Zainichi Koreans are the descendants of colonial subjects who migrated to Japan from 1910 to 1945, when Korea was part of the Japanese empire. In 1952, the Japanese state stripped them of their nationality status and left them stateless. Like racial minority groups in other societies, Korean descendants still face systemic discrimination in contemporary Japan. Although they were colonized by a non-European power and are not physically distinct from the dominant Japanese population, their situation is often compared to that of African Americans. Yet, for scholars who think that race is necessarily based on “phenotype,” anti-Korean oppression cannot qualify as an instance of racism in Japan and the comparison with Black Americans is misguided. This article explores the intellectual and political issues at stake in debates over the use of racial comparisons—what I call the “racial politics of comparison.” Examining the views of scholars and Zainichi Korean activists, I show how the latter have drawn inspiration from the Black liberation struggle and built alliances with African Americans in order to resist oppression. I argue that their unique situation forces us to revise the role attributed to phenotype in current definitions of race and racism.

在日朝鲜人是 1910 年至 1945 年间移居日本的殖民臣民的后裔，当时朝鲜是日本帝国的一部分。1952年，日本政府剥夺了他们的国籍，让他们成为无国籍人。与其他社会中的少数族裔群体一样，韩国后裔在当代日本仍面临系统性歧视。尽管他们被非欧洲国家殖民，并且在身体上与占主导地位的日本人口没有区别，但他们的情况经常与非裔美国人相提并论。然而，对于认为种族必然基于“表型”的学者来说，反韩压迫不能成为日本种族主义的一个例子，与美国黑人进行比较是错误的。本文探讨了关于种族比较使用辩论中的知识和政治问题——我称之为“比较的种族政治”。审查学者的意见和在日韩国活动家，我展示了后者如何从黑人解放斗争中汲取灵感并与非裔美国人建立联盟以抵抗压迫。我认为，他们独特的情况迫使我们修改当前种族和种族主义定义中归因于表型的作用。