Korean-Japanese (Zainichi) Playwrights: Voices Between Two Cultures

Introduction

Among the distinctive voices in Japanese theater are those of Zainichi Korean playwrights: artists of Korean heritage in Japan, many of them descendants of Koreans who came to Japan during the colonial period (1910-1945). Writing in Japanese for Japanese audiences, they have drawn on experiences of cultural displacement and discrimination, and on the negotiations of identity that shape Zainichi life.

The term "Zainichi" (在日) literally means "residing in Japan" and is shorthand for Zainichi Kankoku-Chosenjin (在日韓国・朝鮮人), referring to the ethnic Korean community in Japan. As of December 2025, about 430,000 Korean citizens lived in Japan, some 281,000 of them Special Permanent Residents; many more people of Korean descent hold Japanese citizenship.

Zainichi Korean theater is not a separate genre but a strand within Japanese theater. Yu Miri and Chong Wishing, discussed below, have both won the Kishida Kunio Drama Award, a major Japanese prize for playwriting.

Historical Context: The Zainichi Experience

Understanding Zainichi Korean theater requires some familiarity with the history of the community. During Japan's colonial rule of Korea (1910-1945), Koreans came to Japan in large numbers, some seeking work and many through wartime labor conscription. Immediately after World War II there were roughly 2.4 million Koreans in Japan. Most went back to the peninsula, leaving about 650,000 by 1946.

Those who stayed and their descendants found themselves in an ambiguous legal and social position. When the San Francisco Peace Treaty took effect in 1952, Zainichi Koreans formally lost their Japanese nationality, and many lived as residents without citizenship, facing discrimination in employment, housing, and education. The community itself was divided between those who identified with South Korea (Mindan, founded in 1946) and those who identified with North Korea (Chongryon, formed in 1955), and over 93,000 people left Japan for North Korea under a later repatriation program.

Yu Miri: Between the Stage and the Novel

Yu Miri (柳美里) is perhaps the most widely known Zainichi Korean writer, celebrated for both her novels and her plays. She was born in 1968 in Tsuchiura, Ibaraki Prefecture, and grew up in Yokohama. In 1984 she joined the musical company Tokyo Kid Brothers as its youngest member, and in 1987 she founded her own theater unit, Seishun Gogatsuto (青春五月党), before turning primarily to fiction.

Her play Festival for the Fish (魚の祭), which premiered in 1992, won the 37th Kishida Kunio Drama Award in 1993, shared that year with Akio Miyazawa. It is a family story that begins when the family gathers after the funeral of a younger brother. It should not be confused with Fish Swimming in Stone (石に泳ぐ魚), her first novel, published in the journal Shincho in 1994, whose model objected to her portrayal, leading to a long legal dispute.

Yu won the 116th Akutagawa Prize, for the second half of 1996, for her novel Family Cinema (家族シネマ). Her novel Tokyo Ueno Station won the National Book Award for Translated Literature in the United States in 2020, in Morgan Giles's translation.

Yu moved from Kamakura to Minamisoma, Fukushima Prefecture, in 2015, and in 2018 opened a bookstore, Full House, at her home in the city's Odaka district.

Chong Wishing: From Company Playwright to Yakiniku Dragon

Chong Wishing (鄭義信, also romanized Chong Ui-shin) was born in 1957 in Himeji, Hyogo Prefecture. He became the resident playwright of the company Shinjuku Ryozanpaku (新宿梁山泊) at its founding in 1987 and left in 1995. He won the 38th Kishida Kunio Drama Award in 1994 for The Terayama (ザ・寺山), and his film screenplays include Tsuki wa Dotchi ni Dete Iru (月はどっちに出ている, 1993) and Chi to Hone (血と骨, 2004).

His best-known stage work about Zainichi life is Yakiniku Dragon (焼肉ドラゴン), which premiered in April 2008 at the New National Theatre in Tokyo and then ran in Seoul, as a co-production with the Seoul Arts Center. Set between 1969 and 1971 beside Osaka International Airport, it follows a Zainichi family running a yakiniku restaurant on land they occupy illegally, through eviction, bullying, and personal conflict, until the restaurant is demolished and the family scatters. The play won the Yomiuri Theater Award's Grand Prize and the Tsuruya Nanboku Playwriting Award, among others, and Chong directed a film version in 2018.

Recent Work: Pachinko

The subject continues to reach the stage. Pachinko (Part 1) (パチンコ（上）) by Sugatsu Kanayama (金山寿甲, born 1975), head of the company Tokatsu Sports, won the 67th Kishida Kunio Drama Award in 2023. The publisher describes it as hip-hop theater about the life of a third-generation Zainichi Korean whose family business is a pachinko parlor.

Themes in Zainichi Korean Theater

Several themes appear in the work described above and in Zainichi life more broadly:

Identity and Naming

The question of names -- Korean names versus Japanese names, and the practice of using Japanese aliases (tsumei) -- is part of Zainichi experience. A 2002 survey by the Mindan newspaper found that 50% of respondents always used an alias, 13% always used their original name, and 33% varied by situation.

Family and Generational Conflict

Family is at the center of both Festival for the Fish and Yakiniku Dragon, and Pachinko (Part 1) follows a family business into the third generation.

The Homeland Question

The relationship to Korea is complicated by the division of the peninsula, which has created political divisions within the Zainichi community itself.

Discrimination and Resistance

Yakiniku Dragon shows pressures of this kind directly, through a family facing eviction and bullying.

Zainichi Theater and Broader Japanese Drama

Zainichi Korean playwrights have received major awards, including the Kishida Prize and, in the case of Yu Miri's fiction, the Akutagawa Prize.

Reading the Plays in English

Two plays are included in the Kinokuniya anthology Half a Century of Japanese Theater: Festival for the Fish by Yu Miri in Volume II (1990s, Part 2) and A Legend of Mermaids (人魚伝説) by Chong Wishing in Volume IV (1980s, Part 2). Pachinko #1 by Sugatsu Kanayama, translated by Aya Ogawa with Ashil Lee, is in Engeki: Japanese Theatre in the New Millennium (Japan Playwrights Association, 2024).

Conclusion

Working in Japanese while drawing on a history that is not only Japanese, these playwrights have brought the lives of the Zainichi community onto Japanese stages, including that of the New National Theatre.