Primitive Selves: Koreana in the Japanese Colonial Gaze, 1910–1945
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This remarkable book examines the complex history of Japanese colonial and postcolonial interactions with Korea, particularly in matters of cultural policy. E. Taylor Atkins focuses on past and present Japanese fascination with Korean culture as he reassesses colonial anthropology, heritage curation, cultural policy, and Korean performance art in Japanese mass media culture. Atkins challenges the prevailing view that imperial Japan demonstrated contempt for Koreans through suppression of Korean culture. In his analysis, the Japanese preoccupation with Koreana provided the empire with a poignant vision of its own past, now lost--including communal living and social solidarity--which then allowed Japanese to grieve for their former selves. At the same time, the specific objects of Japan's gaze--folk theater, dances, shamanism, music, and material heritage--became emblems of national identity in postcolonial Korea.
Primitive Selves: Koreana in the Japanese Colonial Gaze, 1910–1945 (Colonialisms) (Volume 5) First Edition
by E. Taylor Atkins (Author)
2.4 out of 5 stars 5 ratings
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This remarkable book examines the complex history of Japanese colonial and postcolonial interactions with Korea, particularly in matters of cultural policy. E. Taylor Atkins focuses on past and present Japanese fascination with Korean culture as he reassesses colonial anthropology, heritage curation, cultural policy, and Korean performance art in Japanese mass media culture. Atkins challenges the prevailing view that imperial Japan demonstrated contempt for Koreans through suppression of Korean culture. In his analysis, the Japanese preoccupation with Koreana provided the empire with a poignant vision of its own past, now lost--including communal living and social solidarity--which then allowed Japanese to grieve for their former selves. At the same time, the specific objects of Japan's gaze--folk theater, dances, shamanism, music, and material heritage--became emblems of national identity in postcolonial Korea.
Editorial Reviews
Review
“Atkins succeeds in illustrating the many anxieties and self-contradictions that shaped the Japanese reception, handling and discussion of Korean traditional and popular culture throughout the official, anthropological, curatorial and popular spheres.” ― Japan Times Published On: 2011-04-10
“An asset not only to scholars of Japanese and Korean studies but to readers interested in colonial histories, postcolonial studies, racial studies and cultural studies in general, thanks to its comparative interdisciplinary approach.“ -- Joowon Yuk ― Int Journal Of Cultural Policy Published On: 2012-04-18
“The author is to be commended for amassing a wide range of cultural productions . . . and shaping them into a more general claim about the relationship between colonialism and culture within the context of modernity.” -- Todd Henry ― Korean Studies Published On: 2011-12-31
“Atkins’s study offers a refreshing new perspective.” ― Journal Of Japanese Studies Published On: 2012-07-25
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From the Inside Flap
"Deeply researched and elegantly written, Primitive Selves reaches beyond the confines of the colonial era to the present Japanese preoccupation with Korea. This is an absolute must-read for students and scholars of East Asia."—Sabine Frühstück, author of Uneasy Warriors: Gender, Memory and Popular Culture in the Japanese Army
"A gem to be consulted by all students of anthropology, history, ethno-musicology, and colonial studies."—Hyung Il Pai, author of Constructing "Korean" Origins: A Critical Review of Archaeology, Historiography, and Racial Myth in Korean State Formation Theories
"The hallmark of Atkins' scholarship is his ability to take something seemingly marginal—Japanese jazz, Koreana—and use it as a lens to explore cultural practices, national sensibilities, and modern ideologies. In doing so, this book uncovers the anxieties about authenticity that underlie the Japanese fixation with Korean culture across the twentieth century. This is a great example of how to write the empire into the history of modern Japan."—Louise Young, author of Japan's Total Empire: Manchuria and the Culture of Wartime Imperialism
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E. Taylor Atkins
E. Taylor Atkins is Distinguished Teaching Professor of History at Northern Illinois University. Hailing from Little Rock, Arkansas, he has traveled extensively to Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Cambodia, Singapore, and Germany. His first book, Blue Nippon: Authenticating Jazz in Japan (2001) won the 2003 John Whitney Hall Prize from the Association for Asian Studies, for best book about Japan or Korea. All author proceeds from his book Primitive Selves: Koreana in the Japanese Colonial Gaze, 1910-1945 are donated to the Tahirih Justice Center (www.tahirih.org), which arranges pro-bono legal, medical, and social services for immigrant women and girls fleeing gender-based violence. Taylor is a member of the Bahá'í Faith (www.bahai.org) and plays bass and baritone 'ukulele for the Wild Blue 'Ukulele Orchestra and the Agents of Change reggae band.
