LETTER FROM TOKYO
In the Land of the Rising Sun, each school has its own coat of arms, flag and anthem, praising the charm of the seasons when it does not exalt educational values. Sometimes, these texts provoke unwelcome reactions. Such as that of the international high school of Kyoto, 450 kilometers from Tokyo. For the local nationalist fringe, its lyrics are wrong to be in Korean and to mention the “East Sea” to refer to the stretch of sea that separates the peninsula from the Archipelago. The Japanese maintain that the term “Sea of Japan” should be used.
The scandal broke after the school won the final of the high school baseball tournament, known as “koshien,” on August 23 against Tokyo’s Kanto Daiichi School in a thrilling 2-1 match. The result sparked a flood of attacks on social media, with calls for “Kyoto International High School Expulsion from High School Baseball Federation” or the denunciation of a “Shame on Kyoto.”
The international high school is an heir to Kyoto Chosen, founded in 1947 to accommodate the children of Korean expatriates. “Chosen” is the old name for Korea. In the 1990s, faced with financial difficulties and a drop in the number of students, the school decided to integrate into the Japanese education system. Supported by the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Union of Korean Residents in Japan (Mindan), it obtained approval from the Ministry of Education in 2003 and changed its name to “Kyoto International High School”. Today, 70% of its 159 students are Japanese.
However, in Japan, the approximately 600,000 Koreans are descended for the most part from migrants fleeing poverty or forced by the Japanese militarist regime during colonization (1910-1945), and anything Korean remains the target of rampant racism.
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“Koreans, hang yourselves!”
Zaitokukai, an organization that campaigns against special privileges for Koreans in Japan founded in 2006 by nationalist Makoto Sakurai, gained prominence in the 2010s by organizing rallies at the entrance to Tokyo’s Shin-Okubo district, known for its large Korean population. Slogans such as “Kill the Koreans!” or “Koreans, hang yourselves! Drink poison! Die!”
Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike, who is close to the Liberal Democratic Party and was re-elected in July for a third term, has, as she has done every year since she took office in 2016, refused on 1is September, to pay tribute to the Koreans – between 2,900 and 6,600 according to estimates – massacred in the days following the earthquake of September 1is September 1923. The day after the tragedy that left 105,000 dead in Tokyo and its surrounding area, rumors spread that migrants from Korea had poisoned wells, started fires and caused riots.
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