(Inter)National Hegemony: Effects of Hegemonic Bloc politics on Japanese handling of Zainichi Koreans
Written by Gianluca Lione
Hello! My name is Gianluca, but most people call me Niso. Other than a MHIR student, I'm pursuing a double degree with the Graduate School of Public Policy in Osaka Japan. With my research, I'm trying to get I.R. to talk about people again - there's plenty of road ahead!
(Inter)National Hegemony:
Effects of Hegemonic Bloc politics on Japanese handling of Zainichi Koreans
1. Introduction
When David Kang, in 2003 (Kang, 2003), exhorted International Relations (I.R.) scholars to let go of Western essentialisms when dealing with the Far East, he was not fully appreciated by the field.
He was right, though, in asserting the need for a new analytical framework, one that would not simply transpose paradigms developed in a century of Western-centric I.R. academia, but one which would take into account the contextual realities of East Asia.
With the present research paper, the author wishes to employ existing theoretical backgrounds and methods – combining them in novel ways in order to make truth to the necessity Kang spoke about. In particular, this paper deals with the relationship between Japanese nationalism, its ethnopolitical practices, and Japan’s hegemonic position. By working off Neo-Gramscian I.R., which focuses on hegemony at the international scale, and the Foucauldian concept of biopower, which focuses on the human effects of State behaviour, the history of Zainichi Koreans (Koreans ‘living in Japan’) is thus explained and contextualised in the international Great Power Politics shifts of East Asia.
1.1. Topic Justification
While works dealing with Zainichi Koreans are not scarce at all, they are mainly historical or anthropological in nature, and rarely deal with wider questions behind Japanese ethnopolitics.
There is thus an overabundance of both qualitative and quantitative data regarding the lives and social positions of Zainichi Koreans, and extensive research in Japan’s hegemonic an geopolitical history, but a dearth in works connecting these two realities.
The author’s argument stretches from a quote in Gramsci’s Quaderni del Carcere (Gramsci, 1977), in which the Italian shows that the most nationalistic parties are the most favourable to international hegemony in their domestic practices. From this intuition, the author connects Japan’s international hegemonic position to its overt or subtle practices in domestic ethnopolitics.
The aim is not only contextual, but wider: it is possible, given the right circumstances, to identify clear superstructural motivations in the violation of international norms, even when these norms are nominally upkept by that very same superstructure. The case of Zainichi Koreans becomes even more justified if it is underscored that a large part of the original Korean inhabitants of Japan were forcefully removed from the Korean peninsula in order to help the Japanese military machine during WWII: the very beginning of Japanese ethnopolitical struggles is steeped in Great Power Politics.
1.2. The Research Question
Given the wider research puzzle, embedded in a theoretical missing link and in an abundance of data, it is imperative to articulate the argumentative section of this research within a strong empirical project.
Among the aims of this paper is the one of retaining the agency of Zainichi Korean and of the Japanese government; explaining both of these actors’ behaviour within the international scene should not mean that neither of them have any say in their own actions. It is a matter of underlining background contexts that explain and underscore specific behaviours.
In this interest therefore, and in the interest of maintaining closeness to the available material, the following research question and sub-questions are being followed:
How did Japanese internal relations with Zainichi Koreans change with geopolitical shifts?
How did the Détente affect Japanese Government handling of affairs relating to the Chongryon?
How are Korean identity survival practices operationalised vis-à-vis the international context?
1.3. Structure
This paper works off two realities at every step of its research. This is because it is studying reciprocal effects of the structure (domestic hegemony) and the superstructure (international hegemony).
Therefore, all major chapters are subdivided into subchapters dealing with the national or international system. While the discussion incorporates both spheres simultaneously, shifting the focus on one or the other allows for a guided analysis.
The literature review (Chapter 2) therefore deals firstly with domestic realities, discussing the state-of-the-art research on Japanese self-image narratives, specifically the national homogeneity narrative of Nihonbunkaron (Chapter 2.1.1). It then moves onto explain the history of Koreans in Japan (Chapter 2.2), explaining contentious issues like the enforced migration of the 1930s and early 40s, and the existence of the North Korea affiliated Chongryon (2.2.1).
The literature review thus finishes on Neo-Gramscian readings of Japanese international hegemony (Chapter 2.3), focusing in its shift from WWII to the Cold War, and then to the contemporary period.
The theoretical section is also divided into two main lines, firstly laying down the central argument for this paper and then moving onto the theoretical background for the international system – talking about Neo-Gramscian Great Power Politics (Chapter 3.1) and then focusing on domestic ethnopolitics (Chapter 3.2). Apart from laying out the theoretical argument, section 3.1.2 lays the prerequisites for a Neo-Gramscian definition of an hegemonic bloc leader, embedded in the literature but novel in its formulation. This is to aid the system-analysis, which is discussed in chapter 4, focused on the paper’s methodology.
The methodology is twofold: Chapter 4.1 deals with system analysis – a methodology close to Neo-Gramscian work particularly suited to understanding interactions between national and international spheres – while Chapter 4.2 focuses on biopolitical analysis, a type of qualitative analysis that systematises interviews and ethnographic work with the Foucauldian concept of biopower. The empirical analysis is divided on a temporal basis, with Chapter 5.1 dealing with WWII and its closest periods, Chapter 5.2 with the Cold War, and Chapter 5.3 with the current outlook.
With its constant duality, the structure wishes to aid the reader in connecting the superstructure to the structure, the international to the domestic, great power politics to internal ethnopolitics. At the same time, the analyses are synchronous, so each subchapter, even if focused on one of the two levels – still benefits from and is embed in the other.
2. Literature Review
Given the novelty of this research paper in connecting system analysis to biopolitical consequences of ethnic nationalism, this literature review focuses on laying down previous work on the fundamental ‘building blocks’ of the study.
In practice, this means exploring the state of the art in three fields: firstly, in the domestic scene, studies on Japanese nationalism, secondly analyses on Zainichi Koreans sociopolitical position; thirdly, on the international scene, an overview of the most important works concerning the history of Japanese hegemonic position (vis-à-vis Great Powers).
By exploring these three fields separately, the author wishes to introduce key findings and debates while highlighting the need to connect them in one comprehensive line of study (see chapter 4).
2.1. Japanese Japanese Self-Image
Japanese self-image, or the prevailing narrative on what it means to be Japanese shared by Japanese intellectuals and favoured by the government, has a long and politically charged history.
From an ethnic point of view, according to Eiji Oguma, up to the 1910 annexation of Korea by the Japanese Empire two prevailing narratives regarding ethnicity can be identified: one claiming that ethnic Japanese people were the historical inhabitants of the island, descending directly from the Emperor, and thus homogenous in its inhabitation (Oguma and Askew, 2002); one which “regarded the Japanese as a mixture of races, with a significant portion of the ancestral population entering the archipelago […] later than the Ainu” (Edwards, 2004, p. 441). The former was adopted and accepted by the Meiji restoration authorities. Later on though, in order to justify its imperial claims, with different ethnicities now entering the Japanese state, such as the Koreans and the Taiwanese, the two traditions merged. Japanese citizens of different ethnic backgrounds were allowed to join the national identity by assimilation through a common veneration of Japanese ancestors. After 1928, therefore, homogeneity was not considered a fundamental of Japanese identity(Edwards, 2004). Yet, after WWII, the myth changed.
