Japanese Colonial Administration Research Articles

Relocating agrarian development in Asia: food regimes, R&D programs, and the long twentieth century

ABSTRACT This paper answers calls from the food regime scholarship for a closer analysis of the implicit rules, transitions, and regional scales of food regimes. Drawing on archival materials from the Japanese colonial administration and Sino-American agricultural cooperation, interviews with key actors, and secondary sources, this paper examines instances of agricultural knowledge production and exchange. We suggest that beyond the profound influence of the US in the postwar food regime, the nuances and historical and regional specificity of agricultural scientists’ life stories and individual technological imaginaries can ‘scale up’ through the translation of agrarian knowledge.

Centennial-Scale Land-Cover Change on Babeldaob Island, Palau

We used publicly available land-cover datasets (1921, 1947, 1976, 1992, 2001, 2006, 2014) to assess land-cover change on Babeldaob Island, Republic of Palau. Land-cover data were organized, classified, and summarized by area and percentage of island cover for forest, mangrove, non-forest vegetation, and non-vegetation. Japanese colonial administration of the island between 1921 and 1947 included industrial mining and agriculture, which reduced total non-mangrove forest cover by 16%. Temporal vegetation cover dynamics from 1947 through 2014 indicate unassisted forest regeneration of 12% with a concomitant decrease in non-forest vegetation including abandoned agriculture, the majority of which happened by 1976. Mangrove cover appears to have remained stable throughout the 93 year study period. Ground-truth observations showed the highest rates of vegetation cover change since 1976 for non-vegetated areas, followed by marsh and swamp forest. The proportion of non-vegetated cover increased at least twofold after WWII, with at least half comprising roads. Contrary to other tropical geographies, we saw forest expansion following completion of a major perimeter road. However, the larger landscape is permeated by dynamic forest edges subject to wildfire and other land-use disturbances.

Российские корееведы о корейском коммунистическом и национально-освободительном движении конца 10-х, 20-х и первой половины 30-х гг.

The colonial history has been a topic for scientific research for Russian and foreign orientalists in the 20th and 21th centuries. At present some of the historical events and processes, the liberation movement in the Asian colonies for instance, are being revised and reviewed. At the same time a search for new sources, documents and information is becoming one of the priorities in historical science. This is true about Korean liberation studies in the former USSR and Russia. Soviet and Russian orientalists carried out a number of significant works on the topic. However, as many scholars say themselves, these publications need revision. Furthermore, formerly in their publications Soviet researchers were obliged to follow the concepts of the official North-Korean historiography, which was to serve the cult of Kim Il- Sung and the “Chuchhe” doctrine and misinterpreted historical events, those related to the 1920-s and the 1930-s particularly. As a result some misinterpreted conceptions, missing and unexplained data about Korea’s liberation movement appeared. Hence there was a necessity to broaden the scientific source of research, a need for new information and data. The article is devoted to Korean colonial history, particularly to the Korean struggle for independence during the first 25 years of Japanese colonial governance. The author seeks to find out the way national liberation and communist movement are depicted in the conceptions of Soviet and Russian orientalists. Korean struggle against Japanese colonial rule has been reflected in special editions for official use of the Japanese colonial administration. These books were written in Japanese by the General-Governor’s office, police and court and were used by senior Japanese officials. They prove to be an original source of scientific research concerning forms and methods of Japanese governance in the colony, general situation on the Korean Peninsula before WWII. These Japanese publications also provide important data that shed light on Korea’s struggle for independence. The author makes an attempt to compare, where possible, the conceptions of Russian orientalists concerning national liberation and communist movement in Korea in the late 1910-s, 1920-s and early 1930-s with the interpretation given in the above mentioned Japanese publications.

