Abstract
Having made the case for taking enduring identities seriously, I now apply this model to Japan’s Asian experience since its socialization into the international system in the late-nineteenth century. This chapter explores changes and continuity in contemporary Japanese identity since the Meiji Restoration to cast Japan’s present day Korean imaginary within a historical context: Japan’s current attitudes toward South Korea are precisely the elaboration of a colonial relationship into a contemporary diplomatic intercourse. There are similarities across the decades, such as the recurrence of condescension toward Asia in general, and (South) Korea in particular, amid changing international circumstances, including Japan’s defeat in August 1945. I am not suggesting that the colonial relationship is intact; but neither can we deny the family resemblance in how Japan reconstructs Korean otherness today. The bilateral relations are not colonial relations; but a colonial mindset is somehow visible, indicating that the narratives of Japanese self are still legitimated through the particular reproduction of Korean otherness.
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Notes
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See, for example, Reinhard Drifte, Japan’s Foreign Policy for the 21st Century: From Economic Superpower to What Power? (London: Macmillan, 1998), 161–63.
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© 2010 Taku Tamaki
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Tamaki, T. (2010). Contemporary Japanese Identity Narratives. In: Deconstructing Japan’s Image of South Korea. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230106123_4
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