Zainichi Research Articles

A critical overview of Zainichi Korean films since 1945

ABSTRACT This paper gives an overview of the history of Zainichi Korean films from 1945 to the present and explores the historical environment and popular demands that drove the production of major works. After World War II, the Zainichi Korean community took on the challenge of film production for the first time on the strength of GHQ’s favorable policies and cultural solidarity with the Japanese socialists. This challenge, which began with newsreels and documentary films, soon entered a long period of stagnation due to the political upheaval of the time, a conflict with GHQ, and deteriorating relations with the Japanese Communist Party. In the 1970s, Zainichi films gradually began to revive, centering on the documentary genre, thanks to Zainichi Korean directors who had learned production skills under progressive Japanese filmmakers. As the mini-theater boom in the 1980s created an environment in which small-scale, non-mainstream films could be distributed and consumed in Japan, Zainichi films gradually expanded their scope through the production of various drama films. At last, the Zainichi Korean film genre finally began to establish itself firmly in Japanese film history. In particular, after the 2000s when the Korean Wave (Hallyu) phenomenon became noticeable in Japan, female directors and South Korean directors emerged to capture minor and workaday issues from multifaceted perspectives, and the general public in Japan enthusiastically consumed their works. Zainichi Korean films continue to strive to embrace both social issues and mass appeal.

재일조선인 귀환사업의 촉진요인: 국제적 요인을 중심으로

This paper aims to analyze international factors that facilitated the participation of ethnic Koreans in Japan in the repatriation project to North Korea. Since the project is a complicated issue related to the international situation in the Cold War era, this study illuminates the overall aspect of the project, focusing on the perceptions and responses of major international actors such as North Korea, Japan, Korea, the International Committee of the Red Cross(ICRC), the United States, and the Soviet Union. The purpose of this study is to understand the background and process of the project, and to grasp how each country's policy decisions had an effect on the project. North Korea sought to secure labor and capital through the project, and to demonstrate the superiority of regime while Japan sought to solve domestic problems and improve relations with North Korea. South Korea tried to block the project, but there were limitations due to the international situation and domestic conditions. The ICRC emphasized the humanitarian nature of the project, but it was actually used for political purposes. The United States and the Soviet Union decided their positions on the project in consideration of their respective diplomatic interests, having an important impact on the progress of the project.

재일조선인의 대규모 북한 이주와 촉진 요인: 북한·조총련의 선전과 일본 내의 호응을 중심으로

After the end of the World War II, almost 1.4 million Koreans lived in Japan went back to Korea but there still were around 600 thousands ethnic Koreans living in Japan. From December 1959 to July 1984, about 93,000 Korean (including Japanese wives) repatriated to North Korea, while most of them originally came from southern part of South Korea. Studies of the ethnic Korean repatriation from Japan emphasize that economic, political and diplomatic benefits motivated North Korea to decide the repatriation, and underline active roles of the Japanese government, the Japanese Red Cross Society and International Committee of the Red Cross. Including these factors, propaganda of North Korean government and promotion by the General Association of Korean Residents in Japan (Chongryon ) made ethnic Koreans in Japan decide to immigrate to North Korea. In addition, Japanese political parties, politicians, intellectuals, and mass media strongly affected ethnic Korean’s decision to repatriation to North Korea from Japan. This study explores contents of propaganda by North Korea and Chongryon , and news and images on North Korea delivered and created by Japanese politicians and media.

북송사업과 니가타귀국협력회의 역할에 관한 고찰

Focusing on Niigata Prefecture, this article aims to clarify the implementation process and facilitating factors of the return of Zainichi Korean to North Korea. In previous studies, important discussions have been made mainly on the International Red Cross, the Chochongryeon (朝鮮総連), and North Korea-Japan relations. On the other hand, social organizations and local governments that have engaged in practical cooperation received relatively less attention. Based on existing research, this article focuses on the practical movements surrounding the return of Zainichi Korean to North Korea that occurred in Niigata Prefecture from 1959 to the early 1960s, discussions on extending the agreement, and public relations activities. Although the North Korean repatriation support activities in Niigata Prefecture are not determinants of the North Korean return project, it is suggested that they played a role in facilitating the continuation of the North Korean repatriation in a critical phase.

