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Copyright Midwest Conference on Asian Affairs Mar 2013

Abstract

[...]what we see in the quotidian lives of those who lived in Japanese naichi (inner lands or Japan proper) is not only the material impact of increased political and economic exchange with the gaichi (outer lands or Japan's colonies), but also the psychological and cultural effects of having an empire.5 In particular, as the number of Koreans grew in the metropole, the presence of the colonized began to matter to Japanese more and more, not only in a remote and abstract sense, but tangible and practical.6 And, having to justify and maintain the hierarchical relationship between the two people, the images of Koreans as immature and uncivilized-and thus in need of Japan's "assistance" for their successful "assimilation" to the colonial master-were widely propagated by the colonial bureaucrats and ordinary Japanese alike.7 At the same time, the images of vengeful Koreans haunted their minds as it became increasingly difficult to distinguish Koreans from Japanese, not to mention distinguishing "bad" Koreans from "good" Koreans. [...]the moments of mass-scale political crisis that Japan faced in its dealings with Koreans, such as the 1919 March First Independent Movement in colonial Korea and the 1923 massacre of Koreans in the Japanese metropole, were not just aberrational, trivial, and inconvenient "episodes" concerning the colonized, but reflection of the pervasive tension and instability of an empire which could not be resolved easily.\n The concentrated efforts and unsuccessful attempts to differentiate Korean bodies from Japanese revealed the dilemma that imperialism brought not only to the colony, but also back home in the metropole.

Details

Title
"Malcontent Koreans (Futei Senjin)": Towards a Genealogy of Colonial Representation of Koreans in the Japanese Empire*
Author
Lee, Jinhee
Pages
117-187
Publication year
2013
Publication date
Mar 2013
Publisher
Midwest Conference on Asian Affairs
e-ISSN
15543749
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
English
ProQuest document ID
1355684171
Copyright
Copyright Midwest Conference on Asian Affairs Mar 2013