Japanese Colonial Period Research Articles

Admission to Gongju Women’s Normal School during the Japanese Colonial Period and the Characteristics of Japanese Studying Abroad

본고는 관립공주여자사범학교의 입학전형과 일본인 유학이 지닌 특징을 파악하는데 목적을 둔다. 충청도 지역의 가장 큰 도시였던 공주지역은 근대문물을 빨리 받아들인 곳에 속한다. 전시체제기 조선총독부는여성교원 양성을 목표로 전국의 주요도시에 여자사범학교를 세웠는데그 중 한 곳이 공주여자사범학교이다. 총독부의 방침에 따라 공주여자사범학교는 전국적 학생모집과 일본에 소재한 고등여학교 졸업생의 공주여자사범학교 입학을 권장하였다. 이로 인해서 공주여자사범학교는명문학교로서 전국적인 인기를 구가하였다. 그 이유는 첫째, 우수한 인재 선발을 이유로 공주여자사범학교 입학전형 기준이 매우 높았기 때문이다. 1차로 각 도를 대표하는 학생을 우선 선발하고 다시 그 학생들을 모아서 공주여자사범학교에서 최종 선발하는 방식이었다. 둘째, ‘일본 정신’을 가르칠 여성교원으로 가장 적합한 사람은 일본인 여학생으로 여겼다. 실제로 공주여자사범학교는 일본의고등여학교에 공주여자사범학교를 홍보하는 입학지원서를 보내면서 학생모집을 홍보하였다. 이에 따라 공주지역이 유학의 최적의 장소라는인식이 국내, 국외(일본, 대만)에까지 퍼졌다. 1932년 충남도청 이전으로 행정도시의 기능을 상실하고 교육도시로의 발돋움이 필요한 지역에서는 매우 긍정적으로 인식되었다. 지역사회는 이 학교를 시작으로 교육도시라는 이미지 형성을 시도하였고 해방 후에도 교육도시라는 이미지를 확립하는 데 중요한 요인으로 작동되었다.The purpose of this paper is to understand the entrance process of the government Gongju Women’s Normal school and the characteristics of Japanese studying in Gongju. In Gongju, which was the largest city in Chungcheong-do, is one of the places that quickly embraced modern things. The Japanese Government-General of Korea established Women’s Normal Schools in major cities across the country for the purpose of fostering female teachers during the war, one of which is Gongju Women’s Normal School. Gongju Women’s Normal School encouraged students from all over the country and Japanese high school graduates to enter Gongju Women’s Normal School in accordance with the government-general’s policy. As a result, Gongju Women’s Normal School gained national popularity as a prestigious school. The reason is that, first, the admission standard for selecting excellent talents at Gongju Women’s Normal School was very high. First, repre-sentative students guaranteed by provincial governors across the country were selected first, and students were gathered again to pass the second test and finally selected for Gongju Women’s Normal School. Second, it was considered that the most suitable person as a female teacher who teaches‘Japanese spirit’ was a Japanese female student. In fact, Gongju Women’s Normal School sent applications for admission to Japanese girls’ high schools to promote student recruitment. As a result, the perception that Gongju is the best place to study abroad has spread to Korea and overseas(Japan and Taiwan). Before the relocation of the Chungnam Provincial Government in 1932, the function of the administrative city was lost and it was recognized very positively in the area where it should become an educational city. Starting with this school, the local community attempted to form an educational city image, and even after liberation, it served as an important factor in forming an educational city image.

The Spread of Hygiene Concepts and the Making of Public Health Discourse in Modern East Asia.

