The Subversion of the “Futei Senjin” Discourse and the Limits
This study examines From Behind You (Nandō no Haigo yori, 汝等の背後より), a novel by Nakanishi Inosuke, focusing on how the text critiques the dominant colonial discourse of imperial Japan regarding colonial Korea while simultaneously revealing the limitations inherent in its representation of the colonized. Drawing on Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s theory of representation, this paper analyzes the discourse of Futei Senjin (“unruly Koreans”), the colonial systems of law and education, the gendered representation of the colonial Other, and the politics of sacrifice. The novel subverts the Futei Senjin discourse produced by the imperial security apparatus and exposes the ways in which colonial police and judicial institutions constructed Koreans as criminals. It also illustrates how colonial education internalized admiration for the Japanese Empire and desires for assimilation among the colonized, while simultaneously revealing the fictitious nature of such ideological indoctrination through depictions of legal dispossession and sexual violence. Kwon Juyŏng is portrayed as a figure embodying the suffering and resistance of colonial women, yet she is also sexualized and othered through the gaze of imperial masculinity. Likewise, Cho Sŏngsik and Sin Ch’unyong are presented as independence activists, but their characters are fragmented by desires for recognition, petty heroism, and patriarchal domination. While this characterization constitutes an achievement of anti-heroic realism, it also reflects traces of internalized Orientalism that portray Korean resistance subjects as politically immature. Furthermore, the novel critiques not only the violence of colonial power but also the logic of sacrifice embedded within resistance discourse itself, thereby raising broader ethical questions concerning representation. Ultimately, From Behind You emerges as an anti-imperialist text that denounces colonial oppression while simultaneously revealing the ambivalence of a narrative that reconfigures colonized subjects within its own ideological and literary framework rather than fully restoring their voices. In this regard, the novel serves as an important text that demonstrates both the possibilities and limitations of anti-imperialist literature produced from within the imperial center.