Transimperial Genealogies of Korea as a Protectorate: The Egypt Model in Japan's Politics of Colonial Comparison (original) (raw)
Related papers
Sai, 2015
Despite the numerous empirical studies on colonial Korea many fundamental questions about Japanese colonialism require further examination. A new approach to understanding Japan’s colonial project is needed to overcome the limits of the colonial exploitation and colonial modernity thesis. A survey of recent works in colonial studies published in the English language can provide some fresh perspectives in this regard. Many of the recent studies on colonial Korea fully engage the historiography of modern Japanese history and provide important theoretical approaches into the questions of historical structure and agency. While not without their limitations, the results provide more complex understanding of the Japanese colonizers and the ambiguities of colonial rule. The arriving at a more comprehensive approach to colonial Korea will require considerable more effort, but the foundations for such an endeavor have finally emerged in the recent English language studies.
Japanese Colonial Rule and the Issue of Perceptions of History
Modern Japan’s Place in World History, 2023
This chapter takes up the question of whether, and in what ways, Japanese colonial rule was an exception to the colonial rule of other imperial powers. It seeks to define what a colony is and to tackle oversimplifications in historical interpretations. It closes with a discussion of some of the issues still affecting relations between Japan and the Korean Peninsula today. Was Japanese Colonial Rule an Exception? There has been an active and ongoing debate over Japan's rule of its colonies that has also seeped into its diplomatic relations with South Korea and Taiwan. This debate, unfortunately, fails to reflect the present views of historical research to a sufficient degree, frequently containing egregious errors. It is not possible to address all these shortcomings in a brief chapter, of course, but my goal is to address the major errors to provide an aid to the understanding of colonial rule. So, let us start with one of the typical arguments concerning Japan's colonies, which might be summed up as: Japanese colonial rule was an exception. In other words, Japan's control and administration over the Korean Peninsula, Taiwan, and its other Asian colonies differed from that of other countries over their colonies. We can divide this argument broadly into two categories. The first argues and emphasizes the differences between Japan's rule of Korea and Taiwan and the Western Great Powers' rule of their colonies from the affirmative standpoint. Occasionally this argument stresses that, unlike the colonial rule of the West, which was vicious, Japan's was something good, bringing great benefits to the local population. Furthermore, this argument is often linked to the claim that Japanese rule over the Korean Peninsula and Taiwan was, in fact, not colonial rule at all.
Japanese Colonial Legacy in Korea 1910–1945: A New Perspective by George Akita, Brandon Palmer
Korean Studies, 2015
Many agree that Japanese colonial rule of Korea from 1910 to 1945 was intense and pervasive due to the empire's interest in the peninsula's strategic value and assimilation policies targeting the Korean people. Although many are interested in the subject of Korea under Japanese colonial rule, the majority of the researchers come from Japan, Korea, and the United States, that is, the nations that played the roles of ruler, ruled, and liberator. Scholars in these countries naturally view history from different perspectives. In his The Pacific War and its Political Legacies (2009), Denny Roy, a scholar of Chinese political history, discusses divergent accounts and perspectives of the Pacific War (1941-45) presented by China, Japan, and America and calls this discrepancy a Rashomon effect, the term made famous by Japanese director Akira Kurosawa's 1950 film, in which the same incident is recounted contradictorily by several characters involved. Similarly, Japanese rule of Korea in the first half of the last century is viewed and interpreted from conflicting viewpoints, reflecting the researchers' backgrounds. An increasing number of scholars today, however, seek a middle ground through examining the rich historical records available. George Akita and Brandon Palmer's book Japanese Colonial Legacy in Korea 1910-1945: A New Perspective captures this new trend. Post-liberation Korean scholars perceived the colonial period from the dichotomous viewpoint of Japanese oppression versus Korean resistance, depicting Japanese rule as ruthless, exploitive, and without merit. This standpoint is represented by C. I. Eugene Kim and Han-kyo Kim's seminal monograph Korea and the Politics of Imperialism 1876-1919 (1967) as well as many works that followed. Akita and Palmer refer to this black-and-white interpretation by Korean scholars as a ''nationalist (or patriotic) historical paradigm.'' Seventy years after the end of the colonial period, this paradigm has not lost momentum in South Korea. Many in the United States have also been critical of Japanese colonialism. As Akita and Palmer point out, in 1945, the victorious Allied powers were convinced that ''Japan, in every aspect of its society, economy, culture, religion, and governance, was completely flawed,'' and ''these views of Japan spilled over into perceptions of the Japanese as brutal colonial overlords'' (p. 197). Although postwar American scholars of Japanese history often challenged this bias in search of more balanced views, some
The Middle Ground Journal
Rule and Social Change in Korea, 1910Korea, -1945 demonstrates that the debate over the legacy of that era will last far longer. This thought-provoking collection of essays analyzes the blurred boundaries between colonization, modernization, nationalism, and native agency that emerged during Korea's time under Japanese rule. At its core, this work is a response to a long-running historiographical debate about the legacy of Japanese imperialism in Korea. On one side of the debate is a nationalist approach,
Introduction to "Beyond Comparison: Japan and Its Colonial Empire in Transimperial Relations”
Cross-Currents: East Asian History and Culture Review, 2019
they compared one another in the context of "joint rule," which emerged in the 1940s. 3 The colonized Vietnamese were caught between the regimes. By analyzing how the Vietnamese were forced to respond to the ideological and cultural polices practiced by these mutually comparing rulers, Namba demonstrates the relevance of comparison to the history of anticolonialism in Asia. The article shows how the Japanese in Indochina sought to marshal the support of the Vietnamese by using the comparative logic of "Pan-Asianism," which stressed the difference of Japanese rule from Western colonialism, presenting Japan as the "liberator of Asia" from the West. This Pan-Asianist aspect of how the Japanese compared their colonialism with colonialist regimes of other empires is the theme of the article by Aaron Peters, "Comparisons and Deflections: Indian Nationalists in the Political Economy of Japanese Imperialism, 1931-1938." Like the other articles in this special issue, Peters's work foregrounds comparison itself as an object of historical scrutiny. By discussing within a 3 Namba's work can also be read as an interesting case study on "joint rule," potentially an important subfield of transimperial history. On joint rule, see, for example, Stevens (2017).
