earlier in this reader, have since taken to the streets inJapanese cities. How to deal with such a phenomenon, described by Tessa Morris-Suzuki asa kind of “mass retreat to the psychological fortresses of ethno-nationalism and racism” (p.
5), is becoming an ever more pertinent issue for all East Asian countries and theirnationals.
This second article by the noted professor Kang Sang-Jung uses the framework ofpolitical science, but it is based entirely on Kang’s own experience as a Zainichi Korean.
Kang sees expanding nationalism and a heightening of insular ethnocentrism as a kind of“disease.” Relying on the thoughts of Immanuel Wallerstein, Ernest Gellner, and Hannah
Arendt, among others, he uses Arendt’s notion of verlassenheit, a state of loneliness orabandonment felt by the masses, as the base on which the turn toward nationalism takes
place.
Kang starts by explaining that he can identify with this state and sentiment, because“it bears a close resemblance to the situation of the Zainichi Korean ethnic minority in the
1970’s” (p. 13). Alienated in Japan, many Zainichi Koreans came to blindly identify witheither South Korea, which was virtually a military dictatorship at the time, or North Korea,
which through “self-help” (Juche) ideology indoctrination posed as a savior of the Korean
diaspora in Japan. Such identification resulted in the isolation of Zainichi Koreans and theirlack of dialog with the communities that surrounded them. This ethnocentrism resulted indisillusionment as the reality of North Korea came to be exposed, writes Kang. Thereafter
the only recourse left for Zainichi Koreans was “to tunnel down and discover a passage thatwill lead us out, on to the far side, beyond nationalism” (p. 13).
And that is also a path that other East Asians can take. Kang believes that Zainichi
Koreans, who could no longer identify with narrow-minded nationalism, came to identify
with a new kind of regionalism in East Asia that will be relevant to other East Asians. The
article articulates one such new regionalism as a “North East Asian Common House” withJapan, China, and South Korea at its center. Kang envisions such a community as creating abroader coalition and space “for the free interchange of people and information” (p. 14).
Whereas some Japanese right-wing organizations such as Zaitokukai single out Zainichi
Koreans as villains, Kang’s article attributes positive roles to the Zainichi: because they
already have experience in negotiating among nationalist groups and being a minority

Sakamoto: ‘Koreans, Go Home!’

everywhere they go, they are the future of East Asia, as the region increasingly turns
toward intraregionalism and multiculturalism.

171

Zainichi Koreans: The Past, the Present and the Future

172

Tunneling Through Nationalism: The Phenomenology of a Certain Nationalist
Kang Sangjung
Introduced by Tessa Morris-Suzuki
Translated by Mark Gibeau
Introduction
Throughout the modern era, issues of nationalism and national identity have lain at the heart ofintellectual debate in Japan, but the contours of the debate have repeatedly changed over time.
From the 1950s onward, as Japan rose from the ashes of defeat to become an economic
superpower, visions of ethnic homogeneity and unique culture were widely propagated by theJapanese state and media, and were embraced by a number of commentators in the US andEurope as well as in Japan itself. During the 1990s, this economic and cultural nationalism cameunder sustained criticism, triggered in part by the collapse of the economic bubble. Yet, far fromhastening the demise of nationalism, the two decades of relative economic stagnation from theearly 1990s onward were marked by the rise of new and more overtly politicized nationalist
ideologies, and by impassioned debates over the nation and its destiny.1 More recently, somecommentators have suggested that a rightward shift is occurring in Japanese intellectual life,
bringing together people from opposite ends of the political spectrum into a new nationalist
consensus.2
For the past two decades or so, Kang Sangjung, who is a second-generation member of the
Korean community in Japan and a professor at the University of Tokyo, has been an active andinfluential participant in debates about nationalism in Japan and beyond. In this article, hereflects on the shifting context and nature of nationalism in Japan, and on changes in his own
view of nationalism over the period from the 1970s to the present day. Nationalist discourse (hesuggests) needs to be seen in the broader context of economic and political transformations, notonly within Japan itself but also on a regional and global scale. From this perspective, the intense
debates surrounding nationalism that erupted from the 1990s onward reflect a profoundtransformation in the relationship between “nation” and “state”: a transformation that demands a
deep rethinking of nationalism in the twenty-first century context.
As he explains in the article translated here, Kang’s approach to political ideas has been shapedby his experiences both as a Korean born and brought up in a Japanese provincial city, and as ascholar of political thought (particularly of the ideas of Max Weber) who conducted part of his
graduate work in 1980s (West) Germany. His first major contributions to controversies overnational identity were a series of articles on the identity of Zainichi Koreans, published in the
1980s3, and he has since published widely on ideas of nationalism in a global and in a Japanesecontext.
I first encountered Kang’s ideas on nationalism in a recorded conversation (taidan) between
Kang and the scholar of social thought Murai Osamu, published in a special issue of the Japanesejournal Gendai Shisō entitled Minzoku Mondai no Kigen e [To the Roots of the Problem ofEthnicity].4 In retrospect, the timing and content of this special issue seems significant. It
appeared in May 1993, at almost exactly the same time as the original version of SamuelHuntington’s Clash of Civilizations.5 The Soviet Union had recently collapsed, and the Balkans
Conflict was reaching its peak. This, in other words, was the moment of the emergence (at least

Kang: Tunneling through Nationalism: The Phenomenology of a Certain Nationalist

173

in Europe) of a “post-Cold War” order, when many observers were predicting a decline inideologically-based global tensions and a revival of conflicts based on ethno-nationalism.
The early 1990s, however, were also the period when new constructivist and post-structuralist
ideas were encouraging radical critiques of nationalism. The May 1993 Gendai Shisō issue
included translations of critical writings by Jacques Derrida and Etiènne Balibar, as well as
essays by a number of scholars who would play key roles in the deconstruction of nationalism
within Japan (among them Ukai Satoshi, Takahashi Tetsuya and Ueno Toshiya). Kang andMurai’s taidan, meanwhile, used Harry Harootunian’s recently published essay “America’s
Japan/ Japan’s Japan”6 as a starting point for exploring the ways in which Japanese ethnonationalism was entangled and complicit with US power and western orientalism.
By 1993, then, the stage was set for the intense debates over nationalism discussed in Section 4of “Tunneling through Nationalism.” The temperature was further raised two years later bycontroversies surrounding the fiftieth anniversary of Japan’s defeat in the Asia-Pacific War.
Timid steps by some Japanese politicians towards apologies for the events of the war were
followed by a fierce backlash from the right, who revived an ethno-nationalist discourse
reminiscent of the 1930s and early 1940s. At the same time, though, the 1990s saw the
publication of outstanding Japanese critiques of nationalism, exposing the ideologicalunderpinnings of the myths of cultural uniqueness, and highlighting the paradoxical complicityof Japanese nationalist rhetoric with political subordination to the US. Among these were works
like Nishikawa Nagao’s Kokkyō no Koekata [How to Cross National Borders]7 and the collectionof essays Nationaru Hisutorī o Koete [Transcending National History], edited by Komori Yôichi
and Takahashi Tetsuya8.
The 1990s critique of nationalism in Japan was not simply a matter of intellectual debate, butinvolved a strong element of political activism. The teaching of history had already emerged as apolitical battleground from the 1960s onward9, and many of the key participants in the 1990s
debates campaigned energetically against the adoption of new nationalistic history and civics
textbooks in schools, and against the enforced singing of national anthem at graduation
ceremonies and other public occasions. The battle lines, however, were far from simple. This
was not a dichotomous divide between nationalists and their critics, but rather a more complex
field in which pro- and anti-nationalism was interwoven with diverse attitudes toward issues
including Japanese history, the constitution and the security alliance with the United States.
Some of these complexities were brought to the surface in 1995, when liberal literary scholar
Katô Norihiro published his immensely controversial essay Haisengoron [After Defeat], inwhich he argued that Japan required a clear sense of national identity in order to be able toapologize to other Asian nations for the wrongs committed in wartime.10 The fierce arguments
provoked by this proposal exposed a range of intellectual and emotional dividing lines amongst
people seen as being on the liberal-left of the Japanese political spectrum.
Nationalist sentiment in Japan was immensely strengthened in 2002, when revelations about the
kidnapping of Japanese citizens by North Korea (the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea,
DPRK) led to an outpouring of media fear and hostility towards the DPRK, in some cases
triggering threats and physical attacks on Koreans in Japan seen as sympathetic to the North. The
rising tide of nationalism during this period was also influenced by social anxieties stemmingfrom the prolonged economic recession which followed the bursting of the “bubble” in the early
1990s. At the level of state politics, the nationalist ascendancy appeared to reach a peak with theZainichi Koreans: The Past, the Present and the Future