Development of urbanization until the beginning of the First World War development of urbanization of the Korean Peninsula during the Japanese colonial rule (1910-1945)

The urban approach to urban planning during Japanese colonization (1910-1945) boils down to the dimension of colonial rule and exploitation of the Korean Peninsula. Japanese imperialism has left positive and negative aspects on cities on the Korean Peninsula. Positive aspects are the introduction of modern urban planning and the development of industrialization. In addition to the modernization and growth of the Korean economy, the development of urbanization also took place by establishing the so-called "North Korean city routes". Focusing on officials from the Japanese Ministry of Construction and the financial potential of Korea, ways have been devised to establish an urban plan for the peninsula. The Japanese regulation on urban planning introduces a zoning system (1934). From 1910-1945 the growth of the urbanization of the capital Seoul was influenced by the Japanese colonial administration, becoming the first Korean city of millions.

1935년 ‘신의주 국제스파이 사건’과 일제의 메리놀 외방전교회 압박

1935년 12월 6일 국경 근처 신의주 본당에서는 ‘신의주 국제스파이 사건’이 발생하였다. 사건의 발단은 신의주 성당 내에서 수상한 전파가 잡히면서 시작하였다. 이 ‘괴전파’는 1930년대 횡행하던 국제스파이의 소행이지 않을까 하는 기사로까지 확대 보도되었다. 그래서 평양 지목구, 신의주 본당, 나아가 메리놀 외방전교회가 명성에 큰 타격을 입게 되었다. 하지만 ‘신의주 국제스파이 사건’은 이후 오보로 밝혀졌다. 이 오보는 한국 언론의 단순한 실수가 아니라 일제가 조작한 국제스파이 사건을 의미하였다. 이 사건의 목적은 메리놀회에 대한 정치적 압박에 있었다.BR ‘신의주 국제스파이 사건’은 메리놀회의 신사참배 거부와 연관 지어 살필 필요가 있다. 메리놀회는 1932년을 기점으로 일제의 신사참배 요구를 다른 교구들이 허용하여 가는 상황과 달리 그 이후에도 계속 신사참배 거부 태도를 분명히 밝히었다. 일제의 입장에서 메리놀회가 ‘눈엣가시’로 보일 수밖에 없는 상황이었다. 따라서 1930년대 대륙 침략에 박차를 가하던 일제로서는 메리놀회를 감시하고 탄압할 구실을 찾는 데 혈안이 될 수밖에 없었다. 그 계기가 국제스파이 조작사건이었다.BR 한국 천주교회가 1936년을 기점으로 신사참배를 허용할 수밖에 없었는지 생각해 보면, 기존 연구에서 밝혀졌듯이 일본 당국의 신사참배에 관한 입장표명, 일본 주교들의 견해 변화, 신사참배를 바라보는 교황청의 태도 변화 그리고 일본 주재 교황사절의 적극적인 개입과 중재 때문이었다. 이와 함께 일제 당국의 ‘신의주 국제스파이 사건’ 조작을 통한 메리놀회에 대한 정치적 압박 또한 일정 부분 영향을 미쳤으리라 생각된다.

The Aestheticization of Korean Suffering in the Colonial Period: A Translation of Yanagi Sōetsu’s Chōsen no Bijutsu