Following the work of historian Masao Nishikawa, social scientist Keiichi Kawate identifies three phases in Japanese history that contributed to a myth of self-image: since 1942, the “overcoming modernity” phase, since the 1960s the “theory of modernisation” – which supposedly led to the economic miracle of Japan – and the “theory of Japanese culture” which started in the 1980s (Kawate, 2019). Each phase provided for a different yet systematic approach to construct a Japanese national identity within the particular geopolitical and international situation.
The first phase related vis-à-vis the West, synonymous with modernity (Kawate, 2019, p. 83), attempting to adopt and overcome its principles in order to achieve similar status. During the Cold War Japan proved its economic excellence, on a different scale and timeline to Western powers. Internally, this rise was credited to a sort of Japanese exceptionalism, and internationally “the USA regarded the Japanese rapid economic growth as a successful model of modernization […] and attempted to use [it] as an instrument that flaunted the superiority of a capitalistic state over socialism” (Kawate, 2019, p. 84). By the 1980s, this contrast between a domestic pride in the ‘Japanese way’ and an international opinion hinged on the westernisation of Japan had come to an ending point, with the former prevailing over the latter.
Japan, acting somewhat independently from the West, survived the oils shocks of the 70s comparatively better off (Yoshitomi, 1976). Emboldened in this feeling of exceptionalism, the Japanese government under Nakasone fully adopted Nihonbunkaron (‘discourses of the Japanese’) – a comprehensive theory of Japanese international exceptionalism developed by the newly formed International Research Centre for Japanese Studies(Kawate, 2019).
What is left over of the myth Japanese ethnic homogeneity after the 1980s is, according to the literature, a problem of nationalism.
2.1.1 Japanese Nationalism
In 1986 prime minister Nakasone attempted to exculpate previous comments regarding American racial makeup by stating that “things are easier for the Japanese […] because we are a monoracial society” (Kowner and Befu, 2015, p. 389). Historian Rotem Kowner and anthropologist Harumi Befu show the connection between the Japanese government and the official narrative of ethnic self-identity. They contextualise Nihonbunkaron as an “hegemonic ideology and as an ‘industry’ whose main producers are intellectuals […], and whose consumers are the masses”(Kowner and Befu, 2015, p. 390).
In practice Nihonbunkaron is the quintessential basis of contemporary Japanese nationalism(Kowner and Befu, 2015, p. 393). It constitutes what Befu had previously defined as a state religion(Kelly, 2002), informing individual and collective political choices. In fact, the ubiquity of Nihonbunkaron is felt across the political spectrum (which, admittedly, is rather small in Japan), with – according to sociologist Yoshio Sugimoto – post-WWII conservatives, traditionalists, communists, unionists, and socialists agreeing on its validity (Sugimoto, 1999).
In fact, both culturally and politically Nihonbunkaron is characterised by the N=E=C equation: the terms ‘nation’, ‘ethnicity’, and ‘culture’ are used interchangeably, as if, for what concern Japanese reality, they were synonyms (Sugimoto, 1999).
2.2 Zainichi Koreans and the Japanese State
The ethnic denomination of Koreans in Japan is a contested topic. When the 2006 edition of Jared Diamond’s famous (and controversial) popular anthropology book Guns, Germs and Steel showed a new chapter researching the origin of Japanese people, proposing, among other theories, that modern Koreans and modern Japanese share a common ancestor that came from the Korean peninsula (Diamond, 2014, sec. Epilogue), some Japanese circles loudly contested his work(Quinn, 2017).
The favoured theory in Japan sees the Japanese people as almost autochthonous to the archipelago, concomitant with the indigenous Ainu. This, in line with the principles of Nihonbunkaron, allows for an ethnic differentiation between Japanese and Koreans, nihonjin and Zainichi kangokujin (literally ‘Korean people living in Japan’).
2.2.1 An History
According to sociologist John Lie, many Zainichi Koreans can trace back their ancestry to the enforced migration of people from the Japanese colony of Korea.
Infamously, after the 1923 Kantō region Earthquake, with the express consent of the Japanese government, circa six-thousand ethnic Koreans were killed by Japanese authorities, in what has come to be known as the Kantō Massacre and been equated to “slavery for African Americans and the Shoah for Jewish Americans”(Lie, 2008, p. 5). Afterwards, to supply the WWII Japanese war effort: “between 1939 and 1945, 700,000–800,000 Koreans were made to work in Japan” (Lie, 2008, p. 5), forcibly removing them from the peninsula.
The origin of Zainichi populations in Japan in itself is soaked in blood and a source of ethnic differentiation on both sides. After WWII, the issue of Zainichi Koreans became a post-colonial one, steeped in the successful homologation of Koreans into Japanese society – by the 1930s one third of Koreans were born in Japan, and a majority spoke Japanese (Lie, 2008, p. 7) – but not into Japanese life, as the remnants of an imperial ethnic hierarchy could still be felt (Lie, 2008, p. 8).
In fact, Kim Bumsoo’s analysis of the changing social status of Zainichi Koreans shows that in the 1950s, after the end of the American occupation of Japan, they were both the most hated social group and the most marginalised (Kim, 2011b). In 1952, after the San Francisco Peace Treaty came into effect, Koreans went from being marginalised but effective citizens of the Japanese empire to virtually stateless, as no diplomatic relation was established between Japan and either of the Koreas (Kim, 2011b, p. 235). By 1965 Japan and South Korea normalised their relationship but circa 250.000 Zainichi refused to take up South Korean citizenship. In practice, Kim’s analysis shows a gradual yet steady increase of socio-economic conditions. During the 1960s-1970s, Japan's economic boom created high labour demand, improving opportunities for Zainichi Koreans.
Education levels rose, and some gained desirable jobs, though discrimination in hiring persisted, especially in public and corporate sectors. From the 1980s through the 2000s socio-economic conditions improved further, aided by legal reforms, reduced hiring discrimination, and expansion of service and construction industries. Ethnic industries like pachinko and yakiniku restaurants grew significantly. However, inequalities persisted, with unemployment and irregular employment remaining higher than for Japanese. Currently, the socio-economic gap between Zainichi Koreans and the Japanese population has narrowed substantially, though disparities remain, alongside increasing polarization within the Zainichi community (Kim, 2011b).
2.2.1 The Chongryon
When discussing the Zainichi community, it is essential to analyse the role and history of the Chongryon, the ‘General Association of Korean Residents’. According to historian Alexandra Roland, initially successful during the Cold War, the Chongryon supported "repatriation" campaigns to North Korea and built an extensive network of schools, businesses, and cultural institutions to foster North Korean identity. However, its influence began to decline in the 1960s due to North Korea's deteriorating image, worsening economic conditions, and reports of repression from repatriates.