174

Prime Ministership of Abe Shinzô (who served for one year, from September 2006 to September2007). Abe’s hawkish foreign policy (particularly towards North Korea) and determination torevise Japan’s postwar constitution and education laws were underpinned by an intense cultural
nationalism, spelled out in his widely sold paperback Utsukushii Kuni e [To the Beautiful
Country].
Throughout this period, Kang Sangjung actively participated in debates on Japanese nationalism
from several angles. His writings included Orientarizumu no Kanata e [Beyond Orientalism,
1996]12 and Nashonarizumu [Nationalism, 2001]13, both of which offered critical reexaminations of modern nationalist thought in Japan, but also works like Nicchō Kankei no
Kokufuku [Overcoming Japan-North Korea Relations, 2003]14 and Higashi Ajia Kyōdō no Ie o
Mezashite [Towards a Common House in East Asia, 2001]15, which argued, in terms of practicalcontemporary policies, for the normalization of relations with the DPRK and the creation of a
Northeast Asian regional community. The second of these themes, closely related to Wada
Haruki’s proposals for Northeast Asian regionalism16, forms an important element in the article
translated here.
His approach, however, has always been a distinctive one. As a South Korean national born,
brought up and resident in Japan, he directs his critique of nationalism towards Korea as well as
towards Japan, often pointing to the complex ways in which Japanese and South Koreannationalism are historically intertwined and re-enforce one another. (Although, as in this article,
his criticism also recognizes the power relationships which differentiate the nationalism of
former colony from that of former colonizer).17 He strongly believes in the importance ofcommunicating with a broad popular audience, and much of his work, particularly in the past ten
years, has appeared in media outlets (local as well as national) that lie outside the normal circuitsof academic debate. His popular writings have included recorded discussions with a wide rangeof people, including those with political views far removed from his own18, and also increasingly
include works written in novelistic semi-fictional form.19 Kang’s works (including the article
translated here) also express a multi-layered response to the complex phenomenon ofnationalism: a desire to understand its economic and social wellsprings; a profound hostility tostate mobilization of ethnonationalist symbols and passions; but also a recognition of, and acertain sympathy for, the human desire for community and the longing for a place to call home.20
If the early 1990s marked the start of a new phase in Japan’s ongoing nashonarizumu ronsō[nationalism debate], the period from 2009 onward may come to be seen as marking a shift to afurther phase whose outlines are not yet clearly defined. Events on the political stage have had adeep impact on the contours of public discourse in Japan. The 2009 advent of a Democratic Party
government, after over half a century of almost uninterrupted Liberal Democratic Party
dominance, was welcomed by many people as opening up new domestic and international
possibilities for Japan. But the rapid collapse of the Hatoyama administration and the problems
that have beset the Democratic Party regime ever since have left many feeling deeply
disillusioned. In global terms (as Kang emphasizes) US hegemony seems in irreversible decline,
yet the Japanese government appears unable to find any policy alternative to the US strategic
embrace.
In some respects, the power of cultural nationalism seems to have diminished since the 1990s.
Japanese audiences enthusiastically embrace the Korean and Chinese popular culture whichreaches them via expanding cross-border media flows. Within the sphere of mass culture,Kang: Tunneling through Nationalism: The Phenomenology of a Certain Nationalist

175

interaction between Japan and its Asian neighbours is far closer than it was ten or fifteen years
ago. But cultural transnationalism co-exists with the rise of populist nationalism, particularly at
the level of prefectural and city governments, and has recently triggered an overtly racist
backlash, played out above all on the social networks of the Internet age.21 Meanwhile, efforts toresist the state imposition of obeisance to the national symbols of flag and anthem are repeatedly
frustrated. The 1990s critique of nationalism could, indeed, be said to have triumphed in therealm of logic, only to fail in the realm of practical politics. The fact that nations and ethnicities
are constructed rather than natural, and that national symbols and traditions are invented, is now
widely accepted. But people continue to hate and fight in their name regardless.
In Japan, the disaster that has unfolded since the tsunami of 11 March 2011 has added a newtwist to the nationalism debate: on the one hand, deepening many people’s mistrust of thenational government, while on the other evoking the rhetoric of national community – ganbare
Nippon! – as a rallying cry for recovery.

In his media comments on the disaster, Kang Sangjung has not only exposed failures in thecompany and government response to the nuclear crisis and called for regional cooperation todevelop alternatives to nuclear power22, but has also sought to shift attention from the national to
the local human dimensions of the event, which he defines not as a “national disaster” [kokunan]
but as a “people’s disaster” [minnan].23
US power declines; the global financial system sinks further into crisis; regional power shifts
challenge Japan’s economic dominance in East Asia. In this uncertain world, how can we findeffective ways to resist a mass retreat to the psychological fortresses of ethno-nationalism andracism? The essay translated here provides no simple answers to this question, but offers boththeoretical and personal reflections on the changing forms and persisting power of nationalism inJapan, while also pointing to the outlines of one possible path beyond the ethnonationalist
hatreds of an age of globalization.—Tessa Morris-Suzuki