The Aestheticization of Korean Suffering in the Colonial PeriodA Translation of Yanagi Sōetsu’s Chōsen no Bijutsu Penny Bailey (bio) Are not the problems of life and destiny the most important issues with which we will ever concern ourselves? These issues are materializing right in front of us. How could I possibly remain silent?1 If people cannot unravel the secret of the line, they cannot enter the heart of Korea.2 Between 1919 and 1923, the Japanese art critic, philosopher, and social justice advocate Yanagi Sōetsu 柳宗悦 (1889–1961) published a series of texts expressing his antipathy for Japan’s expansionist agenda in Asia.3 The catalyst behind this corpus was the swift and brutal response by the Japanese colonial administration in Korea, the Government-General of Korea (Chōsen Sōtokufu 朝鮮総督府), to the 1919 independence uprisings in Keijō 京城 (Kr. Kyŏngsŏng, present-day Seoul). As civil unrest spread across the country in what became known as the March First Movement (Kr. Samil Undong 三一運動, Jp. San’ichi Undō), thousands of Koreans demonstrating against Japanese occupation of the peninsula were killed or [End Page 27] wounded, and tens of thousands arrested; reports in the mainstream Japanese press blamed the unfolding crisis on the insubordinate behavior of “malcontent Koreans” (futei Senjin 不逞鮮人) and Western missionaries.4 Outraged by what he viewed as Japan’s culpability in the uprisings, on 11 May Yanagi penned Chōsenjin o omou 朝鮮人を想ふ (Thinking of the Koreans), his first essay on Korea. The work marked the starting point of a campaign polemicizing against Japan’s colonization of Korea through essays, public speeches, art exhibitions, musical performances by his wife, Kaneko 兼子 (1892–1984), and the 1924 establishment of the Chōsen Minzoku Bijutsukan 朝鮮民族美術館 (Korean Ethnic Art Museum) in Keijō. Motivating these projects was a humanistic credo that articulated Yanagi’s affection for the people and aesthetics of Korea, coupled with a proposal to use the “great art” (idai na geijutsu 偉大な芸術)5 of the peninsula as a panacea for the persisting tensions between Japan and Korea arising from Japan’s annexation and subsequent occupation of the peninsula, referred to as the “Japan-Korea Problem” (Nissen mondai 日鮮問題). One of the most intriguing (and eventually controversial) aspects of Yanagi’s campaign was his aestheticization of Korean suffering in a discourse he named the “beauty of sorrow” (hiai no bi 悲哀の美). Its fullest articulation was laid out in Chōsen no bijutsu 朝鮮の美術 (Korean Art), which appeared three times in 1922: first in January in the prestigious literary magazine Shinchō 新潮 (New Currents), then in May as a privately printed book, and finally in September as one of ten texts in Yanagi’s anthology Chōsen to sono geijutsu 朝鮮とその芸術 (Korea and Its Arts).6 Chōsen no bijutsu proposed that Korea was beset by a national sorrow precipitated by the peninsula’s history of recurrent invasion by foreigners. This sorrow, which was reified in all of Korean visual culture, was particularly discernible in the white glazes, decorative motifs and techniques, and, above all, linear characteristics of the two main genres of Chosŏn-dynasty (1392–1910) ceramics, porcelain (Kr. paekcha 白磁, Jp. hakuji) and stoneware (Kr. punch’ŏng sagi 粉青沙器, Jp. funsei saki). These works were far removed from both the bold intention of Chinese artworks and the sentimental and joyful character of Japanese artworks, which sought their artistic expression in form and color, respectively. “Standing between these two,” Yanagi asserted, “was the art of Korea, which was forced to carry the destiny of sorrow (hiai no meisū 悲哀の命数) alone.”7 The present article provides the first English translation of Chōsen no bijutsu following an analysis of the circumstances and impulses that led to Yanagi’s construction of the “beauty of sorrow” discourse. In this introduction I argue that the discourse [End Page 28] encased Chosŏn ceramics in a narrative that employed meanings and values based not so much on the contextual factors surrounding Korean ceramic production and consumption as on Japan’s rise as an imperial power, which provided both the environment and the resources for Yanagi to establish his career as an art critic. By co-opting the Chosŏn works to frame his discourse, Yanagi was able to publicly vent...

The historical implications of American missionary dentist W.J. Scheifley and the first Korean Dental Department established in the Severance Union Medical College

This article discusses accomplishments and historical implications of American missionary dentist W.J. Scheifley and the first Korean dental department, which was established in 1915 in Korea. W.J. Scheifley, with Christian service mind and mission as a dentist, applied to American Protestantic missionary dentist overseas. The dental department in the Severance Union Medical College introduced the scientistic dental education of America, facilitated research on the dental condition of the Korean people, and ran independent dental clinic. W.J. Schiefley criticised the profit-seeking attitude of Japanese dentists and denturist(="IPCHISA", in Korean pronunciation) and emphasized on the significance of Oral Health. He did all kind of dental treatments with advanced equipments like X-ray machine, and managed the collective oral health care for missionaries overseas. He trained medical students and assistants of the dentists with the goal of producing Korean dentists, but he failed due to the Dentist law introduced by Japanese colonial administration that interfered with producing Korean dentists. However, O.R. Avison's proposal of the establishment of dental schools stimulated the establishment of Kyungsung dental school, which provided the basis for the Dental department in the Severance Union Medical College becoming special training institution for Korean Dentists.

