The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus Volume 14 | Issue 18 | Number 4 | Article ID 4958 | Sep 15, 2016

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Specters of East Asia: Okinawa, Taiwan, and Korea

Choi Jinseok with an introduction by Brett de Bary

The essay “Specters of East Asia” is thecontribution of playwright, actor, and scholarChoi Jinseok to the volume Still Hear theWound. It is based on a presentation made byChoi in March, 2007, at the Sakima ArtMuseum in Okinawa, whose courtyard facesdirectly onto the U.S. Marine Air StationFutenma, itself bordered by winding roads andchain-link fences. While protests overconstruction of a new airstrip in the coastalfishing village of Henoko swelled and continuedin Okinawa, protests which continue in 2016,the museum hosted workshops in 2004 and2007 as part of a series of events organized bythe Asia, Politics, Art Project founded bypoet/philosopher Lee Chonghwa of SeikeiUniversity, Tokyo. Its members were scholars,critics, and young artists dedicated toexploring, through art, often marginalized andsuppressed memories of colonial violenceshared across national boundaries in East Asia.

With the image of “specters of East Asia,” Choilinks past to present, calling attention tooccluded but deeply etched and persistenttraces of a history of Japanese colonizationshared by present-day Okinawa, Taiwan, andKorea. The earth and even the dramatic cliffs oftoday’s Okinawa, for example, are still dottedwith unmarked graves of Korean colonialsubjects, conscripted as porters, laborers andsoldiers by the Japanese Imperial Army, whoperished in the clash between U. S. andJapanese forces there. In trying to restore theseanonymous Korean dead to memory togetherwith countless Okinawan victims of the Battleof Okinawa, Choi seeks to activate a politics ofEast Asian redress and mourning that might goaround and beyond the rituals appropriated by

postwar states and nationalisms.

In this vein, and recalling a visit to the site ofthe former Japanese Jintong Coal Mine inTaiwan, Choi notes that in Taiwan, too, thelives and deaths of laborers from different partsof the Japanese Empire converged andintertwined. Yet, here as well, structures ofdivision and hierarchy were imposed on thedaily lives of these workers. Japaneseengineers, Taiwanese minders, Taiwaneseindigenous peoples, and Koreans were housedin different residences whose building namesranked them in a hierarchy from higher tolower. (Japanese engineers resided in “Kōgu”or “Imperial Palace,” the Taiwanese miners inthe “Tokyo” residence, indigenous Taiwaneseminers in “Hokkaido,” and so on.) Choi citespassages from Okinawan thinker ArakawaAkira, who warned that as a result of colonialJapan’s assimilation policies (kōminka), peoplesof East Asia had competed with each other to“become Japanese,” rather than seekingcommon ground as neighbors.

Through these and other examples, Choi callson readers to envision an East Asia still criss-crossed by the traces of the movements offormerly colonized subjects–not only thosekilled or abandoned on the battlefield by theJapanese army, but the many others who losttheir lives working in mines, dams, railroads,and reclamation projects. The essay thus seeksto shed light on those whose lives and deathsunfolded on the backstages of East Asianpolitics and history, and who call out to beremembered and mourned. Choi notes thattheir differences, once hierarchized underJapanese Empire, were only re-entrenched

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when territorial borders of the nation states ofJapan, South Korea, and Taiwan were redrawnin the wake of the Pacific War, and under thegeopolitical boundaries of the Cold War order.For Choi, it is only by confronting the psychicbarriers to mourning East Asian “others,”instilled by postwar nationalisms, that theenergy for a new activism challenging theomnipresence of the U.S. military in East Asiacan be born.

One element that makes this collection ofessays and artworks unique is that scholarsworking in a range of disciplines were asked toengage in conversations with practicing artists:academics working with the written word andartists working in a range of materials andmedia including textiles, film, and performanceart were challenged to

express themselves in new ways. Takentogether, essays and artworks reproduced inthe volume beautifully elucidate the view thatin a region still haunted by divisive politics, arthas the potential to provide a bridge that cane n a b l e u s t o r e t h i n k o r r e i m a g i n einterconnected histories in East Asia. As areflection of this focus on intersectionsbetween humanities-based research and theworks of contemporary artists, this volumeincludes a number of images and a DVD ofinterviews with the artists which are ideal forclassroom use. Artists whose work isrepresented in the volume are Kinjō Mitsuru,Ito Tari, Oh Haji, Soni Kum, and YamashiroChikako. Visuals representing the work of threeof these artists accompany Choi’s essayreproduced here.

We are grateful to the artists and Yumiko ChibaAssociations for their generous permission touse the images shown here.

This essay is from Still Hear the Wound, avolume of essays excerpted and translated fromZanshō no oto: Ajia, Seiji, Aato no mirai e,edited by Lee Chonghwa, Iwanami Shoten,2008. The English volume, edited by Rebecca

Jennison and Brett de Bary, was published byCornell East Asia Series in 2015.

We acknowledge the help of Christopher Ahn,Ikeuchi Yasuko, and Mizutamari Mayumi inproviding explanations for the varied uses ofthe terms zainichi and chōsenjin in this text.

Yamashiro Chikako, Seaweed Woman,Lambda Print, 2008©Chikako Yamashiro, Courtesy of YumikoChiba Associates

Chapter 4

Specters of East Asia

Okinawa, Taiwan, and Korea

Introduction

Among a cluster of underground air-r aidshelters that made up the former OkinawaArmy Hospital in Haebaru, in the city of Naha,is a cave where the character for the Koreansurname “Kang” has been carved three timesinto the ceiling. As the Battle of Okinawaraged, workers and patients at the formerhospital had fled the center of the city, movingrepeatedly until they finally arrived atHaebaru’s underground shelters. Here,wounded soldiers received surgery and medicaltreatment alongside military porters workingwith pickaxes to hew out a tunnel about 6 feethigh and 230 feet in length.

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I came upon the place where the name “Kang”had been engraved, after walking alonethrough pitch darkness, about midway throughthe tunnel. The characters had been carved, itappeared, by a chōsenjin soldier hospitalizedfor some kind of injury to his lungs.1 Judgingfrom their position on the ceiling, I couldsurmise that the soldier had carved them whilelying on the upper bunk of a makeshift hospitalbed inside the tunnel. Perhaps, trying to escapethe flames of war, the soldier had fled until hisphysical strength was depleted, and had carvedthese characters with the foreknowledge thathe would die there in the underground shelter.Although it was clear that the three charactershad been produced by the hand of the sameperson, the size and depth to which each onehad been carved were different. In theirdifferences, they seemed like a record of thelast days of someone striving desperately toleave behind some trace of his existence, whiledying in a distant place called Okinawa. Onecould say I had come across his grave.

What could that soldier possibly have felt as hecarved the three characters of the name“Kang” here, in a distant land, I wondered.Whatever his feelings were, they defied myimagination. Yet as someone living in thepresent, I felt obliged to use at least thephysical sensations I was experiencing here tounders tand , t o a sma l l e x ten t , t heunimaginable. To meet a “faraway death”means to carve your own name in stone threetimes, with diminishing levels of strength. And,lest we forget, to meet a faraway death can alsomean to die with no grave at all, without evenbeing able to carve one’s name in stone.2

My Experience in Taipei

I went to Taipei in January 2007. At that time, Ivisited the now closed coal mine–turned-sightseeing area in Jingtong in the Pingxi areanear Taipei. While there I had the opportunityto listen to the local people talk about the mine.

Jingtong Mine, which had thrived in the 1920s,

allegedly hired Japanese engineers togetherwith Taiwanese, indigenous, and chōsenjinminers. It goes without saying that these fourgroups of workers were not treated on an equallevel but had been organized around a clear-cut hierarchy. In the ranking of Japanese,Taiwanese, indigenous people, and chōsenjin,the chōsenjin occupied the lowest place. Belowthe Taiwanese were the indigenous people, andthen, below them, were the chōsenjin. It is nothard to imagine that, based on the hierarchyexisting between the empire and colony andamong colonized territories themselves, day-to- day practices of discrimination took place inthe mine, as the violence of colonial oppressionwas transferred from one group to another.This situation must have intensified under theextreme conditions of war.

The mine is now a small museum called theJingtong Coal Mine Museum, where historicalrecords of the J ingtong mine such aschronological records and photographs havebeen retained. I found, however, absolutely norecords relating to chōsenjin miners. Not onlywere the records therefore incomplete, but ingeneral materials concerning the Japanesecolonial period were displayed in the museumquite haphazardly, memorializing only thoseaspects of Taiwan’s mines that put Taiwan’smining industry generally in a good light.

Preserved in the area surrounding the coalmine was also the dormitory for the Japaneseengineers who had worked there. The actualdormitories of the Taiwanese, indigenous, andchōsenjin miners had long since disappeared,but their former locations and names bluntlyconveyed a hierarchy with Japanese at the top.For instance, if we consider the names of thedormitories, we find that the dormitory wherethe Japanese engineers lived was called Kōgu,or Imperial Palace. This dormitory took theform of a traditional Japanese home, and thebuilding has been carefully preserved tomaintain the look of the times. Even now, itretains its name from the colonial period, and is

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being used as a teahouse called Kōgu. In fact,when I went inside to have coffee I felt as if Ihad slipped back in time to the colonial period;time seemed to flow differently inside andoutside the building. Ironically, I had neverexperienced such a feeling in Japan. I had thesense that for the first time here in Taiwan Iwas encountering the refinement of atraditional Japanese home. Shamisen musicplayed inside the teahouse, sounding moreJapanese than any music that I had heard inJapan, while its interior had been decoratedwith a stronger sense of Japaneseness thananything one could find in Japan today, givingme a very strange impression. Here thereseemed to exist a Japan that was moreJapanese than Japan—a case of “reverseOrientalism”? According to the brochure forthose who visited the teahouse, the dormitoryfor the Japanese engineers faced the ImperialPalace in Tokyo, symbolizing that their heartswere turned in the direction of Mount Fuji andtheir homeland. Indeed, in those days, ordinarypeople were not allowed to approach theJapanese engineers’ dormitory.

