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COPYRIGHT AND USE OF THIS THESIS This thesis must be used in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act 1968. Reproduction of material protected by copyright may be an infringement of copyright and copyright owners may be entitled to take legal action against persons who infringe their copyright. Section 51 (2) of the Copyright Act permits an authorized officer of a university library or archives to provide a copy (by communication or otherwise) of an unpublished thesis kept in the library or archives, to a person who satisfies the authorized officer that he or she requires the reproduction for the purposes of research or study. The Copyright Act grants the creator of a work a number of moral rights, specifically the right of attribution, the right against false attribution and the right of integrity. You may infringe the author’s moral rights if you: - fail to acknowledge the author of this thesis if you quote sections from the work - attribute this thesis to another author - subject this thesis to derogatory treatment which may prejudice the author’s reputation For further information contact the University’s Copyright Service. sydney.edu.au/copyright 1 The Noose Among the Cherries: Landscape and the Representation of Resident Koreans in Japanese Film By Michael Ward A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Philosophy Faculty of Arts and Sciences The University of Sydney 2015 2 Dedication Page This thesis is dedicated to the memory of my beloved father Billy F. Ward (November 30, 1945-August 16, 2014) who passed away only twelve days before I submitted this thesis for examination. I miss you and love you, Daddy. I hope to be only half the man you were. 3 Acknowledgements A work of extreme hardheadedness, this thesis would not have been possible without the calm and dedicated guidance of my advisor Dr. Rebecca Suter. Dr. Suter helped turn my nebulous ideas into a cohesive thesis and for that I am forever grateful. I hope to one day become the scholar that you thought I could become. Much appreciation is also due to my associate advisor Dr. Lionel Babicz for his warmth and kindness during my time in Sydney. Dr. Jane Chi Hyun Park helped me through a living nightmare when I considered abandoning my graduate work completely. Dr. Mark E. Caprio and Dr. Mats E. Karlsson acted as readers for this thesis. Their guidance helped this thesis reach its fullest potential. Dr. Chikako Nihei, Dr. Sabina Zulovic, Dr. Yi Wang, Dr. Ping Tian, Dr. Hongwei Bao, Dr. Hongguang He, Dr. Meng Li, and Filip and Sayaka Swennen offered me friendship and the chance to join in many stimulating conversations. Thank you for that, dear friends. Special thanks is due to Dr. Zuvolic and my dear friend Lewis Tang who were both willing to deliver copies of this thesis in Sydney while I fidgeted nervously in Tokyo. My dear mother Diane Ward has suffered long while her only child has gone off to live in distant lands. Thank you for your love and financial support. I would have never gotten this far without you. My in-laws Takumi and Mari Sakurai have supported me with their love and financial support since the time I entered their family. This thesis would not have been possible without them. My dear cat Ai-chan has helped me more than her confused little head will ever know. It was in a conversation with Ai-chan that I had a major breakthrough with my research and thus was able to create a stronger thesis. Thank you, Ai-chan. Finally, my beloved wife Kuriko Sakurai helped me in more ways with her love and financial support than I would be able to list here. I love you, my heart. Thank you for being Kuriko, dear one. Your being you is a gift I cherish every day. 4 Table of Contents Introduction: 5 Chapter 1: A Short History of Japan’s Resident Korean Population: 8 Chapter 2: Resident Koreans in Japanese Film: 98 Chapter 3: Landscape Theory: 167 Chapter 4: Death by Hanging: the Creation and Destruction of Ri Chin’ U: 244 Conclusion: 293 Works Cited: 297 5 Introduction: Resident Koreans on Film My interest in the cinematic use and representation of Koreans and Resident Koreans in Japanese film began in 2004 when I watched Ōshima Nagisa’s 大島渚 (1932-2013) 1983 film Senjō no Merī Kurisumasu (戦場のメリークリスマス, Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence) for the first time. Besides the homoerotic tensions shared between David Bowie and Sakamoto Ryūichi, the scene that made the largest impression on me was one that depicted the brutalization of a Korean soldier serving in the Japanese army by a Japanese sergeant played by Beat Takeshi. After watching this film, I began to search for other Japanese films that contained Korean characters and came across Yukisada Isao’s 行定勲 (1968- ) seminal film Go! (2001), which