The Review of Korean Studies, 2020
This paper analyzes the information contained in a variety of travelogues written prior to and after the Japanese annexation of Korea to provide a better understanding on how Westerners perceived the colonial rule. In order to do so quotes on specific topics such as the socio-political situation of Korea or the traveler’s perception on both Korean and Japanese people have been extracted and juxtaposed in an effort of identifying and defining predominant trends. These primary sources need to be approached taking in consideration the Zeitgeist during the period in the West. Their authors depart from a sociopolitical context during which Social Darwinism was in vogue. Besides that, while taking travelogues as a source of historical information has its limitations it also constitutes an excellent way to discuss to what extent the Japanese propaganda effort in the colony was efficient or not. It is also important to note that most of the travelers arrived into Korea via Japan, stayed at the Japanese-managed Chosun Hotel and they often had very limited interactions with Koreans. Thereby they were exposed to the Japanese discourse. This can be perceived in their comparisons between Korean and Japanese customs. However, I would like to argue how their perception on the latter was still influenced by the orientalist discourse as well.
Sungkyun Journal of East Asian Studies
Studies on Japan's assimilation policies in Korea (1910−1945) frequently criticize the contradiction between the rhetoric of inclusiveness Japan used to describe its administration and the policy of discrimination it advanced in the colony. This paper argues this contradiction is characteristic of other administrations that the colonizers employed in territories contiguous with the colonial homeland, including the French in Algeria and the Germans in Alsace and Lorraine. It contrasts this peripheral expansion with the intensive assimilation efforts found in internal nationbuilding expansion, and the less intrusive external expansion where colonizers built social walls to separate colonizer from colonized. In Korea, evidence of this contradiction between rhetoric and practice appeared in various social, economic, and political areas. This paper emphasizes the contradiction found in the education system established by the government general, which offered Koreans elementary schooling of a lesser quality than that provided Japanese both in Japan and in Korea. Over the decades of colonial rule in Korea the Japanese proposed a number of reforms that promised to close the gap between colonizer and colonized education, and scheduled others that due to Japan's defeat in the Asian Pacific wars never materialized. Thus it remains an open question as to whether Japan's assimilation policies would have succeeded in closing the rhetoric-practice gap had the colonizers had more time. Japanese relations with other minority peoples, including Okinawans and Ainu, suggest that, while one factor, time alone might not have narrowed this gap to sufficiently assimilate Koreans, both those residing on the peninsula and in the colonial homeland.
Japan's Colonization of Korea: Discourse and Power. By Alexis Dudden Book Review JJS 33.1 2007
Journal of Japanese Studies, 2007
Alexis Dudden starts with a promising premise that discourse-particularly that of international law-was as significant as politics, economics, and military power in enabling Japan's annexation of Korea. She sidesteps the issue of causality but "aims to confound the view that only military strength truly prevails in power politics" (p. 4). After a short introduction, she focuses on the Hague Incident. The next chapter reviews how the new vocabulary of international law infused Meiji foreign policy. Chapter three looks at how this "vocabulary" was used in the colonization of Korea. Chapter four, "Voices of Dissent," describes the activities of Tarui Tōkichi, Kōtoku Shūsui, and Hǒ Wi. Chapter five outlines Gustave Boissonade's contributions to Japanese modern law, legal discourses mobilized during the buildup to 1910, and the "105 Persons Incident." The final chapter, "Coda: A Knowledgeable Empire," is composed of brief sections on Nitobe Inazō, Tōyō Kyōkai, and "Concluding Notes." The section on the Hague Incident reminds us that the failure of Korean emissaries to gain entry into the official conference halls was not only due to politics, but also stemmed from larger issues of language and representation. This contrasts with some existing scholarship that overlooks the larger discourse of legality and civilization permeating the Hague conference. Chapter three's section on Durham Stevens is lively, making good use of quotations from the San Francisco Chronicle. The underused Hōritsu shinbun provides the basis for a brief discussion of two key figures in the construction of a "modern" legal regime in Korea, Ume Kenjirō and Kuratomi Yūzaburō. The occasional "theoretical" nods are welcome, although I would have preferred more extensive engagement with the relevant theories. Unfortunately, the moments of solid scholarship are undermined by problems that range from technical issues to thin contextualization and loose argumentation. To start with the technical, the index is sparse, characterized by omissions of major figures. Several endnotes lead to underdeveloped observations about contemporary parallels. Other endnotes for crucial assertions contain citations without page numbers. Particularly frustrating is Dudden's repeated omission of page numbers in major works by two leading scholars of the "annexation," Moriyama Shigenori and Unno Fukuju. This is highly problematic when she hints at major disagreements but fails to provide specifics. Transliteration errors are ubiquitous. Too many book and article titles (generally Korean ones) do not follow any standard system, while missing 202