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August 22, 2025

Colonial Discourse, Othering, and Ethnic Egoism : A Critical Reading of Nakanishi Inosuke’s Furyō Senjin

Key Points

The text illustrates how colonial discourse constructs Korea as both a subject and threat under Japanese imperialism, revealing complex power dynamics.
Furyō Senjin, described as a rhetorical tool, manifests colonial fear, shaping perceptions and spatial relationships regarding Koreans.
This critical reading focuses on Usui Eisaku's internalization of guilt, reflecting broader societal attitudes towards colonial subjects and spaces.
The analysis calls attention to the entrenchment of colonial language hierarchies, which perpetuate affective colonialism through both empathy and domination.

Abstract

This study offers a critical examination of the structures of colonial discourse and mechanisms of othering embedded in Furyō Senjin (The Unruly Koreans), a 1922 short story by Nakanishi Inosuke. Positioned within the ideological and affective apparatuses of Japanese imperialism, the novel constructs Korea not merely as a colonial subject but as an existential and spatial threat. The term Furyō Senjin, far from being a neutral descriptor, emerges as a rhetorical and political instrument that materializes colonial fear through language and imaginary geographies. This paper analyzes how the protagonist, Usui Eisaku, internalizes this discourse, projecting guilt and anxiety onto Korean spaces and bodies. The study also scrutinizes the use of terms like dojin (native), revealing how colonial language entrenches a hierarchy of civilization and savagery. Despite the author’s ostensible pro-Korean stance, the text reproduces latent Orientalist logics and affective asymmetries. Ultimately, the work is read as a paradigmatic case of affective colonialism, wherein empathy and domination operate not in contradiction but in structural collusion.

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