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Exposing Imperial Japan

Exposing Imperial Japan

Viewing the suffering of colonized people through the lens of the colonizer's propaganda

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Korean director of Straits of Chosun (1943)...
Colonial regime forced Korean schools to drop...
Angry Koreans filed numerous complaints against local...
Korean residents of Seoul once spoke their...
In 1917, an 11-year-old Korean girl in...
Tracing the origins of the myth that...
Propaganda story of Japanese couple adopting poor...
Korean schoolgirls attend a five-day swimming camp...
Propaganda articles say Koreans men are cowards...
Tourist groups visiting the historical sites of...
In October 1943, Seoul high school girls...
Simon Young Kim (김영근), a South Korean...
February 1943, Seoul high school girls perform...
Japanese news staff wrote sad and internally...
Keijo Nippo editors endorsed the People’s Republic...

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

631

1942

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

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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

532

296

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

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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

526

350

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

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Police

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

705

859

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

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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

404

386

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

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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
School

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

467

416

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

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Clothing

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

552

2251

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

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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

514

509

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

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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

536

1363

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

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Recent Posts

  • In 1945, Imperial Japan trained almost every able-bodied Korean man, woman, and child to stab Americans to death with bamboo spears in suicide combat militias under direct Imperial Army command
  • Imperial Japan banned passengers wearing chima skirts from boarding trains, escalating its campaign against traditional Korean garments in May 1945
  • “If Japan loses, Koreans will fight each other, divided by foreign powers”: June 1945 warning by Korean collaborator (박춘금, 朴春琴) who urged authorities to redirect Korean nationalism into support for Imperial Japan
  • Imperial Japan called Korean women in chima dresses ‘the most filthy and ugly sight’ and shamed them with posters captioned ‘there are still women like these’ (April 1945)
  • Imperial Japan shamed Koreans for going to theaters instead of preparing for invasion (March 1945)

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    • Imperial Japanese penal official said Korean 'ideological criminals' (independence activists) were 'not well made as human beings', but 'if only their thoughts could be corrected, then they will get better' so they can be 'used' for wartime labor, but 'this is not the case with ordinary criminals'
    • Nostalgia for Imperial Japan and its undercurrents in Kishi Nobusuke's legacy in postwar Japan, in Park Chung-hee and Chun Doo-hwan's legacy in South Korea, and why access to wartime newspapers of Japan-occupied Korea is important to combat historical misinformation by the far-right in both countries
    • Simon Young Kim (김영근), a South Korean violin virtuoso and disciple of famous violinist Jascha Heifetz, Simon was once my teacher and mentor, and his son was my best friend in elementary school
    Exposing Imperial Japan
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