Koreans in Japan

Sonia Ryang, Sonia Ryang

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136353123
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Scienze sociali
• Subtopic: Studi sull'etnia

Koreans in Japan are a barely known minority, not only in the West but also within Japan itself. This pioneering study analyzes these relations in the context of the particular conditions and constraints that Koreans face in Japanese society.
The contributors cover a wide range of topics, including:

* the legal and social status of Koreans in Japan

*the history of Korean colonial displacement and postcolonial division during the Cold War

*ethnic education

*women's self-expression.

These studies serve to reveal the highly resilient and diverse reality of this minority group, whilst simultaneously highlighting the fact that - despite recent improvement - legal, social and economic constraints continue to exist in their lives.

1 The politics of legal status

The equation of nationality with ethnonational identity

Chikako Kashiwazaki

The exclusion of Koreans from Japanese citizenry is often understood as a continuation of the Japanese state policy from the colonial period. The conception of the imperial community as an ethnically homogeneous “family-nation” with the emperor as the head had no place for non-Japanese people except as assimilated imperial subjects with complete loyalty to the emperor. Similarly, postwar Japan maintains a strict naturalization system that demands from applicants a high degree of assimilation into Japanese society and culture. The continuity in the principle of “assimilation or exclusion,” however, does not fully account for the postwar system of nationality regulation or the attitude of Koreans toward Japanese nationality.

The purpose of this chapter is to consider an historical process by which interactions between political actors generated an equation between the concept of nationality and ethnonational identity, or the notion of national essence, in postwar Japan. Recent legal changes in Western European states in dealing with resident aliens show a trend towards extending a range of citizenship rights to long-term resident aliens, and widening access to nationality for non-citizen immigrants. The Japanese case stands in contrast to this trend, in that the restrictive regulation of nationality has persisted for decades despite the presence of 600,000 to 700,000 Koreans as resident aliens ever since the end of the Second World War.

In both colonial and postwar periods, membership in the Japanese state was simultaneously linked with the issues of assimilation, the state’s domestic and international security concerns, and loyalty to a specific political community. The relationship among these factors, however, changed after 1945. The analysis in this chapter draws attention to different aspects of Japanese state interests to identify the sources of restrictive nationality law and regulations. The chapter also tries to show how the equation between nationality and national essence held by the government and immigration authorities of Japan was, ironically, shared by the majority of resident aliens, notably Koreans, who were divided into pro-South Korean and pro-North Korean groups, reflecting the partition of the Korean peninsula in 1945.

The rest of the chapter is divided into four parts. The first section offers a comparative perspective by reviewing changes in the relationship between nationality and citizenship in Western Europe and the role played by the state. The second section examines Japanese colonial rule of Korea, with a focus on the interplay between assimilation policies and the state’s security concerns. The third section discusses the reorganization of nationality and citizenship during the Allied occupation of Japan. The final section traces the way in which the concept of nationality came to be perceived as national essence and as such rejected by Koreans in Japan, and considers historical ramifications concerning the legal regulation of nationality.

Nationality, citizenship, and state interests

Nationality is here understood as formal membership in a state in the sense of international law. In scholarly works as well as in ordinary English usage of the term, “citizenship” is usually used interchangeably with the term “nationality.” For the analysis in this chapter, citizenship is treated as conceptually distinct from nationality and is defined as a bundle of rights and duties the state confers or imposes upon individuals.

Nationality by definition entails one’s unconditional right to enter the state’s territories and the right to diplomatic protection while residing in another country. Although it is now usually taken for granted that full citizenship corresponds to nationality, historically this rarely was the case. Even in societies that we now call democratic, full citizenship used to be typically limited to male property owners before the introduction of universal suffrage. Often in colonial empires, colonized subjects were attributed nationality of the “mother country” but were not granted full citizenship. A solid association between nationality as membership in a state and full citizenship is a relatively new phenomenon which emerged after the First World War. Two processes were conducive to a gradual equation of nationality and citizenship within the boundaries of a national state: democratization characterized by increased demand for civil rights and equal opportunities, on the one hand, and the reorganization of international relations due to rising nationalisms in the dominated regions of the world, on the other. It was the post-Second World War decolonization which made the national state form the most legitimate boundaries of sovereignty. National state membership thus became a primary basis for the differentiation of legal status within state territories, drawing a distinction between citizens/nationals and non-citizens/non-nationals.

