The following statement in the preface to this book inspires hope that John Lie will cut through the fog of misinformation about Koreans in Japan that hangs over academic writing on this subject, including most of his own writing to date (pages xi-xii, underscoring mine).

The blurb on the back whets the appetite of the puruser like this.

"Migrants from the Korean peninsula to Japan and their descendants" comes closer to "Koreans in Japan" as a definition of "Zainichi" in the Lie's eyes. Not ironically -- but, given Lie's other writing, predictably -- Lie outdoes proponents of the very "Zainichi ideology" he cogently criticizes by way of promoting his own view of "Zainichi" as a "peoplehood identity" that is every bit as essentialist in its insistence on equating "Zainichi" with what he terms "ethnic Koreans" -- which, alas, goes entirely undefined except in his "sociological immagination".

This being said, RESUME

In his preface, John Lie refers to three earlier books -- Blue Dreams: Korean Americans and the Los Angeles Riots (Abelmann and Lie 1995), Han Unbound: The Political Economy of South Korea (Lie 1995), and Multiethnic Japan (Lie 2001) -- as "my trio of books on Korea and the Korean diaspora" and jokes that "this book makes it the sociological imagination tetralogy" (page xii). Though better crafted and leaner than Multiethnic Japan (reviewed here as Lie 2001), Zainichi continues in the same imaginary vein regarding political, legal, and social history.

Lie has obviously done a lot of homework since publishing Multiethnic Japan. He has become more familiar with writing in Japanese on "Zainichi". His grasp of the complexities and dynamics of being "Koreans in Japan" are also more astute.

As prose, too, Zainichi (Koreans in Japan is more entertaining. In the end, though, it must be read not only as "sociological imagination" but as "imaginative literature" in which he has invented not only history but culture for the sake of spinning an entertaining yarn about "Zainichi peoplehood" -- which could have been its title, since it constitutes an application of Lie's "peoplehood" theory to his imaginary "ethnic Korean" population in Japan.

I have organized my comments under the following headings.

Alternative history
What's in a name

Alternative history

Lie does not waste time with facts. He immediately lays the foundation for the fictional aspects of his story in the preface, with this paragraph (page x, underscoring mine).

"Ontologically speaking"

To this point, Lie's overview -- as a caricature of "nationalist discourse" -- is fair enough. The "reality" is indeed not so simple. And part of the "reality" is that Lie himself has done more than perhaps any other writer, in English, to give ontological body to "Zainichi" as "group" invented mostly by racioethnic sentiments and ideology, without regard to past and present facts.

Much of what Lie presents as "the basic facts of nationality and name" turn out to be untrue (page x, underscoring mine).

"in spite of colonial racism"

Lie seems ideologically incapable of giving credit to the dynamics of Japan's nationalization of Korea as part of Japan.

Japan had been recognizing "Japanese nationality" on the basis of raceless treaties, and of raceless customary and statue laws, for nearly four decades by the time Korea became part of Japan in 1910. It was not "in spite of colonial racism" but because of non-racist legal precedent, from the beginning of the Meiji period, that people of territories incorporated into Japan's sovereign dominion became Japanese nationals as a matter of course.

"ethnic Koreans"

No law or "official discourse" in Japan, relating to nationality, has ever spoken of "ethnic Korean". The term is a projection on the past of Lie's "Zainichi" publicist imagination.

While Lie later comments, valuably, on the racialism within the self-styled "Zainichi" camp in Japan, he himself tends to lead his own critiques of the putative plight of "Zainichi" as though to blame "Japanese racism", as in the follwoing lament toward the end of his preface (page xiv, underscoring mine).

"Zainichi"

Driving much of Lie's endorsement of "Zainichi" while equivocating about who the label is supposed to include, is his own theory of "peoplehood" and his addiction to American-style race boxes.

There is no such status as "Zainichi" in Japan. There are only nationality statuses, and under Japanese law three different categories of "Korean" nationality are possible: Koreans as legacy Chosenese (affiliates of a "Chosen" as a legacy entity), Koreans as nationals of the Republic of Korea (ROK), and Koreans as nationals of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK). ROK Koreans are the most numerous, distantly followed by Chosenese Koreans, and much more distantly followed by DPRK Koreans.

