Asia-Pacific, Civil Society, Headlines, Human Rights, Indigenous Rights

JAPAN: Museum Helps Ethnic Koreans Gain Acceptance

Suvendrini Kakuchi

TOKYO, May 17 2006 (IPS) - Poignant artifacts, remnants of traditional clothing made from silk and cotton, and large photographs that depict the hard lives of Koreans who arrived in Japan in the mid-20th century, are displayed in a new museum dedicated to preserving the history of Japan’s largest ethnic community.

Kang Duk Sang, curator of the ‘History Museum of Japanese Koreans’ and an ethnic Korean himself, says the museum is more than a place for simple retrospection.

”The museum plays a very important role in Japan where the rights of minorities are not respected. We hope that by depicting the lives of the older Koreans in Japan we can open the eyes of the Japanese public to the hardship and tough survival instincts of our ancestors and also help younger Koreans to learn about their roots with a sense of pride,” he explained.

Ever since the museum, a 550-sq metre carpeted hall equipped with soft lighting, was opened in November in central Tokyo -under the patronage of ‘Mindan’, an association that represents ethnic Koreans in Japan- it has served as a bridge between the immigrants and their notoriously xenophobic hosts.

A visit to the museum, the first of its kind in Japan, is an experience in comprehensive learning about an ignored ethnic community and illustrates how this country’s much touted homogeneous society is actually only an illusion.

Various exhibits, such as miniature models of markets run by ethnic Koreans, an old sewing machine that was used by a woman to earn a living, are displayed in the hall.

There are depictions of menial jobs such as gravel clearing- done by Korean labourers after they migrated, either forcibly or voluntarily, to Japan during the colonisation of their peninsula.

After Japan surrendered to the Western allies in 1945, ending World War 11, tens of thousands of ethnic Koreans, then living in Japan as citizens under Japan’s colonial policies, were stripped of their Japanese nationality and left stateless under a decision taken by the Tokyo government.

Lack of citizenship status contributed to the hardships of the Koreans who had no passports or access to Japanese public services such as national universities, state employment, welfare or public housing.

Kang says the Korean War in 1950 contributed to the despair of the immigrants as their homeland was divided leaving them with reduced chances of ever returning to their homes and reuniting with their families.

Denied state support, many of them lived in ghettos in the outskirts of large cities and working as cheap labour for Japanese companies and businesses.

Over the years, they have been fighting for equal rights, protesting bitterly against the Japanese government’s racist policies that enforced on them the humiliating fingerprinting system and compulsory adoption of Japanese names when applying for citizenship.

Kang recalls how he, like other ethnic Koreans, even if they were born in Japan, had to report to the local ward offices when they turned 14, to be fingerprinted.

‘’Fingerprints of our ten fingers were taken by officials in a solemn ceremony and every Korean at that age left the office feeling they were treated as criminals. We hated the discriminative policy so much,” he recalled.

Posters and banners carried by ethnic Koreans – while protesting and suffering imprisonment for it for it until the system was modified to a single fingerprint – are displayed in the museum.

Today there are around 600,000 ethnic Koreans living in Japan. Kang says thousands more have taken on Japanese nationality to hide their identity. They have assumed Japanese names and have stopped speaking Korean so that they can work as doctors, actors, businessmen or even politicians.

Japan’s policy of forced assimilation saw radically discriminative policies directed at the Koreans – both from the North and South. Government jobs were out of bounds for them and neither could they vote in district or national elections.

Japanese immigration laws have eased with regard to nationality for children. If one parent is Japanese, they are eligible to become Japanese citizens – compared to previously where both had to be Japanese nationals. And this has opened the door to younger Koreans taking up Japanese citizenship.

The Korean population is split between those who opted to give up their identity and become Japanese or fiercely defending their ethnic roots by attending Korean schools, refusing to give up their Korean names and, as many of them did, returning to either North or South Korea.

But, says Kang, whose mother sold Korean sweets to feed her family of six children after his father was blinded while serving in the Japanese military government, it is important for Koreans living in Japan not to forget their past.

”I recall how hard my mother worked. I want that the hard work of our ancestors not be forgotten by fourth and fifth generation Koreans as well as the Japanese public which is not taught in Japanese schools about the ethnic Koreans,” he says.

That message is slowly sinking in. Sumiko Seikiguchi, 78, who also manages the Korai museum displaying Korean history, in downtown Tokyo, says Kang is doing a great job.

‘’The best way to erase racism in Japan is to educate the Japanese about the Koreans. I myself, was shocked to learn of Japan’s past aggression in Korea when I read a book after I tuned 60-years old. I have now learned to respect Korean culture and society,” she said.