Imperial Romance

Fictions of Colonial Intimacy in Korea, 1905–1945

Su Yun Kim

• Publisher: Cornell University Press
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781501751899
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Korean History
• Index: History

In Imperial Romance, Su Yun Kim argues that the idea of colonial intimacy within the Japanese empire of the early twentieth century had a far broader and more popular influence on discourse makers, social leaders, and intellectuals than previously understood. Kim investigates representations of Korean-Japanese intimate and familial relationships—including romance, marriage, and kinship—in literature, media, and cinema, alongside documents that discuss colonial policies during the Japanese protectorate period and colonial rule in Korea (1905–45).

Focusing on Korean perspectives, Kim uncovers political meaning in the representation of intimacy and emotion between Koreans and Japanese portrayed in print media and films. Imperial Romance disrupts the conventional reading of colonial-period texts as the result of either coercion or the disavowal of colonialism, thereby expanding our understanding of colonial writing practices. The theme of intermarriage gave elite Korean writers and cultural producers opportunities to question their complicity with imperialism. Their fictions challenged expected colonial boundaries, creating tensions in identity and hierarchy, and also in narratives of the linear developmental trajectory of modernity. Examining a broad range of writings and films from this period, Imperial Romance maps the colonized subjects' fascination with their colonizers and with moments that allowed them to become active participants in and agents of Japanese and global imperialism.

1

CIVILIZATION AND ENLIGHTENMENT

The Role of the Japanese Home in the Early Colonial Period, 1905–1919

Korean-Japanese unions were rare, perhaps because the two sides were separated by a sea, but it certainly existed as a part of the ongoing interactions between dynasties for many centuries. Despite the countries’ geopolitical proximity, a noticeable movement and discourse on intermarriage emerged only around the time Korea came under Japanese governance, first as a protectorate in 1905 and then as a colony after annexation in 1910. The end of the nineteenth century was a time of modern nation-state building for both Korea and Japan. Both countries paid new attention to boundaries and made efforts to construct a strong centralized government. Korea’s Chosŏn dynasty first opened its ports to Japan in 1876 and later opened itself to the Western powers that reached Asia. The Kabo Reforms (1894–1895), modeled after Japan’s 1868 Meiji Restoration, were an attempt to strengthen the Chosŏn court with Western-style modernization. In Japan, the Meiji government was incorporating its newly gained territories into the nation: Okinawa in 1879, Taiwan in 1895, the Karafuto and Kwangtung leased territories in 1905, and finally Korea in 1910.

The first ideological discourse about interracial/interethnic marriage between Koreans and Japanese emerged at the end of the nineteenth century in eugenics debates in Japan that focused on improving the Japanese “race.”¹ Throughout the Meiji era (1868–1912), the physiology of race was a popular topic among Japanese intellectuals. Influenced by the Western colonial promotion of science and eugenics, some theorists were determined to seek ways to advance the Japanese race and suggested that mixing between “whites” and “yellows” would serve their goals. Thus, many writings posited a mixed marriage between a Japanese man and a white woman as an advantage for the Japanese race.² However, support for the mixing of Japanese and whites was not common; the intermarriage of similar races was more often suggested as a route of improvement.³ Many writers of these discourses believed that the Korean race was the most similar to the Japanese race, and mixing Koreans with Japanese was considered particularly favorable. One of the pioneers of Japanese eugenics, Unnō Kōtoku, argued for Korean-Japanese mixing in the popular magazine Taiyō (The sun). Titled “On Mixed Marriages between the Korean and Japanese Races,” Unnō’s essay suggests that Japanese and Korean exogamy would bring a superior quality to the former.⁴

The modern idea of the Japanese as a single, homogeneous race had emerged in the late nineteenth century, and it was not the only race theory in Japan. The homogeneous race theory, in fact, became popular much later in Japanese imperialism. In the past, several other theories had imagined the Japanese as a group of people who were related to groups outside Japan. One popular theory was based on ancient mythology and held that the Japanese nation consisted of a mixture between “a conquering people” and “a previous aboriginal people.” Supporters of this mixed-nation theory viewed the Japanese race as “a multi-racial composition of neighboring nations.”⁵ Another common ancestor theory—that Japanese and Koreans shared the same forebears—originated in the Edo period (1603–1868) and involved Korean migration. It claimed that the inhabitants of the archipelago were the descendants of people who had originally come from the Korean Peninsula. This theory on the common origins of Japanese and Korean people, or Nissen dōsoron (K. Ilsŏn tongjoron), had been considered obsolete (or just mythical) for centuries but was resuscitated after the 1910 annexation of Korea to support the argument that because Korea had once been under the control of the Japanese emperor, the Koreans had forever been imperial subjects of Japan.⁶

