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John Dower on "race" and "nationality"

"Legal Perspectives" on territoriality and nationality

First posted 12 April 2008
Last updated 23 June 2011

Dower 1986 • Yamato race | "natives" and "Japanese" as "nationality"
Dower 1999 • "Korea, Taiwan (also known as Formosa)" | gaichi or "dependency", naichi or "metropolitan Japan"
Selected topics • Interior and Exterior jurisdictions

This review is a springboard for examining the continuing importance -- six decades after Chosenese and Taiwanese lost their Japanese nationality in 1952 -- of the territorial foundations of Japanese nationality.

John W. Dower
1986
1999

War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War
New York: Pantheon Books, 1986
xii, 398 pages, hardcover

Japan in War and Peace: Selected Essays New York: New Press, 1993 (hardcover), 1995 (paper cover)
x, 368 pages, paper cover

Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II
New York, London: W. W. Norton & Company, The New Press, 1999
676 pages, hardcover

These three books -- especically the 1986 and 1999 works -- are major contributions to the English literature on World War II in Asia and the Pacific. However, their readability and apparent credibility have led many researchers to suppose that Dower knew more than he did about some of the topics he touched on in passing -- like Japan's postwar Constitution, nationality and naturalization, and ethnic, racial, and other minorities.

The popularity of Dower's racialization of the war and its aftermath have significantly inspired other writers to impute race and racism to Japan's policies and laws, concerning "Koreans" and other vaguely defined minorities in Japan, before, during, and after the Pacific War. For sure, not few earlier writers addressed "racial" attitudes, but Dower's books appear to me to have inspired what I would call a "fashion" of racialization.

Biographical note

John Dower was a professor of Japanese studies at the University of California in San Diego when War Without Mercy was published in 1986. By 1999 when Embracy Defeat came out, he was a professor of history at the Massachusettes Institute of Technology, needs little further introduction. Both of these books, which received numerous awards, became virtual bestsellers among publications on Pacific War and the postwar Occupation of Japan. Dower's influence on younger scholars has been enormous. Many writers on social issues in Japan have adopted his views, expressed in both books,

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Dower 1986

Yamato race

Chapter 1, Patterns of a Race War, begins with an overview of mainly "Western racial fears" of the "Asian racial dreams" evident in the "Pan-Asianism" of the Greater East Asia Co-Posperity Sphere. Japan's seemingly oppressive actions in East Asia and the Pacific, before and after Pearl Harbor, inspired various reactions from critics.

Dower speaks of "the blatant racism of the Nazis" (page 4) and of the "racist underpinnings of the European and American colonial structure" (page 5)" -- whereas Japan "did not invade independent countries in southern Asia" but only "colonial outposts which the Westerners had dominated for generations, taking abolutely for granted their racial and cultural superiority over their Asian subjects" (page 5).

Some critics, Dower says, saw Japan's actions in Asia as those of a fascist state. Some regarded them more as the desperate ambitions of a latecomer to regional imperialism. Yet others thought they reflected "a racial supremacism as virulent in its own way as the master-race theories of the Nazis" (Dower 1986, page 8).

Having raised the spectre of "master-race", Dower immediately segues to the following paragraph and endnote (page 8, and note 7, page 320, underscoring mine).

That there was a decidedly racist component to the very conception of the Co-Prosperity Sphere is indisputable. Although the Japanese government frequently admonished its officials and citizens to avoid all manifestations of racial discrimination, the operative language of the new sphere was in fact permised on the belief that the Japanese were destined to preside over a fixed hierarchy of peoples and races. An Imperial Army document from the summer of 1942, for example, divided the nationalities of Asia into "master races," "friendly races," and "guest races." A massive secret study prepared in the civilian bureaucracy in 1942-43 was entitled "Global Policy with the Yamato Race as Nucleus," and expatiated upon the destiny of the Japanese as the "leading race" in Asia and implicitly the world. The Co-Prosperity Sphere, it was argued there, would contribute in both material and psychological ways to maintaining that superiority "eternally." For the Japanese, Pan-Asianism was thus a hydra-headed ideology, involving not merely a frontal attack on the Western colonial powers and their values but also discrimination vis-à-vis the other races, nationalities, and cultures of Asia/u>. [Note 7]

[Note 7]  For "master races" (shūjin minzoku) [sic = shujin minzokou], "friendly races" (yūjin minzoku), and "guest races" (kigū minzoku, see August 6, 1942, "Plan for Leadership of Nationalities in Greater East Asia" in Joyce C. Lebra, ed., Japan's Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere in World War II: Selected Readings and Documents (1975; Oxford University Press), 118-21. The "leading race" (shidō minzoku concept and secret document of 1942-43 are discussed at length here in chap. 10, where the use of minzoku, which can also be translated "people," is defined.

I gather that "shūjin" is an error for "shujin" (主人), meaning the "master" or "head" or "proprietor" or "lord" of a home or entity -- as opposed to "kigū" (寄寓), a "guest" or "visitor" or "temporary inhabitant". Whereas "yōjin" (友人) means a "friend" or "companion" in reference to someone with whom one is on good terms and keeps company as a associate or peer.

Japan had no "citizens" then or now. Then people with Japanese nationality were "subjects" (shinmin) and "nationals" (kokumin). Today Japan has only "nationals" (kokumin). The United States, then as now, had "citizens" and "nationals", which were different statuses of people who possessed US nationality. Under the domestic laws of both Japan and the United States, "nationality" referred to the civil status recognized in international law as affiliation with a state, regardless of race. Japanese domestic laws did not define race or discriminate on account of race, while some US federal, state, and local codes treated people differently according to their putative race.

Throughout his book, however, Dower uses all manner of words -- citizen, nation, nationality, people, race, state -- with practically no glossing of their meanings in Japanese. One gets glimples in the transliterations of the titles of Japanese sources in the endnotes, but there is little attempt in the main text to differentiate what words that, however similar they may appear to be in some contexts, are not the same.

Two-thirds into the main text, "Yamato race" is finally glossed as "Yamato minzoku" (page 205). Not until Chapter 10 -- "Global Policy with the Yamato Race as Nucleus" -- does he, as promised in the above cited endnote, discuss at length the word "minzoku", and this is what he says (page 267, underscoring mine).

In their theoretical explanation of "race," the Japanese researchers drew a distinction between the narrow and more biologically oriented concept (Rasse in German, jinshu in Japanese) and the broader, more culturally influenced perception of a race as a people or nationality (Volk in German, minzoku in Japanese). Minzoku, or Volk, was the core word. The report most often identified the Japanese themselves as the Yamato minzoku ("Yamato people" or "Yamato race"), rather than simply the "Japanese" (Nipponjin), but the same general rubric applied to other peoples as well. The Chinese, for example, were identified as the Han minzoku ("Han people" or "Han race," from the historical designation dating back to the ancient Han dynasty). Although "blood" was undeniably important, strictly biological considerations tended to receive peripheral attention from the report's writers. Similarly, the great color categories of white, yellow, and black which so fascinated Causcasians were mentioned only rarely. At one point, the report explicitly referred to this as an Anglo-American fixation that should be avoided by the Japanese, and made the familiar point that such color prejudice was incompatible with Japan's alliance with Germany and Italy.

