Like other Japanese across the empire on August 15, 1945, Saitō Tomoya anticipated that this day ... more Like other Japanese across the empire on August 15, 1945, Saitō Tomoya anticipated that this day would be anything but ordinary, perhaps even a turning point in the war and Japan’s imperial history. The media had alerted the empire of the unprecedented announcement to be made that day at noon by the emperor. All subjects were to gather around a radio at that time, which the vast majority did. Although rather allusive in mentioning the ‘end’ of the war or Japan’s ‘defeat’, the prerecorded message succeeded in achieving its primary purpose: to inform subjects of Japan’s decision to accept the Allied terms of surrender as dictated by the Potsdam Declaration. Saitō recalls the imperial message that they must ‘pave the way for a grand peace … by enduring the unendurable and suffering what is insufferable’1 as sufficient in convincing listeners of the decisive turn of events.2
The battles of the Pacific War formally ended between mid-August and early September, 1945. Howev... more The battles of the Pacific War formally ended between mid-August and early September, 1945. However, the declarations of peace and surrender ceremonies that occurred during this time did not end informal battles across the Asian continent. Renegade Japanese military personnel refused to lay down their arms and repatriate quietly to their country. Some combed the waters between Japan and Korea in search of returnees attempting to repatriate with financial and material means in excess of that which the United States military governments allowed. Others sought to disrupt the occupation process by patrolling the streets of Korean cities and engaging in illegal and often violent activities. Koreans also caused problems by joining the Japanese in their postwar adventures or by harassing Japanese preparing to return to Japan and the Korean sympathizers who attempted to help them. Reportage of such actions appeared in the G-2 Periodic Report, which kept a daily record of such actions. These...
On August 22, 1945 the Ukushima-maru set sail from the northern Japanese port city of Ōminato wi... more On August 22, 1945 the Ukushima-maru set sail from the northern Japanese port city of Ōminato with the apparent intention of delivering an undisclosed number of Koreans to Pusan, Korea. The laborers had been both recruited and conscripted for construction work necessary to fortify the naval base that had been strategically located in this remote location decades from the time of the 1905 Russo-Japanese War to monitor ship traffic between the islands of Honshu and Hokkaido. Two days later, while skirting the Japan Sea/East Sea side of Honshu island, the ship suddenly detoured into Maizuru Harbor in Kyoto prefecture, where it exploded sending hundreds, perhaps thousands of Koreans, and 25 Japanese to their watery grave. While other ships met similar fates after the guns of the AsiaPacific wars fell silent, the Ukishima-maru incident is unique in the cause of the explosion that sank the ship remains a mystery. While the Japanese government insists that a sea mine sank the ship, Korean...
Table of Contents 1. Before and After Defeat: Crossing the great 1945 divide Mark E. Caprio and C... more Table of Contents 1. Before and After Defeat: Crossing the great 1945 divide Mark E. Caprio and Christine de Matos 2. Cash and Blood: The Chinese community and the Japanese occupation of Borneo, 1941-1945 OOI Keat Gin 3. State, Sterilization and Reproductive Rights: Japan as the occupier and the occupied Maho Toyoda 4. Labor under Military Occupation: Allied POWs and the Allied Occupation of Japan Christine de Matos 5. More Bitter than Sweet: Reflecting on the Japanese community in British North Borneo, 1885-1946 Shigeru Sato 6. Colonial-era Korean Collaboration over Two Occupations: Delayed closure Mark E. Caprio 7. Film and the Representation of Ideas in Korea During and After Japanese Occupation, 1940-1948 Brian Yecies 8. Patriotic Collaboration?: Zhou Fohai and the Wang Jingwei government during the Second Sino-Japanese War Brian G. Martin 9. Trapped in the Contested Borderland: Sakhalin Koreans, wartime displacement and identity Igor R. Saveliev 10. Collapsing the Past into the Present: The occupation of Japan seen in the pages of the journal New Women Curtis Anderson Gayle 11. Dividing Islanders: The repatriation of 'Ry?ky?ans' from occupied Japan Matthew R. Augustine 12. Memories of the Japanese Occupation: Singapore's first official Second World War memorial and the politics of commemoration John Kwok 13. A Textual Reading of My Manchuria: Idealism, conflict and modernity Mo Tian
