A Study on Japanese Settlers’ Experiences and Memories of Colonial Korea

Abstract

July 2020 this research team has been conducting joint research with support from the National Research Foundation of Korea, and is now in its second year of work. The team is composed of researchers from the fields of modern and contemporary Japanese history, modern and contemporary Korean history, modern Japanese literature, and Japanese political science, and as a result it is ideally positioned to engage in multidisciplinary research. In relation to Korea-Japan relations such research is vital, because after the Second World War Japanese society pursued the goals of forming both a ‘cultural state’ and a ‘peace state’ as a result of criticism of prewar militarism. These tendencies began to exert influence on the practical politics of the period from 1945 to the 1960s, when the study of Japanese and other colonialism began in earnest. The protagonists who investigated the issues of the responsibility for the war and of colonial rule were intellectuals and cultural figures who filled the void in the study of colonial history in the 1950s.research team is focused on making an academic and social contribution that can help to transcend the historical conflicts in Korea-Japan relations and the historical absence of a regime of peace in East Asia. It does so by examining the various circuits of colonial experience and memory which came to the fore in Japanese society after the defeat in the World War 2 and the return of the Japanese settlers to Korea.