Staging ‘Koreana’ for the Tourist Gaze: Imperialist Nostalgia and the Circulation of Picture Postcards

Abstract

This article analyses the production and distribution of the first generation of picture postcard views of historical monuments in the Korean peninsula. These sites were preserved, reconstructed and promoted as tourist destinations by the Japanese colonial administration, the transportation industry and local developers in order to promote Japanese tourism during the colonial occupation of Korea (1910–45). Through an analysis of picture postcards and other tourist materials made for Japanese tourists in Korea, this study argues that the aesthetic, historical and ethnographic knowledges contained in this body of colonial-era visual materials were pivotal in the creation of a ‘timeless’ image of Korea and its peoples as the most picturesque and ancient land in the Japanese empire.