Abstract

Yang Bang Ean is a second-generation Korean resident in Japan and a renowned composer of piano and orchestral style using musical elements from Korea. His background has provided us the opportunity to understand one side of the life of the next generation forming a part of today’s diasporization. The Korean diaspora in Japan, particularly the second generation, allows for the exploration of various postcolonial issues. These diasporic Koreans living in Japan have been pushed to the margins of their residential society. On the boundary, they have ardently tackled with how to live self-reliantly. This is through the bodily reconstruction of their Korean diasporic identity. The bodies of Korean residents in Japan are the first windows through which they suffered and can carry on again, often conducting new cultural practices. An example of this is Yang Bang Ean. Therefore, this article aims to explore how Yang has bodily constructed his Korean diasporic identity. To this end, the current study intends to apply the approach of construction of sensory nostalgia to his autobiography and his musical composition, Prince of Cheju. This study finds that, based on olfactory and ocular hearings, which were pushed to the margins of Japanese society within the old sensory hierarchy, Yang constructed a futuristic nostalgia for his own homeland—ancient Jeju Island.