According to an endnote, the title of the work from which Dower digests the distinctions between "minzoku" and "jinshu" in Japaneses "Yamato Minzoku o Chūkaku to suru Sekai Seisaku no Kentō [An Investigation of Global Policy with the Yamato Race as Nucleus]" (Chapter 10, note 1, page 357). Apparently, though, Dower is not himself moved to distinguish between what was "race" as a narrow biological concept, and what was "race" as a broader anthropological and even political notion. And one of the major flaws of Dower's otherwise impressive book is precisely that he imputes more to "race" than the "race" metaphor deserves.

Dower talks about "race relations" and "patterns of racial . . . thinking" (page 12), and "racial and racist ways of thinking" (page 13), apparently differentiating between "racial" and "racist" -- but he does not elaborate on what constitutes "racist" as opposed to "racial" thinking. Does his own speaking of "the Japanese" constitute a "racial" label for those he considers the "people" of Japan as a matter of "race"?

Dower describes the way the door was closed to Asian immigration under the "quota" system introduced in 1924. Here describes the setting of quotas for each "nationality" as two percent of the population of the nations resident in the United states in 1920, but narrow door was "closed to Asians (as well as Arabs)". The quota law also stipulated, he said, that "no one could enter the United States as a permanent resident who was not eligible to become a naturalized citizen, and under prior regulations Asians already had been designated ineligible for naturalization" -- referring to fact that "the naturalization law amounted to a pure 'color' law" (page 164).

Dower exaggerates. The so-called "Immigration Act of 1924" did not forbid the entry as permanent residents of aliens not allowed to naturalize. It provided, in fact, that "No alien ineligible to citizenship shall be admitted to the United States unless such alien . . ." -- and proceeded to list several exceptions. And indeed a number of aliens "ineligible to citizenship" continued to be admitted to the United States as non-quota immigrants -- including some Japanese nationals.

While clear that US naturalization codes had been racist from their inception in the late 18th century shortly after the founding of the United States -- to say nothing of the rulings in numerous court cases, some of which Dower cites -- as "color" laws they were far from "pure". Had they been pure, all manner of people who were not categorically "white" in the view of US laws and the courts would have been barred from naturalization.

Dower goes on to review how, during the war with Japan, United States abrogated its Chinese exclusion laws, and allowed a handful of Chinese to come to the United States, since the United States and China were allies in a war that arguably started because of the manner in which the United States, with Great Britain and the Netherlands, had supported China's cause against Japan after Japan's military hijacking of China's state in the late 1930s. And he makes it clear that "the European and American colonial structure" -- far more than Japan, which had colonized only Korea and Formosa -- had "suppressed independence in most of Asia" (page 167).

Yet not once does Dower disclose that, while the United States was closing its doors to immigration from Asia, and legally banning the naturalization of Asian immigrants, and while some states were barring interracial marriages, Japan imposed no racial restrictions on entry to the country and legally facilitated access to its nationality, through marriage and adoption in 1873, and also through naturalization from 1899 -- with no racial restrictions whatever. And during the decades of the late 19th and early 20th century -- while Asians including Japanese, Chinese, and Indians were regarded as "ineligible to citizenship" under US naturalization laws -- some Chinese, Indians, and nationals of other countries were becoming Japanese.

"It was not that the Japanese people were, in actuality, homogeneous and harmonious, devoid of individuality and thoroughly subordinated to the group," Dower observes, "but rather that the Japanese ruling groups were constantly exhorting them to become so" (page 31). He speaks of Japan as "a race and nation" in the eyes of "most Europeans and Americans" (page 38), and the perception in the United States of "the Japanese enemy" as not just the "enemy's armed forces" but in terms of "the Japanese as a race and culture" (page 53). He cites Admiral Halsey's call for "the almost total elimination of the Japanese as a race" (page 55), and remarks that public opinion in both the United Kingdom and the United States demanded, "if not the extermination of the Japanese people" then certainly the country's thorough defeat (page 55).

He talks about the "national and racial destiny" of "the Japanese people" (page 56) and "national psychology" (page 57), and "national psychosis" (page 129)

Racial world view

Dower's conflation of "race" and "nation" is evident throughout the book when one examines usage in his Japanese sources. One of many cases in point would be the following characterization of a magazine article published immediately after the beginning of the Pacific War (page 211, and note 17, page 350, underscoring mine.

In the January 1942 issue of Bungei Shunjū, one of Japan's most popular middle-class monthlies, war with the Allied powers was greeted in racial terms that relied on much of the same sort of abstract and color-sufused ["the red heart of the yellow Japanese"] language. [Note 16] The outbreak of the war, it was stated in an article entitled "Establishing a Japanese Racial Worldview," clarified the Japanese character, whose basic traits were brightness, strength, and uprighteousness. These qualities made the Japanese "the most superior race in the world," and it followed that all other countries and peoples of Asia should be assimilated into the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere in accordance with their particular abilities. Under no circumstances was it appropriate to think in terms of "formal equality," since no one else could equal the "bright and strong" moral superiority of the Japanese. Thus, the legalist liberal worldview of the European and American powers had to be replaced by a racial worldview emanating from Japan. And the foundation of this racial worldview, in turn, would necessarily be a level of "spiritual and physical purity" that the Japanese alone were capable to attaining.

[Note 16]  Ogushi [sic = Ōgushi] Toyoo, "Nippon Minzoku Sekaikan no Kakuritsu" [Establishing a Japanese Racial World View], Bungei Shunjū 20.1 (January 1942): 24-33.

Ōgushi Toyoo (大串兎代夫 1903-1967), a regular contributor to the magazine, was both a legal scholar and a Ministry of Education official. He was deeply involved in the ministry's "National Spiritual Culture Institute" (国民精神文化研究所 Kokumin Seishin Bunka Kenyōjo), which as its name implies promoted research on the spiritual culture of nationals (国民 kokumin). Purged from public office after the war, he returned to his legal roots, as an attorney and professor of law. Founded in 1932, the Nationality Spiritual Culture Institute, via wartime mergers with other agencies and postwar transformations including those carried out during the Occupation of Japan, is today the National Institute for Educational Policy Research (国立教育政策研究所 Kokuritsu kyōiku seisaku kenkyūjo).