Let me return to the matter of the dormitories’names. The dormitory housing the Taiwaneseminers was given the name Tokyo, and the onewhere the indigenous miners stayed was calledHokkaido. Did this signal that Hokkaido,although on a lower rung than Tokyo in theorder of buildings, was highest among all ofimperial Japan’s colonies? The dormitoriesthemselves were no longer standing, but hereand there in the streets of Pingxi one could findsigns saying “Tokyo” and “Hokkaido.” Althoughthe signs designated tourist inns, they gave mea sense that the memory of those places stilllives on in the area today, even if in the form ofa nostalgia from which the bitter memories ofthe colonial past have been excised.

But what about the chōsenjin miners who werelowest in status? Based on the ranking amongJapan’s colonies at the time, one might think adormitory called Ryukyu would be appropriate

for them. But the chōsenjin miners’ dormitorywas not even adorned with a name like Ryukyu.Sadly enough, it had no name whatsoever.Moreover, one could figure out approximatelywhere the dormitories called Tokyo andHokkaido were located, but I was told no oneknew where the chōsenjin miners had lived. Ihope to learn more about this mine in thefuture. But upon hearing that the building forthe chōsenjin miners had never been given aname, and that its whereabouts werecompletely unknown, I was quite overcome. “Sothat was the status of Chōsen ...” I thought,staring off into the distance.

I remember my experience in Taiwan vividly, tothis day. I wonder if this is because I hadalready visited Okinawa before going toTaiwan. The air in Taiwan feels very much likethe air in Okinawa. Geographically the twoislands are close and belong to the samearchipelago, so it is not surprising that theyshare similarities. The humid, subtropical airand soil feel the same in both places, and theattitude to life Okinawans call chirudai seemsto link them in my mind. But what inextricablylinks the two places for me is the fact thatchōsenjin died, away from home, in bothplaces. Chōsenjin were killed during the Battleof Okinawa not just by Japanese, but also byOkinawans. Still today, beneath the runway ofKadena Airforce Base, lie the remains ofchōsenjin porters who served as forcedlaborers for the Japanese Army. Their bonescan still be found there.

For me, this connection between chōsenjin whomet faraway deaths in Taiwan and Okinawaprompts thoughts of East Asia, Japan, Okinawa,Taiwan. This is an East Asia that rests on thesacrifice of the chōsenjin dead. It is an Asiathat has already internalized these chōsenjindead as Other. By this I mean that they nolonger have any visible presence in East Asia.Unmourned and out of sight, the chōsenjindead swarm over Japanese, Okinawan, andTaiwanese land. They cannot be seen, yet they

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have never disappeared. I think of light andshadow. In terms of such a metaphor, one couldsay the chōsenjin dead are East Asia’s shadows.A person surrounded by light cannot see thatwhich is in the shadows. From the shadows,however, it is possible to make out that whichis in the light as well as that which is in thedeepest of shadows. An East Asia imagined bythose who remain blind to the chōsenjin deadwill not be capable of dismantling “modernity,”“nationality,” and “the state,” and will merelyrepeat the violence inherent within them.

Dwelling With the Dead

In the Jeju Island Uprising, as well as in thecivil war which arose from its escalation—theKorean War—people of Korean ethnicityslaughtered each other in the cruelest wayshumanly possible, committing horrors even hellcouldn’t conceive of. This phrase, “horrors evenhell couldn’t conceive of” are the words of theelderly Yang We-h on in the documentary Amano ryan san (Grandma Yang the diving woman),directed by Haramura Seiki in 2004. In thisfilm, which frames the awe-i nspiring life of anelderly woman born on Jeju Island, whosurvived the uprising by escaping to Osaka as astowaway, Yang responds to the interviewer’squestions as to what the massacre was likewith this phrase, and a pained expression.“Horrors even hell couldn’t conceive of.” Couldhumans know anything more tragic than whatplayed out here?

Yet it is safe to say that among Japanesetoday—whether it is because the Korean War isonly remembered for the economic boom themilitary procurements industry created forJapan, or simply because the war has beencleansed from memory—it is entirely unknownthat these massacres and the war that followedcan be precisely traced to Japanese colonialpolicies. Antagonism between the cunninglyutilized pro-J apanese landowners and police,and the people of Chōsen whom they hadcontinuously harmed and exploited, lay at the

very root of what caused these events,including those prompted by revenge, thatpreceded and succeeded it.

In addition to such preexisting internalconflicts within communities and villages, afterthe liberation from Japanese rule, there wasalso the confrontation between the SovietUnion (which thoroughly promoted land reformand punished the pro-J apanese collaborators inNorth Korea) and the United States (which ingoverning South Korea took full advantage ofthe negative legacies left by the Japanesecolonial government, such as the Governor-General’s Office and former pro- Japanesecollaborators), in other words, the structure ofthe Cold War. Veiled within that structure,conflicts within the Korean Peninsula grewincreasingly severe, until the Jeju Uprising of1948 occurred, leading eventually to theKorean War, which was actually a civil war.The wartime situation changed at a dizzyingpace, and every time it did so, the battlefrontwould be moved, so that revengeful massacresof increasing brutality were carried out overand over again.

Also, although a majority of the massacres ofcivilians in the Korean War were perpetratedby the South Korean army, we shouldremember that this army was an institutionoriginally organized by pro- Japanesecollaborators. These were people fully steepedin the militarist mentality of the Japanese armyand its brutal ways. Throughout the KoreanWar, the army officers and police openlycarried Japanese swords, which they used inthe massacres of civilians. As the Koreansociologist Kim Dong- choon astutely grasped,“If we consider the fact that it was the pro-Japanese forces, cornered in a moment of crisis,who played a leading role in these massacres,following practices inculcated in them by theJapanese Imperial Forces, it is also possible tosee the mass killings that took place during theKorean War as a direct legacy of the Japanesecolonial rule.”1 If we do not grasp these

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continuities with Japanese colonial rule, andonly take into account the confrontationbetween the United States and the SovietUnion, we will not be able to understand whythis sort of massacre took place, and why thetragic “horrors even hell couldn’t conceive of”came to unfold. It goes without saying that thecivil war we call the Korean War, and itsmassacres, cannot be seen as “someone else’sbusiness” by the Japanese. The Japanese wereinvolved in those deaths.

The Korean War has not yet come to aconclusion; the Korean Peninsula still carriesthe scars of those massacres. It is the same aswith Okinawa, which still carries the scars leftby the mass suicides that happened during theBattle of Okinawa. Even sixty years is notenough. The Korean War has not ended. TheBattle of Okinawa has not ended. In a situationin which it is still not possible to solve the issueof pro- Japanese collaboration in South Korea,and in which the perpetrators of thosemassacres, as well as their surviving familiesand subordinates, continue to be in positions ofpower, our social structure remains incapableof punishing the perpetrators.

As is well known, Japan remains unwilling as astate to face the history of Okinawa’s masssuicides. But the situation in Okinawa is evenmore complex. That is to say, not only doOkinawans carry the all-t oo- enormous scars ofthe violence committed against them that wasworse than anything “hell could conceive of”but they also retain similar memories ofviolence they themselves committed againstformer colonies, chiefly Chōsen.

Nevertheless, the relationship betweenOkinawans and chōsenjin should not beregarded as a dichotomy of perpetrators andvictims. Should we speak in these terms, theexistence of the dead will slip from view. This isbecause the violence perpetrated by imperialJapan and its mainland population wascompletely different in kind and quality from

the violence perpetrated by Okinawans inOkinawa. Before displacing it elsewhere, weneed to unravel this vortex of oppression andviolence that existed between the colonies ofOkinawa and Chōsen. Moreover, we need toproperly grieve for those chōsenjin who metfaraway deaths in a land called Okinawa. Whatthis would involve in concrete terms is touncover the true circumstances surroundingtheir deaths, as would be the case withunearthing the dead who lie under the runwayof the Kadena Military Base.

I catch my breath when some Okinawanfriends, recalling the violence of the war, talkabout the damage done to chōsenjin as if theythemselves had been the perpetrators. This isextremely painful to hear. It is, of course, ofprimary importance to speak about theseissues, but won’t the practice of Okinawanscontinually speaking about them from thestandpoint of the perpetrators becomedangerously commonplace? And doesn’tspeaking from the point of view of the“perpetrators” force Okinawans to expel thoseother deaths, of Okinawans, that have longbeen internalized and held within? In otherwords, if this narrative of “perpetrators” and“victims” does indeed become a pattern, won’twe simply be dealing with abstractions?Perhaps this is the pitfall of any account thattries to be conscientious. But in this particularcase, I think we can better understand thesituation in Okinawa by considering how thehistory of violence toward chōsenjin isremembered in Japan.

One often sees on cenotaphs or in the archivesof coal mines and dams in Japan the statement,“The number of forced laborers fromKankoku/Chōsen who died in Japan in the lineof duty is still unknown.” The chōsenjin dead,their number, even their names, remainunclear, and at the present time in Japan theimpetus to find this information is lacking.What this tells us is that, at the time that thesedams and mines were in operation, Japanese

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did not actually consider chōsenjin to be humanbeings. Occupying the very bottom rung on thesocial hierarchy, chōsenjin were not only madeto work in the most degrading and dangerousof environments. Even when they died trying toperform these tasks, they were not treated ashuman beings. When the Japanese proprietorsof the coal mines and dams had troubledisposing of the corpses, many bodies weresimply burned or thrown away on the spot.Thus it has come to be that their number andtheir names went unrecorded. The word“discrimination” alone simply cannot describe aviolence like this, which transcends ourimagination. And if the word “violence” ispremised on an understanding that it issomething done to humans, then not even thatword will do. If I may repeat myself: theJapanese did not treat chōsenjin as humanbeings.

