- Convenors:
-
Bernhard Leitner
(Medical University of Vienna)
Dolf-Alexander Neuhaus (German Institute for Japanese Studies)
Jeehye Kim (University of Salzburg)
Send message to Convenors
- Discussant:
-
Yufei Zhou
(International Research Center for Japanese Studies)
- Format:
- Panel
- Section:
- History
Short Abstract
From racial science to malaria fever therapy and industrial education, this panel explores how Japan’s colonial rule in Korea reshaped science, medicine and technology by tracing the transnational circulation of knowledge, practices and concepts, even beyond the colonial era.
Long Abstract
This panel explores the intersections of science, medicine, and technology in Japanese-occupied Korea, examining how colonial power shaped knowledge production, medical practices, and educational legacies. Through three interconnected case studies, we analyze the ways in which Japanese imperial ambitions influenced research, medical experimentation, and postwar technical assistance, leaving enduring imprints on Korea’s socio-political and intellectual landscapes.
The first paper investigates one of the first anthropological studies conducted by Japanese scholars in colonial Korea, focusing on anthropological photography and bodily measurements. Deeply rooted in the tradition of European racial science, the research sought to classify the colonized racially and even to construct the racial origins of both the colonized and the colonizer. Yet, the visual and methodological approaches diverged from contemporary European scientific frameworks, reflecting Japan's unique colonial agenda and its efforts to position itself within global racial hierarchies.
The second paper traces the introduction of malaria fever therapy to colonial Korea by Japanese psychiatrists, exploring its transnational trajectory from Vienna to Japan and ultimately to Korea. This experimental treatment for neurosyphilis, initially developed by Julius Wagner-Jauregg, became entangled with racial science and colonial governance. The paper examines how Japanese psychiatrists adapted this therapy, and how its implementation reinforced colonial rule while engaging with broader discourses on race and medical authority.
The third paper investigates industrial education and vocational training in Korea under Japanese rule, examining how colonial officials, Western mission schools, and Korean nationalists advocated similar educational goals while pursuing contradictory objectives. Using Korean texts, missionary journals, and official records, it explores where these visions converged, overlapped, and collided within asymmetrical colonial power relations. The presentation traces how these complex colonial dynamics shaped postwar South Korean educational policy and cooperation with Japan.
Together, these papers illuminate the complex and often contentious relationships between science, medicine, technology, and colonialism, offering new perspectives on Japan’s imperial project and its lasting impact on Korea.
| Abstract in Japanese (if needed) |
Accepted papers
Paper short abstract
While malaria hindered imperialist advancements in Asia, the same disease brought new hope to contain another danger behind the frontline: Neurosyphilis. How did malaria end up as a cure, and how did this groundbreaking experimental research travel from Austria through Japan to colonial Korea?
Paper long abstract
Malaria posed a formidable barrier to imperial expansion across East, South, and Southeast Asia. The discovery of its transmission mechanism earned British tropical physician Ronald Ross the 1902 Nobel Prize. Over two decades later, in 1927, another Nobel Prize in medicine, this time awarded to Viennese psychiatrist Julius von Wagner-Jauregg, highlighted malaria not as a problem, but as a solution. By deliberately infecting patients suffering from paralytic dementia with malaria, he observed remarkable improvements in neurological symptoms. Paralytic dementia, or neurosyphilis, represents the terminal stage of untreated syphilis, characterized by the bacterium’s invasion of the nervous system. As an organic disease manifesting in a mental disorder, the deadly and widespread condition thus became a focal point for unraveling the enigmatic connection between body and mind.
This paper explores the transnational journey of this experimental therapy from Austria to occupied Korea. How did this controversial treatment cross borders and oceans, and what role did Japanese psychiatrists play in its adoption? Within a colonial context, how did the therapy intersect with racial discourses that sought to differentiate and hierarchize populations? By examining this overlooked episode in the circulation of medical knowledge, the paper illuminates how medical discourse served as a tool to legitimize Japanese imperial ambitions and consolidate colonial rule. It reveals the complex interplay between disease, cure, and the mind-body problem in a setting where science and power were deeply entangled.
Paper short abstract
This presentation examines how Japanese colonial authorities, Western missionaries, and Korean nationalists pursued overlapping yet often conflicting agendas for industrial education, and explores how these colonial tensions shaped South Korea's postwar technical education.
Paper long abstract
This presentation explores industrial education in Korea under Japanese occupation and its postwar legacies under the developmentalist military dictatorship. Various groups of actors were involved in shaping education during colonial times, and their efforts both intersected and diverged in revealing ways. The official colonial education system in Korea under Japanese rule laid strong emphasis on industrial and vocational education for Korean children to fit its broader objective of assimilating a colonial workforce that was loyal and could be employed in Japanese industries. Koreans were actively discouraged from pursuing higher education outside technological fields such as agriculture and engineering. Western missionaries also advocated industrial education through their schools, which existed long into the colonial period and strove to teach Koreans practical skills to edify their hearts and make them amenable to western style capitalism. While colonial and missionary approaches to industrial education frequently overlapped and reinforced one another, Korean nationalists pursued industrial education for fundamentally different objectives: to strengthen the country's economic base and lay the foundations for future independence.
Drawing on Korean writings, missionary reports and journals, as well as official colonial documents, this presentation argues that conflicts between these groups invariably emerged when Koreans asserted their own agency and vision for industrial education. The presentation furthermore explores how these various strands of Korean educational history intersected and at times challenged one another, and examines how their legacy shaped postwar South Korean educational policy and cooperation with its former colonizer Japan during the Park Chung-hee era.
Paper short abstract
Analyzing Torii Ryūzō’s anthropological survey in colonial Korea, this paper examines how he “measured the living” using photography. It argues that photography was crucial to construct the racial origins of both the colonized and the colonizer, revealing the imperial appropriation of science.
Paper long abstract
Shortly after Japan’s annexation of Korea, the Japanese anthropologist, Torii Ryūzō (1870-1953) was commissioned by the Government General to investigate the new colony and its people. Throughout the 1910s, he traveled across the entire Korean peninsula to conduct an extensive study that ranged from ethnology, history, and archaeology to physical anthropology. All these were integral parts of his synthesized research concept, “jinshugaku.” As he stated in 1912, he considered physical anthropology, or, study of “Rassenanatomie” to be the most important element, both for his research on Koreans and for his overall study of jinshu. To this end, he left behind not only extensive research data but also a vast corpus of photographs – largely corresponding to the so-called anthropometric photography of his time.
Situating the photographs from Torii’s fieldworks within the context of the global history of science and scientific imagery, this paper examines the dynamics between visuality and anthropological knowledge production. I argue that the photographs were the result of the global circulation of European racial science and its methodologies that were deeply connected to a Eurocentric racist view. Furthermore, the analysis sheds light on the global process of appropriation and divergence of racial science and photography that were mobilized to define the racial origins of not only the colonized but also of the colonizer.