Discourse on Education for Korean Students in the 1960s Japanese Teachers Union:

Changing Perspectives on “Zainichi Korean Education”

Abstract

In Japanese public schools after the war, what kind of “problems” were conceived concerning second and third generation Korean children, who were then turned into “foreigners”? The movement and discourse of Zainichi Korean Education saw nation-wide development starting from the 1970s. There teachers' interests were largely focused on problems in the students' state of mind; in the eyes of teachers, these students were deprived of humane development as “minzoku” (a nation, or a racial/ethnic group). If we trace back to the root of such educational discourse, its original form evolved from the 1960s movement of the Japanese Teachers Union (Nikkyoso Kyoken).

In Nikkyoso Kyoken's annual conferences from the late 1950s through the 1960s, we can see a considerable change in the perspective taken on Zainichi Korean Education. Behind this change was the politics of a series of Japan-North Korea solidarity movements such as the North Korea Repatriation Movement, and the politics of the Japanese Nationals Education (Kokumin Kyoiku) movement. Within the discourse of Nikkyoso Kyoken at this time, we can find two different educational perspectives: one focuses on discrimination, alienation, and rampant poverty in the school and local community and problematizes this social environment, and the other focuses on the agendas that evolve from political movements and problematizes the lack of education to make nationals or minzoku. The relation of the two perspectives changes from the original state of co-existence to the overwhelming dominance of the latter after the early 1960s. As a result, the most important problem that “Japanese teachers” should now tackle is the problem of “assimilation,” which will result in an educational discourse that will address “restoration” of nature as an essentially different member of minzoku from “Japanese” as its core value.