These three categories are generally conflated in published exit-and-entry (immigration) statistics and alien registration data -- but source data would show breakdowns.

No data, however, would show racioethnic qualities, since "Korean" nationality -- like all state affiliations -- is a purely civil status. The same is true for breakdowns of "Japanese" nationality -- they do not, because legally they cannot, reflect individual racioethnic classifications.

Lie and other "Zainichi" publicists have hijacked the term "Zainichi" for exclusive reference to "Koreans" in Japan. Never mind that, in doing so, they thereby disregard categories of aliens who are also "resident in Japan" (zainichi), and whose legal statuses, like those of some (but fewer and fewer) Koreans in Japan, are linked with post-1945 settlements to the manner in which the Allied Powers broke up the Empire of Japan after World War II.

The only objective historically significant definition of "Zainichi" as a label for Koreans in Japan as a consequence of Japan's imperialism -- as a number of Korean and Japanese authors maintain should be the case if we are talking about Japan as a civil society -- is that of Koreans who possess the legacy status of Special Permanent Resident (SPR). This status happens to be held by about fifty different nationalities of aliens in Japan -- the majority of whom are ROK nationals. However, the status is defined only in terms of losss of Japanese nationality pursuant to the effectuation of the San Francisco Peace Treaty in 1952. There are no racioethnic qualifications -- and, in fact, such qualifications would have been impossible under either Japanese or international law.

And, in fact, there are plenty of "systematic sources" on SPR Koreans in Japan as a legal cohort. Annual Alien Registration statistics show full breakdowns by nationality and status of residence. Two classifications of permanent residents -- general permanent residents, and treaty-based Special Permanent Residents, are also differentiated by nationality. There are no breakdowns of "Koreans" by legal status (Chosenese, ROK, DPRK). And because "Korean" is a purely civil status, breakdowns by personal racioethnic descent are impossible.

So unfortunately for Lie's racialist "peoplehood" thesis, which equates "Zainichi" with "ethnic Koreans", there are no breakdowns of people in Japan by race or racioethnic identity. Japan has never had race boxes. Japan has never been motivated to legally racialize its subjects (past) or nationals (past and present).

"monoethnic ideology"

According to Lie, Japan has no data on "Zainichi" because of its "monoethnic ideology". Why, then, did Japan not have race boxes -- during the many decades that it represented itself to the world as a racially complex empire? Why did Japan's imperial laws not racialize people, but rather permitted them to freely marry, and change regional (subnational) statuses through marriage and adoption, without regard to their personal racioethnic descent? Unlike the United States, where race boxes were the legal instruments by which federal and many state governments denied people such freedoms of migration and mixture? Unlike the United States, where even today race boxes can figure in qualifications for employment, school admissions, and other social actions?

Lie takes race boxes for granted because he has been stewed in the pot of multiculturalist ethnoracial consciousness, . He would, of course, reognize the role that race boxes have played in legally mandated racial discrimination in American history. But he does not seem to have digested why Japan has resisted the temptation, submitted to in not a few Euro-American states, to racialize civil status.

Japan's basic status laws have been civil since their inception during the Meiji period, in that they have not racialized people. Race, more fashionably called "ethnicity" today, was not a factor in being "Korean" (Chosenese) under Japanese law, whether on "the Korean peninsula" (by which Lie avoids saying "Chosen"), in "the Japanese archipelago" (by which he avoids saying "the Interior" or "the prefectures") -- or elsewhere in the Empire of Japan (in Taiwan or Karafuto, for example) -- or elsewhere in the world for that matter (such as Manchuria, or the United States).

There were no "ethnic Koreans" in Japan during the "colonial period" -- and there are no "ethnic Koreans" in Japan today -- as a matter of legal status. During the "colonial period" anyone whose legal domicile was "Chosen" (as "Korea" was called when part of Japan) was "Chosenese" (Chōsenjin) -- meaning they were a member of a household register that was territorially affiliated with Chosen. Regional family laws -- not ethnicity -- determined movements between Chosen, Interior (prefectural), and other imperial Japanese registers.

