Korean issues in Japan
Japan's nationalization of Korea and its legacy
By William Wetherall
First posted 15 February 2006
Last updated 1 October 2008
Contents
Here you will find reviews of some books, and commentary, on Korea-Japan relations and Koreans in Japan. I have grouped the books and commentary into the following categories.
Books by Tei Taikin
Books by Asakawa Akihiro
Books by other writers
Ken Kanryu related books
"Ken 'Ken Kan ryu' ryu" vicious circle
Books by Tei Taikin
No other writer in Japan today has contributed more to the forging of a new view of Korean and Japanese nationalism and its consequences on Koreans in Japan than Tei Taikin (Chung Daekyun). His most important titles are in the paperback series of two major publishing houses.
Tei's books have not been the kind that tv talk shows like to hype into bestsellers. However, his views, also expressed in numerous monthly magazine articles, are slowly but surely affecting public understanding of Korea-Japan relations when Korea was part of Japan, and the legacy of migration -- most voluntary, some forced -- from the Korean peninsula to the prefectures.
Tei was a Japanese of Chosenjin [Korean] subnationality when born in Iwate prefecture in 1948, a Chosenjin [national of Korea as defined when Japan effectively abandoned its sovereignty over the country] from 1952, a Kankokujin [ROK national] from 195X when his father formally declared his allegiance to the Republic of Korea, and a Japanese again since 2004 when he naturalized in Japan.
Tei received a BA from St. Paul's University in Tokyo and an MA from the University of California at Los Angeles. He taught Japanese at universities in Korea from 1981-1995 while continuing his research and writing on Korea-Japan relations and ethnicity, and has been a professor at Tokyo Metropolitan University since 1995.
I first met Tei in 1975, when he called himself Chung and also Saito (his mother's original family name). We have kept in touch over the years and he, more than anyone, has inspired my current views of ethnicity and nationalism.
Chung, Dae-Kyun [Tei Taikin]
Japan-born Koreans in the U.S.: Their experiences in Japan and the U.S.
Master's Thesis
M.A. in Asian American Studies, 1978
University of California, Los Angeles, 1978
iii, 83 pages (typescript)
At the time he wrote this thesis, Tei was calling himself Chung, one of several romanizations of the Korean reading of the character read "Tei" in Sino-Japanese. Already experienced in community work with Koreans in Japan, he spent three years at the University of California in Los Angeles, he conducted this very original study of people like himself in the United States.
One litmus test of who you are is to plunge into another world and see who you make friends with. Do Koreans born and raised in Japan, where they are surrounded by Japanese and are like most Japanese in all but nationality, discover their "Koreanness" in Los Angeles? Do they meet Koreans from the Republic of Korea and suddenly feel at home?
The answer to the second question is no -- they discover they have nothing in common with "real" Koreans and may not even be welcome in their communities. The answer to the first question is yes -- they find themselves mixing with, and socially and culturally most comfortable in the company of, and even most accepted by, Japanese.
Accepting this fact is the first step to liberation from the "Zainichi syndrome" (my expression) -- an obsession with "being a Korean in Japan" that causes some self-styled "Zainichi" to discrimate against themselves more than they may at times be discriminated against by some Japanese.
Kawamura Minato and Chong Taegyun [Chung Daekyun] (editors)
Kankoku to iu kagami: Sengo sedai no mita rinkoku
[The Republic of Korea as a mirror: Japan's neighbor as seen by the postwar generation]
Tokyo: Toyo Shoin, 1986
334 pages, hardcover
Chong Taegyun [Chung Daekyun]
Nikkan no pararerizumu: Atarashii nagameai wa kano ka
[Parallelism in Japan and Korea: Is a new mutual view possible?]