Rules of the House: Family Law and Domestic Disputes in Colonial Korea, 2019
List of Illustrations vii Acknowledgments ix vii 1. Household register with a wife and a concubin... more List of Illustrations vii Acknowledgments ix vii 1. Household register with a wife and a concubine 41 2. Household register with a concubine and daughter 42 3. Household register with a widow, daughter, and son-in-law 43 4. Diagram of the Yi Se-sŏn case 44 5. Diagram of the case where the widow refused to adopt an heir 51 6. Diagram of son-in-law adoption 62 7. Properly moderate wedding ceremony 70 8. Diagram of the Yi Sun-bong case 100 9. Example of name-change documentation 101 10. Example of name-change documentation 102 Illustrations ix Acknowled gments In the long time it took me to complete this book, I have incurred intellectual and material debts to many. I am happy to acknowledge some of them here. I have benefited greatly from scholars who have generously provided academic guidance along the long trajectory of this project. First of all, I thank my teachers at Berkeley, whose teachings and influences I have come to appreciate more and more over the years. Andrew Barshay had the insight to see a project even before there was one and provided patient guidance. Irwin Scheiner taught me how to think with precision, while Wen-hsin Yeh inspired me to explore with imagination. Mizuno Naoki, formerly of the Center for Humanities at Kyoto University, was a generous and resourceful adviser during my research in Japan and provided critical guidance in archival research. Lee Seung-yup supplied crucial help in gathering archival material used in this book. Jung Ji Young of Ewha Womans University has been the de facto mentor of the project from its inception and introduced me to relevant scholarship in Korea. John Duncan graciously hosted me at the UCLA Center for Korean Studies during my year as the Korea Foundation postdoctoral fellow. Namhee Lee, Chris Hanscom, and Jennifer Jung-Kim were generous to welcome me into their vibrant intellectual community. I presented earlier versions of the manuscript at various venues and received many invaluable comments.
Studies on Japan's assimilation policies in Korea (1910−1945) frequently criticize the contradict... more Studies on Japan's assimilation policies in Korea (1910−1945) frequently criticize the contradiction between the rhetoric of inclusiveness Japan used to describe its administration and the policy of discrimination it advanced in the colony. This paper argues this contradiction is characteristic of other administrations that the colonizers employed in territories contiguous with the colonial homeland, including the French in Algeria and the Germans in Alsace and Lorraine. It contrasts this peripheral expansion with the intensive assimilation efforts found in internal nationbuilding expansion, and the less intrusive external expansion where colonizers built social walls to separate colonizer from colonized. In Korea, evidence of this contradiction between rhetoric and practice appeared in various social, economic, and political areas. This paper emphasizes the contradiction found in the education system established by the government general, which offered Koreans elementary schooling of a lesser quality than that provided Japanese both in Japan and in Korea. Over the decades of colonial rule in Korea the Japanese proposed a number of reforms that promised to close the gap between colonizer and colonized education, and scheduled others that due to Japan's defeat in the Asian Pacific wars never materialized. Thus it remains an open question as to whether Japan's assimilation policies would have succeeded in closing the rhetoric-practice gap had the colonizers had more time. Japanese relations with other minority peoples, including Okinawans and Ainu, suggest that, while one factor, time alone might not have narrowed this gap to sufficiently assimilate Koreans, both those residing on the peninsula and in the colonial homeland.
