The articles in this issue expand the scope of Zainichi studies in three key ways: they bridge the "August 1945 divide" by.Al Jini hotels: low rates, no booking fees, no cancellation fees. For, as the contributions to this issue illustrate, representations of passing in Zainichi literature and film subvert and deny the conventional understandings of ethnicity, agency, and authenticity that have dominated popular discourse in Japan. Addressing the fraught problem of passing in Zainichi cultural production requires, at times, unconventional approaches that move beyond established chronological, geographical, and ethnic boundaries. Our aim, then, is to simultaneously center Zainichi cultural production in the intersections of the fields of Japanese and Korean studies and within theories of passing. With that said, the studies grouped together here do not represent a comprehensive examination of passing in Zainichi literature and film indeed, they only scratch the surface of this ubiquitous theme. Since Zainichi Koreans represent a case where ethnic difference does not necessarily coincide with racialized difference, rethinking passing through a study of Zainichi cultural production allows us to consider different forms of (linguistic, ethnic, textual) politics and theorize the complex relations of race, ethnicity, and gender from a global perspective, would like to sincerely thank fellow co-organizers Catherine Ryu and Nobuko Yamasaki, participants, and sponsors for their invaluable support, as well as the two anonymous reviewers who provided crucial feedback on the articles. Scholarship on passing has tended to focus on problematic racial relations historically entrenched in North American contexts, resulting in the theorization of passing as racialized performativity. The lens of passing allows us to emphasize these intersections while also addressing and contributing to broader understandings of the construction of difference.
Zainichi cultural production should be viewed as a node of interconnection, linking various discourses and bodies of literature, rather than occupying a space at the margins of a "national" Japanese or Korean culture. That is, because passing is not necessarily a transgression but the "default condition" imposed upon ethnic minorities by Japanese society, literary and filmic representations of that passing can be both ubiquitous and invisible. It can be argued, however, that passing-i.e., the social and legal processes through which ethnic Korean minorities pass for Japanese-constitutes a central problematic in Zainichi literature and film, whether it is explicitly articulated as such or not. Zainichi Koreans are the largest diasporic community in Japan, and their writings comprise a diverse literary corpus. In order to accomplish this task, we have relied upon the lens of passing. This special issue aims to deepen our understanding of those conditions and the ways in which Zainichi experiences have been represented in literature and film. Zainichi, therefore, denotes not only a particular group of people residing in Japan but also certain historical and social conditions that have shaped their experiences in Japan. Though the literal translation of Zainichi would be something along the lines of "residing in Japan," the term, as most commonly used today, designates something much more specific: ethnic Koreans who can trace their roots in Japan back to the colonial period (1910-1945).
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