Tokyo: Sankosha, 1992
252 pages, hardcover
Tei Taikin [Chong Daekyun]
Kankoku no imeeji: Sengo Nihonjin no rinkoku kan
[The image of Korea: How postwar Japanese view a neighboring country]
Tokyo: Chuo Koron Sha, 1995
xii, 239 pages, paperback (Chuko Shinsho 1269)
Tei Taikin [Chung Daekyun]
Nihon (Irubon) no imeeji: Kankokujin no Nihonjin kan
[The image of Japan (Ilbon): How Koreans view Japanese]
Tokyo: Chuo Koron Sha, 1998
vi, 240 pages, paperback (Chuko Shinsho 1439)
Tei Taikin [Chung Daekyun]
Zainichi Kankokujin no shuen
[The end of Koreans in Japan]
Tokyo: Bungei Shunju, 2001
196 pages, paperback (Bunshun Shinsho 168)
This is Tei's first book-length examination of the status and conditions of Koreans in Japan, particularly those who have been in Japan since the day Japan surrendered to end World War II in 1945 and descendants born and raised in Japan. The maintenance of Korean nationality into second, third, and later generations is partly an anomaly of both Japan's and ROK's nationality laws. But it also reflects an attitude toward nationality that doesn't make sense in light of the fact that most Koreans in Japan are so totally integrated into Japan's mainstream that it makes no point not to be Japanese.
The title reflects Francis Fukuyama's "The End of History and the Last Man" (1992). The number of Koreans in Japan who are categorically "Zainichi Kankokujin" -- by virtue of their treaty-accorded "special permanent residence" status -- is rapidly shrinking through death and naturalization, and the fact that most Koreans marry Japanese and their children are able to acquire Japanese nationality at time of birth. So it is only a matter of time before there will be no significant population of such what I call "legacy Koreans" in Japan.
Tei Taikin [Chung Daekyun]
Kankoku nashonarizumu no fuko: Naze yokusei ga hatarakanai no ka
[The misfortunes of Korean nationalism: Why suppression doesn't work]
Tokyo: Shogakukan, 2002
221 pages, paperback (Shogakukan Bunko 476)
Tei Taikin [Chung Daekyun]
Zainichi: Kyosei renko no shinwa
[Japan resident [Koreans]: Myths of forced movements]
Tokyo: Bungei Shunju, 2004
201 pages, paperback (Bunshun Shinsho 384)
Over the past two or three decades, a number of researchers have debunked the myth -- commonly reported as fact in mass media and books in Japanese and English -- that Koreans in Japan are the descendants of colonial subjects forcefully brought to Japan to work. Tei, however, has written -- if not the last word on the subject -- the most important overview to date.
Tei Taikin [Chung Daekyun]
Zainichi no taerarenai karusa
[The unbearable lightness of being [Korean] in Japan]
Tokyo: Chuo Koron Shinsha, 2006
vii, 194 pages, paperback (Chuko Shinsho 1861)
This is a very moving book, in which Tei (born in 1948 during the occupation of Japan) shares many personal and frank thoughts about his father (born in Korea in 1899), his mother (born in Iwate prefecture in 1909), and his older brother (born in Tokyo in 1944) and younger sister (born in Iwate in 1950). He also revels a great deal about himself as he grew up and forged his own way in life, and as his experiences changed his perceptions of the world and who he was and wanted to be.
In the penultimate chapter Tei talks very candidly about his sister's law suit against the Tokyo Metropolitan Government (see review of Chong Hyang Gyun 2006). For the record, he was opposed to her suit. His arguments are at once powerful and, in view of how he phrases his criticism of his own sister, very poignant.
In the final chapter Tei narrates his own journey back to Japanese nationality through naturalization. In an earlier chapter he also talks about his mother's naturalization in 1985. When she married his father, she moved from her family register in Iwate prefecture to his register in Korea, so she too lost her Japanese nationality as a result of treaty settlements after World War II.
Tei's title is inspired by Sonzai no taerarenai karusa -- the Japanese title of Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1985). The Czech title is Nesnesitelna lehkost byti (1982, 1984), but the novel could not be published in Czechoslovakia, and apparently Kundera has not allowed it to be published in the Czech Republic.
Asakawa Akihiro
Asakawa Akihiro was born, according to his own phrasing, a "Zainichi Kankokujin sansei" [third generation ROK national in Japan], in 1974. Such labels should not be taken too literally. ROK did not exist when the so-called "first generation" migrated to the prefectures. And some of their children -- the "second generation" -- were born before ROK was founded in 1948, if not before the end of the war in 1945.
