Unraveling and Connecting in the Transpacific (original) (raw)

This chapter examines the flow of people, goods, and money in the transpacificfrom East Asia to the US-through an analysis of the narratives and work of two immigrant artists, Yoko Inoue from Japan and Jean Shin from the Republic of Korea, by employing the concepts of both major-and minor-transnationalism. The concept of minor transnationalism, as addressed in the introduction, highlights the horizontal relationship between transmigrants and/or between minoritized peoples (Lionnet and Shih 2005, see the introduction for more detail). In the previous two chapters, Crystal Uchino and Kazuyo Tsuchiya respectively shed light on the empathy, collaboration, and renewed relationships between Japanese Americans and other Asian Americans over the hibakusha (A-bomb survivors) and between Korean immigrants and African Americans in Los Angeles after the 1992 civil disturbances (Uchino, Ch. 8, Tsuchiya, Ch. 9). Minor transnationalism contrasts with major transnationalism in the transpacific, a term which Hoskins and Nguyen use to reference the economic, political, and military contact zones between nation-states, incorporating the power dynamics between them (Nguyen and Hoskins 2014). As Naoki Sakai and Hyon Joo Yoo discuss (2012, 12, see the introduction for more detail), the US as a masculine presence dominated a feminized Asia while the stronger Asian powers exploited weaker Asian and Pacific countries. US intervention in the Korean and First Indochina Wars stimulated the development of capitalism in the nation-states of East and Southeast Asia, which allied themselves with the Western Bloc, and military cooperation from Japan, South Korea, Thailand, and the Philippines, in turn, helped support the Vietnam War (Nguyen and Hoskins 2014, 2-15). The role that the Korean War-era special procurements played in Japan's postwar economic recovery (detailed later in this chapter) provides another example of major transnationalism as well.