Soni Kum, Beast of Me, 2005Courtesy of the artist

It is a common practice in today’s Japan torefer to those who lived on the KoreanPeninsula in the colonial era before it wasdivided into North and South, and before theDemocratic Republic of Korea was established,as kankokujin or kankoku/chōsenjin. This,however, is clearly a historically erroneousappellation, a form of arrogance of the livingwho try to impose their will on the dead. The

polite term for “person” (kata) is also oftenused these days, as when the expression“Chōsen no kata” is used in place of chōsenjin.However, this politically correct mode ofaddress is also a kind of hypocrisy, since itdisguises the facts and obfuscates that historyin which chōsenjin were not treated as humanbeings. While this way of speaking occurs whenJapanese attempt to refer to the victimhood ofchōsenjin from the position of the perpetrator,it results in an erasure of the dead. It is a kindof remembering- while- forgetting that, by dintof repetition, turns the existence of the deadinto an abstraction, forces the dead to return tosilence, and has meant that a palpablesensation of confronting those from the formercolony who lost their lives has been lost. But ifit is true that the very ground we are standingon contains—detectible to the naked eye—thebones of those who were abandoned, whoseground is it? We need to exercise ourimaginations at least to this extent. We need tounderstand that this earth we now inhabit,before being a possession of the living, belongsto the dead. Isn’t this what is required of us?An ability to imagine the dead that is basic toour very existence as humans?

The Truth Commission on Forced Mobilizationunder Japanese Imperialism (established inSouth Korea in 2005 through the Special LawSupport ing Fact - F inding on ForcedMobilization under Japanese Imperialism) isnow carrying out the national project of havingthe remains of chōsenjin forced laborersreturned to South Korea.2 Even today theseremains are scattered on the grounds oftemples near mines and dams throughoutJapan. Some Japanese, whether out of pangs ofconscience or a fear of being cursed, saw to itthat such remains were at least delivered to atemple. The South Korean government is nowcommitted to having them transported home.Of course, since this is in every respect anundertaking of the South Korean government,set forth within the framework of the nation-state, it has inherent limitations. Investigations

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will be carried out only in Japan (the territoryof the former colonizer) and not in Taiwan orOkinawa. There is also the risk that the SouthKorean state will intervene in this history anduse it for its own purposes. Nevertheless, it is asignificant effort. It is especially so when weconsider that contemporary South Korea hastrodden a long path, from military dictatorshipto democracy, in order to reach this pointwhere it can come to terms with its past as itsdemocracy matures. It is also significant whenwe take into account the fact that South Koreastill cannot act independently of the U.S.- andJapan- led anti- Communist bloc in East Asia,starting first and foremost with the provisionsof the peace treaty concluded with Japanduring the quagmire of the Vietnam War, whichwas facilitated by South Korea’s complicitywith Japan and the United States in wagingthat war. And when we consider that the ColdWar (and the Cold War era that posed so manyobstacles for South Korea) has still not endedin East Asia, we could even say that the SouthKorean government has been prompt in movingto undertake this project. Why then, we mightask , has Japanese soc iety remainedunresponsive to, disinterested in, and ignorantof this project? These are, bear in mind, thevery same Japanese who were inflamed overthe kidnappings of Japanese citizens by NorthKorea. I hardly consider the repatriationproject something of no concern to Japan.

A friend who is involved in the activities of theTruth Commission on Forced Mobilization toldme this story: There are cases in which familymembers who are sent the remains of thedeceased, once the whereabouts of the bodyhave been discovered and the circumstances ofdeath clarified, burst into tears and grieve,even after sixty years have passed. Yet inaddition to that long- neglected grief, whichindeed had already started to wither away,these survivors experience a second grief. Thisis the grief that occurs when they discover thatthe remains that are delivered are not bonesbut ashes. Normally, cremation does not take

place in Korean culture. This is also the case inOkinawa, where, unlike Japan, burial is donerather than cremation. Because burial is aKorean tradition, survivors who receivecremated remains of the deceased experience asecond grief . What could it be l ike toexperience this second grief, after the passageof sixty years’ time?

Let us return the discussion to Okinawa. TheOkinawan view of the relation between life anddeath is something like “dwelling together withthe dead,” as I understand it. As a matter ofdaily experience, the dead and the living dwelltogether. One can immediately tell that similarviews of life and death have been held inOkinawa and Chōsen by looking at the shapesof the graves: we find burial mounds on theKorean peninsula, and turtleback tombs inOkinawa. In both places, graves are aceremonial space where the dead and the livingmingle—in a Korean cultural sensibility, thegrave was a wide- open space or a yard, ormadang. For instance, the series of artworks byYamashiro Chikako that use the turtlebacktomb as a stage seek to evoke the essence ofsuch tombs, which are rooted in the Okinawanidea of “dwelling together with the dead.” Inthe video art performance “Okinawa Complex”(2007), which was staged in a garden with aturtleback tomb, the legs of the performerappear from amid a bed of foliage, slowlyopening and closing in a repeated pattern. Thebeautiful lines of her legs are themselvesalmost like flowers reaching up to heaven fromthe surface of the gravesite. They seem to waftpleasantly in the wind. Through the repetitionof this exercise, a festive space opens up, inwhich the living and the dead mingle, so thatthe appearance of the tomb site is graduallytransformed in a richly humorous manner.Looking at the intense, almost poisonousshadows, lights, and colors that appear one byone in this piece, the spectator begins to have alanguid feeling, the feeling of chirudai.

“Dwelling together with the dead.” Here in

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Okinawa—a force field richly expressive of thisview of life and death—should it not be possibleto maintain the presence of the chōsenjin dead,too, as a sensation, even as an internalizedOther, that is held and confronted within? I amnot speaking of the dead as an idea here.Rather, I speak of the dead as existences uponwhich we can train our gaze precisely as whatis unseen, yet has not disappeared from thisworld. I want to believe that the sensation ofthese graves, and the view of life and deathprevalent in Okinawa, have the power todismantle even the pressures of Japanese andAmerican imperialism that have so far heldOkinawans and chōsenjin apart.

Undoing/Resolving Han

To the Spirits of Our Brothers and Sisterswho Perished on this Island

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Why has this island become silent?

Why is it that it no longer tries to speak

Of the sorrow of the women

Of what happened to our brothers and sistersof the Korean Peninsula?

Oh, older brothers who were abducted, tornfrom your families

Who breathed your last in the suffocating heatof ships’ hulls Whose hands and feet wereblown off in this land of Okinawa Whose soulswere trampled upon!

The war has ended, time has passed,

Yet the sound of soldiers’ boots never fadesfrom this island Stolen land, vanished villages,the cries of women, all continue The hearts ofthe people are still parched.

Oh, older brothers,

Unmourned to this day, buried in the crevicesof these limestone cliffs

Are your bones, bones, bones

Even they cannot return to the grave mounds ofyour home- towns Our older brothers!

We, Okinawans,

Bow our heads, brothers and sisters,

Before the spirits of you who were trampledunderfoot by soldiers’ boots And left lyingthere.

We bow our heads before our sisters,

Who were violated as sex slaves by theJapanese army

Before our brothers, who became its victims asmilitary porters

We believe that, before long, the hardenedpods of the tesangu will burst open

And the seeds, scattered across the sea weshare, will blossom as flowers.

Oh, brothers and sisters,

Never ceasing to tell of the hardships youexperienced

We will banish war and armies from this earthTo your spirits, to you, who perished in thisland We vow it.

This poem is carved on the stone, Monument toHan, located in Yomitan Village in Senaha,Okinawa. Erected to memorialize chōsenjinmilitary porters who died in Okinawa duringthe war, its unveiling ceremony took place onMay 13, 2006. The monument stands in adeserted spot atop a small hill, looking out overthe beautiful sea that borders Yomitan Village.Standing in front of it, surrounded by massiveRyukyuan limestone cliffs, one feels a wind thatseems to have blown directly across the oceanfrom the Korean Peninsula.

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In May 2008, I had the good fortune of visitingthe Monument to Han, guided by Asato Eikoand Murayama Tomoko, who had played keyroles in its construction. Asato Eiko is theperson who had carved the inscription aboveinto the stone. She informed me that the largeRyukyu limestone formations into which themonument had been set were themselvescomposed of bone—fossilized coral, to be exact.The Monument to Han itself, that is, restswithin a massive bone.

Asato’s inscription embodies the sentiments ofthose Okinawans involved in building theMonument to Han, and their determination tomourn the deceased chōsenjin. Implicit in thisgaze of Asato, who in addressing the portersand women who were forcibly made into sexslaves as “older brothers,” “older sisters,” or“brothers and sisters” treats them as an innerpresence or literally “family,” are what I mightcall the first stirrings of a new relationshipbetween Okinawa and Korea. It is a newrelationship that could become a means ofworking though han, which is the duty of futuregenerations.

The Korean word han refers to a sadness thatthrobs, that has congealed and hardened; andalso to something that “loosens” it. In theKorean expression “undoing han” (hanpuri),han refers to a congealed feeling that loosensand hardens again, loosens and hardensagain—to a process of rumination that isrepeated over and over. Han never disappears.It does not disappear, but hanpuri can alsoallow one to carry on with living—and withouthanpuri one will become physically debilitated.Hanpuri, that is, could be called the veryactivity of human life itself. Nevertheless, thedepths of han being what they are, it will bedifficult to undo the han of those dead whohave been neglected for over sixty years.Rather, we should try to keep them company aslong as we live.

