ABSTRACT
This chapter depicts the contradictory aspects of the Japanese war orphans’ desperate lives lived in the interstice between Japanese and Chinese culture, with a focus on the following five points.
(1) They are, in essence, Chinese people of Japanese ancestry. However, Japan does not recognize them as Chinese people of Japanese ancestry but saw them as Japanese people who have been socialized as Chinese.
(2) In the 1980s and onward, the Japanese government sent the war orphans to training centers to learn the Japanese language and customs for about half a year to transform them into Japanese people. Meanwhile, the Japanese war orphans also tried to avoid the Chinese language, which was part of their Chinese identity and Japanized themselves autonomously. They showed aspects of running away from Chinese culture.
(3) The Japanese war orphans had the following three points in common with the Overseas Chinese in Japan: the Japanese language barrier, being restructured at the bottom of the labor market, and exploitation of the modernization gap between Japan and China. They also had the following two differences: their approach to their distance from the nation-state and whether they used or abandoned their homeland.
(4) The Japanese war orphans have made full use of awareness of ancestry, that they are Japanese, to live in Japanese society.
(5) Neither Japan nor China has ultimately been able to extract themselves from the trap of nationalism surrounding the Japanese war orphans.
