Function-Based Spatiality and the Development of Korean Communities in Japan by Rands David;

Author:Rands, David; [Rands, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lexington Books
Published: 2014-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Four

Annexation Through the Great Kantō Earthquake

Colonizing migration, in its purest form, simply expands the geographic range of a given population. . . . Coerced migration entails obligatory departure, forced severing of most or all ties at the origin. . . . Circular migration consists of creation of a regular circuit in which migrants retain their claims and contacts with a home base. . . . Chain migration involves sets of related individuals or households who move from one place to another through a set of social arrangements. . . . Career migration, finally, characterizes individuals and households that move in response to opportunities to change position within or among large structures.

—Charles Tilly1

The period between the annexation in 1910 and the Great Kantō Earthquake of 1923 was one of great migration wherein distinctions between the Korean communities in Osaka and Tokyo solidified. In 1915, the 594 Koreans in Tokyo represented the largest Korean community in Japan. Osaka ranked fourth, behind the mining communities in Fukuoka and Yamaguchi, with only 399 Korean residents. By 1917, Osaka’s Korean population of 2,235 more than doubled the number of Koreans living in Tokyo, and by 1920 Osaka had a Korean population of 4,762, dwarfing the population of Tokyo’s Korean migrants which had only grown to 1,618.2

While in previous periods the scale of migration was much more limited, and many of the Koreans in Japan were sojourners, after annexation the majority of Tilly’s types of migration can be observed. The colonial experience and its impact on the ability of Koreans to migrate to Japan, the circular migration of students and miners for whom Japan was a temporary sojourn, the chain migration of Koreans from Cheju, and the career migration of many factory workers who sought to escape the Korean system in favor of a life in Japan were all evidenced as Koreans moved to Japan. During this period the number of Koreans in Japan increased from just over 2,000 to over 80,000; and it was then that Osaka became the main destination for Koreans coming to Japan.

Annexation meant that Koreans were no longer regarded as a foreign population, but as Japanese nationals. Mostly originating in the southern provinces, the post-annexation migration began with a trickle of laborers and rapidly became a flood, as migration promised benefits to both Japanese industrialists and Korean peasants. This dynamic was intensified by the explosion in manufacturing induced by World War One. It was during this period that the Japanese government acted to control migration, initially encouraging it, and then attempting to limit it as manufacturing slowed at the end of the war. Tokyo, as the metropole, and Osaka, Japan’s second-city, reacted quite differently to these directives. The types of business employing Koreans, employment practices, and destinations of goods produced differentiate the patterns of migration between the two cities. These differences were manifest in the 1 September 1923 Great Kantō Earthquake.

Pak Chae-il and Richard Mitchell attribute Korean migration to the “push” factors of Japanese colonialism. On August 22,

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