The Location of “Korean” Culture: Ch'oe Chaesŏ and Korean Literature in a Time of Transition

2011 ◽  
Vol 70 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-75 ◽  
Author(s):  
Serk-Bae Suh
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Early Life ◽  
National Literature ◽  
Japanese Empire ◽  
Colonial Korea ◽  
Korean Culture ◽  
Korean Literature ◽  
Cultural Autonomy ◽  
Japanese Colonial

This essay focuses on Ch'oe Chaesŏ, a leading Korean intellectual, active translator of English literary criticism, and editor in chief of Kokumin Bungaku (National Literature), a prominent Japanese-language journal published in colonial Korea. Ch'oe asserted that the unfolding of history in the twentieth century demanded a paradigmatic transition from liberalism to state-centered nationalism in culture. He also privileged everyday life as allowing people to live as members of communities that ultimately are integrated into the state. By positioning Koreans firmly as subjects of the Japanese state, his argument implied that the colonized should be treated on a par with the colonizers. Further, Ch'oe advocated Koreans' cultural autonomy as an ethnic group within the Japanese empire. Tracing Ch'oe's early life and examining his critical essays on nation, culture, and state, the author discusses how his endeavors to establish an autonomous space for Korean culture simultaneously legitimized Japanese colonial control.

The Dual Career of “Arirang”: The Korean Resistance Anthem That Became a Japanese Pop Hit

2007 ◽  
Vol 66 (3) ◽  
pp. 645-687 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. Taylor Atkins
Keyword(s):  
Folk Song ◽  
The Other ◽  
Dual Career ◽  
Japanese Empire ◽  
Colonial Korea ◽  
Cultural Violence ◽  
Japanese Colonial ◽  
Iconic Status

“Arirang” is known worldwide as the quintessential Korean folk song. Its iconic status in contemporary Korea derives from its perceived role in strengthening Korean resolve to resist the cultural violence of the Japanese colonial occupation (1905–45). A musical “skeleton” capable of countless improvised variations and interpretations, some “Arirangs” explicitly assailed the Japanese and thus were censored by colonial authorities. However, in the 1930s and 1940s, precisely the time when assimilationist pressures in colonial Korea were intensifying, Japanese songsmiths, singers, and recording companies released “Arirang” renditions in prodigious quantities, sometimes in collaboration with Korean performers. “Arirang” became the most familiar song in the Japanese empire: Its persistent theme of loss spoke to Koreans of their lost sovereignty and to Japanese of the ravaging effects of modernity on traditional lifeways. For both peoples, it served as a mirror for self-contemplation and an “ethnographic lens” for gazing upon the other.

The Ruralist Paradigm: Social Work Bureaucrats in Colonial Korea and Japan's Assimilationism in the Interwar Period

2016 ◽  
Vol 58 (4) ◽  
pp. 1004-1031
Author(s):  
Sayaka Chatani
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Social Work ◽  
World War I ◽  
Social Problems ◽  
Japanese Empire ◽  
World War ◽  
Colonial Korea ◽  
Korean Society ◽  
Japanese Colonial ◽  
Colonial Government

AbstractHow did the Japanese Empire, while adamantly adhering to assimilationism, manage the politics of colonial difference in the interwar years? How should we situate the seemingly exceptional conduct of Japanese colonial rule from a comparative perspective? To examine these questions, this article analyzes the mindsets of mid-level colonial bureaucrats who specialized in social work. Social work became a major field of political contestation in the post-World War I period around the globe. Policies on social work tested colonial officials regarding their assumptions about state-society relationships and Japan's assimilationist goals. Their debates on social work reveal that by the end of the 1920s colonial officials in Korea had reached a tacit consensus to use a particular analytical lens and ideological goal that I call “ruralism.” In the ruralist paradigm, these officials viewed Korean society as consisting of “rural peasants” and understood Korean social problems as primarily “rural problems.” Ruralism was a product of many overlapping factors, including pressures to integrate colonial society into the imperial system, the empire-wide popularity of agrarian nationalism, global discourses that increasingly dichotomized the “rural” and the “industrial,” and the rivalry between the colonial government and the metropole. How social work officials re-conceptualized the colonial masses and attempted to engage with social problems under the rhetoric of assimilationism showed a similar dynamic to the “developmental colonialism” that prevailed in the French and British empires after World War II.