It is not that Ōgushi did not believe in the superiority of "Nihon minzoku" as a spiritual superior entity and standard bearer of morality. The problem is whether it was "racial" or whether it was "national" in the sense of the content of demographic vessel that comprised the "nationals" of Japan. "Nihon kokumin" referred to Japanese nationals as subjects of Japan who possessed Japan's nationality -- a raceless status, hence embracing Japanese who were territorially "Interiorites" (affiliates of prefectural Interior registers), "Taiwanese" (affiliates of Taiwan registers), or "Chosenese" (affiliates of Chōsen registers). "Nihon minzoku" referred to nationals as an ethnic collectivity, idealized as "Yamato minzoku" -- the romantic reference to the collective ethnic nation. "Nihon" was a state, consisting of "nationals" (kokumin) belonging by law to various territories, within which there were various kinds of people -- all of whom were supposed to aspire to being proud members of Japan's ethnic nation (Nihon minzoku) idealized as the Yamato ethnic nation (Yamato minzoku).

The United States also classified "race" two ways, one in the narrow "color" sense, another in the broader anthropological sense of "minzoku" -- as defined, for example, in the thick "Dictionary of Races or Peoples" published by the United States government in 1910 for purposes of racial classification on passenger manifests of vessels arriving from foreign ports. The introduction of this guidebook, which became a standard in other countries that also required captains to disclose information on arriving passengers, spoke of "five grand divisions . . . the Caucasian, Ethiopian, Mongolian, Malay, and American, or, as familiarly called, the white, black, yellow, brown, and red races . . . made upon physical or somatological grounds" -- and "the subdivisions of these into a multitude of smaller 'races' is made largely on a linguistic basis" (see Race boxes at ports of entry).

Such "racial" thinking clearly inspired ethnologists and others in Japan, who did not resist viewing humans "racially" -- whether in the "five grand divisions" or in terms of the smaller "races" diffferentiated mainly by language. Dower, referring to a report published

Doak on "ethnic nation" and "race"

Kevin M. Doak takes Dower to task almost reflexively representing "minzoku" as "race" rather than "ethnic nation".

See my reviews of several of Doak's publications with respect to how he attempts to define the semantic ranges of "minzoku" and "kokka" and "kokumin" under Doak 2007.

Shimazu on Japan's 1919 "racial equality proposal"

See review of Naoko Shimazu's Japan, Race and Equality: The Racial Equality Proposal of 1919 for another faulty analysis of Japan's racial quality proposal.

RESUME definitions of "race" that were prevalent in "white" America, Britain, Australia, and "white" Canada" (minzoku) -- such legal differentiation ese and Chosenese as affiliates under its territorial -- "used the term " -- and intended to say "national equality" (minzoku rather than "that the English term "race" was more likely to refer to what in Japanese was called "jinshu" than than to what in Japanese was called "minzoku". But she sho) also appears to be attributed to , for athe charter of the Legdisi, where Japan proposed that the League of Nationals understood Wilson to have been calling for racial quality, he says, they were dissillugot the impression that Wilson meant racial equality, Japanese understood that Wilson meant "racial equality" that its Japanese translation "which became the equivalent of ", the notion that "nationalism" is historically more closely associated takes Dower to task for 大串 兎代夫（おおぐし とよお、1903年1月19日 - 1967年1月3日）は、日本の法学者、国家学者。元名城大学総長。従四位勲三等瑞宝章。国民精神文化研究所では三羽烏の1人と呼ばれた。 大串兎代夫 日本民族世界観の確立 文藝春秋 東京：文藝春秋社 第20巻、第1号 昭和16年 印刷 昭和17年1月1日 発行 ( 新年号、特集：大東亜戦争完遂のために Ōgushi Toyoo Nihon minzoku sekaikan no kakuritsu [Establishment of Japanese national worldview] Bungei shunjū Tokyo: Bungei Shunjū Sha Volume 20, Number 1 New year issue, Special feature: For the completion of the Great East Asia War KOSHO TWO ISSUES 文芸春秋２０巻１号　状態良 保田與重郎　横光利一 1,000円 保田與重郎　横光利一、 文芸春秋社、 昭１７ 文芸春秋２０巻１１号　状態良 横光　間宮茂輔 1,000円 横光　間宮茂輔、 文芸春秋社、 昭１７ 文芸春秋　第２０巻第１号　大東亜戦争完遂のために、創刊２０周年記念原稿当選発表、他 菊池寛、大串兎代夫、河田嗣郎、ホールヴエック、他著、 文藝春秋社、 昭17 文芸春秋　昭17年2月（20巻2号）東亜共栄圏確立の原理・座談会、南方資源論（金子鷹之助）、大串兎代夫、牧野富太郎、･･･ 史録書房 1,000円 花房満三郎編、 文芸春秋社、 昭17 A5版216頁　ヤケ 文芸春秋　昭17年4月（20巻4号）翼賛議会確立のために（大串兎代夫他）、日独同盟の哲学的基礎（デュルクハイム）、斎･･･ 史録書房 1,000円 花房満三郎編、 文芸春秋社、 昭17 A5版216頁　ヤケ 文芸春秋　昭17年5月（20巻5号）経済再編成と転廃業・座談会、藤沢親雄、大串兎代夫、藤田徳太郎、横光利一他 史録書房 1,000円 花房満三郎編、 文芸春秋社、 昭17 A5版208頁　ヤケ 文芸春秋　昭17年11月（20巻11号）十二月八日の反省（大串兎代夫）他 史録書房 800円 藤沢閑二編、 文芸春秋社、 昭17 A5版208頁　ヤケ　背痛

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Dower 1993

In the first endnote to the eighth essay -- "Race, Language, and War in Two cultures" (pages 257-285) -- Dower refers the reader to War Without Mercy for "full annotations" and remarks that "Here I have sharpened the focus on racial language in comparative perspective" (page 285). His "Sources and Credits" at the end of the book state that the was originally presented under the title "Group Defamation and the American-Japanese War" at an April 1988 conference (page 356).

Dower's characterization of "Yamato minzoku" as an essentially "racist" notion is very strong (page 273, underscoring mine).

In [the expression] Yamato minzoku, the association became explicitly racial and exclusionary. The race had no identity apart from the throne and the mythic and religious (Shintō) traditions that had grown up around it, and no outsider could hope to penetrate this community. This was blood nationalism of an exceptionally potent sort.

Both "race" in the more physical sense of "jinshu" ("yellow" in opposition to "white") -- and "race" in the more historical, linguistic, cultural, and spiritual sense of "minzoku" (referring to "racioethnic nations") -- were, to be sure, powerful metaphors globally. That "blood nationalism" in the Empire of Japan was at times "potent" is undeniable. That it was "exceptionally" potent, when potent, strikes me as untrue.

Dower would have benefited from the writings of Kevin M. Doak, but Doak did not critically address Dower's excess racialization of "minzoku" until 1995 (see Kevin Doak on "minzoku" and "kokumin" for reviews of Doak's writing). If he saw Doak's 1995 article, and noticed Doak's remarks, he chose to ignore them in his 1999 book (see next).

