Blood Brothers: Racial Passing and Male Bonding in Japanese Yakuza Films

Like the Western gangster film, the Japanese yakuza film has long been a site for the co-articulation of racial, ethnic, gender, sexual, and class differences.  Not surprisingly, Korean residents of Japan (so-called zainichi Koreans) have played a central role in the development of this genre, especially from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s, when the yakuza film was at the height of its popularity and when Japan began to reexamine its (post)colonial past in response to domestic and international crises.  This talk looks at three yakuza films from this period that focus on racial tensions and gender anxieties between yakuza and zainichi Koreans.  In particular, Professor Scott will discuss how the acts of racial passing and male bonding in these films reflect larger concerns about Japanese national identity and masculinity through the bloody body of the zainichi Korean male subject.

Presenter: Christopher Scott

Date: 03/02/2010

Time: 4:00 PM - 5:30 PM

Location: 710 Social Sciences West Bank,Social Sciences

Christopher D. Scott is Assistant Professor in the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures at Macalester College, where he teaches courses in Japanese, modern Japanese literature and film, race and ethnic studies, and translation studies.  This talk is from his current book project, Invisible Men:  Race, Masculinity, and Zainichi Korean Subjectivity in Postwar Japanese Culture.