Not Only a Child : The Vulnerability and Complicity of Japanese Settler Girls in Colonial Korea

There is no such thing as "only" children within colonial systems of power, and it is important to acknowledge the ways in which childhood and Japanese colonization were entangled. This article uses the memoirs Mother's Keijō, My Seoul and Gyeongju is the Sound of Mother Calling to examine the connections between vulnerability and complicity as experienced by two Japanese settler girls who were born and raised in the Japanese colony of Korea (Chōsen) between 1925 and 1945. Through analyzing their physical and emotional experiences as female children in a colony run by adult men, I show that Japanese settler girls had neither agency over their own life choices nor much awareness of colonial power structures and their own position as settlers. I argue that it was their marginality from structures of power and their ignorance about their positions within the colonial system that caused Japanese settler girls to be unconsciously complicit in colonial power. The experiences of these two girls highlight the ways that settler colonial systems use the vulnerability of children to perpetrate the colonial status quo. Yet, moments of emotional discrepancy occasionally allowed these Japanese settler girls to recognize and negotiate their level of complicity with the Japanese Empire, suggesting that introspection provides some emotional agency to marginalized members of the colonizing class.