Key events, such as North Korea’s admission of Japanese abductions in 2002, further eroded the Chongryon credibility and led to shrinking membership and organizational challenges. Today, the Chongryon operates as a diminished entity, struggling to maintain relevance amid generational shifts and the community's growing disconnection from North Korea. (Roland, 2023) I.R. scholars Junhyoung Lee and Alexander Dukalskis trace an history of the association by studying the textbooks that it provides its students and the organization’s newspaper; utilising historical analysis, interviews, they highlight the Chongryon’s strategies to sustain loyalty among successive generations, including ethnic education and ideological appeals. While Chongryon once flourished by promoting ties to North Korea, its influence has waned due to North Korea's declining appeal, economic challenges, and the diaspora's integration into Japanese society. (Lee and Dukalskis, 2025)
2.3 An History of Japanese Hegemonic Positions
Having collected the most relevant works on the history and sociopolitical context of Zainichi Koreans, the literature review now moves onto the hegemonic context of Japan, as to lay the necessary information to then engage in the wider discussion.
2.3.1 The Concept
Neo-Gramscian authors have, before applying it to various historical realities, extensively conceptualised hegemony. For James O’Connor, the hegemon must always legitimise it accumulation of capital.
So, in order for a specific regional or global power to be considered hegemonic, it must engage in benefitting one class in favour of another one, while legitimising it at the cultural and normative level. This is done transnationally, with the class of the benefitting collective prevailing over their nationality (O’Connor, 2002, chap. 6). Myles Carrol adds to this analysis by underscoring that a hegemon must continuously socially reproduce itself. Social reproduction, which is steeped in gendered and racialised dynamics, allows for the biological and cultural reproduction of the entire hegemonic bloc (Carroll, 2022b).
Other Neo-Gramscian authors, looking at other traditional great power politics interpretations, maintain the need for military presence in the reproduction of an international hegemonic bloc. For Philip J. Meeks, e.g., Japan itself “may be emerging as a key player in a new type of […] hegemon […] regime, even though it does not yet possess the type of military power believed by many to be a prerequisite for international hegemony” (Meeks, 2023, p. 41).
2.3.2 Pre-WWII
Historically, East Asia’s hegemonic order is marked by an oscillation between unitary hegemonies and multi-actor systems, often misunderstood as a continuous ‘Chinese world order’. Barry Gills’ work highlights the periodicity of these transitions, refuting the monolithic notion of a Confucian hegemonic continuity(Gills, 1993). Instead, East Asia's history reflects cycles of centralized dominance and decentralized competition among states, shaped by shifting modes of accumulation and ideological paradigms.
By the late 19th century, Japan, allying itself with Western powers, disrupted the Sino-centric order, modernizing rapidly under the Meiji Restoration and emerging as a regional power through its industrial capitalism and imperial ventures. Its victory over Qing China (1894–1895) and Tsarist Russia (1904–1905) symbolized the breakdown of traditional tributary systems and the rise of Japan as a competing hegemon(Gills, 1993).
By 1942, Japan's imperial project—framed as a Pan-Asian mission—further destabilized the region’s hegemonic dynamics, embedding itself within broader global hegemonic transitions while amplifying the region’s structural tensions.
Effectively, therefore, Japan can be considered to be its own hegemon during its imperial times, with the caveat of its military alliances and the presence of other empires in the Far East.
2.3.3 Post-WWII
The hegemonic transition of Japan during and after World War II reflects a complex interplay between the dismantling of its imperialist ventures and the restructuring of its domestic and international economic systems. For Carroll the Allied occupation, led by the United States, marked a critical juncture, fundamentally altering Japan’s political and economic systems (Carroll, 2022a).
The post-war period saw Japan reestablish itself as a regional power through economic means rather than military conquest. This shift was codified through the 1947 Constitution, which renounced militarism and established democratic governance (Carroll, 2022a). Key to Japan’s reintegration into the international order was the 1951 San Francisco Treaty, which restored its sovereignty but entrenched its dependence on the United States through the U.S. Japan Security Treaty. This dependency allowed Japan to prioritize economic reconstruction under the Yoshida Doctrine, which focused on industrial growth and international trade while relying on American security guarantees (Carroll, 2022a).
By the 1960s, Japan's economic miracle - characterized by rapid GDP growth, increased industrial output, and technological advancement - cemented its position as a model of modernization within the Cold War order. The keiretsu system, enterprise unionism, and a synergistic relationship between the state, bureaucracy, and private capital underpinned this growth, fostering social stability despite rising economic inequalities.
By 1975, Japan had transitioned from a militarized empire to a developmental state, achieving regional prominence through economic strength rather than hegemonic coercion (Carroll, 2022b). In practice, it shifted into the military and diplomatic sphere of the United States, fully enshrining itself in its hegemonic bloc. Developments like Japan’s inclusion in the otherwise all-Western G7 underpin this argument.
3. Theory and Argument
The theoretical argument for this paper’s analysis follows these conclusions: if ethnic policies are nationalistic policies, and if nationalistic forces are always the most dependant on the international hegemonic situation, then there is a direct relation between changes at the hegemonic level and changes at the domestic ethnopolitics level.
On top of this, when the marginalised ethnicity is inscribable to hegemonic rivals, as are e.g. Chongryon-affiliated Koreans and North Korea (Narasimha and Kotecha, 2018), the relationship is more demarcated. In order to establish this relationship, firstly the Gramscian relationship between nationalisms and the international sphere is discussed, secondly the Neo-Gramscian framing of Great Powers and hegemony, and thirdly the role of ethnopolitics as nationalistic policymaking.
3.1 Gramscian Inspirations and Great Power Altercations
3.1.1 Gramsci and the International
Writing from the fascist-ran prison of Turi, Apulia, Antonio Gramsci lucidly looked at the political reality of his times, the turbulent 1930s and 1940s, and theorised on the role of politics in society. Among other realisations, Gramsci sketched a relationship between the international and the domestic sphere (of “hegemony of the political parties”):
“The more the immediate economic life of a nation is subordinated to international relations, the more a particular party embodies this situation and exploits it to prevent the ascendancy of opposing parties […], one may conclude that often the so-called 'party of the foreigner' is […] the most nationalistic party”. (Gramsci, 1977, p. 1562. Author’s Translation.)
Thus, in a Gramscian view of international systems, those political forces which embody strict nationalistic interests are directly influenced by the international situation of their geographical and political area. Domestic hegemony influences and is influenced by international hegemony; in Marxian terminology, the superstructure reacts on the structure, and the structure is embedded in the superstructure: “… international relations passively and actively react to [domestic] political relations”.
This is all to say that in a time of unbridled and violent nationalism, as was fascist Italy, one of the most precise thinkers of his time concluded that nationalistic political forces are the most influenced by international geopolitical changes. Extrapolating this line of thought to a more I.R. focused discussion, then, it is possible to highlight a connection between the relation of nations and their nationalistic domestic policies. Therefore it is essential to highlight the political makeup of international systems.
3.1.2 Great Power Politics
While the size of their role is a contested topic, great powers are an undisputably major component of international politics. As this paper focuses on the reality of East Asia, and to avoid problematisations around the terminology, throughout this paper the Soviet Union, China, and the United States are understood to be primary unit of inquiry when discussing great powers.
