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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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Imperial Army general describes crowded movie theaters...
Nov. 1945 news articles called out Korean...
In January 1943, the CEO of a...
This Korean family donated their metallic tableware...
Why did many Koreans “voluntarily” enlist in...
Part 1 – Thousands of young Korean...
By December 1943, poultry was unavailable anywhere...
Korea in November 1945 was beset by...
Governor Koiso told Korean conscripts in Imperial...
A Korean father spent 8 years looking...
American soldiers meeting local women and shopping...
February/March 1943 foreign movies in Seoul theaters:...
Korean modern dancer Choi Seung-hee featured in...
Chinese children in 1944 Seoul featured singing...
In 1943, Japanese company bosses discussed how...

Category: Japanese Language

“Even Dreams Must Be in Japanese”: Imperial Japan’s Chilling Wartime Propaganda for Korean Assimilation
Japanese Language

“Even Dreams Must Be in Japanese”: Imperial Japan’s Chilling Wartime Propaganda for Korean Assimilation

2025-04-23

153

1117

These propaganda cartoons, serialized in 1943 during the height of Imperial Japan’s war mobilization, were aimed at the Korean audience.

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Propaganda cartoons from 1943 depict cheerful Koreans enjoying Imperial Japanese rule as they are sternly warned about eavesdropping Western spies
Japanese Language

Propaganda cartoons from 1943 depict cheerful Koreans enjoying Imperial Japanese rule as they are sternly warned about eavesdropping Western spies

2025-04-15

183

893

These propaganda cartoons, serialized in 1943 during the height of Imperial Japan’s war mobilization, were aimed at the Korean audience.

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Japanese Language

How Korean numbers (하나,둘,셋…) are related to Japanese numbers (hito-, futa-, mit-…), as explained by 1938 Japanese linguistics article from colonial regime

2024-02-05

451

2566

I ran into this interesting linguistics article in the June 1938 issue of “Chōsen” (Korea), published as an official propaganda

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Korean staff at Keijo Nippo took over news operations from their former Japanese bosses in Nov 1945 and then sent this message to Korean readers announcing continued publication in Japanese for the time being until Korean typefaces are ready for use
Korean Workers

Korean staff at Keijo Nippo took over news operations from their former Japanese bosses in Nov 1945 and then sent this message to Korean readers announcing continued publication in Japanese for the time being until Korean typefaces are ready for use

2023-09-25

414

681

For my second post that I am making during my stay in Korea, I thought it would only be fitting

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Japanese Language

Colonial officials claimed ‘Korean must naturally stop being spoken as a result of the spread of Japanese’ ‘no words in Korean can express the essence of the Japanese spirit in a straightforward way’ ‘Korean will one day be regarded as just another local dialect like the Kyushu dialect’ (June 1943)

2023-03-22

502

2942

In June 1943, Keijo Nippo ran a long series of roundtable discussion articles, where colonial interior ministry officials gathered to

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Japanese Language

Governor Koiso likened Korea to a disabled body whose brain (regime) could not talk to the limbs (Korean people), so an ‘exclusive use of Japanese’ policy was forced on Koreans, starting with Seoul city employees who were labeled ‘inferior’ and ‘weak-willed’ if they still spoke Korean at work

2023-01-15

594

1656

In 1943, Governor-General Koiso kicked off the new year by intensifying his campaign to further restrict the public spaces in

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Police

‘Jeon’ became ‘Takamatsu’ and ‘Park’ became ‘Masaki’: 1940 profiles of Korean families in Seoul adopting Japanese names to purportedly honor their Korean roots, be accepted by Japanese neighbors, to better interact with the public, to instill a ‘spirit befitting Imperial subjects’ in their children

2023-01-02

534

878

This 1940 article profiles two Korean families in Seoul who adopted Japanese names: the Jeon family, which became the Takamatsu

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School

Colonial authorities abruptly abolished Korean translations of the neighborhood meetings of Patriotic Groups in May 1942 as part of a ‘radical treatment’ to make Koreans speak Japanese, equating the inability to speak Japanese to a serious medical illness

2022-12-18

524

877

This May 1942 article announces that Korean translations of the regular meetings of the Patriotic Groups are hereby abolished. The

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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

668

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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Japanese Language

Young Korean teachers teach children the ‘will to fight and destroy the U.S. and Britain’ and the Imperial Way of Labor where ‘every stalk of grass and every tree’ is connected to the Japanese nation and everything in the villages is ‘all solely dedicated to the Emperor’ (Sosa, 1943)

2022-10-10

472

1301

This is a ‘feel-good, heartwarming’ story of a novice teacher who gradually gets used to teaching her fourth grade students

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Posts pagination

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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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