Korean Fan Dance for Fun: Performing Alterity in Contemporary Japan

Abstract

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.

Introduction to the Special Issue, Commitment to Alterity and Its Disavowal: The Politics of Display of Belonging

“…However, it has a narrow focus on linguistic practices. Expression of belonging by dance performance or clothes that one wears that Lim and Ullman analyse, respectively, in this special issue cannot be analysed by this approach (Lim 2013;Ullman 2013). …”

“…Articles in this special issue illustrate such complexity: labelling themselves with particular shades of belonging and acting out that label differently in various contexts , participating in cultural clubs and performing 'ethnic' dances (Lim 2013), and acting or dressing in the stereotypical ways that are associated with that category (Ullman 2013).…”

From Korea to Japan: A Transnational Perspective on South Korea's Important Intangible Cultural Properties and Zainichi Korean Artists

“…Nevertheless, the adaptation and practice of traditional Korean music and dance in Japan should not be reduced to epiphenomena of the nation-state (Clifford, 1994:302) but rather and more importantly should be seen as a constructive gesture in terms of searching for meaning in being a diaspora beyond the confines of the nation-state. As Youngmi Lim (2013), a Zainichi Korean scholar herself, states that Zainichi Koreans' interest in traditional Korean music and dance can be traced to as early as the late 1960s, when a social movement developed among younger-generation Zainichi Koreans that criticized older-generation Koreans' acceptance of a colonial view over themselves as racially inferior people and fractioning of the Zainichi Korean community into two following partition in the Korean Peninsula. While these Zainichi activists instrumentalized traditional Korean performing arts-puch'aech'um (fan dance) and nongak (farmer's band music, more widely referred as p'ungmul) in particular-to raise cultural pride and consciousness by implementing them into Korean heritage education classes offered in Japanese and Korean schools (Lim, 2013), some Zainichi Koreans fascinated by Korean performing arts ended up travelling to South Korea in order to learn it in the native context and from the authentic teachers (Lim, 2013).…”

“…As Youngmi Lim (2013), a Zainichi Korean scholar herself, states that Zainichi Koreans' interest in traditional Korean music and dance can be traced to as early as the late 1960s, when a social movement developed among younger-generation Zainichi Koreans that criticized older-generation Koreans' acceptance of a colonial view over themselves as racially inferior people and fractioning of the Zainichi Korean community into two following partition in the Korean Peninsula. While these Zainichi activists instrumentalized traditional Korean performing arts-puch'aech'um (fan dance) and nongak (farmer's band music, more widely referred as p'ungmul) in particular-to raise cultural pride and consciousness by implementing them into Korean heritage education classes offered in Japanese and Korean schools (Lim, 2013), some Zainichi Koreans fascinated by Korean performing arts ended up travelling to South Korea in order to learn it in the native context and from the authentic teachers (Lim, 2013). Back in Japan, these Zainichi Koreans were viewed as having acquired authentic knowledge which empowered them as Korean cultural authorities in Japan.…”

“…Yet modes of expression and sense of identity can greatly vary among individuals and groups of migrants, especially in a case like Korean migration to Japan, where there is the historical complexity of colonialism and partition. Moreover, as racial differences between Koreans and Japanese are not obvious, national origin may only be perceived if announced by means of ethnically distinctive cultural signs; for this reason, and because Korea was formerly colonized by Japan, not every Zainichi Korean was brought up to cultivate or be mindful of their ethnic heritage (Lim, 2013).…”