Abstract
Kazuko Suzuki’s Divided Fates: The State, Race, and Korean Immigrants’ Adaptation in Japan and the United States is a captivating work in several respects, and it is difficult to do full justice to the contributions it makes in a brief review. Most U.S. sociologists specializing in race and immigration are at least vaguely aware of historical and existing racisms exterior to the western colonial and post-colonial framework. The racisms and racial systems more familiar to North American sociologists (e.g., here in the United States, Brazil, and elsewhere in the Caribbean and Latin America) stem from a longue durée trajectory of Eurocentric white dominance with historical roots ultimately traceable to the initial Portuguese explorations along the western African coast prior to 1492.
By contrast, Divided Fates plunges the reader into a different universe of race and racialization by providing the English-speaking world with an interior view of ethno-national racial supremacy and its political (and geo-political) evolution in Japan following the Meiji period, through its imperial expansion that culminated in the Second World War’s Pacific Theater and its adaptation and institutionalization under the U.S. occupation led by SCAP (Supreme Commander for Allied Powers), as informed by experiences of Korean minorities in Japan. As per Suzuki’s account, Japan’s ideology of national identity, race, culture, and bloodline is rigid to the point where concepts of hyphenated identities, such as Korean-Japanese, do not gain traction as they have in the United States and many other countries.
Koreans are among several minority groups in Japan, which also include the Ainu, the Burakumin, and the Ryukyuans (Okinawans), but Korean minorities in Japan are themselves heterogonous. Zainichi and Tainichi is one divide (resulting from different historical waves of migration) while Mindan vs. Sōren represents the North Korean/South Korean divide.
Zainichi Koreans are those who arrived in Japan as a consequence of Japan’s annexation of the Korean peninsula and expansion into Manchuria, China, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific and their descendants. Many were forcibly removed to Japan to fill labor shortage needs there because of Japan’s military enlistments and imperial expansions during the early twentieth century.
The Zainichi are now into their fourth generation; the majority were initially from the northern part of pre-partition Korea. Most try to keep their Korean identities concealed, leading marginalized underground lives due to the convergence of citizenship, nation, culture, and, above all, purity of bloodline assumed by Japan’s jus sanguinis system. (Although SCAP was of the nation of E Pluribus Unum, this concept was not imposed on Japan, nor was jus soli, the concept of citizenship based on birthplace.) An essential difference however, is that Zainichi Koreans who became South Korean nationals also became eligible for “treaty-based permanent residence” in 1965 due to the normalization of diplomatic relations between Japan and South Korea, while those who had pledged loyalty to North Korea did not qualify. Although naturalization is an avenue out of statelessness, the legal criteria are vague and assessment of naturalization applications is left widely to the discretion of individual administrators.
Political allegiances of the Zainichi shifted increasingly to South Korea, with an estimated 2:7 ratio in favor of South Korea by 1992 (pp.52–53). Nevertheless, Zainichi Koreans in general have been held blameful for militaristic actions by North Korea, such as its 1998 missile launch over Japan. There are no obvious phenotypical markers to identify Koreans as distinct from Japanese, but ethnic Korean school uniforms worn by Zainichi girls have made them conspicuous targets for harassment and assault going to and from the ethnic nationality schools they attend.
Sometimes Zainichi Koreans lead their lives with the firm conviction that they are fully Japanese only to be informed of their true status of being not Japanese accidently when official records are required, such as when applying for a passport (pp.99–100). The accounts of Zainichi Koreans attempting to pass as Japanese and avoid exposure as non-Japanese minorities (and therefore non-citizens) are eerily reminiscent of the accounts of undocumented immigrant children’s underground lives in the United States as they mature to discover and grapple with the implications of their true official identities (see, e.g., Gonzalez 2011). They do not form visible residential enclaves and are scattered throughout Japan’s urban population, although stigmatized lines of business disproportionately owned and managed by Zainichi Koreans due to their marginalization, such as barbeque restaurants, pachinko parlors, and “love hotels” do in some instances cluster in particular districts. For the most part, Zainichi Koreans are engaged in lower-paying/lower status service and clerical work, as well as entertainment and sport.
In a work such as this, most readers unfamiliar with the relevant contexts need help understanding important aspects of the historical background. Some, for example, will puzzle over how and why most Zainichi Koreans were from the North rather than the South. That the northern region of the Korean peninsula was controlled at different times by Russia and Japan and was more industrialized than the south prior to the Second World War due to its proximity to the vast natural resources of Manchuria, as described by Cumings (1984), helps clarify this. A reference list of abbreviations and terms used would also have been quite helpful.
Although comparative analysis of the Zainichi and Tainichi Koreans in Japan is informative, the cross-national comparisons of Koreans in Japan and the United States allow Suzuki to probe differences in racialization processes in the two separate national contexts, particularly as concerns cultural explanations such as the “model minority” concept that has emerged and linked to the U.S. pan-ethnic category, “Asians.” Suzuki notes that “once these model minority groups are located in international context, the culturalist argument loses its explanatory power due to diverging adaptation patterns of diasporic groups who share the same ethnic and cultural origin” (p.213). Overall, Divided Fates is an important contribution to the increasing body of cross-national comparative research on the acculturation and adaptation patterns of immigrant groups.