The Postwar Experience of Repatriates: The Crack in Postwar Japan's Reconstruction

Abstract

This paper studies the postwar phase of the integration of repatriates into Japanese society, thereby shedding new light on the nationalism of postwar Japan. To this end, it reviews the discourses surrounding the repatriation project and examines the existential consciousness of repatriates in postwar Japanese society. In particular, it examines the novels of Abe Ko ˉ bo, who suffered from a confused identity after he returned to Japan from Manchuria. After its defeat in World War II, Japan endeavored to build a “New Japan” through re-education and repatriation. The repatriation project became the basis for the national solidarity required for this restructuring. The personal tales of repatriation, which record the experiences of those evacuated from the former colonies, constitute a history of the ordeals suffered by the Japanese victims of the war. However, repatriates felt both bitterness and discrimination directed against them by postwar Japanese society, as though they were strangers in their own country. Furthermore, they sensed the disjunction between the identity of the colonial Japanese and that of the “pure” mainland Japanese, which caused them to experience existential confusion. However, the cause of this sense of incompatibility was the ideology of postwar Japan, which aimed at reintegrating the nationstate. As the public memory of the Japanese as eternal victims spread, the truth was buried. A review of the postwar fate of the repatriates reveals the “crack” inherent in the nationalism of postwar Japan; it thus contributes to the deconstruction of the myth of the “great achievement” of Japanese homogeneity and reveals its illusory nature.