To be or Not to be, That Is the Question: The Bifurcation Approach of the Japanese State and Identity Formation of Koreans in Japan

Koreans in Japan present an important case for understanding the nature of the interconnections between race, nationalism, and ethnic relations. All too often, studies of these phenomena center on Western cases or on cases where non-Western racial minorities move to Western states. In this paper, however, I examine these inter-relations within Northeast Asia. The Zainichi Koreans or old-timer migrants in Japan (who are already in the fourth generation) must face what I call a ‘bifurcation approach,’ which makes a strict distinction between the Japanese and the non-Japanese based on nationality in the management of ethnic/racial diversity instituted by the Japanese state and society. In Japanese, the concepts of ‘race,’ ‘ethnicity,’ and ‘nation’ are virtually indistinguishable. The formulation race = ethnicity = nationality = culture is essential to the Japanese conceptualization of what makes one Japanese. Moreover, under the Japanese sense of nationhood defined along exclusively ethno-genealogical lines and nationalistic multiculturalism, minority cultures have become fossilized owing to state sponsorship of the dominant Japanese culture. As a result, Zainichi Koreans—who have significantly become acculturated to and share a similar phenotype to the mainstream Japanese—have been racialized and constrained in their formation of hyphenated identities such as 'Korean-Japanese.' Based on interviews with Zainichi Koreans, this paper demonstrates how they negotiate the shoals of race, nationality, and ethnicity in order to survive in a deeply racialized state and examines their collective identity-formation under circumstances in which they have to live by hiding their ethnic origin with a constant pressure to ‘impersonate’ being Japanese.