A product of Kobe, Osaka, and Nagoya colleges, he is presently a professor at the Graduate School of International Development at Nagoya University. He has studied in Australia and worked for the Japanese Embassy in Australia as a specialist researcher.
Asakawa has specialized in migration and immigration policy, and in Australian politics and society. Much of his research, though, has been centered on Koreans in Japan and naturalization, the subjects of the following books. He himself became Japanese in 1999.
Asakawa Akihiro
Zainichi gaikokujin to kika seido
[Japan-resident aliens and the naturalization system]
Tokyo: Shinkansha, 2003
2002 pages, paperback
This book is the most exhaustive and current study of naturalization in Japan. It's main strengths are data on naturalization (statistics culled from government reports, and Asakawa's own analysis of Kanpo [Official Gazette] notices), and discussions of naturalization procedures and costs. It's main weakness is it's characterization of Japan's Nationality Law.
Asakawa categorical differentiates "'zokusei ni yori kokuseki' (citizenship by attribution)" and "'shutoku ni yoru kokuseki' (citizenship by acquisition)" (page 37). He then states that Japanese nationality obtained at time of birth falls in the former category, while Japanese nationality obtained later through naturalization would fall in the latter category.
However, Japan's Nationality Law treats all means of obtaining Japanese nationality as "acquisition" [shutoku]. Nationality is acquired through timely notification and confirmation of particulars (now at time of birth or when legitimized, once also through adoption and marriage) and through application and permission (naturalization).
Asakawa Akihiro
"Zainichi" ron no uso: Shokuzai no jubaku o toku
[Lies of "Zainichi" discourse: Breaking the spell of atonement]
Tokyo: PHP Kenkyujo, 2006
188 pages, hardcover
Six of seven chapters in this book are based on articles originally published in two monthly magazines, Shokun! (Chapters 1-2, 4-5) and Seiron (Chapters 6-7). Chapter 3, a debunking of myths about naturalization, was written for the book.
While all chapters expose flaws in the victimhood ideology that has driven most journalistic and academic writing about Koreans in Japan, Chapter 7 (pages 162-184) may be the most valuable. It's title, like those of the other chapters, is long and speaks for itself.
Sengo "Zainichi shinwa" to shite no kokuseki hakudatsu to iu uso: Oonuma Yasuaki, Todai kyoju no fikushon o tsumikasaneta Kokuseki to jinken
[ The lie of nationality deprivation as a postwar "Japan-resident [Korean] myth": The fictions accumulated in Tokyo University professor Oonuma Yasuaki's Nationality and human rights ]
While pointing out the ideologically-inspired flaws in Oonuma's book (Tokyo: Toshindo, 2004), Asakawa also takes shots at other well-known publicists who, like Oonuma, are inclined to ignore legal and other facts which weaken if not entirely undermine their arguments that Koreans in Japan deserve special entitlements.
Oonuma is best known for Tan'itsu minzoku shakai no shinwa o koete: Zainichi Kankoku/Chosenjin to shutsunyukoku kanri taisei [Transcending the myth of monoethnic society: the system of emigration/immigration control of Japan-resident Koreans] (Tokyo: Toshindo, 1986, revised 1993). While valuable as a source of information, this book, too, takes the position that the manner in which Japan has treated former subjects of Korea in Japan has been oppressive if not also illegal.
Other writers
Chon Hyan Gyun [Chong Hyang Gyun] (editor)
Seigi naki kuni
("Tozen no hori" o toitsudzukete:
Tocho kokuseki nin'yo sabetsu saiban no kiroku)
[Country without justice
(Continuing to question "natural legal principle":
A chronicle of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government
nationality appointment discrimination trial)]
Tokyo: Akashi Shoten, 2006
310 pages, hardcover
This is a collection of articles by six authors, including two university professors and two attorneys (one of them the late Kim Kyung Duk [Kim Kyongduk] (1949-2005), who were involved in or otherwise supported the editor's law suit against the Tokyo Metropolitan Government for limiting managerial posts to Japanese. The last one third of the book consists of selected district court, high court, and supreme court documents.