In other words, being "Korean" (Chosenese) was a matter of territorial household (population, family) registration -- not ethnicity, which has never been a matter of law in Japan.

To go return to Lie's introductory remarks about "Koreans" and "Japanese nationality", though, he says this about postwar settlements ((page x, underscoring mine).

"rescinded Japanese citizenship"

Japanese law did not then -- and does not now -- define either "citizens" or "citizenship". And most certainly Japanese nationality was not "rescinded" by the San Francisco Peace Teaty.

The San Francisco Peace Treaty, signed on 8 September 1951 and enforced from 28 April 1952, made no provisions whatever regarding changes in the nationality status of either Taiwanese or Chosenese as a result in Japan's formal abandonment of its sovereignty over Formosa (Taiwan) and Korea (Chosen). Lie, and many like him who have written about nationality issues in Japan before 1945, between 1945 and 1952, and after 1952 generally seem not have read relevant treaties and laws.

Japan's position was that the territorial abandonments, provisionally agreed to by Japan when signing of the Instruments of Surrender, and finalized by the San Francisco Peace Treaty, implied, as a matter of course, that Japan would no longer have a say in the nationality of anyone formally affiliated with Taiwan or Chosen. Since Japanese nationality had been gained through the territorial cession of these entities to Japan in 1895 and 1910, their retrocession away from Japan in 1952 would naturally result in a loss of Japanese nationality -- unless otherwise stipulated in the treaty that confirmed the retrocession.

The San Francisco Peace Treaty left all such matters to Japan and the unspecified states that by 1951, when the treaty was signed, had established control and jurisdiction in the several territories which Japan abandoned.

The most important of these states and territories were Republic of China (ROC, which controlled Taiwan), the Republic of Korea (ROK< which controlled the southern part of Korea), the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK, which controlled the northern part of Korea), and the Soviet Union (USSR, which controlled the Kuriles and southern Sakhalin or Karafuto).

The People's Republic of China (PRC) was not a contender for Taiwan because, while it had gained control and jurisdiction of China's mainland provinces at the time it was founded in 1949, it failed to extend its influence to Taiwan, where the ROC government had taken refuge.

Note that neither Chinese state, neither Korean state, nor the Soviet Union signed the San Francisco Peace Treaty, which therefore could not specify successor states or otherwise settle nationality and matters related to territorial transfers.

ROC

Japan signed a treaty with the Republic of China on the very day the San Francisco treaty came into effect, in which ROC was clearly recognized as ROC laws would determine the nationality of Taiwan-affiliated people -- including those residing in Japan. ROC placed no conditions on how Japan would treat former Taiwanese in Japan. However, Japan treated those who met certain residency conditions, under laws linked with the Potsdam Declaration, somewhat differently from aliens generally. Consequently, today such people and their descendants are qualified as Special Permanent Residents.

ROK and DPRK

Japan and ROK attempted to negotiate a treaty during the months leading up to the effectuation of the San Francisco treaty. They were unable to agree to terms, mainly because ROK's demands were unreasonable. One of its more unreasonable demands was for "national treatment" of Koreans in Japan as ROK nationals with all rights of Japanese nationals.

On 19 April 1952, barely a week before the San Francisco treaty was due to come into effect -- Japan having already agreed to terms with ROC, its negotiations with ROK indefinitely on hold -- the Civil Affairs Bureau of the Attorney General's Office of Japan (the Ministry of Justice from 1 August 1952) issued Civil Affairs A No. 438 -- which held that, concomitant with the separation of Chosen and Taiwan from Japan as of the day of effectuation of the San Francisco treaty, Chosenese and Taiwanese would lose their Japanese nationality. The notification made it clear that these were civil family register statuses.