If public health can be defined as "all activities to ensure universal medical use of the people and protect and promote health," it can be said that public health emerged in the process of developing the concept of hygiene in East Asia. While traditional hygiene emphasized individual curing and longevity, modern hygiene was the state in charge of individual body and discipline. East Asian countries had to practice modern tasks in the field of hygiene and medical care in line with the construction of modern countries, and it was considered legitimate for modern countries to intervene in individual bodies. As the demand for modern national construction became stronger, interest in public health rather than personal hygiene increased. In East Asia, a new interpretation of the concept of hygiene began in Japan. Sensai Nagayo(1838-1902) newly defined the concept of 'sanitation' to justify the physical intervention of the modern state in Meiji period. The concept of 'public health' began to be used in earnest in 1890, when Ogai Mori(1862-1922) translated Western-style health protection measures for the public as public health. Since then, public health has evolved into a universal social discourse in Japan. Japan's public health expanded to colonial Joseon, Taiwan, and China. Japan's victory in the Sino-Japanese War led East Asian countries to believe that hygiene was the root of the Japanese nation's power. In the early 20th century, the government of the Republic of China began to imitate the case of Japan while promoting modern education reform and institutional reform. Japanese-style 'public health' was transplanted into various hygiene laws and sanitary equipment. In Korea, modern hygiene was introduced and spread from the end of the 19th century to the first half of the 20th century, and the concept of 'public health' in Japan was mainly spreading. Public health in Japan was vaguely defined as an activity to protect and promote the health of the people, but in practice, it was focused on improving quarantine and environmental infrastructure. In response, the concept of American-style public health, which values prevention and treatment at the same time, has already begun to emerge under the Japanese colonial rule. In East Asia in the 1920s and 1930s, Japanese-style public health and American-style public health discourse competed, and measures to solve medical inequality were discussed in earnest. Interestingly, in common in East Asian countries, Actual Medical Expenses Campaigns to improve medical access at low cost and social medicine to universally provide prevention and treatment to the people have drawn attention. This was also a phenomenon caused by intensifying medical inequality as rapid urbanization and industrialization progressed in East Asian countries in the first half of the 20th century. Although it was impossible to resolve social contradictions or move toward fundamental reform of the national medical system due to the nature of the private movement, the actual medical movement further imprinted the need for public health care in the country and society. Social medicine studied the effects and relationships of the social environment on diseases and health, and studied ways to promote public health by using preventive medicine and therapeutic medicine. If social medicine was supported by state power, it was possible to go forward with practice such as State Medicine like China, otherwise it would only be a civilian movement such as the People's Health Movement, as in colonial Korea. Liberation and the Korean War were a dramatic turning point in American-style health that led to Japanese-style hygiene. Immediately after Liberation, there was a discussion between the left and right camps over medical nationalization to enhance the publicity of medical care. The medical community was sympathetic to the nationalization of medical care, but due to the lack of medical personnel and financial resources, specific alternatives could not be proposed. As American-style health studies gradually expanded their influence after the Korean War, American-style public health, which emphasized prevention and treatment activities, became established, and efforts were made to establish a health center system.

조선총독부의 민족종교 탄압과 제주도 무극대도 사건

The Mugeuk Daedokyo Incident on Jeju Island was a significant incident that occurred on Jeju Island in 1937 when Japan was moving toward militarism. According to the verdict, 20 people were convicted in this case. The most common crimes they were charged with were “impiety to the Japanese Emperor” and “National security law.” ‘Impiety to the Japanese Emperor” consisted in the fact that they foresaw that the Japanese Emperor would soon be dethroned, and “National security law” was invoked as they said that Japan’s imperialism would soon collapse and Joseon would become independent. Additionally, Military penal law and Navy penal law were involved as Japan said that it would lose in the Sino-Japanese War. This incident was part of an independence movement that desired the defeat of Japan and Korea's independence. To block the support of the general public for the religious leader Kang Seung-tae, the Japanese government played on social issues such as “fraud,” “rape,” and “violation of doctors’ rules.” charged with immorality.
 The Imperial Japanese divided the religions of colonial Korea into two types. Japan’s state religions, “Shinto” and “Buddhism,” and “Christianity,” were classified as religions and administered by the Religious Division of the Academic Affairs Bureau of the Japanese Government-General of Korea. Ethnic religions that desired human liberation, national liberation, and national independence were classified as “similar religions,” and were controlled by the Government-General’s Police Bureau, which suppressed independence activists. Religions classified as pseudo-religions were all ethnic religions that dreamed of national liberation.
 Even after the liberation of Korea, this religious classification made by the Japanese was accepted as it was, and those involved in the Mugeukdaedo incident were excluded from the national conferment of a decoration. Kang Seung-tae, the leader of the Mugeuk Daedokyo, was treated as a person of interest to the point that even after serving his six-year sentence, the Japanese Empire would not release him, because the view of the Japanese Government- General, who treated him as a pseudo religious leader, was maintained even after liberation.
 Now is the time to frame the Mugeukdaedo incident on Jeju Island as one of the fiercest national liberation movements of the 1930s.