Cross-Currents: East Asian History and Culture Review, 2014
Medical researcher Kubo Takeshi's contributions to professional publications, such as Chōsen igak... more Medical researcher Kubo Takeshi's contributions to professional publications, such as Chōsen igakkai zasshi (The Korean medical journal), and more popular magazines, such as Chōsen oyobi Manshū (Korea and Manchuria), reflected many of the prejudicial attitudes that Japanese held toward Koreans during the first decade of colonial rule. His scholarship was based on biological determinist thinking, an approach developed by eighteenth-century European medical researchers to establish race, class, and gender hierarchies. For Kubo this approach provided a means for exploiting scientific inquiry to establish and manage Japanese superiority over Korean subjects in a more stable manner than one based on more malleable cultural differences. A people could adjust its customs or mannerisms to amalgamate with a suzerain culture but could not do so with hereditarily determined features, such as blood type or cranium size, shape, or weight. Practitioners, however, often linked the physical with the cultural by arguing that a people's physical structure was a product of its cultural heritage. The subjectivity injected into this seemingly objective research methodology abused the lay community's blind trust in modern science in two ways. First, it employed this inquiry to verify biased observations, rather than to uncover new truths; second, it altered the approach, rather than the conclusions, when this inquiry demonstrated the desired truths to be inaccurate. Biological determinism proved useful in substantiating a Japanese-Korean colonial relationship that acknowl
The concept of trusteeship has played a major role in Korea's colonial and post-colonial history.... more The concept of trusteeship has played a major role in Korea's colonial and post-colonial history. Two United States presidents, Woodrow Wilson in 1918 and Franklin Roosevelt in 1941, saw the policy as a stage for occupied peoples to pass through prior to their gaining complete sovereignty. In 1943 Roosevelt specifically deemed that Korea would require a lengthy trusteeship period upon Japan's defeat. This policy, however, was never officially introduced to the peninsula. This article focuses on post-liberation attempts by the United States and Soviet Union to enact a process that would have subjected a provisional unified Korean government to trusteeship as an important step toward forming a more permanent political body. This process, decided upon in Moscow at a conference of three foreign ministers held in December 1945, faced complications at Joint Commission meetings when the Soviet Union and United States failed to agree on the interpretation of the Moscow Decision. Specifically, the two sides differed over whether to allow consultation with groups of conservative Koreans who aggressively opposed the idea of their country being subjected to a trusteeship administration. Another important factor was the generally hostile relations that were developing between the Soviet Union and United States that impacted negatively any trust that remained from their wartime alliance. Their failure to complete their task represented the last reasonable chance for North-South reunification prior to the two Koreas forming separate states in 1948.
In December of 1943, three leaders of the Allied forces gathered in Cairo, Egypt to discuss warti... more In December of 1943, three leaders of the Allied forces gathered in Cairo, Egypt to discuss wartime and postwar issues. The Communiqué that they completed in the last of the four-days of meetings, however, reflected issues related to the postwar fate of the Japanese empire, rather than the wartime issues that had dominated their discussions. The rather obtuse phrase, “in due course,” inserted to qualify the leaders’ promise to deliver Korea its independence would gather significant importance only after the conference. It served as a cornerstone for Allied occupation policy planning and execution for future gatherings, while Koreans used it as a rallying point around which they protested Allied trusteeship policy both during and after the Pacific War. This disagreement contributed to the failure that the U.S. and Soviet experienced in their efforts to reunite the peninsula during their three-year occupations of southern and northern Korea. The legacy of this phrase continues in the ...
Cross-Currents: East Asian History and Culture Review, 2014
Medical researcher Kubo Takeshi's contributions to professional publications, such as Chōsen ... more Medical researcher Kubo Takeshi's contributions to professional publications, such as Chōsen igakkai zasshi (The Korean medical journal), and more popular magazines, such as Chōsen oyobi Manshū (Korea and Manchuria), reflected many of the prejudicial attitudes that Japanese held toward Koreans during the first decade of colonial rule. His scholarship was based on biological determinist thinking, an approach developed by eighteenth-century European medical researchers to establish race, class, and gender hierarchies. For Kubo this approach provided a means for exploiting scientific inquiry to establish and manage Japanese superiority over Korean subjects in a more stable manner than one based on more malleable cultural differences. A people could adjust its customs or mannerisms to amalgamate with a suzerain culture but could not do so with hereditarily determined features, such as blood type or cranium size, shape, or weight. Practitioners, however, often linked the physical with the cultural by arguing that a people's physical structure was a product of its cultural heritage. The subjectivity injected into this seemingly objective research methodology abused the lay community's blind trust in modern science in two ways. First, it employed this inquiry to verify biased observations, rather than to uncover new truths; second, it altered the approach, rather than the conclusions, when this inquiry demonstrated the desired truths to be inaccurate. Biological determinism proved useful in substantiating a Japanese-Korean colonial relationship that acknowledged historically similar origins while arguing for the historically different evolutions of the two peoples.