scholarly journals Tolstoy’s Text in Works of R. Akutagawa

2021 ◽  
pp. 218-230
Author(s):  
V. V. Kuryanova ◽  
N. A. Segal
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Literary Criticism ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
National Literature ◽  
Leo Tolstoy ◽  
Early 20Th Century ◽  
Public Figures ◽  
Personal Myth ◽  
The World ◽  
Japanese Writer

The supertext in the works of one of the most popular and mysterious Japanese writers of the early 20th century — Ryunosuke Akutagawa examined in the article. The relevance of this study is due to the fact that the problem of considering supertexts is one of the promising interdisciplinary areas of modern humanitarian knowledge. It is pointed out that in literary criticism there are quite a few works on topos texts, but very few works devoted to the nominal supertext, which is Tolstoy’s text. It is emphasized that Tolstoy’s text began to be created especially actively at the beginning of the twentieth century, and Tolstoy’s personality itself aroused interest not only in his homeland, but throughout the world. It is noted that the author’s extensive correspondence with public figures in Japan is known. It is argued that the fiction and journalistic texts of the Russian classic influenced the development of the national literature of Japan. Particular attention is paid to the issue of including in the text the personal myth of Leo Tolstoy as the basis of the Tolstoy’s text in the works of Akutagawa. It is shown that the Japanese writer refers to the story of the Yasnaya Polyana wise old man, using the episode of reconciliation between Turgenev and Tolstoy as the plot of the story “Woodcock”. In conclusion, the authors note that in their later works (“Cogwheels”, “The Life of an Idiot”) Akutagawa questions the sincerity of L. Tolstoy’s faith in God, interpreting the mythologeme “Leo Tolstoy and Religion” in an original way.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Whitehead
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Historical Sociology ◽  
Cultural Representations ◽  
History Of ◽  
Television Film ◽  
Popular Image

The introductory chapter discusses the popular image of the ‘Romantic mad poet’ in television, film, theatre, fiction, the history of literary criticism, and the intellectual history of the twentieth century and its countercultures, including anti-psychiatry and psychoanalysis. Existing literary-historical work on related topics is assessed, before the introduction goes on to suggest why some problems or difficulties in writing about this subject might be productive for further cultural history. The introduction also considers at length the legacy of Michel Foucault’s Folie et Déraison (1961), and the continued viability of Foucauldian methods and concepts for examining literary-cultural representations of madness after the half-century of critiques and controversies following that book’s publication. Methodological discussion both draws on and critiques the models of historical sociology used by George Becker and Sander L. Gilman to discuss genius, madness, deviance, and stereotype in the nineteenth century. A note on terminology concludes the introduction.

scholarly journals Art (and) Criticism: Hart Crane and David Siqueiros

Text Matters ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 229-243
Author(s):  
Alicja Piechucka
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Present Article ◽  
Art Criticism ◽  
Hart Crane ◽  
Historical Texts ◽  
Art And Literature ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Way

The article focuses on an analysis of Hart Crane’s essay “Note on the Paintings of David Siqueiros.” One of Crane’s few art-historical texts, the critical piece in question is first of all a tribute to the American poet’s friend, the Mexican painter David Siqueiros. The author of a portrait of Crane, Siqueiros is a major artist, one of the leading figures that marked the history of Mexican painting in the first half of the twentieth century. While it is interesting to delve into the way Crane approaches painting in general and Siqueiros’ oeuvre in particular, an analysis of the essay with which the present article is concerned is also worthwhile for another reason. Like many examples of art criticism—and literary criticism, for that matter—“Note on the Paintings of David Siqueiros” reveals a lot not only about the artist it revolves around, but also about its author, an artist in his own right. In a text written in the last year of his life, Hart Crane therefore voices concerns which have preoccupied him as a poet and which, more importantly, are central to modernist art and literature.

scholarly journals Celibacy or Marriage? Dilemmas for Buddhist Monks in Korea

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (2021/1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Beatrix Mecsi
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Relevant Literature ◽  
Social Darwinism ◽  
Viable Alternative ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Daily Lives ◽  
Korean Buddhism ◽  
Complex Picture ◽  
Japanese Colonial