Understandings of international politics are primarily dependent on who are considered its actors what forces are included or disregarded. Authors pertaining to the realist tradition, for example, view states as the sole and primary actor of international politics, their hegemony and their interests being the only force in play(Morgenthau, 2014). The institutionalist tradition, instead, underscores the role of norms and institutions on the international plane, viewing states as privileged actors among others (Keohane and Martin, 1995).
The Neo-Gramscian tradition, in which this paper is partly inscribed envelopes both points of view. Great powers in Neo-Gramscian thought protect, institutionalise, and lead their own hegemonic bloc (HB). They are not fully autonomous, as they negotiate their hegemony in a struggle between the interests of the Transnational Capitalist Class (TCC) and their internal hegemonic order(Budd, 2013, pt. I). In this sense, geopolitics is embedded in the superstructure of capitalist relations, and each HB reinforces the economic interests of the TCC even when it engages in military or strategic operations. Military interventions protect the interests of TCC directly.
Consequently, institutional norms are present, as an international superstructure stronger than each state is surmised, while state interest is still preserved as one of the main forces – if it is accepted that state interest is the interest of the TCC (Smith, 2010).
The international system in this paper is thus understood to be the outcome of the constant interplay of domestic structures and international superstructures; the domestic scene, expanded upon in Chapter 3.2, is embedded in the dynamics of Great Power Politics (GPP), which is understood to be subservient to transnational economic interests. Opposing great powers carry their own HB, leading them and protecting their stability on the international scale. Because the domestic is embedded in the international, and both systems are referencing back and forth to each other, domestic structural developments are dependant on HB competition, even if the protection of the interests of the TCC is the primary force of state interaction.
For ease of access, the prerequisites to categorise a country as the leader of an HB – based on the aforementioned Neo-Gramscian literature and this present discussion – are:
Material Capabilities: Strong economic and military power.
Ideological Leadership: The ability to universalize norms, values, and institutions that sustain consent.
Formation of a Hegemonic Bloc: Building coalitions with subordinate states, the TCC, and securing domestic legitimacy.
Coercive Capabilities: The capacity to enforce order when consent fails.
Crisis Management: Adapting to systemic contradictions and challenges without losing leadership.
3.2 Ethnopolitics
The primary basis of this paper is the Gramscian analysis of the interplay of international and domestic scene, concluding that the most nationalistic party is the one that most follows international developments.
Taking an example close to Gramsci, one of the defining traits of fascism in Italy was the 1937 promulgation of the leggi razziali, which deliberated on the racial make-up of Italy and which segregated and marginalised Jewish people. Fascist propaganda maintained that these laws were in protection of the nation, which it identified with a specific ethnic makeup (Collotti, 2011).
If we see this political development through a Gramscian lens, though, it becomes enshrined in the need for Italy to more closely identify with its HB, protected and led by the great power that was Nazi Germany, which had captained racist and antisemitic laws in Europe. Thus, Italian domestic ethnopolitics were moved from a nationalistic need to subscribe to the superstructure, reinforcing the HB.
In the case of Japan, what is analysed is not weather the State is ran by a nationalistic party, but the direct bodily effects of policies that are in line with the principles of nationalism. If, as described by Anthony D. Smith, nationalistic policies pertain to and focus on political sovereignty, self-determination, ethnic exclusivism, and population policies(Smith, 2010), then ethnopolitics can be understood to be nationalistic in nature. In fact, according to Smith nationalist policies emphasize the ethnic or racial identity of the nation, often leading to exclusionary or assimilationist policies(Smith, 2010, chap. 2).
By upholding an imagined idea of nation complete with its ethnicity, its history, its culture, its rules, and its norms, nationalisms promise a reality of national strength and self-determination(Anderson, 2008). If we follow Gramscian though, though, the outcome is that nationalistic governments implement policies that align the nation more towards the geopolitical situation, and less towards the benefit of its own people as understood through democratic principles – think of the effect of the leggi razziali: the welfare of (Jewish) Italian citizens is nullified, while the hegemonic leader, Germany, is appeased.
The domestic reality of a country is of course central, thus both national and international dynamic are analysed in this paper; at a theoretical level, though, the focus should be placed on the fact that nationalistic policies, like those pertaining to ethnopolitics, are closely related to HB politics.
Because the makeup is that of a structure-superstructure feedback system, in which both influence each other, domestic ethnopolitics is both a product of the domestic situation and a consequence of the HB its state belongs to.
Some norms are widely upheld and reinforced in the international system. Norms, though, are not immune to hegemony: They are a product of a specific HB as much as its hawkish or military tendencies(Kupchan, 2014). Japanese ethnopolitics are no isolated from international norms; in fact, “ [Japanese] domestic actors use international norms to bolster arguments for which they have found few domestic resources and those norms in turn work under particular domestic circumstances” (Gurowitz, 1999, p. 444).
HBs protect and reinforce themselves through practices that encompass both hard and soft power: Japan’s subscription to international norms, born of a tendency to appease international opinion(Gurowitz, 1999), is explained by its role as a middle power in the American HB.
The history of ethnic policies towards Koreans in Japan is long, as analysed in chapter 2, and complex. The fact that the Chongryon is so closely related to North Korea, which is in the Chinese HB(Lee and Dukalskis, 2025), renders the discussion clearer and easily demarcated.
In fact, the detrimental impacts of transnational capitalist hegemony and GPP on marginalized groups can manifest as economic marginalization, political deactivation, or social exclusion. A pertinent example is the plight of Zainichi Koreans – many of whom arrived during Japan's colonial rule over Korea or were forcibly brought as labourers. Specifically, members of the pro-North Korea organization Chongryon have faced institutionalized discrimination and political disenfranchisement.
Their situation worsened as Cold War GPP intensified, with Japan aligning with the U.S.-led hegemonic bloc and distancing itself from North Korea. This alignment translated into policies that marginalized Chongryon members, limiting their access to public services, economic opportunities, and political rights, while branding them as security threats within Japan's domestic sphere.
These conditions will be further analysed in the following chapters, where the impact of U.S.-China great power competition on Japan’s domestic treatment of Chongryon and broader Zainichi Korean communities will be explored in detail. This analysis will illustrate how international hegemonic blocs influence and exacerbate the domestic marginalization of certain groups.
4. Methodology
This paper adopts a qualitative, interdisciplinary methodology that combines biopower analysis with elements of system analysis to investigate the problematised relationship, utilising a framework that aligns with both Neo-Gramscian and Foucauldian perspectives.
Neo-Gramscian methods more closely associate this work with its theoretical background, with the tautological assumption that a tradition’s own methodology – system analysis – is the best suited for its work. Foucauldian biopower is operationalised as to adapt the Neo-Gramscian background to the study of ethnic marginalisation.
While Neo-Gramscian literature is indeed concerned with activist and insurgency groups (Okereke, 2015), there is a gap in a systematic analysis of individual and collective welfare. The direct effects of international power structures on the physical and political livelihood of an ethnic group is the direct concern of biopolitical analysis, a tool specialised in human welfare(Macey, 2009).
