Shirin Nezammafi and the unmaking of postcolonial Japan

Abstract

Abstract This article takes up the short work of fiction Salam, written in Japanese in 2006 by Shirin Nezammafi, and deploys it as a primary source in the history of the Japanese present. Salam tells the tale of Layla, an Afghan migrant detained in and then expelled from Japan in 2001. The article argues that Salam exposes the unmaking of postcolonial Japan: if postcolonial Japan meant a territorial, sovereign nation-state built on hegemonic national myths, then now it is unsustainable. Salam calls to an inevitable if uncharted post-national, post-territorial future. To advance this argument, the article focuses on Nezammafi's treatment of three humanistic categories tied up with geopolitical territoriality: language, art, and gender. These categories, when associated with the nation-state, generate irony in Salam. That irony stems from the anachronism of nations: territorial nations, Japanese or otherwise, appear as past entities that have outlived their possibility.