Tunneling Through Nationalism: The Phenomenology of a Certain Nationalist

Zainichi Koreans: The Past, the Present and the Future

176

What is nationalism? How does one answer such a primitive yet essential question? As amember of one of Japan’s ethnic minorities, to me it is both an academic and an existential
problem.
In this essay I will draw on the world systems approach of Immanuel Wallerstein and othertheories to trace the transformation of the East Asian order in the post war period while
simultaneously discussing my own transformation from pre-nationalist to nationalist and postnationalist. I will outline the processes by which an East Asia baptised into nationalism mighttunnel through that nationalism to emerge on the far side, into what we may call an East Asian
Common House: a loose, cooperative regionalist community connecting North East Asia andSouth East Asia. The conclusion I reach in the present essay is that this kind of regional
integration has the potential to attenuate nationalist rivalries in East Asia.
1. From Gesellschaft to Gemeinschaft
Why must we begin any examination of nationalism with the question of what constitutes theobject of enquiry? What is the object of enquiry? The problem is not simply that the object isunclear at the start of the examination; even at its end we cannot expect a single, univocal
definition to emerge. Still, what is clear is that the concept of nationalism does exist, and that it
contains within it an excess of images. Nationalism is known to all as a household word: yet itlacks definition. Why does nationalism in particular embody such paradoxes? It would seem that
simply labelling a phenomenon as “nationalism” is sufficient to bring nationalism into existence.
Whether you define nationalism as a discourse or see it as a specific form of social
consciousness, it remains nonetheless a highly volatile phenomenon. Like a mercurial, explosive
liquid, the phenomenon of nationalism is unstable, fleeting and transitory.
If nationalism is such a volatile phenomenon, why do nationalists see it as an unshakable andeternal “destiny”? We can liken nationalism to the shimmering of the air on a hot day: ephemeral
and trembling, rising like a flame from diffracting light. Yet, as we all know, these heatshimmers are only the product of warm air, rising from a patch of earth heated by the sun’s rays.
They live for but a moment. When air of a different density is introduced into the rising flow, thelight passing through is diffracted into an array of colours. It is as though the display were
designed specifically to deceive the eyes of the onlookers. If nationalism is akin to these heatshimmers, what are the powerful rays of light that cause the shimmering?
Even if nationalism is not solely a product of the modern era, but is predicated on the “ethnies”
of previous ages24, there can be no denying that the constructivist approach is highly effective
when analysing this phenomenon. Whether one stands in opposition to nationalism or supports it,
there seems to be a consensus regarding the efficacy of constructivism as a framework ofunderstanding. Despite the rhetorical emphasis on the persistence and immortality ofnationalism, there remains a shared understanding that nationalism was discovered at a specificpoint in time, and that it was created and is constantly being re-created. With that in mind, how
do we go about developing an argument about nationalism’s origins, development andmovement? If nationalism can be likened to the shimmering of the air, perhaps we ought to lookoutside of nationalism for the source of that iridescence.
The best-known version of this somewhat external, objective explanation can be found in theworld systems theory developed by Immanuel Wallerstein and others. According to Wallerstein,
the modern world system (the global capitalist economy) was formed as a class-based societyKang: Tunneling through Nationalism: The Phenomenology of a Certain Nationalist

177[gesellschaft]. Yet, to justify its own structure, while destroying a range of historically extant
communities [gemeinschaften], this world system simultaneously constructed new forms of
gemeinschaft which resembled status groups (race, nation, peoples, ethnic groups, religious
groups, etc.). Thus the modern period is not, as one might expect, a movement fromgemeinschaft to gesellschaft, but rather the opposite: it is a movement from gesellschaft togemeinschaft.
If the above holds true, then the cultural role of nationalism in the construction of difference
must be reconsidered. However much we may emphasise the role of nationalism in ethnic
identity creation, language revival and cultural differentiation, in situations where suchphenomena do not serve class interests, status group formation may take non-ethnic forms, suchas the creation of religious identity groups. So (for example) we can see cases of shifts within a
few decades from pan-Turkic to pan-Islamic movements, and then to nationalist- or class-based
movements. Thus we cannot simply look at one section of the process and conclude that it is an“ethnic revival.”
Still, nationalism is not simply a reflection of the social reality of the world system. Like theshimmering produced by the diffraction of light, nationalism too appears in an almost infinite
number of different guises. That is, unified forms of shared status identity such as ethnicity are
not unequivocally fixed. Rather, they are given their specific form by the adhesive force of thesubjective moment. The result is a broad spectrum of innumerable gradations.
On this point Wallerstein makes the half-ironic comment that, “Far from gemeinschaften dying
out, they have never been stronger, more complex, more overlapping and competitive, moredeterminative of our lives. And yet never have they been less legitimate... Our gemeinschaften
are, if you will, our loves that dare not speak their names.”25 Research on nationalism must
untangle these cryptic paradoxes from within as well as from without.
Here, as a preliminary approach to this kind of internal/external understanding of nationalism, I
would like to talk about my personal transitions against the backdrop of the various historicalstages of nationalism in Japan and East Asia. Setting aside the question of whether or not
ontogeny (the development of the individual) recapitulates phylogeny (the development of thewhole group or system), I believe that discussing shifts in personal experience in the context of
the world system social reality will highlight the contradictions inherent to nationalism. It is also
for this reason that I have selected “Phenomenology of a Certain Nationalist” for my subtitle.
2. Pre-Nationalist
It is necessary to pass through a number of different intermediary stages before the nation orstate and their traditions and histories come to occupy a central position in one’s selfconsciousness, endowing one with a sense of affiliation and difference from others. I was born
during the Korean War and I passed my youth--until my adolescence—in the age of the Pax
Americana. The world economy was being run according to the Bretton Woods system, with
post-war America and the overwhelming power of the U.S. dollar at its centre. A Keynesian
welfare state with a Fordist system of production and consumption at its core accompanied the
spread of Americanism throughout the world. This system pushed the former Axis powers ofJapan, West Germany and Italy to unprecedented levels of growth and by 1968 Japan had
surpassed West Germany’s GNP and had become the number two economic power in theWestern camp.

Zainichi Koreans: The Past, the Present and the Future

178

At the same time, the U.S. superpower became bogged down in the Vietnam War and was
shaken by the turmoil brought on by the growing civil rights and student power movements. The
intensification of the Cold War and the prosperity of former Axis powers gave Japan a highly
strategic position in Asia. In the United States the views of such people as Edwin Reischauer andWalt Rostow gained traction as they promoted Japan as a model case of Asian modernizationand of the spread of American-style mass consumerism. In this way, as Japan grew increasingly
dependent upon the U.S. both militarily and politically, it also came to occupy a central positionin the world system hierarchy, and was resurrected as a major regional power in Asia.
Standing in stark contrast to Japan’s re-emergence was the former colonial state of Korea.
Impoverished by civil war and its subsequent partition, it was only after the military coup d’étatof 1961 that a developmental dictatorship style of modernisation finally commenced. This
divided nation on the periphery of the world system was, as a result of pressure from Japan andthe U.S., positioned at the front line of anti-communism and was subjected to the violent
oppression of state-sponsored information politics. America, Japan, and Korea, with an “imposed
anti-communist internationalism” in the latter, served as the base for the peculiarly stablepostwar international hierarchical order of centre, semi-periphery and periphery.
This Cold War structure concealed postcolonial histories and forced former colonizing states andformer colonized states alike to adopt unitary national identities. Thus Zainichi Koreans, who
existed as a minority stranded in their former coloniser’s state, were put in an excruciatingly
difficult position. In Japan they were discriminated against as “history’s refuse” and forced into apariah-like role. At the same time, they were scorned by Koreans as “half Japanese”(panchoppari) or “ethnic dropouts.” Born in the state of their former coloniser and speaking
Japanese as their native tongue, second-generation Zainichi Koreans found themselves caught ina crushing vise, trapped in ambivalence between the suzerain and the colonised state.
At the time, the towering shadow of Pax Americana continued to loom over East Asia despite theU.S. becoming increasingly trapped in the quagmire of the Vietnam War. America retained its
hegemonic position in virtually every field: politics, military, the economy, culture, etc. Under
America’s protection, and thanks in no small part to special military procurements during the
Korean and Vietnam Wars, Japan continued with its transformation into an economic regional
power. Thus, despite being castrated militarily, Japan was on its way to becoming America’s
greatest ally as East Asia’s dominant regional power.
While Japan underwent its transformation, Korea--located on the periphery of the world system-became a satellite state as an American military supply base. With the conclusion of the JapanKorea treaty of normalization in 1965, it also began to receive economic assistance from its
former coloniser and to embark on its project of modernisation via the developmental
dictatorship model. In contrast to Japan’s interaction with South Korea, however, there was noattempt to settle accounts with North Korea (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea) anddiplomatic relations between the two countries remain severed.
Thrown into this tumultuous environment, Zainichi Koreans found themselves being twisted andbent as the opposing powers grated and shoved against one another. While existing as an ethnic
minority in Japan, they nonetheless precisely reproduced the Korean North-South division. Not
only were Zainichi Koreans forced to continue to occupy a subservient colonial position in Japanand survive in a situation that replicated the North-South division of their homeland, they also
had to deal with a wide range of unresolved problems within their own community such as a

