Korean modern dancer Choi Seung-hee featured in...

Five Korean singers, including future pop stars...

Chinese children in 1944 Seoul featured singing...

Tourist groups visiting the historical sites of...

British and Australian prisoners of war arrive...

This Japanese teacher devoted a decade of...

Korean comfort women interviewed after whirlwind 1943...

Seoul police busted some British and American...

Colonial authorities discussed how to reduce prenatal/infant...

Not content with merely banning U.S. and...

Nostalgia for Imperial Japan and its undercurrents...

February/March 1943 foreign movies in Seoul theaters:...

February 1943 news article of British prisoners...

Imperial Japan’s manhunt for the “Communist Bandit...

A look into the foreign films showing...

Month: November 2022

Japanese Language

Korean writers in the ‘Korean Literary Association’ became puppet voices for Imperial Japan, praising the 1942 switch from Korean to Japanese language in Korean literature and declaring, ‘Korea has come to share the mission of transmitting the spirit and culture of Japan to all regions of Asia’

2022-11-29

458

Thus far, we’ve seen how Koreans of various walks of life, including comfort women and ‘model Korean families’ who mainly

Korean Workers

Young female employees lining up to receive mandatory ‘payroll savings booklets’ to automatically deduct their wages to contribute to the Imperial Japanese war effort (Seoul, 1943)

2022-11-27

405

The following is a photo of some young female employees at a company in Seoul lining up to receive some

Daily Life

Not content with merely banning U.S. and British jazz music, colonial authorities forced cafes, bars, and restaurants to throw out all phonograph records, and replaced the in-store background music with Imperial Japanese military songs and news propaganda blaring on the radio (Jongno, Seoul, 1943)

2022-11-23

412

This is a story about a restaurant association in Jongno-gu, Seoul which not only banned American and British jazz music

School

This Japanese teacher devoted a decade of his life going door to door preaching “You Koreans and we Japanese are brothers, so dedicating yourselves to the Imperial nation is the only way!” the Koreans initially hated him, but eventually came to welcome him with respect, allegedly (Shimonoseki, 1943)

2022-11-21

539

The following propaganda article profiles one Japanese teacher in Shimonoseki who took it upon himself to organize Korean residents into

80 years ago today, Korean women were making gloves for the Imperial Japanese Army at a factory run by Wakōkyōen, a nonprofit of the Japanese Jōdo Buddhist sect operating in Korea since 1893 and contracting with the colonial regime to rehouse, educate, and employ evicted Seoul slum residents

Korean Workers

80 years ago today, Korean women were making gloves for the Imperial Japanese Army at a factory run by Wakōkyōen, a nonprofit of the Japanese Jōdo Buddhist sect operating in Korea since 1893 and contracting with the colonial regime to rehouse, educate, and employ evicted Seoul slum residents

2022-11-17

289

This is a photo of Korean girls and women manufacturing gloves at a factory in Gwansu-dong, Seoul exactly 80 years

Korean schoolgirls standing in front of Seoul Whashin Department Store in 1943 as Korean women make some stitches in Shinto cloth amulets to be gifted to Imperial Japanese soldiers

Daily Life

Korean schoolgirls standing in front of Seoul Whashin Department Store in 1943 as Korean women make some stitches in Shinto cloth amulets to be gifted to Imperial Japanese soldiers

2022-11-14

336

In Imperial Japan, schoolgirls would stand around public places like department stores and hold white strips of cloth, and then

Imperial Way

Onerous regulations prescribing long lists of permissible and forbidden types of clothing were imposed on Koreans in 1943 to promote a ‘minimalist lifestyle’ of ‘Japanese beauty and simplicity’ in the name of wartime resource conservation

2022-11-11

388

In September 1943, almost two years into waging war against the United States and Britain, facing extreme shortages in everything

Daily Life

Imperial Japanese PSA ordering residents to avoid movie theaters in the daytime, using a fictional skit contrasting Yōko, the ‘good Korean girl’ in simple work pants practicing air raid drills, against Hoshiko, the ‘bad Korean girl’ dressed up ‘flamboyantly’ going to the movies (Seoul, 1944)

2022-11-06

409

This article is just one of many from the ‘Yōko versus Hoshiko’ column, a Keijo Nippo newspaper serial featuring fictional

The modern Seoul police force has cultural continuity with the Imperial Japanese police force of the colonial period because the US occupation decided to staff the police leadership with Japanese-trained officers – here are two propaganda articles describing Seoul police culture in 1943 and 1944

Police

The modern Seoul police force has cultural continuity with the Imperial Japanese police force of the colonial period because the US occupation decided to staff the police leadership with Japanese-trained officers – here are two propaganda articles describing Seoul police culture in 1943 and 1944

2022-11-03

373

The modern Seoul police as an organization descends directly from the Imperial Japanese colonial police forces which policed the Korean