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Dower 1999

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Dower on "kokumin" and 1950 Nationality Law

Dower, in Embracing Defeat, makes this statement regarding the choice for "kokumin" rather than "jinmin" to represent "the people" in the draft constitution presented the Japanese government by the Supreme Commander for the Allied Forces, General Headquarters (GHQ/SCAP) (Dower 1999, pages 381-382, italics his, underscoring mine).

Although an initial government translation of the GHQ draft prepared by the Foreign Ministry rendered "people" as jinmin, Matsumoto and Satō discarded this in favor of kokumin, an inherently more conservative term. Written with two ideographs denoting "country" and "people," kokumin is an everyday word that carries connotations of the people harmoniously merged in the nation. There is no intimation here of a potentially adversarial relationship between the people and the nation, the state, or the highest authorities -- including, of course, the emperor. On the contrary, as the government subsequently took care to explain, the concept of kokumin embraced the emperor himself, thus signifying that the emperor and the people were one. During the war years, kokumin had been a familiar word in propagandistic sloganeering, essentially synonymous with "the Japanese" or even "the Yamato race."

Satō Tatsuo was frank in later explaining why kokumin, with its consensual and natinalistic connotations, was chosen for the new constitution. He and his associates, he stated, "adopted kokumin because (1) we wanted to emphasize the sense of the people as members of the state, and (2) we thought that jinmin would convey a sense of the people in exclusion and opposition to the Emperor." Although advisors to Government Section called attention to the conservative connotations of kokumin, General Whitney and Colonel Kades did not deem the distinction important and allowed the rendering to stand. [Note 19].

[Note 19] (Page 614) Inoue discusses these linguistic issues in some detail, and includes the citation from Satō in her treatment; pp. 184-205, esp. 188-90. The problematic nature of the term kokumin was emphasized to Whitney and Kades by a team of advisers consisting of T. A. Bisson, Cyrus Peake, and Kenneth Colegrove; this is discussed on pp. 188-93 of a manuscript by T. A. Bisson entitled "Reform Years in Japan, 1945-47: An Occupation Memoir," which has been published in Japanese translation but not in English; see Nakamura Masanori and Miura Yōichi, trans., Nihon Senryō Kaisō-ki (Tokyo, Sanseidō, 1983).

Regarding Inoye, Dower writes (page 609, Note 3): "For an analysis of linguistic differences between the Japanese and English-language versions of the constitution, see Kyoko Inoue, MacArthur's Japanese Constitution: A Linguistic and Cultural Study of Its Making (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991)."

A dozen pages later, Dower wraps up his discussion of the "jinmin" versus "kokumin" issue like this (Dower 1999, page 394, italics his, underscoring mine).

Where the Americans had intended to affirm that "all persons" are equal before the law, and included language in the GHQ draft that explicitly forbade discrimination on the basis of race or national origin, Satō and his colleagues erased these guarantees through linguistic subterfuge. By interpreting kokumin as referring to "all nationals," which was indeed a logical construction of the term, the government succeeded in denying equal civil rights to the hundreds of thousands of resident ex-colonial subjects, including Taiwanese and especially Koreans. The blatantly racist nature of this revision was subsequently reinforced by "terminological" revisions during the Diet deliberations, and this provided the basis for discriminatory legislation governing nationality passed in 1950. [Note 52]

[Note 52] (Page 616) Koseki (1988), pp. 235-36; Koseki (1989), pp. 160-61; Asahi Shimbun, January 22, 1996 (p. 12). Furukawa Atsushi suggests that Satō was "abnormally" concerned about the possibility of treating foreigners euqlly under the constitution; see Sodei Rinjirō and Takemae Eiji, eds., Sengo Nihon no Genten (Tokyo: Yūhisha, 1992), vol. 1, p. 168.

Regarding Koseki (1988) Dower writes (page 616, Note 51): "Shōichi, "Japanizing the Constitution," Japan Quarterly 35-3 (July-September 1988), pp. 239-40. The impetus for rendering the constitution in colloquial Japanese came from a lobby calling itself the National Language Alliance (Kokumin no Kokugo Renmei), which included the novelist Yamamoto Yūzō as well as a former judge and bureaucrat, Miyake Shōtatō, who had been purged by SCAP.

Regarding Koseki (1989) Dower writes (page 609, Note 3): The most highly regarded recent Japanese scholarly analysis of the "birth" of the new constitution is Koseki Shōichi, Shin Kempō no Tanjō (Tokyo: Chūō Kōronsha, 1989). For an English edition of this incisive study, edited and translated by Ray A. Moore, see The Birth of Japan's Postwar Constitution (Boulder: Westview Press, 1997). This appeared as the present book was being finalized, and citations here are to the original Japanese edition. . . . ."

Koseki, a specialist on constitutional law, qualifies the "jinmin" versus "kokumin" issue somewhat differently, in the Japan Quarterly article referred to by Dower (Satō 1988, page 236, underscoring mine)

The government draft translated "people" as kokumin, the semantic equivalent of "Japanese." SCAP objected that kokumin was inappropriate because it included the emperor as one of the people (English law distinguishes between the two). Some Occupation officials favored jinmin, which covers all inhabitants of Japan, including foreign nationals, but excludes the emperor. Satō Tatsuo objected strongly to the leftist overtones of the term and insisted on retaining kokumin.

Koseki goes on to say this about the 1950 Nationality Law (Satō 1988, page 236, underscoring mine).

The government presented its draft Constitution to the Diet in June. During parliamentary deliberations, the Cabinet Legislative Bureau asked that a clause be included at the beginning of Chapter 3, "Rights and Duties of the People," reading "The conditions for being a Japanese national shall be determined by law." This stipulation, worded virtually the same as Article 18 of the Meiji Constitution, was adopted as Article 10. In a critical choice of terminology, the article rendered "national" as kokumin, thereby equating "all of the people" with "all nationals"." The Nationality Law, enacted in 1950 after the Occupation had abandoned its program of democratic reform, followed Meiji jurisprudence in basing nationality on patrilineal consqnguinuity. Through this clever maneuver, the Cabinet Legislative Bureau had retained an important principle of traditional legal philosophy and practice. In stead of opposing the equal rights provisions of the SCAP draft, the bureau introduced a series of seemingly minor changes in wording that decisively limited the rights of foreign residents.

Koseki then speculates about Satō's ulterior motive in favoring "kokumin" as the term defining "the people" in the 1947 Constitution in relation to "former colonial subjects from Korea and Taiwan" (Satō 1988, page 236, underscoring mine).