Kang: Tunneling through Nationalism: The Phenomenology of a Certain Nationalist

179

lingering paternalistic social structure, gender inequality and so on. The pariah-like existence of
the Zainichi Koreans was further disrupted by sensational incidents of self-destructive violence:
the Komatsukawa Incident26, whose central figure was Yi Jin-U, and the Kim Hi-ro Incident27. It
was inevitable that the unresolved postcolonial issues of postwar Japan should erupt into such
periodic criminal incidents.
Amidst this oppressive reality I sought only to escape from all things ethnic or national. At thesame time I felt internally incomplete. I found myself overcome by a sense of drifting--not unlike
what one senses in lachrymose, romantic sentimentality. Drifting aimlessly in this faintly ironicalsorrow, unable to decide on a course of action and unbound by any commitment, I had a freedom
which seemed like that of the prewar so-called “leisured intellectuals” [kōtō yūmin]. Of course,in my case, that freedom was confined to a small space with a radius of only a few meters. I
ensconced myself in that space and peered out at the world through a tiny gap in the wall. I
rejected the world even as I ceaselessly and desperately sought for something to connect me tothat world. So, consumed and troubled by ambivalence, there was no room for even the smallest
particle of nationalism in that second generation Zainichi Korean.
3. A disease called Nationalism
As I slumbered, lulled by my counterfeit feelings of romanticism, the 1970’s arrived. I visited
Korea at the moment when it was being dragged into the orbit of a developmental dictatorship. It
was then that I experienced an important transition. The distant seeds of our present-day
financial crisis were then being sown in the form of the “Nixon shock.” The postwar economic
system was under assault and confidence in the standard currency--the US dollar--was beginningto wobble. The suspension of the direct convertibility of the dollar into gold, the ultimate bastionof support for value, the drain of the Vietnam war on the value of the dollar, and the consequentchronic deficits in US account balances all served to reveal that the framework of the economic
superpower was being shaken. The move to a variable exchange rate system enhanced the
incentive for the international flow of capital, and we began to understand the powerful influencethat currency, finance, exchange policies and the like hold over the real economy.
At the same time, in economic terms, the world was becoming multipolar. The emergence ofWestern Europe and Japan supported a tri-polar structure of global capitalism centred on the US,
Japan and Europe. With the summit meetings of the mid-1970s, this cooperative structure took
on a more concrete form. Japan occupied a privileged position in world finance and was largely
unaffected by the stagflation that swept across Europe and the United States, leaving long-term
economic malaise in its wake. The country was therefore able to overcome the oil shock of 1973
and focused on making its position as an economic superpower permanent. The result was that
cultural nationalism, now linked to economic nationalism, resonated throughout Japan as
consciousness of Japan’s superpower status grew.
This was not a statist nationalism that focused itself on the political realm, but rather it was ananti-political or apolitical nationalism embedded in the economy, society and culture. It was anationalism grounded in the newly-emerging fields of consumer culture and popular culture-themselves products of Japan’s rapid transformation into a mass-consumption society. It was, inother words, the sediment of a national consciousness atomised by consumerism, which settled
and came to form the foundation upon which long-term conservative rule was established. In
Korea, by contrast, the split between dictator and people was becoming clearer and the country

Zainichi Koreans: The Past, the Present and the Future180

was approaching a season of intense politics. The echoes of that season reached the ears andminds of the Zainichi, resulting, for many of them, in an “ethnic awakening.”
In Japan, the protest movements against the renewal of the US-Japan Security Treaty of 1970
were dying down and violent political eruptions on both the radical right (the Mishima
incident28) and on the radical left (the Red Army incident29) were breathing their last. With
radical political factions receding into the background, political forces began to collapse into a
more general, centrist position. A new, “catch-all” system of politics was coming into being: asystem that sought to encompass everything while simultaneously maintaining internal
discrimination and difference. Zainichi Koreans, excluded from this catch-all system, werebrought together by what Benedict Anderson calls “long distance nationalism.” They had nochoice but to try to find their own escape route by becoming attached to a quasi-conceptual
democracy.
I too was drawn in by this force, and recited the mantra of “ethnic nationalism = democracy =reunification.” I bade farewell to my gloomy fixation on romantic sentimentalism and threw
myself into student movements opposing the dictatorship and supporting an ethnically unified
democracy in Korea. At the time “ethnicity” [minzoku / minjok] seemed to be a magical word,
capable of solving all of our problems. To liberals and the left our support for an ethnicallybased nationalism no doubt seemed like an absurd anachronism. However, to Zainichi Koreans
the word “ethnicity,” remote though it may have been from everyday experience, shone with abright and inviting aura.
My bias toward ethnicity and my increased consciousness of belonging to a specific ethnic group
allowed me to construct an internal barricade, separating me from the outside world. I moved
from what I felt to be a “false” identity to a “true” identity. To exaggerate somewhat, you could
say that I experienced this as a Copernican revolution, as something akin to a religious
conversion.
So was this spiritual elevation simply a temporary “illness”? Does it deserve the scornful label,
to misquote Lenin, of “right-wing infantilism”? No, I do not think so. Even were we to see it as
an “illness,” that does not make it mere delusion, nor does it make the ideas empty words. Whatother means remained to the Zainichi Koreans, besides the “illness” of nationalism, to affirm
their own existence? We had been discriminated against, excluded, forcibly uprooted andexpelled from the community. Ought we to have assimilated into the majority? Should we haveassimilated into a class that transcended ethnicity and race? Or should we have tried to better
ourselves and transformed ourselves into cosmopolitan global citizens? To the extent that wewere not in a position to choose those options it was quite natural that we should have been
attracted to the “illness” of nationalism.
However, this raises the question of why, knowing that it was an “illness,” I chose nationalism in
the first place and clung to it with such resolve. At that time I did not see nationalism as an“illness.” On the contrary, it seemed to me the very embodiment of health. Over time, however, I
came to realise that nationalism was an “illness” that drives its sufferers mad. This awakening
was not unlike a patient discovering a portal to a new world and, by means of this new
perspective, becoming aware for the first time of the unnatural “illness” with which he isafflicted.

