Dean of the College, Division of Languages and Literature, and Japanese Program Present

Reclaimed Landscapes:
Diasporic Space in Postwar Japanese Literature

The neighborhood of Ikaino in Osaka has been home to Japan's largest population of ethnically Korean residents (commonly referred to as "Zainichi Koreans") since it was first settled in the 1920s. In this talk, I discuss the literary representation of this urban space as a "Korea inside Japan" or "second homeland" for the Zainichi Korean community, beginning in the 1950s and continuing far beyond Ikaino's official erasure from Osaka city maps in 1973. In particular, I consider how mythological narratives of Ikaino as built on land reclaimed through the construction work of Koreans laboring under conditions of empire have been used as a spatial metaphor for the lived experiences of the Korean diaspora in Japan.

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For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].

Time: 5:30 pm – 7:00 pm EDT/GMT-4

Location: Olin Humanities, Room 202

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