CONSTRUCTING IDENTITY THROUGH POWER: ANALYZING WAR RESPONSIBILITY DISCOURSE THROUGH ZAINICHI KOREANS AND ABANDONED JAPANESE SETTLERS IN MANCHURIA

Ray Matsumoto

doi:10.7273/000007419

A rich historiography of war responsibility (sensō sekinin) and postwar responsibility (sengo sekinin) has existed in Japan that explores themes of guilt, accountability, and redress. This discourse has largely centered on judging who is responsible for Japanese wartime actions— collective culpability or limited to military leaders— and how they are responsible— moral, legal, and political responsibility. However, war responsibility scholarship has frequently overlooked the history of Japanese colonialism and the perspectives of the subaltern. This thesis aims to fill this gap by presenting a different question for exploration: How can one understand war responsibility discourse as a system of colonial power rather than a dichotomy of perpetrator vs. victim? By examining the Koreans in Japan (Zainichi Koreans) and Japanese settlers abandoned in Manchuria (zanryū hōjin), this thesis argues how postwar intellectual knowledge production, namely debates on war responsibility, served to reproduce the colonial mentality that essentializes Zainichi Koreans and zanryū hōjin. The thesis will thereby present early Japanese war responsibility as a construction of identity that perpetuated colonial legacies of exclusion and essentialization. This thesis also demonstrates how the reproduction of colonial structures became embedded in Japanese nationality and citizenship laws during the U.S. Occupation. The family registry system (koseki) that once served to disentangle the political status of Japanese nationality and the rights of Japanese citizens became a tool to control and exclude Zainichi and zanryū populations. In turn, Japanese nationality in the postwar era became a system to propagate an ideology of Japanese ethnic homogeneity and silence former colonial subjects. Similarly, the colonial othering of these subaltern groups manifested in Japanese and SCAP repatriation policies. These programs demonstrate how the reproduction of Japanese colonial structures became tied to broader Cold War dynamics, which stigmatized Zainichi, zanryū, and hikiagesha (Japanese repatriate) populations as ethnic, social, and ideological others. The analysis also explores how Zainichi and zanryū subjects internalized the structure of postcolonial power through the intersectionality of their identities. The silencing of former Japanese settlers who survived Red Army sexual violence demonstrates how patriarchal structures contributed to the broader reproduction of colonial structures. The voices of these survivors also serve to highlight how bravery, resistance, and agency can manifest within these oppressive structures of power. This intersection of subaltern identities is also exhibited in multigenerational family dynamics through the passing and disrecognition of second and third-generation Zainichi Koreans and zanryū hōjin. I argue that second and third generations can present a de-essentialized understanding of Zainichi and zanryū that embraces their complexity, fluidity, and individuality. The decision to reject the label of “Zainichi” or “zanryū” shows the act of resisting colonial structures and embracing their autonomy as human beings.

CONSTRUCTING IDENTITY THROUGH POWER: ANALYZING WAR RESPONSIBILITY DISCOURSE THROUGH ZAINICHI KOREANS AND ABANDONED JAPANESE SETTLERS IN MANCHURIA

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