Kang: Tunneling through Nationalism: The Phenomenology of a Certain Nationalist

181

For me, this transition occurred when I left Japan to live in a small corner of Europe. There I wasable to witness directly the tragic aftermath of the diasporas, the dispersal and coalescing ofpeoples and races. I came to appreciate that the “sufferings” (leiden) of Zainichi Koreans was not
specific to Koreans. Rather, it was a tragic condition into which myriad peoples throughout
history have fallen. It was at this moment that I first became aware of the “the world” as well as
its past as “world history.” That is, for the first time, I was able to view the history of the Korean
people from a new perspective and in a new light. It was as though I were peering through thewrong end of a telescope. From this vantage point, the individual sufferings of the Korean people
retreated into the distance and merged with the sufferings of other peoples. It was as though theinnumerable individual streams of suffering of all the different peoples joined together to form
the river of “world history.” When I realised this, I distanced myself from nationalism and madea different choice.
As it happens, it was right around this time that the Keynesian welfare state was in decline andthe neo-liberal reforms that sowed the seeds for the current global financial crisis were emerging.
Then, ten years later socialism crumbled and, as though to fill the subsequent void, Islamic
fundamentalism appeared and the Iranian Revolution was played out on the world stage.
4. Beyond Nationalism
After the oil shock of the 1970s made the shift from Fordism to Post-Fordism irreversible,
capital, money and information transcended national boundaries, moving freely throughout theworld. Nationalism seemed to become something of a throwback: the ghost of a previous age.
From the mid-1980’s I also began to put down roots in the locality where I lived and, in theprocess of “implanting” my family in that locality, I gradually came to distance myself from myprevious partiality for “ethnic nationalism.” Additionally, through my readings in sociology,
history, literary criticism and post-colonialism, I encountered a variety of critical discourses on
the nation state and national culture. I turned this critical evaluation of paradoxes onto myself
and embarked on a kind of self-dissection.
Yet the path of history is unpredictable. At the very moment I was embracing the subjective
problem of “dis-enchanting” nationalism, a new phenomenon one could call nationalism began
to sweep across Japan. It could, I suppose, be seen as a “virtual phenomenon”--dependent as it
was upon the media and the Internet. In this sense, simply by defining it as a nationalist
phenomenon may make it a sort of “self-declared nationalism.” Or, though we characterise it as
nationalism, perhaps we are just dressing up a variety of phenomena in the garb of nationalism.
In some cases this may have involved an ironic acceptance of media phenomena as nationalism
when, in reality, what we were seeing was the manifestation of a variety of individual and social
demands. In any event, there can be no denying that some sort of nationalism more firmly
focused on the state was beginning to spread. Why did this phenomenon appear? To understandthis we must first revisit the classical definition of nationalism.
To borrow from Ernest Gellner, nationalism can be thought of as a political principle that
attempts to match the political unit with the cultural unit.30 Gellner’s analysis is obviously
predicated on the assumption that the state emerged in the form it did so that it could deal withindustrialisation, the one underlying force from which so much else emerges. In contrast to
agricultural societies, the modern industrial society is defined by an egalitarianism that is itself aby-product of the social fluidity of industrial societies. All members of this society are expected
to possess basic skills: literacy, numeracy, basic work habits and technical skills, familiarity with

Zainichi Koreans: The Past, the Present and the Future

182

essential social skills. A new trans-personal mode of communication, which does not depend onsocial context, is necessary to cultivate these skills. That is to say, these skills can only develop
where a shared, standardised written and spoken language exists. Clearly it is the modern nation
state that develops high culture based on the ability to speak and write the common language.
Through instruction in language and culture, the nation state holds a monopoly over the “quality
control” of the production of useful and adaptable people (through education). It is for thisreason, Gellner asserts, that without the existence of the state, the question of nationalism would
never arise.
In this sense, a nationalism in which human communities are organized into large, collectively
educated and culturally homogeneous units is not the result of an ideological misstep or an
impulsive excess, but rather is the inevitable product of the attempt to match the political withthe cultural. State and society are joined, and a fictive system called “unified national culture”-in which all members live, talk and produce--is constructed.
One aspect of this fictive unification, in the case of Japan, was the identification of centre andregion, and the assumption that one’s native locality (patrie) was equivalent to the nation as
represented by the centre. In the modern nation state, and particularly in the Meiji state, there
were in fact ongoing frictions between centre and regions. But during the Sino-Japanese andRusso-Japanese Wars the state prospered, and regional societies supported that prosperity. Thus
for a while the optical illusion was established that the prosperity of the nation state and theprosperity of local regions operated in harmony.
To be sure, Gellner’s analysis of the origins of nationalism relies on a highly rational
interpretation. It does not address the irrationality of nationalism. How nationalism spurs people
to such zeal that they willingly go to their own deaths in its name is not explained. Nor does heaccount for the temporal lag that exists between the emergence of industrialisation and thesudden rise of nationalism. Having said that, however, Gellner’s important contributions to ourunderstanding of nationalism are beyond question. His analysis presents us with the processes bywhich the political unit of the modern world has become legitimised as the “nation-state” (twoelements joined by a hyphen): from the social policies and corporatist bureaucratic state ofGermany’s Second Reich, to the Anglo-Saxon welfare state in the period of total war (under the
Beveridge Plan) and to the postwar Fordist regimes of accumulation and the Keynesian social
welfare state. In this sense, Gellner’s analysis is very compelling.
If we see Gellner’s nationalism as “classical nationalism,” then we are confronted with anotherproblem: that the very foundations of the society he describes are now being dismantled. The
spreading anxiety and malaise that accompanies globalisation is the result of globalisation’s“liquefaction” of social foundations and the resultant collapse or vanishing of society. Underclassical nationalism, legitimacy depended upon the union of state and society. Now that
legitimacy is collapsing as societies fall to pieces and disperse like so many atoms. It seems thatthe universal “regime of desire” better known as “the market” has brought about a situation
where the state and society can be unified, if at all, only by external pressure.
The homogeneity cultivated and imposed by the irresistible, objective demands ofindustrialisation can be seen as having been expressed in the form of nationalism. But now thehomogeneous social infrastructure that underpins nationalism is on the brink of utter collapse.
So, why is it that nationalism seems to be on the rise? To answer this we must first recognise thatwhen we discuss nationalism, its meaning will inevitably differ depending upon what we

