Article

Author

Ko Youngran, born in the Republic of Korea in 1968, came to Japan in 1994 and in 2003 she completed a doctoral program at Nihon University, where she is now an associate professor in the Department of Japanese Language and Literature (日本大学文理学部国文学科). She specializes in the recent-era [modern] literature of Japan, and is especially interested in the works of writers who today would be called former colonial subjects of the Empire of Japan.

Ko's Nihon University faculty profile states that, until her first year of college, she had never seen hiragana or katakana, and undertook the study of Japanese language and literature because Japanese was the easiest language to learn as a speaker of Korean. That choice was, of course, to change her life.

The book originates in Ko's continuing research on how the activities and works of certain individuals in the Empire of Japan before and during World War II have been ignored by researchers and writers today who focus on the Japan after the war. For her, this focus constitutes "noise" that obscures the true picture of not only prewar and wartime Japan, but also Occupied Japan.

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Name

Names fascinate me -- not that they are unusual, for all people I have crossed paths with seem to have one -- but that some people have so many. I myself have more, in the esteem of others, than I was given by my parents, or have been dubbed by those who know me, or by myself -- and perfect strangers are inclined to refer to me by yet other names.

Ko Youngran, too, has a variety of names. She is "高榮蘭 Ko Youngran" on the jacket cover and on the title page, but "高榮蘭 (コウ・ヨンラン)" on the author profiles on the back flap of the jacket and on the colophon, of the book I am reviewing here. She is "高 榮蘭 (コウ ヨンラン)" on The University of Tokyo Center for Philosophy (UTCP) website, "高 榮蘭 (こう よんらん)" on her profile as a faculty member at Nihon University, "高 榮蘭 (KO YOUNGLAN)" in a 2009 report on a study at Keio University in which she participated (see below), and "高榮蘭 (コウ ヨンラン Ko Young Ran)" in the author profiles of a 2010 journal to which she contributed an article related to this book (see below).

Spaces are increasing used in Japanese to make segments of names shown as Sinific graphs or kana. As visual elements, they are used much like middots (・) to segment linguistic expressions which are not necessariliy segmented in speech. I formally use only a space -- not a middot -- to differentiate the family and personal elements of my own name ウェザロール ウィリアム (Uezarooru Uiriamu > Wetherall William), but I have no control over what others do, and not few people habitually write a middot. Ko would appear to be in the same position.

I suspect Ko would consider her name a "Korean name" -- but characterizating it such does not predicate how her name should be written in any script -- except as she herself would write it. And whether she consistently writes her name the same way is also her prerogative. I have not, however, seen her name written "高 榮 蘭" or "コウ ヨン ラン" and so I would guess that "Ko Young Ran" is an anomaly of an editor's imagination.

In hangul Ko's name would be 고영란, the personal component of which has Youngran, Younglan, and Youngnan variations in McCune-Reischauer. Note that the romanization of katakana "ヨンラン" is phonemically "Yonran" but phonetically "Yongran". In the currently fashionable Republic of Korea system of romanization, her name could be "Go Yeong Nan". The system was introduced after she came to Japan, but she seems to be ignoring it -- which is cause for celebration.

My point would be -- assuming that authors know best how to write their names, and that the way they most frequently express their name is probably the way they most prefer -- then the author of this book is "Ko Youngran" -- never mind its lengthening as "Kō" in Japanese script -- and never mind the tendency of some Koreans with the same surname to romanize it "Koh".

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Cover and obi

The cover, of a mother holding her emanciated child, is part of a 1950 May Day poster, one of many which Ko introduces in her final chapter on "'Women' in places of joint struggle" (see below).

The spine of the obi, readable below the title as the book sits on a shelf, raises the question -- "How has 'colony' come to be consumed?" Pull the book off the shelf, and the same question is reiterated on the front of the obi, which further baits the hook like this.

Kōtoku Shūsui (幸徳秋水 1871-1911), a Meiji-era anarchist and communist journalist and opinionist, was executed by the Japanese government on charges of having plotted to assassinate the emperor. Kōtoku represents opposition to the emperor system.

