Japanese Settlers Research Articles

Toward a Japanese paradigm of settler-colonial urbanism?

Abstract The city of Sapporo, founded in 1869 by the Japanese government as a colonial headquarters in Hokkaido, developed as part of a global wave of settler-colonial urbanism. Like counterparts in North America and Australia, Sapporo facilitated economic, environmental and political transformations across Hokkaido that led to the displacement of Indigenous Ainu society by a soon overwhelming number of ethnically Japanese settlers. However, several historical factors distinguish Sapporo’s settler-colonial urbanism from its peers, including the long history of relations between the Ainu and Japanese; the heavy role of the Japanese state in Sapporo; and the lack of mass relocations of the Ainu to reservations far from their traditional homes.

1930년대 ‘식민 도시’ 경성(京城)의 영화 소비의 장 전환

One of the transformative factors that has re-directed the realm of the cinema in colonial Korea was the move toward the nationalizing of film business that was taken in imperial Japan in the early 1930s. To mention it briefly, it was intended to protect and develop film business as a state industry. Following imperial Japan’s steps immediately, the Government-General of Korea (GGK) has promulgated a new film policy named ‘Motion Picture and Film Regulation Rule’ (No.82 ordained by the Government-General) in August 1934 and implemented the policy of ‘screen quota.’ This paper aims to examine the ‘geopolitics’ of the screen quota because the latter was one of the crucial factors that would transform the sphere of cinema consumption in colonial Korea, especially in Keijō (colonial Seoul). In the colonial city, the showing and watching of movies have long been divided between colonized Koreans and the Japanese settlers. The move toward the nationalizing of film business, along with the opening of new theaters called ‘movie palaces,’ would reconstruct the cinema of the colonial city and help to generate the ‘contact space’ between the two peoples.

Crafting Survival: Chamorro and Okinawan Women’s Camp Labor in the Northern Mariana Islands, 1944–1946 / 生きるための工芸：北マリアナ諸島の米軍民間人収容所におけるチャモ ロ・沖縄女性の労働(1944–1946 年)

Abstract: While Japanese and U.S. scholars have examined the U.S. narrative of liberating women in postwar Japan, the U.S. military’s internment of local women in the Northern Mariana Islands (NMI) further elucidates the contradictory nature of U.S. liberation. During World War II, U.S. forces captured and interned the local population of the islands in the name of liberation and protection from Japanese forces. Since Japan had previously colonized the NMI for three decades, these interned civilians included Chamorro and Refaluwasch (Native Pacific Islanders), as well as Okinawans, Koreans, and Japanese settlers. While interned at camps, these local Native and Asian women performed various forms of labor, including craft-making. I argue that interned women made crafts for their economic survival, responding to the U.S. military’s expectation of crafting as a key industry to represent the liberation of women and the rehabilitation of the local economy of the islands after Japanese rule. I also contend that crafting held a deeper cultural meaning, especially for Chamorro and Okinawan women, which escaped the attention of U.S. military officers and enabled the sustenance of Native practices. By analyzing U.S. military records and photographs, as well as women’s memoirs and crafts, this article demonstrates how Native and Asian women in the NMI creatively responded to the U.S. imperial projects of liberation and rehabilitation during and after WWII.

Crafting Survival: Chamorro and Okinawan Women’s Camp Labor in the Northern Mariana Islands, 1944–1946 生きるための工芸：北マリアナ諸島の米軍民間人収容所におけるチャモ ロ・沖縄女性の労働 (1944–1946 年)

While Japanese and U.S. scholars have examined the U.S. narrative of liberating women in postwar Japan, the U.S. military’s internment of local women in the Northern Mariana Islands (NMI) further elucidates the contradictory nature of U.S. liberation. During World War II, U.S. forces captured and interned the local population of the islands in the name of liberation and protection from Japanese forces. Since Japan had previously colonized the NMI for three decades, these interned civilians included Chamorro and Refaluwasch (Native Pacific Islanders), as well as Okinawans, Koreans, and Japanese settlers. While interned at camps, these local Native and Asian women performed various forms of labor, including craft-making. I argue that interned women made crafts for their economic survival, responding to the U.S. military’s expectation of crafting as a key industry to represent the liberation of women and the rehabilitation of the local economy of the islands after Japanese rule. I also contend that crafting held a deeper cultural meaning, especially for Chamorro and Okinawan women, which escaped the attention of U.S. military officers and enabled the sustenance of Native practices. By analyzing U.S. military records and photographs, as well as women’s memoirs and crafts, this article demonstrates how Native and Asian women in the NMI creatively responded to the U.S. imperial projects of liberation and rehabilitation during and after WWII.

