Organizer and Chair: Noboru Tomonari, Carleton College
Discussant: Jung-Sun Park, California State University, Dominguez Hills
A radical process of transculturation and hybridization
is often understood to have begun under the regimes of colonialism. Our panel
observes four instances where efforts towards such an objective have been made,
through music, theater performances, and cinema, with varying consequences.
E. Taylor Atkins’ research
is on infusion into Japan of cultural products whose marketability was premised
on their Koreanness during the colonial era. Such Korean-themed entertainments
mediated the colonial relationship and created or confirmed stereotypes and
misconceptions. Nayoung Aimee Kwon’s paper focuses on another prewar instance,
through a reading of a Japanese language theatrical adaptation of The Tale of
Spring Fragrance. Kwon reads the double-bind of the translator perched between
conflicting demands for “colonial kitch” in Japan and for “national
tradition” in Korea. Sang Mi Park discusses South Korea’s learning
Japanese cultural policy. She evaluates Japan’s ongoing influence over
its former colony by inspiring cultural programs as well as Koreans’ ironic
use of Japan’s experience in their process of national reconstruction
while endeavoring to clean up the colonial legacy. Noboru Tomonari studies the
performances of Shinjuku Ryozanpaku, an underground theater group founded in
1987. Its two founders, both resident Koreans in Japan, attempted to amalgamate
various aspects of Korean and Japanese culture first on stage and later in films.
Building on each other’s papers, the panelists attempt to present a multivocality
of culture and the complexity of subjectivity in the context of colonialism
and post-colonialism.
E. Taylor Atkins, Northern Illinois University
The popular culture of early-twenty-first-century Japan has been characterized
by what is known as the K-Wave (Kanryu or Hallyu), the prevalence of music,
films, and TV shows from South Korea. But the K-Wave is hardly unprecedented.
The last third of the colonial era witnessed an infusion into Japan of cultural
products and influences whose marketability was premised on their Koreanness.
If colonial administrators in the 1930s and ‘40s regarded expressions
of a resilient, distinctive Korean identity as evidence of either excessive
Japanese lenience or Korean recalcitrance, Japanese consumers in the
naichi clearly found Koreana to be exotic and charming. The capacity of such
Korea-themed entertainments to mediate the colonial relationship, to generate
empathy and understanding, to create or confirm stereotypes and misconceptions,
and to comment on the shared conditions of colonial modernity constitutes
the theme of this paper. The export of Japanese media products to the colonies
represented one of the most synergistic of ventures between private capital
and the imperial state: the state provided a relatively stable, captive market
with an expanding urban middle class to consume entertainment commodities, while
the culture industry provided products that facilitated the proliferation of
Japanese as the national language (kokugo) and the creation of affective attachments
and “communities
of taste” binding naichi and gaichi together through consumption. It is
intriguing to note that the performance of an exotic Koreanness became most
popular and profitable in Japan as colonial efforts to obliterate Korean
identity intensified.
Nayoung Aimee Kwon, UCLA
Spring 1938. The Japanese wartime empire was expanding into China and beyond,
and imperial policies in colonial Korea were fluctuating from differentiation
toward assimilation, with the catchy slogan Naisen Ittai (One Body of Japan
and Korea) mobilized to garner the support of Koreans for war. It was a time
when Japanese became the official language, and Korean language cultural
productions were increasingly censored. A highly anticipated Japanese-language
theatrical adaptation of The Tale of Spring Fragrance (Ch’unhyang chon), a Korean
folktale of oral “tradition,” opened to rave reviews in major metropolitan
cities in Japan. The popularity of the performance ignited an encore run throughout
colonial Korea, triggering a wide discourse in the metropole and the colony.
Here, I consider a moment of colonial “collaboration” between Korea
and Japan when their literary histories converged. I shall consider the significance
of the much publicized spectacle performance in the Japanese language kabuki
rendition of a p’ansori tale, considered the epitome of Korean “tradition.” I
read the tensions between the receptions in Japan and Korea and the differences
between the reproduction and consumption of the tale as trendy “colonial
kitsch” and as timeless “national tradition.” By paying close
attention to untranslatable gaps in these parallel nostalgic appropriations
and the double bind of the translator perched in-between, I read the play
not as the embodiment of harmonious assimilation of Korea and Japan as touted
by pundits but as performing its anxieties and breakdown.
Sang Mi Park, Waseda University
That South Korean leaders energetically emulated the Japanese program in
economic development is a well-studied subject. Despite a strong anti-Japan
sentiment (ban’il gamjong) in post-colonial Korean society, postwar Japan’s
recovery as a world economic leader became the model for Koreans to emulate.
In its cultural program, too, Japan provided South Korea with methodology.
This paper discusses the historical process of
South Korea’s learning Japanese cultural policy. South Korean leaders
found the Japanese cultural program useful in the process of national renovation
while they endeavored to clean up the colonial legacy. Each regime of South
Korea intensively adopted the ideas and forms seen in Japan’s cultural
policy after its normalization with Japan in 1965 as a tool to legitimize its
own administrative power and to mobilize the people toward diverse goals of
the state. It is no coincidence that South Korea chose a slogan of “cultural
Korea” (munhwa Han’guk) that was written with the same Japanese
kanji. I will discuss how cultural practices of the New Village Theater Movement
(saemaul yo n’guk undong) initiated by Park Chung-Hee administration (1961-1979)
in the early 1970s, similar to the New Life Movement of the 1950s Japan, and
the first Five-Year Plan for Cultural Enhancement (munye junghung 5 gaenyon
gyehoek) during the years 1974 to 1978 functioned as more than entertainment.
South Korea’s cultural policy helps us understand how the Japanese government
subtly extended influence over its former colony by inspiring cultural programs
for national reconstruction of post-colonial countries.
Noboru Tomonari, Carleton College
Since its founding in 1987, the Shinjuku Ryozanpaku Theater group has been
an active force in the contemporary Japanese avant-garde theater scene. The
group is led by Kim Sujin (1954-), a resident Korean who recently directed
two feature films, Risking the Night (Yoru o kakete) and The Apostle of Glass
(Garasu no tsukai). During the 1990s, Kim’s main collaborator at the Ryozanpaku
was playwright Chong Wi-shin
(1957-). Chong too is a resident Korean and he writes screenplays for filmmaker
Sai Yoichi. This paper examines plays and films by Kim and Chong, and those
of their works that carry the avant-garde theater as their basis. The two
film makers, together and alone, created dream-like worlds in which social minority
characters such as resident Koreans and homosexuals play out their memories,
obsessions, and desires. They were influenced by Kara Juro (1940-), who blended
the Japanese traditional arts with radical principles of restaging and refiguration.
After Chong’s departure from Ryozanpaku, Kim made a return to Kara’s
works, often directing them onstage, and the film The Apostle of Glass is another
example. Kim’s films and plays that are made in Japan and South Korea
manifest a transnational identity that refuses to be contained within a single
nationality. The avant-garde style was a useful means for them to incorporate
their minority identity-politics into their art. The paper situates their
works in the context of modern Japanese theater/cinema and resident Korean activism
in postwar Japan.
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