4.1 System Analysis
4.1.1 In the literature
Robert W. Cox, who in his life was both a United Nations officer and an International Political Economy scholar, was among the most authoritative voices in extrapolating Gramsci from his Italian context and into wider I.R. In his application of system analysis, which aims to construct a state’s position in its international context, Cox warns to “beware of underrating state power, but in addition give proper attention to social forces and processes and see how they relate to the development of states and world orders. Above all, do not base theory on theory but rather on changing practice and empirical-historical study, which are a proving ground for concepts and hypotheses” (Cox, 1981, p. 128).
Thus the aforementioned methodologically twofold nature of this paper. For what regards system analysis specifically, research utilising this method has largely been applied to the study of neoliberal power systems at the international level. For Okereke, e.g., the key dimension of hegemony is in the cultural; he studies, through an historical and discursive argument, the role of ideas in the maintaining of hegemonic structures(Okereke, 2015).
By studying the progressive historical impact of European norms and narratives, Caradaică shows how the process of Europeanization of the Latin-American system follows an alignment with the Western Hegemonic Bloc(Caradaică, 2014). Authors that have used Neo-Gramscian system analysis therefore tend to view an historical contingency and reframe it in the context of local and global hegemony (Okereke, 2015).
4.1.2 In practice
For what regards the purposes of this paper, the objective of this method is to assess both the super-structure and the structure of ethnopolitics in Japan. By looking both at the development ideas on a historical lens, it is possible to highlight a change in Japanese policies towards Zainichi Korean groups.
As this process is mapped out, the development is to be overlapped onto the history of the HBs Japan was part of. Understanding the cultural development around the notion of ethnic homogeneity (Narzary, 2004), for example, can underline how different hegemonic situations spur harsher or softer rhetoric and policies for ethnic Koreans in Japan.
By analysing primary and secondary historical sources and records of government policies, it is possible to trace an history of Japanese ethnopolitics in the context of hegemonic struggles. By focusing especially on pre-WWII Imperial Japan and post 1980s Japanese state, it is possible to confront two different Hegemonic situations for the Land of the Rising Sun, one in which it was considered on the level of a Great Power (Imperial Japan) and one in which it is considered a middle power (current Japan).
The choice to focus on post 1980s Japan comes from the rich situation of post-Soviet Union East Asia, which saw the slow but steady rise of China, the gradual decline of the Japanese economic might, and the renewed presence of the USA, which all provide for complex variables in the development of Japan’s hegemonic position.
4.1.3 Methodological Justification
Applying International Relations theorising to non-Western contexts is often liable to critique. Kang’s 2003 Getting Asia Wrong, while inherently flawed, is a great example of the need to contextualise I.R. to Asia. Cox, as mentioned before, warns the researcher from relying too heavily on sole Neo-Gramscian theorising, but to actively labour in the historical contingency of the studied matter.
This first part of this paper’s methodology is thus composed in the interest of these two warnings, relating it to the faults and the hopes of past literature.
4.2 Biopolitical Analysis
4.2.1 In the literature
Biopolitics is, in a Foucauldian sense, “a mode of governmentality focused on the management of populations” (Mackie, 2014, p. 278). Its analysis is hinged on the bodily effects of state policies, on the livelihood and emancipation of individuals and of their closest collectives.
Similarly to Cox for Neo-Gramscian methods (chapter 4.1.1), David Macey called upon the I.R. scholarly community to rethink the role of power and race in the wake of Foucault. He connects the problem of race and ethnicity directly to the French thinker, and highlights how effective biopolitical analysis must take into account the ethnic and racial makeup of its researched object. In order to gauge the effects of policies on the population, biopolitical analyses often utilise, when doing empirical research, systematic interviews and participant observation methods (Laurent and Robillard-Martel, 2022); authors like Hiroshi Yoshioka (Yoshioka, 2023) even relay their own personal bodily experiences.
By analysing the political development of the medical field, Yoshioka finds that the livelihoods of Japanese citizens at large were effectively damaged by the Japanese state in favour of the interests of big pharmaceutical companies (Yoshioka, 2023, p. 335).
Authors that do not directly collect empirical data, like Vera Mackie, hinge their methodologies on the analysis of legislative promulgations, demographic data, and critical interpretations (Mackie, 2014). Mackie highlights a biopolitical crisis in the racialisation of Japanese care workers, providing a precedent for biopolitical analysis in racial/ethnic Japanese contexts.
4.2.2 In practice
The livelihood of ethnic Koreans in Japan can be analysed on two axes, one political, like an assessment of their marginalisation and the status of their rights, one bodily, like their expected lifespan, whether they are more likely to be the victims of violent crimes.
If indeed ethnic Koreans are empirically found to be at a political and bodily disadvantage when compared to other Japanese people, then it is possible to highlight systemic reasons for their social situation. In this sense, the biopolitical analysis is synchronous with the Neo-Gramscian system analysis; while it is true that the former is directed at the domestic scene (the structure) and the latter is directed at the hegemonic blocs (the superstructure), it is in the interests of good scholarship knowledge to accept that these two systems are mutually interactive.
Therefore, this paper’s methodology does present two distinct analysis moments, on Neo-Gramscian and Foucauldian, but still utilises both at the same time, dividing the overall analysis only on a temporal basis. Practically, therefore, the method includes reading and understanding those sources closest to Zainichi Koreans, both primary and secondary, and underscoring the direct phenomenologically relevant aspects of social, private, and political life. By then relating these findings to the ones derived of the System-Analysis, it is possible to reach a scientifically valid relationship.
4.2.3 Methodological Justification
Biopolitical analysis is the most suitable to the study of personal and political welfare, as it offers insights into how policies act upon the bodies of Zainichi Koreans, affecting their education, economic opportunities, cultural expression, and political emancipation.
By moving from similar analyses in the Japanese context, and answering Macey’s call to include race in discourse around biopower, this paper wished to instrumentalise this conceptual and methodological field into a precise analysis, devoted to the relationship between the Japanese government and Zainichi groups. Internal developments for Zainichi Koreans, embodied for example in the complex history of the Chongryon, affect Japanese laws and policies towards them, and these in turn affect future developments. Understanding how structural changes affect direct livelihoods then is made possible by the twofold methodological approach.
5. Empirical Evidence and Findings
How do great powers affect Japanese internal relations with Zainichi Koreans?
5.1 Zainichi Koreans under Japanese Hegemony
As the naturalized Zainichi protagonist in Lee Hoesung’s 1975 novel […] Exile and freedom expatiates: “What crimes Japanese have committed against Koreans. . . . Do you know why Koreans are afraid of an earthquake? They are afraid that they would be massacred again. . . . We suffered enforced migration” (Lie, 2008, p. 6)
As prefaced (see 2.2 and 2.3), the first chapters of Zainichi Korean history are bloody and traumatic. If we are to accept Imperial Japan’s role as a Great Power, in its hegemonic influence over East Asia(Gills, 1993), then the first ever act of a Great Power in the relationship between Zainichi Koreans and the Japanese government, was Japan’s own doing. Imperial and nationalistic callings led to the invasion and colonisation of the Korean peninsula, and the strains of WWII, the single most dramatic confrontation of great powers in history, led to the mass enforced migration of Koreans into Japan.
