Interrogating the ‘Population Problem’ of the Non-Western Empire: Japanese Colonialism, the Korean Peninsula, and the Global Geopolitics of Race

Globalization from above and below: Rejecting superficial multiculturalism and igniting anti-Korean sentiment in Japan

“…Leveraging growing anxieties about the spread of European colonialism, Japan borrowed from European racial logics and claimed that it was a defender of the yellow race, even while exploiting, oppressing, and culturally erasing Asian ethnic others (Fujitani, 2011). The latter required ideological formations that naturalized the belief in Japanese superiority and Asian inferiority; this is particularly the case for Korea, which Japan attempted to turn into a settler colony and which suffered longer than other Japanese-occupied territories (Em, 2013; Park, 2017a). Thus, analyzing Japan provides an understanding of the postcolonial discourses that have emerged outside Europe and the Global South.…”