Cultural Diversity in Japan: Week 5 (5/14)

Flashcards for a vocabulary review of key terms and concepts from a lecture on Zainichi Koreans.

Great Kanto Earthquake

A major earthquake in 1923 followed by a massacre where Koreans and Chinese were targeted due to pronunciation difficulties.

"Ju go yen go jussen [15 yen 50 sen]" or "Gagigugego"

People were asked to pronounce these phrases to identify Koreans and Chinese during the Great Kanto Earthquake massacre.

Zainichi

A term referring to Koreans in Japan, who faced discrimination and were massacred after the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake.

The earthquake and the ensuing mass murder

For Korean population it is the equivalent of slavery for African Americans and the Shoah [the Holocaust] for Jewish Americans.

Shifting Identity (linguistic, residency)

By the mid-1930s, nearly a third of Koreans were born in Japan, leading to increased Japanese language proficiency and desire for permanent residency.

Japanization efforts in the late 1930s through 1940s

By the 1940s, assimilation increased due to Japanization efforts, influencing language, names, schools, food, and clothing.

Koh Hansu

Characters in Pachinko set in 1923 Yokohama.

Tutoring at wealthy American family

Koh Hansu's occupation in Pachinko.

Book-keeping for his boss Ryoichi

Hansu's father occupation in Pachinko

Myth of homogeneity

Postwar Japanese society broke from the prewar period, rejecting the colonial experience.

Postwar period

The war as the nightmare that was to be forgotten.

Japanese society after losing its empire

After the loss of its empire, postwar Japanese society became less ethnically diverse.

Foreigner [gaijin]

Referred almost exclusively to white Euro- Americans [hakujin].

Hakujin

The small population of these individuals came to stand for the postwar Japanese perception and recognition of ethnonational otherness, and their relative rarity underscored the monoethnic worldview.

Homogeneous society

Prewar Japanization and postwar monoethnic ideology both presumed this type of society.

Japanese homogeneity

The ideal extended well beyond the ethnic dimension to encompass social inequality and regional diversity.

Tokyo

The center and standard of popular national culture.

Rapid economic growth in the 1960s

Ethnic Koreans disappeared from Japanese popular consciousness during this period.

Bullied at schools and excluded from mainstream employment

Ethnic Koreans lived in a society that disrecognized them due to this.

Invisibility and silence 1950s-1960s

Through separation, segregation and isolation.

Invisibility and silence 1970s

Through indistinguishability of ethnic Koreans and Japanese after the integration of minorities.

1970s

Non-Japanese ethnics became indistinguishable from ethnic Japanese.

Ethnonational differences in Japanese culture

Manifested themselves in everyday life, perhaps most viscerally in speech and food, in the colonial period.

Passing

The second-generation Zainichi by the 1970s were in no obvious ways distinguishable from ethnic Japanese people.

Invisibility

The majority’s inability to differentiate, but is the minority’s ability to pass as “normal Japanese”.

Passing

The presentation and representation of the self to attain and obtain the status that one desires in defiance of that which is denied.

Anxiety from passing

The threat of exposure and the ethical conundrum of leading a life of deception.

koseki [household registry]

Expressed in everyday life as Korean name and Korean ancestry in this document.

Passing

Requirement of the ideal of ordinariness or norlmanless [futsū].

Zainichi

Ethnic Koreans born and brought up in Japan