Like other Japanese across the empire on August 15, 1945, Saitō Tomoya anticipated that this day ... more Like other Japanese across the empire on August 15, 1945, Saitō Tomoya anticipated that this day would be anything but ordinary, perhaps even a turning point in the war and Japan’s imperial history. The media had alerted the empire of the unprecedented announcement to be made that day at noon by the emperor. All subjects were to gather around a radio at that time, which the vast majority did. Although rather allusive in mentioning the ‘end’ of the war or Japan’s ‘defeat’, the prerecorded message succeeded in achieving its primary purpose: to inform subjects of Japan’s decision to accept the Allied terms of surrender as dictated by the Potsdam Declaration. Saitō recalls the imperial message that they must ‘pave the way for a grand peace … by enduring the unendurable and suffering what is insufferable’1 as sufficient in convincing listeners of the decisive turn of events.2
The battles of the Pacific War formally ended between mid-August and early September, 1945. Howev... more The battles of the Pacific War formally ended between mid-August and early September, 1945. However, the declarations of peace and surrender ceremonies that occurred during this time did not end informal battles across the Asian continent. Renegade Japanese military personnel refused to lay down their arms and repatriate quietly to their country. Some combed the waters between Japan and Korea in search of returnees attempting to repatriate with financial and material means in excess of that which the United States military governments allowed. Others sought to disrupt the occupation process by patrolling the streets of Korean cities and engaging in illegal and often violent activities. Koreans also caused problems by joining the Japanese in their postwar adventures or by harassing Japanese preparing to return to Japan and the Korean sympathizers who attempted to help them. Reportage of such actions appeared in the G-2 Periodic Report, which kept a daily record of such actions. These...
On August 22, 1945 the Ukushima-maru set sail from the northern Japanese port city of Ōminato wi... more On August 22, 1945 the Ukushima-maru set sail from the northern Japanese port city of Ōminato with the apparent intention of delivering an undisclosed number of Koreans to Pusan, Korea. The laborers had been both recruited and conscripted for construction work necessary to fortify the naval base that had been strategically located in this remote location decades from the time of the 1905 Russo-Japanese War to monitor ship traffic between the islands of Honshu and Hokkaido. Two days later, while skirting the Japan Sea/East Sea side of Honshu island, the ship suddenly detoured into Maizuru Harbor in Kyoto prefecture, where it exploded sending hundreds, perhaps thousands of Koreans, and 25 Japanese to their watery grave. While other ships met similar fates after the guns of the AsiaPacific wars fell silent, the Ukishima-maru incident is unique in the cause of the explosion that sank the ship remains a mystery. While the Japanese government insists that a sea mine sank the ship, Korean...
Table of Contents 1. Before and After Defeat: Crossing the great 1945 divide Mark E. Caprio and C... more Table of Contents 1. Before and After Defeat: Crossing the great 1945 divide Mark E. Caprio and Christine de Matos 2. Cash and Blood: The Chinese community and the Japanese occupation of Borneo, 1941-1945 OOI Keat Gin 3. State, Sterilization and Reproductive Rights: Japan as the occupier and the occupied Maho Toyoda 4. Labor under Military Occupation: Allied POWs and the Allied Occupation of Japan Christine de Matos 5. More Bitter than Sweet: Reflecting on the Japanese community in British North Borneo, 1885-1946 Shigeru Sato 6. Colonial-era Korean Collaboration over Two Occupations: Delayed closure Mark E. Caprio 7. Film and the Representation of Ideas in Korea During and After Japanese Occupation, 1940-1948 Brian Yecies 8. Patriotic Collaboration?: Zhou Fohai and the Wang Jingwei government during the Second Sino-Japanese War Brian G. Martin 9. Trapped in the Contested Borderland: Sakhalin Koreans, wartime displacement and identity Igor R. Saveliev 10. Collapsing the Past into the Present: The occupation of Japan seen in the pages of the journal New Women Curtis Anderson Gayle 11. Dividing Islanders: The repatriation of 'Ry?ky?ans' from occupied Japan Matthew R. Augustine 12. Memories of the Japanese Occupation: Singapore's first official Second World War memorial and the politics of commemoration John Kwok 13. A Textual Reading of My Manchuria: Idealism, conflict and modernity Mo Tian
