Paper short abstract:

This presentation delves into the debates among Korean activists and Japanese liberals surrounding the so-called "Korea problem" (Chōsen mondai). It discusses the question as to how the voices of Koreans colonial subjects can be situated within the discourse on empire during the Taishō period.

Paper long abstract:

Following the Korean March First Independence Movement in 1919 Japanese left-leaning liberals began to increasingly criticize Japanese colonial rule in Korea. While research has long focused on this aspect, their intellectual exchange with Korean activists received far less scholarly attention. Based on an analysis of contemporary journals like the trilingual Ajia kōron (The Asia Kunglun), this presentation explores how Korean independence activists and Japanese liberals formulated their respective critiques of colonial rule in Korea and, in a broader sense, Japanese imperialism by proposing alternative configurations of regional order. During the early 1920s Tōkyō, as the burgeoning capital of an expanding empire, constituted a contact zone (Pratt 1992; Goebel 2015), within which the transnational lives of people from different backgrounds in Asia converged and which facilitated the interaction between for students and anti-colonial activists from various parts of Asia and Japanese intellectuals. Aided by a liberal political atmosphere, a relatively vibrant print culture thrived in Taishō Japan, which allowed for a dynamic discussion on issues such as the government's Korea policy. The intellectual space which resulted from the contact zone enabled colonial authors to discuss, represent and negotiate their own marginalized positions within the Japanese empire directly with Japanese audiences. The journal Ajia kōron which was published in Tōkyō by the Korean independence activist Yu T'aekyŏng between May 1922 and January 1923 in Tōkyō provided a platform to these approaches to empire and regional order while at the same time epitomizing Korean agency within the variegated publishing landscape of the Taishō era. Assembling a wide variety of authors from Korea, Taiwan, India and China, the journal's significance is underpinned by numerous contributions from proponents of Taishō liberalism including proponents of a "small Japan" (shō Nihonshugi) Ishibashi Tanzan and Miura Tetsutarō as well as Yoshino Sakuzō and other critics of colonial policy in Korea. While, depending on their specific backgrounds, contributors to Ajia kōron may have had diverse motivations and objectives for their criticism, this presentation seeks to reexamine the history of Taishō Japan from the colonial perspective and thus add another layer to the understanding of Japanese liberal thought.

Paper short abstract:

Since 1889 Japan is one of those countries which frequently reduced the number of municipalities with municipal merger policies. Research focuses on the situation in Japan proper, excluding her colonies. This paper examines Japanese municipal merger policy in her largest colony, Korea (1910-1945).

Paper long abstract:

Since 1889 Japan belongs to those countries which frequently reduced their number of municipalities (shi-chō-son) by conducting large scale municipal mergers (shi-chō-son gappei). Three of those policies were carried out nationwide under direct supervision by the central government. those were the "great municipal merger of the Meiji era (meiji no daigappei)" in 1889, the "great municipal merger of the Showa era (shōwa no daigappei)" in the 1950s, and the "great municipal merger of the Heisei era (heisei no daigappei)" in the 2000s. Between those three great mergers voluntary mergers of municipalities occurred throughout the country. All this reduced the number of municipalities in Japan proper from about 75,000 in 1888 to about 1,500 in 2014.

Research on municipal mergers in Japan was carried out by researchers from many fields in the humanities, like political science, social science, history, or economics, to name a few. Research on the situation in imperial Japan before 1945 has one thing in common: it is focused on Japan proper (the so-called "naichi") and completely neglects the overseas holdings, or colonies, of Japan (the so-called "gaichi").

However, to get a complete and comprehensive view of modern Japan's municipal merger policy, inclusion of her colonies into the picture is necessary. This paper aims to put the situation of municipal merger policy of imperial Japan in Korea in the spotlight. Korea was not only Japan's largest colony but also her gateway to Asia.

Japan did not change the structure of local government units completely, nor did it adapt Korea's municipal structure to the one in Japan proper. However, as South Korean researchers like Kim Pyŏng-mun (2010) or Yi Kwang-u (2016) have shown, municipal mergers and other forms of restructuring were carried out by the Japanese administrators. However, research by Japanese or Western researchers are almost non-existent, with the exception of one paper each by Aono Masaaki and Yamada Kōhei which were both published in 1990.

This paper aims to end this neglect of the situation in the local government units of colonial Korea, to provide new aspects in the discussion about Japan as an colonial empire.