Colonial Discourse, Othering, and Ethnic Egoism : A Critical Reading of Nakanishi Inosuke’s Furyō Senjin

This study offers a critical examination of the structures of colonial discourse and mechanisms of othering embedded in Furyō Senjin (The Unruly Koreans), a 1922 short story by Nakanishi Inosuke. Positioned within the ideological and affective apparatuses of Japanese imperialism, the novel constructs Korea not merely as a colonial subject but as an existential and spatial threat. The term Furyō Senjin, far from being a neutral descriptor, emerges as a rhetorical and political instrument that materializes colonial fear through language and imaginary geographies. This paper analyzes how the protagonist, Usui Eisaku, internalizes this discourse, projecting guilt and anxiety onto Korean spaces and bodies. The study also scrutinizes the use of terms like dojin (native), revealing how colonial language entrenches a hierarchy of civilization and savagery. Despite the author’s ostensible pro-Korean stance, the text reproduces latent Orientalist logics and affective asymmetries. Ultimately, the work is read as a paradigmatic case of affective colonialism, wherein empathy and domination operate not in contradiction but in structural collusion.