Won't Fade Away
Embracing My Japanese Heritage Through Language With BTS’ Music
Whenever people hear my Japanese first name, I’m typically bombarded with a range of predictably microaggressive questions. “Were you born in Japan?” and “Do you like [insert Japanese food/anime/manga here]?” are always uncomfortable, but the one that hurts the most is “Can you say something in Japanese for me?”
I’m what we in the Japanese diaspora call Yonsei, meaning that my great-grandparents migrated from Japan to America at the end of the 1800s as agricultural laborers. At the time, racist laws prevented Japanese people from becoming citizens or owning land in America and denied people like my grandparents basic needs like healthcare and education as they worked backbreaking jobs for little pay. Even worse, the United States government incarcerated all Japanese Americans living on the West Coast during World War II because of unfounded racist fears that Japanese Americans would serve as spies for the Japanese imperial military.
One way in which the United States sought to usurp Japanese “foreign subversion” both before and during World War II was through banning and limiting the use of Japanese language. Speaking and writing Japanese was heavily regulated, if not banned altogether, in the camps where my grandparents were imprisoned because the government suspected that coded messages would be passed between inmates. The government prohibited Japanese schools, newspapers, and cultural activities, those who disobeyed these orders were often arrested or punished. In order to avoid further discrimination during and after the war, many incarcerees and their descendants tried to become as “American” as possible.
The racist policing of non-English languages is a prominent part of American history that we can still see today in how Western American media interacts with BTS during interviews and other media appearances. From constantly placing the burden on Namjoon to translate everything for the rest of the members to reducing interviews to U.S.-centric juvenile questions such as “What’s your favorite American food?” America continues to be less than accommodating of non-English speakers despite claiming to be a bastion of modern equality and diversity.
My grandparents, like many other migrants marginalized by language, gave their kids anglicized American names and refused to teach them Japanese to try and protect them. While community institutions such as temples, cultural centers, and even sports leagues helped promote Japanese American culture and community, our actual language ability was violently erased. As a result, I grew up surrounded by Japanese and Japanese American traditions and culture but very limited language ability. I’ve struggled to learn and retain Japanese despite years of Japanese school and have often felt disconnected from the language and Japan itself, even as being unable to speak at more than a third grade level made me feel “not Japanese enough.”
As a fourth generation Japanese American, I’ve found learning and speaking Japanese language to be complicated and fraught for most of my life due to large systems of intergenerational trauma, incarceration, and appropriation in the United States. BTS’ Japanese discography and its healing powers, however, have changed all of this for the better. Masterpieces such as Film Out and Let Go have made me more confident and comfortable with my own Japanese identity and language ability, even (and in part because) they force us to reckon with Japan’s imperial legacy and its enduring impact on Korea.
While nothing will top their Korean lyricism, their Japanese songs are incredibly beautiful as well. I was pleasantly surprised when I first heard their Japanese songs that I could understand a decent bit of the discography. Moreover, their lyrics and musicality are so incredible that I found myself actually motivated to learn words and the kanji I didn’t know for the first time. BTS are also non-native Japanese speakers; in fact, South Koreans endured very similar forms of oppression at the hands of imperial Japan as Japanese Americans did in the United States, including forced language learning. I never want to negate the privilege and accountability that all members of the Japanese diaspora need to make space for in interactions with any colonized Asian ethnicity, it was actually BTS’ South Korean identity and positionality that made me feel more comfortable and less self-conscious about not speaking “perfect” Japanese (and more broadly, any language). To see BTS transform Japanese, a linguistic site of such complex pain and trauma for so much of Asia, be turned into beautiful works of comfort, healing, and solidarity like “your eyes tell” and “Let Go” that connect and speak to ARMY worldwide, is astounding.
As a baby ARMY, Film Out was actually my first live Japanese MV and song release. The lyrics of Film Out, in many ways, describe my journey with Japanese itself: I’m constantly searching for a part of myself, my history, and my identity that has already erased in so many irretrievable ways by the hegemony of U.S. racism and imperialism until only half-remembered whispers are piled up like snow (降り積もる). Unlike the boys’ characters in the MV, however, BTS has made sure that my Japanese will not disappear. With their words, I will never be left alone.