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

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.

Imperatives of Care: Women and Medicine in Colonial Korea

Imperatives of Care: Women and Medicine in Colonial Korea

The vernacularity of Palauan Japanese

AbstractThrough a qualitative and quantitative analysis of linguistic, perceptual, historical and sociodemographic data as well as two decades of sociolinguistic ethnography collected among the postcolonial Japanese speech communities of Palau in the Pacific, this article argues that Palauan Japanese was not simply ‘standard Japanese transported’, but a koineised vernacular variety of Japanese; i.e., a variety resulting from the mixture of different migrant dialects, which was adopted by Palauans through daily interaction with local Japanese settlers during the colonial period. The article concludes by emphasising: (a) the usefulness of teasing apart varieties largely acquired and consolidated through everyday communication with target language speakers from varieties mastered largely through formal schooling; (b) the importance of understanding the social contexts in which ‘new’ colonial varieties are formed as well as the linguistic outcomes of the dialect mixing that occurs when a numerically dominant but dialectally diverse settler population colonises a new territory; and (c) the helpfulness of speech perception and social identification experiments as tools to identify vernacularity.

재조일본인 사회의 ‘발전사(發展史)’ 간행과 식민자들의 창조된 ‘향토’

This article examines local history materials published by Japanese settlers in colonial Korea. Japanese published various types of books on Korean peninsula at late Meiji and Taisho era. These books are published mainly to provide information about Korea and to encourage emigration to Korean peninsula. This article focuses on HATTENSHI(發展史) which mainly describe history of migration of Japanese settlers. Japanese settlers published local history books to commemorate their emigration and cultivation in Korean peninsula. These books described how colonizer’s community built, therefore Korean people and historical background was eliminated. In some books, complimenting pioneer spirit of early settlers is essential key to understand their publication. And in some books, Japanese settlers invented their area of residence to their conceptional hometown.

Analysis of the Conditions and Characteristics of Japanese Migrant Fishing Villages in Ulsan

This study aimed to explore how Japan expanded its fishery bases in Joseon and colonized and ruled the coastal and offshore areas of Joseon and its fishery industry by analyzing the conditions and characteristics of Japanese migrant fishing villages in Ulsan. This study also examined how the private exchange between Joseon and Japanese people was formed during the colonial era. There were free-migration fishing villages, such as Sinam, Sejukpo, Ilsanjin, and Jeongja, where Japanese fishermen migrated and settled to make a living and earn personal incomes by catching fish, such as sardines, sole, and cero. In the case of Jeonhari, it was initially an aid-migration fishing village, which was formed as the Shimane Prefecture government offered aid grants to have fishermen migrate and later more Japanese fishermen migrated by their free will. Bangeojin was a migrant fishing village formed based on the combination of free migration and aid migration. The establishment of those migrant fishing villages was managed as part of Japan’s colonial policies as the Japanese government intended to colonize Joseon. The Japanese government aimed to obtain the fishery resources of Joseon, and there was also a strategic intention to have Japanese people migrate to geographically important spots in the Korean peninsula and have a militarily competitive edge. It was also found that the fish caught in migrant fishing villages were carried to Japan to be used for military food procurement in times of war, as seen in Sinam, Sejukpo, and Bangeojin. The early process of the colonization of Joseon was confirmed through the Association of Japanese People formed in Bangeojin, which gave Japanese people the privilege to engage in commerce in Joseon and supported Japanese settlers, groups, and organizations that aided in the colonization of Joseon. Lastly, this study analyzed how private exchange between Joseon and Japanese people was formed during the colonial era. There were conflicts between Joseon and Japanese people at red-light districts, public baths, and schools. Conversely, the records about the Joseon person hired by a Japanese store owner and a Joseon person who gave considerations to Japanese people showed personal trust and friendly attitude between civilians beyond the relationship between colonizers and the colonized at a governmental level.