While some of the internal migration previous to WWII followed patterns common with other empires, with populations in the periphery willingly moving towards the centre – think of a famous refrain from 1920s southern Korean countryside: “Tokyo in Japan / What a wonderful place / If you go once / You will never come home” (Lie, 2008, p. 7) – the lingering traumatic impacts of the Imperial government’s actions are fundamental to the Zainichi identity to this day (Shipper, 2010).
The impact of the war was devastating for much of the country, but in some situations it disproportionately affected Zainichi Koreans, without subsequent political space for them to heal from this trauma(Robillard-Martel and Laurent, 2020). By the beginning of the war, especially because of the many factories around the city, Hiroshima presented an outsized Zainichi Korean population.
The nuclear bombing of Hiroshima resulted in the death of between 20.000 and 30.000 ethnic Koreans(Yoneyama, 1999, p. 121). The reward for the Zainichi losses during WWII came in a stripped citizenship; after 1949, citizens of the colonies lost their status as ‘children of the emperor’(Morris-Suzuki, 1997, p. 189), a leftover of the Meiji policy of absolute ethnic integration (under the Japanese state, in a Japanese ethnicity), and entered a problematic legal status (Chung, 2010).
The 1950 Nationality Act, last amended in 1993, adopted a demarcated ius sanguinis perspective on citizenship, with full citizenship given to those born of a Japanese patrilineal origin. Considering that “the rate of intermarriage hovered around 1–2 percent of all Korean marriages in Japan in the 1930s” (Lie, 2008, p. 8), many Zainichi Koreans were excluded from citizenship. As diplomatic relationships with either of the Koreas would not be normalised until 1965 (in the context of Japanese-USA-South Korean allyship), Zainichi Koreans were left politically marginalised and legally disenfranchised.
This first, short, chapter on the effects of GPP onto Japanese ethnopolitics shows that until the end of WWII, and right after it, the welfare of Zainichi Koreans was disproportionately affected by the Great Power event that was the war. Imperial Japan can be considered to be its own hegemon during this time, given that its allyship with Germany and Italy was primarily military, and neither country’s role fits the necessary prerequisites (see chapter 3.1.2) to be considered an international hegemon in a Neo-Gramscian sense. Therefore, internal hegemony is the primary tool in the analysis of Imperial Japan. Its control and influence over the colony of Korea and its citizens becomes entailed in the issue of GPP, embodied in the WWII and its immediate consequences.
5.2 Zainichi Koreans in the Cold War
How did the Détente affect Japanese Government handling of affairs relating to the Chongryon?
After the end of the allied occupation of its country, Japan found itself stripped of its military might, constitutionally restructured, and fundamentally resized. Effectively, it became engulfed in the HB led by its main occupant, the United States(Morris-Suzuki, 1997). At the same time, the Korean War had started and was about to end. The non-victory by U.S. forces meant that Zainichi Koreans were, especially if we are reminded of their substantially unclear citizenship position, living a double GPP reality.
This was especially true for the circa 250.000 (Kim, 2011b, p. 235) or so Zainichi who refused to take up South Korean citizenship after 1965. Many of them were North Korean sympathisers, responsive towards the premises and promises of the Soviet HB. This section of the analysis thus focuses on the relationship between the Chongryon, the association to which many of these 250.000 Zainichi were part of, a flare of the Soviet HB, and the Japanese State, fully enshrined in the American HB.
5.2.1 Chongryon between hegemonies
On April 10th, 1956, the Chōsen University of Tokyo first opened. Its teachers are sanctioned by the North Korean government, and its teachings focus on the revolutionary history of Kim-Il-Sung(Shipper, 2010, p. 62). Only 20% of Zainichi Koreans currently associated with the Chongryon can trace their ancestry back to geographical North Korea(Lee and Dukalskis, 2025), rendering the existence of the school a primary concern of the North Korean government, given its interest to keep a presence within Zainichi populations. After the end of the war, most Koreans were either without regular employment or in abject working conditions. This was an opportunity for North Korea which rivalling its newly created unrecognised peninsular neighbour, and for the Soviet HB, rivalling the USA’s presence in the pacific, to gain a foothold in a now Western-affiliated country.
The immediate closeness of a portion of the Zainichi populations towards North Korea, which was so great that the North Korean government considered it a decisive Cold War victory(Morris-Suzuki, 1997), was partly an espousing of the communistic principles of Kim-Il-Sung’s political project. Chōsen University therefore became, together with the entire Chongryon school system, an internal reaction of Zainichi populations fuelled by GPP hegemonic struggles. In other words, the creation and expansion of the Chongryon itself was an answer to the terrible living conditions of Zainichi Koreans and to the new Cold War hegemonic system.
The more heated decades of the Cold War coincided with Japan’s economic rise. Koreans seem to have benefitted from the improving economy, which increased the labour demand, but accurate contextualisation shows that Zainichi were still systematically disenfranchised and led away from full integration into Japanese socio-economical life.
A March 1953 guideline from the Cabinet Legislation Bureau “set […] that ‘Japanese nationality is required for civil servants who participate in the exercise of public authority or in the formation of public will’”(Kim, 2011b, p. 238) leading away Zainichi Koreans from higher level jobs. The Japanese formal recognition of South Korea of 1965, which, again, granted the possibility for Zainichi Koreans to take up South Korean nationality, meant that the Chongryon lost part of the basis for its existence on Japanese soil, the disenfranchisement of Zainichi vs-à-vis their homeland.
This came in the context of the hegemonic need for facilitating the Détente. The new improved economic situation of the West, and the first cracks in the economy of the Soviet HB, meant that the new interests of the TCC were not aligned with a need for a lowering of the iron curtain.
5.2.2 The Zainichi situation after the Détente
The peak of Chongryon activity had been during the 50s and early 60s, and now memberships to the Association have heavily declined. If the GPP dynamics of the early Cold War hand rendered a miniature version of the bloc conflict on Japanese soil, in which the government could not take decisive action against the Nort-Korean affiliated association, but it could keep engaging in its ethnopolitics against Koreans(Lee and Dukalskis, 2025), then the dynamics of the Détente and the shift of North Korea from the Soviet Union’s HB to China’s allowed for a change in domestic practices.
During the 70s and 80s, 17 Japanese citizens had disappeared off the Japanese coast. On the seventeenth of September 2002, supreme leader Kim Jong Il admitted to 13 abductions (Boynton, 2016). As the U.S. had entered a period of sole hegemony (after the death of the USSR), the effects of the détente on the sea of Japan meant that Japan had more freedom to act on its Chongryon Korean citizens. Partly using the scandal of the abductions, the Tokyo municipal government revoked its tax exemptions and delt a decisive blow to the association, from which it is yet to recover. (Lee and Dukalskis, 2025)
5.3 Zainichi Korean Welfare under the China-US Rivalry
Between the 1900s and the 2010s, the exponential rise of China reframed the Pacific Ocean political scene, lodging itself in the void left behind by the Soviet Union.
Compared to the previous hegemonic situation, the interests of the TCC aligned with the rise of China(Fusaro, 2017): its turn onto a more capitalist economy – even if under the control of the Communist Party – meant a deeper economic intertwining with the American HB. At the same time, Japanese nationalism rose both at the cultural and at the institutional level (Kowner and Befu, 2015), especially with Prime Minister Nakasone’s espousing of Nihonbunkaron.