Following the Confucian period of the Chosŏn era, which overshadowed Buddhists and confined them to the margins of society, at the beginning of Japanese colonial rule the possibility of monastic marriage typical of Japanese practice emerged as a viable alternative for Korean Buddhists in the early twentieth century. While the repressive memory of Japanese colonial heritage often appears in the relevant literature about clerical marriage today as the main reason for Korean Buddhists to get married, an analysis of contemporary documents presents us with a much more complex picture. Most notably among Korean intellectuals, one of the most significant personalities of the era, Manhae Han Young’un’s (1879−1944) systematically urged the reform of Korean Buddhism, Chosŏn Pulgyo yusinnon 朝鮮 佛 敎 維新 論 (Treatise on the Restoration of Korean Buddhism). In connection with the presentation and circumstances of the thirteenth point formulated to allow polemics and the practice of priestly marriage, we can see that his Confucian education, personality, and life play as important a part in his reasoning as the ideologies of the era, social Darwinism and modernism, and democracy. But primary sources revealing the daily lives and circumstances of the monks also show that thewillingness to marry was also greatly influenced by the new inheritance rules introduced in the Japanese colonial system.

scholarly journals COEXISTENCE OF CLASSICAL MUSIC AND GUGAK IN KOREAN CULTURE

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 67-99
Author(s):  
So Hyun Park
Keyword(s):  
Classical Music ◽  
Traditional Music ◽  
Musical Instruments ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
New Music ◽  
Flowering Period ◽  
Korean Culture ◽  
Korean Traditional Music ◽  
Japanese Colonial

Classical music and Korean traditional music ‘Gugak’ in Korean culture try various ways such as creating new music and culture through mutual interchange and fusion for coexistence. The purpose of this study is to investigate the present status of Classical music in Korea that has not been 200 years old during the flowering period and the Japanese colonial period, and the classification of Korean traditional music and musical instruments, and to examine the preservation and succession of traditional Gugak, new Korean traditional music and fusion Korean traditional music. Finally, it is exemplified that Gugak and Classical music can converge and coexist in various collaborations based on the institutional help of the nation. In conclusion, Classical music and Korean traditional music try to create synergy between them in Korean culture by making various efforts such as new attempts and conservation.

scholarly journals FORGOTTEN NAMES OF POLISH LITERATURE – KAZIMEZH TRUKHANOVSKY

2019 ◽  
pp. 347-356
Author(s):  
T. Hajder
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Short Stories ◽  
Literary Criticism ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Global Level ◽  
Polish Literature ◽  
Literary Traditions ◽  
Time Space ◽  
Complicated Model

Polish literature is one of the leading positions not only in the Slavic world, but also well-presented at the global level. The article is devoted to the Polish writer of the middle of the twentieth century, whose name is unknown to the Ukrainian narratee, but his works are extremely interesting. The reasons why some writers do not fall into the field of wide-ranging research are different. In the case of the Kazimierz Trukhanovsky’s works, this is an insufficient research of the Polish literary criticism, the researchers are writing about it only now. Returning the names of interesting writers and attracting attention to their works is an actual and interesting task.The creative legacy of K. Trukhanovsky is quite extensive – it’s a romance cycle, story and short stories, individual novels. Philosophy, reflection and utopia are the most extensive characteristics of the writer’s works. The imagery and aesthetic background of the novels become clearer if we attract the work of artists, whose leading motive of creativity was the hell and the wandering of human souls in the search of divine light. The writer applied to mythologization and the magic properties of time-space measurements in the novel. Mythological and literary traditions are superimposed, as a result of which the author creates a complicated model of a labyrinthine novel.

scholarly journals «Z lupoyu literaturnoho detektyva» (Do problemy identyfikatsiyi utayemnychenykh tekstiv)

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. 212-225
Author(s):  
Mykola Krupach
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Interwar Period ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
General Concept ◽  
The State ◽  
National Literature ◽  
Western Countries ◽  
The Status ◽  
Text Construction

The article “Contemporary Ukrainian Poetry” by Oleh Olzhych has been given the status of an authoritative source in domestic literary criticism in recent decades, in particular, in the study of the genesis of emigrant poetry of 1920-1930 and in general on the interpretation of the state of national literature in eastern and western countries, which in the interwar period were respectively under the rule of Russia and Poland. Only the “textual coincidences, general concept and intonation” of the article and Olzhych’s related texts were taken as the basis of identification. Such a technique contains elements of pre-programming of the final result and can lead to erroneous conclusions in identifying the author of the publication. It draws attention to the analogies of text construction, subject matter, lexical and stylistic coincidences, etc., but distracts from what is the main in the objective establishment of the publication of a particular person - the (internal) content of the text. The example of Olzhych’s attitude to the process of development of national literature in the interwar period and especially to the work of his father (Oleksandr Oles) shows that he can’t be the author of a politically quite controversial article “Contemporary Ukrainian Poetry”.

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