박생광의 회화: 한국적 이미지의 추구

This study is aimed to examine ‘Park Saeng-gwang's painting focusing on the pursuit of Korean image’ from a humanities perspective based on empirical data. Until now, research on Park Saeng-gwang has been written within the framework that his painting expresses the beauty of the Korean people. Specifically, many of the papers focused on material and color in terms of the works’ forms or traditional elements such as folklore, shamanism, and folk painting in terms of the contents. Those studies were written while focusing on the point that Park Saeng-gwang sublimated our folklore or religious elements through the bold use of color in the aspects of reinterpreting tradition. It was attempted to find the meaning by stressing the aspect of rediscovering the beauty of Korea and reinstating our color painting; however, this author deems that it was not enough to interpret the fundamental ground of Park Saeng-gwang's works. It is difficult to analyze the true significance of his works without considering why he paid attention to shamanism in his later years and what he wanted to express through his works. Therefore, it should be prioritized to interpret the nature of shamanism, and we should never be too silly to analyze his works only fragmentarily. The meaning of Park Saeng-gwang's works is in the fact that he broke away from the existing worldview and restored the base culture of the Korean people with shamanism that other people were reluctant to pay attention to. Shamanism was what was despised by the ruling class in the Joseon Dynasty, persecuted as the people's faith during the Japanese colonial period, and underestimated as irrational superstition by Western values after the liberation; however, it has continued to exist till now with its tenacious vitality. For this reason, this study attempts to understand the nature of Korean image he pursued and extend the discussions that have been carried out by exploring shamanism preferentially.

『기생 및 창기에 관한 서류철』의 2022년 새로운 칼라복제본에 관한 연구

This study explored “Preceding Studies” and “Existing Bibliography” that utilized the Records of Gisaeng and Changgi as well as “Recent Research Trends” that verified and corrected the academic errors and distortions found in those studies and bibliography to derive the state and problems of the existing copies of the Records of Gisaeng and Changgi. After figuring out the problems found in the existing copies, this study emphasized the need for new copy and described the process of obtaining the new copy (the colored copy of the Records of Gisaeng and Prostitute on June 30 2022) based on academic proposal and request to the National Archives of Korea. Then, this study came up with the value and utilization direction of the new colored copy.
 To establish the correct understanding on “Fundamental Characteristic and Truth of Records of Gisaeng and Changgi,” it is necessary to publish the new 2022 copy for Records of Gisaeng and Changgi and books that compile reprinted copy, accurately translated copy, and the recent studies on Records of Gisaeng and Changgi. These new copy and books will correct academic errors and distortions discovered in previous studies and existing bibliographies based on Records of Gisaeng and Changgi, as well as widely spread the corrections as well as newly discovered facts.
 Records of Gisaeng and Changgi should be easily accessible to both researchers and ordinary people in order to highlight the value and fundamental characteristics of Gisaeng and prostitute, as well as to promote the correct understanding and new perception toward the Korean modern history of Gisaeng and prostitute by clearly distinguishing and understanding the concepts of “Gisaeng Group” as the artist group that inherited the tradition of female musicians and “Prostitute Group” as the prostitute group who lived on prostitution during The Korean Empire’s turning point of modernization.
 Lastly, Although the Gisaeng during the Joseon Dynasty, the Daehan Empire, and the Japanese colonial era was not free from the sexual amusement and exploitation of the men under the Confucian society and the Japanese colonial rule, Gisaeng was not a prostitute who made a living by the prostitution. Gisaeng was an entertainer who learned music and dance every day at Jangakwon in the Joseon Dynasty, Goybangsa in the Daehan Empire, and Gisaeng Association and Gwonbeon in the Japanese colonial period. Gisaeng also made a living by doing music and dance at the royal court events, public events, private events, theaters, and restaurants.

