Organizer and Chair: Todd A. Henry, Colorado State University
Discussant: Takashi Fujitani, University of California, San Diego
Of the many traits characterizing the development
of Japanese imperialism in East Asia, a particularly salient one includes the
notion of “proximities” (ethnic/cultural,
linguistic/literary, geo-political, etc.) – both those which officials
ideologically claimed as linking the peoples of this region together into a
larger Emperor-based community as well as those which individuals negotiated
and contested in the creation of their everyday lives. Given the importance
of such proximities, the place that this and other inherently spatial concepts
occupy in areas such as social history, literary representations, and popular
culture is a particularly germane field of inquiry in the ongoing development
of critical approaches to the study of modern imperialism in East Asia. Such
an intellectual project informs this panel, which seeks to explore the interface
of various dimensions of space (material, imaginary, etc.) and imperialism in
multiple sites throughout the region, from Manchuria and Korea to Japan and
Taiwan. Individual papers will explore the ways in which a particular imperial
space – whether it be a mountain, a metropole, or a tourist site – is
represented, named, and organized. In this way, we hope to uncover the ideological
agendas of political authorities as well as the ways in which the inhabitants
and communities of a particular locale negotiated and contested their surroundings
in the production and reproduction of imperial spatialities across East Asia.
Joseph R. Allen, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities
The convergence of the Japanese colonial project and the development
of modern photographic technology, especially the introduction of celluloid
film and the development of the halftone process, meant that Japanese
colonialist photography quantitatively, if not qualitatively, out-stripped
that of the early British, French, and German regimes. From the very beginning
of Japan’s
colonial rule (Taiwan, 1895), a photographic industry provided an overwhelming
visual record of colonial conditions. Both ruler and subject came to
know the island through the medium of this technology, and, of course, that
medium carried its own ideological imprint.
The Japanese photographic effort not only constructed
individual iconic images of the island, but also placed those images in composite
visual narratives; these are especially manifested in the official photographic
albums dating from 1896. The albums presented this distant and exotic land
in a spatial and rational order that allowed the Japanese, both on the island
and in the homeland, to imagine it as something that might be comfortably “their
own.”
My paper will suggest that early albums (ca. 1900) helped establish heuristic
models for this imaginary colonial order, especially through the depiction of
the military and anthropological expedition. These two expeditionary types present
their own spatiality, that of the circuit and of the excavation, which in later
stages of colonial rule are elaborated in a variety of non-military and non-anthropological
forms, such as in the Imperial visit and the tourist itinerary. Needless to
say, these visualizations are often narratives of progressive and utopian intent.
Ellie Y. Choi, Harvard University
Mimicking the pedagogical stance of imperialist travelers Bird Bishop, Krüger
and Kikuchi Yuho, Yi Kwangsu boarded a train at Seoul Station in 1922 and headed
for the famous Diamond Mountains (Kumgangsan yugi, 1922). The Diamond Mountains
was the modern Japanese tourist industry’s crown jewel in Korea, but its
draw came from a combination of lingering and often competing histories. For
Korean nationalists like Yi, to travel to famous historical places was to forge
a “national” topography and open up imaginaries closed off to the
Korean minjok (nation) under Japanese control. It allowed explorations of “deserted
places” in memory, and opened up space to new possibilities. Deep in the
mountains, Yi saw beyond the Japanese hotel and modern amenities provided by
the Southern Manchurian Railway Company, to ancient Koguryo imaginaries in a
time when “Korea” was strong and powerful.
Studying the contested narratives framing the territory
around the Diamond Mountains, this paper considers how colonized Korean intellectuals
selectively reorganized local and national histories, as well as forged relationships
to figures, locales and myths haunting their memory as “pasts.” The
politics of “seeing” in a new light places and memories which were “lost” figures
prominently, since writing a history of “reconstruction” in Korea
necessitated realigning Choson pasts towards a direction predetermined by that
reason. My argument is that the clash between the modern and “traditional” in
the Diamond Mountains inspired a lifelong search for Korean authenticity
and essence in Yi Kwangsu, which would characterize his later historical writings.
Kenneth J. Ruoff, Portland State University
Wartime tourism, not only within Japan proper but also within the empire,
is a topic that has been largely neglected by scholars of Japan. Historians
of the interwar period understand that tourism, which has a long history
in Japan, was an important aspect of the consumer culture that assumed a critical
mass by the 1920s. However, the fact that tourism remained vibrant in the
late 1930s, peaked in 1940 even though by that year Japan was into its third
year of full-scale war on the Chinese continent, and continued to be popular
into 1942 may come as a surprise to individuals who think of this period as
a “dark
valley” characterized by widespread suffering on the part of the Japanese
people.
In contrast, individuals familiar with the “Afterwork” (Dopolavoro)
organization in Fascist Italy and especially the “Strength through Joy” (Kraft
durch Freude, or KdF) leisure-time organization in Nazi Germany should not be
surprised to learn that until the war situation deteriorated precipitously in
mid 1942, tourism thrived under Japan’s authoritarian government precisely
because it often served official goals. The construction and reinforcement
of not only religious but also political ideologies often involves moving bodies
around to scripted sites.
In the aftermath of the Manchurian Incident, no site
outside of Japan proper was more sanctified or popular than Port Arthur, location
of the penultimate battle in the Russo-Japanese War. This paper will analyze
the historical narrative that Japanese tourists encountered upon visiting Port
Arthur, and demonstrate tourism’s central role in citizenship training
in wartime Japan.
Todd A. Henry, Colorado State University
During the final years of Japanese rule in colonial Korea, the capital city
of Seoul and its inhabitants experienced a number of dramatic changes, as
the Emperor’s subjects were mobilized to fight the Asia-Pacific War. Seoul,
then known as “Great Keijo,” expanded significantly, increasing
in size by nearly four times. At the same time, the urban population swelled
from approximately 375,000 in 1936 to over 1.1 million by 1942, making the city
one of the seven largest in the Japanese Empire. While these quantitative changes
mark one barometer of the changes experienced by Seoul’s residents, the
exigencies of wartime mobilization produced a series of equally, if not,
more significant transformations in qualitative terms.
My presentation highlights one of these changes – namely, how the late
colonial regime in Korea reshaped Seoul’s spatiality. In particular, I
will argue that wartime “imperialization” collapsed the limited
space that had existed between the domestic life of colonized Koreans and the
spiritual culture of the city’s Shinto shrines. As I will show, this shift
was manifested in increasingly mandatory “visits,” which brought
millions of Koreans onto the shrine grounds, and in the forced practice of Shinto
within individual homes, which forcibly re-directed Koreans’ spiritual
energies back onto such sacred sites. I will also investigate Seoul’s
wartime spatiality by demonstrating how pressures to prove one’s “Japaneseness” (by
dying on behalf of the Emperor) gave rise to the construction of entirely new
urban spaces, including a special shrine designed to deify the spirits of the
city’s deceased spirits.
|