해방 직후 재조선일본인 ‘귀환[引揚]’ 연구의 성과와 전망

해방 직후 재조선일본인 ‘귀환[引揚]’ 연구의 성과와 전망

Academic studies and issues on Japanese settlers in colonial Korea

Academic studies and issues on Japanese settlers in colonial Korea

明治〜昭和期の北海道の和人社会における毛皮利用、特にイヌ皮について--企画展「毛皮」に関する覚え書き

明治〜昭和期の北海道の和人社会における毛皮利用、特にイヌ皮について--企画展「毛皮」に関する覚え書き

재조일본인 사회의 ‘발전사’ 간행과 일본의 향토 연구

이 논문에서는 재조일본인이 간행한 조선지지 중에서 발전사를 하나의 새로운 자료군으로 정리하고 기술에 나타난 ‘식민자의식’과 그 근저에 있는 의식구조에 대해 살펴보았다. 발전사는 거류민 사회의 형성사를 주요 내용으로 하는 간행물 이다. 발전사 간행 사업은 개항 기념, ‘한국병합’, 거류민단의 해산을 계기로 이루 어진 경우가 많았다. 개항 시기부터 거류민 사회의 역사를 역사로 남기려는 의식 에 더하여 식민지 통치 권력에 대한 반관(反官) 의식이 간행을 뒷받침하고 있었 다. 발전사 내용을 통해서는 일본인들의 ‘개척’ 정신을 기념하고 기리는 의미가 발전사 간행을 뒷받침한 점을 알 수 있다 또한 재조일본인 사회의 발전사 간행은 일본의 향토사 연구 동향과 동시대성 을 가지고 있었다. 발전사 간행을 계기로 지역의 연혁에 대한 관심이 커지면서 조선의 지역사에 대한 연구 조사가 이루어졌다. 일본인 집단거주지의 형성 성격 에 따라 발전사 서술 내용에도 특징적인 내용을 찾을 수 있다 개항장에서 성장한 식민지도시에서는 개항이 중요한 기점이었으며 개항을 기념하는 사업의 일환으 로 발전사가 간행되었다. 잡거지 식민지도시의 발전사에서는 조선인과의 조우 및 이문화 접촉을 다룬 기술이 두드러졌으며 신시가지 형태로 성장한 식민지도시의 경우에는 일본인들이 한반도로 이주하여 해당 지역을 건설했다는 ‘개척’ 의식을 엿볼 수 있다.

Graveyard geomancy in Korea under Japanese rule – Focusing on the 1930s

ABSTRACTThe “Gravesite Ordinance” was introduced to colonial Korea in 1912, forbidding private graveyards, limiting burials to public cemeteries and establishing cremation as the main means of burial. This aimed at establishing legal grounds for the burial customs Japanese settlers had brought with them, but also was a means to systematize Korean graves. At the time, legal disputes about private graveyard properties of Koreans were ensnaring the judiciary system. Also, many mountains covered with loose graveyards were a steady reminder of death that made it impossible to put such spaces to use for mining or infrastructural purposes. Koreans were strongly antagonized by the new law, for it ignored Confucian tradition and custom as well as geomantic principles. Koreans voiced their discontent with the new law, so one major revision was made after the outbreak of the March First Movement in 1919. The amendment however only changed rules for the Korean elite, so the masses became even further disgruntled. Thus, the number of law suits concerning graveyards did not decline, but the content changed: now frequent violations of the new law became the issue. Korean non-obedience of the laws led to secret burials and other forms of non-acceptance which were then criminalized by the Japanese authorities. Through an analysis of lawsuits, crime records, newspapers and other historical material this article shows that the Japanese law intending to “modernize” in the end had the contrary effect.

The Clandestine activities of Japanese settlers in colonial Korea on US-Korea alienation after US occupation after Liberation

