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This paper focuses on performances of Korean folk culture in Japanese schools and communities to analyse how minority identities are constructed. Korean minority education in Japan has taken up the challenge of reversing the stigma attached to former colonial subjects, employing a range of tangible props what Twine (1999) calls 'racial literacy' which prepares racial minority children to cope with and challenge racism at large. While embodying identity expression through Korean folk dance performances is an effective strategy, it faces constraints from larger social forces. Korean dance and music performances do little to challenge the dominance of mainstream values. These performances are embedded in everyday family, school, and community practices and paradoxically reproduce existing gender roles, broader pedagogical ideologies, and social structures. This ethnographic case study disentangles contradictions in minority education and shows commitment to alterity accompanies disavowal of alterity in relation to the hegemonic Japanese culture and society.keywords Koreans in Japan, minority education, racial literacy, Korean folk dance, performing identity [Q]uestions of identity are always questions about representation. They are always questions about the invention, not simply the discovery of tradition. They are always exercises in selective memory, and they almost always involve the silencing of something in order to allow something else to speak. (Stuart Hall 1995: 5) ethnos, vol. 80:2, 2015 (pp. 192-222), http://dx.

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This article describes where Zainichi Korean minority communities stand in contemporary Japanese society. Diverse Zainichi Korean communities struggle to reproduce and establish their legitimacy, as the narrowly defined Zainichi Korean population declines, and the levels of institutional racism based on legal status diminish. Increasing are more subtle forms of exclusion and microaggressions as well as on- and off-line hate speech. Based on the examinations of two cases of social movements involving Zainichi Koreans, I will examine how Zainichi Koreans are polarized into visible, outspoken subgroups and the invisible. A more resilient and proactive subethnicity can be seen among those who perceive continuing collective suffering and oppression. The Zainichi Korean minority’s experience attests to how ethnicity is reproduced and activated through committed collective actions, which build on coalitions with concerned Japanese and beyond.