Why the national films that used Japanese language mingled with Korean language were made during the era of Pacific War when the Korean Language was prohibited to use? Why Kyungsung Broadcasting Station that propagandized Japanese national policy kept ...
Why the national films that used Japanese language mingled with Korean language were made during the era of Pacific War when the Korean Language was prohibited to use? Why Kyungsung Broadcasting Station that propagandized Japanese national policy kept making Korean language program? Our conventional wisdom on Japanese Imperialism is wrong that tried to disrupt a unique national culture? Or was there an inside story of cultural dominance?
In order to clear up this question, we need to widen the view from ‘Colonial Korean’ to ‘Imperial Japan’, or from political repression and economic exploitation into the dynamics, the paradox, and the contradiction of cultural dominance. To make a national film which used local language mixed with Japanese language was a common trend appeared in the area dominated by Imperial Japan. The ideology referred to as ‘The Greater East Asia’ and the reality of the shortage of Japanese speaking people compelled this dual language situation. So Korean language broadcasting did.
The subjects of the study will attempt to fully interpret the meaning of the repressive and paradoxical reality caused by cultural dominance. The comprehensive topic of ‘cultural power’ of Imperial Japan: Knowledge and culture media are set up, and during each stage with a three-year interval during Japanese Colonial period since 2008, the study did a comprehensive research on various cultural interaction which was made between the core Japan and peripheral colonies.
This study is summarized with two features distinguishable from previous studies. First, existing studies on Japanese colonial period have analyzed this era under the dual structure of conflict mostly between ‘Japan’ vs. ‘individual colony’. On the other hand, this study covers the whole space of ‘Imperial Japan’ as the subject of the study. Unlike today when East Asia is divided as individual nation-state, it needs to remind the fact that Japan was the ‘Empire’ embraced Korea, Taiwan, Manchuria, some areas of China, and even some islands of the South Pacific in the East Asia at the first half of the 20th Century. In many cases, Japan’s culturalpower did not focus on one certain
colony, but worked with having the dominance on the entire empire in mind. Similarly, the peripheries of the empire also joined cultural interaction by competing or collaborating with each other. It is necessary to make Imperial Japan as the subject of the study in order to understand the cultural reality of the time properly.
Second, this study is unique because it chooses the cultural power rather than the political power and economic power as the subject of the study. It is well known that imperialism pursued the cultural dominance and there are many studies on this topic. However, there are many complex and abundant features which are different from political or economic dominance appeared during the operation process of cultural power.
The culture area like knowledge and arts, pop culture, etc can be not only the tool of dominance, but also the weapon of the resistance. For example, education within colonies needs to occur on some level to maintain dominance over subjects. However, excessive education may cause an enhanced awareness of by a dominated society of its plight and thus result in unrest among the subjects.
The operation of cultural power used to cause unexpected results deviated from power intention. The culture of the empire was mutated as being embraced by the colony and it caused ruptures on mainland culture through refluxing to the core of the empire.
The study team divided the comprehensive topic into two detailed subjects - knowledge and culture media as the area of practical knowledge so that we research the subject of this study effectively. Knowledge study includes system-oriented intellectual practice (colonial policy studies and translation), intellectual practice of anti-power (intellectual exercise such as ‘people revolution/culturalism and anarchism, socialism etc), and boundary practices between two parties (national school and civil study). The study of culture media includes a comprehensive view of ‘culture media’ to overcome the limitation of segregation approach by each media, and studies how it is accepted, resisted, and transformed in the media such as newspaper, magazine, and broadcasting etc and pop culture like theatre and movie, and in the practice of pop culture including popular song.
The first three-year study examined historical genealogy of cultural power formed in the center of Imperial Japan, and at the second stage three-year study expanded the view to the peripheries of the empire based on the outcome of1st level study.
Acomprehensive view will besecured by reviewing the interaction between the coreempire and the fringes on the following third stage three-year study.
The cultural interaction between the core and periphery appeared on the results of the second stage study, and the characteristics and meaning are summarized as below. First, in case of knowledge area, it is confirmed that the power is effective as the imperial university and colonial policy studies, translation and so on set the framework of knowledge of the colonist. However, knowledge may have unintended consequences when it brings about educated spies or informed free-thinking revolutionaries that threaten the empire. Anarchism may result from anti-structural knowledge practiced frameworks of ideological networks.
Second, the media such as newspaper, broadcasting and others and the pop culture such as movie and theatre etc played a role as a path to inject the cultural power of the empire into the daily life of the people through censorship, propaganda of national policy, and rewards. However, this area became the space of the discourse of the nation, establishment of Korean language community, and backflow of the culture to the center. It is confirmed that there is a fierce competition among something national, ethic and imperial in the popular culture.
To study the cultural power of Imperial Japan’ one must understand the complicated lives of the people who lived in that era. The dominating aspects of Imperial cultural power became a contradiction upon itself for those being dominated. A dominated society that seems compliant and unwilling to challenge authority may find more creative ways to do so. Forced cultural power may feed creativity in ways detrimental to oppressors. We can understand the complex lives of people of this time through the study of its culture, both genuine and forced by Imperialists.