Rules of the House: Family Law and Domestic Disputes in Colonial Korea, 2019
List of Illustrations vii Acknowledgments ix vii 1. Household register with a wife and a concubin... more List of Illustrations vii Acknowledgments ix vii 1. Household register with a wife and a concubine 41 2. Household register with a concubine and daughter 42 3. Household register with a widow, daughter, and son-in-law 43 4. Diagram of the Yi Se-sŏn case 44 5. Diagram of the case where the widow refused to adopt an heir 51 6. Diagram of son-in-law adoption 62 7. Properly moderate wedding ceremony 70 8. Diagram of the Yi Sun-bong case 100 9. Example of name-change documentation 101 10. Example of name-change documentation 102 Illustrations ix Acknowled gments In the long time it took me to complete this book, I have incurred intellectual and material debts to many. I am happy to acknowledge some of them here. I have benefited greatly from scholars who have generously provided academic guidance along the long trajectory of this project. First of all, I thank my teachers at Berkeley, whose teachings and influences I have come to appreciate more and more over the years. Andrew Barshay had the insight to see a project even before there was one and provided patient guidance. Irwin Scheiner taught me how to think with precision, while Wen-hsin Yeh inspired me to explore with imagination. Mizuno Naoki, formerly of the Center for Humanities at Kyoto University, was a generous and resourceful adviser during my research in Japan and provided critical guidance in archival research. Lee Seung-yup supplied crucial help in gathering archival material used in this book. Jung Ji Young of Ewha Womans University has been the de facto mentor of the project from its inception and introduced me to relevant scholarship in Korea. John Duncan graciously hosted me at the UCLA Center for Korean Studies during my year as the Korea Foundation postdoctoral fellow. Namhee Lee, Chris Hanscom, and Jennifer Jung-Kim were generous to welcome me into their vibrant intellectual community. I presented earlier versions of the manuscript at various venues and received many invaluable comments.
Studies on Japan's assimilation policies in Korea (1910−1945) frequently criticize the contradict... more Studies on Japan's assimilation policies in Korea (1910−1945) frequently criticize the contradiction between the rhetoric of inclusiveness Japan used to describe its administration and the policy of discrimination it advanced in the colony. This paper argues this contradiction is characteristic of other administrations that the colonizers employed in territories contiguous with the colonial homeland, including the French in Algeria and the Germans in Alsace and Lorraine. It contrasts this peripheral expansion with the intensive assimilation efforts found in internal nationbuilding expansion, and the less intrusive external expansion where colonizers built social walls to separate colonizer from colonized. In Korea, evidence of this contradiction between rhetoric and practice appeared in various social, economic, and political areas. This paper emphasizes the contradiction found in the education system established by the government general, which offered Koreans elementary schooling of a lesser quality than that provided Japanese both in Japan and in Korea. Over the decades of colonial rule in Korea the Japanese proposed a number of reforms that promised to close the gap between colonizer and colonized education, and scheduled others that due to Japan's defeat in the Asian Pacific wars never materialized. Thus it remains an open question as to whether Japan's assimilation policies would have succeeded in closing the rhetoric-practice gap had the colonizers had more time. Japanese relations with other minority peoples, including Okinawans and Ainu, suggest that, while one factor, time alone might not have narrowed this gap to sufficiently assimilate Koreans, both those residing on the peninsula and in the colonial homeland.
