Abstract

Hikiagesha, or returnees from Japanese overseas colonial territories, occupy an ambivalent position within Japanese narratives on imperialism. Deprived of their perceived home in the colonies, they became a domestic Other situated in the margins of history as post-war Japanese society distanced itself from its past adventures in Empire-building. Some hikiagesha, however, became cultural producers and openly challenged post-war amnesic forgetting of the workings of Japanese imperialism. This article analyses two pieces of short fiction written in the 1950s and 1960s by returnees who were born in Korea during the colonial period (1910–1945) – Kajiyama Toshiyuki’s The Remembered Shadow of the Yi-Dynasty (Richō zan’ei, 1963) and Kobayashi Masaru’s Ford 1927 (Fōdo senkyūhyakunijūnana-nen, 1956). I discuss how the texts negotiate the memory of Japanese colonialism in Korea and argue that the hikiagesha share a deep-seated ambivalence towards both Japan’s role as an imperial power and Korea as the place of their childhood. While generally critical of Japanese imperialism, their narratives are caught between conflicting post-war discourses concerning the memory of the colonial period.

摘要

Hikiagesha，或从日本海外殖民领土归来的人，在日本关于帝国主义的叙述中占据着矛盾的位置。由于战后日本社会远离了过去在帝国建设中的冒险，他们被剥夺了他们在殖民地的感知家园，成为了一个位于历史边缘的家庭他者。然而，一些hikiagesha成为文化生产者并公开挑战战后对日本帝国主义运作的遗忘。本文分析了殖民时期（1910-1945 年）在韩国出生的归国者在 1950 年代和 1960 年代创作的两篇短篇小说——梶山俊之的《被铭记的彝族阴影》（Richō zan'ei，1963 年）和小林胜的福特 1927 年（Fōdo senkyūhyakunijūnana-nen，1956 年）。我讨论了这些文本如何协商日本在韩国的殖民主义记忆，并认为，hikiagesha对于日本作为帝国强国的角色和韩国作为他们童年的地方有着根深蒂固的矛盾心理。虽然普遍批评日本帝国主义，但他们的叙述夹在关于殖民时期记忆的战后相互冲突的话语之间。