Abstract
Recent progress in research on the migration history of Japan has cast new light on the influx of the Korean population to Japan just after the end of the Second WorldWar. This migration was designated as “illegal entry” and/or “smuggling,” and was suppressed by the Japanese government and the Supreme Commander for Allied Powers. However, partially because of the too obvious “illegality” of this migration, a question remains to be solved: how did people actually prohibit this migration?
The purpose of this article is to clarify the concrete process that drew the borderline between “Korean” and “Japanese” after the Japanese Empire fell. Focusing on the legislation process and the performance of the law, this article investigates the answer to this question. Before the Immigration Control Act became a law and determined the nationality of Koreans in both Japan and the Korean Peninsula, how was the authority able to regard migration from Korea to Japan as “illegal”? How did “illegal entry” become a political/social problem and how was it suppressed? Answering these questions involves considering who was categorized as a “foreigner” and “illegal” in postwar Japan, as well as how the borderlines between “legal” and “illegal” and “Korean” and “Japanese” were drawn.
