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Paper short abstract

This paper looks into how some Japanese teacher-cum-naturalists in one province of colonial Korea tried to make their studies on plants locally rooted (鄕土), by importing folk knowledge from Japan.

Paper long abstract

As well known, public schools in colonial Korea were the Japanese equivalent of Christian churches in Western colonies, and Japanese teachers, recruited with scholarships and other benefits, were expected to become missionaries for the Japanese civilizing mission in colonial Korea. By the 1930s, some of these teacher-cum-naturalists had established themselves in the colonial administration and the imperial university in Keijo to launch ambitious research projects. For example, they carried out a ten-year study involving 300 elementary schools in South Jeolla Province, led by their model and leader, teacher-turned-scholar Mori Tamezo (森爲三, 1884-1962), at Keijo Imperial University. Echoing the move for locally rooted (鄕土) studies in Japan, they planned to make a new list of regional plants by making a regional plant collection. They “requested” teachers in 300 provincial schools to send specimens for 100 summer and 100 autumn plants from their vicinity. By 1938, the provincial education office had accumulated 63,000 dried specimens, which in quantity almost matched the collections at the Tokyo Imperial University. This paper discusses the making of this unique "plant archive" in colonial Korea. These activities of Japanese teacher-cum-naturalists in Korea help us discuss several aspects of Japanese colonialism in Korea: the existence of long-term Japanese colonial residents moving towards scientific professionalization in competition with simultaneously shaping mainland authorities; the similar move of colonized Korean teachers at Korean-funded private schools, who embraced their collection trips and studies on Korean plants as correcting their "unscientific" past; the active renegotiations of shared and folk traditions between Japan and Korea, both emerging as political entities in these interactions. This paper looks into how some Japanese natural history teachers in colonial Korea had shaped their own civilizing mission by "regionalizing" their studies on plants in South Jeolla with folk knowledge from Japan, making a new path in between the imperial authority in Tokyo and Koreans remapping everything in their self-civilizing mission.