The editor, Chong Hwang Gyun, is employee by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government as a public health nurse [hokenshi]. She passed an examination for a managerial position but was disqualified from holding the post for the reason that she is not Japanese.
While I agree that nationality should not have been a qualification for the post Chong sought, unfortunately she made the mistake of arguing that it was a Korean and even a racial issue.
In the preface, Chong and one of the contributors cite the English phrase "National Origin" by way of introducing Chapter 5, where it serves as the centerpiece of Kondo Atsushi's argument that Metropolitan Tokyo's nationality restriction violates articles in United Nations conventions ratified by Japan, which disallow discrimination based on "national origin" (pages 130-151). This is perhaps the most serious flaw in Chong's defense -- since "national origin" is racialized in UN conventions, while in Japanese and international law "nationality" is raceless.
Significantly, the Japanese government, which had no involvement in Chong's law suit, has formally opposed to the use of "national origin" in the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD) -- because the term would racializes "nation" and "national" in ways conflict with the raceless quality of "nationality".
Though Chong was courageous to take her case to court, she did not adequately arm herself with facts about Koreans in Japan, or even about her own family for that matter. Consequently, media accounts of her case compounded errors in her own statements at press conferences. One of the worst reports was written in English by a journalist who interviewed her.
The task of setting the record straight fell to Chong's brother, Tei Taikin (Chung Daekyun), who attempted to correct some of the more serious misunderstandings in magazine articles. Tei also devoted a chapter in his family biography to his sister's case (see review).
Ken Kanryu related books
Yamano Sharin
Manga Ken Kanryu
[Manga / Despised Korean style]
Tokyo: Shin'yusha, 2005
289 pages, paper cover (Shinyusha mook)
Yamano Sharin
Manga Ken Kanryu 2
[Manga / Despised Korean style 2]
Tokyo: Shin'yusha, 2006
269 pages, paper cover (Shinyusha mook)
Yamano Sharin
Ken Kanryu koshiki gaido bukku: "Manga Ken Kanryu" dokusha no koe
[Despised Korean style official guide book: Voices of readers of Manga / Despised Korean Style]
Tokyo: Shin'yusha, 2006
129 pages, paper cover (Shinyusha mook)
Bessatsu Takarajima (editor)
Manga Ken Kanryu no shinjitsu!: "Kankoku / Hanto tabuu" cho nyumon
[Manga / Truths about despised Korean style!: Super primer of "ROK / Peninsula taboos"
Tokyo: Takarajimasha, 2005
124 pages, paper cover (mook)
Sakurai Makoto (Doronpa)
Kenkanryu jissen handobukku: Hannichi moshin gekitai manyuaru
[Despised Korean style / practical handbook: A manual for repelling anti-Japan blindfaith]
<Handbook Kenkanryu>
Tokyo: Shinyusha [Shin'yusha], February 2006
239 pages, paper cover (Shinyusha mook)
Sakurai Makoto (Doronpa)
Ken kanryu: Hannichi moshin hanto enjo hen
[Despised Korean style: Anti-Japan blind faith peninsula burning]
Kenkanryu jissen handobukku 2
[Ken Kan Ryu Execution Handbook 2]
Tokyo: Shinyusha [Shin'yusha], September 2006
227 pages, paper cover (Shinyusha mook)
Bessatsu Takarajima (editor)
Ken Kanryu no shinjitsu!: Za Zainichi tokken
[Truths about despised Korean style!: The "Zainichi" interests]
Tokyo: Takarajimasha, June 2006
144 pages, paper cover (mook)
Some Koreans like to dislike Japan, and some Japanese like to dislike Korea. Such mutual sentiments feed on each other and chase one another in books and magazines in both countries, and on websites and blogs around the world.
Some Japanese fall in love with a few Korean actors and singers. They keep vats of kimchi in their kitchens at home, learn to write their names in hangul, and make pilgrimages to Korea. They read popular accounts of Japan-Korea relations and feel guilty about what Japan is supposed have done in Korea during several waves of nationalism over the past two millennia.