The Possibility of Liminal Colonial Subjecthood: Yayutz Bleyh and the Search for Subaltern Histories in the Japanese Empire

ABSTRACTThis article examines whether writing histories of colonial subjects is possible. Traditional colonial histories subsume the colonial subject's individual history under a larger narrative of subjugation, which often does not allow room for people to exist outside the dichotomized role of collaborator/resister. This approach has left a gap in the scholarship for histories of colonial subjects whose lives do not easily fit either category. This article addresses this gap by detailing the life of Yayutz Bleyh, an Atayal woman who became one of the most important participants in the Japanese colonial administration of Aboriginal Affairs in Taiwan. For over six years, the author gathered fragmented pieces of information regarding Yayutz from a multitude of sources – visuals, as well as oral and written materials from inside and outside the colonial archive – in order to sketch the contours of an extraordinary woman and her life. Through the process of filtering these disparate sources, it was the silences regarding certain issues and the discrepancies that emerged among sources that proved to be the most revealing about Yayutz as someone who straddled both the world of the colonizer and the colonized.

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

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.

<i>Korea's Occupied Cinemas, 1893-1948: The Untold History of the Film Industry</i> (review)

Reviewed by: Korea's Occupied Cinemas, 1893-1948: The Untold History of the Film Industry Peter Y. Paik Korea's Occupied Cinemas, 1893-1948: The Untold History of the Film Industry by Brian Yecies and Ae-Gyung Shim. New York: Routledge, 2011 (Routledge Advances in Film Studies). $125 (hardcover) Korea's Occupied Cinemas, 1893-1948, by Brian Yecies and Ae-Gyung Shim is a groundbreaking study that examines the early history of films and moving pictures on the Korean peninsula. Ambitious in its scope, the book traces the consumption and spectatorship of moving images on the Korean peninsula back to the late nineteenth century. After electricity had begun to power the lights of the Kyŏngbok Palace and a line of streetcars was running across Seoul, the newly founded Seoul Electric Company found an immediate and steady source of income in the nightly motion picture screenings held at its warehouse in the Tongdaemun district. Eager audiences flocked to view images of European and American cities, in crowds that sometimes numbered over one thousand. Authors Yecies and Shim not only provide a fascinating glimpse into this early period of film spectatorship and image consumption, when toothpaste containers and empty tobacco packets could be redeemed for theater tickets, but also give a compelling and multifaceted account of filmmaking and film spectatorship under the Japanese colonial administration. As Yecies and Shim point out, the appetite of Koreans for viewing motion pictures was already quite developed at the time of Korea's annexation by Japan as a colony. The capacity of the cinema to inculcate certain values and to arouse new desires did not go unrecognized, however, by Japanese colonial authorities, which set about organizing free screenings of films and newsreels to promote their expansionist aims. The colonial government's censorship practices, however, were not centralized until 1925, eight years after Japan had passed into law a domestic system of film censorship. Although Korean movie narrators (pyŏnsa) were subject to harrassment and even beatings for making comments during their performances that were considered hostile or disparaging to the colonial authorities, and Korean filmmakers were subject to government surveillance as well as to censorship regulations, nevertheless the years between 1923-34 proved to be a remarkably productive period for the cinema of colonial Korea. This span saw the release of ninety feature films directed by Korean filmmakers and produced by predominantly Korean film crews, including those with explicitly anticolonial overtones, such as The Story of Chunhyang (Ch'unhyangjŏn, 1923) and Arirang (1926), which was received by audiences as a fierce and impassioned protest against colonial oppression. A film like Arirang, in which the protagonist, a mentally unstable young man, recovers his sanity after killing a colonialist collaborator and would-be rapist, indicates that the hands of the Japanese censors were more lax than would be expected for a colonial authority using culture to foster a spirit of obedience, if not a sense of allegiance, among the colonized people. Yecies and Shim raise [End Page 421] the question of whether the radical content of Arirang might have had more to do with the performances of the pyŏnsa at its screenings than with the film script itself, as no intact reels of the film have survived. But the censorship policies of the Japanese had other unintended consequences that undermined the colonial government's aim of achieving cultural hegemony. Censorship laws forced Japanese films to pass through two boards of censors before they could be screened in Korea, in effect more than doubling the fees levied for the censorship process. Paying the costs for two sets of censors, the one located in Japan and the other based in Korea, amounted to a financial burden that only a handful of major studios could assume. The censorship process thus left the film market in Korea wide open for Hollywood films, which became much more popular than movies from Japan. By 1934, Hollywood films had a market share of over 60 percent. The late 1920s and early 1930s were also a time of cooperation and solidarity between leftist filmmakers of both countries. Members of the Korean Artists Proletarian Federation were allowed to meet with their counterparts in Japan...

