Paper short abstract:

This presentation examines dam projects started by Japanese imperial engineers on the Yalu River and finished by postcolonial regimes decades later, showing how the logics of state-led hydrological engineering spanned the ideological and historical divides of Northeast Asia’s twentieth century.

Paper long abstract:

Evidence of imperial Japan’s developmental ambitions can be found in the Sup’ung Dam, second largest in the world at the time of its completion in 1944. Constructed on the Yalu River border between colonial Korea and Manchukuo, the dam’s completion inspired pride in the accomplishments of “scientific Japan.” But its aftermath also revealed the profound limits of Japanese imperial hubris and overreach.

Sup’ung was the first of seven projected dams along the Yalu, but it was the only one actually finished by the time of Japan’s imperial collapse. This paper examines two additional Yalu dam projects started by Japanese engineers at the height of the Asia-Pacific War in 1942. As Japan’s wartime losses stretched the empire’s resources, dam projects at Ŭiju and Unbong encountered perennial material shortages that frustrated planners and led at times to deadly accidents.

The Ŭiju and Unbong dams were ultimately abandoned and left unfinished as Japan’s defeat in WWII spelled the end of its Asian empire. But one of these dams would live again in a new postcolonial era, as engineers in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and People’s Republic of China eventually completed a dam at the Unbong site in 1967. By examining the rebirth, under postcolonial Chinese and North Korean regimes, of Japanese imperialists’ failed dreams to transform the Yalu, this paper shows how the logics of state-led hydrological engineering spanned the seemingly stark ideological and historical divides of Northeast Asia’s twentieth century.

Paper short abstract:

This paper examines cotton cultivation policies in colonial Korea to explore the changing rural economy. I highlight the role of semi-governmental organizations (SGOs) as a vehicle for colonial interventions in agriculture to change production practices and link Korean farmers to global markets.

Paper long abstract:

This paper examines colonial efforts to expand cotton cultivation in Korea in order to explore one of the fundamental transformations of the rural economy—the introduction of semi-governmental organizations (SGOs) as a method for government intervention in agricultural production. While SGOs have been recognized within the “colonial corporatism” that emerged in response to the 1930s rural crisis, a focus on cotton cultivation reveals that SGOs featured prominently in many other colonial policies. Acting as the major vehicle for state intervention, semi-governmental cotton cultivation associations (J. mensaku kumiai; K. myŏnjak chohap) distributed seeds, fertilizers, and credit to farmers; oversaw the cultivation of cotton through field inspections and visits from agricultural technicians; and managed the sale and distribution of the cotton crop, setting prices and mediating between buyers and sellers of cotton. In enacting imperial policies at the local level, cotton associations aimed to structure every aspect of cotton cultivation.

In examining cotton cultivation, this paper presents a fresh perspective of the broader transformations of the Korean rural economy under colonial rule. Although previous research has focused on rice cultivation and the Program to Increase Rice Production (PIRP) as emblematic of exploitative colonial policies, a focus on cotton adds significant nuance to the understanding of colonial agricultural policy. On one hand, the colonial government’s ambitions were far broader than is revealed in the PIRP alone. Cotton policies spanned almost the entirety of colonial rule, in contrast to the temporally limited PIRP (1920-1934). Cotton policies also highlight the global context of colonial agriculture, as new species were imported, grown, and processed to meet the demands of the textile industry in competition with alternate sources of raw cotton in China and British India. Yet, cotton policies also reveal the limitations of the colonial government. The cotton associations established a capitalist framework for agricultural production that, though sometimes aligned with imperial goals, at other times worked against colonial policy as during the collapse of global agricultural prices in the late 1920s. By focusing on SGOs, I highlight the material foundations of the colonial rural economy, some of which would influence Korean agriculture even after liberation.

Paper short abstract:

This paper argues that the roots of agricultural collectivisation in Northeast Asia are in the State Capitalist and total war ambitions of Imperial Japan, and experiments in Manchukuo, Korea and North China, and have left legacies for post-1945 policies in Northeast Asian nations.

