Organizer: Hiromi Mizuno, University of Minnesota

Chair and Discussant: Lisa Yoneyama, University of California, San Diego

This interdisciplinary panel explores the significance of boundaries (legal, territorial, and cultural) that shifted due to the collapse of the Japanese empire. Until 1945 Japan was a multi-ethnic empire, but today Japan is often used as a quintessential example of the nation-state where the nation (people), the state, and the territory neatly converge. This transition was not a smooth, automatic change, nor was it complete. Korean presence illuminates the disparity between nationhood and statehood. All four papers deal with current problematic ramification of this uneven nation-state boundaries: the problems of the nation-state-territory boundaries in the ‘comfort women’ case (Mizuno); the changing boundary of citizenship for Koreans in Japan (Shin); the geographical boundary dispute around Takeshima/Dokdo (Dudden); and zainichi writer Yu Miri’s provocative use of historical, colonial, and geographical boundaries between Japan and Korea (Wender). The panel uses a creative "marathon" format, taking advantage of its interdisciplinarity. Each paper raises a question for the next paper (and the audience) to respond, regarding: theorization of legal boundary making (Mizuno->Shin); intersection of state boundary-making policy and popular nationalism (Shin->Dudden); and relationship between boundary making and story telling at the national and personal levels (Dudden->Wender). Discussant Yoneyama will synthesize the "marathon" discussion and, from the Asian-American studies perspective, provide further questions for the panelists and audience to engage. The goal is to have active discussion among panelists as well as with the audience. Paper presentation will be limited to 15 minutes each, summarizing the points of the paper and questions.

Hiromi Mizuno, University of Minnesota

This paper proposes to view the ‘comfort women’ issue as part of the inherent problem of international human rights at large. Specifically, it examines the relationship between colonialism, the nation-states, and international human rights laws in the history of human rights. At the heart of my paper lies what Hana Arendt identified as the paradox of human rights. Human rights are fundamentally paradoxical. On one hand, they are universal rights entitled to any human being regardless of nationality. On the other hand, however, in reality it is through the nation-state that individuals’ rights are granted and protected. In other words, one needs to a citizen of a nation-state in order to be human. What is lacking in Arendt as well as current legal specialists’ scholarship on human rights is the fact that colonialism has legally excluded many from the category of humans, including the ‘comfort women.’ Post-WWII independence further complicates the ‘comfort women’ issue as the re-drawing of the nation-state-territory boundaries affected various ‘comfort women’ differently. This paper illuminates the above points by looking closely at two tribunals -- the International Military Tribunal for the Far East immediately after the WWII, and the International Women’s War Crimes Tribunal in 2000. It incorporates latest legal and philosophical scholarship on international human rights law and attempts to provide a critical reading of colonial and coldwar politics that has constituted the philosophy and application of international human rights law and citizenship.

Hwa-Ji Shin, SUNY Stony Brook

This paper examines the crucial impact of exogenous factors (e.g. geopolitical context) and the endogenous dynamic between "self" (i.e. Japanese) and "other" (i.e. Koreans) on the nexus of nationhood and citizenship in a historically specific context of distinctive regime types in Japan. The Japanese case provides a formidable opportunity to revisit several prominent theories of nationhood and citizenship – which stipulate a mostly Western, nation-state centered narrative – as Japan’s development differs from the conventional narrative of nationhood and citizenship. During the imperial period, an authoritarian regime conducted an inclusive policy based on cultural assimilation and broad recognition of heterogeneity. The democratized Japanese nation-state in the aftermath of WWII implemented more exclusionary citizenship. Today, such exclusive practices are called into question by the former colonies, minority groups, and supranational institutions (i.e. U.N.). Based on archival research, this paper seeks to refine some of the dominant assumptions in the literature on nationalism and citizenship. This paper pays special attention to the changing role of the Korean minority in Japan because they are the focus of these changing policies and their mobilization (or lack thereof) informed the transformation of Japanese nationhood, citizenship and immigration policy. By identifying what constraints regime-type places on the types of citizenship available to a society and what social forces create and sustain dissonant voices in debates over nationhood, my study shows how the making of nationhood and citizenship-immigration policies is contingent on exogenous geopolitical factors as well as endogenous contentious relationships between state and non-state actors.

Alexis Dudden, Connecticut College

At the center of the body of water between Japan and Korea lies an uninhabited island (Takeshima/Dokdo) that each nation has claimed as sovereign territory since 1945. Since then, there have been sporadic outbursts of nationalist fervor regarding possession of this territory, leading to the current stalemate that erupted this past spring. Though unlikely, should the countries choose to defend their claims militarily — as more belligerent politicians and their supporters in both countries advocate — the United States is legally bound to defend these rocks for both Japan and South Korea because of its separate security treaties with them. And what if North Korea got involved? The incomprehensibility of such a moment best exemplifies the process of the past fifty years of apology politics and reveals how many histories have had to be ignored or written out to make such a state of affairs common sense within national story-telling. My paper will examine the apparent rigidity of geographical claims to this territory while emphasizing the fluidity of the stories that sustain the problem for all the nations involved.

Melissa L. Wender, Tufts University

Yu Miri seems to invite controversy. She has written extensively about sexual abuse and suicide. She has been sued for infringement of privacy and had her case make it all the way to Japan’s Supreme Court. She has had book signings cancelled after death threats from proclaimed Rightists. She has given very public birth to a child out of wedlock – never hiding the fact that the father is not only married, but Japanese. She acquired Japanese citizenship for her son, and then took him to a Shinto shrine for blessing, wearing a kimono, thereby inciting the ire of many fellow Zainichi Koreans. And most recently, she and the public were surprised when the Asahi Shinbun ceased publication of the novel she was serializing for it and a Korean paper. In this novel, Hachigatsu no hate [The Limits of August], the first to be simultaneously carried in both Japanese and a Korean newspapers, Yu stepped into the landmine-laden territory of history, including that of the comfort women. I will analyze the novel’s significance in the context of its cancellation by Asahi and Yu’s very public persona and explore the possibilities and the dangers of this work delving into the fraught past of Japanese-Korean relations. Might imagining being a victim of historical atrocity encourage readers to feel empathy and wish to make amends for the past? Or, might readers think that the historical matters referred to in the text are merely further examples of Yu’s endless search for controversy? This paper contributes to the panel by examining how national, geographical, and historical boundaries affect an individual writer and in turn can be strategically employed by the writer’s personal, commercial, and political purposes.