The current struggles of Zainichi Koreans are directly related to the prevalence of the mono-ethnicity theory of Japanese lifeways, with internal answers to the pressures of a racist theory of Japanese-ness. The influence of GPP in this sense, especially for what counts the ‘wild-card’ that is North Korea, is directly impacting Zainichi welfare. In order to explain this relationship, first this chapter will deal with practices of Zainichi cultural and bodily self-preservation, then with the influence of the superstructure.
5.3.1 Zainichi Survival
Because of the ‘civil religion’ role of Nihonbunkaron (see chapter 2.1.1), its precepts being accepted at both a governmental and at a societal level, the existence of a sizeable ethnic minority and its legal status are an existential threat to the narrative on ‘Japanese-ness’. The existence of local networks like the Korean Youth Network (KYN) at the territorial level allows for individuals and their closest collectives, regardless of political affiliation, to come in contact with their origins(Laurent and Robillard-Martel, 2022).
Often, Zainichi utilise a Japanese alias (tsumei) in substitution to their Korean name, relying on physical similarities to operationalise “racial passing”(Laurent and Robillard-Martel, 2022, p. 44); some recall living two different lives, one under their birthname, one under their tsumei (Sangjung, 2006, p. 267).
In their daily lives, many Zainichi (albeit, mainly of older generations (Laurent and Robillard-Martel, 2022, p. 51)), preserve their traditional life ways through silent acts like traditional culinary traditions, funeral rites, and language education. The existence of the KYN for this purposes supplanted the death of the politicised Chongryon, which, because of an institutional fear of its closeness to North Korea – straining HB GPP – is now fundamentally undersized (Roland, 2023).
Women especially are more resistant to the pressures of homogeneity and promote traditional attire (Laurent and Robillard-Martel, 2022). These subtle acts of defiance come in opposition to subtle bot noticeable discriminatory actions. There is a widespread exclusion of Zainichi Koreans from everyday life, justified by Nihonbunkaron, that intervenes in the most mundane of actions – reinforcing ethnic disparity and the purposed homogeneity at the ‘ground level’ (Kim, 2011a).
This distance from other citizens is kept at a legislative level: the 1991 ‘Special Law on the Immigration Control of Those Who Have Lost Japanese Nationality and Others on the Basis of the Peace Treaty with Japan’ effectively requalified second generation Zainichi Koreans as ‘Special Permanent Residents’(Kim, 2006). Because Japan does not allow for dual citizenship, those Zainichi Koreans which qualify as Special Permanent Residents (and are not naturalised citizens) are in a political and legislative limbo.
Compared to full citizenship, Special Permanent Residence requires holders to periodically renew their residence permits and carry identification cards to verify their residency status, they cannot hold a Japanese passport or vote in national elections, are excluded from voting or running for office at the national level and in many local elections, and cannot hold public sector jobs that require citizenship(Kim, 2006).
Zainichi Koreans fight the institutional pressure to give up ties to their ancestry, embodied in the push to give up South Korean citizenship and Special Residency in favour of naturalisation, in the day-to-day reinforcing of traditional lifeways.
While Zainichi groups clearly have political agency, they are institutionally disenfranchised and discriminated against in subtle yet persistent ways. While the ways of this discrimination have until now been explained in cultural and historical terms, the final section of this argumentation aims to show how the latest shift in global HB GPP can be pinpointed as a superstructural influence on Japanese internal ethnopolitics.
5.3.2 The US, China, North Korea, South Korea, Chongryon, Zainichi
How are Korean identity survival practices operationalised vis-à-vis the international context?
Japan is widely considered a middle power in the HB of the U.S., being economically strong but diplomatically and militarily weak (see requirements for international hegemon status in chapter 3.1.2). The prevalence of a nationalistic narrative in its institutions and legal practices (like citizenship discrimination) can be considered, in a Neo-Gramscian sense, allowed and allowable only under the context of its hegemonic situation.
This is not a novel thought; e.g., it has been argued that Japan’s nuclearization came precisely in the nationalistic frenzy of the 80s and 90s, and that the consent needed from the civil society for its spread was built through negotiations between the interests of the U.S. (and of the HB) and the promises of nationalism (Kelly, 2014). The marginalization of Zainichi Koreans, shown in this paper to go from overt to subtle in the last century, is not merely a byproduct of domestic nationalism but reflects Japan’s need to maintain coherence with the ideological and strategic imperatives of its hegemonic bloc.
By reinforcing the U.S.-led bloc’s opposition to North Korea, Japan’s policies towards Chongryon members – often seen as extensions of North Korean influence – serve a dual purpose.
On one hand, they align with the bloc’s geopolitical priorities by reducing potential support for a rival hegemon. On the other, they affirm Japan’s role as a compliant and reliable middle power within the bloc. This alignment manifests through systemic disenfranchisement, such as denying Chongryon members access to state benefits or legitimizing cultural exclusion through Nihonbunkaron.
These practices are not merely reactive but deliberate, aimed at embedding Japan’s domestic policies within the broader framework of U.S.-China rivalry. This approach illustrates how domestic nationalism becomes a tool for managing Japan’s international obligations, ensuring its integration into the HB while simultaneously marginalizing groups that disrupt the desired national narrative or align with opposing powers. Gramsci’s insight – that nationalistic policies often serve as conduits for international hegemonic interests – is key to understanding how Nihonbunkaron functions as both a cultural and political tool. The ideology of a homogenous Japanese identity—embedded within the domestic structure – aligns with Japan’s need to maintain its role within the U.S.-led bloc. As such, the systemic disenfranchisement of Zainichi Koreans cannot be understood in isolation but must be analysed as part of a broader strategy that reflects the pressures of bloc competition.
Neo-Gramscian theory further clarifies this phenomenon by elucidating the feedback loop between the international superstructure and domestic structures. Japan’s ethnopolitical policies are shaped by both internal nationalistic pressures and the imperatives of its hegemonic alignment. These policies, in turn, reinforce the dominant global bloc’s stability by marginalizing elements perceived as aligned with rival blocs, such as North Korea-affiliated Chongryon members. This dynamic affirms the theoretical premise that domestic ethnopolitics are profoundly influenced by the geopolitical positioning of the state within hegemonic blocs.
The United States, as the leading hegemonic power, prioritizes the containment of North Korea and, by extension, limits Japan’s capacity to adopt policies that might appear conciliatory towards Chongryon, which is perceived as a proxy for North Korean influence. Simultaneously, China’s growing regional power complicates this dynamic, as it seeks to challenge U.S. dominance while maintaining its strategic alignment with North Korea. This rivalry places additional pressure on Japan to assert its loyalty to the U.S. bloc by aligning its domestic policies with the bloc’s anti-North Korean stance.
South Korea’s role further adds to these complexities, as it shares a contentious yet necessary partnership with Japan within the U.S.-led bloc. While South Korea’s diplomatic ties with Japan enable cooperation against shared security threats, historical grievances and differing approaches to ethnic Korean communities often result in tensions. This divergence indirectly reinforces Japan’s rigid stance on Zainichi Koreans affiliated with Chongryon, as it distances itself from any association with North Korea’s sphere of influence. North Korea, on the other hand, exploits the existence of Chongryon to maintain a symbolic foothold in Japan, using it as a cultural and ideological link to its diaspora, further justifying Japan’s marginalization of these communities.