晦峯 河謙鎭의 經學

Hoebong Ha Gyeom-jin (1870~1946), the author of 『Dongyuhakan』 that outlined the traditional academics in a type of study scheme, a descriptive method of traditional academic history of Asia studied under the tutelage of Myeonwoo Gwak Jong-seok (1846~1919) to succeed the academic line of Janju Academic Faction.
 This article is a review of the Gyeonghak (Chinese Classics) perspective with the focus around the analysis of ｢Kang Yu-wi Noneojuseojobyeon｣ that was written in 1934 when he was 65 years of age. 『Noneoju (Annotation of the Analects of Confucius)』 of Kang Yu-wi, the subject of criticism, was an attempt of new annotation on ‘Saseo (Four Books of Chinese Classics)’ of Confucianism under the tradition of Geummun Gyeonghak in early 20th century. In this aspect, this refutation for each category on 『Noneoju』 of Kang Yu-wi could be understood as to demonstrate the academic position and level of Joseon’s renowned Confucianism scholar of 65 years old who has already solidify his academic position of his time. On the other hand, In 1934, a Confucius scholar of Joseon who was passing by the core of Japanese colonial period had the criticism on the writings of China’s Geummun Gyeonghak scholars that seemed as an attempt to correspond to its time in a way of taking a profound look at how to view to advance the insight on its time of 20th century as well as studies on Confucianism.
 Looking into the criticism of Ha Gyeom-jin, he refuted the assertion of ｢Noneojuseo｣ of Kang Yu-wi with the courteous theory of Confucianism principles for each category. He criticized the texts based on Kang Yu-wi and defended the scholarship of Jeungja, and sharply criticized the principle of Daedong that was advocated by Kang Yu-wi. The theory that was most aggressively facilitated in such a criticism was the Confucian orthodoxy. It was also penetrating in another writing, 『Dongyuhakan』. Under the desperate situation of the Japanese colonial era, straightening up the collapsing tradition was approached as the inevitable premises and the restoration of Dotong was to restore the collapsing Confucianism principle as the true and genuine system once again.
 However, this type of route for such perspective is to overcome the chaotic status of the time and ultimately progress into the Daedong community by overlooking the implication of time passing for academic contemplation of Kang Yu-wi. Ha Gyeom-jin purely and firmly kept the position of traditional Confucianism scholarship and he had the response on the changing image of the time, but it is called for more criticizing perspective on the outcome and its implication.

Yokomitsu Riichi and Taiwan：The Birth of Sensationism (Modernism) in East Asia

This book discusses the emergence of modernism in colonial Taiwan, with a focus on the work of Yokomitsu Riichi. Through a comprehensive discussion of how Taiwanese writers were influenced by Yokomitsu’s literary theories and techniques, it explores the diverse possibilities of Taiwanese literature during the period of Japanese rule. By comparing Yokomitsu’s work and that of Taiwanese modernist writers, it examines the reception by Taiwanese people of Japanese literature and its construction of subjectivity, and explores the relationship between modernism and colonial literature from a broader perspective. In particular, the author examines the use of abstraction in these texts in detail. At the same time, he discusses Chinese and Korean modernist writers in order to place the development of modernism in colonial Taiwan in a broad context.

The Past and Future of Taiwanese Art：A Look Back over the Past 100 Years

From the Japanese colonial period to the present, the question, “What is Taiwanese art?” has been asked over and over again, and a clear answer has yet to be found. This is not only a search for identity but is also rooted in the pain of Taiwan’s history, as artists address the shifting national borders and the nation state of Taiwan. In the past few years, several important exhibitions of Taiwanese art have been held. The study of Taiwanese art history, which had been a rather minor academic field, has gradually gained momentum. Today, many art historians are attempting to depict Taiwan from the perspective of the island and the many ethnic groups and foreigners who reside there. Furthermore, since many Taiwanese artists and scholars have studied and researched in Japan for over a century now, the study of Taiwanese art history will hopefully develop more actively not only in Taiwan but also in Japan.

일제강점기 영산강 유역 양잠 생산의 지역적 재편

The purpose of this study is to examine the regional reorganization of sericulture production during the Japanese colonial period through oral data through field surveys centering on five areas of Yeongsan River where Jeollanam-do Jongbang Village was formed; Jangseong, Naju-si, Damyang, Hwasun, Hampyeong and the following conclusions were drawn. First, before the Japanese colonial period, these survey areas maintained the traditional way of raising silkworm cocoons since the Joseon Dynasty, Second, silkworm cocoons and mulberry trees were converted into Japanese-style improved species during the Japanese colonial period, and the relevant rural offices actively intervened in this process, Third, silkworm cocoons produced in five survey areas were sold and distributed through a joint sales office managed by the Japanese, Fourth, it was also confirmed that around the five regions during the Japanese colonial period, there was actually a large-scale mulberry field created by Japan which raised silkworm cocoons.