Kang: Tunneling through Nationalism: The Phenomenology of a Certain Nationalist

183

emphasise. It will mean one thing if we stress the concept of “nation’ implied by Benedict
Anderson’s “imagined communities” and something quite different if we focus instead on
Weber’s “state” as an ”anstalt” [institution] with a “monopoly on the use of legitimate violence.”
This element of ambivalence can be seen in the hyphen that links the two words “nation-state,”
and it extends to cover the area of the “nation”--a space that can be seen as roughly identical withsociety. In order to meet the demands of industrialisation, the state sought to integrate itself withsociety and mobilise human resources by promoting universal literacy, numeracy, and technicalskills, as well as a general “improvement” of the population. While serving as a model for
economic development and regimes of accumulation, postwar Fordism and Keynesianism alsofunctioned as the integrating principles behind unified national economies.
As I have mentioned, however, we are already at a stage where, in the embrace of globalisationand the liberalisation of finance in particular, we are busily dismantling the foundations uponwhich the unified national economy is based. The link between state and society is crumbling.
The state is separating itself from the nation and transforming itself into an agent for the global
regime of accumulation. As a result, not only is the state withdrawing from its monopoly on the“quality control of the production of people” (education), it is also cutting the umbilical cordconnecting it to society by withdrawing from welfare and medicine, superannuation andemployment, and other areas essential to the reproduction of social life. It is moving, in short,from “government” [seifu] to a form of “rule” or “control” [tōchi], involving a wider structureencompassing both the state and key figures in civil society. What we have is not a “credit
crunch” but rather the phenomenon of a “public crunch.” Nationalism as the glue which oncetranscended class and unified the people is being weakened at its very foundations.
Hannah Arendt saw this kind of situation, in which the masses have “lost their connection withothers and become defined by their rootlessness,” as the indispensable precondition for
totalitarian rule. Arendt defines this condition of the masses as “verlassenheit,” loneliness, or thestate of being abandoned:
What prepares men for totalitarian domination in the non-totalitarian world is the fact thatloneliness [verlassenheit], once a borderline experience usually suffered in certain marginal
social conditions like old age, has become the everyday experience of the ever-growing massesof our century. The merciless process into which totalitarianism drives and organizes the masses
looks like a suicidal escape from this reality. The “ice-cold reasoning” and the “mighty tentacle”
of dialectics which “seizes you as in a vice” seems like the last support in a world where nobody
is reliable and nothing can be relied upon.31
In Japan, the national broadcaster NHK’s special documentary entitled The Working Poor
depicts the plight of a thirty-five year old homeless man who is reduced to spending his days
sifting through rubbish bins. He searches for magazines in the hope that he might convert theminto enough money for a cup of convenience store instant ramen. It is a telling story that reveals
the spread of “verlassenheit” among the younger generation of that ostensibly wealthy country:
Japan.
I am overcome by a sense of déjà vu when I consider the predicament of these young people:
abandoned by society and left no alternative but to abandon themselves. It bears a close
resemblance to the situation of the Zainichi Korean ethnic minority in the 1970’s. This recentsocial phenomenon of the working poor is nothing more than a new manifestation of theZainichi Koreans: The Past, the Present and the Future184“verlassenheit” of Japanese citizens who are now becoming “Zainichi-fied,” turned into pariahs.
This repetition indicates that the principle of a single, homogeneous unity upon which the nation
is based has become virtually meaningless and that another kind of invisible apartheid is
emerging.
If that is the case we have no choice but to recognise that the social foundation for the “nation”
no longer exists in contemporary nationalism. Rather we are left with a “nationalism without
nationals” or a “post-national nationalism.” All we have is a nationalism with the state at its
centre. Ironically, the socially unifying force of “state nationalism” is left as the only force thatcan contain both the anti-social conditions created by verlassenheit and the “organizedverlassenheit” that destroys all social relationships (i.e. the violence and terror of
totalitarianism).
But the national state, transformed into the agent of neo-liberal capitalist plunder, now no longer
has the least iota of justification for its claim to unite the people of the nation. Today, the social
basis of the nationalism on which citizens relied is destroyed, and forcibly imposed loyalty to thestate alone is lauded as “patriotism.” What a distortion, what a deception this is! We areconfronted by the spectacle of desolated home communities (patries), rural areas being torn
apart, the land of the nation laid waste, and at the same time, servile and blind obedience to thestate, accompanied by xenophobic nationalism.
As this transformation in the nature of nationalism has become obvious, I have finally come tothink that it might be possible not so much to overcome or transcend nationalism, but rather toburrow through it, to tunnel down and discover a passage that will lead us out, on to the far side,
beyond nationalism. That is, it is not simply a matter of repudiating nationalism as an “illness” orof unthinkingly embracing it. Rather, by digging the well as deep as it will go, I believe that wemight find ourselves on another path to the other side of nationalism.
Conclusion: The Northeast Asian Common House
With the current enormous shifts in global capitalism, which may be described as the prelude to
global economic crisis, what transformations will be wrought on existing states and nationalism?
This is the question I find myself thinking about most often. At the end of this phenomenologicalexamination of a nationalist, this question of future destinations is a particularly critical one.
The perilous situation of global capitalism, perched on the brink of world crisis, is anindisputable indication that the “Pax Americana” is drawing to a close. The age of Americanismthat so defined the twentieth century is coming to an end. The end of the Cold War was not theend of history, but rather the end of the Pax Americana. At the same time, the financial crisis has
shown us--quite unexpectedly--how utterly powerless states are to control the arrogant
movement of capital as it straddles national borders. Indeed the crisis revealed that the state, in
its new role as an agent for capital, can and will operate against the interests of the nation.
Yet, despite all this, the end of the state has not begun. The nation, as before, remains the mostcritical, the most important embodiment of gesellschaft and the most critical and the mostimportant embodiment of gemeinschaft. So, what will be the future of nationalism? Ifnationalism is a complex of ideas and movements that aims to maintain the existence of thenation and that gives shape to the state (as political protective membrane of the nation), thennationalism must be prepared to deal with the greatest threat to the nation: capitalism run amok.

Kang: Tunneling through Nationalism: The Phenomenology of a Certain Nationalist

185

Unless this issue is addressed it will not be possible to avoid the fate of utter collapse that has
already been visited upon those small and mid-sized states once lionised as models ofglobalisation.
So, it is not simply a matter of rejecting nationalism. We must consider how we can both
integrate nationalism and take its core ideals to a different level. Surely a way of doing this isthrough a regionalism which would create a broader space for the free interchange of people andinformation, capital and technology across borders; for such regionalism would maintain thesovereignty of the state while, at the same time, attenuating ethnocentric nationalism andopening up the state to a wider shared ownership. One part of this process of regionalisation
involves digging down as deep as possible into the well of local home communities – patries –and thus opening up tunnels to a region-wide transnational network of patries.
At the beginning of the post-America era the world is divided into four poles: a regionalism
emerging from the loose solidarity between the EU and Russia; the regionalism surrounding
North and South America; African regionalism; and finally the regionalism of East Asia. Might
not this era be a time when those four poles begin to negotiate and cooperate with one another ona global level? Of course, it goes without saying that Japan and Korea belong to the East Asianpole. Through the cooperation of South East Asia and North East Asia, and with thecontributions of Japan, China and Korea in North East Asia in particular, the East Asia pole will
prove to be immensely important to the future of the region.
An important possibility here is the notion of a “North East Asian Common House,” which refers
to the structure of a regionalist order with these three countries at its centre. The three countries
at the core of Northeast Asia – China, Japan and South Korea – by themselves produce some
20% of the world’s GNP. There has never before been a region that has experienced such rapid
economic growth. Besides, trade within the region and particularly between Japan and China has
already exceeded Japan-US trade in scale. With investment and trade expanding, there can be no
doubt that sooner or later this region will become a single economic sphere, even if in an
informal rather than in an institutionalised sense.
Yet there are few places in the world where the political rivalry between nations is as intense as
in Northeast Asia. On the one hand, the economic interdependence and cultural flows are rapidly
growing, but on the other profound conflicts over security and resources are becoming more andmore evident year by year. Why has it so far been impossible to establish a regional security
framework and mechanisms to promote mutual trust in Northeast Asia? One reason has been
discord in terms of historical consciousness. I have discussed this problem in greater detailelsewhere32, so will refer only briefly to it here. However, it is worth mentioning simply thatwith the rapid spread of democratisation and new information networks, it becomes easier fornationalism to be popularly disseminated, and this has aggravated the problem.
The second reason for the failure to create common security frameworks is the fact that inNortheast Asia the Cold War has not yet fully come to an end. Since the Korean War armistice
was signed at Panmunjom on 27 July 1953, more than half a century has passed without progress
towards the signing of a peace treaty. In other words, Northeast Asia’s “post-war world” wascreated without coming to terms with the history of what might be termed an ongoing “semiworld war” situation. In this postwar regional order, the United States served as a hub, and theonly relationships that developed were an agglomeration of bilateral relationships between the
US and Japan, the US and South Korea, the US and North Korea, the US and China etc. ThereZainichi Koreans: The Past, the Present and the Future186