기시(岸信介) 내각 시기 한국과 대만의 대일(對日) 정책 비교 연구 (1957-1960)

The Kishi Cabinet extended diplomatic overtures to communist countries while maintaining official relations with Republic of Korea(South Korea) and Republic of China(Taiwan). This strategy reflects a separation of governmental and private-sector objectives. South Korea employed tactics like public relations appeals, international organization appeals, suspension of trade with Japan, and resuming bilateral talks in response to visible repatriation of Koreans in Japan. Taiwan, maintaining diplomatic relations since 1952, protested inclusion of the Chinese flag in the 1958 Sino-Japanese private trade agreement, even considering severing diplomatic ties. Both South Korea and Taiwan were unable to fully deter Japan's engagement with communist nations. However, despite the crisis of the relationship break, they showed a pattern of continuing their relationship with Japan. The purpose of the policy toward Japan was to prevent Japan from developing into more political and diplomatic relations with North Korea or China(PRC) and to recognize their external sovereignty. This became a factor in continuing relations with Japan rather than turning a blind eye to Japan and cutting ties with Japan in the policy toward Japan.

Drumming to be one, drumming to be different: ethnicity, nation, and cultural identity of Zainichi Koreans in Japan

ABSTRACT Pungmul, a form of Korean folk drumming, is prominent as a traditional Korean music practice among diasporic Koreans, including Zainichi (Korean residents in Japan). Over the last four decades, it has become popular across the globe as a tool for heritage education and a marker of ethnic identity. In this paper, I engage with several Zainichi Korean musicians who pursue pungmul as their full-time profession or as a serious leisure activity. In Japan, most pungmul musicians are third- or fourth-generation Korean migrants and, as a group, present a complex mix of state, national, and cultural affiliations as North Koreans, South Koreans, and naturalized Japanese. Considering the inherent social complexities among Zainichi, I delineate how a traditional Korean performing art form enables these Koreans to overcome and transcend social barriers and nation-state boundaries while shaping and expressing their identity as diasporic individuals.

Transnational Exchanges and Diaspora Culture of Zainichi Koreans and Korean Americans : Focusing on Articles from Sanzenri, Minto, Seikyu

Transnational Exchanges and Diaspora Culture of Zainichi Koreans and Korean Americans : Focusing on Articles from Sanzenri, Minto, Seikyu

Performance as Apology: Deconstructing the Legacy of the Japanese Empire in Shin’ya Eiko’s Shinsetaryon

ABSTRACT This article explores the historical narrative of Zainichi Koreans in the Japanese actress Shin’ya Eiko’s solo performance of Shinsetaryon in an attempt to reflect on the decolonisation process between Japanese and Koreans in postwar Japan. In Shinsetaryon, the Zainichi Korean protagonist, Sin Yŏng-suk, narrates her life story interwoven with historical incidents in Japan and Korea during and after Japanese colonial rule. I argue that Shin’ya treated her performance as an apology for her ignorance of the plight of Zainichi Koreans, who have struggled politically and socially in both imperial and post-imperial Japan. She continually revised the script to include her growing understanding about unseen others in the narrative, positing herself as an aggressor who did not completely understand the formerly colonised Koreans. Through these revisions Shin’ya clarified her sense of distance from the Zainichi Korean protagonist, which was essential if her performance was to constitute an apology. She also challenged the idea of the linguistic hierarchy between the Japanese and Korean languages, which is a legacy of Japan’s assimilation policy during the colonial period. In doing so, Shinsetaryon suggested the possibility of remembering the Japanese empire in multiple ways without assimilation between the former coloniser and the colonised.

관동대지진과 민족 하이어라키 - 오키나와인의 관점에서 본 재일조선인 -

관동대지진과 민족 하이어라키 - 오키나와인의 관점에서 본 재일조선인 -

Art of Failure: Soni Kum’s Morning Dew Project and Diasporic Aesthetics

Abstract To date, one of the first video artworks by and about Zainichi (ethnic Koreans living in Japan), Zainichi artist Soni Kum’s three-channel video work Morning Dew (2020) is based on her interviews with sixteen Zainichi Koreans who went to North Korea during the repatriation project (1959–1984) and came back to Japan, and their descendants. I argue that Morning Dew, deliberately fails to give a coherent Zainichi representation, and in doing so, locates Zainichi experience in a context of the global diaspora, especially through the incongruent video montages on three screens, having animals lead the narrative, and filming the void. Queer imagination of failure helps explain the ways in which Kum’s aesthetic choices and her lived experience intersect. Responsive to the bifurcated gender discourse that threatens the legibility of queer lives, queer failure helps to unveil the structural polarization in identity-based knowledge formation and explicate Kum’s art of failing as a means to convey a portrayal more faithful to the diasporic life of Zainichi Koreans.