Enacting the “Incomprehensible China”: Modern European Jurisprudence and the Japanese Reconstruction of Qing Political Law

The great ambition of Japanese colonialism, from the time of its debut at the end of the nineteenth century, was the reformulation of Chinese law and politics. One of the most extraordinary examples of this ambition is The Administrative Law of the Qing Empire [Shinkoku Gyōseihō], a monumental enterprise undertaken by the Japanese colonial government in Taiwan intended not only to facilitate Japanese colonial administration of Taiwan but also to reorder the entire politico‐juridical order of China along the lines of modern rational law. This article examines the legal analysis embraced in The Administrative Law of the Qing Empire and recounts its attempt to reconstruct the Qing's “political law” (seihō) by a strange, ambiguous, and hybrid resort to “authenticity.” The strangeness of this Japanese colonial production comes from Japan's dual position as both colonizer of Taiwan and simultaneously itself colonized by “modern European jurisprudence”(kinsei hōri). In uncovering the effects of modern European jurisprudence on the Japanese enterprise, we will discover Japan's pursuit of its own cultural subjectivity embedded in The Administrative Law of the Qing Empire, epitomizing the campaign of national identities observable in the process of East Asian legal modernization.

Loyal Patriot? Traitorous Collaborator? The Yun Ch'iho Diaries and the Question of National Loyalty

