The term “Japanese women in Korea” refers to adult women who moved to, remained in, or remigrated back to Japan from the Korean Peninsula through diverse trajectories within the transnational space-time of the post-1945 era. This study examines ho...
The term “Japanese women in Korea” refers to adult women who moved to, remained in, or remigrated back to Japan from the Korean Peninsula through diverse trajectories within the transnational space-time of the post-1945 era. This study examines how these Japanese women navigated their life trajectories for survival from August 15, 1945, to the early 1970s, and how they agentively determined their own belonging in the process. Within the context of the bilateral demarcation of nationality between South Korea and Japan, these women faced fragmented and precarious legal statuses. Departing from prevailing scholarly models that view them either as passive subjects entirely subjugated to state legal-institutional structures or as exceptional anomalies excluded by mono-nationalist discourse, this study repositions them as active agents. It demonstrates how they derived institutional mutability and carved out flexible membership that could not be neatly subsumed by a single nation or state. To this end, this research empirically traces their approximately 30-year history of belonging, spanning from the initial period of Doseon (渡鮮, crossing over to Korea) in 1946, to the collective petition incident at the Busan holding camp in 1951, to the naturalization policies and hometown visitation projects of the 1950s and 1960s, child relief practices and solidarity through mutual aid in the 1960s, and finally, the Kiuil (帰日, return to Japan) struggles in the 1970s in response to family registry-centered (戶籍, hojeok) legislation.
To elucidate these historical trajectories from a transnational perspective traversing both South Korea and Japan, this study critically reviews existing scholarship that has conventionally categorized Japanese women in Korea under the monolithic rubric of the "subaltern." Furthermore, to analyze the dynamics of "reconfiguration of positioning and identity" that constitutes the overarching theme of this study, it draws upon the conceptual framework of the "politics of belonging," yet refuses to restrict it to a linear, citizenship-based notion of "belonging" tied to a specific state or nation. Instead, it approaches their experiences as a process of securing substantive membership through "positioning," whereby the historical actors flexibly situated themselves within the interstices of the two nations along their specific life trajectories. This methodological framework serves as a crucial analytical index for evaluating how their positioning and identities mediated various life trajectories to ultimately define and expand the "space" of the self. Furthermore, by tracing the gaps within official archives and analyzing a wide array of multi-layered historical sources, this study addresses the barriers to securing membership as well as the historical reality of their shifting belonging and identity through a multimodal turn.
The concrete empirical findings of this study are as follows. First, focusing on the two pivotal junctures of 1946 and 1951, this study demonstrates that the migration of Japanese women to Korea—a phenomenon long overshadowed by the mainstream history of pro-Korean repatriation from Japan—served as the baseline for substantive negotiations over membership. Notably, the 1951 collective petition incident at the Busan holding camp stands as the earliest record of these women agentively declaring themselves as legitimate repatriates from within an exclusive classification system, illustrating the dynamic interplay between state administration and subject-driven practices.
Second, it elucidates how the naturalization and hometown visitation initiatives from the late 1950s to the early 1960s carved out multifaceted institutional spaces. By analyzing the narrative of Akashi Tokiko, the first naturalized Japanese woman in postwar Korea, this study exposes the limitations of media representation. Simultaneously, through an analysis of the official organ Shinwa (親和), it demonstrates that this publication functioned as an institutional discursive arena that publicized the lives of these women—who were systematically excluded from official bilateral talks—and drove the execution of hometown visits.
Third, this study analyzes the “Nagamatsu Kazu phenomenon” that surfaced within South Korean and Japanese societies in the 1960s. It demonstrates that her child relief work constituted a pathway for forging new social relations amidst the structural constraints of both societies, as well as a crucial mechanism of social negotiation to secure public membership.
Fourth, it examines the reconfiguration of identity and life trajectories endured by these women as minorities within mono-nationalist discourse. While figures such as Yoon Hak-ja and Kunita Fusako sought social acceptance in Korean society through social practices and solidarity, this study reveals that their institutional membership and primordial nationality never seamlessly coalesced, leaving them in a perpetual state of layered, overlapping positioning.
Lastly, this study analyzes the agentive “Kiuil” struggle within the public discourse of both nations in the 1970s. Through this analysis, it demonstrates that the Japanese government selectively demarcated its postwar responsibilities based on the timing of arrival and the possession of family registries, categorizing these women into "repatriates" and "returnees." Nevertheless, this study elucidates that historical actors, such as Nishiyama Umeko, refused to be confined by a state-imposed paternalistic framework; instead, they successfully elicited practical, administrative flexibility from within the state structure by securing freedom of residence through their struggle.
In conclusion, this study establishes that the life trajectories of Japanese women in the post-1945 era traversed the borders of South Korea and Japan, ultimately leading to the process of acquiring substantive membership and determining belonging. Their actions were not the passive byproducts of top-down state humanitarianism; rather, they represent the hard-won outcome of re-establishing membership and a practice that expanded the "space" of the self by historical actors standing in the interstitial cracks of national borders. By recovering this multi-layered and fluid process of securing membership, this study expands the horizons of minority research within Korea-Japan relations, while paradoxically exposing the inherent contradictions of exclusive state administrative apparatuses. Ultimately, by substantiating the legal-historical realities verified by archives, this work will serve as a significant opportunity to build a new transnational foundation for scholarship on Japanese women in the post-1945 era.