As the number of foreign residents in Japan continues to grow, scholars of Japanese society are devoting increasing attention to the ways in which foreign communities interact with state and society in Japan. David Chapman's recent book Zainichi Korean Identity and Ethnicity focuses on the oldest and, until recently, the largest foreign community in Japan: the Korean community. Koreans in Japan are often called “zainichi Koreans,” which literally means “Koreans in Japan.” However, as Chapman notes, zainichi thinkers, beginning with Kim Tong-myung, have made the term zainichi into a new identity category, treating zainichi identity as an alternative to “being totally Korean or totally Japanese” (p. 44).
Chapman articulates three goals that he hopes to accomplish by writing this book. First, he aims to make the ideas of a variety of zainichi thinkers accessible to non-Japanese readers. Second, he aims to “demonstrate how, since the early 1970s, the zainichi...