Loyal Patriot? Traitorous Collaborator?The Yun Chiho Diaries and the Question of National Loyalty Mark E. Caprio In August 2004 Republic of Korea (South Korea) President Roh Moo Hyun called for the creation of a parliamentary commission to identify Koreans who had collaborated with Japan during its thirty-six years of colonial occupation of the Korean peninsula. The crimes of these collaborators, Roh explained, constituted “[a]cts of betrayal in support of imperialist Japan and colonial rule at the time our patriotic forefathers were staking their lives in the fight for the nation [and remain] hidden in the shade of history.”1 Critics accused Roh of attempting to rectify the past “through a political initiative” and warned that his inquiry “would have an explosive and inflammatory effect on the country that might well be hard to control.”2 Disregarding this warning, one year later the Institute for Research in Collaborationist Activities compiled a list of 3,090 collaborators, and promised to add more names in the near future.3 The term “collaborator,” as used pejoratively to describe someone whose actions or attitudes in support of a foreign occupation can be considered treasonous,4 is controversial primarily because it judges suspect individuals based on a context politically different from that which they committed their alleged crimes. It fails to consider the fact that the accused held a different sense of state and nation than that held by their accusers. It also attempts to render a judgment based on the activities of the accused, and fails to consider the pressures, reasoning, or circumstances that influenced the decisions they made. Timothy Brook notes, “those who appear to have chosen the reality of collaboration may have been engaging in a calculus of options and risks different from the simplicities that hindsight, and the nationalist narrative that thrives on it, hands to us.”5 In the case of Korea, few of the people listed as traitors remain alive to explain their case. A fairer assessment of their alleged betrayal requires a more comprehensive inquiry into the cognitive reasoning and ambitions behind these activities. The case of Yun Ch’iho (1864–1945) offers an appropriate example to test the justice of a collaboration charge precisely because of the complications and ambiguities it presents. Yun’s extensive contacts with Japanese nationals, and the support and assistance he offered to the Japanese colonial government during Japan’s participation in World War II, led to placing his name on various lists of collaborators. But there was an earlier phase in Yun’s life, when previous to Japan’s annexation of the Korean peninsula in 1910 he encouraged political, social, and cultural reform in Korea that established his qualifications as a Korean patriot. A review of his extensive eleven-volume diary that he maintained primarily in English throughout the pre- and post-annexation phases of his life provides a unique insight into his actions and the motivations that influenced them. Collaboration Examined Efforts by Koreans to identify collaborators predate President Roh’s recent campaign. The first post-war attempt to identify pro-Japanese collaborators was brought to a halt in 1949 by the first South Korean President, Syngman Rhee (1948–1960). Over the next four decades, which included the long period of autocratic rule by Park Chung Hee (1961–1979), investigations into collaboration became taboo. The democratization of South Korea starting in the late 1980s, however, helped to revitalize efforts to address collaboration. A three-volume set of biographies of ninety-nine members of the “pro-Japanese faction” (ch’inil p’a) that appeared in 1993 constituted a fresh effort to finally address this issue. Published on the 74th anniversary of Korean people’s most ambitious effort to drive the Japanese from their homeland—the March First (1919) Independence Movement—this project identified the most notorious Koreans who collaborated with the Japanese colonial administration.6 The root of the problem, however, is found in the days that surrounded Japan’s surrender and after the United States and the Soviet Union divided the Korean peninsula. Kim Pong’u, in his introduction to the ch’inilp’a volumes, blames the U.S. administration for Korea’s present plight: In addition to dividing...

Military Bases and Modernity

Okinawa was an independent island kingdom that was forcibly annexed by Japan in 1879. The Japanese colonial administration did little to modernize the islands of Okinawa. Following the defeat of the Japanese in World War II, the American government took over the administration of the island. The U.S. government built a series of military installations in Okinawa, turning the islands into military staging areas for the projection of American power in Asia. This article focuses on the experience of a new modernity brought forth by the U.S. military bases in the Okinawan islands. The article also considers how the bases, as an expression of Americanization and U.S. global expansion, impacted the formation of Okinawan identity in the latter half of the 20th century.

Language planning in Korea under the Japanese colonial administration, 1910–1945

Abstract This study analyses language planning in Korea under the Japanese colonial administration from 1910 to 1945. In order to show how the oppressed language (Korean) served as an autonomously contested medium for reaction, we examine both the intended language planning of the Japanese colonial administration and reaction of the Korean scholars in the process of language planning. Status and corpus language planning are interpreted as the interplay between the colonial government and the resistance of the Korean linguists. As a result, Korean became a proscribed language, and interference of Japanese expressions in written Korean became more conspicuous. Nevertheless, the participation of Korean linguists in setting rules for Korean orthography was significant. The 1933 unification of the Korean orthography changed inconsistent phonetic orthography to a system of spelling based on morphological syllable division and became the standardised writing principle of contemporary Korean orthography.