The purpose of this study is to examine the perception of the situation of the Japanese Government General of Korea, the Japanese settlers in colonial Korea toward Japan defeat, and the intention of the conflict between South Korea and the US by the Japanese return group, especially the Japanese Relief Society, during the period of US military in South Korea. The Japanese government decided that the sovereignty of the Korean peninsula remained in Japan until it ratified a peace treaty that would define Japan’s postwar status, and informed the Japanese Government General of Korea on August 24 1945. The Japanese government retained the conventional view that Japan’s sovereignty over colonial territories, including the Korean Peninsula, was not in the signing of the Potsdam Declaration to surrender to the Allies, but in a signing of a treaty with the Allies even after the defeat. After the defeat, the Japanese Military Police and the Tokodai movement was very significant. They were planning to form a subterranean secret organization to distract South Korea’s order, and to alienate between the US military and Koreans. Another secret organization was under investigation by the US military intelligence agency in October 1945, when a clandestine group of former military policemen, who led the operation of the US-Korea separation after US occupation, was being caught by the US military’s CIC. The object was the organization of Japanese Relief Society. These groups advocated private organizations aiming for the safe return of Japanese citizens, but they were formed with enormous financial support and support from the Japanese Government General of Korea and the Japanese Military Command in Korea. In addition, the ‘Kim Ke Cho incident’ was revealed. Kim Ke Cho, a pro-Japanese leader sponsored by the Japanese Government General of Korea, was brought to trial after being caught by the US military in preparation for the work between Korea and the United States in connection with the Japanese Relief Society. In other words, this event can be evaluated as showing that the space of liberation was not free from the influence of Japanese imperialism, and thus the space of continuity is stronger than disconnection.

일본인 식민자 사회가 바라본 3.1운동 : ‘재조일본인’의 ‘조선소요’(朝鮮騷擾) 인식

일본인 식민자 사회가 바라본 3.1운동 : ‘재조일본인’의 ‘조선소요’(朝鮮騷擾) 인식

The Gaze on the Threshold

This article examines the presence of Korean housemaids who worked for Japanese settlers in colonial Korea, 1910–45, and its connection to the urban landscape in the colony. It provides a historical investigation of the Korean housemaids who emerged among female workers in the urban sector and analyzes the diverse representational strategies of Korean housemaids by different gazers in mass media and literary works produced in the colonial and postcolonial period. In particular, it deals with the issue of colonial intimacy, focusing on the colonial encounter that includes the dynamic operation of affective politics between Korean housemaids and Japanese expatriates in the domestic arena. This article argues that the hybridized images of the Korean housemaids in Japanese families not only poses one specific form of the gendered subaltern whose voices were fragmented and refracted but also marks the colonial landscape in Korea as the contested terrain of revealing fractures in the dichotomous colonial narratives and the intertwined frames of race/ethnicity, class, and gender.

제국 신민의 전염병 도시 경성

Typhoid, a food- and water-borne disease strongly associated with the unhygienic life style and environment, is a most prevalent infectious disease in colonial Korea (1910-1945), especially among Japanese imperial settlers. Among them, the residents of Keijo, the impressively modernized capital of the colony, suffered the most. It was an enigma since the city was best equipped with sanitary infrastructures, which way in turn clearly was favored by the famously clean Japanese settlers. This paper examines this enigma of the Japanese imperial hygiene within the political settings of colonial Korea. Especially, it analyzes its relationship with privileges that Japanese imperial settlers had pursued and enjoyed. Living in the Japanese side of the city with properly Japanese style, they indeed enjoyed the up-to-date hygienic and medical infrastructures and interventions like the running water and free vaccines. Yet, the hygienic infrastructure and medical interventions in colonial Korea, like all other modern systems, had their limitations and uncertainties, partly owing to their own profit-seeking business model. The Japanese settlers just made themselves more vulnerable to them in two ways, with their well-discussed identity as “brokers of empire,” if not quasi-rulers. Firstly, as part of the ruling power, they could not acknowledge those limitations of the imperial hygiene that they had helped to create. Secondly, unable to equate themselves with the colonized who were to be disciplined for their unhygienic habits and life styles, they refused interventions that demanded to correct their habits and life styles. Keeping their preferences of “cold tofu” or “sashimi,” and too confident about their imperial regime, these Japanese settlers of Keijo kept their association with that unhygienic disease. This paper displays the vulnerability of Japanese colonial modernity even for its most benefited group while revealing the unique power structure of the Japanese colonial regime, which was built on and sustained by these privileges of unofficial rulers who refused to be disciplined as hygienic subjects.

재조일본인 건립 신사(神社)에 관한 기초적 연구 : ‘한국병합’ 전후 변화 양상을 중심으로

재조일본인 건립 신사(神社)에 관한 기초적 연구 : ‘한국병합’ 전후 변화 양상을 중심으로

在朝日本人 吉田秀次郞의 자본축적과 '식민자'로서의 지역적 위상

在朝日本人 吉田秀次郞의 자본축적과 '식민자'로서의 지역적 위상