The Sad Stories of ‘Unni (big sister)’ : Labor of Young Girls in Modern Korean Families

From the Japanese Colonial Period up until the 1970s, a large number of pictures and photographs that portrayed Korea’s children had one distinctive feature; they show a unni, which is a Korean word for big sister, looking aer the younger siblings. The images tell the story of how young girls, often called by their title unni, were deeply burdened with the responsibilities of doing household chores and taking care of other family members, enabling the very survival and growth of their family in a society that was rapidly turning into a capitalist economy. The paper analyzed eldwork data from the 1930s and found that young girls in families bore the main responsibility of taking care of their younger siblings and doing household chores, enabling their mothers to join the work force. A critical analysis of surveys conducted in the rural areas in the 1960s also revealed that such phenomenon continued well aer Korea was liberated from the colonial rule, and that families largely erased or oppressed the memory of the unni being burdened with such hard work. It was a common strategy for families to have their daughters serve the family needs, so that the saved-up time and money and the limited family resources could be concentrated on educating their sons. Such a strategy could only hold when everyone took for granted the sacrice made by the unni figure in the family. While some will reminisce their childhood with fond memories, some have had to sacrice and suer.

전통 판소리의 공연학적 역사와 전망

In modern pansori, various experiments are being made on the existing traditional pansori, and many new creations of pansori are being made. However, traditional pansori also has historically undergone continuous changes and experiments. In this regard, this study was intended to suggest the point where the traditional pansori has changed and the tasks to be positively improved by the pansori of our time.
 First, the performance aspects of traditional pansori were analyzed in a visual dimension. This study examines how pansori performances have changed from the mid-19th century to modern pansori. In the 19th century, in the yard, a singer performed wearing a hat on an applicator, and held a white or red fan. The drummer used a relatively large drum, and the tip of the drumstick was round. At the end of the 19th century, in Kim Jun-geun's paintings, it can be seen that the performance space for pansori has changed into a room or an indoor space. The singer performed with the master, but did not organize a separate space, and the drum and drummer of the master was changed to a shape similar to that of modern times. In the early 20th century, the stage of pansori during the Japanese colonial period was transformed into a theater. The traditional attire of the singer and the master was sometimes simplified with a bob and a duruma. In particular, female singers changed from wearing a white hanbok with their indigo hair to gradually wearing a splendid hanbok. As the intangible cultural heritage system began after the 20th century, pansori centered on human cultural assets was mainly performed on stage under the technical influence of microphones and lighting. It can be said that the musicality of pansori has gradually become highly sophisticated amid these changes in performance space and media.
 While traditional pansori could be changed over time without losing its typicality, there were also parts that lost the essence of 'pan'. This is the weakening of storytelling or polarity, and in this regard, the development direction of traditional pansori was suggested in three areas. First of all, I heard that aniri(아니리) and wit should be strengthened to restore the storytelling of pansori. Next, it was argued that the spirit of the times should be contained through the creation and reconstruction of a new lyric(더늠). Finally, it was suggested that the dramatic aspect of pansori should be established through the expansion of neoreumsae(너름새) and reinforcement of acting.

일제강점기 정읍 화호마을의 공간구성에 관한 연구

During the Japanese colonial period, Japan exploited the entire Korean Peninsula and targeted not only cities but also rural areas. The exploitation of rural area was accelerated with the support of Oriental colonization Company and The countryside was a living scene of direct exploitation. However, most of the research was concentrated in representative port cities such as Kunsan, which transports logistics such as rice and grains. There was insufficient research on how Japanese entered the country, how Korean were plundered, and the rural villages that were the target of exploitation. The contents of hi-exploitation were also historical and historical humanities such as colonial land ownership and farm management, and the spatial structure of the existing traditional villages were insufficiently investigated. Hwaho-ri, Shin Taein-eup, Jeollabuk-do, centered on Yongseo Village, there are many traces of farm houses, hospitals, employee residences, schools, churches, and Oriental colonization Company This study aims to study what changes traditional rural villages have brought by the Japanese colonial rule, centering on Hwaho-ri Village.

