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Paper short abstract

This paper examines the contrasting approaches of two historians to reinterpreting Japanese myths concerning Japan-Korea relations. Comparing academic historiography and pseudohistory, it highlights the plurality of attempts to rewrite myths, influenced by the political context of late Meiji Japan.

Paper long abstract

This paper examines the discourses of two prominent figures—an academic historian and a pseudohistorian—both of whom reinterpreted Japanese myths concerning Japan-Korea relations.

The first, Kume Kunitake, born in northern Kyushu, is well known as a leading founder of positivism-based history in Meiji Japan, but was expelled from the Imperial University in 1892, following his controversial article “Shinto is the Ancient Custom of Heaven-Worshipping Rituals”. From the 1880s into the 1910s, Kume was also one of the pioneers who claimed that Japan and Korea were one nation in the mythical age. Unlike other advocates, he based his interpretation on the “shared” ruler Susanoo and common ritual practices, without relying on notions of blood lineage or linguistic affinity. Kume repositioned Japan and Korea as a community bound together through the worship of “heaven”.

The other figure, Kimura Takatarō, is notorious for advocating a pseudohistory called “Neo-History” from 1910 onward. He traced the origins of the Japanese people to the Mediterranean world and attacked positivist history, which he had once studied. Kimura’s methodology involved, for example, identifying Jingū Kōgō with a Norse deity he called “Jingō” (non-existent), relocating her legendary conquest as an event on the Italian Peninsula, and claiming her as the origin of the term “jingoism”. His pseudohistory emerged from a denial of racial connections to Koreans. In relation to the West, he also accepted the concept of “religion”, which he had previously disliked, as a new principle to combine nations without geographical restriction. His vision of worldwide “Divine Restoration” influenced various pseudohistorical discourses.

Both of these approaches differed from conventional Japanese-Korean common ancestry theory, which emphasized the homogeneity of clans and language families. Kume rejected kinship-based models, while Kimura imagined Japan outside East Asia. From contrasting positions, they illuminate the range of interpretations of Japan’s political mythology.