Abstract
The public sphere plays a central role in the political life of modern societies. Various interest groups articulate their concerns and advocate their political demands through communicative action in the public realm. Yet depending on the political configuration of a particular society, the public sphere may serve as a site for the exchange of democratic ideas or a platform for ritualistic performances of loyalty to mass dictatorships. In this sense, regardless of the political system, the public sphere can enable modern politics by conferring legitimacy to both mass participatory politics and totalitarian mobilisation. Numerous scholars have debated either the presence or absence of the public sphere in authoritarian states, yet few focus on the public sphere’s role in encouraging individuals to identify with an ‘alternative rationality’ that provides symbolic significance to their lifeworlds. Thus, more careful attention to the discursive mechanisms of the public sphere may reveal critical insights into a global modernity premised on the actualisation of individual freedoms yet sometimes faltering into authoritarian excess.
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Notes
Kubota Yūko, ‘Chōsen sōtokufu shoki no nihongo kyōiku niokeru “jisei oyobi mindo” nitsuite’, Kyūshū sangyō daigaku kokusai bunka gakubu kiyō 17 (2000), p. 16.
Jŭrgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, Thomas Burger, trans. (Cambridge, MA: MIT University Press, 1989).
Uday S. Mehta, ‘Liberal Strategies of Exclusion’, in Fredrick Cooper and Ann Laura Stoler, eds, Tensions of Empire (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), pp. 59–86.
U Kalpagam, ‘Colonial Governmentality and the Public Sphere in India’, Journal of Historical Sociology 15/1 (March 2002), 37.
David Scott, ‘Colonial Governmentality’, Social Text, 43 (Autumn 1995), 197.
For more on Japanese attitudes towards Koreans during the colonial period see Mark Peattie, ‘Japanese Attitudes toward Colonialism’, in Raymon H. Myers and Mark R. Peattie, eds, The Japanese Colonial Empire, 1895–1945 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984), pp. 80–127.
For more on the cultural nationalist movement, see Michael Robinson, Cultural Nationalism in Colonial Korea (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1988).
In a sense, some Japanese intellectuals like Yoshino Sakuzō (1878–1933) and Yanaihara Tadao (1893–1961) followed the path of such Western critics of imperial rule as Tocqueville, who attempted to find a rationale for including some French colonial subjects as full members of an imperial polity. For more on Tocqueville’s role as the architect of the Algerian colonial assimilation policy, see Jennifer Pitts, A Turn to Empire: The Rise of Imperial Liberalism in Britain and France (Princeton, NJ, and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2005).
Pak Ch’an-sŭng, Han’guk kŭndae chŏngch’i sasangsa yŏn’gu (Seoul: Yŏksa pip’yŏngsa, 1992), p. 118.
Yuge Kotaro, ‘Shōrai no chōsen tōchi ni tsuite’, Chōsen oyobi manshū (May 1932), p. 29.
Kubota Yūko, ‘Chōsen sōtokufu shoki no nihongo kyōiku niokeru “jisei oyobi mindo” nitsuite’, Kyūshū sangyō daigaku kokusai bunka gakubu kiyō 17 (2000) 15–16.
Mark Caprio, Japanese Assimilation Policies in Colonial Korea, 1910–1945 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2009), pp. 92–100.
Chōsen sōtokufu, Kanzei chōsa jigyō no keika (1921) 14.
Chōsen sōtokufu, Kanzei chōsa jigyō no keika (1921), 14. The first time that a comprehensive tax survey took place in Korea was during the 1920s, and one colonial source notes that the process was conducted twice in Japan and four times in Taiwan, so those regions had plenty of experience with and understanding of the system. The source continues, however, to complain that because this was the first time that the survey was carried out in Korea, there were many false rumours about the process due to the low Korean mindo.
Hagiwara Hikozō, ‘Kani kukserŭl hoego hago’, Chosonmun Choson, 100 (February 1926), 22.
Colonial officials also emphasised that when Koreans failed to pay their taxes, it was because of their low mindo. Chu Wŏn-jŏng, ‘Myŏnnae napse ŭimuchaŭi chuŭirŭl ch’okham’, Chosonmun Choson 105 (July 1926), 93.
Chōsen sōtokufu, Chōsen no hanzai to kankyō (1928), 120.