Paper long abstract:

Agricultural collectivisation in Northeast Asia is usually assumed to be a disastrous policy enacted by post-WWII socialist regimes, leading to catastrophes such as the People’s Communes and the Great Leap Forward. This paper argues that collectivisation here had its roots in fact in the State Capitalist and total war ambitions of Imperial Japan, and was a pillar of the “1940 System” that lie at the basis of the so-called “East Asian Model”. In the late-Meiji years, German-inspired cooperatives were started by Hirata Tōsuke in Japan, and by 1918-20, nationwide cooperativisation was first proposed for Japan by Nishihara Kamezō and for China by President Hsu Shih-chang. During the 1920s-30s news of Soviet efforts aroused new interest in East Asia, and Korean Governor Ugaki Kazushige’s efforts at rural cooperativisation is now a classic case of “Colonial Corporatism”. Meanwhile, collectives were envisioned for Japanese emigrants to Manchuria by Tachibana Shiraki. Facing an impending war in 1937, leftwing intellectuals in the South Manchuria Railway Investigation Department led by Satō Daishiro, proposed a revamp of the Manchukuo agricultural economy through collectivisation. Their experiments in the Harbin-Suihua area, known as the “Pinchiang Course”, became a phenomenal success. Despite Kempeitai purges and the death of many leftists including Satō himself, the establishment of “Agricultural Revival Cooperatives” became Manchukuo national policy, completed by 1941. In 1940 the Colonial Korea Government set up “Hamlet Leagues” throughout with “Production Responsibility Systems” as part of a governing apparatus, the “National Totality League”. Meanwhile Tachibana’s influence on the New People’s Association (NPA), which oversaw the North China collaborationist regime, ensured that collectivisation was also tried in North China, following Kuomintang experiments elsewhere in 1936. The legacy of these experiments was enormous. Early Communist Manchuria under Chairman Gao Gang (1948-53), dismissed land redistribution and spearheaded cooperativisation, emboldening Mao’s claims that this was more progressive than small production. Cultural Revolution-era CCP Poliburo member Chen Yonggui, a successful People’s Commune leader, had worked in an NPA cooperative. Taiwan too, in the 1950s-80s, embraced cooperatives. In North Korea, colonial cooperatives were preserved intact. In South Korea it indirectly influenced the Saemaeul Movement of the 1970s.

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores transformations of mineralogical extraction in northern Chōsen (Korea), between 1910-1945, from an industry rooted in entrepreneurial efforts led by foreign investor, to one enmeshed in the State Capitalist nexus of Imperial Japan and led by enterprises such as Nippon Kogyo.

Paper long abstract:

Mining and Mineral extraction on the Korean peninsula has been vital in developmental and institutional terms throughout Korean history. Gold mining and mining for other precious metals was vital to the Yi dynasty in Chosŏn, and the richness of deposits in the northern areas of its territory following western encroachment and the opening of Korea by Japan in 1876 became hugely important. Ernst Oppert, James Morse of Nebraska and many other adventurers with gold rush experience, flocked to the peninsula. Companies such as the Oriental and Occidental Development Company and Morse’s American Oriental Mining created something of a developmental boom in Korea the three decades before 1910, foreign Capital, and an entrepreneurial animal spirit transforming the landscapes and terrains of Korean mines at Unsan and Musan into vital places of extraction and accumulation. The annexation of Korea in 1910, meant that eventually such foreign and Korean efforts and enterprises would be co-opted and assimilated into the Japanese Imperial project by the Chōsen Government General and other agencies – though that assimilation would take time, American Oriental Mining at Unsan generated so much funds for the Government General that it lasted in American ownership til 1941. This paper explores the transformation of such spaces of mining and mineralogical extraction from those of enterprising and ambitious foreigners and local interests, to ones enmeshed and vital to the State Capitalism of Imperial Japan. The paper explores the institutional and legal reconfigurations undertaken by the Government General in order to make mining efforts more practical, productive and research focused in Chōsen, and for their outputs to flow more coherently and seamlessly into the wider Imperial market. In particular the paper considers efforts at Syozyo and Suian, mines owned by Nippon Kogyo, a predecessor of ENEOS holdings, and their reconfiguration into modern mining operations which fed the Japanese Empire with not only gold and coal, but also rarer elements such as Wulfenite and Molybdenum, important to weapons research prior to 1945, but which as ores from which Rare Earths and Uranium can be extracted, continued to be of interest after the colonial period's end.