When the Constitution was drafted, the vast majority of foreign nationals in Japan were former former colonial subjects from Korea and Taiwan. Satō almost certainly had them in mind as he worked to eliminate the equal rights provisions and introduce a nationality clause. As a result, ex-colonial residents were never given equal civil rights. Today [1988], although 90 percent of the resident Koreans and Chinese were born and raised in Japan, their non-Japanese nationality excludes them from full participation in society. They pay taxes and fulfill other obligations of citizenship but do not have the right to vote, to teach in public schools, or to work in the public sector.

Chung's version of postwar legal history is clearly inspired by Dower's version, and Dower's version is clearly inspired by Koseki and others who have omitted a number of facts that suggest that the concerns of Japanese legalists like Satō were considerably broader than concerns with the contemporary or future treatment of Taiwanese and Chosenese. I will enumerate the serious omissions in their arguments after clarifying a few details.

The legalist Matsumoto Jōji (松本烝治 1877-1954), a former director of the Legislative Bureau, was the cabinet minister responsible for coordinating the revision of the Constitution during the early phases of the drafting of the new Constitution.

Satō Tatsuo (佐藤達夫 1904-1974), a career bureaucrat, had served in the Ministry of Interior before joining the Legislative Bureau (法制局 Hōseikyoku), an Cabinet office established under the 1890 Constitution. In 1962, the bureau was renamed the Cabinet Legislation Bureau（内閣法制局 Naikaku Hōseikyoku) to differentiate it from the legislative bureaus that each of the two houses of parliament had established under the 1947 Constitution. Satō became the vice director of the bureau in March 1946 when the Japanese government began nationalizing GHQ's draft constitution.

Satō and a number of other legalists did, in fact, strongly oppose the manner in which the GHQ draft had stipulated, regarding "Rights and Duties of the People" (Chapter III), that "All natural persons are equal before the law" (Article XIII) and "Aliens shall be entitled to the equal protection of law" (Article XVI). This would seem to conflict with the preamble, which began "We, the Japanese People, acting through our duly elected represntatives in the National Diet . . . do proclaim the sovereignty of the people's will and do ordain and establish this Constitution . . . ."

It would seem that "the Japanese People" who would "proclaim the sovereignty of the people's will" could not possibly have included people other than "Japanese" as a matter of nationality. The terms "natural persons" would include all people, both Japanese (persons who possess Japan's nationality), and "aliens" (persons who do not possess Japan's nationality. The 1899 Nationality Law very clearly spoke of "Japanese" in terms "nationality".

The terms "equal before the law" and "equal protection of law" do not mean "equal" as a matter of status or treatment based on status. Why, in any event, should "natural persons" and "aliens" be included in a list of "rights and duties" regarding "the People" defined as those who possess sovereignty? Would this have meant that all natural persons in Japan, including all Japanese and all aliens, were to have the same rights and duties?

Whatever Satō et al personally felt about the Emperor as the symbolic head of state, in relation to the sovereign People of Japan, as legalists they were also responsible for ensuring that the new Constitution was compatible with conventional distinctions between people who are Japanese and not Japanese in terms of their nationality, meaning their formal affiliation with the state -- i.e., "kokumin". All countries in the world, including the United States, have made distinctions between nationals and non-nationals.

Both "jinimin" and "kokumin" had been legal terms in Japanese law since the Meiji period. The term "jinmin" (人民) was commonly used to refer to the "people" of the state that were parties to international treaties, but it was also used in the 1872 Family Regster Law -- as was "kokumin" (国民 national) -- as was "shinmin" (臣民 subject) -- to refer to those who to be registered as the "people" or "nationals" or "subjects" of Japan. In other words, from the start of the Meiji period, these terms, in reference to Japan, referred to "Nihonjin" (日本人 Nihonjin) -- the term used in a number of other status laws, including the 1873 proclamation concerning status changes in alliances of marriage or adoption between Japanese and aliens.

The 1890 Constitution spoke of "shimin" -- but personal status provisions in the 1890 Civil Code -- which satisfied the constitution's requirement for a statute that defined the conditions for being a "subject" -- spoke of "national status" [status of national] (国民分限 kokumin bungen), which defined "status of [being] Nihonjin" (日本人の分限 Nihonjin no bungen), inspired by phrasing familiar since as early as the 1873 marriage and adoption proclamation. The 1890 Rules of Laws also spoke of "national status" -- which became "nationality" (国籍 kokuseki) in the 1899 Nationality Law. The 1890 Civil Code had been promulgated but not enforced, and the government decided, when rewriting the civil code and rules of laws, to establish the "national status" provisions as an independent "nationality" law.

The 1899 Nationality Law, though also intended to satisfy the call in the 1890 Constitution for a statute determining the requirements of being a subject, also spoke only of "nationality" in terms of "being Japanese" at time of birth or gain or loss later in life. Being Japanese at time of birth was based on either jus sanguinis or jus soli standards, depending on the conditions of birth, and jus sanguinis standards were either patrilineal or matrilineal standards depending on the conditions of birth. Neither race nor ethnicity were issues.

Some Japanese laws spoke of "subjects" and others spoke of "nationals". There is no doubt that all people regarded as possessing Japan's nationality were regarded as "emperor (loyal) affiliates" or "subjects" (shinmin) in relation to the sovereign Emperor, as people whose allegiance belonged to him -- and as "nation affiliates" or "nationals" as members of the state's demographic nation.

It is true that at the time Japan's constitution was being revised that the sinific term "jinmin" was used by communists and others to mean "the people" as "citizens" (公民 kōmin) as a political collectivity, rather than as "nationals" (国民 kokumin), which implied that they were bound to the state. At the same time, the meaning of "the people" in American law was different than its meaning in "British law" -- as noted by Koseki (see above), and also at considerable length by Inoue (Inoue 1991, especially pages 185-186).

My point would be that where Inoue and others dwell too much on the terminological issue as one involving the status of the Emperor in relation to the people of Japan, Dower -- and many others before him and following him -- have ignored the more fundamental civil status issues, and mischaracterized the meaning of "kokumin" historically, in their rush to characterize the revisions reflected in the 1947 Constitution and the 1950 Nationality Law as "racist".

In point of fact:

At the , and revision in order to advance the notion that "race" and "racism" inspired the "linguistic subterfuge" (Chang: ) unreasonably were different and the meaning of "the people law and "the people" in British law as absolute Article specifically referred to aliens in the new Constitution. GHQ/SCAP's attempt to The manner in which GHQ/SCAP attempted to do so was rather clumsy -- in view of the conflicts between the meanings of "natural persons" and "the People" in rather sloppy GHQ/SCAP draft. In fact, "natural persons" would have embraced all people, but "the People" would have embraced only those who were considered as "nationals" in Japanese domestic law, or as "citizens" in US domestic law. All states in principle differentiate between their own nationals and aliens.

Apart from Satō's and

To be continued.

"kokumin" and 1950 Nationality Law

Forthcoming.

"mixed-blood children" and nationality

Forthcoming.