허가된 집회만 열기? 미군정·정부수립직후 집회와 시위에 대한 법률들의 변화와 운용

이 논문은 집회와 시위에 관련된 법을 역사적으로 고찰하는데 초점을 두었다. 특히 미군정시기의 법령을 살펴보았는데, 미군정은 포고령에서 보이듯이 한국인들의 인권을 표방하면서도 군정실시를 통한 치안에 초점을 두었다. 그런 점에서 식민지시기 악법이라고 할 수 있는 정치범처벌법(제령 제7호, 1919)나 치안유지법(1925) 등, 당장 미군정에 위협적이지 않은 악범들을 폐지했다. 그러나 식민지시기 악법이라고 할 수 있는 보안법(1908), 집회취체령(1910), 조선임시보안령(1941) 등 경찰에게 집회 및 시위를 개최를 허가할 권한을 부여했던 법안들은 미군정이 끝나가는 시점까지 그대로 남겨두었다. 그 점은 1946년-1947년에 있었던 일련의 정치적 사건들, 특히 좌파들의 몰락을 가져오는 계기가 되었다. 1948년 초, 5·10선거를 위해 유엔임시한국위원단이 입국하려고 할 때, 미군정은 자유롭고 민주적인 형태의 사회를 유지하고 있다는 인상을 줄 필요가 있었다. 그것이 바로 군정법령 제183호를 통해서 “보안법”, “집회취체령”, “조선임시 보안령”등을 폐지하는 것이었다. 그런 점에서 형식상으로는 획기적 조치라고 할 수 있지만 그것이 조선사회에 그다지 알려지지 않았던 것 같다. 또한 미군정 포고 2호의 1950년 4월까지 존속이라든가, 계엄법이 없는 상태에서 계엄령이 선포되었던 사실 등으로 볼 때, “치안유지”를 위해서 대한민국 정부는 미군정포고 2호라든가 준전시상황과 같은 논리에서 사회를 통제해나갔다. 그것이 제주 4·3과 여순사건을 거치면서 “국가보안법”(1948)와 “계엄법”(1949)등이 만들어지면서 사실상 치안을 위해서 경찰이 집회나 시위에 대해 허가제를 운영했다고 할 수 있다. 전쟁과 이후의 냉전을 통해서 집회 시위에 대한 당국의 통제는 상당한 유산으로 남았다. 1962년 처음 제정된 집회 및 시위법도 결국 “허가제”에 준하는 법이었다.

On the Formation of the Public Condemnation of Epoch-making Korean Poet Sŏ Chŏngju – With a Focus on Pro-Japanese Collaboration

Sŏ Chŏngju is no doubt one of the most significant poets of 20th century Korean literature. However, his figure is shrouded in controversies originating from his political choices in life. The first of these controversies is his being a ‘pro-Japanese collaborator’ during the Japanese colonial period. The purpose of this study is to move beyond the accusation of Sŏ Chŏngju being an collaborator to map the settings of the colonial background in which he lived and wrote, while also comparing his situation with that of the famous writer, I Kwangsu. Another goal of the study is to examine the approach to his figure and works in recent times. This is for the sake of gaining a deeper understanding of the important poet, who very often is cast away by the superficial criticism of his being a ‘collaborator’.

Gerakan Perempuan Abad 19-20

Women's organizations are formed from among women themselves, because of the self-awareness of women. The steps taken by women figures throughout history are proof of the seriousness of Indonesian women to lay the foundation for the women's movement in the name of humanity and social justice. Fujinkai was one of the organizations that were allowed to remain standing during the Japanese occupation. This article will discuss the women's movement that emerged in the 19-20 centuries, by explaining the role of several women at that time. This discussion is limited temporally, namely in the pre-independence period only. In writing articles, the author uses the historical method by going through a series of stages such as gathering sources (heuristics), verification (historical criticism, validity of sources), interpretation, and writing. From this research resulted in several discussions, namely: 1) Women and the nature of humanity, 2) Women's movements in the colonial period, 3) Women during the Japanese colonial period.