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2.4 out of 5 stars
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coralsealady
5.0 out of 5 stars Bringing art, music, and popular culture to imperial history
Reviewed in the United States on June 4, 2011
In "Primitive Selves: Koreana in the Japanese Colonial Gaze, 1910-1945," Taylor Atkins finds that Japanese colonial efforts in Korea before and during the Second World War did not follow the typical trajectory of colonial relations. Contrary to the other great colonial powers of the era, Britain, France, and Germany, which usually took a binary attitude of difference (we-they, civilized-barbarian), Japan had a dual focus -- it not only took a similar imperial attitude but also believed that their Japanese ancestors had migrated through Korea. They therefore believes that the rural peoples of Korea were their "primitive selves" who showed the values that the Japanese had lost in their drive to modernity. In so doing, Atkins confronts the historiography that insists Japan held Korea in contempt and that this attitude caused the often cruel attempts to displace Korean culture. Finally, Atkins' work in considering the impact of the colony on the metropole places the book squarely in the new school of imperial and post-colonial studies.
One of the many pleasures of Atkins' book is his careful attention to contextualizing the information he presents. For example, Atkins traces the often adversarial nature of the relations between the two countries chronologically in his first chapter, "A Long Engagement." He gives enough information to demonstrate the often thorny relations between the two countries. In one such instance he goes back to discuss the Mongol attempts to invade Japan through Korea in the thirteenth century and the Imjin War of the late sixteenth century, in which Toyotomi Hideyoshi devastated Korea in support of his effort to invade Ming China.
The subsequent three chapters are thematically organized but still maintain Atkins' contextual approach. He does a great service to the field of history by taking on areas and disciplines that historians usually do not consider: art, music, and popular culture. Atkins demonstrates the links between the growth of mass cultural commodities with the popularity of Korean performing arts in Japan, exploring the many versions of the song "Arirang" which can be heard as the grief for a lost love to a more abstract despair that fed Korean nationalism. He also draws a comparison between the popularity of Korean dancer Ch'oe Sûng-hui in Japan representing colonial Korea with that of the Africa-American dancer Josephine Baker in Paris who symbolizes the French African colonies.
This book is a model of contemporary historical scholarship that uses a finely researched and nuanced argument to make a little-known part of imperial history comprehensible. Unlike many historical monographs, this book is understandable -- if a reader had not previously heard of the Imjin War, Atkins provides just enough detail to make it comprehensible in a way that helps support his points. Would that other history writers would take such care. Atkins has created a work that will set the standards for historical research for years to come.
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2.0 out of 5 stars Japan should give up the ghost that Japan has any leverage over Korea psychologically - its not Koreans who are primitive
Reviewed in the United States on August 10, 2014
Treebeard tells Merry and Pippin that Orcs were mere attempts by Morgoth to copy the Elves.
Japanese Massacre Survivor Remembers
OCTOBER 26, 2006 06:58
음성듣기
In 1918, after being on the winning side in World War I, Japan occupied the Marshall Islands in the Pacific Ocean, which had been under the German rule. During WW2, Japan, which triggered the Pacific War, moved its forces in large scale to the Marshall Islands in case of strikes from the U.S. As many as 36,000 Koreans were forced to move to the islands. On the Mili Atoll in the southeastern end of the Marshall Islands were 800 Korean army civilian employees. Some 170 of them were shot to death indiscriminately for conspiring toward an uprising. Survivors made the shocking testimony that at that time Japanese soldiers ate human flesh of Koreans. What did really happen 60 years ago in the Marshall Islands? Lee In-shin (83), who was drafted to the Mili Atoll and survived miraculously, reconstructed the story about massacre of Koreans and the atrocities of Japanese authorities based on what he wrote in 1995.
Stopped Food Supply-
In the early 1942, Japanese authorities took young Koreans randomly to the war in agricultural villages. Lee was forced to get on a ship in Busan Port on March 23, 1942. On April 6, he arrived the Mili Atoll 13 days later, exhausted from ship sickness. Yet, he and other Koreans were made to labor in the tropical hot weather.
They constructed mainly airplane runways. The Marshall Islands were an outpost to bomb the U.S. When the forced laborers were slow, they were beaten by Japanese supervisors.