The Massacre of Koreans in Japan’s Great Kanto Earthquake to be Reviewed on the 100th Anniversary

The Massacre of Koreans in Japan’s Great Kanto Earthquake to be Reviewed on the 100th Anniversary

Literary Negotiations in Contemporary Zainichi Korean Literature: Zainichi Korean Postcoloniality and its Entanglement with Global History

Abstract: Zainichi Korean literature, which addresses questions concerning the Zainichi Korean minority, can be considered as one among many postcolonial literatures. By examining works of Sagisawa Megumu, Kaneshiro Kazuki, and Kim Masumi as case studies, I position contemporary Zainichi Korean literature within the broader context of postcolonial global history. Sagisawa's novel Saihate no futari (Two persons at the margins, 1999) narrates the relationship between a Japanese woman, whose father is an American GI, and a Zainichi Korean man. After the man succumbs to leukemia, the woman discovers that his mother was a survivor of the atomic bomb. The silencing of his mother's voice can be analyzed using Spivak's concept of the subaltern. Kaneshiro's novel GO (2000) addresses Korea's division as a consequence of imperialism and the Cold War. Furthermore, it draws connections between African Americans in the United States and the Zainichi Korean minority, which can be interpreted as an allusion to Bhabha's concept of mimicry. In Kim Masumi's novel Nason no sora (The sky of Nason, 2001), a Zainichi Korean woman residing in the United States engages with both the Japanese expatriate community and Asian Americans, contending with essentialist concepts of ethnicity. I argue that in the selected novels both the literary negotiations of Zainichi Korean postcoloniality and its entanglement with global history as well as the references to other diasporas, namely, the Asian and African diasporas in the United States, contribute to a subversive reframing of some prevailing narratives concerning the Zainichi Korean minority in Japan.

The Tethered Fates of Japan's "Foreigner" Communities: Zainichi Koreans, Residency Provisions, and the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract: This article explores how the fates of Japan's "foreign" communities—both "oldcomer" Zainichi Korean residents and "newcomer" foreign residents—have, especially since the 1990s, become tethered to one another. The authors argue that the postwar Zainichi Korean campaigns for legal, social, economic, educational, ethnic, constitutional, and welfare benefits have laid a foundation of "residency provisions" that the contemporary newcomer foreign community have also come to heavily rely on. However, access to such residency provisions by non-Japanese has increasingly come under attack from nativist and xenophobic groups such as the Zaitokukai and political parties such as the Japan First Party. More recently, waves of COVID-19 pandemic border closures and "states of emergency" incited a cultural and political environment in which "foreigners" became inextricably linked to the virus as a threat. Political and public support for border closures and stricter immigration controls coalesced with divisive and xenophobic movements that had primarily targeted Zainichi Koreans. The authors maintain this resulted in a shift towards exclusionary discourses directed at Japan's "foreigner" communities more generally. As social outgroups in contemporary Japan, Zainichi Koreans and newcomer foreigners are semantically, socially, and—most importantly—politically excluded through the Japanese/foreigner divide that continues to permeate Japanese self-consciousness. In conclusion, the case study of "IKUNO Tabunka Flat" is introduced as a model of Zainichi Korean grass-roots multiculturalism that attempts to overcome social division and isolation in Ikuno's "foreign" communities and assist in the creation of a more substantive and meaningful multicultural community in contemporary Japan.

Logics of Strategic Racism in the Anti-Hate Speech Law Era: Analyzing the Discourse Against Zainichi Koreans in Japanese Right-Wing TV Programs

Abstract: This study analyzes implicit racist rhetoric in Japan after the Hate Speech Elimination Act was enacted in 2016. While the law brought about the deradicalization and decline of hate groups, it has been ineffective in regulating covert hate speech. Zainichi Koreans, the primary victims of such speech, have struggled to have the illegality of racial discrimination recognized in litigation. By analyzing the case of Shin Sugok versus DHC TV, this article addresses the question of how racists use hateful rhetoric against Zainichi Koreans in the post-HSEA era. Shin filed a lawsuit in 2018 claiming defamation by DHC TV and won substantial compensation; however, the initial court decision in 2021 did not find racial discrimination against her, and the discrimination was only recognized by the Appeals Court in 2022. This blurring of judicial decisions was due to the expressions of racial discourse being subtle, which is referred to as strategic racism. The TV program did not use discriminatory language but stimulated the interest of racist viewers by persistently referring to the ethnic origin of the plaintiff. In this sense, Japan has entered an era in which it is necessary to analyze implicit racial codes, similarly to the situation with racist discourse in the United States.