Top  

See also comments in my review of Koshiro 1999, an earlier draft of which she says was read by Dower, who contributed comments.
  1. 1872 Family Register Law and 1873 status change proclamation
    The term "kokumin" (national) -- while often nationalistic and even racialistic in vernacular usage -- had at the same time been a legal reference to civil status in family registers in territories that were part of Japan's sovereign dominion law, since the Meiji period. It was used, along with "jinmin" (people) and "shinmin" (subject) since in the 1872 Family Register Law. A 1873 proclamation on status changes resulting from alliances of marriage or adoption with aliens very clearly provided for the gain or loss of the "status of being Japanese" (Nihonjin taru bungen) as a matter of register membership -- without regard to race or ethnicity, which were not coded in Japanese law.
  2. 1890 Constitution and 1890 Civil Code and Rules of Laws
    The 1890 Constitution referred to "shinmin" and stipulated that the conditions for being a subject of Japan would be determined by a statute. The first statute to do this was the 1890 Civil Law. Promulgated but never enforced, the Civil Law had a section called "national status" (kokumin bungen), the articles of which provided both patrilineal and matrilineal jus sanguinis as well as jus soli standards for being "Japanese" (Nihonjin) as a matter of birth, and standards for gaining, losing, or recovering "status of Japanese" (Nihonjin no bungen) later in life.
  3. 1898 Civil Code and Rules of Laws and 1899 Nationality Law
    By 1898 Japan had promulgated and enforced a new Civil Code and new Rules of Laws. The "national status" provisions of the 1890 Civil Code were separated from the code and rewritten as the 1899 Nationality Law. The provisions of the 1899 Nationality law, like those of the 1890 Civil Code, provided a mixture of jus sanguinis and jus soli standards for being regarded as "Japanese" at time of birth, and standards for gain, loss, or recovery of "nationality" later in life. The 1899 Nationality Law was applied to Taiwan the same year within three months of its enforcement in the prefectural Interior. It was applied to Karafuto in 1924. It was never applied to Chōsen, as Korea was renamed when annexed in 1910, ostensibly because Korea's 1909 Population Registration Law (Minsekihō), established under the supervision of Japan's Resident-General of Korea when Korea was a protectorate of Japan, had served as both a household register law and a quasi nationality law in the Empire of Korea, and continued to serve this purpose in Chōsen, in conjunction with revisions in household registration practices (based mainly on family law, as they were in the Interior and in Taiwan), introduced over the years by Japan's Government-General of Chosen. measures gradually introduced by the introduced under Japanese rule.registration law served the purposes of determining who
  4. 1925 House of Representatives Member Election Law
    This law extended rights of suffrage, as established by the 1890 Constitution and provisioned by earlier laws, to all male subjects, domiciled in election zones in the prefectural Interior, who met certain age, residential, and other conditions. Subjects not residing in an election zone were ineligible, and -- like Taiwan, Karafuto, and Chōsen -- some remote but populated Interior islands did not have election zones.
  5. 1927 Military Service Law
    In principle, this law required all male imperial subjects to register for possible military service. However, an article in the law limited service eligibility to "those subject to application of the Family Register Law" -- which applied only to the prefectural Interior. In 1938 Chosenese, and in 1942 Taiwanese, became eligible for special enlistment in the Army, meaning they could apply for admission to Army officer training schools and the like. In 1943, an imperial ordinance provided that imperial subjects not subject to the Family Register Law, meaning both Chosenese and Taiwanese, could be entered on rolls used to recruit special enlistees in the Navy. Also in 1943, the law was twice revised to expand the scope of conscription -- first to persons subject to either the Family Register Law or the Chōsen Civil Matters Ordinance, thus embracing Chosenese -- and then, by entirely dropping this territorial status qualification, imposing military obligations on all subjects in accordance with the principle of universal male eligibility stated in the 1927 law.
  6. 1945 revision to 1925 election law
    In December 1945, over three months into the Occupation of Japan, under the direction and surveillance of GHQ/SCAP, the Imperial Government of Japan promulgated revisions to the election law that extended suffrage to women, and dropped the ages of eligibility to vote and run for office from 25 and 30 to 20 and 35. In principle, all imperial subjects (the original law had used "shinmin" in accordance with the 1890 Constitution, which would remain in force until replaced) would be eligible to vote in the first postwar election, so long as they were qualified by age and residence, and were not disqualified for other reasons under the law. The problem arose as to what to do about Taiwanese and Chosenese, and Ryukyuans, since a 1 November 1945 SCAP directive had ordered the government to establish reception centers to accommodate the repatriation from Japan of "non-Japanese" -- referring specifically to "Koreans [Chosenese] and Chinese", but also including "persons formerly domiciled in Formosa and the Ryukyus". Chinese, as aliens, were had never been eligible for suffrage in Japan. But Taiwanese, Chosenese, and Ryukyuans had been Japanese subjects, and they remained Japanese nationals. Like other subjects (nationals), they remained formally eligible for suffrage if domiciled in an election zone. As an Interior law, the election law had not reached Korea (Chōsen) or Formosa (Taiwan), which were exterior territories, but it had reached the Ryukyus (mainly Okinawa prefecture) and a few other parts of the Interior. But Ch&#sen had been "liberated" from Japan, Taiwan had been "restored" to China, and the Ryukyus and a few other parts of the Interior were parts of other Occupation Zones, and as legal entitites outside Occupied Japan, Japan's control and jurisdiction no longer reached these places. The solution, reflecting these legal realities and GHQ/SCAP's "alienation" of Koreans, Formosans, and Ryukyuans, was to add supplementary provisions to the revision that would (1) "for the present suspend" the suffrage rights of people in registers not subject to the application of the Family Register Law (which reached only Interior registers), and (2) elections would not be held in Okinawa and other Interior territories affected by postwar jurisdictional restrictions until otherwise determined. The effect of these provisions was that Chosenese and Taiwanese domiciled in Occupied Japan would not be able to vote or run for office for the time being, while domiciled Okinawans and others in registers Interior registers outside Japan would be able be still be eligible.
  7. 1947 Constitution
    The use of "kokumin" basically reflected the notion that civil affiliation with the state (kokumin) was a matter of affiliation with a register in a polity of Japan's sovereign dominion. The Empire of Japan had been reduced Japan, defined as the prefectural Interior (Japan proper) minus a couple of prefectures and islands associated with other prefectures, but SCAP, while partly alienating Koreans, Formosans, and Ryukyuans for "repatriation" purposes, held that they still possessed Japanese nationality. For legal purposes, they were still "kokumin". The new Constitution did not change this fact.
  8. 1947 Alien Registration Order
    Effective the same day the new Constitution came into force, this imperial order, the last enacted by the Imperial Diet and promulgated by the Emperor of Japan under the 1890 Constitution, provided that Chosenese, and most Taiwanese, would for the time being be treated as aliens for the purpose of the order. It is clear from the order that they were not aliens as defined by the order, meaning persons who do not possess Japanese nationality, but people excepted from their non-alien status for purposes of the order. Note that the same order excepted some aliens -- specifically, Occupation personnel and their authorized dependents, and members of recognized foreign missions -- from treatment as aliens for the purpose of the order. SCAP's formal repatriation program had ended at the end 1946. Ryukyuans domiciled in Japan were not formally alienated for registration purposes. GHQ/SCAP was very much behind the alienation of Chonesese and most Taiwanese (Taiwanese who had become Chinese, and were parts of China's mission in Japan, were excepted from alien treatment).
  9. 1949 cabinet order concerning property acquisition by aliens
    GHQ's legal section held that an article in the government's draft of this "discriminates against Formosans and Koreans" in a manner it regarded as "contrary to the Japanese Constitution (Art. 14)". The Foreign Investment Board, to which the draft had been submitted for approval, agreed, and the draft was revised. In the final version of the order, Chosenese and Formosans are excluded from the definition of "aliens" by excluding them from an exclusion -- i.e., they are (1) first excluded by stipulating that "aliens" are those in a register to whom the Family Register Law does not apply, and (2) then included in a proviso that persons not in such a register would not be treated as aliens if they had Japanese nationality on the day Japan formally surrendered to the Allied Powers, so long as they had continuously resided in Japan and not acquired the nationality of another country or received a certificate of from a representative. Dual nationals with Japanese nationality were also excluded from treatment as aliens if they had been domiciled in Japan since the surrender or been permitted to repatriate to Japan, or been permitted by SCAP to permanently reside in Japan -- this being generally in accorded with principles of international law.