Koreans in the aftermath of the Kanto earthquake of 1923

One of the results of the policies pursued by the Japanese colonial administration in Korea after 1910 was the migration of large numbers of Koreans to Japan. Hostility and prejudice toward these immigrants were fostered not only by the willingness of Korean workers to accept working and living conditions far below those which their Japanese counterparts would tolerate, but also by the association of Koreans with radical ideologies. This hostility was given its fullest expression immediately after the Great Kantō Earthquake of 1923 when large numbers of Koreans were put to death by members of the army, police, and local ‘vigilance associations’. An attempt is made here not only to describe the events which followed the earthquake, but also to show how these were an inevitable consequence of Japanese colonial rule.

Rural Development in South Korea

E VER SINCE the late 19th century, with the penetration of American missionaries and Japanese carpetbaggers into rural areas, Korean farmers have undergone a long, varied, and increasingly intense process of social change and mobilization.1 Under the Japanese colonial administration, agricultural innovation, expanded educational opportunities, improved transportation, and the migration that accompanied rapid industrialization and urbanization all helped to introduce new ways of thinking and acting into rural society. After World War II the gradual elimination of yangban privilege, and in 1949-50 the land reform further transformed village social organization, creating a relatively egalitarian society of small owner-farmers. During the chaotic period of the Korean War, the rural population either had to leave their land as refugees, or stay home under North Korean occupation. Millions experienced military service. A tremendous national effort after liberation resulted in the achievement of compulsory, universal primary school education by about 1960, accompanied by a very rapid expansion in the number of secondary schools and colleges. The development of transportation and mass communications brought material and ideological influences from the city to nearly every corner of rural Korea. What did not begin to change until about the middle 1960s, however, was the prevalence of grinding rural poverty. Rapid population growth, the importation of huge quantities of relief grain from the United States, and neglect of the rural sector by successive Korean governments-both in technological and economic terms-all resulted in a stagnant or worsening economic situation in the countryside.

Waldbauliches aus den Philippinen

The Molave tree and the spanish galleons: This wood made possible the historic Manila-Acapulco trade across the Pacific which spanned two-and-a-half centuries. Only the galleons built of molave timber could resist the huges waves, destroying insects and fungi.Vitex parviflora does not grow in the dense tropical rainforest but on more dry and mostly flat sites in open stands. Thus felling and logging were too easy and the cattle distroyed the rest. Molave narrowly escaped the fate of the mighty galleons, the extinction. The Crytomeria a kind of philippine Douglas fir? The British colonial service established about 100 years ago outside Japan and China the first plantations ofCrytomeria japonica around Darjiling in the Himalaya. The plantations, mostly pure stands, have been a success especially in terms of growth, probably unexpectedly. There is neither degradation of the soil nor erosion in spite of the monsoon. In Taiwan, where the Japanese colonial administration introduced the tree 75 years ago, the stands are uneven aged and more open. The growth reaches the one of the Douglas fir. From Taiwan crytomeria came to the Philippines where a German team propagated the tree until now successfully, first in the mountains of the northern island of Luzon, and later even on the southern island of Mindanao. The Filipinos hope to feed with its wood the papermills with their growing demands.

Agricultural Transformation Under Colonialism: The Case of Taiwan

Much interest andthe economic progress made in Taiwan since the end of World attention have been recently focused onWar II. A major factor in Taiwan's postwar economic development is that the island already possessed a progressive and productive agricultural sector when it was returned to Chinese rule in 1945. The transformation of Taiwan's agriculture was the major accomplishment of the Japanese Colonial Administration. When Japan acquired Taiwan in 1895, its agriculture was stagnant and its peasants were engaged almost exclusively in subsistence farming. To enable Taiwan to make a contribution to Japan's efforts at industrialization, the Colonial Government was given the task of rationalizing and modernizing Taiwan's agriculture. Taiwan was to be integrated with the Japanese economy to provide a food surplus to help maintain the Japanese laborers diverted from agricultural to industrial activities. Foreign exchange that Japan would otherwise have spent on food imports would be used to finance more strategic imports. More explicitly, the Japanese had two objectives: to increase Taiwan's agricultural output and to divert the increase away from agriculture in Taiwan without committing an equivalent transfer of production value to agriculture in Taiwan.