That the Okinawan people have a connection to

those killed in the Korean War should be aprinciple that sustains the antibase struggle inOkinawa, and can be a continuing intellectualresource for that struggle. Moreover, theantibase struggle is, properly speaking, a wayof mourning the faraway deaths of chōsenjinwho died in Okinawa during the Pacific War.This is the sense of the words carved by AsatoEiko: “Oh, brothers and sisters, never ceasingto tell of the hardships you experienced, Wewill banish war and armies from this earth, Toyour spirits, to you, who perished in this land,We vow it.” This vow, our determination in thehere and now, can be the beginning of a rebirthof the bond between Okinawa and Chōsen.

Beyond the "Anti-Reversion Theory" of the1970s

When I first read Arakawa Akira’s essay,“Hanfukkiron” (Anti- reversion theory),developed around the time of Okinawa’sreversion to Japan, I found it to be a form ofthinking that was full of resonance forchōsenjin in Japan. “Anti- reversion Theory” hassomething universal about it that could bedirectly connected with the present historicalsituation of those who are called zainichichōsenjin. Most especially, up until recently Ihave read “Anti- reversion Theory” assomething concerning me (although I realize Imay have misread many points). The work hasthe power to appeal to the singular existence.When encountering its words, I was able tograsp and historicize something I, too, hadbeen subjected to in Japanese society: forArakawa understands the violence of reversionas a form of assimilation—a form of “becomingJapanese.” Reading the essay, I had felt in thetangible presence of a continuing history, theviolence of a past and present in whichreversion also constitutes the form ofassimilation known as “becoming Japanese.” Inthat violence that connects Okinawans andchōsenjin with each other—the violence ofreversion as a form of the same assimilationthat has been borne by both groups—I felt I

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could discern how certain structures of Japanhad come into being.

What is noteworthy about “Anti-r eversionTheory” is that it is not simply a criticism of thenation, but rather that it takes up the problemof the state as a question of “totality versussingularity.” In other words, “Anti- reversionTheory,” while thoroughly basing itself on theperspective of the singular existence, takes aimat the totality, as a theoretical praxis critical ofassimilation. In the essay “Okinawa as‘Unpropitious Space’ of Antistatism,” Arakawadraws on his own editor’s foreword to thespecial issue of Shin Okinawa Bungaku (NewOkinawan literature) published a year earlier,to define anti- reversion theory as “a matterthat has to do with to what extent I, as asingularity, am involved with ‘Japan as a state.’” And he writes, “Insofar as this is a problem ofsingularity versus totality, it is not a question tobe raised about others but directed inward, tothe self.”4 Continuing, Arakawa writes of “Anti-reversion Theory”:

Thus, in the case of “Anti-r eversion Theory” Iam in no way referring to the institutional andterritorial reconsolidation of a Japan andOkinawa that have been divided, which wouldbe an external phenomenon. I am pointing towhat might be called a spontaneous activity ofthought whereby Okinawans, willingly and ontheir own, allow themselves to be subsumed bythe state. In this sense, I would have noobjection to referring to “Anti- reversionTheory” as a spiritual inclination, on the levelof the singular, to thoroughly and continuouslyreject fusion with the state. To reformulate iteven further, let me say that anti- reversionequals “Antistate” and “Antination.” It is amanifesto directed inward, whereby Iceaselessly position myself as a person withoutnationality.5

Moreover, “Anti- reversion Theory,” insofar asit manifests a “spiritual inclination, on the levelof the singular, to thoroughly and continuously

reject fusion with the state,” is a critique ofassimilation, or a critique of colonialism as awhole. Herein lies the universality of Arakawa’stheory, and the power of his writing to appealto the s ingular . This i s certa in ly anunforgettable work. But going beyond itstheoretical argument, what is even moreunforgettable is the way in which the very ideaof anti- reversion theory is fraught with blackhumor. There’s a kind of virulent laughter inthe work. I smile wryly, especially whenreading descriptions such as the one below:

That is to say that, as I have stressedrepeatedly thus far, it is by unrestrainedlyflaunting Okinawa’s geographical and historicalheterogeneity and its “otherness” that we canbegin to grasp their potential. In other words, itis only when Okinawa puts forward everythingthat is decidedly different and “other” aboutitself that Okinawans will be able to bothrelativize and see in their own minds the“state,” which is at one and the same time anactually existing organ of repression and anuncanny, bewitching monster that defines ourlives as a whole.

When this happens, we will be able to clearlyput into perspective for the first time that the“state,” or “Japan as state,” is not simply anideological concept, but instead is a livedsensation. Then, we will be at last able toliberate ourselves from the value systems of thenation, as well as from the curse of having ourown lives defined in response to those values.For the first time, “Japan as state” will appearbefore us Okinawans in concrete form assomething to be rejected.

It is truly only in that moment of realization,when “the state” takes shape before us assomething to be rejected, that our existence(the existence of Okinawa itself) will become apoisonous arrow shot deep inside “Japan asstate,” a kind of extremely malignant tumor.Like gangrene, Okinawa can become a regionthat has the potential to implode the very idea

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of “Japan as state,” rotting it from the insideout. Okinawa’s historical and geographicalsituation for this very reason endows it with thegood fortune of being an existence to be enviedby every other region of Japan. In no wayshould we allow this privilege to be “detoxified”by an unquestioning espousal of the ideology of“reversion,” which is in fact a will towardassimilation.6

If I may put it this way, we see here inArakawa’s “Anti- reversion Theory” a kind ofblack humor that contains a virulent laughterthat is also a curse directed toward the nationof Japan. As a chōsenjin who has been “residentin Japan” (zainichi) since my birth in the yearafter Okinawa’s reversion, I must say I wasbodily susceptible to infection by this curse. Icould think of no greater pleasure. But I nowrealize it is not enough to simply define thevirulent laughter that suffuses “Anti-r eversionTheory” as black humor. To do this causesanother feeling inherent in the work to dropout of sight. Although it is something that Ihave come to understand only recently, I woulddefine that feeling—if I were to link it toOkinawan sensibilities—as chirudai. Here Iwould like to quote the words of the producerNakazato Isao, referring to chirudai .Attempting to conceptualize the chirudai that isrichly put into an image in the work offilmmaker Takamine Gō, Nakazato definesOkinawan chirudai as “a subtropicalremainder/surplus that cannot be forcefullysubsumed by the narrative of the nation and itspeople.” He writes:

Chirudai is an Okinawan expression that canmean “to be out of it” or “to become sick of it,”or “vacantly.” As such, chirudai could beunderstood as that unproductive idleness oftenassociated with countries of the South. ButTakamine’s work instills into it a seconddimension that lacks these negat iveconnotations. For him, chirudai is “a naturalphenomenon that is rooted in the land and theblood of Okinawa, from which the Uchinanchu

cannot possibly escape, whether they wish to ornot—one might say it is the very physicalconstitution of Okinawa.” If I were to makebold to reformulate this in my own words, Iwould say that chirudai is the subtropicalremainder/surplus that cannot be forcefullysubsumed by the narrative of the nation and itspeople. In other words, chirudai is not onlysomething like the “Okinawan constitution” butcan also be the means of producing aheterogeneous image that counters thepatriarchal nature of the national narrative.7

Let me suggest that the feeling of chirudai thatNakazato conceptualizes here (so splendidly ittakes one’s breath away) is similar to thefeeling that forms the basic undercurrent ofArakawa’s “Anti-r eversion Theory.” Let mesuggest that we can sense that same feeling inthe words, so typical of Arakawa’s manner ofexpression, used to describe the state of mindof those people who, in l iving out thephilosophy of anti- reversion theory, live as“people without a country” or “statelesspersons.” Arakawa writes, “The weapons ofthose who live as stateless persons are thephilosophies of ‘having no homeland’ and of‘idleness.’ Such ideas are like gangrene to thehypertrophic nation. We do not need to beimpatient at all.”8 Moreover, today, a full thirty-f our years after reversion, Arakawa still linksanti- reversion theory—as a philosophy spunout of chirudai in precisely this idle, “no needto be impatient at all” way—to the visionexpressed in Lu Xun’s “My Old Home”: “Foractually the earth had no roads to begin with,but when many men pass one way, a road ismade.”9

Of course, we must acknowledge that,regardless of the existence of Arakawa’s “Anti-reversion Theory,” Okinawa thereafter revertedand continues to revert to Japan, as it isabsorbed into Japan’s economy and politics.Moreover, at the present time, when we areexperiencing both a “Korean Wave” boom andan Okinawan boom in Japan, Okinawa is

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undergoing a kind of cultural absorption underthe auspices of a touristic, Orientalist gaze.Films made by the director Nakae Yūji might beseen as an example of this tendency.10 And yetone wonders. Do these developments mean thatanti-r eversion theory has come to an end, orbecome outmoded? I can hardly think so.Rather, anti- reversion theory remainsunassimilable by “Japan as state,” and as suchit continues to curse that state. It is “thatsubtropical surplus/remainder that cannot beforcibly subsumed by the narrative of thenation and its people: chirudai.” If I think ofJapan surrounded by an East Asia that includesOkinawa and Chōsen, or take a bird’s-e ye viewof a shabby Japan that is rotting from withinbecause of the gangrene inside it, I feelconvinced of this. And I am convinced that now,more than ever, “Anti-r eversion theory” is notold, but very new.

Nevertheless, I feel there is something missingin “Anti-r eversion Theory.” We need to writeits “sequel” at the present time. I wouldtherefore like to offer a critical rereading of thetext, as a way of repaying my debt to it andexpressing the highest form of respect to itsauthor. I see my criticisms as a way ofperpetuating its legacy.