    and the Post-Surrender Policy.is in its formal definition of aliens for the purpose of the order. among SCAP ordered the government to revise its original order,
  10. 1947 Alien Registration Order

    Discriminatory? Yes. Because of "race"? Not so simple, since registers were based on civil status, not race. More important for the purposes of assessing Dower's (and Chung's) contentions is that the discrimination was not facilitated by any "linguistic subterfuge" involving "kokumin" or "nationality".

  11. 1945 As a legal term, "kokumin" continued to embrace Taiwanese and Chosenese domiciled in Occupied Japan as a matter of civil status based on their possession of Japanese nationality, an artifact of Japanese law which SCAP insisted Japan continue to respect until their nationality status could be determined by treaties between Japan and concerned states.
  12. Other legal measures, inspired by SCAP directives and otherwise approved by SCAP during the Occupation of Japan -- before the drafting and editing of the new Constitution and after its promulgation in 1946, and after its enforcement in 1947, partly alienated domiciled Taiwanese and Chosenese as "non-Japanese" while continuing to recognize their possession of Japanese nationality.
  13. The 1950 Nationality Law in no way changed the status of Taiwanese and Chosenese in Occupied Japan as Japanese. Its enforcement did, however, end the migration between prefectural (Interior) family registers and Taiwan (Formosan) or Chōsen (Korean) registers which had been possible under the 1899 Nationality operating with territorial (Interior, Taiwan, and Chōsen) register laws. Japanese courts have recognize these effects in legacy nationality confirmation cases.
  14. Taiwanese and Chosenese were not separated from Japan's nationality until 28 April 1952, when Taiwan (Formosa) and Chōsen (Korea) were formally separated from Japan, under the terms of the San Francisco Peace Treaty, which came into force on that date. While in effect they "lost" Japanese nationality, this loss of nationality was not predicated on the 1950 Nationality Law, hence was not regarded as haveing been "lost" for purposes of the law.
Chung's second contention
does two things of great interest. First, she bases her statement mainly on Dower's version of the adoption of "kokumin" in 1947 Constitution and its implications for the 1950 Nationality Law, which is flawed by its omission of a number of important facts, but especially the following. . Then, having earlier contended that before the 1950 Nationality Law the differentiation of "former colonial subjects" had been based on race or ethnicity, she contends that now discrimination was based on "citizenship status" -- her Americanism for status as a "national" of Japan if one one possesses its nationality.

Chung's implication that, in the end, "citizenship status" in the 1950 Nationality Law was also ultimately based on race and ethnicity is also consist with Dower's claim that the "racist" use of "kokumin" inspired the "discriminatory" 1950 Nationality Law (John W. Dower, Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II, New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1999, page 394, italics his, underscoring mine).

By interpreting kokumin as referring to "all nationals," which was indeed a logical construction of the term, the government succeeded in denying equal civil rights to the hundreds of thousands of resident ex-colonial subjects, including Taiwanese and especially Koreans. The blatantly racist nature of this revision was subsequently reinforced by "terminological" revisions during the Diet deliberations, and this provided the basis for discriminatory legislation governing nationality passed in 1950.

RESUME The Allied Powers, represented by the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP), who exercised his authority through his General Headquarters (GHQ) in Tokyo, had to deal with numerous legal issues, including nationality as a status that would determine how people were treated in Occupied Japan and other occupation zones. One issue was how to treat the Japanese nationality of people who were domiciled in "Japan" as redefined by the Allied Powers, but were territorially affiliated with parts of Japan which had been separated from Japan's control and jurisdiction either permanently or temporarily.

A number of writers have contended that the treatment of Taiwanese and Chosenese by the Japanese government, if not also by GHQ/SCAP, was "racist". Their classification as "non-Japanese" by SCAP for purposes of repatriation, their ineligibility to vote or run for office under the election law when revised in 1945, their treatment as "aliens" under the 1947 Alien Registration Order, and of course their "deprivation" of Japanese nationality in 1952 were motivated by "racism".

Forthcoming.

"Koreans in Japan" constitute an extremely mixed and ethnically diverse population of people in Japan, whether (1) the population of Special Permanent Resident (SPR) aliens of one or another Korean nationality who are legally linked to the former colonial population of Chosenese which lost its Japanese nationality in 1952, (2) the somewhat larger population of Korean aliens including, in addition to SPRs, migrants the Republic of Korea (practically all) and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (very few), or (3) the much larger population of people including, in addition to Korean aliens, Japanese and others who might be regarded as partly "Korean" on racioethnic rather than nationality grounds.