Shimazaki Tōson (島崎藤村 1872-1943) is included in Ko's catchment because of his 1906 novel Hakai (破戒), translated into English by Kenneth Strong as "The Broken Commandment" (1974). The protagonist, a school teacher who had been admonished by his father never to reveal he was a descendant of former outcastes, hides his own background while witnessing discrimination against others like him who are thought to be "filthy [people]" (穢多 eta) or "new commoners" (新平民 shin heimin). Eventually, though, rumors pursue him and finally he confesses that he, too, is an eta. This novel is the centerpiece of Ko's exploration of "buraku" discrimination and "buraku liberation" movements.

Nakano Shigeharu (中野重治 1902-1979), a prolegarian novelist, left the Communist Party when arrested for his ideological activities in the early 1930s, was elected to the House of Councillors as a member of the party when it was revived after World War II, then was expelled for his criticism of the party. He represents for Ko the changing moods of leftists.

Chō Kakuchō Chan Hyokuchu (張赫宙 チャン・ヒョクチュ 1905-1997) is Ko's foil for what she calls "colonial" (植民地 shokuminchi) Korean writers, by which she means Chosenese who came to like Japan and contributed to Japan's colonization of Korea as Chosen. The obi prints the graphs of Chō's name with furigana in katakana reading "Chan Hyokuchu" -- the reading given in the index.

Kin Tatsuju (金達寿 1919-1997) usually indicated in his books that his name was to be read "Kimu Tarusu" (キム タルス、きむ たるす) if in kana, or "Kim Talsu" if in roman letters. I have shown the Sino-Korean reading here partly to startle readers who know differently, but mainly to beg a serious question: Why did the writers of the obi instruct readers to render 張赫宙 in Sino-Korean as "Chan Hyokuchu" as Ko does, but did not instruct them to render 金達寿 as "Kimu Darusu" (キム・ダルス), again as Ko does?

Readers of Japanese unfamiliar with these writers, and otherwise unable to impose Sino-Korean readings on their names, would usually render them in Sino-Japanese. Ko's kana rendering reflects Kim Dalsu, a more recent standard of romanization not necessarily in accord with either historical usage or personal choice. Her regard for Kim Talsu as a "Zainichi" (在日) writer is not itself cause to impose a Sino-Korean reading on his name -- but, unlike Chō Kakuchō, whose name when writing in Japanese was marked (when marked) to be read in Sino-Japanese -- Kim did fairly consistently refer to himself by his Sino-Korean name when speaking in Japanese, or in kana when writing, and romaji usually reflected the Sino-Korean reading.

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Contents

Here is the contents of Ko 2010 as cut and pasted from the publisher's website and spaced as shown in the book. I have inserted my own translations of the titles of the three parts and eight chapters.

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Disclaimer

The last item in the explanatory note (凡例) following the table of contents includes the sort of dislaimer that has come to be essential in accurate writing about the past.

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Introduction

Forward

Ko begins her forward with an account of her first summer in Japan, specifically August 1994, when she received a bit of a shock. She knew, as historical knowledge, that atomic bombs had been dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 6 and 9 August, and of the air raids of the Allied Forces, and the Battle of Okinawa. But everytime she saw on television the extent of the horror and devastation of such occurences, she realized her own lack of awareness of people who had died in "Japan" (「日本」"Nihon") -- and wondered if her own memory of the war, accumulated in the Republic of Korea, was mistaken. Japanese television, movies, and newspapers -- however much she looked at such media -- there were no cruel Japanese soldiers like those recalled in August in Korea. She heard only voices filled with the grief of "Japanese nationals" (「日本国民」"Nihon kokumin") whose families had been sent off to the military, who had experienced the miseries of repatriation, who had had to endure air raids, or had lost irreplaceable (precious) relatives. (Page 9)

In the penulimate paragraph of her foreword she makes this observation, which also appears on the (page 16).

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Strengths

In this book, which I would guess heavily draws from her doctoral research, Ko attempts to how journalists and novelists and others opposed the imperialism and discrimination before the the postwar era, when she alleges that their efforts have been rendered invisible in present-day mainstream views of Japanese political and social history.