To put it bluntly, what is missing from “Anti-reversion Theory” is a gaze toward the Otherwho dwells within. This is the result of a kind ofdualism that an argument “against” somethingcan fall into, and insofar as “Anti- reversionTheory” adheres to such a dualism, it will notbe able to maintain a gaze toward the Otherwithin. Arakawa’s argument needs to lookforward. It goes without saying that at the timeit was wri t ten Okinawa was direct lyconfronting all- too- suffocating, giganticpressures from Japan and the United Statesand did not, perhaps, have the luxury ofanything other than dualistic thinking. Butinsofar as it lacks a gaze toward the Otherwithin, even an Okinawa that resists reversionwill be entangled in the logic of “modernity,”

“the nation,” and “the state.” Let me offer areading of Arakawa’s essay “Modern Okinawaand Korea,” published in the winter issue ofSanzenri Quarterly in 1978, as a text that issuggestive of this problem.

Arakawa does not take up Chōsen directly inthis article, published six years after Okinawa’sreversion to Japan, but he does allude torelations between Okinawa and the JoseonDynasty in the premodern and modern periods.Given his stance in opposition to reversion, it isperhaps to be expected that Arakawa expressescriticism of certain developments that followedupon reversion, and took place against thebackdrop of a collusive relationship betweenthe Japanese and South Korean governments:for example, the establishment of a “Japan-South Korea Friendship Association in OkinawaPrefecture,” and the ongoing introduction,without heed for the sacrifices of the SouthKorean people, of South Korean laborers andSouth Korean physicians to help in the spheresof industrial and cultural production, or healthand welfare, in Okinawa.

In the course of his argument, touching on therelationship between Okinawa and the KoreanPeninsula in the modern period, Arakawacriticizes a form of discrimination that hasexisted in Okinawa, arguing that “Okinawanshave rarely grasped how foolish they have beenin choosing a narrow- minded way of life,whereby everything has been channeled into‘becoming Japanese’ rather than becoming agood friend for those on the Korean Peninsula,let alone other neighboring peoples.” AsArakawa describes, the detrimental influence ofOkinawans’ desire to become Japanese underthe authoritarian kōminka (Japanization orassimilation) policies of the Japanese empire,meant that modern Okinawans deeply despisedand vehemently rejected any association withothers who had been discriminated against andoppressed by Japan (such as the Ainu, those onthe Korean Peninsula, and Taiwanese), feelingthat the greatest hardship was for their

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“Japaneseness” to be questioned. However, wes h o u l d b e a r i n m i n d t h a t t h e s a m ediscriminatory views were also present in thecolony of Chōsen, and even, one wouldpresume, in Taiwan and among the Ainu. As aresult of the Japanese empire’s oppressivepolicies, the modes of interaction that hadexisted among regions in East Asia prior tomodernity, as well as the ability of other EastAsians to imagine a resistance to imperialJapan, were completely undone. It wasprecisely this division of East Asia that provedto be imperial Japan’s cunningly cruel design.Even t oday , under the p res sure o fJapanese/American imperialism, East Asia hasyet to overcome its division.

This brings me back to my main point. In hisessay, Arakawa criticizes a modern Okinawathat marched toward assimilation with blindfaith (produced by its lack of a meaningfulrelationship with the modern KoreanPeninsula), and he also speaks of the necessityto restore the memory of the interactionsbetween premodern Okinawa, the KoreanPeninsula, and Asia as an alternative path.Memory of premodern East Asia, in otherwords, offers for Arakawa an opportunity to doaway with modern Okinawan discriminationand to “ res tore a r i ch openness” topostreversion Okinawa. He writes:

It is my sense that, were we to unearth andreaffirm within mainstream culture the thrivinginteraction that originally existed between thepeople of the Korean Peninsula, China, and thepeoples of the regions in the South Pacific, ourspirit would without doubt reclaim a richopenness for itself. With modernity, theOkinawan spirit has atrophied all too much dueto the detrimental influence of its assimilationgoals. Okinawa has been an imitator, chasingafter the distorted spirit of a modern Japan thatdoes not feel the pain of others as its own.11

I empathize with Arakawa’s perspective.Particularly, I feel that interaction between

Ok inawa and Je ju I s l and shou ld bereestablished. As is apparent in the similaritiesbetween their intonation of words and theirreadings of Chinese ideographs, exchangebetween Okinawa and Jeju Island was onceabundant. They are both islands thatexperienced similar tragedies, where “acts thateven hell couldn’t conceive of” were committedunder the pressure of Japanese/Americanimperialism. The Battle of Okinawa should beunderstood more broadly and placed within itsEast Asian context, with its connections to theJeju Uprising recognized. Only then will ourhistorical awareness become richer, and willwe attain a perspective that can structurallyaccount for why such tragedies occurred.

However, I also feel that the renewal of arelationship between Okinawa and the KoreanPeninsula, before being based on any history ofpremodern interactions, should begin with arestoration to memory of chōsenjin in the Battleof Okinawa. Any recollection of a premodernrelationship that fails to acknowledge thismodern event will surely be limited to theconceptual level. In the essay I have beendiscussing, it is true that Arakawa does touchon modern Chōsen. But his gaze is on Chōsenas if it were something exterior to Okinawa,with no inner connection to it. This is becauseArakawa does not touch on the bitter memoriesevoked by the presence of chōsenjin as aninternal Other within Okinawa. In Arakawa’sgaze, the palpable sensation of chōsenjin as aninternal Other of Okinawa is lacking. Can wenot say that this remains a problematic aspectof anti- reversion thought as a whole? For,insofar as it is based on the binary logic of“anti”—in other words, as long as thefragmented “Okinawa” that returns to Japan isnot in its turn fragmented—it cannot perceiveChōsen as an internal other. Herein we find thelimits of the anti- reversion theory of the 1970s.

There is a scene described by the criticOkamoto Keitoku that I have not been able toforget. In his memoirs of the Battle of Okinawa,

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in the essay “Gūkan” (Random thoughts)published the year before he died, Okamotounexpectedly makes a reference to thepresence of Koreans:

What the Japanese army called “provisions”were kept in storage in the neighborhood of alinen factory on the island of Miyako, alongwith the army’s military equipment. SometimesI caught sight of chōsenjin military porterssneaking in to eat the raw rice grains, whichmade them sick to their stomachs. I fdiscovered, they were severely beaten. Allaround the factory one could see trails of theirshit, containing the grains of raw rice theycould not digest. Looking back on it, it is clearthere were many dramas unfolding aroundthese chōsenjin, having to do not only with foodbut with the discrimination they faced. But, atthe time, these things were totally beyond ourken.12

The kinds of scenes Okamoto witnessed werenot restricted to Miyako Island. At the height ofthe Battle of Okinawa, they occurredthroughout the various islands where chōsenjinmilitary porters were deployed. As thesurviving elders, or halaboji, who had served asporters to the Japanese army repeatedly recallwhen they tell us about that time, “TheJapanese did not treat chōsenjin as humanbeings.”13 One survivor of the battle on AkaIsland spoke of his memory (although it is apiece of history that can barely be conveyed inwords) of Japanese soldiers executing twelvechōsenjin military porters for plucking riceplants on civilian agricultural lands and puttingthem in their pockets. Other porters wereforced to dig a hole and bury the bodies. Onecan imagine that, in an atmosphere where nottreating chōsenjin as humans prevailed, suchexecutions must have taken place on otherislands as the battle raged.

What could have possibly gone through theminds of the porters who were severely beatenfor furtively stealing food? Were they, in fact,

able to be angry? If it is possible that—underthe most extreme conditions in the Battle ofOkinawa, and in that moment of execution andat that site—those who had not been treated ashuman beings were not even allowed to feelanger, then that pent-u p anger of the deadwho were executed, that festering han whichhas never been released is ours to revive andreflect on anew in the here and now. It needs tobe expressed, as part of new politics that wouldoverthrow the memory politics that consigns tooblivion chōsenjin who met faraway deathsthroughout East Asia.

Okamoto Keitoku––I deeply admire how, in thedays before his death, he took a moment toremember the chōsenjin who were in the Battleof Okinawa. It is essential for us to understandhow meaningful this was. In the few sentencesof that one passage, it seems to me thatOkamoto, as his own body declined, foresawhow he could express a new kind of encounterwith Chōsen by thoroughly dismantling his ownOkinawan identity. It is even possible he hadalready achieved such a reencounter. Notthrough ideas, but through his bodilysensations. Through the smell, the color ... thestreaks of shit on the earth with their raw,undigested rice. If it is possible, at the risk ofimpropriety, to pick up on those bodilysensations, let me propose that Okinawa existson top of the shit of dead chōsenjin and, in thissense, Okinawa is Chōsen.

It seems to me that a gaze that regards thechōsenjin dead in Okinawa carries out a furtherdismantling of the “Okinawa” alreadydismantled by anti- reversion theory and takesus beyond it. Isn’t another revolution of thespirit demanded of us here today?

From “Minority” to “Multiplicity”

We are all familiar with the word “minority.” Ihave been called that in Japanese society andhave defined myself that way. Before I everfaced the world, the sign “minority” had beenprepared for me, since—whether it was being

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used by people trying to reclaim the humanrights of minorities, or by those seeking toconsume minorities—this discourse flooded,and continues to flood, our environment.However, when I consider it now, I have beentrapped in the cage of that word “minority,”which pared down my ex is tence andimaginative power. As long as I allowed myselfto be trapped by the term—was it for the sakeof restricting my existence within a binaryrelationship that simply defined it as theopposite of “Japanese” or “the majority”?— Iwas unable to conceive of those chōsenjin whomet faraway deaths in East Asia. It also nowseems to me that, despite the fact that I am ascholar of modern Korean literature and anactivist engaged with postcolonial theory, I hadallowed myself inadvertently to be lulled intooccupying the position of the minority,subsumed into a system that had come to becontrolled and consumed by the majority. Thisconstraint, which enfolded me like a fate, is thevery essence of politics and the political.