acted as my introduction to Japan’s Resident Korean community as well as films depicting Resident Koreans. With my general interest firmly in place, my academic interest in these films was ignited when I had the chance to view Ōshima’s film Kōshikei (絞死刑, 1968) in 2006 which introduced me both to a critique of institutionalized racism in Japan towards Resident Koreans and 1960s avant-garde Japanese film. As I worked on other projects, the subject of how Resident Koreans were represented in Japanese films remained in the back of my head and later developed through my readings of W.E.B. Du 6 Bois, Frantz Fanon, and Paul Gilroy. However, it was not until I came across Matsuda Masao’s 松田政男 (1933- ) and Adachi Masao’s 足立正生 (1939- ) theory Fûkeiron (風景論 Landscape Theory), detailed below, that I developed a more critical way of understanding how Japanese directors use Resident Korean characters in their films. Consisting of four chapters, this thesis opens with a short introduction to pre-colonial and colonial Korean history and prewar and postwar Resident Korean history. Chapter two, after giving a brief description of Japanese victim consciousness and how it was spread throughout Japan through melodrama films, delves into the history of late 1950s and early 1960s films created by leftist humanist Japanese directors. These films depict diluted Resident Korean characters whose primary purpose is to reflect the positive qualities of the Japanese characters who appear in the films while more serious aspects of Resident Korean history remain absent. Concerned with the way in which the leftist humanist directors handled their Resident Korean characters, the third chapter of this thesis takes a close look at Matsuda and Adachi’s theory of landscape and uses it to show how marginalized individuals such as the non-Korean serial killer Nagayama Norio, the original subject for the theory of landscape, and the white-robed Resident Koreans in an early Ōshima Nagisa documentary film are controlled by Japanese political power that manifests itself in homogenous landscape 7 that was an ubiquitous presence throughout late 1960s and early 1970s Japan. The fourth and final chapter of this thesis concerns itself with the diagram of the microphysics of power which is embedded within Japan’s homogeneous landscape and is responsible for both the creation and death of individuals like the previously mentioned Nagayama Norio and the Resident Korean Ri Chin’ U and his filmic representative R in Ōshima’s Death by Hanging. In writing this thesis I hope to accomplish two primary goals. One is to outline a general history of the representation of Resident Koreans in postwar Japanese films until 1970 and show how Japanese directors, both postwar humanist leftist directors and 1960s avant-garde directors used the images of Resident Koreans for their own purposes. Also, I hope that this thesis helps to show that the theory of landscape is more than an old Japanese film theory that has gained recent academic interest because it is quite useful as a critique in understanding how the Japanese state marginalizes individuals within its own borders while controlling the general populace. 8 Chapter 1: A Short History of Japan’s Resident Korean Population 1.1.1 Threatened by the West In 1881, the politician and historian Takekoshi Yosaburō 竹越與三郎 (1865-1950) wrote that in the Edo Period (1603-1868) the Japanese had no conception of the archipelago being a “nation” until the arrival of Commodore Matthew Perry (1794-1858).1 The threat that Perry and his Kurofune 黒船 (Black Ships) represented forced the Japanese to engage in a decades-long process of revamping their traditional, social, political, and economic structures and, according to Takekoshi, the combined threat of the West and the modernization/Westernization of Late Edo and Early Meiji Japan resulted in “the 300 or so domains bec[oming] siblings and the many tens of thousands of people realiz[ing] that they were one people.”2 Responding to the threat from the West, the Meiji government engaged in a program of nation-building which closely resembled colonial expansion through the fact that local cultural institutions, such as local gods, dialects, costumes, cuisine, holidays, 1 Mark E. Caprio, Japanese Assimilation Policies in Colonial Korea, 1910-1945. (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2009), p.50. 2 Takekoshi Yosaburō as quoted in Caprio, Japanese Assimilation Policies, p.50; Hong Yung Lee, “Introduction: A Critique of ‘Colonial Modernity’” in Colonial Rule and Social Change in Korea, 1910-1945. Hong Yung Lee, Yong-Chool Ha, and Clark W. Sorensen, editors. (Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 2013), p.4. 9 were replaced by ones that the Meiji elite considered to be “civilized” and which they