The changing legal status of resident aliens in Western Europe in recent decades marks another development in the relationship between nationality and citizenship. The settlement of immigrants and their families in Western European countries led to the extension of a range of “partial” citizenship rights to resident aliens. Tomas Hammar categorizes the new group of non-citizens as “denizens,” who have permanent resident status and enjoy extensive civil and social citizenship rights, if not electoral rights on the national level (Hammar 1990: 12–15). With the increase in denizens, legal changes in nationality laws occurred in recent years, particularly in countries where the transmission of nationality followed the principle of jus sanguinis (by parentage). These changes include the establishment or broadening of the categories of second-generation immigrants who enjoy a legal claim to nationality (Germany and Sweden), and greater tolerance for dual nationality (Switzerland and the Netherlands) (Bauböck 1994: 33; Çinar 1994; Soysal 1994: 26–7).¹

The concept of state interests helps account for the emergence of denizens and the lowering barrier to acquiring nationality among second- and third-generation immigrants. States play a central role in the matter of nationality because the right to determine who can be a citizen largely and ultimately rests on the sovereignty of the state. The state is here conceptualized as “a set of organizations invested with the authority to make binding decisions for people and organizations juridically located in a particular territory” (Rueschemeyer and Evans 1985: 46–7). My discussion assumes that states may formulate and pursue goals which are not simply reflective of the demands or interests of social groups or classes (Skocpol 1985: 9) regarding, in the present discussion, the issues of nationality and citizenship. However, the state is not always internally coherent, nor is it ruled by a single ideology, and it is possible that officials at different levels and in different institutions of a state may have contradicting interests.

State interests in several areas are considered relevant to the present discussion. First, any state has interests in defining the populations subject to its rule and in creating some unity among them. If the population is ethnically heterogeneous, then the articulation of unity may involve an inclusion of all ethnic groups, an exclusion (or expulsion) of some groups, or else a creation of tiered membership. Second, states are interested in applying standard rules over their territories for effectively extracting resources and monitoring the activities of residents. Third, states are concerned about domestic and international security, namely any political and military threat to their effective rule. For this reason states aim to cultivate among their members loyalty to the state, or primary allegiance over any other political entity. Fourth, cultural and ideological dimensions also comprise state interests. The prevailing understanding of nationhood among state managers may shape policy formulation. The importance of projecting its image as a democratic state, for instance, would make a state responsive to international legal norms.

Given state interests in internal social order and external security, the presence of a large group of resident aliens poses potential problems to a state if, for instance, the marginalization of immigrants leads to social and political unrest. The encouragement of return migration is one option. If it is not feasible, the state would likely seek some form of incorporation of the immigrants into society through the extension of citizenship rights in return for civil obligation. Once the flow of return migration diminished in the mid-1970s, immigrant-receiving countries in Western Europe turned increasingly toward incorporation (Soysal 1994). In some cases, a redefinition of state interests seems to be under way. For instance, discretionary naturalization in Germany has been regarded as a restrictive system because it includes “public interest” as a criterion.² However, the Ministry of Interior has assumed since 1991 that there is a public interest in the naturalization of long-term residents and young foreigners living in Germany (Çinar 1994: 53).

States’ incorporation regimes in turn provide immigrants with a framework within which they articulate their demands. With prolonged stays and the development of social relations in their country of residence, immigrants themselves are likely to develop a greater interest in expanding the range of citizenship rights within the host society. As a result of the interactions between states and immigrant groups in Western Europe, the acquisition of nationality by immigrants is increasingly understood as a point on a continuum of legal status from “aliens” to “denizens” and then to “full citizens,” while the symbolic significance attached to membership in a national state is to some extent attenuated (Çinar 1994; van den Bedem 1994). It should be noted, however, that this trend toward readjusting the concept of nationality does not necessarily separate it from full citizenship. In most countries, in other words, the possession of nationality remains a precondition for enjoying full citizenship.³

European experiences thus suggest progressive legal incorporation of permanently settled immigrants into citizenry. If the key in this process is the transition of immigrants from sojourners to permanent settlers in the host society, the case of Japan demands explanation. The settlement of Korean migrants in Japan occurred much earlier than that of major immigrant groups in Europe today, and yet Japanese nationality regulation has changed little. In the area of partial citizenship, the legal status of long-term resident foreigners has gradually improved over time, and scholars have applied the concept of denizenship to Koreans in Japan (Kajita 1996; Kondō 1996). Nevertheless, greater disjunction remains between “denizens” and “full citizens” in Japan than is typically the case in Euope.

The ideology of Japanese ethnic homogeneity appears to be a likely factor explaining the restrictive access to Japanese nationality. However, state interests are multidimensional, as discussed above. One might ask, referring to European experiences, whether Japanese state managers might not find it beneficial to turn resident Koreans into Japanese citizens, so as to reduce the tension arising from intergroup relations in society. Further analysis is required of the construction of nationality-based differentiation in legal status.