As a modern nation-state, Japan, rather than embracing homogenous race theory, accepted both “racial purity” and “racial hybridity” discourses as they served its purposes. Throughout the Korean colonial period, however, the racial hybridity rhetoric—which also encouraged Korean-Japanese intermarriage—proved to be more popular. Tessa Morris-Suzuki argues that Japan, as a newly established colonial power, “needed ideologies which might appeal to its colonial subjects as well as to the people of the colonizing homeland (naichi).”⁷ What Morris-Suzuki calls the “melting-pot” image of Japanese origins “meshed beautifully with colonial assimilationist policies.”⁸ If Japan had succeeded in blending people from a wide range of racial and linguistic backgrounds in the past, surely it could do the same again with its new colonial subjects in Taiwan and Korea. Further, the racial hybridity rhetoric pointed directly toward intermarriage as a practice dating to ancient times. The historian Kita Sadakichi declared in 1929: “From the first, we Japanese people have not been a homogeneous ethnic group [tanjun naru minzoku]. Rather, many people of different lineages have lived together in this archipelago for long periods of time and in the process have intermarried, adopted one another’s customs, merged their languages and eventually forgotten where they came from. Thus an entirely united Japanese ethnic group has come to be created.”⁹ The prehistoric assimilation of other peoples through migration and intermarriage was the essence of the Yamato minzoku (Japanese ethno-racial group) identity. Kita went on to argue that “the Yamato minzoku … had emerged from an intermingling of people drawn from most corners of the present-day Japanese empire.” The purported history of racial mixing supported a Yamato minzoku theory that cast Japaneseness as “the still center” into which “cultural difference [was] continuously absorbed, consumed, and transformed into cultural homogeneity.”¹⁰ In other words, the Yamato race was the result of generations of intermarriage.

Intermarriage as Sentimental Union

In Korea, race discourse arrived with a discussion about making Koreans assimilated to Japanese. Several terms were invented in the Korean media after the 1910 annexation. Two terms were used for assimilation: tonghwa (J. dōka), which is a straightforward translation of the word “assimilation,” and yunghwa (J. yūwa), which means “harmonious coexistence.” Words and phrases such as Ilsŏn yunghwa (J. Nissen yūwa), naesŏn yunghwa (J. naisen yūwa), Ilsŏn tonghwa, and naesŏn tonghwa—all of them meaning, essentially, “Japanese-Korean assimilation”—often appeared in the newspaper Maeil sinbo (Daily news), the GGK-subsidized Korean-language newspaper, with little differentiation in the 1910s and 1920s.¹¹ Yunghwa and tonghwa were used to celebrate the positive side of Korean-Japanese intermarriage in the media. For example, an article titled “Marriage of Japanese-Korean Assimilation,” a report on an engagement between a Japanese man and a Korean woman, stated that the pair would make a “peaceful home” (kajŏng) in the future, and their marriage would encourage others to pursue assimilation.¹² Another article, “Pre-history and Korean-Japanese Harmony,” claimed that because of the migration and exchange between the Paekche kingdom (18 BCE–660 CE) and Japan in the past, Japan and Korea already enjoyed good yunghwa (assimilation/harmony) in their history and people.¹³

While the discourse regarding the mixing of races in Japan seems to have affected the way race was understood by the Japanese authorities in Korea, it is difficult to pinpoint a direct impact on the policies of the GGK. There is, however, ample evidence that officials and public intellectuals carefully discussed and analyzed intermarriage as an important means for encouraging Korean people to look with favor on the GGK. GGK leaders referred to mixed marriage as a good way to teach Japanese customs and culture to Korean subjects. The goal was to help Korean people advance through assimilation to Japanese practices and beliefs. In other words, the colonial leaders were fully aware of the function of marriage in the making of state subjectivity and colonial citizens. Maeil sinbo often published articles about mixed marriages in the early period of colonial rule. One such piece, titled “Japanese-Korean Assimilation and Marriage,” argued for the effectiveness of intermarriage in bringing about assimilation; another, “Marriage of Japanese and Koreans,” suggested that mixed marriages would re-create the prehistoric condition in which Japanese and Koreans were already a single ethnic/racial group. One opinion piece on assimilation even claimed that intermarriage was a necessary step in the completion of the assimilation process.¹⁴

Similar discourses are traced in some officials’ records. According to a memo to Governor-General Saitō Makoto (r. 1919–1927 and 1929–1931) and Vice Governor (Administrative Superintendent) Mizuno Rentarō in 1919, Japanese prime minister Hara Takashi (Hara Kei) suggested the promotion of mixed marriage (J. zakkon, K. chaphon) between Japanese and Koreans to improve communication and build harmony in colonial Korea.¹⁵ Prime Minister Hara related his hope that mixed marriage would encourage Koreans to adopt Japanese customs, habits, and language.¹⁶ Conveying the same idea, Governor-General Saitō expressed his support for intermarriage on several occasions in 1919.¹⁷ The rhetoric from the ruling powers seems to have been focused on the management of the Korean people in a way that would ensure cooperation with Japanese rule and encourage the creation of a bridge between Japan and Korea. Another example is the following report by the Japanese military: “ ‘Promote mixed-marriage of Japanese and Koreans’: There is nothing better than mixed marriages of Japanese and Koreans for the communication and assimilation of thoughts. Currently, the fact that many prominent pro-Japanese [Korean] men are married to Japanese women and then work as middlemen between Japanese and Koreans shows the importance of sentimental union [jōteki ketsugō]. In particular, the effect on the ch...

Table of contents

• List of Figures and Tables
• Acknowledgments
• Note on Transliteration and Translation
• Introduction
• 1. Civilization and Enlightenment
• 2. Under the Same Roof
• 3. Wartime Ideology and the Integration of Korean-Japanese Mixed Families, 1930s
• 4. Romance and Colonial Universalism
• 5. Visualizing “International” and Korean-Japanese Marriage in Print Media
• Epilogue
• Glossary
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index