Diaspora without Homeland: Being Korean in Japan Edited by Sonia Ryang and John Lie Published in association with University of California Press Description: More than one-half million people of Korean descent reside in Japan today—the largest ethnic minority in a country often assumed to be homogeneous. This timely, interdisciplinary volume blends original empirical research with the vibrant field of diaspora studies to understand the complicated history, identity, and status of the Korean minority in Japan. An international group of scholars explores commonalities and contradictions in the Korean diasporic experience, touching on such issues as citizenship and belonging, the personal and the political, and homeland and hostland. Editors: Sonia Ryang is Associate Professor of Anthropology and International Studies, C. Maxwell & Elizabeth M. Stanley Family and Korea Foundation Scholar of Korean Studies, and Director of the Center for Asian and Pacific Studies at the University of Iowa. John Lie is Class of 1959 Professor of Sociology and Dean of International and Area Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. Contributors: Mark E. Caprio, Erin Aeran Chung, Chikako Kashiwazaki, Ichiro Kuraishi, John Lie, Youngmi Lim, Tessa Morris-Suzuki, Sonia Ryang, Yu Jia Review: “Diaspora without Homeland sets a new standard for the study of Japan’s Korean diaspora. Beginning with Sonia Ryang’s evocative introduction, the uniformly excellent chapters in this volume reveal the rich and complex experience of being Korean in Japan.” —Nancy Abelmann, University of Illinois Diaspora without Homeland UC-RyangLie_ToPress.indd i 1/16/2009 2:38:30 PM UC-RyangLie_ToPress.indd ii 1/16/2009 2:38:31 PM Diaspora without Homeland Being Korean in Japan Edited by Sonia Ryang and John Lie Global, Area, and International Archive University of California Press Berkeley los Angeles London UC-RyangLie_ToPress.indd iii 1/16/2009 2:38:31 PM The Global, Area, and International Archive (GAIA) is an initiative of International and Area Studies, University of California, Berkeley, in partnership with the University of California Press, the California Digital Library, and international research programs across the UC system. GAIA volumes, which are published in both print and open- access digital editions, represent the best traditions of regional studies, reconfigured through fresh global, transnational, and thematic perspectives. University of California Press, one of the most distinguished university presses in the United States, enriches lives around the world by advancing scholarship in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Its activities are supported by the UC Press Foundation and by philanthropic contributions from individuals and institutions. For more information, visit www.ucpress.edu. University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles, California University of California Press, Ltd. London, England © 2009 by The Regents of the University of California Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Diaspora without homeland : being Korean in Japan / edited by Sonia Ryang and John Lie. p. cm. (Global, area, and international archive ; 8) Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn : 978-0-520-09863-3 1. Koreans — Japan — Social conditions. 2. Japan — Ethnic relations. 3. Marginality, Social — Japan. I. Ryang, Sonia. II. Lie, John. DS832.7. K6D53 2009 305.895'7052 — dc22 2008045210 Manufactured in the United States of America 19 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of ansi/niso z39.48 – 1992 (r 1997) (Permanence of Paper). UC-RyangLie_ToPress.indd iv 1/16/2009 2:38:31 PM Contents Introduction. Between the Nations: Diaspora and Koreans in Japan 1 Sonia Ryang 1. Occupations of Korea and Japan and the Origins of the Korean Diaspora in Japan 21 Mark E. Caprio and Yu Jia 2. Freedom and Homecoming: Narratives of Migration in the Repatriation of Zainichi Koreans to North Korea 39 Tessa Morris-Suzuki 3. Visible and Vulnerable: The Predicament of Koreans in Japan 62 Sonia Ryang 4. Reinventing Korean Roots and Zainichi Routes: The Invisible Diaspora among Naturalized Japanese of Korean Descent 81 Youngmi Lim 5. Pacchigi! and Go: Representing Zainichi in Recent Cinema 107 Ichiro Kuraishi 6. The Foreigner Category for Koreans in Japan: Opportunities and Constraints 121 Chikako Kashiwazaki UC-RyangLie_ToPress.indd v 1/16/2009 2:38:31 PM 7. The Politics of Contingent Citizenship: Korean Political Engagement in Japan and the United States 147 Erin Aeran Chung 8. The End of the Road? The Post-Zainichi Generation 168 John Lie Notes 181 References 199 Contributors 219 Index 221 UC-RyangLie_ToPress.indd vi 1/16/2009 2:38:31 PM Introduction: Between the Nations Diaspora and Koreans in Japan Sonia Ryang How many Koreans are there in the world today? Answering this question would appear to be a relatively simple endeavor, considering that Korea is a small nation. Yet it quickly becomes complicated, involving the calculus not only of