"A multiple-contributor volume on Zainichi literature, literary works by ethnic or diasporic Koreans in Japan. Includes translations of Japanese-language essays, stories, and poems by seven authors"--

This book traces the origins and transformations of a people-the Zainichi, or Koreans “residing in Japan.” Using a wide range of arguments and evidence-historical and comparative, political and social, literary and pop-cultural-John Lie reveals the social and historical conditions that gave rise to Zainichi identity, while exploring its vicissitudes and complexity. In the process he sheds light on the vexing topics of diaspora, migration, identity, and group formation.

This book traces the origins and transformations of a people-the Zainichi, or Koreans "residing in Japan." Using a wide range of arguments and evidence-historical and comparative, political and social, literary and pop-cultural-John Lie reveals the social and historical conditions that gave rise to Zainichi identity, while exploring its vicissitudes and complexity. In the process he sheds light on the vexing topics of diaspora, migration, identity, and group formation.

Into the Light is the first anthology to introduce the fiction of Japan’s Korean community (Zainichi Koreans) to the English-speaking world. The collection brings together works by many of the most important Zainichi Korean writers of the twentieth century, from the colonial-era "Into the Light" (1939) by Kim Sa-ryang to "Full House" (1997) by Yu Miri, one of contemporary Japan’s most acclaimed and popular authors. Although diverse in style and subject matter, all of the stories gathered in this volume ask a single consuming question: What does it mean to be Korean in Japan? Some stories record their contemporary milieu, while others focus on internal turmoil or document social and legal discrimination. More generally, they consider the relationship of Korean ethnicity to sexuality, family, culture, politics, and history. Thus the stories provide a fascinating window into the human experience of modernity in Japan and Korea, not only enabling us to track the ways in which grand concepts such as nation, language, empire, economy, and gender have shaped the human imagination, but also entreating us to ask how individual authors have sought to provide insight—or even guidance—on the path that grand history might follow. The volume includes stories by Chong Ch’u-wol, Kim Ch’ang-saeng, Kim Hak-yong, Kim Sa-ryang, Kim Tal-su, Noguchi Kakuchu, Yi Yang-ji, and Yu Miri.

Presenting the voices of a unique group within contemporary Japanese society—Zainichi women—this book provides a fresh insight into their experiences of oppression and marginalization that over time have led to liberation and empowerment. Often viewed as unimportant and inconsequential, these women’s stories and activism are now proving to be an integral part of both the Zainichi Korean community and Japanese society. Featuring in-depth interviews from 1994 to the present, three generations of Zainichi Korean women—those who migrated from colonial Korea before or during WWII and the Asia-Pacific War and their Japan-born descendants—share their version of history, revealing their lives as members of an ethnic minority. Discovering voices within constricting patriarchal traditions, the women in this book are now able to tell their history. Ethnography, interviews, and the women’s personal and creative writings offer an in-depth look into their intergenerational dynamics and provide a new way of exploring the hidden inner world of migrant women and the different ways displacement affects subsequent generations. This book goes beyond existing Anglophone and Japanese literatures, to explore the lives of the Zainichi Korean women. As such, it will be invaluable to students and scholars of Japanese and Korean history, culture and society, as well as ethnicity and Women’s Studies.

The Routledge Handbook of Modern Korean Literature provides a comprehensive overview of a Korean literary tradition, which is understood as a multifaceted nexus of practices, both homegrown and transnational. The handbook discusses the perspectives from which modern Korean literature has thus far been defined, analyzing which voices have been enunciated, underappreciated, or completely silenced and how we can enrich our understanding of it. Taking up diverse transnational and interdisciplinary standpoints, this volume aims to encourage readers not to treat modern Korean literature as a self-evident category but to examine it anew as an uncultivated and uncharted space, unearthing its internal chasms and global connections. Divided into five parts, the themes covered include the following: Literature and power Borders and boundaries Rationality in literature and its limits Language, ethnicity, and translation Korean literature in the changing mediascape. By introducing new conceptual paradigms to the field of modern Korean literature, this book will appeal to students and scholars of Korean, East Asian, and world literature alike.

A New York Times Top Ten Book of the Year and National Book Award finalist, Pachinko is an "extraordinary epic" of four generations of a poor Korean immigrant family as they fight to control their destiny in 20th-century Japan (San Francisco Chronicle). NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF 2017 * A USA TODAY TOP TEN OF 2017 * JULY PICK FOR THE PBS NEWSHOUR-NEW YORK TIMES BOOK CLUB NOW READ THIS * FINALIST FOR THE 2018DAYTON LITERARY PEACE PRIZE* WINNER OF THE MEDICI BOOK CLUB PRIZE Roxane Gay's Favorite Book of 2017, Washington Post NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * #1 BOSTON GLOBE BESTSELLER * USA TODAY BESTSELLER * WALL STREET JOURNAL BESTSELLER * WASHINGTON POST BESTSELLER "There could only be a few winners, and a lot of losers. And yet we played on, because we had hope that we might be the lucky ones." In the early 1900s, teenaged Sunja, the adored daughter of a crippled fisherman, falls for a wealthy stranger at the seashore near her home in Korea. He promises her the world, but when she discovers she is pregnant--and that her lover is married--she refuses to be bought. Instead, she accepts an offer of marriage from a gentle, sickly minister passing through on his way to Japan. But her decision to abandon her home, and to reject her son's powerful father, sets off a dramatic saga that will echo down through the generations. Richly told and profoundly moving, Pachinko is a story of love, sacrifice, ambition, and loyalty. From bustling street markets to the halls of Japan's finest universities to the pachinko parlors of the criminal underworld, Lee's complex and passionate characters--strong, stubborn women, devoted sisters and sons, fathers shaken by moral crisis--survive and thrive against the indifferent arc of history. *Includes reading group guide*