The Identity of the Second Generation Colonizers: Focused on Female Colonizers

Abstract

In this paper, the author discusses the identity of the second generation female colonizers who were born and brought up in Korea under the colonial administration. As colonizers’ children who lived in a livelihood zone formed only by Japanese, these children went to the Japanese primary school in which they received the same education as in the mainland; they lived within strong cultural structures that maintained and nurtured Japanese food, culture and customs. The children lived in an environment thoroughly segregated from Korean society in which they were not encouraged to question the existence of others. In girls’ high schools in Korea, which were more open and freer than those in the mainland of Japan, they were able to receive high-level education, and nurture their self-confidence, which I term ‘colonizers’ disposition’. In everyday life, they lived with Korean household servants as their subordinates, and never doubted their own superior position. Korea was a home for them while they regarded the mainland of Japan as a foreign country. However, the collapse of the Japanese Empire forced these children to return home. After they had returned home they were discriminated against as repatriates, and regarded as alien. They were betrayed by the defeated state, and received no protection from the state even after their return to Japan. Based upon their bitter experience, they began to feel themselves out of place in relation to the ‘Japanese State’ and the ‘Japanese.’ They were accused of harboring a colonizers’ disposition, and a culture of conformism was imposed upon them. Facing this pressure, there were some that tried to completely adapt to the manners of the mainland society while others came to take a critical attitude towards the state by self-critically reflecting on their own colonizers’ experience.