Sint Nicolaas Surprise

On Saturday the 3th we had an excursion to Korean town in Oosaka, where the so called Zainichi 在日, people of Korean descend live. Earlier I already wrote something on the legal status of being a foreigner in Japan. One of the rules is that as long as you don’t have any Japanese blood in your veins you are not able to become Japanese. And this exactly the point where the problems for the Zainichi start. They are of Korean descend, but most of them are the second of third generation, and are brought up in Japan, and also speak better Japanese than Korean. And only because they don't have Japanese blood so they are regarded as foreingers. This not only means that they have to carry a alien registration with them allmost all their life, but it also causes a lot of questions about their identity. On the one hand they are foreigners in Japan, but on the other hand they are not Koreans either. When they visit Korea they are seen as tourist. The only form of identity that is left for them is that of Zainichi, descendants of Koreans living in Japan. According to the Japanese teacher, many of the Zainichi still suffer from discrimination, partly because of their status as Zainichi but also partly because of their status as being a foreigner. One specific form of discrimination is that Japanese parents don’t want their son or daughter to marry with a Zainichi, which results in the fact that they Japanese and Zainich do not intermingle and thus the Koreans intermarry and their children stay foreigners.
I was also going to change of identity and I was going to become the representation of a foreigner in the Netherlands: I was going to be Zwarte Piet (Black Peter) on Sunday. I was asked to become him, for the Dutch Japan Association of the Kansai Area. I met the guy who was Sint Nicolaas before he changed his identity into Sint Nicolaas when I was going to change into Zwarte Piet,and once more the fact that the world is extremely small was underlined. I had met this Sint Nicolaas before, to be more exactly he had lived in the village next to Asten, the village where I have spend my youth. I came in contact with him and his Japanese wife because I was featured in one of the local newspapers and they gave me a lot of useful information before I went for the first time to Japan.
As tradition requires Sint Nicolaas and his companions arrived in the harbour by ship, greeted by the children singing Sint Nicolaas songs. Zwarte Piet was generous in throwing candy in to the crowd, but they also could not resist the temptation to try what kind of effect it had on the Japanese. Some thought we were Santa Claus who lost the way and arrived to early in Japan and others just stared at us in amazement, but all were grateful to receive some candy. Here as well as in the Netherlands, children were afraid of Sint Nicolaas and Zwarte Piet, but they had to face them anyway in order to receive a small present. This Zwarte Piet was glowing to see such a familiar scene at such a strange setting, but still it had something completely Dutch. And I realized that I was more Dutch than I had ever though, and that it was strange that one had come all the way to Japan to realise it.
And I hope that the Zainichi also have a kind of proud of being in Japan as a Korean descendant as long as they are not incorporated in Japanese society.