are many situations where negotiations between the neighbouring countries of the region cannot
proceed smoothly without the US acting as intermediary: a situation that Columbia University
professor Carol Gluck has termed “the bilateralism syndrome.”
In 2003, however, an important experiment in creating a multilateral framework for security andfor promoting mutual trust was established. This was the Six Party Talks on North Korean
denuclearisation. If the framework established by the Six Party Talks (themselves a move toward
the end of the Cold War) can be mobilized in the future, we can envision the creation of an
ANEAN (Association of North East Asian Nations), consisting of Japan, China, North and South
Korea, the U.S. and Russia, and serving as a counterpart to ASEAN. If this can be achieved, thenthe contours of the East Asia pole will become visible.
With the inclusion of America (as an Asia-Pacific nation), Russia (as part of the Far East) andNorth Korea, the North East Asia Common House would surely constitute a core entity in East
Asia. If each nation, while sharing their national sovereignties, created a broader regional base,
we might see nationalism finally released from the yoke of ethnocentrism. The result, one
imagines, could be a transformation from ethnocentric nationalism to a kind of sharednationalism premised on coexistence. Of course this vision of the future could be criticised as
being over-optimistic. Yet, we cannot use reality as a tool for criticizing reality. It is in ideals that
we find an alternative; and as we stand on the precipice of global crisis, confronted byunprecedented dangers, we should not dismiss those ideals out of hand as a “fool’s dream.”
An earlier Japanese version of this essay was published in Ōsawa Masachi and Kang Sangjung
eds., Nashonarizumu Ron Nyūmon, Tokyo, Yuhikaku, August 2009. The version published here
is revised and expanded.
Kang Sangjung is a Professor specialising in political theory and inter-Asia relations in theInterfaculty Initiative in Information Studies, University of Tokyo. His most recent works
include Omoni (2010) and Rīdā wa Hanpo mae o Aruke: Kim Dae-jung to iu Hito (2009).
Tessa Morris-Suzuki is Professor of Japanese History in the College of Asia and thePacific, Australian National University. Her most recent works include Borderline Japan:
Foreigners and Frontier Controls in the Postwar Era (2010) and To the Diamond Mountains: A
Hundred Year Journey Through China and Korea (2010).
Mark Gibeau is a Lecturer in the Japanese Studies in the College of Asia and thePacific, Australian National University. His research interests focus on postwar Japanese
literature with particular emphasis on the work of Abe Kōbō. His literary translations include
works by Kawabata Yasunari, Kakuda Mitsuyo, Yamamoto Shūgorō and Komatsu Sakyō.
Notes
1

Laura Hein, “The Cultural Career of the Japanese Economy: Developmental and Cultural
Nationalisms in Historical Perspective,” Japan Focus, 26 June 2008.
2

For example, Kim Gwang-sang, “’Sato Masaru gensho’ hihan,” Impaction, No 160, November
2007
3

For essays by Kang and other participants in this controversy, see Iinuma Jirō ed., Zainichi
Kankoku Chōsenjin: Sono Nihon Shakai ni okeru Sonzai Kachi, Osaka, Kaifūsha, 1988.

Kang: Tunneling through Nationalism: The Phenomenology of a Certain Nationalist

187

4

Kang Sangjung and Murai Osamu, “Ran-Hansha suru Orientarizumu,” Gendai Shisō, May
2003, pp. 182-197.
5

Samuel P. Huntington, “The Clash of Civilizations?,” Foreign Affairs, vol. 72, no. 3, Summer,
1993, pp. 22-49; this essay was later incorporated in Huntington’s book The Clash of
Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order, New York, Simon and Schuster, 1996.
6

H. D. Harootunian, “America’s Japan / Japan’s Japan,” in Masao Miyoshi and H. D.
Harootunian eds., Japan in the World, Durham N.C., Duke University Press, 1993, 196-221.
7

Nishikawa Nagao, Kokkyō no Koekata, Tokyo, Chikuma Shobō, 1992.

8

Komori Yôichi and Takahashi Tetsuya, Nashonaru Hisutorī o Koete, Tokyo, Tokyo Daigaku
Shuppankai, 1998.
9

From 1965 onward, historian Ienaga Saburō filed a series of suits against the Japanese Ministryof Education, which had demanded changes to history textbooks that he had authored. During the
1980s, the textbook controversies became international, as China and other Asian counties
protested reported plans by the Japanese government to replace the word “invasion” indescriptions of Japan’s role in the Asia-Pacific War with the word “advance.” These
controversies formed the background to the protests over nationalist textbooks in the second halfof the 1990s. See Ienaga Saburō (trans. Richard H. Minear), Japan’s Past, Japan’s Future: One
Historian’s Odyssey, Lanham, Rowman and Littlefield, 2001; Laura Hein and Mark Seldeneds., Censoring History: Citizenship and Memory in Japan, Germany and the United States,
Armonk, M. E. Sharpe, 2000.
10

Katō Norihiro, Haisengoron, Tokyo, Kōdansha, 1997; the three essays contained in this bookwere originally published as journal articles between 1995 and 1997.
11

Abe Shinzō, Utsukushii Kuni e, Tokyo, Bungei Shunjūsha, 2006; Kang Sangjung’s Aikoku no
Sahō (Tokyo, Asahi Shinsho, 2006), published a few months later, can be read as a response toAbe.
12Kang Sangjung, Orientarizumu no Kanata e, Tokyo, Iwanami Shoten, 1996.

13

Kang Sangjung, Nashonarizumu, Tokyo, Iwanami Shoten, 2001.

14

Kang Sangjung, Nicchō Kankei no Kokufuku, Tokyo, Shūeisha Shinsho, 2003.

15

Kang Sangjung, Higashi Ajia Kyōdō no Ie o Mezashite, Tokyo, Heibonsha, 2001.

16

See Wada Haruki, Tōhoku Ajia Kyōdō no Ie: Shin-Chiikishugi Sengen, Tokyo, Heibonsha,
2003.
17

For Kang Sangjung and Hyun Mooam, Dai-Nihon, Manshū Teikoku no Isan, Tokyo,
Kōdansha, 2010.
18

For example, Tawara Sōichirō, Kang Sangjung and Nishibe Susumu, Aikokushin, Tokyo,
Kōdansha, 2003; Kaneko Masaru, Kang Sangjung, Kim Mirei, Kobayashi Yoshinori etal., Aikokushin, Kokueki to wa nani ka, Tokyo, Asukomu, 2004.
19

For example, Kang Sangjung, Omoni, Tokyo, Shûeisha, 2010. This is a novel closely basedon the life of Kang’s mother.

Zainichi Koreans: The Past, the Present and the Future

188

20

For example, C. Douglas Lummis, Kang Sangjung and Kayano Toshihito, Kokka to Aidentiti oTou, Tokyo, Iwanami Bukkuretto, 2009; Kang Sangjung and Nakajima Takeshi, Nihon:
Konkyōchi kara no Toi, Tokyo, Mainichi Shimbunsha, 2008.
21

For a careful discussion of this phenomenon, see Rumi Sakamoto, ‘Koreans, Go Home!’
Internet Nationalism in Contemporary Japan as a Digitally Mediated Subculture, The AsiaPacific Journal Vol 9, Issue 10 No 2, March 7, 2011.
22

See for example “Kakuheiki Shōmetsu to Genpatsu Jikō: Kang Kyōjū ni Kiku,” Shinano
Mainichi Shimbun, 7 August 2011.
23

See, for example, Kang Sangjung, “Minnan ga Tsuzuite iru,” Shinano Mainichi Shimbun, 17
June 2011.
24

See Anthony Smith, Nationalism, Oxford, Polity Press, 2001.

