ABSTRACT

Koreans in Japan are a barely known minority, not only in the West but also within Japan itself. This pioneering study analyzes these relations in the context of the particular conditions and constraints that Koreans face in Japanese society.
The contributors cover a wide range of topics, including:

* the legal and social status of Koreans in Japan

* the history of Korean colonial displacement and postcolonial division during the Cold War

* ethnic education

* women's self-expression.

These studies serve to reveal the highly resilient and diverse reality of this minority group, whilst simultaneously highlighting the fact that - despite recent improvement - legal, social and economic constraints continue to exist in their lives.

chapter |12 pages

Introduction

Resident Koreans in Japan

chapter 1|19 pages

The politics of legal status

The equation of nationality with ethnonational identity

chapter 4|29 pages

Mothers write Ikaino

chapter 5|16 pages

Reading against the bourgeois and national bodies

Transcultural body-politics in Yu Miri's textual representations

chapter 9|22 pages

Kids between nations

Ethnic classes in the construction of Korean identities in Japanese public schools

chapter 10|11 pages

Ordinary (Korean) Japanese