I will therefore refer to myself not as a“minority,” but as “multiplicity.”14 Thinking ofmyself this way, I am ready to take revengeagainst the term “minority.” “Multiplicity” isnot the logic of numbers that dictate who arethe “minority” and “majority,” but a way ofbeing, grounded in the magnitude of theexistence of the Other that one internalizes.“Multiplicity” is the shadow one encounterswhen delving into and dismantling the self. Towhat extent can one dismantle the self andexist along with its shadows? “Multiplicity” is away of thinking based on such a “dwellingtogether with the dead”; it is a will to expressthat which, although invisible to the eyes, willnever disappear. I am not the minority, butmultiplicity. On the basis of a “coming right ofself- determination” I invoked at an earlierconference on anti-r eversion theory convenedhere in Okinawa, I named myself in this way.15

Moreover, I, as multiplicity, am addressing onemore multiplicity. That is Mr. Arakawa Akira,who eventually embraced a self who was once

“one of the enthusiastic advocates of reversion,whose eyes had been clouded by the grandproposal of reversion to the ‘fatherland,’ ” as anOther within.

“I am afraid of the Japanese people. As anOkinawan, I am extremely afraid of them.”16

These words of Mr. Arakawa in his interview inthe quarterly magazine Zenya are very strikingand have remained with me to this day.

Precisely because they were the words ofsomeone who had committed himself to a life ofanti-r eversion that was already being spent insplendid isolation and surrounded bymisunderstanding; Arakawa’s sensation of“fear” seemed to me deeply philosophical. Iwas lucky enough to be present at the time ofthis interview. Mr. Arakawa said those wordsnot overdramatically, but frankly withouthesitation.

I can understand his feeling. Living in Japan onOctober 2, 2006, after North Korea had carriedout its atomic tests, I began, for the first time,to feel the bodily “fear of being stabbed in theback.” This was an event that changed mysense of history in a revolutionary way: in thatinstant I encountered the colonial Korea whichwas referred to in Japanese as Chōsen. And,although this might sound like a strange way ofputting it, I could feel a bodily connection inthat moment to the chōsenjin who had beenattacked from behind by Japanese carryingbamboo spears at the time of the Great KantoEarthquake—who had been stabbed and mettheir “faraway deaths” there. Or, at the veryleast, what was brought home to me at thatmoment was that nothing had changed inJapanese society since that time.

That truly painful, fearsome feeling that onecould be attacked from behind is something Ino longer harbor. I think this is because I havetaken up the outlook of “dwelling with” thosedead who perished far from home, and I havecome to feel myself embraced by them, to usethe words of Sakurai Daizō of the tent-t heater

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troupe Yasen no Tsuki Haibītsu. Within theirembrace, I (and many other “I”s) are not“minorities.” We are multiplicity. This was thehope I was able to express and graduallyembody while performing as an actor with thattroupe, and standing with my feet planted onthe earth beneath tents I had erected with myown hands.

Today, East Asia has become a vivid sensationfor me, almost as though those chōsenjin whodied in Japan, Okinawa, and Taiwan werecalling out to me. I have an intense desire toknow more about the circumstances of theirdeaths. What, I wonder, were the expressionsin the eyes of chōsenjin who were stabbed todeath with bamboo spears by Okinawansduring the Battle of Okinawa? What did theysee in that very moment? Moreover, thisinvolves my facing an internal Other as well.His name is Saitō Hiroshi, and he is myself atthe time when I adopted a Japanese name.

To explain—during my primary and middleschool years, I went by the name Sai, theJapanese reading of my Korean name. Manyzainichi chōsenjin lived in the ward of Adachi,in Tokyo, where I was raised, and people fromJeju Island were especially numerous. However,since most of them used Japanese names intheir public lives, and because it is difficult todistinguish zainichi chōsenjin by theirappearance, not knowing who was who was aroutine matter at the time. By disappearing intothe homogeneous and transparent atmosphereof Japanese society, we ended up supportingthat homogeneity and transparency—or, moreprecisely, we were forced to support it.

During this period, because I had always beenthe only zainichi chōsenjin in my classes atschool (although I later learned, throughrumors that circulated after graduation, thatsome others had been so as well), a massiveinferiority complex gripped my spirit. I wasunbearably ashamed, not only because I wasnot Japanese, but also because I was the only

person with such a strange name. Although Inever experienced the blatant discriminationendured by previous generations of chōsenjin,Japanese society at the time continued to bepervaded by an atmosphere that foisted“Japaneseness” on all its citizens, and as a childI was especially sensitive to that. The resultwas that I blindly believed in those days that ifI could only become Japanese, I could be freedfrom my inferiority complexes and live a normallife. I settled on a Japanese name (SaitōHiroshi) for myself when I entered high school,and ended up going through school under thisname. Having at last become Japanese throughmy own doing, I could not at that point evenfathom living my life as Choi Jin Seok.

For a while, perhaps for half a year, everythingseemed rosy. But I was unable to completelyrepress the feeling that somehow or other I wasliving a lie. There were even times when,gripped by the illusion that everyone aroundme must surely have known that I was actuallya chōsenjin, I could not get myself to go toschool. Those were dark, bleak days. In fact,even now I find it difficult to recall this time inmy life.

However, after graduating from high school, Icame to the realization that I could no longergo on as Saitō Hiroshi, and that I could nolonger think of myself as Japanese. Rather, thenext step was to become South Korean. And soI studied abroad in South Korea for a year, anddesperately studied the language. I had becomea fervent nationalist by the time I returned andentered university in Japan, introducing myselfusing my actual birth name. I became “ChoiJinseok, South Korean.” But that phase did notlast long either, because I could not adapt tobeing South Korean so suddenly. Either way ofidentifying myself seemed impossible, and asone might imagine, those, too, were dark days.

Just at the point when I had almost given up ontrying to decide what to do with myself, arealization hit me like a bolt from the sky. I had

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wanted to become Japanese, and then tobecome South Korean. Either way, I realized, Iwas on a path that left me harboring anunrequited desire to be part of a nation- state.It was at this very time that I had a similarlyprofound encounter with literature. From thatmoment on, I was finally released from thespell I had long been under. I gradually beganturning my gaze, instead, toward the history ofthe Japanese colony Chōsen; toward the historyof the Korean War; and toward the forgottenchōsenjin who had perished in Japan. At last, Ihad gotten my mind around the idea that I was,indeed, a chōsenjin.

Oh Haji, Flower Spot, 2007Courtesy of the artist

This became a process of inner dismantling for

me, a spiritual revolution. Once I embarked onit, my life changed and became directed towardmy own liberation. It was also a path offorgetting “Saitō Hiroshi” and separatingmyself from him. As I struggled to face mycontradictions, “Saitō Hiroshi” came to feel likea foreign body I was harboring, with whom Icould never be at peace. Now, however, I thinkof it thus: I have internalized “Saitō Hiroshi” asjust one of the dead I harbor within me. Theidea of “Saitō Hiroshi”—even his name—is atestament to that lonely time in my life when Ilived rather desperately. I had been thinkingthat forgetting him would enable me to live, butI now wonder if his presence, as one of thedead within me, has not actually been what haskept me going. It seems it is my turn to accepthim. This is how I will exist from this point on. I(together with many other “I”s) am not aminority, but a multiplicity.

To Conclude

Surely now is the time for all those who arecalled zainichi to begin to talk with each otherabout who are the chōsenjin, and to bring tobear on that question all the tension of ourbodies that are in the here and now. As abeginning—and regardless of whether one is azainichi with South Korean citizenship, azainichi with Japanese citizenship, a zainichiregistered as a Chōsen national, or a zainichiwho is absolutely unable to talk about thesematters because the words with which to do sohave been stolen—as a beginning, we zainichiwho are wavering in various crevices, havingbeen scattered, strewn, and divided by theviolence of colonial assimilation, should nowonce and for all, confront the gaze of the poetKim Shi-jong, who scrutinizes “the shadowyterm”—chōsenjin used with negativeovertones—together with the word zainichichōsenjin, a word which might function as acommon denominator for all of us. The hope ofzainichi truly lies in the rereading of thesewords at the present moment. Kim has put itlike this:

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Speaking as one called zainichi, my impulsewould be to take the term chōsenjin (チョウセンジン), the shadowy term that has evenbecome a kind of code for zainichi (i.e., withthe meaning “born in Japan”)—and revive in itthe very resonances that it shares with thewritten word chōsenjin (朝鮮人) as a call forpride, friendship, and love. As fellow membersof the same ethnicity (at least insofar as someof us with South Korean citizenship aredesignated zainichi chōsenjin, while others whoretained their prewar colonial designation arealso called zainichi), we belong to the “sum of asum total,” which we must retrieve from themidst of our shared zainichi existence.17

To echo the words of Kim Shi-jong, I alsobelieve that anyone who feels their self- esteemas “Korean” (朝鮮人) has been damaged shouldseek to recover it in the sound’s consonancewith chōsenjin (チョウセンジン), and that isprecisely within these overlapping resonancesthat we can move forward together. Myregistration card denotes me as a person “ofChōsen nationality” or chōsenseki (朝鮮籍),insofar as I am registered in the category ofzainichi chōsenjin. Following Kim Shi-jong’snotion, then, it is within that “sum” of the “sumtotal” of the zainichi population that can becalled zainichi chōsenjin that I wish to locatemyself ... and also to find something that liesbeyond that. This is because, insofar as zainichirefers to those “in Japan,” zainichi identitycannot be absolute. Chōsenjin do notnecessarily exist only within Japan. They arealso in Okinawa, Taiwan, and Korea. Only whenzainichi who live in Japan can feel how they areconnected to the bodies of those chōsenjin whomet faraway deaths in East Asia can they,together with other zainichi, transcend thedesignation zainichi. It is at this point thatanother word will come to meet us. I would liketo think of this as a transition from chōsenjin tojoseon saram. ...

