The Empire Strikes Back from Within: Colonial Liberation and the Korean Minority Question at the Birth of Postwar Japan, 1945–47

Abstract

Abstract The recent historiography of empire has discussed the impact of decolonization on metropolitan society, or how the “empire strikes back.” A growing literature also examines the postcolonial return migration of colonial settlers and its multifaceted aftereffects on the “home” country, bringing fresh insight into how decolonization is experienced “when empire comes home.” This article adds a different question for exploration: What does decolonization look like on the empire’s home front when colonial liberation takes place within, or when the empire strikes back from within? By examining the “liberation” of Korean imperial subjects in Japan after World War II, this article provides a unique vantage point for analyzing decolonization’s impact on metropolitan society. I will demonstrate how Japanese history can offer new insight into the convergence of two critical social phenomena regarding decolonization, namely, empire’s homecoming and colonial liberation on the empire’s home front. Moreover, this article also aims to challenge the historiographical “amnesia of empire” in the study of US-occupied Japan. I will discuss how the Korean minority question became a critical locus where US-led democratization and the postimperial transition from a multiethnic empire to the so-called monoethnic nation intersected and shaped the formation of postwar Japan.