Japan and ROK would not come to terms until 1965, following a 1961 coup d'tat in which Park Chung-hee -- who was born and raised in Korea when it was under Japanese rule and trained and and served an army officer, and understood Japan -- became ROK's second most important president. The most important had been it's first president, Syngman Rhee, who had spent most of his life in the United States, returned to the American occupied southern zone of the Korean peninsula in 1945, helped found ROK in 1948, and hated Japan -- a country he knew mainly from the viewpoint of a self-styled nationalist in exile.

Japan has yet to establish a normal state relationship with DPRK.

Soviet Union / Russia

Japan established a normal state relationship with the Soviet Union, now Russia, but the two countries have yet to sign a peace treaty resolving territorial disputes related to provisions of the San Francisco Peace Treaty.

Japanese nationality is essentially territorial, in that it is based on whether a household register is affiliated with Japan's sovereign territory. Since people in Chosen and Taiwan registers had acquired Japanese nationality through the affiliation of their registers with Japan, they lost Japanese nationality when their registers ceased being affiliated with Japan.

This understanding on Japan's part was contested by neither the Republic of China nor the Republic of Korea. Nor did GHQ/SCAP officially object.

Though some individuals on all sides urged more complex nationality settlements, including provisions for retaining Japanese nationality, the concerned states -- i.e., ROC and ROK -- agreed to Japan's understanding of the effects of the San Francisco Peace Treaty, that all Taiwanese and Chosenese would lose their Japanese status but could naturalize if they wished to be Japanese.

John Lie fails to put his perceptions of the postwar disposition of Koreans in Japan in a credible historial framework. It is as though he has no interest in the history of the legal arrangements that result from relationships between states and determine the statuses of affiliated peoples.

Lie next continues his characterization of the legal changes in the status of Koreans in Japan in 1952 like this (page x, [braketed] gloss Lie's, underscoring mine).

"imperial subjects became resident foreigners;
Japanese citizens became Koreans [Chōsenjin]"

Not quite. No one in Japan in 1952 was either an "imperial subject" or a "Japanese citizen". In fact, it makes no sense to suggest that anyone could have been at once an "imperial subject" and a "citizen" of Japan.

More over, "Koreans" in Japan did not become "Koreans [Chōsenjin]" -- they had been "Chōsenjin" since 1910, or since their birth into, or migration to, a Chōsen family register after the annexation and until 1952.

Though the Meiji Constitution remained generally (but not entirely) in force until replaced by the new Constitution in 1947, and while a number of pre-1945 laws which had used the constitutional term "shinmin" (subjects) also remained in force until abrogated or revised, "shinmin" and "teikoku shinmin" (imperial subjects) ceased to be official terms from the time Japan signed the Instruments of Surrender on 2 September 1945 and Hirohito issued his Imperial Rescript issued on that occasion.

In other words -- during the Occupation of Japan, when Japan's sovereignty was in the hands of the Supreme Commander for the Allied Forces (SCAP), there were no "subjects" but only "nationals" of Japan.

Korea became Chosen the moment the Empire of Japan annexed the Empire of Korea, and Koreans became Chosenese. Chosenese remained Chosenese during the Occupation, and remained Chosenese after losing their Japanese nationality in 1952. Chosenese residing in the prefectures in 1952, and their descendants, who have not migrated to another status, including but not limited to ROK nationality, remain Chosenese today.

In other words, the status of Chosenese, which began in 1910, continues to this day -- unbroken. Between 1910 and 1952, it was associated with Japanese nationality. Since 1952, it has been a legacy or "residual" legal status, since "Chosen" ceased to exist, except as a legacy entity that Japan -- informally since the last years of the Occupation and formally since 1965 -- has equated with the dominion of the Republic of Korea.

"there was no Korea"

"Korea" definitely continued to exist -- albeit as a legacy entity -- after 1952. It continued to be the object of negotation between ROK and Japan -- until they normalized their relationship in 1965. The Japanese version of the treaty very clearly refers to the entity of "Chosen" as the territory claimed by the Republic of Korea.