Culinary Intimacy in Fukazawa Ushio's The Matchmaker and "When Yi Tongae Eats"

Abstract: Since her debut in 2012, Fukazawa Ushio has become a critical voice in the Japanese literary scene, writing about social issues including hate speech against Zainichi Koreans, abuse of migrant workers, gender inequality, and misogyny. One of the significant aesthetic features of her work is the use of food and foodways to explore these issues. This article examines the short story collection The Matchmaker and the five-part food essay "When Yi Tongae Eats," focusing on their sensorial elaboration of Zainichi Koreans' experiences of discrimination and desire to belong, sitting both at the intersection of gender and ethnicity. Fukazawa's sensorial contemplation of the affective values associated with cooking, eating, and drinking, I argue, generates a sense of intimacy among characters and between text and reader that ultimately enables us to expand our understanding of the complexities of Zainichi Korean identity and their place in contemporary Japan.

Lee Ufan's ambivalent otherness and art historiography

AbstractThis article aims to reexamine the relationship between the artist Lee Ufan and nationalist art history through his idea of “ambivalent otherness,” which he defined as both “suffering” and “power.” Traditional art history is established upon a nationalist framework that emphasizes the artists' nationality, leading to the marginalization of national others at the border. As a zainichi Korean, Lee has undergone the “suffering” of being excluded by the art world and art historiography. However, he transformed it into his source of “power” to challenge art historiography based on nationality. This study analyzes the art criticism of “Japanese Contemporary Art History” written by Minemura Toshiaki and Chiba Shigeo in the 1970s and 1980s and highlights the ruptures that the artist's in-between identity wrought on nationalist art history. This shows how both the Mono-ha movement and the artist were marginalized in the construction of “Japanese Contemporary Art History.” Furthermore, this study scrutinizes how Lee attempted to rewrite art history using Mono-ha art theory and a perspective committed to “overcoming coloniality” from the postcolonial in-between position, by reinterpreting Lee's article on Chosŏn minhwa, written amidst an aesthetic controversy across the border between Japan and Korea.

Specters of comfort women: Biopolitical colonial warfare, questions of humanity, and the haunted future

The memories of “comfort women” have been discursively represented primarily within the dynamic discussions that define narratives regarding the universal human rights of women. In this article, I attempt to re-read the history of the comfort women system against the paradigmatic human rights narratives of gender-based violence while contextualizing its history within the legacy of colonial racism. The understanding of the comfort women system as colonial violence that I put forward thus challenges the basic assumptions of current debates on contested memories in East Asia. For this, I draw on haunting aspects of Zainichi Korean documentary filmmaker Soonam Park’s archivization of human suffering during the colonial period and on Michel Foucault’s notion of biopolitics. I further discuss the contrasting implications of W. E. B. Du Bois’s visits to Japan and to the ruins of the Warsaw Ghetto in light of Michael Rothberg’s reading of Du Bois and of his conceptual reflections on “marking caesuras.” In this regard, I characterize Imperial Japan as the absent empire of postcolonial grammatology, underscoring thereby the manner in which Eurocentrism, binary thinking, and habitual orientation around the color line inhabit and determine much of the work carried out under the banner of postcolonial studies. “Enter the ghost, exit the ghost, re-enter the ghost.” – Hamlet.

1970년대 재일한국인 2세의 조국 통일 담론

1970년대 재일한국인 2세의 조국 통일 담론

Investigating into the Correlation between Japanese Hate Crimes against Zainichi Koreans and the Disabled

Investigating into the Correlation between Japanese Hate Crimes against Zainichi Koreans and the Disabled

The (Im)possibility of ideal education: Hope, uncertainty, and being safe in a Korean international school in Japan

ABSTRACT Drawing on an in-depth ethnography of students, teachers, and parents at School K, a newly built Korean international school, this paper investigates how students choose their subjects to show their multi-faceted identities within the institutional goals of the school. Rather than promoting an expatriate Korean identity, School K bases its pedagogies on border-crossing and uses trilingual education to cultivate global citizens with the potential to thrive internationally, while embracing their own ethnic backgrounds. School K’s emergence indicates a shift in educational policies among Korean schools in Japan that increasingly seek to transcend the goal of ethnic solidarity and affective longing for the Korean peninsula. This study shows that in addition to the distinction between oldcomer and newcomer Koreans, students express various senses of “internal borders” and project their subjectivities to transcend them. In everyday school activities, such as learning the Korean language and/or interacting with neighbors, Japanese nationals, Koreans from Korea, and the Zainichi Korean students imagine multiple borders that are context-oriented and rather playful. Institutionally, conducting trilingual education requires more resources for a school than bilingual education and can result in financial difficulties, mainly due to non-endorsement by the Japanese government, which destabilizes the school’s management. While parents and students express dissatisfaction about school curriculum and management, they value the friendships made at school and think the school ultimately offers a safer space for Zainichi Korean students, providing middle-class Zainichi Korean families with an alternative educational choice.