The True Name Movement: Japanese Teachers' Struggle for Empowering Korean Children.

Abstract

Personal naming has been central to the state's control of Koreans in Japan, but it has also been an important political strategy for Korean activists to challenge Japanese authorities. In the 1970s, Japanese teachers in public schools formed a true name movement, in which they encouraged Korean students to discard their false (Japanese) names, declare their true (Korean) names and true identities, and fight against ethnic discrimination. When the movement began, this rhetoric effectively captured the minds of Korean students. However, it became problematic in the 1980s, when the movement gradually spread. More and more Korean children became attached to their Japanese names and took those names as their true names; For them, the rhetoric was a rigid system of ethnic classification, in which a personal name, an ethnic self, and the true self signified one another. Yet, the movement helped them learn the political significance of personal naming.