Joseon saram. In the Korean language, Joseonrefers to Chōsen and saram to 人 or “person,”

that is, joseon saram means a “a person ofChōsen.”18 It is a word every zainichi knows,and that no one except a zainichi would know.The young people of the generation after myown already find themselves in the samecondition as the youth of present- day Okinawa.Youth who cannot speak the Okinawanlanguage (uchinānguchi) are in a similarposition to zainichi who did not go to an ethnicschool and therefore cannot speak Korean.Every zainichi, however, even those who didnot go to ethnic schools, recognizes the wordJoseon. This is in much the same way thatanyone who is Okinawan—young or old, man orwoman—knows the word uchinānchu. Thereason the words joseon saram and uchinānchuwill not disappear is because they are thenames for our very being.

I cannot help at this point but add that theword saram in Korean means “person,” but theword “love,” pronounced saran, is written thesame way. In other words, in the Koreanlanguage, saram and saran, “people” and“love,” are homonyms, etymologically related,and similarly written. (Is it not splendid to thinkof “people” and “love” as having the samesound?) Therefore, I would like to impress onyour minds this way of referring to the peopleof Chōsen, as joseon saram, which ends withthe same sound as “love.” I would like toimpress this upon you for a Korea to come.

In the near future, under the tide of present-day neoliberalism, it is likely that U.S.–NorthKorean relations will be restored, the KoreanWar will be formally concluded, and that, asdiplomatic relations between North Korea andJapan are resumed, the Korean Peninsula willbe reunified by forces of neoliberalism withoutany voices of protest being raised. It is not hardto imagine the desperate situation that willpresent itself at that point. The rich butuntouched natural resources of the People’sRepublic of North Korea, together with itshighly skilled, low- waged labor force, will bewantonly exploited. These tendencies are

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already visible on the economic level, but it iseasy to foresee a situation in which theadvances of American and Chinese industry willbe followed by moves forward on the part ofJapan, which wi l l then resu l t in thedevelopment of North Korean industry in adelayed fashion. Under such conditions, it isprobable that the same types of disparities anddiscrimination that exist between the formerEast and West Germany will be produced inKorea. This would certainly confront us with adeeply hopeless scene. Yet even a state ofdespair need not mean the end of the world.Despair can be converted into the energy thatwill change the world; it is capable of servingas a force field for political expression.

A reunification of the Korean peninsula wouldeffectively mean the end of the Cold War inEast Asia. When this happens, all kinds ofrecords and remembrances that we who live onone side of the Cold War divide have nevercome into contact with will emerge from theother side. The archives of land reform, forexample. In these we may expect to encounterissues similar to those raised by the so- calledTibetan Uprising. But when the Tibetanproblem is taken up, no reference is ever madeto the archives of the land reform carried outby the Communist Party after entering Tibetand taking power, when land monopolized byBuddhist temples was forcibly taken away fromthem and distributed to Tibet’s enslaved andcompletely landless population. Nor, whendemands are made for “human rights” or to“Free Tibet,” is the question ever raised of whyit was monks who were the central force in thatmovement and exactly what kind of “freedom”they were demanding. These questions cannotbe grasped by apply ing ready- madeepistemologies from our side of the Cold Wardivide, an approach that simply results infurther obfuscation of problems in the capitalistsphere. What exactly does “modernity” meanfor China, and for Tibet? As the Chinese scholarSun Ge astutely points out, this is where theessence of the Tibet problem lies. We should

not see it as merely posing a problem forothers, but as “an epistemological challengeposed to all of us by the contemporary historieswe are living through.”19

Once reunification occurs, and we are facedwith the society and politics of a People’sDemocratic Republic of Korea, which has itsown archives of land reform, together with thescars of the Korean War and a history ofcontinued struggle against Americanimperialism, it seems likely that a similarepistemological challenge will emerge,requiring the fundamental questioning of“modernity”—a problem which cannot becomeapparent by applying only the ready- madeconcepts of “freedom” and “human rights.” Wecan expect such challenges to accompany us aswe find ourselves swept across to the otherside of the Cold War. And to the extent that theviolence of neoliberalism is likely to becomemore apparent once reunification takes place,challenging questions will inevitably be raisedabout whether capitalism, progressing underneoliberal economic principles, is an economicsystem that can really offer “equality,” alongwith “freedom,” and what “freedom” actuallyconsists of. Surely the aporia of “freedom” and“equality” (with “freedom” pursued by thecapitalist world but unachieved by the socialistworld, and “equality” pursued by the socialistworld but unachieved by the capitalist world)will remain as a weighty “epistemologicalchallenge” that the world has still not resolved.Indeed, it is just possible that the revival ofJapanese interest in the proletarian authorKobayashi Takiji’s Crab Cannery Ship is anindication that capitalism is already beingchallenged in this way. It is being challengedby a young underclass who have been passedthe buck of neoliberalism’s contradictions, andby alienated members of multiplicit(ies) whohave been withdrawing themselves from theworld. At any rate, it is perhaps because theconcepts of “winners” and “losers,” and thesmokescreen of “personal responsibility,” nolonger hold sway among these groups that

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these challenges are being raised.

Furthermore, there is even now something ofgreat importance that concerns everyperson—as wel l as the “people” as awhole—who have been affected by the ColdWar.20 That is, the coming of the dead. Whenthe Korean Peninsula becomes unified, thereality of the damage done to the North duringthe Korean War will become ever more real,and materialize before us. And when that timecomes, we shall finally, as a collectivity, be ableto mourn those who died during that war.Indeed, the madang awaits us where we mayresolve the han of those dead and loosen itsbonds. The Cold War began because of thedivision of the Korean Peninsula during theKorean War, and that war has continued todetermine what life is like in the societies thatwere involved. In that sense, it is not just thoseon the Korean peninsula, but every person (andthe “people” as a whole) who has been affectedby the Korean War and the Cold War who areinevitably summoned to this madang. At such atime, it should follow as a matter of course thatall core U.S. archives that pertain to thesubstantive supervision of the war by theUnited States, as well as to the process of itsintervention, and especially facts related to thetime immediately before and after the outbreakof the war, be declassified.

Then, for the first time, we may be able toinvestigate the true nature of the Cold War, tofinally understand what U.S. imperialism inEast Asia consisted of, and thus to piecetogether a more genuinely syntheticperspective on the Cold War.

But let me now shift attention away from thequestion of what historical and politicalparadigms will be at stake when reunificationoccurs, to the question of what reunification

will mean concretely, as an event that takesplace on the level of everyday life. I think it willmean the arrival of joseon saram. The people ofthe Democratic Republic of Korea—its artists,its researchers—will appear before us. The daywhen they will join us under our theater tents,in research groups, symposia, assemblies, anddrinking parties, will arrive. Who knows whatname the Korean Peninsula will bear by thattime? But whatever that name is, it will notchange the fact that all those who join us willbe joseon saram. In the near future, joseonsaram will be among us. This is why I wouldlike to impress that term on the minds of all ofyou who are here today.

Whether we think of them as part of our past orpresent histories, we must engrave in ourminds what is conveyed by the term joseonsaram. I have introduced the term becausethose who died in East Asia before 1945 did notthink of themselves as chōsenjin when theywere recruited as forced laborers, or when theydied far away. Since we can surmise that fewcould speak Japanese as well as they couldspeak their mother tongue, it is likely that theywould have referred to themselves with thewords “Naneun joseon saram iya,” whether atthe time when they arrived in Japan or at thetime when they perished abroad. That is, thedead we bear within us were joseon sarambefore they were chōsenjin. I would like you toremember the term. Try murmuring it—you canpronounce it either as joseon saram or joseonsaran—just once when you have a quietmoment to yourself.

Collaboratively translated by Ryan Buyco, Brettde Bary, Andrew Harding, Miyako Hayakawa,Hirano Oribe, Keiji Kunigami, Jillian Marshall,Andrea Mendoza, and Paul McQuade.

Choi Jinseok is Associate Professor at the Graduate School of Integrated Arts and Sciences,

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Hiroshima University. Born in Seoul in 1973, raised in Tokyo. Author and actor who hasperformed with the theater group Yasen no Tsuki Haibittsu. His publications include Yi Sangsakuhin shū (Collected works of Yi Sang, ed., trans.), (Sakuhinsha, 2006); Chōsenjin wa anatani yobikaketeiru: heito supeechi o koete (Chōsenjin are calling out to you: Going beyond ‘hatespeech’) , (Sairyūsha 2014). His recent performances include, Mo-nuke tendenko, Tokyo,May, 2013.

Lee Chonghwa is Professor of Political Philosophy and Post-colonial Studies in theDepartment of Law, Seikei University, Tokyo. Born on Jeju Island, Lee came to Japan in 1988.Her publications include, Tsubuyaki no seiji shisō—motomerareru manazashi—kanashimi eno, soshite himerareta mono e no (Murmurs as Political Thought—In search of ways to see thesorrow and things hidden), (Seidosha, 1998); Motome no Seijigaku – kotoba - haimau shima(Toward a Politics of Supplication - In search of words - Islands that crawl and dance),(Iwanami Shoten, Tokyo, 2004). Lee's works have continued to draw attention because of theunique way that they integrate critical thought, poetry and political philosophy. She iscurrently the Director of the Center for Asian and Pacific Studies at Seikei University.

Rebecca Jennison is Professor of Literature and Gender studies at Kyoto Seika University.Her publications include, Imagination without Borders, Feminist Artist Tomiyama Taeko andSocial Responsibility (co-edited with Laura Hein, Center for Japan Studies, University ofMichigan, 2009), “Precarity, Performance and Activism in Recent Works by Ito Tari andYamashiro Chikako,” in Performance, Feminism and Affect in Neoliberal Times, (Palgrave,forthcoming, 2017). Translations include, MOVE~Ito Tari’s Performance Art, by Ito Tari(Impaction, 2012); Voices of the Stones, by Kinjō Mitsuru (Sakima Art Museum, 2010).