In this context, the marginalization of Zainichi Koreans illustrates the deeply intertwined relationship between domestic nationalism and great power competition, where Japan’s actions are simultaneously shaped by and contribute to the broader dynamics of U.S.-China rivalry and inter-Korean relations.
5.4 So What?
The position of Zainichi Korean people in Japanese society has changed throughout the last century, while always maintaining a degree of disenfranchisement and ethnic discrimination.
This condition is a complex sociopolitical affair, the outcome of various forces moving and the national and international levels. These forces include hegemonic struggles, Japanese government policies, and the Koreans’ own agency. The fact that Zainichi are not a monolith, moving at different paces making different decisions from each other – as proven by, e.g., 250.000 Koreans electing not to take up South Korean citizenship in 1965, shows that the change in Japanese policies has stemmed from multiple loci, including Korean mobilisation. While shifts in hegemonic bloc structure have allowed for changes Japanese nationalist Zeitgeist, especially for what concerns the Chongryon and relationships with North Korea and China, it is surmised that changes in policymaking stem from a complex multi-level system. Ethnopolitics around citizenship changed significantly with different hegemonic situations, especially in the passage to the post-war period.
This is all to say that the matrix of change is not found in any particular level of the system: it is not just in the agency of Zainichi Korean, not in the policies of the Japanese state, nor in the hegemonic bloc GPP. Change in this complex relationship is born of a mutual penetration of narratives, and of their effects on human life. Nationalism here, even when it propagandizes the exceptionalism of Japan, erecting one ethnicity to a position of privilege, the only one representing the Nation, actually reinforces the politics of the hegemonic leader – like Gramsci had predicted.
While the prevailing narrative nominally defends the Nation, inscribing it to one ethnicity, one race, and excluding the others, in practice it subdues policy choice to the hegemonic leader. People living on Japanese soil, not quite citizens because of the precepts of Nihonbunkaron, are thus mistreated and disenfranchised because of a wider hegemonic struggle between two Great Powers, be it the Soviet Union and the US, or China and the US. Nationalistic sentiment therefore acts in favour of a different state while professing to protect the Nation.
[…], one may conclude that often the so-called 'party of the foreigner' is […] the most nationalistic party”. (Gramsci, 1977, p. 1562. Author’s Translation.)
6. Conclusion
This paper has examined the interplay between Japanese nationalism, its ethnopolitical practices, and the shifting dynamics of international hegemony.
David Kang’s admonition, to analyse East Asia according to its own standards, and not Western ones, has been followed by mixing ground-level work with systematic analysis. By defining nationalism not by a Western conception, but through the Japanese-specific Nihonbunkaron, this paper has let Japan enjoy its contextuality.
Simultaneously, the operationalisation of history is not prognostic nor deterministic, but simply explanatory, as its dealings are understood to influence internal Japanese ethnopolitics contextually. By situating the experiences of Zainichi Koreans within a Neo-Gramscian framework and employing biopolitical analysis, it has traced the direct and indirect impacts of Japan's hegemonic positioning on domestic ethnopolitics.
The findings underscore a consistent pattern: changes in the international hegemonic blocs to which Japan aligns shape its internal policies towards marginalized ethnic groups. Historically, Japan’s colonial exploitation and subsequent marginalization of Zainichi Koreans reveal an interplay between nationalistic agendas and international alignments. During Imperial Japan's hegemonic era, ethnopolitical policies were tools for reinforcing a homogenized identity essential to imperial expansion.
Post-WWII, the dynamics of the Cold War influenced Japan's treatment of Zainichi Koreans, as its alignment with the U.S.-led bloc necessitated political marginalization of groups perceived as sympathetic to opposing powers, such as Chongryon-affiliated Koreans.
6.1 Answers to the Research Question(s)
The empirical evidence points towards the fact the Japanese internal relations with Zainichi Koreans are indeed influenced by geopolitical shifts. During the first period of Japanese hegemony, in which Japan was not the clear subject of any one hegemonic leader, policies towards Zainichi were brutal and unapologetic. Forced migration and institutionalised killings were the norm.
After the end of WWII, and with the shift toward the United States’ hegemonic bloc, Japanese treatment of Zainichi Koreans improved. While economically integrating (even if with discriminatory tendencies from the public), Zainichi still were not granted with citizenship, but the united States closeness with South Korea and opposition to North Korea meant that some action had to be taken. South Korean citizenship was allowed after 1965, but circa 250.000 Koreans remained stateless and North Korean citizenship was never recognised. This impacted relations with the Chongryon, an association which propagated North Korean teachings to Koreans in Japan.
The Détente meant that lower international pressure was exercised on the Japanese state in its dealings with Koreans. Koreans improved their social status, the Chongryon started losing ground because of scandals and the increasingly more hawkish position of North Korea. Simultaneously, Nihonbunkaron – a narrative on Japanese-ness – became more institutionalised and culturally prevalent, fully enshrining thought on racial and ethnic homogeneity.
With the rise of China, and the separate affiliation of Chongryon and non-Chongryon affiliated Zainichi, the ethnicity is again problematised. Currently, while socio-economical integration is not at problematic level, Koreans in Japan still face subtle but persistent acts of discrimination, including in the workplace. Personal acts of rebellion from the pressure of homogeneity include cultural reinforcements of traditional clothing, food, and rites.
6.2 Future Outlook
This research has highlighted the necessity of integrating domestic and international perspectives to understand the mechanisms through which marginalized communities are affected by global power dynamics. By framing the Zainichi Korean experience as both a product of Japanese nationalism and a consequence of hegemonic bloc competition, it challenges the notion that domestic ethnopolitics operate independently from international contexts.
From a policy perspective, governments must address the ways in which international alignments influence domestic minority treatment, ensuring that nationalistic policies do not exacerbate inequalities. Additionally, policymakers should prioritize inclusive legal reforms and promote narratives that challenge monolithic national identities, as these measures can mitigate the adverse effects of bloc politics on marginalized communities. It is also important for correct and informative campaigns to be conducted towards the public, making sure that some actions are taken against the passive reinforcement of ethnopolitical discrimination.
Future studies should further explore the feedback loops between international hegemonic transitions and their domestic repercussions, addressing gaps such as the limited empirical analysis of minority lived experiences under shifting hegemonic pressures, and the lack of comparative studies that examine how similar dynamics unfold in other regions or historical contexts. Expanding research on how marginalized communities actively navigate and resist hegemonic alignments could also offer crucial insights into the agency of these groups within such systems. Moreover, interdisciplinary approaches integrating cultural studies, political science, and sociology could deepen our understanding of how hegemonic ideologies are internalized and contested at both societal and individual levels.
This paper serves as a testament to the notion that all levels of actions are interconnected in International Relations; there are always more biases to curve, more voices to be heard. It is up to the researcher, careful of her position of privilege in her relationship with knowledge, to look at the international scene and decide whose lived experiences get to be included, and whose do not.
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