This book will attract especially post-colonial critique scholars who like to mix Koreans, Buraku residents, and Women in the cocktail of discourse on ideology, fantasy, illusion, confusion, memories, noise, myth, resistance, solidarity, violence, noncombatance, and struggle.

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Weaknesses

Forthcoming.

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Other work

Ko Youngran has participated in a number of symposia related to her fields of study, and several of her papers have later been published in Japanese and Korean. The following have been most closely related to the subject of the book under review.

Ko 2010-03a

高榮蘭 (コウ ヨウンラン Ko Young Ran)
出版帝国の「戦争」：一九三〇年前後の改造社と山本実彦『満・鮮』から
文学 (岩波書店)
隔月刊 第11巻・第2号
3・4月号 2010年
二０一０年三月二十五日発行
ぺーじ120-137
特集：日韓トランスナショナル：一九二〇−三〇年代の文学

Kō Yonran (Ko Young Ran)
Shuppan teikoku no "sensō": 1930-zengo no Kaizōsha to Yamamoto Sanehiko "Man・Chō"
[From Kaizōsha around 1930 and Yamamoto Sanehiko's "Manchuria and Chosen"] Bungaku (Iwanami Shoten)
Bimonthly, Volume 11, Number 2
March-April 2010
Published 25 March 2010
Pages 120-137
Tokushū Nik-Kan toransunashonaru: 1920-30 nendai no bungaku
[Feature: Japan-Korea transnational: literature of the 1920-30 period]

Ko 2010-03b

高榮蘭
交錯する文化と欲望される「朝鮮」：崔承喜と張赫宙の座談会を手がかりに
語文 (日本大学国文学会)
第百三十六輯 平成22年3月25日発行
ページ69-84

Ko Youngran
Kōsaku suru bunka to yokubō sareru "Chōsen": Sai Shōki to Chō Kakuchū no zadankai o tegakari ni
[Entangling cultures and desirable "Chosen": (Using) the discussion between Sai Shōki and Chō Kakuchū for a handhold (clue)]
Gobun (Nihon Daigaku Kokubun Gakkai)
[Language and literature (Nihon University Culture, Japanese language and literature association)]
Volume 136, Published 25 March 2010
Pages 69-84

The article is based on a paper Ko presented on 15 July 2007 at a symposium on "The materialism of literature: Publishing, distribution, and movement" (文学のマテリアリズム：出版・流通・移動 Bungaku no materiarizumu: Shuppan, ryūtsū, idō) held on 14-15 July 2007 at the university, and by the department, with which she is affiliated, and which hosts the association that publishes this journal. The title of her symposium paper apparently had "print culture" (活字文化 katsuji bunka) rather than just "culture".

Ko did some of the research for the paper and article as part of a group, under the supervision of Matsumura Tomomi (松村友視) at Keio University, which over the period of four years, between 2005-2008, received 3.74 million yen from the Mita Media Center at Keio University, for "Research on the Relationship between Journalism and Intellectual Discourse in Twentieth-Century Japan: The Case of the Kaizosha Publishing Company".

Ko 2009-05

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Selected topics

Noise

The term "noise", when seeing it on the obi (see below), took me immediately back to my first college major, electrical engineering, where I first encountered the word used to describe anything that corrupted the transmission of information in a signal by distorting the signal on its way from a sender to receiver. The social sciences, especially studies of communication in human societies, meaning print and electronic mass media, including today the Internet, have adopted the metphors of information theory, originally introduced d in the middle of the 20th century by C.E. Shannon in paper called "A Mathematical Theory of Communication" (1948).

I still have, in my nostalgia library, a copy of Gorden Raisbeck's Information Theory (1964), which presents "an introduction for scientists and engineers" of C.E. Shannon's original theory of information. Today the theory embraces the daunting field of quantum computation and encryption, which takes Shannon's math to the level of matrix-based statistical analysis in theoretical and applied physics. I barely understood dumbed-down versions of the original theory. But I have witnessed the spread of its metaphors -- among many other metaphors in the hard sciences -- to the softer, non-mathematical social sciences.

