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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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‘We’re going to Washington!’ – a 1944...
Mixed marriages in 1939 Korea: a Korean...
Propaganda article contrasting the ‘Bad Korean Retailer’...
This Korean father made sure his family...
Elderly Korean farmer Kim Chi-gu (김치구, 金致龜),...
Korean writers in the ‘Korean Literary Association’...
By December 1943, poultry was unavailable anywhere...
Buyeo, former capital of Baekje, was used...
A Korean father spent 8 years looking...
Korean schoolgirls in 1943 mending military uniforms...
Imperial Japanese Army finally acknowledges Korea’s imminent...
Governor Koiso told Korean conscripts in Imperial...
Pro-Japanese Korean colonel (신태영)’s full 1943 speech...
When all of Korea was forced to...
Onerous regulations prescribing long lists of permissible...

Month: March 2025

Daily Life

‘Sweaters are tools of suicide’: Koreans were forced to follow Dr. Sonomura, a radical Japanese nudist fitness guru, and practice winter ‘naked calisthenics’ to save fuel and fabric for the Imperial Japanese war effort in 1945

2025-03-30

218

3184

It was January 1945, in the final desperate months of World War II. As fuel and fabric shortages deepened, the

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Daily Life

As Seoul froze in the winter of 1944–45, Korean families were told to share kitchens and bathe together to save coal for Imperial Japan’s war effort

2025-03-23

196

1711

This 1945 Japanese newspaper article presents a seemingly grassroots roundtable of Korean housewives from all walks of life gathering in

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Travel

February 1945 news report painted Korean passengers as ‘loud’ and ‘unruly’ while praising Japanese as orderly and ‘appreciative’, detailing the broken and lawless overcrowded state of train travel in wartime Korea

2025-03-16

231

1328

By early 1945, the Pacific War had dragged on for over three years, and Imperial Japan’s war machine was straining

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Military

Forgotten Korean Suicide Attacker ‘Hero’ celebrated by Imperial Japan: Park Gwan-bin (박관빈, 朴官彬) charged into an Allied machine-gun nest clutching an anti-tank explosive during the Burma Campaign in Dec. 1944

2025-03-06

280

3249

In the annals of forgotten history, few figures exemplify the complex and tragic reality of Korean soldiers in the Imperial

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Recent Posts

  • Imperial Japanese and Korean collaborator elite partied in brothels and luxury restaurants while ordinary Koreans starved in wartime Seoul, early 1945
  • The film that tried to make Koreans see Imperial Japan as their “Omoni” (Mother): Inside the 1945 propaganda movie “Love and Vows” (愛と誓ひ, 사랑과맹세)
  • 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

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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
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