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The Mutual Gaze of Okinawans and Zainichi Koreans in Post-War Japan: From 1945 to the 1972 Okinawa Reversion
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 March 2025
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The present article deals with the ‘educational movement’ of the 1950-60s focusing on the issues of discrimination against zainichi Koreans and Okinawans. It examines the moments of mutual gaze between zainichi Koreans and Okinawans as both struggled for freedom and liberation against the US-Japanese system of domination. Zainichi Koreans and Okinawans were autonomously choosing their respective identities in accordance with the changes in political circumstances. They initially wanted to become liberated peoples belonging to (unified) Korea and Japan respectively. Of course, their goals of withdrawal of foreign armed forces from Korea and Okinawa and social reforms were ultimately thwarted. Nevertheless, the attempts of the marginalized to forge horizontal unity and relativize the Japanese nation state via the concepts of ‘motherland’ merit attention.
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References
Notes
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20 While the majority of Okinawans favored reincorporation into Japan over US rule in the 1950s and 1960s, there was and remains a pro-independence minority. The leader of pro-independence Ryukyu Kokuminto, Kiyuna Tsugumasa (1916-1989), envisaged Okinawa becoming a pro-US, anti-Communist state. He participated in the Asian Peoples' Anti-Communist League, spearheaded by South Korea's Syngman Rhee regime (1948-1960). See Lim Kyounghwa
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24 Oguma, Eiji (2002). Minshu to aikoku: sengo nihon no nashonarizumu to kōkyōsei (Democracy and Patriotism: Nationalism and the Public Sphere in Postwar Japan). Tokyo: Shin'yōsha, p. 368.
25 Nihon kyōshokuin kumiai (Japan Teachers Union) ed. (1953). Nihon no kyōiku (Japan's Education) 2. Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, pp. 469-470. ‘Pan-pan’ refers to the girls who sold sex to US soldiers during the American Occupation. ‘Pan-pan culture’ connotes the US culture imported to Japan, particularly the culture of military prostitution, usually seen as vulgar and sordid.
26 Ibid., p. 459.
27 Nihon kyōshokuin kumiai ed. (1966). Nihon no kyōiku (Japan's Education) 15. Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, p. 462.
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33 Benjamin C. Duke (1973). Japan's Militant Teachers: A history of the Left-Wing Teachers' Movement. Honolulu: The University Press of Hawaii. 76-77.
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35 Gima Susumu (1970). Uchinaru Nihon tono taiketsu (Confrontation with the Inner Japan), in Okinawa no sensei-tachi: Hondo tono shin no rentai wo motomete (Okinawa Teachers: Looking for True Solidarity with the Mainland), co-edited by Japan Teachers Union and Teachers' Association of Okinawa. Tokyo: Gōdō shuppan, p. 240.
36 Gima Susumu, “Uchinaru Nihon tono taiketsu, p. 240.
37 Pak Sunam (1967), Zainichi Chōsenjin no kokoro: han Nihonjin no genjitsu kara (The Heart of Zainichi Koreans in Japan: From the Reality of Half-Japanese People), Tenbō, No. 103. Tokyo: Chikumashobō, p. 146.
38 Kim Yŏngdal, Zainichi Chosenjin no kika: nihon no kika gyosei ni tsuite no kenkyu, 17-19.
39 Ibid., p. 171.
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41 Gima Susumu, “Uchinaru Nihon tono taiketsu, p. 245.
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43 Ibid., p. 269.
44 Kirsten L. Ziomek, (2014). The 1903 Human Pavilion: Colonial Realities and Subaltern Subjectivities in Twentieth-Century Japan Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 73, No. 2, 493-516
45 Teachers' Association of Okinawa (1971). Kaihō kyōiku dokuhon “ningen” ni tsuite no kenkai (View on Ningen, the Textbook for Liberation Education), Buraku kaihō, No. 15.
46 The statistics are available at the website of the Korean Residents Union.
47 Kim Yŏngdal, Zainichi Chosenjin no kika, 24.
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