Japan’s colonial rule

In Japan today the concept of nationality rigidly remains, and denotes symbolic membership in the Japanese nationhood as defined by culture, descent, or the ideologically-charged metaphor of one large household. We shall trace aspects of Japan’s colonial rule of Korea to see how elements of the postwar conception of Japanese nationality historically took shape. A close relationship between the Japanese state’s security concerns and assimilation policies is key. Historical legacies of Japan’s colonial rule were later to influence the identities of resident Koreans.

Compared with postwar Japan, the ethnically heterogeneous composition of populations was much more obvious and widely recognized in the Japanese colonial empire. Politicians, military officers, academics, and commentators expressed a variety of conceptions of the imperial community, which contained contradictory doctrines such as the multiethnic origin of the Japanese, common descent with Koreans, the Japanese as one family descending from a single lineage, the emperor’s nation, and the racial brotherhood and union of all Asians as culminated in the idea of the Great East Asia Coprosperity Sphere (Oguma 1995). Informed by these diverse visions of the political community as well as by European models of colonial rule, Japanese state managers attempted to forge some unity among diverse imperial subjects, including the Koreans, towards the effective government. Accordingly, colonial policies exhibited a complex interplay between assimilation and separation, and unification and division of colonized subjects and the colonizing population.

A brief reflection on the term “assimilation” is necessary. While its meaning is multidimensional, two broad categories may be identified in colonial policies: legal-institutional assimilation and cultural assimilation. The former involves the extension of the institutions of the “mother country” to colonies. This aspect of assimilation facilitates the equalization of citizenship rights and duties to some degree, due to its tendency toward the equal treatment of subjects. Cultural assimilation denotes approximating the colonized to the colonizer through education and acculturation in terms of language, religion, lifestyle, and symbols of the empire. Assimilation in Japanese colonialism had distinct characteristics in its cultural components. In European colonialism, cultural assimilation was for the most part a project of “civilizing” the colonized people through the dissemination of Western culture. In the case of Japan, cultural assimilation was closely linked to the issue of national security, as discussed below. Assimilation policies demanded “spiritual” assimilation, centered on loyalty and allegiance to the Japanese emperor, from the colonized population at large.

Upon Japan’s colonization of Korea in 1910, Koreans were attributed Japanese nationality, but remained second-class subjects in many respects and were differentiated from Japanese regarding citizenship rights and duties. Incompatibilities between indigenous customs and traditions and Japanese laws also slowed legal assimilation. Yet some degree of legal assimilation was effective for social control and security measures. By incorporating colonial subjects into a common legal-institutional framework, the imperial state gained an effective means of surveillance and control. Cultural assimilation was also useful for social control, because greater subjective identification with the empire made anti-colonial movements less likely. Since the Japanese imperial state faced persistent anti-colonial, independent movements among Koreans throughout the colonial period (Mitchell 1967: chs 2, 4, and 5; Weiner 1994: ch. 5), the state’s security concerns shaped the ways in which legal-institutional assimilation and cultural assimilation were played out.

The household registration system is one example where some degree of legal assimilation, in this case the standardization of registries, served the purpose of consolidating colonial rule.⁴ In Korea, Japanese administrators initiated the reorganization of the existing Korean household registry in 1909, in preparation for the official annexation a year later. The police played a major role in compiling the new registry (Yoshida 1993). The Korean household registry was gradually modified into the Japanese model during the colonial period. This is discussed in more detail later in the chapter.

Household registries served as a legal underpinning for the distinction between “Japanese proper” and colonial subjects. The former had their household register in Japan, while the latter had theirs in the colonies, regardless of their place of residence. It was not permissible to move the register from the colony to the metropole or vice versa. (This was to influence the postwar establishment of the nationality of Koreans and some Japanese.) In effect, household registries could be used as a device for marking the status of the colonized.

Conscription is a case in point. The military obligation law of 1927 stated that “those to whom the household registration law is applicable” were subject to conscription. Koreans, regardless of their place of residence, were excluded because the Korean household registry was governed by a special law of the government-general of Korea, separate from the law applied to Japan proper. Since military duty requires a high level of loyalty to the state, the government maintained the practice of having only “Japanese proper” serve in the army until the early 1940s. Household registries were therefore useful as an identifier of eligibility in that they delineated “proper” Japanese from the rest (Tashiro, Yoshida, and Hayashida 1969: 3–5; Tanaka 1974: 82–9).

There were nevertheless some tendencies toward equal treatment of imperial subjects in terms of rights and duties. While voting rights were not extended to colonies, colonial subjects residing on the Japanese home islands participated in national and local elections after universal male suffrage was established in 1925. For instance, 16,170 Koreans, o...