ZAINICHI KOREANS, AFRICAN AMERICANS, AND THE RACIAL POLITICS OF COMPARISON

Zainichi Koreans are the descendants of colonial subjects who migrated to Japan from 1910 to 1945, when Korea was part of the Japanese empire. In 1952, the Japanese state stripped them of their nationality status and left them stateless. Like racial minority groups in other societies, Korean descendants still face systemic discrimination in contemporary Japan. Although they were colonized by a non-European power and are not physically distinct from the dominant Japanese population, their situation is often compared to that of African Americans. Yet, for scholars who think that race is necessarily based on “phenotype,” anti-Korean oppression cannot qualify as an instance of racism in Japan and the comparison with Black Americans is misguided. This article explores the intellectual and political issues at stake in debates over the use of racial comparisons—what I call the “racial politics of comparison.” Examining the views of scholars and Zainichi Korean activists, I show how the latter have drawn inspiration from the Black liberation struggle and built alliances with African Americans in order to resist oppression. I argue that their unique situation forces us to revise the role attributed to phenotype in current definitions of race and racism.

The Ethnic Is Still Political: Collective Action in the Age of Zainichi Korean Population Decline in Contemporary Japan

This article describes where Zainichi Korean minority communities stand in contemporary Japanese society. Diverse Zainichi Korean communities struggle to reproduce and establish their legitimacy, as the narrowly defined Zainichi Korean population declines, and the levels of institutional racism based on legal status diminish. Increasing are more subtle forms of exclusion and microaggressions as well as on- and off-line hate speech. Based on the examinations of two cases of social movements involving Zainichi Koreans, I will examine how Zainichi Koreans are polarized into visible, outspoken subgroups and the invisible. A more resilient and proactive subethnicity can be seen among those who perceive continuing collective suffering and oppression. The Zainichi Korean minority’s experience attests to how ethnicity is reproduced and activated through committed collective actions, which build on coalitions with concerned Japanese and beyond.