Essentially, a message from a sender is encoded, transmitted in some sort of channel (such as a wire, waveguide, or even the atmosphere), then decoded for a receiver. "Noise" is a form of interferrence in the channel, such as static, which distorts, destroys, or otherwise corrupts part of the signal.

The nature of the original message, the manner of coding, and the frequency of transmission and the bandwith of the channel, among other factors, determine how much available information will be lost. The source is qualified by its "entropy" and "redundancy".

The entropy, or amount of information, is zero if the source produces the same message every time. Thus a totally predictable message has zero entropy, i.e., zero information. Entropy thus increases with unpredictability.

The redundancy of the message itself is zero if no element of the message can be lost with losing information. The reduancy of a code designed to most efficiently encrypt a message is the amount by which the code has to be expanded to protect the integrity of the encrypted message during transmission. A message can be compressed to the extent that it can be safely reproduced after transmission.

"Noise" also figures in oral-aural communication, involving sound waves rather than electromagnetic waves. A conversation may still be understood, despite background noise, because of predictability and redundancy. The science of "interferrence" in sound enables the production of "white noise" or "random noise" generators, which some psychologists, for example, may use to render incomprehensible any talk in their office that might pass through a wall or door into a waiting room.

"Noise" also figures in the design of barcodes and other scannable encrypted messages, which -- just like digital signals -- utilize checksum schemes to check parity -- which, in the case of price tags and passports, discourages tampering.

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Literacy

Forthcoming.

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May Day

The cover of Ko's book shows part of a poster promoting themes of the 21st May Day in Japan, which was observed between 1 April and 30 June 1950. The poster reads "Opposes War / Oppose Colonialization / Conciliation Promotion Movement for Peace and Independence" (戦争反対 / 植民地化反対 / 平和と独立のための講和促進運動) (Ko 2010: 332). Another version has somewhat different phrasing, including "Total Conciliation" (全面講和) and "Total Dependence" (前面独立) (Ko 2010: 348).

Another 1950 May Day poster announces sponsorship by various organizations, including the "Buraku Liberation Committee" (部落解放委員会 Buraku Kaihō Iinkai) and the "Chosenese Liberation Relief Association" (朝鮮人解放救済会 Chōsenjin Kaihō Kyūsai Kai).

A Korean language version of a poster for the 23rd May Day of 1952 makes the following statements (Ko 2010: 336).

The poster is attributed to "[In] Japan Democratic Front for a United Chosen" (在日本朝鮮統一民主戰線 Zai-Nihon Chosen Tōitsu Minsu Sensen). The title of the poster reads "1952 May Day Month" (1952年메−데−月间). Below the hangul for May Day (메−데− mee dee) are the katakana for May Day (メーデー mee dee). The poster would have been totally readable by anyone literate in Japanese and illiterate in Korean, including Chosenese in Japan who were native in Japanese and not fluent if even conversant in Korean -- hence my "translations" here of "Chosen" (J. Chōsen, K. Chosŏ) and "Chosenese" (J. Chōsenjin, K. Chosŏin".

The [In] Japan Democratic Front for a United Chosen formed in January 1950 from remnants of the Federation of Chosenese in Japan (在日本朝鮮人連盟 Zai-Nihon Chosenjin Renmei), which was disbanded in September 1949 for alleged subversive activities. The federation was disbanded with the formation in May 1955 of Confederation of Chosenese in Japan or "General Association of Korean Residents in Japan" as it calls itself today in English (在日本朝鮮人總聯合會 / 在日本朝鮮人総連合会 K. Chae Ilbon Chosŏnin Ch'ong-ryŏnhap-hoe, J. Zai-Nihon Chōsenjin Sō-rengō-kai) -- abbreviated "Ch'ongryŏn" in Korean and "Chōsen Sōren" in Japanese.

Ko states in her introduction to the May Day poster shown on the cover it that such posters called for "[Racioethnic] National Independence" (民族独立), yet none of the several posters she shows, representing May Days from 1949 to 1952, shows this expression (Ko 2010: 332). The 1952 poster in Korean, however, shows part of a placard calling for "[Racioethnic] National Education" (民族教育) (Ibid. 336).

