ABSTRACT

This chapter traces the origins and development of the discursive phenomenon of kenkan or Korea hating across a spectrum of cultural fronts during the last three decades. It focuses on how the articulation of kenkan in the present has been mediated by narrations of the contested past between Japan and Korea. In the 2000s, the discourse and mood of hating Korea, first discussed a decade before using the term kenkan, finally surfaced in a concrete form. The chapter considers how the current incarnation of kenkan, the unalloyed form of Korea-phobia heralded by the Zaitokukai's hate speech demonstrations, might be understood in terms of paired shifts in nationalist historical revisionism that turn away from imperial nostalgia. The discourse of kenkan demonstrates that contests over diversity in Japan revolve not merely around the inclusion of foreign bodies and culture, but also around the challenge of accommodating conflicting historical subjectivities that do not easily fit into the narration of nation and empire.