Some Koreans criticize Prime Minister Koizumi's vists to Yasukuni shrine. They loathe Japanese who say that Japan's annexation of Korea in 1910 was both legal and beneficiary. They chastise Japan for claiming that Korea's Tokto islands in the East Sea are Japan's Takeshima islands in the Japan Sea. They criticize Japanese textbooks that fail to mention the sins they feel Japan committed during its 35-year occupation of Korea, from making Koreans learn Japanese and adopt Japanese names, to forcing them to work in Japan or sexually comfort Japanese soldiers in war theaters throughout Asia.
The latest wave of "dislike" has come from the Japan side, in a number of comics and other books with "Ken Kanryu" [Hating Korean style] in their titles. Their authors generally feel that some Koreans exaggerate or misconstrue what Japan is supposed to have done to Korea. They feel their misgivings are shared by an increasing number of Japanese who are annoyed at the way some Koreans continually play the "historical victim" fiddle in their appeals for international support against Japan.
The "Ken Kanryu" boom in Japan as of course been critically reviwed in and rebuked by Korean media. It has also become an object of minor attention outside Japan, in an article in the New York Times in 2005, and in a report by a UN human rights official in 2006.
The United Nations
On 24 January 2006, Doudou Diene, the Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance for the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, filed a "Mission to Japan" report in which he summarized the circumstances he found in Japan when visiting the country from 3 to 11 July 2005. In Paragraph 72 he makes the following statement.
The Special Rapporteur also noticed a strong presence of the discriminatory mentality towards Koreans and Chinese in the media and other communications targeting the young generations. He learned that new comic books that became best-sellers recently, such as "Hating the Korean wave" and "Introduction to China", deny and revise the most relevant episodes of the Japanese colonial history, and have as an objective the denigration of the Korean and Chinese culture and civilization. They mention that "there is nothing at all in Korean culture to be proud of" and portray Chinese as obsessed with cannibalism and prostitution.
Diene is citing from an article called "Ugly Images of Asian Rivals Become Best Sellers in Japan", written by Norimitsu Onishi and published in The New York Times on 19 November 2005, after he had left Japan.
"Hating the Korean wave" is Onishi's translation of "Ken Kanryu" -- a phrase that appears in the titles of two comics and several related and other books. Did Diene ever see, much less read, such books? Not likely.
Such books exist in Japan because the country tolerates freedom of expression. Their existence also reflects the surfacing of a lively debate between people who regard history as a closed book, and those who feel that history should always be amenable to revision in the light of new information and insights.
In nothing else, such books suggest that ideologically popular histories of Japan's relations with the Korean peninsula have tended to publicize the often exaggerated and sometimes erroneous claims of alleged victims and their descendants.
Sakurai Makoto goes by the handle "doronpa". He styles himself as the representative of "Higashi Ajia Mondai Kenkyu Kai" [East Asia issues research association]. This is the new name, since 1 February 2006, of what Sakurai had called "Nikkan Rekishi Mondai Kenkyukai" [Japan-ROK historical issues research association] when writing his best-selling Kenryukai handbook. This happens to be the official publishing date of the book, though the preface is dated 28 November 2005, and the book hit the stands
Sakurai means business. His website, which has been up since September 2003, is fairly large and includes blogs and links to dozens of hours of bandwidth-hungry net radio broadcasts featuring him expounding on a favorate topic, mostly something related to Japan-Korea relations past and present, including Koreans in Japan.
Sakurai welcomes commentary. He invites any "foreign students from ROK, Koreans in Japan, and the left-wound people" [Kankoku ryugakusei, Zainichi, hidarimaki no katagata] who see his site to submit their contrary views for posting.
Common denominators
Sakurai has something in common with the Japan Communist Party. Both are opposed to the "Jinken yogo hoan" [Human rights protection bill] now being tossed around the Diet -- as are many media organizations. They feel the proposed law would open the door for the government and others it empowers to curtail critical opinion and otherwise infringe upon freedoms of speech. On this point I'm inclined to agree.
Sakurai's "East Asia issues research association" website features an animated graphic on which the following message unfolds.
Majo da!! Witch! to sabetsu o ukeru Before receiving sono mae ni discrimination, jinken yogo ho an ni let's oppose the hantai shiyo!! human rights protection law bill!
To be continued.