{"id":16492,"date":"2022-09-22T13:38:28","date_gmt":"2022-09-22T04:38:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/inst\/sgu\/?p=16492"},"modified":"2022-09-22T14:31:40","modified_gmt":"2022-09-22T05:31:40","slug":"event-report-intersecting-diasporic-literatures-on-jinis-puzzle-and-pachinko-by-dr-christina-yi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/inst\/sgu\/news-en\/2022\/09\/22\/16492\/","title":{"rendered":"Event Report: \u201cIntersecting Diasporic Literatures: On Jini\u2019s Puzzle and Pachinko\u201d by Dr. Christina Yi (University of British Columbia)"},"content":{"rendered":"

The event \u201cIntersecting Diasporic Literatures: On Jini\u2019s Puzzle and Pachinko\u201d by Dr. Christina Yi<\/a><\/span> (The University of British Columbia<\/a><\/span>) was organized and held by the Global Japanese Studies Model Unit at Waseda University. The event was conducted in person at Waseda\u2019s Toyama Campus, and saw 22 attendees, including undergraduate and graduate students, and members of the general public.<\/p>\n

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Professor Yi\u2019s lecture proposed to rethink the global configurations of power that become visible once one pays attention to the intersections of narratives of diaspora that are normally told separately from each other, by reading Ch\u2019oe Sil\u2019s Jini\u2019s Puzzle<\/em> (Jini no pazuru<\/em>, 2016) alongside Min Jin Lee\u2019s Pachinko <\/em>(2017), and analyzing the translations and visual-media adaptations of both works.<\/p>\n

When one translates into Japanese the apparently-straightforward word \u201cKorea\u201d\/\u201cKorean\u201d it is necessary to decide between several terms with various connotations. The word \u201cCh\u014dsen\u201d\u300c\u671d\u9bae\u300d, used in the colonial period, and the post-war terms \u201cKankoku\u201d \u300c\u97d3\u56fd\u300d and \u201cKita-Ch\u014dsen\u201d \u300c\u5317\u671d\u9bae\u300d mean different things. It is also not the same to describe a person as a \u201cCh\u014dsenjin\u201d\u300c\u671d\u9bae\u4eba\u300d,\u00a0 \u201cKankokujin\u201d \u300c\u97d3\u56fd\u4eba\u300d, \u201cCh\u014dsen-seki\u201d \u300c\u671d\u9bae\u7c4d\u300dor to use a katakana transcription of the English word \u201cKorean\u201d\u300c\u30b3\u30ea\u30a2\u30f3\u300d. These differences should not be understood as a simple question of equivalencies in translation. They point to the necessity of considering the history of Imperialism and the Cold War, which has been excised from public memory both in Japan and in the USA.<\/p>\n

Jini\u2019s Puzzle<\/em>, for instance, deals with North Korea only as an unknowable space that the protagonist must reject, in order to develop her personal journey of self-discovery in the USA. Hawai\u2019i plays there a particular role as a space where the main character has the hardest time fitting in. She is treated as a tourist by the locals, and exoticized as a local by the tourists. During her time in Oregon, on the other hand, her race is never problematized. It might seem paradoxical that she would feel less comfortable in a state with a substantial Asian-American population, but Professor Yi interpreted that fact as a sign that foregrounded racial relations in Hawai\u2019i bring to light by contrast the naturalized \u201cwhiteness\u201d that underlies the myth of American multi-culturalism.<\/p>\n

Pachinko <\/em>has also been praised in the US as a valuable example of \u201cimmigrant literature.\u201d That reading of the novel, however, separates the content of the novel from the historical experiences of those who actually experienced colonialism. Professor Yi stressed that her objective in pointing this out was not to criticize it as a \u201cmisreading,\u201d but to question the structural conditions that turn the \u201cWestern\u201d into a \u201cuniversal message,\u201d and the \u201cnon-Western\u201d as \u201climited experience.\u201d The question of whose experiences are considered \u201ctransparent\u201d and \u201ctranslatable\u201d is always a historical process that plays out in an unequal field of power relations.<\/p>\n

Event Overview<\/em><\/span><\/h3>\n