demography but of political allegiance, social affiliation, and cultural identity. Divided among North and South, the population of the Koreas today amounts to seventy-two million, or so the readily available statistics say. However, millions more Koreans live outside the Korean peninsula. According to one set of data, as of 1995 there were 4,938,345 Koreans residing permanently overseas, with 1,661,034 in the United States and 659,323 in Japan; other significant areas of concentration were China (two million) and the former Soviet Union, notably Kazakhstan (about 490,000). The 2004 U.S. census recorded 1,251,092 Koreans, while the 2004 statistics from Japan’s Ministry of Justice documented 607,419 Koreans registered as aliens (Yau 2004, United States Bureau of the Census 2007, Japan Ministry of Justice 2004). Such figures shift fast, reflecting tempo- rary or permanent repatriation, migration, immigration, naturalization, acquisition of residence, and other residential arrangements. Depending on the legal practices and demographic methods of the host nation, “Korean” in this context could mean either Korean ethnicity (while claiming citi- zenship of the host country) or actual Korean nationality (while being denationalized and stateless in one’s country of birth). The demographic map of Koreans residing outside of their homeland reveals the cartographic traces of colonialism, World War II, the Korean War, and the Cold War. Koreans in Japan in particular are marked as reminders of Japan’s colonial rule of Korea and the ensuing wars that shaped the global Korean diaspora. Despite its global extent and visibility, however, the Korean diaspora in general (and in Japan in particular) is 1 UC-RyangLie_ToPress.indd 1 1/16/2009 2:38:31 PM 2 / Sonia Ryang not a familiar subject of diaspora studies. Rather, Western scholarship on Koreans in Japan has dealt with them as Japan’s foreign minority, as if to concur with the Japanese nation-state’s official stance of monoethnicity. This volume fills the existing gap between Korean studies and diaspora studies by locating Koreans in Japan in current Western discourses of diaspora.1 By stating the above, however, I do not mean to conjure a crystal cita- del of diaspora studies and beg for “Korea” to be included. Discourses of diaspora are themselves unstable, heterogeneous, and (I might even say) promiscuous, in continual intellectual intercourse with multiple partners. The tendency for discourses of diaspora to gravitate toward strong emo- tion on the one hand and objective theory on the other, to obsess over the past while envisioning a utopian future, to slide into hopeless pessimism and then to surface with euphoric optimism — these attest to their capacity for incorrigibly multiple engagements. 1 Existing models of diaspora, when set in extremes, can be divided into the “classical” and “cultural studies” models. The classical model, exempli- fied by the Jewish Diaspora, is premised upon original ethnic persecu- tion as the cause of dispersal and loss of homeland. It is accompanied by a strong sense of connection to home (or homeland), the loss of which is suffered collectively by the dispersed population. This may manifest as collective memory, myth, nostalgia, desire to return, organized action or commitment to homecoming, efforts to preserve one’s original culture and mythical heritage, insistence on difference from the hostland population, and so on. As such, classical diasporas often take a politicized, collective form. Ongoing ethnic persecution becomes an ontological precondition for diasporic community formation.2 The second model is concerned with life’s insecurity and an ongoing crisis of identity, which, although generally associated with modernity and the rise of the reflexive self, in this case is specifically related to the loss of an original homeland (real or imaginary), which may be perceived either as part of the past or of contemporary experience. In this model, one’s diasporic self-consciousness and self-appointment as a homeless, displaced, and dislocated subject are critical in identifying a diasporic form of life. As such, the cultural-studies model takes as the most decisive criterion for identifying diaspora to be an irreducible diasporic consciousness or state of mind. UC-RyangLie_ToPress.indd 2 1/16/2009 2:38:32 PM Introduction / 3 If the first model emphasizes the phylogeny (or collective genesis) of diaspora, the second stresses ontogeny (or individual genesis). But the two models are not as far apart as they first might appear to be — they both reside on a conceptual base of home and homeland. There are people in diaspora for whom original exodus is no longer significant. There are those who are still deeply injured by recent exile and banishment. Some diaspo- ras are unable to trace their origins to one country, since they originate from various parts of an entire continent that is now divided into many nations. Other diasporas are the result of recent civil wars among newly formed nations.