Becoming Japanese: Contested meanings of race and nationality in contemporary Japan
Item
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Title
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Becoming Japanese: Contested meanings of race and nationality in contemporary Japan
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Identifier
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d_2009_2013:83e02516c943:11001
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identifier
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10676
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Creator
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Lim, Youngmi,
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Contributor
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Stephen Steinberg
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Date
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2010
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Ethnic studies | Asian studies | Assimilation | Citizenship | Koreans in Japan | Race and ethnicity | Social reproduction
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Abstract
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I examine the "final" phase of assimilation of Koreans born and raised in Japan (zainichi Koreans), an invisible racial minority fully acculturated yet kept in legal limbo for decades, in a society where immigration and naturalization continue to be exceptional. How do zainichi Koreans represent themselves and participate in Japanese civic life? By specifically focusing on the dilemma of becoming Japanese among the former colonial subjects and their descendents, I explore both the permeability and impermeability of Japanese collective identity.;Based on (1) in-depth interviews with zainichi Koreans, regardless of nationality, legal statuses and levels of collective consciousness, or zainichi literacy, (2) participant observations in different groups and events, and (3) secondary analyses of official statistics as well as opinion pieces and autobiographies authored by zainichi Koreans for the Japanese print media, I examine shifting zainichi representations and debates over civic participation. I trace prominent shifts in their interpretations of the collective past and ideas about collective identity, citizenship and civic participation. I also provide an ethnographic account of everyday experiences among intermarried couples, naturalized individuals and local activist groups, covertly and overtly expressing Korean heritage and the political agenda in predominantly Japanese environment where Korean lineage is not a cost-free symbolic ethnicity. These all attest to unstated assumptions about what it means to be authentic members of Japanese society or who has the right to dissent in the revisionist currents of Japanese collective and historical identity.;Diverse expressions of zainichi Korean identities, whether losing their perceived genealogical connection with Korean roots, passing but expressing their Korean heritage exclusively in a private domain, or claiming proactive Korean identity that is perceived as foreign, complementarily reproduce Japanese societal homogeneity. Paradoxically, active claimants of collective Korean identities, with or without Japanese nationality, tend to participate more actively in Japanese civil society than those without explicit Korean identity claims. Zainichi Koreans resist and accommodate the process of becoming Japanese, while continuing to fulfill discursive and political needs of the Japanese majority.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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2009_2013.csv
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degree
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Ph.D.
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Program
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Sociology