The 21st May Day of 1 May 1950 is said to have drawn a record 600,000 participants to Hibiya Plaza, immediately in front of the Imperial Palace, and the General Headquarters of the Supreme Commander for Allied Forces (GHQ/SCAP) in Tokyo. Proletariaion-spirited labor unionists had dubbed the cite "People's Plaza" (人民広場 Jinmin Hiroba) since May Day was revived in 1946 after a decade of suppression.

The 23rd May Day of 1 May 1952 was immediately dubbed "Bloody May Day" (血のメーデー) as a result of the pitched battles between the police some of the demonstrators -- three days after the end of the Allied Occupation of Japan on 28 April 1952.

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Shimazaki Toson's "Hakai"

Ko gives an entire chapter to the theme of "'Texas' in Hakai" (pages 64-104). "Texas" appears in the last two chapters of Hakai. A wealthy eta who has had his fill of ostracization, described at the beginning of the novel, invites Uchimatsu, the progatonist, to join an agricultural project described as a "Japan village" (日本村 Nihonmura) in Texas in America (Shimazaki 2009: 400, 406-407; Shimazaki 1974: 241, 245).

Ko describes a number of reports in Japanese magazines concerning settlements of Japanese emigrants in California and Texas, which some contemporary writers and she herself refer to as "shokuminchi" (植民地) or "places for [trans] planting people" -- i.e., colonies. She also shows a table of annual counts of Japanese who crossed to America between 1901 and 1910, and another table of annual counts of Japanese who traveled abroad during the same period, broken down by numbers who emigrated to colonies -- meaning, again, "places for [trans] planting people" -- i.e., agricultural settlements.

Ko's overview of contemporary materials and commentary on Japanese settlements in Texas and elsewhere, during the first decade of the 20th century, serves to develop her story about the rivalry between nationalistic and proletarian thought. And that Segawa Ushimatsu, the protagonist of Hakai, sets off for a Japanese settlement in Texas serves as a literary example of colonization -- i.e., emigration as resettlement.

That Segawa views the move to Texas as a solution to problems he has faced in Japan because of his eta descent -- and, I would submit, his own attitude toward his eta descent -- is also of some interest -- as an example of what I would call "utopian" motivation -- i.e., the desire to seek a life that promises to be better elsewhere. The man who financed the "Japan village" in Texas and invited Segawa to join him turns out to be Ūhinata, a man of eta descent whose treatment Segawa had witnessed at the opening of the story, but this merely expedite the plot twist at the end of the story.

Ko, making no reference to how Shimazaki himself characterizes Ūhinata or Segawa, describes Segawa as being of "discriminated burakumin" (被差別部落民 hisabetsu burakumin) origin, and otherwise represents him as struggling against "discrimination toward burakumin" (部落民に対する差別 burakumin ni tai suru sabetsu) (page 65).

Historically, Ko's terminology is faulty for two reasons. First, "burakumin" (部落民) did not exist, much less were descendants of former outcastes victimized by proletarian attributives like "discriminated" (被差別 hisabetsu or "unliberated" (未解放 mikaihō). Second, while the term "burakumin" later gained some usage in Japanese, it is no longer favored today by "buraku liberation" organizations that champion "human rights" for "buraku residents" (部落住民 buraku jūmin) regardless of putative descent.

Ko takes her terminology from buraku liberation movement literature published after World War II, at the height of the postwar rebirth of hardcore proletarian radicalism, which had developed from the late 1910s and early 1920s, but had been suppressed by the late 1930s and early 1940s. The postwar movement divided into two major factions in the 1970s when communists within the socialist-dominated Buraku Liberation League (BLL) were purged and formed their own organization, National Federation of Buraku Liberation Movements (Zenkairen).

By the 1990s, Zenkairen was declaring an "end to buraku history". It was no longer appropriate to speak of "buraku" much less of their need for "liberation". In 2004, it took "buraku liberation" out of its own name in preference for National Confederation of Community Human Rights Movements (Zenjinren). From its viewpoint, only communities still under the BLL's spell need liberation, from BLL's ideology and domination.

For more about Hakai see Shimazaki Toson's "Hakai": Late-Meiji legacies of prejudice and paranoia.

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