In February 1943, when a Japanese cargo ship full of food was about to moor, it was bombed by U.S. fighters and sunk. The supply of food was suspended.
When maintaining the forces became impossible, the Japanese military command in Mili Atoll decided to send their soldiers to 40 nearby islands and get food self-sufficiently.
Tragedy on the Marshall Islands-
Japanese and Koreans eked out eating soup with bean leaves. And in early 1945, a Korean who was working for the army disappeared.
Efforts of groups of other Koreans to find the missing person failed. Later, those who went for fishing to a nearby deserted island saw an unspeakable scene. They found the disappeared Korean with slices of flesh in the thigh cut out.
What shocked them more was the whale meat Japanese gave to them a few days earlier. At that time, they felt satisfied because it had been long since they had eaten meat last time, but they quivered thinking they might have eaten human flesh. It was not quite possible the Japanese without any tool caught a whale and gave the meat to Koreans.
Several days later, another Korean went missing and was found with similar thigh flesh slices cut out. Koreans were overwhelmed with fear. Eventually, they decided to escape from the island. U.S. warships were around the island, so they thought they could escape if they killed the Japanese.
On the night of March 18, 1945, Koreans carried out their plan and killed 7 Japanese. When they were about to flee, machine guns were fired at them. A Korean informed the army in one-hour-away Lukonor Island about the plan and a 50-strong Japanese patrol came to the island and mercilessly fired bullets into Koreans. The Japanese bayoneted fallen Koreans. Those who took the lead in uprising killed themselves by blowing up dynamite.
According to Park Jong-won (who died in early 2000), a survivor, only 15 including the two injured managed to avoid death.
Sixty Years of Nightmare-
Twenty days after the mass killing, Kim Jae-ok (82), who went to the island to clean up the bodies, said "There were corpses floating in the sea when I got close to the island." "I also vividly remember the island was crowded with flies, the size of thumbnails," said Kim.
"In 1995, I went back to the Mili Atoll, and I could not find any signs of the massacre. Yet I could not get over the tragic memories so I wrote the memorandum," said Lee.
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ejw
1.0 out of 5 stars Poor research methods & premised on a “both sides” revision of Japanese colonialism.
Reviewed in the United States on July 7, 2021
No critical analysis of liberal multiculturalism and relies on Japanese colonial archives & perspectives.
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ROROTOKO
5.0 out of 5 stars Japanese attraction to Koreana expressed anti-modern ambivalence, even self-loathing
Reviewed in the United States on January 23, 2011
"Primitive Selves" is on the ROROTOKO list of cutting-edge intellectual nonfiction. The book interview of Professor Atkins ran here as the cover feature on November 24, 2010.
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Primitive Selves: Koreana in the Japanese Colonial Gaze, 1910–1945
by E. Taylor Atkins
3.20 · Rating details · 15 ratings · 1 review
This remarkable book examines the complex history of Japanese colonial and postcolonial interactions with Korea, particularly in matters of cultural policy. E. Taylor Atkins focuses on past and present Japanese fascination with Korean culture as he reassesses colonial anthropology, heritage curation, cultural policy, and Korean performance art in Japanese mass media culture. Atkins challenges the prevailing view that imperial Japan demonstrated contempt for Koreans through suppression of Korean culture. In his analysis, the Japanese preoccupation with Koreana provided the empire with a poignant vision of its own past, now lost--including communal living and social solidarity--which then allowed Japanese to grieve for their former selves. At the same time, the specific objects of Japan's gaze--folk theater, dances, shamanism, music, and material heritage--became emblems of national identity in postcolonial Korea. (less)
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Christina
Oct 10, 2015Christina rated it did not like it
Shelves: 2015
Atkins needs to go back to grade 3 english class and learn how to write a sentence. A sentence should convey one or two ideas maximum not 5 different ideas. If you sentence is an entire paragraph something is wrong. Also Atkins needs to realize the beauty of simplicity. I'm not trying to look up in the dictionary every other word. Even the message of the book wasn't clear. Atkins seems to say that Japanese colonial rule was beneficial for Korea's culture and that colonial rule is what shaped Korean culture. However he explicitly says in his introduction the book was to be about how Korea cultured shaped Japanese culture making them realize that modernization took away Japanese antiquity. His arguments were weak in this aspect but strong in proving how Japanese colonialism is what makes modern day Korea's culture. (less)
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