The geopolitics of whaling and Japanese colonialism in Korea

ABSTRACT Although Japanese colonialism in Korea lasted less than half a century (1910–45), Korea served as a critical foothold for Japanese expansion into Asia and the Pacific. The Japanese Empire once encompassed a fifth of the globe, and its reach was just as contingent upon dominating marine environments as it was on land-based conquest. Reading Japanese colonialism as a volumetric undertaking, we examine colonial archives, whaling statistics and legal documents to understand how geopolitical ambitions shaped, and were shaped by, colonial whaling projects to dominate marine spaces around colonial Korea. Japanese whalers employed volumetric techniques to control voluminal marine space and its constitutive elements – including whales – and to satisfy the political and economic needs of colonial and later wartime Japan. However, while Imperial Japan's extensive subordination of marine space has earned it the moniker of a ‘pelagic empire’, we find its territorialization was always partial and incomplete, impeded as it was by material realities. Our analysis of Japanese colonial whaling demonstrates how the ongoing process of (re)making marine territory is intertwined with, and reliant upon, terrestrial and aerial volumes.

Editor's Introduction

Editor's Introduction

Refashioning Femininity in Colonial Korea

This article looks at the activism of Kang Hyang-nan and other feminists with the Rose of Sharon Alliance (Kŭnuhoe) during the 1920s in colonial Korea, tracing how Kang and her colleagues used short hair as a symbol of feminist resistance. While the bobbed cut and women’s rebellion against traditional hairstyles became subject of public debate, Kang and others were able to destabilize views about the “naturalness” of female inferiority in Korea. These activists capitalized on the debates over the meanings and propriety of women’s hairstyles not only to challenge traditional gender roles, but also to suggest the constructed nature of gender itself. However, these feminist meanings of short hair for Kang and others became overshadowed by other images by the 1930s, which foregrounded the short-haired woman as an emblem of modernity, consumerism, and female sensuality.

The Glocalization of Methodist Christianity in Colonial Korea

AbstractModern Protestant missions were launched in East Asia based on previous experiences in South and Southeast Asia. Regional nations, including Japan and China, encountered the Christian movement within the context of the global phenomena of colonialism and imperialism in the 18th and 19th centuries. While Joseon Korea had not been fully known among outsiders, the US Methodist Church, along with the Presbyterian and Baptist churches, did send pioneers in 1884. What, then, was the influence of the Methodists’ work? Who was Victor W. Peters (1902–2012)? Why was he unique compared to his other colleagues? What was his cultural philosophy in colonial Korea (1920s–1940s)? This article explores these questions through the historical records of the Christian mission to establish the Korean Methodist Church, focusing especially on the principles that Peters applied. The article argues that, unlike other Americans, Peters endeavoured to promote the indigenization of Western religion through his personal experience of entering a cross‐cultural marriage with a Korean woman. The philosophy of regionalism, in terms of a “soft power,” is likewise demonstrated by Peters’ Korean lifestyle – living in a hanok (Korean house), wearing hanbok (traditional Korean dress), eating hansik (Korean food), and speaking Hangul (Korean) – while he voluntarily involved himself in church planting and advocating for Simeon Lee Yongdo (1901–33).

The Promise of (Un)happiness:34 Literatureand Yi Si-u's Surrealist Poetics in Colonial Korea

AbstractThis article examines Korean surrealism—the avant-garde movement most explicitly preoccupied with questions of the psyche and subjectification within an historical context of colonial unfreedom—through attention to the short-lived journal Samsa munhak 三四文學 (34 Literature, 1934–37) and its most representative poet, Yi Si-u 李時雨. Drawing from psychoanalysis and affect theory, it addresses Yi Si-u's scholarly underexamined but substantive meditations on the constitution of the subject, desire, and repression, focusing specifically on the question of (un)happiness and its implications for psychic and political freedom in a colonial climate of despair only partially brightened by the allure of the commodity. The author aims to demonstrate how Yi's surrealist refraction of subjective desire both registers the sociopolitical pressures of his historical context as well as negatively conceptualizes a liberated form of happiness at odds with the standardized variant administered by the hegemonic colonial authority. As such, the dialectical inseparability of collective liberation from psychosocial repression and the individual pursuit of happiness can become legible, an insight that may contribute to current theorizations of affect, commodification, and emancipatory movements.