The same "Chosen" continues to exist as a legacy entity in the operation of Japanese law even today, in the 21st century -- as when courts consider cases contesting the legal status in Japan of people who have been members, or who have been treated as though they are or were members, of "Chosen" registers.

In other words, the legal effects of "annexation" and "deannexation" are alive and well -- if not always understood by social commentators.

Moreover, in late 1948, faced with two governments claiming the same "Korea" and its affiliated people, the United Nations General Assembly declared that ROK was the only legal government on the peninsula. This position, supported by the United States and other countries that quickly recognized only ROK, fed the continuing hostility between ROK and DPRK, which eventually provoked DPRK to go on the offense in 1950 and attempt to militarily unite the peninsula under its government.

"Korea" -- meaning "Chōsen" under Japan's legal control and jurisdiction, the entity referred to in the San Francisco Peace Treaty and related agreements before and after, and in numerous Japanese laws and court decisions -- very much continues to exist as a legacy entity -- an entity which, though now defunct, is still an object of formal concern in Japan's domestic laws and policies, and in its relations with the two Korean states.

And "Korea" will continue to exist -- at least until there are no Special Permanent Residents who, whatever their nationality, ethnicity, or raciality, can claim to have natural, marital, or adoptive ties with a family register in "Korea" between 1910 and 1952.

Failure to understand such plain legal facts is one of the reasons why writers like Lie tend to get lost in their their "Zainichi" rhetoric.

To be continued.

What's in a name

Lie's "basic facts of nationaliaty and names" statement continues with a long paragraph on the names used to describe Korean entitities. The -- which is equally erroneous and misleading with respect to the legal and bureaucratic realities in Japan.

Here is another statement that lacks truthfulness (page x, underscoring mine).

Somewhat related to this statement, Lie later makes the following remark (page 12, underscoring mine).

"Zainichi"

There was nothing -- to repeat -- "ethnic" about being "Korean" during the "colonial period" or later -- just as "ethnicity" has had no bearing, then or now, on whether one is "Japanese". Both have been raceless statuses.

Being a Korean has always been a matter of regional (Korea, Chosen, ROK, DPRK) registration status. No one who was "Chosenese" in the prefectures during the period that Korea was a part of Japan called Chosen could have been "Zainichi" -- because "-nichi" (Japan) embraced "Chosen" (Korea).

In other words, because Chosen was part of Japan, and Chosenese were Japanese, Chosenese in Chosen, and Chosenese in Taiwan, were also "in Japan". Contemporary Japanese descriptions of the sovereign Empire of Japan could not possibly have referred to such people as "Zainichi" anything -- in the way Lie and others wish to use the term today.

This was not simply the "logic" of the colonizer and colonized -- but a fact of the consequence of the international recognition of Japan's annexation of Korea as Chosen and the implications of the annexation for the nationality status of Chosenese as Japanese subjects.

Under the terms of surrender at the end of World War II, the Allied Powers separated "Korea" from "Japan" as it defined "Japan" for Occupation purposes. Even during the Occupation, however, legally the prefectures were still the "Naichi" ("Interior"), as this continued to be an entity in Japanese law. Even the 1952 Civil Affairs notification concerning loss of Japanese nationality referred to the "Naichi" as an entity distinct from "Chōsen" and "Taiwan".

The term "Zainichi Chōsenjin" began to be used during the Occupation as a reference to Koreans in Occupied Japan. Such persons continued to be under the authority of Japanese laws, as enforced by the government of Japan within Occupied Japan, to the extent that it was permitted to operate under its own authority by the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP).

SCAP directed the government of Japan to treat Koreans, Formosans, and some other categories of Japanese nationals "in Japan" -- meaning "Occupied Japan" -- as aliens for border control and registration purposes, while continuing to respect the fact that they were still Japanese nationals. Determinations of their legal status in Occupied Japan, however, continued to be largely based on laws and ordinances that had been applied to Taiwan and Chōsen -- though Japan had lost control and jurisdiction over these territories.

