The Emotional Topography of the Zainichi Memoryscape: Korean Ghettos in Postwar Japan Revisited

Please join for a lecture with:

Sayaka Chatani, Assistant Professor of History, National University of Singapore

Moderated by: Kim Brandt, Research Scholar, Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University

Event Description: A Korean ghetto existed in every large Japanese city in the early postwar period, and up to the late 1960s. These ghettos provoke the same images and associations in Japanese people’s memory: isolated, dirty, impoverished, and dangerous. To many scholars the existence of ghettos confirms the transwar continuity of Japanese oppression of underclass ethnic minorities. But zainichi Koreans who grew up in ghettos, or tongne, often offer a number of spectacular heroic stories about living there. This presentation switches the focus from Japanese society to Koreans themselves, and discusses the important sociopolitical functions of the tongne, along with its continuing symbolic meanings. By viewing tongne as a post-liberation place of origin for zainichi, and by paying attention to the reproduction of its meanings, we can gain a better understanding of the uneven terrain of power relationships within zainichi society. In particular, examination of Korean ghettos in Japan helps to explain why the (pro-North Korean) Chongryun organization exercised great cultural power at least until the 1970s and still defines the emotional topography of the zainichi memoryscape.
No registration required.

This event is organized by the Weatherhead East Asian Institute at Columbia University.