Sōshi kaimei: Nihon no Chōsen shihai no naka de

by Naoki Mizuno

246 pages, Paperback Shinsho

First published March 1, 2008

Reviews

[meeners · Rating 4 out of 5]

a fantastic place to start if you're interested in 創氏改名. mizuno talks about it from a variety of different angles (bureaucratic strategies in korea, naichi opposition, responses by koreans in korea vs. naichi, comparisons with taiwan, changes in policy, regional differences, etc.) and is able to present all these very complex issues to the reader in an easily understandable way. it's kind of amazing to compare current perceptions of 創氏改名 to what really went on.

with that said, however, i do think he's rather quick to dismiss the various 誤解 people had then and now, without really talking about why those misunderstandings may have arisen or what we can understand from them. it's easy to point a finger at people after the fact, but i think it's just as important to think about changes in 創氏改名 discourse and how that reflects different political situations or stances or whatnot. this is especially important with literature - easy to say "this author misunderstood the policy" but harder (but more productive) to talk about what was the intent or effect of those "misunderstandings" in the text.

[Hachimaru · Rating 4 out of 5]

I must have learned this policy when I was a child at school but I knew how ignorant I had been of it when I just started to read this book. I didn't even know the difference between 氏 and 姓, they can be explained as the difference between family names and father's names. The author seems to have a kind of bias (it is, in a way, inevitable) about the policies and characters of Empire of Japan and sometimes his opinions can be conjectures, I can learn a lot of knowledge about this policy.