Chōsen sōtokufu, Shisei ni kansuru yukoku kunji narabini enjutsu (1922), 8.
Kim Yŏng-bŏm, ‘Amyŏn hyŏpŭihoewŏn chewiege koham’, Chosonmun Choson (March 1924), 92.
Katayama Iwao, ‘Chosŏnŭi hwahak kongŏp kwa oin ŭi kago’, Chosonmun Choson (May 1923), 27.
Yuge Kotarō, ‘Chosŏn ch’ŏlto ŭi sisŏl yohang’, Chosonmun Choson (May 1923), 21.
Wada Ichirō ‘Taechŏng sipinyŏndo yesane ch’wihaya’, Chosonmun Choson (March 1923), 7.
Oda Tadao ‘Chōsen zaisei no seikaku to kadai’Chōsen gyōsei (November 1943), 14.
Kim Yŏng-kap, ‘Nongch’onûl pudtaehaya ssŏ chosŏnûl pudtaehara’, Kaebyŏk (November 1922), 29.
Song Man, ‘Minjok sahoejuŭi ron’gang’, Tonggwang (August 1931), 4.
Kim Tong-jin Chosŏn kyŏngch’alŭi haepu, Tonggwang (February 1932), 31.
The chain of negative representations reflects Japanese attempts to establish cultural and historical distance from the rest of Asia so that they could separate themselves from the negative representations of the West. See Stefan Tanaka, Japan’s Orient (Berkeley: University of California Press); Lim Jie Hyun, ‘The Configuration of Orient and Occident in the Global Chain of National Histories’, in Stefan Berger, Linas Eriksonas, and Andrew Mycock (eds), Narrating the Nation: Representations in History, Media and the Arts (New York: Berghahn, 2008).
Im Hong-sun, Nōkairei shiken hitotaba, Chōsen chihōgyōsei (March 1927), 100.
Hui-yu Caroline Ts’ai, ‘Total War, Labor Drafts, and Colonial Administration: Wartime Mobilization in Taiwan, 1936–45’, in Paul Kratoska, ed., Asian Labor in the Wartime Japanese Empire: Unknown Histories (New York: Sharpe, 2005), pp. 103–5.
For more on the mobilisation system and the role of Korean women, see Michael Kim, ‘Mothers of the Empire: Military Conscription and Mobilization in Late Colonial Korea’, in Jie-Hyun Lim and Karen Petrone, eds, Gender Politics and Mass Dictatorship (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), pp. 193–212.
Far more were mobilised for labour duty; Utsumi Aiko, ‘Korean “Imperial Soldiers”: Remembering Colonialism and Crimes against Allied POWs’, in T. Fujitani et al., eds, Perilous Memories: The Asia-Pacific War(s) (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001), pp. 199–217.
Kanzuka Tasuku, ‘Naisen ittai eno shōkei’, Chōsen no kyōiku kenkyū (September 1939), 6.
Yun Ch’iho, Yun Ch’iho ilgi [Yun Ch’iho’s diary], vol. 11 (Seoul: Kuksa P’yǒnch’an Wiwǒnhoe, 1974), pp. 160–61.
Chu Yo-han, ‘Hongŭn’gamŭp’ [Great benevolence and tears of gratitude], Taedonga (July 1942), 29.
The Japanese were aware that including Koreans in the wartime system meant they could no longer be indefinitely denied basic political rights and access to education. Consequently, compulsory education for all Koreans was announced in 1943 and scheduled for implementation in 1946. The Japanese Imperial Diet also passed a law allowing Koreans to vote on a limited basis in April 1945. But the end of the war (August 1945) prevented meaningful implementation of full political participation in Korea despite the fact that millions of Koreans had been mobilised for wartime military and labour duty. Ch’oe Yu-ri, Ilche malgi sikminji chibaejŏngch’aegyŏn’gu (Seoul: Kukhakcharyowŏn, 1997), p. 245.
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© 2013 Michael Kim, Michael Schoenhals and Yong-Woo Kim
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Kim, M. (2013). The Colonial Public Sphere and the Discursive Mechanism of Mindo. In: Mass Dictatorship and Modernity. Mass Dictatorship in the Twentieth Century. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137304339_10
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