Lie has difficulty with these most "basic facts" because he has not adequately surveyed and appreciated how "Koreans in Japan" were actually described and treated under Japanese laws inder legal arrangements of the Allied Occupation of Japan. These facts make sense only in the light of how SCAP itself redefined "Japan" and "Japanese" during the postwar Occupation.

The Instruments of Surrender signed on 2 September 1945 resulted in the separation of "Korea" (Chosen) from "Japan" for the purposes of control and jurisdiction of various parts of the formal and informal Empire of Japan under Allied authorites. GHQ/SCAP directives, pursuant to Joint Chiefs of Staff directives, redefined "Japan" as the area that came be called "Occupied Japan" -- meaning the occupation zone which included the prefectures minus Okinawa, Karafuto, and some islands associated with Hokkaido, Kagoshima, and Tokyo.

The same directives redefined "Japanese" as those legal domiciles defined by registers within the occupation zone called "Japan" -- whereas Japanese nationals who were legally domiciled in parts of the Empire of Japan outside "Japan" would be treated as "non-Japanese" for purposes of "repatriation" and border control, which came to include alien registration. In the meantime -- until treaties determined otherwise -- such "non-Japanese" would remain Japanese nationals under Japanese law.

This treatment of Japanese affiliated with parts of Japan outside "Japan" applied not only to "Koreans" and "Formosans" but also to "Nansei islanders" -- meaning people with registers in Okinawa prefecture and a few islands to the north of Okinawa that were part of Kagoshima prefecture -- since these were under direct US military (rather than Allied) administration.

To be continued.

Names

Lie makes the usual comments about names and "coming out" by beginning to use "ethnic Korean names" rather than "passing names". He makes this statement during a discussion of what calls "[t]he 'real name' initiative" (page 110, underscoring mind).

This is not true -- which is clear from the De Vos and Lee work which Lie describes (and generally pans) as "the most elaborate Anglophone social-scientific work on Zainichi" (book under review, page 2). My own contribution to the De Vos and Lee book includes a long section on names (pages 290-295), the first part of which shows that NHK was accommodating the Sino-Korean readings of some Koreans in Japan even while it was defending its general name-reading policy in court -- as the following passage from my article shows (Wetherall 1981, pages 290-291).

Suffrage

Lie seriously exposes the flaws in his "Zainichi" definition when he takes about "suffrage" in Japan (pages 152-153, underscoring mine).

Has Lie read the 1995 Supreme Court ruling on Kim et al v Osaka, 1995? Not only did the Supreme Court dismiss the case, but the nationality of the plaintiffs in appellants had no bearing on the Supreme Court's ruling -- which merely recognized that the 1947 Consitution did not prohibit aliens from participating in local elections.

In no way, shape, or form did the ruling lead to a "spread across the nation" of "the Zainichi right to vote in local elections". He is making this up -- or is relying on someone else who has made this up.

A few -- but very few -- municipalities have, since the ruling, allowed some aliens to participate in some aspects of local government. The Local Autonomy Law, however, has never been revised to permit the sort of "right" that Lie implies. All efforts to pass alien suffrage legislation through the Diet have failed.

If and when Japan's lawmakers get around to revising Japan's laws to permit some degree of alien suffrage in local governments, the law will not exceptionalize "Zainichi" by any definition, but will extend specific rights of local suffrage to aliens with specific statuses of residence -- most likely permanent residents, including Special Permanent Residents.

To be continued.

"Immigration and Naturalization Bureau"

Nothing exposes Lie's unfamiliarity with law and bureaucracy in Japan more than his many references to an alleged "Immigration and Naturalization Bureau" -- which does not exist. There is a so-called "Immigration Bureau" which -- contrary to this Americanized English -- exercises control over the border crossings, out and into Japan, by aliens and Japanese alike. Naturalization is handled, along with numerous other civil matters, at regional legal affairs bureaus, which have nothing to do with immigration.

I have no idea why Lie should assume that things work -- or should work -- in Japan as they do in the United States -- or used to work. During 2003, INS (Immigration and Naturalization Service) ceased to exist. Some of its former functions are now carried out in an organization called USCIS (United States Citizenship and Immigration Services).

To be continued.

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