Cross-Currents: East Asian History and Culture Review, 2014
Medical researcher Kubo Takeshi's contributions to professional publications, such as Chōsen igak... more Medical researcher Kubo Takeshi's contributions to professional publications, such as Chōsen igakkai zasshi (The Korean medical journal), and more popular magazines, such as Chōsen oyobi Manshū (Korea and Manchuria), reflected many of the prejudicial attitudes that Japanese held toward Koreans during the first decade of colonial rule. His scholarship was based on biological determinist thinking, an approach developed by eighteenth-century European medical researchers to establish race, class, and gender hierarchies. For Kubo this approach provided a means for exploiting scientific inquiry to establish and manage Japanese superiority over Korean subjects in a more stable manner than one based on more malleable cultural differences. A people could adjust its customs or mannerisms to amalgamate with a suzerain culture but could not do so with hereditarily determined features, such as blood type or cranium size, shape, or weight. Practitioners, however, often linked the physical with the cultural by arguing that a people's physical structure was a product of its cultural heritage. The subjectivity injected into this seemingly objective research methodology abused the lay community's blind trust in modern science in two ways. First, it employed this inquiry to verify biased observations, rather than to uncover new truths; second, it altered the approach, rather than the conclusions, when this inquiry demonstrated the desired truths to be inaccurate. Biological determinism proved useful in substantiating a Japanese-Korean colonial relationship that acknowl
The concept of trusteeship has played a major role in Korea's colonial and post-colonial history.... more The concept of trusteeship has played a major role in Korea's colonial and post-colonial history. Two United States presidents, Woodrow Wilson in 1918 and Franklin Roosevelt in 1941, saw the policy as a stage for occupied peoples to pass through prior to their gaining complete sovereignty. In 1943 Roosevelt specifically deemed that Korea would require a lengthy trusteeship period upon Japan's defeat. This policy, however, was never officially introduced to the peninsula. This article focuses on post-liberation attempts by the United States and Soviet Union to enact a process that would have subjected a provisional unified Korean government to trusteeship as an important step toward forming a more permanent political body. This process, decided upon in Moscow at a conference of three foreign ministers held in December 1945, faced complications at Joint Commission meetings when the Soviet Union and United States failed to agree on the interpretation of the Moscow Decision. Specifically, the two sides differed over whether to allow consultation with groups of conservative Koreans who aggressively opposed the idea of their country being subjected to a trusteeship administration. Another important factor was the generally hostile relations that were developing between the Soviet Union and United States that impacted negatively any trust that remained from their wartime alliance. Their failure to complete their task represented the last reasonable chance for North-South reunification prior to the two Koreas forming separate states in 1948.
In December of 1943, three leaders of the Allied forces gathered in Cairo, Egypt to discuss warti... more In December of 1943, three leaders of the Allied forces gathered in Cairo, Egypt to discuss wartime and postwar issues. The Communiqué that they completed in the last of the four-days of meetings, however, reflected issues related to the postwar fate of the Japanese empire, rather than the wartime issues that had dominated their discussions. The rather obtuse phrase, “in due course,” inserted to qualify the leaders’ promise to deliver Korea its independence would gather significant importance only after the conference. It served as a cornerstone for Allied occupation policy planning and execution for future gatherings, while Koreans used it as a rallying point around which they protested Allied trusteeship policy both during and after the Pacific War. This disagreement contributed to the failure that the U.S. and Soviet experienced in their efforts to reunite the peninsula during their three-year occupations of southern and northern Korea. The legacy of this phrase continues in the ...
Cross-Currents: East Asian History and Culture Review, 2014
Medical researcher Kubo Takeshi's contributions to professional publications, such as Chōsen ... more Medical researcher Kubo Takeshi's contributions to professional publications, such as Chōsen igakkai zasshi (The Korean medical journal), and more popular magazines, such as Chōsen oyobi Manshū (Korea and Manchuria), reflected many of the prejudicial attitudes that Japanese held toward Koreans during the first decade of colonial rule. His scholarship was based on biological determinist thinking, an approach developed by eighteenth-century European medical researchers to establish race, class, and gender hierarchies. For Kubo this approach provided a means for exploiting scientific inquiry to establish and manage Japanese superiority over Korean subjects in a more stable manner than one based on more malleable cultural differences. A people could adjust its customs or mannerisms to amalgamate with a suzerain culture but could not do so with hereditarily determined features, such as blood type or cranium size, shape, or weight. Practitioners, however, often linked the physical with the cultural by arguing that a people's physical structure was a product of its cultural heritage. The subjectivity injected into this seemingly objective research methodology abused the lay community's blind trust in modern science in two ways. First, it employed this inquiry to verify biased observations, rather than to uncover new truths; second, it altered the approach, rather than the conclusions, when this inquiry demonstrated the desired truths to be inaccurate. Biological determinism proved useful in substantiating a Japanese-Korean colonial relationship that acknowledged historically similar origins while arguing for the historically different evolutions of the two peoples.
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