The Theory of Health and Hygiene in the Textbooks of the Governor-General of Joseon in the 1910s and 20s

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to examine the health and hygiene descriptions of the textbooks published by the Governor-General of Joseon and to find the contents of the discipline that the colonial powers aimed at. In addition, the research method reviewed the health and hygiene-related units for three subjects of textbooks: Moral training, Joseon-language reading, and National-language(Japanese) reading, in which the “will” of Japanese colonial rule is directly and explicitly projected. In addition, the descriptions of the textbooks were tracked by time to extract the theory of health and hygiene of colonial powers and compared with articles from other media (newspapers, magazines, etc.). In this paper, we first considered the process of publishing textbooks in the 1910s and 20s. In 1911, the “Joseon Education Ordinance” was enforced, but the Japanese Government-General of Joseon could not immediately issue textbooks as new contents, so it first used textbooks compiled by the Korean Empire’s undergraduate departments. Thus, ‘correct’ textbooks were published from 1911. At the same time, the Japanese Government-General of Joseon started a textbook compilation project in accordance with the school system and the confirmation of each school curriculum, and published almost all of the books for ordinary schools in 1917. In 1922, a new ‘Joseon Education Ordinance’ and ordinary school regulations were promulgated and enforced again. Accordingly, textbooks for ordinary schools were newly published. From the 1910s to the 1920s, textbooks were published three times. Secondly, we looked at the logic of health and hygiene. The 1910s and 20s textbooks are based on the theory of health and hygiene that health and hygiene should be taken care of for filial piety (parent), public interest (society), and loyalty (state). Furthermore, there is a logic that health spreads in the order of individuals, societies, and countries. Third, we identified characteristics through key words. What can be seen from the core words of textbooks published in the 1910s and 20s is, first, units of subjects directly related to an individual’s body in lower-level courses, and units of topics related to public hygiene in higher-level courses. Second, it is a characteristic of each period, which shows that new content has been added or replaced by the latter.