25

Immanuel Wallerstein, Unthinking Social Science: The Limits of Nineteenth Century
Paradigms, Temple University Press, 1991, p. 75.
26

Komatsukawa Incident – A Zainichi Korean man named Yi Jin-U (Ri Chin’u) was tried andfound guilty of raping and murdering a high-school girl and a young woman in 1958. Yi was ahighly intelligent young man, whose letters reflecting on his crime and impending execution
evoked a strong response, and became (amongst other things) the subject of Ōshima Nagisa’s
film Kōshikei [Death by Hanging]27

Kim Hiro Incident – In 1968, Kim Hiro, a Zainichi Korean from an impoverished background,shot two gangsters and then held eighteen people hostage in a siege at a guest house before
surrendering to police, an event that attracted massive nationwide media coverage in Japan.
28

Mishima Incident – the ritual suicide in 1970 of novelist Mishima Yukio and an associatefollowing a far-fetched attempt to carry out a right-wing military coup d’état.
29

United Red Army Incident – A siege at Mount Asama in 1972 which resulted in the arrest of
five members of the extreme left-wing United Red Army [Rengō Sekigun]. It was subsequently
revealed that fourteen other members of the group had been killed in internal purges by theircomrades.
30

Ernest Gellner, Nationalism, New York, New York University Press, 1997.

31

Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, Cleveland and New York, World PublishingCo., 1962, p. 478.
32

See, for example, Kang Sangjung, Kang Sangjung no Seijigaku, Tokyo Shūeisha Shinsho,
2006, ch. 6.

Zainichi Koreans: The Past, the Present and the Future

189

Recommended for Further Reading
Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus Articles Recommended for Further Reading“The Forging of Alien Status of Koreans in American Occupied Japan”
Mark E. Caprio
January 2, 2008
http://japanfocus.org/-Mark-Caprio/2624
Together with the other article authored by Caprio in this course reader, this article
explains the circumstances during the occupation era that created the status of Zainichi
Koreans in postwar Japan. It argues that American occupation policies were responsible forthe later plight of Zainichi Koreans. The article contends that there were several reasons
Americans distrusted Koreans in Japan at the time. One was that, lacking a direct channel
between themselves and the Koreans, the Americans largely mirrored and accepted theJapanese attitude of looking down on Koreans. Moreover, the Korean activities in the black
market as well as communist sympathies among many Koreans made Americans keen to
repatriate them immediately to the Korean peninsula. The emerging Cold War mind-set
made them view Koreans as affecting Japan only in bad ways.

“The Future of Japan’s Immigration Policy: A Battle Diary”
Sakanaka Hidenori
Introduction by Andrew Taylor and David McNeill
http://japanfocus.org/-Sakanaka-Hidenori/2396
Sakanaka Hidenori (1945– ) is a former director of the Tokyo Immigration Bureau, and thisarticle is a translation of an excerpt from his 2005 publication Immigration Battle Diary(Nyukan senki). Sakanaka argues that Japan has two major options for its future: one, the“Small Option,” is to keep its borders tightly closed to foreign immigrants and allow the
population to rapidly decline. The other, the “Big Option,” is to allow a gradual influx offoreign migrants into Japan and offer them equal rights and privileges. Sakanaka thinks the“Big Option” is the only realistic alternative for Japan, despite knowing that some hostility
toward migrants will arise in the process. He argues that the question of how to deal with
Zainichi Koreans is one of the important issues for the future of immigration in Japan; they
are “a litmus test for the relationships Japan would need to build with new arrivals if itwere to accept a large number of immigrants” from elsewhere in the world. (p. 2).

“Guarding the Borders of Japan: Occupation, Korean War and Frontier Controls”
Tessa Morris-Suzuki
February 21, 2011
http://japanfocus.org/-Tessa-Morris_Suzuki/3490
In this article, a companion piece to another article authored by Tessa Morris-Suzuki, she
discusses the significant inflow of Koreans into Japan during the immediate postwar years.

Zainichi Koreans: The Past, the Present and the Future

190

Here, drawing on her readings of the records left by the vessel Hatsushima, which traveled
between Jeju Island and Japan in 1948 and in the following years, Morris-Suzuki describes
the circumstances that surrounded the Korean passengers who entered Japan illegally. The
article argues that the ill-prepared repatriation program implemented by the Japanese andoccupation authorities made it virtually impossible for repatriated Koreans to remain in
Jeju or elsewhere in Korea. Without recognizing the confusion that reigned in Korea,
however, both the Japanese and the Americans continued separating the former colonials
from the Japanese. Jeju Island, meanwhile, became a battleground in the struggle between
the right-wing mainland Koreans and the Jeju Islanders who rebelled against them,
resulting in the April 3rd Incident in which between 20,000 and 30,000 were murdered (p.
13). The Japanese authorities neglected to protect the Koreans after the massacre,
however, and continued to categorize them as potentially subversive aliens who should be
extradited at the earliest opportunity.

“Legal Categories, Demographic Change and Japan’s Korean Residents in the Long
Twentieth Century”
Yoshiko Nozaki, Hiromitsu Inokuchi, and Kim Tae-young
September 10, 2006
http://japanfocus.org/-Kim-Tae_young/2220
This short and succinct article outlines the history of Koreans in Japan during the twentiethcentury and in the early 2000s. The article depicts how Japanese legal approaches changed
during that time period as well as demographic changes occurring at that time. The
Japanese annexation of Korea in 1910 instigated the inflow of Koreans into Japan, and theabrupt transformation of Japanese policies after 1945 made these Koreans into “stateless”
people. Also significant is the fact that the number of Zainichi Koreans has been steadily
declining since the early 1990s. At that time, it became easier for them to naturalize asJapanese citizens as interethnic marriages became common. The article argues that despite
this gradual decrease, it is important to recognize the Zainichi Korean heritage in order forJapanese to understand that their nation is no longer mono-ethnic – indeed, that it neverwas.

“Names, Bones and Unpaid Wages: Repatriations for Korean Forced Labor in Japan”
William Underwood
September 10, 2006
http://japanfocus.org/-William-Underwood/2219
Pak Kyong-shik wrote a seminal study on Korean forced labor in wartime Japan in 1965
and there has been a steady flow of studies on this topic since then, by scholars such as
Tonomura Masaru. In Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, William Underwood has written aseries of pertinent articles. This one describes the coercion of Koreans to work in wartime
Japan, as well as painstaking efforts made by today’s activists in Japan and Korea tocompensate the victims of that coercion. The activists are targeting both the JapaneseZainichi Koreans: The Past, the Present and the Future

191

government and some major Japanese corporations such as Mitsubishi and Aso
Corporation who used the forced labor, but both groups have done very little to redress thesituation. The former Prime Minister Aso Taro is a former chairperson of Aso Corporationand he serves as a foreign minister in the Abe cabinet formed in 2012.
Other Recommended Readings
Chapman, David, Zainichi Korean Identity and Ethnicity (London and New York: Routledge,2008).
Chung, Erin Aeran, Immigration and Citizenship in Japan (Cambridge and New York,
Cambridge University Press, 2010).
Ko, Mika, Japanese Cinema and Otherness: Nationalism, Multiculturalism and the Problem ofJapaneseness (London and New York: Routledge, 2010).
Wender, Melissa, Lamentation as History: Narratives by Koreans in Japan, 1965-2000(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005).
Yoneyama, Lisa, Hiroshima Traces: Time, Space, and the Dialetics of Memory (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1999).