Special Permanent Resident is a status of residence based on separation from (loss of) Japanese nationality in 1952, accorded people who have been continuously residing in Japan since 2 September 1945 and descendents who were born in Japan and have continously resided in Japan. The SPR status is held by aliens representing about fifty (50) nationalities. The vast majority are Koreans, practically all of them nationals of the Republic of Korea (ROK) or "Kankoku", while the rest are nationals of "Chōsen" referring to the territory that was "liberated" from Japan in 1945 and formally separated from Japan in 1952. Some "Chōsen" Koreans claim to be citizens of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) but Japan does not recognize its nationality. SPR status is not, in any event, based on present nationality, but on having lost Japanese nationality on 28 April 1952 due to the effectuation of the San Francisco Peace Treaty, or having been born in Japan to such a person since this date -- with the additional qualification that one has continuously been domiciled in Japan since 2 September 1945 or since birth after this date.

after this dateNationality status is not, in any event, a qualification for SPR, while other but Japan does not recognize DPRK neither Japan nor ROK recognizes DPRK nationality. To my knowledge, none of the few aliens in Japan who entered the country as migrants from DPRK qualify as SPR, ROK nor Japan recognizecalled "Kita Chōsen) Japan does not recognize, called "Kita Chōsen" in most separated from Japan after World War which, when separated from Japan following World War II, represents the nationality linked with "Korean" nationality that Chosense, as Japanese nationals, were supposed to recover when Chō, a territory of Japan resulting from Japan's annexation of the Empire of Korea in 1910, was formally separated from Japan in 1952.of the former Japanese territory of Chōsen different nats are aliens whose status of residence in Japan The vast majority of Special Permanent Residents in Japan are Koreans of one or another Korean nationality, and some non-Korean SPRs are their nationality being a strictly civil, non-racial status.SPRs come in about fifty differenty nationalitys The first two populations are "Korean" "one-drop blood" or Korean status who qualify as Speci (whether These flaws stem from the desire of the author's to turn "Koreans in Japan" -- who consinto an "Overseas Korean" race box that essentially RESUME DISARMING "RACE" BIASED READERS

Your introduction, where you raise the questions you seek to answer, is the place where you can most effectively disarm readers who might think your purpose is to "apologize" for what Japan "did" (or rather "didn't") do. You have to stress that no matter what Japan "did" or "didn't" do -- in the absence of lateral agreement (with either the Allied Powers or with or or the other or both Korean states) -- would have been "unilateral" -- whether a purely "political" or "legal" or "moral" or "racial" issue -- mindful that ANY legal solution in the ABSENCE of an INTERNATIONAL agreement HAD TO BE based on Japan's domestic laws. Japan had basically two options -- (1) "choice", which would have required the creation of municipal registers in Japan -- or (2) alienization (denationalization in the form of "recovery" of Chosen -- i.e., "Korea", not ROK or DPRK -- nationality status when Chosen was separated from Japan) followed by naturalization (if, as an alien, one wanted to revert to Japanese nationality. Both the "choice" and "naturalization" options could have been facilitated by laws enabling qualified persons to create registers (or naturalize, and create registers) on the basis of a notification procedure.

MULTILATERAL UNILATERALITY Again, any action on Japan's part, in the absence of a lateral (bilateral or multilateral) agreement, would have been unilateral on Japan's part. Yet what Japan did was not exactly "unilateral" -- given the manner in which it resolved such issues with ROC, and given the manner in which such issues were negotiated with ROK -- BEFORE the 19 April 1952 notification concerning loss of nationality. The question, then, what legal conventions in regional (but especially Japan's) affiliation laws, and what political conditions, affected Japan's "moral choice". Assuming that the right "moral choice" would have been to offer a "nationality choice" -- you have to show that to have provided such a "nationality choice" was not as easy as it sounds, considering the laws of the land and the political battles that would have to have been fought and won in the Diet to change the laws of the land in any timely manner. And to have given a choice within the framework of contemporary laws wo uld have engendered political battles elsewhere, in Japan and between Japan and the Korean states. ROK, however, recognized (as it had to, being a sovereign state) that Japan's nationality was its domestic call, since all states have the right to define their own nationality. ROK was only interested in trying to get Japan to (1) recognize its claim to have rights to regard Chosenese as its nationals, or at least to recognize that ROK's domestic laws (namely, it's 1948 Nationality Law, would determine whether Chosenese would qualify as ROK nationals). And it wanted either "national treatment" or special permanent residence status for its nationals in Japan. KIM DONG-JO All this is clear from what has been written about the first round of ROK-Japan talks -- including, most importantly, what was written by Kim Dong-Jo in his 1986 book "Kan-Nichi no wakai" (titled in English "Korea-Japan Reconciliation"). Kim participated in the 1st, 4th, and 7th rounds -- and was ROK's head of delegation in the 7th and last (1964-1965) round -- and one of the two ROK plenipotentiaries who signed the 1965 normalization treaty and status agreement. He gives three pages to the "nationality problem" and I will translate them tomorrow. His statement sparkles with clarity. Kim, of course, was born, raised, and totally educated in Japan inclusive of Chosen -- schooled in both Keijo and Fukuoka -- a Ministry of Health bureaucrat in Kyoto at the time Japan surrendered -- then a careerist in ROK's Ministry of Foreign Affairs. You can't get better than that. And nothing he omits from his story, that I can think of, is ammunition for the argument that Japan commit ted a moral sin in (1) denationalization Chosenese and Taiwanese as of 28 April 1952 -- and, simultaneously, creating a legal status that evolved into the 1966 Kyotei status for qualified ROK nationals, the 1982 Tokurei status for others, and the 1991 Tokubetsu Eiju status for all. What Japan did was consistent with what ROK and Japan essentially agreed to in the 1st round of talks. If Price is insistent that you speak of "construction", then I would swap the term for "de-construct" by which you mean "un-constsruct" what had already been formally "constructed". In other words, go along with him to a point, but in the service of your own argument. It is thought terminating argument to claim that everything is "constructed". Sure, laws are "constructed" just as buildings are "constructed". But if you are faced with an existing building, and want to remodel it, or replace it with a new building, then you need to rebuild part of it, or tear it down. Even ROK did not entirely tear down the received Japanese territory of Chosen. The USAMGIK insisted that things be done in an orderly fashion, and that meant keeping a lot of things going as they were. 35 years (45 Actually, Price is wrong about "construction". The Allied Powers, and the Japanese government, were faced with the problem of having to "deconstruct" statuses which had already been constructed, and recognized, under international law and domestic law as practiced after the 1910 annexation. That was the whole object of "liberation" and the reduction of the Empire of Japan to "Japan" as redefined for Occupation (i.e., legal) purposes. The legal empire of Japan had to be "deconstructed" or "unconstructed" legally. It is a no-brainer to argue that ALL parties -- SCAP, the Japanese government, Korean organizations in Japan, and Korean organizations elsewhere, including of course ROK and DRPK when they were established -- were "racialist" in the racioethnic "nationalist" sense of "minzoku" considerations. It is vastly more difficult to show that the actual "deconstruction" of the territorial statuses which had been treated as cause for Japanese nationality proceeded in a gen erally orderly and "lawful" manner, from the viewpoint of all state parties (including SCAP representing the Allied Powers). ROK (and presumably also DPRK) did not, of course, RECOGNIZE that "Korea" had ever legally become "Chosen", hence "Koreans" had ever truly become "Chosenese", hence "Koreans" remained "Koreans" and had actually been "Koreans" in the eyes of ROK's 1919 provisional government.