Reenacting Border-Crossing Narratives of the Japan–Korea Annexation Era & Transnational Adaptation of “Japanophone” Literature ：From <i>Pak Yol to the Pachinko</i> Phenomenon

HAAG, Andre

doi:10.22628/bcjjl.2025.21.1.49

The Journal of Japanese Language Literature Studies > Volume 21(1); 2025 > Article

Special Issue

Border Crossings: The Journal of Japanese-Language Literature Studies 2025;21(1): 49-67.
doi: https://doi.org/10.22628/bcjjl.2025.21.1.49

Reenacting Border-Crossing Narratives of the Japan–Korea Annexation Era & Transnational Adaptation of “Japanophone” Literature ：From Pak Yol to the Pachinko Phenomenon

Andre HAAG

Associate Professor, University of Hawaii

日韓併合期越境物語の再演と <日本語文学>の越境アダプテション ―― 映画

アンドレ･ヘイグ

ハワイ大学マノア校東アジア言語文学准教授。日本近代文学、文化研究

Correspondence Andre HAAG ,Email: andreh@hawaii.edu

Published online: 30 December 2025.

This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

ABSTRACT

This article examines transnational “re-stagings” of Japan and Korea’s intertwined colonial past through adaptation, focusing on the Korean film Pak Yol (2017) as a counterpoint to the global Pachinko phenomenon. Situating both works within the recent boom of postcolonial screen adaptations in South Korea, it argues that Pak Yol functions as a cross-border adaptation that imaginatively reconstructs the 1920s imperial capital Tokyo as a multilingual site of resistance, filling a representational void long avoided by Japanese visual culture. The film’s portrayal of the anarchists Park Yeol and Kaneko Fumiko centers on linguistic performance—especially the subversive use of Japanese, the imperial language—as a means of cross-ethnic solidarity and critique. Through close reading of the film’s “Inukoro” sequence and its adaptation of lost texts, the essay considers how Pak Yol recovers lost or censored forms of Japanophone cultural production, while contrasting this with Pachinko’s universalizing, Americanized treatment of the colonial experience. Ultimately, the article contends that Pak Yol exemplifies an adaptive practice that visualizes translingual resistance and fills the silence left by Japan’s own culture industries, which remain unable—or unwilling—to adapt their imperial past.

Keywords: Transnational Adaptation, Cross-border Cinema, Multilingual Performance, Koreans in Japan, Pachinko Phenomenon

キ―ワ―ド: 越境的アダプテーション, 日韓越境映画, 多言語的演出, 在日コリアン,