Brett de Bary is Professor of Asian Studies and Comparative Literature at CornellUniversity. She is Senior Editor of Traces: A Multilingual Series of Cultural Theory andTranslation. Recent publications include critical essays on the women writers Morisaki Kazuein the volume Kikyō no monogatari/idō no katari: sengō sengō nihon ni okeru posuto-koroniaru no sōzō edited by Hirata Yumi and Iyotani Toshio (Heibonsha, 2014), and TawadaYōko in Translation/Transmediation: A Special Issue of Poetica, edited by Atsuko Sakaki(Yushōdō, 2012). She is editor of Universities in Translation: The Mental Labor ofGlobalization, Volume 5 of Traces (Hong Kong UP, 2010) and co-editor with Naoki Sakai andIyotani Toshio of Deconstructing Nationality (Cornell University East Asia Series, 2005).

Notes1 Translator’s note: Throughout this translation we will use the romanized chōsenjin andChōsen whenever these terms appear, either written in kanji or katakana in Choi’s essay. Thismethod of translation has been chosen both to demonstrate, and accord with, the argumentdeveloped by Choi in the course of the essay, which calls attention to the historical specificityof the word Chōsen, as used by the Japanese colonial regime (1910–1945) to refer to theentirety of its colony on the Korean Peninsula, inclusive of areas partitioned into North andSouth at the end of the Korean War in 1953. As Choi points out later in this essay, residents of

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the Korean peninsula who were subject to forced mobilization as porters for the JapaneseImperial Army or laborers for mining, dam building, and other work in Japan, were calledchōsenjin by the Japanese, although they themselves most probably would have continued torefer to themselves by the Korean- language term joseon saram. Throughout the postwarperiod, the terms chōsenjin and Chōsen have continued to be used in Japan. For example,although the political entity called Chōsen is now defunct, it is listed as a “nationality”(chōsenseki) on the Alien Registration Cards of those who remain stateless, i.e., those who didnot declare South Korean, or any other, citizenship after the conclusion of the SouthKorea–Japan Basic Relations Treaty in 1965. While the terms Chōsen and chōsenjin bothcontinue to carry some discriminatory overtones, in recent years both have been reclaimed byactivists and progressive scholars. In the pages that follow, Choi argues that those “Koreans”who lived and died under Japanese colonialism should be referred to by the term chōsenjin,rather than the sanitized kankokujin (referring only to citizens of today’s Republic of SouthKorea) or even zainichi kankoku/chōsenjin that some have chosen as a more politicallyacceptable term today. Thus the memory of the suffering of chōsenjin under Japanesecolonialism will not be erased. At the same time, as we will see later, Choi envisions that areclaimed chōsenjin could be used as an umbrella term to bring together those in Japan whoare now fragmented by loyalties to either South Korea (Kankoku) or North Korea (still oftenreferred to in Japanese as Chōsen).2 Choi, like Lee Chonghwa in her introductory taidan with Takahashi Yūji, makes the trope of“faraway death” central to the rhetoric of this essay. Like Lee, he uses the archaic termkakushi (客死), literally, “to die while traveling” or “to die while a guest,” whose ideographsdo not rely on a distinction between “foreign” and “native.” The term also evokes the ethicalquestion of how to deal with anonymous or unmourned deaths.3 Kim Dong- choon, Chōsen sensō: Hinan, senryō, gyakusatsu [A social history of the KoreanWar: Displacement, occupation, massacre], trans. into Japanese by Kim Mihye, Choi Deokhyo,Cho Kyong- hee, and Chong Yong- hwan (Tokyo: Heibonsha, 2008), 236.4 Translator’s note: The South Korean government of Roh Mo-h yun established the Truth andReconciliation Commission in 2003 to investigate human rights abuses and civilian massacresthat occurred in Korea from the colonial period through the overthrow of the militarydictatorship by the minjung movement in 2003. The Truth Commission on Forced Mobilizationunder Japanese Imperialism started its visits to former worksites throughout Japan in April2005, against the background of state- level negotiations over the repatriation of the remainsof conscripts known to be retained in Japan. With much of its work uncompleted, the Truthand Reconciliation Commission and other groups linked to it were disbanded by the LeeMyung- bak administration when the commission’s first mandate expired in 2010.5 “Undoing/Resolving Han” is a translation of the subtitle:　恨を解く、恨解き. The conceptconveyed by the character 恨 in this section’s subtitle can mean “grudge” or “resentment” inJapanese, while in Korean it can also refer to “bonding based on suffering and hardship.”Furigana beside the second part of the title (恨解き) give it the gloss ハンプ リ to evoke“hanpuri,” the Korean pronunciation for “loosening the bonds of suffering.”6 This essay, “ ‘Han kokka no kyōku’ to shite no Okinawa,” was included in the book Hankokka no kyōku [The unpropitious space of antistatism] (Shakai Hyōronsha, 1971). Arakawawas editor of the special edition on the antireversion debate compiled by the quarterlymagazine Shin Okinawa Bungaku [New Okinawa literature] 18 (December 1970).

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7 Arakawa, “ ‘Han kokka no kyōku’ to shite no Okinawa,” 304.8 Arakawa Akira, Shinpan: Hankokka no kyōku: Okinawa, jiritsu e no shiten [New edition: Theunpropitious space of antistatism—a perspective on Okinawa and independence](Tokyo: Shakai Hyōronsha, 1996), 136–137.9 Nakazato Isao, Okinawa: Imeeji no ejji [Okinawa: The edge of the image] (Tokyo: Miraisha,2007), 244.10 Arakawa, Shinpan: Hankokka no kyōku: Okinawa, jiritsu e no shiten.11 The words of Lu Xun are from “My Old Home,” in Selected Stories of Lu Xun, trans. YangHsien- ji and Gladys Yang (Beijing, 1972), 63–64.12 For a discussion of the ways in which Japanese notions of Okinawa can be seen in the filmsabout Okinawa produced by director Nakae Yūji, see Ōmine Sawa’s essay “Uragaesu koto,omotegaesu koto: 1999 nen ikō no Okinawa no hyōshō” [Inside out and outside in:Representations of Okinawa after 1999], in Okinawa Eigaron [Okinawan cinema], ed. YomotaInuhiko and Ōmine Sawa (Tokyo: Sakuhinsha, 2008), and the transcription, in the samecollection, of the panel discussion on this topic convened at the symposium Okinawa karasekai o miru (Seeing the world from Okinawa), held at Meiji Gakuin University in June 2007.13 Arakawa Akira, “Kindai Okinawa to Chōsen” [Modern Okinawa and Chōsen] published inKikan Sanzenri [Sanzenri Quarterly] (Winter 1978): 165.14 Okamoto Keitoku, “Gūkan, 42” [Random thoughts, 42], Keeshi Kaze 4, no. 7 (June 2005), inOkamoto Keitoku, “Okinawa” ni ikiru shisō—Okamoto Keitoku hihyōshū [A philosophy ofliving in Okinawa: Critical writings by Okamoto Keitoku] (Tokyo: Miraisha, 2007), 248.15 The Korean word halaboji (grandfather) is a respectful way of addressing older men.16 The word “multiplicity” (tasū) was my stage name in the play Hengen kasabutajō (Shape-shifting scabrous castle) performed by the troupe Yasen no Tsuki Haibiitsu in Tokyo andBeijing in 2007, and is a poetic expression that the play passed on to me. It is a wordconnected in my mind to the playwright and actor Sakurai Daizō, as well as to the troupe thatperformed the play. And it is without doubt a word I myself came to embody as an actor inthat troupe. Whenever I weave that word into my critical writing, I think of it as a kind oftranslation of the play and also an expression of my esteem for it.17 “I am not a minority, but multiplicity.” This is something I determined for myself when Iparticipated as a panelist in the symposium on antireversion theory, titled Maakarawajiiga?!Kitarubeki jiko ketteiken no tame ni (Where will the anger come from? Towards a right of self-determination to come) held at the Sakima Art Museum in Okinawa on May 18, 2008.18 Arakawa Akira, “Hanfukkiron to dōka hihan—shokuminchika no seishin kakumei toshiteikkikan” [Antireversion debate and the critique of assimilation—on a spiritual revolutionunder colonialism], Zenya 9 (Fall 2006), 300.19 Kim Shi-jong, “ ‘Zainichi’ no hazama de” [In the crevices of “zainichi”], in Heibonsharaiburari (Tokyo: Heibonsha, 2001), 457. Translator’s note: In our reading, when Kim Shi-jongrefers to the way the terms chōsenjin and zainichi have become almost interchangeable, hedoes so as a poet who is himself called zainichi. Although he has lived in Japan for over sixtyyears, Kim Shi-jong was born on Jeju Island and holds South Korean citizenship. He searchesfor a way to give both the terms zainichi and chōsenjin new meanings which might overcomethe divisions arising out of the different terms and categories by which the fragmentedzainichi community is now known. Moreover, Choi here uses the ideograph 朝鮮人 for

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chōsenjin by contrast to the prior katakana spelling of チョウセンジン (also read chōsenjin) tosuggest that the discriminatory nuances that still cluster like shadows around the word mightbe replaced by a literal reading of it as “people of Chōsen,” in the same way that an Americanin Japanese is Amerikajin or a Canadian Kanadajin.20 The Korean peninsula was unified under the Joseon Dynasty from 1392 until the time of itsannexation by Japan in 1910.21 Sun Ge, “ ‘Sōgō shakai’ chūgoku ni mukiau tame ni” [Toward encountering China as a“synthetic society”], Gendai shisō 30, no. 9 (2008): 54–58.22 Translators’ note: When Choi places “peoples as a whole” in apposition to the plural of“persons” (人々), he uses the character 人民 to clarify that he does not mean “nation” or“people” in the nationalistic sense.