scholarly journals An Image of Korean Women during the Japanese Occupation of the Peninsula, as It Emerges from Literary Masterpieces

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-88
Author(s):  
Elena Buja

Abstract This paper1 aims to offer a picture of the darkest period in the history of the Korean women, namely that of the Japanese colonial rule (1910–1945). The only advantage Korean women enjoyed as a result of their country’s annexation to Japan was access to institutional education, even if this was done in Japanese and from Japanese course books. But this came with a price: many of the Korean teenaged females were turned into comfort women (sex-slaves) for the Japanese soldiers before and during the Pacific War. Not only did these girls lose their youth, but they also lost their national and personal identity, as they were forced to change their Korean names into Japanese ones and to speak Japanese. To build the image of the fate of the Korean women during this bleak period, the research method I have used is a simplified version of content analysis, “an analysis of the content of communication” (Baker 1994, 267). I have explored the content of fragments from a couple of novels authored by Korean or American-Korean authors, which cover the historical events in the peninsula leading to the end of WWII (Keller’s Comfort Woman (2019) and Bracht’s White Chrysanthemum (2018), to mention just a few) and which are focused on the topic of comfort women,2 i.e. young women that were sexually exploited by the Japanese military. The results of the analysis indicate that many of the surviving victims became “unpersons” and led a life of solitude and misery until their death.

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 108
Author(s):  
Syahrur Marta Dwisusilo ◽  
Lucitra A. Yuniar

The period of Japanese occupation for 3 years in Indonesia is sort when compared to the Dutch colonial period. However, at that time it was a critical time for the formation of various ideological thoughts. One of the ideologies that emerged in the Japanese colonial era was the ideology of "Greater Asia", which is known as the ideology of unification of Asia. During the Pacific War, Japanese writers who underwent military service in Indonesia published many of his writings for the purposes of Japanese military propaganda, especially those related to prapaganda of Greater Asia ideology. One of the most active writers in spreading this ideology was Asano Akira. This research clarifies the role of Asano Akira in spreading the ideology of Greater Asia through its activities and mobility in Java with the approach of new historicism and orientalism.


PANALUNGTIK ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 171-183
Author(s):  
Deni Sutrisna

The Pacific War, it is a sad history of humanity for most people, especially war veterans. Their stories passed on to the younger generation, many stories and tales were recorded: starting from preparations for war, war strategies, the course of war and the liberation of a colony from invaders is interesting to listen to. Army dock is one of the remnants of the Pacific War on Morotai Island which is an important part of the history. It’s existence not only describes the Allies landing process to liberate the island from Japanese rule, it is also a historical source of Indonesia's involvement in the Pacific War arena. It is possible, because the Allies and the Japanese took advantage of the natural resources of Morotai Island to build various infrastructure needed for war, including the Army dock. The army dock was built composition of building materials by utilizing existing materials in the coastal areas of the island, namely limestone reef. This initial step of the Allies strategy finally succeeded in liberating Morotai Island from Japanese occupation, from here later grew the construction of other military facilities and infrastructure that were built to prepare to retake the Philippine island of Mindanao, the largest military base outside Japan. How the Army dock was built and its function in the past, is a problem that will be answered in this paper. In order to answer these problems, the observation method is used through field surveys and library data searches.


2021 ◽  
Vol 99 ◽  
pp. 122-146
Author(s):  
Anna Shnukal

AbstractThroughout its European history, Australia has solved recurrent labor shortages by importing workers from overseas. Situated on shipping lanes between the Pacific and Indian Oceans, the northern Australian pearlshelling industry became a significant locus of second-wave transnational labor flows (1870–1940) and by the 1880s was dependent on indentured workers from the Pacific and Southeast Asia. Exempted from the racially discriminatory Immigration Restriction Act of 1901, indentured Asian seamen, principally Japanese, maintained the industry until the outbreak of the Pacific War in 1941. The Torres Strait pearlshelling industry, centered on Thursday Island in Far North Queensland, resumed in 1946 amid general agreement that the Japanese must not return. Nevertheless, in 1958, 162 Okinawan pearling indents arrived on Thursday Island in a controversial attempt to restore the industry's declining fortunes. This article is intended as a contribution to the history of transnational labor movements. It consults a range of sources to document this “Okinawan experiment,” the last large-scale importation of indentured Asian labor into Australia. It examines Australian Commonwealth-state tensions in formulating and adopting national labor policy; disputes among Queensland policy makers; the social characteristics of the Okinawan cohort; and local Indigenous reactions. Also discussed are the economics of labor in the final years of the Torres Strait pearling industry. This study thus extends our knowledge of transnational labor movements and the intersection of early postwar Australian-Asian relations with Queensland Indigenous labor policy. It also foreshadows contemporary Indigenous demands for control of local marine resources.


Author(s):  
Putut Widjanarko

The Japanese occupation of East Asia during World War II was accompanied by its propaganda targeted to the local population. In Indonesia, the military government, among other things, published Djawa Baroe, a fortnightly magazine published from January 1, 1943 to August 1, 1945.Compared to other magazines, this bilingual magazine (in Japanese and Bahasa Indonesia) Djawa Baroe was unique: it featured ample photographs and illustrations. Qualitative content analysis method enables this study to find the meaning of a theme in its holistic political, social, and cultural contexts beyond the number of its occurrences in the text offered by quantitative content analysis. All the issues of Djawa Baroe are examined in detail and reiteratively. Six themes can be found in Djawa Baroe, i.e., the friendship between Japanese and Indonesians, the description of Japanese military prowess, the exaltation of nationalism and the preparation for the war, the evil nature of Western power, the role of women in society, and entertainment. The study concludes that along with the development of the Pacific War that turned against the Japanese, Djawa Baroe moved its emphasis on long-range goals at the high psychological level to influence and win the hearts and minds of Indonesian people, to a more immediate result and practical guide in facing the imminent war. On the other hand, against the original intention of the Japanese propaganda, Djawa Baroe may have helped its educated readers to imagine their future nation-state, Indonesia. Keywords: Djawa Baroe; Wartime propaganda; Japanese occupation; nation-building


1997 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 324-344 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hiroshi Shimizu

This paper examines the main factors behind the rise and decline of the Japanese fisheries based in Singapore before the Pacific War, and shows that, as the fisheries contributed greatly to the Singapore economy, they did not constitute a foreign economic enclave in the British colony. It also describes how the Japanese and local fishermen conducted fisheries during the period from 1942 to 1945, and argues that the legacy of the Japanese fisheries outlived the Japanese occupation.


1989 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 117-149 ◽  
Author(s):  
John F. Laffey

The completion in 1986 of the Documents diplomatiques français, 1932–1939 permits a review of French Far Eastern policy during that troubled time characterized by J.-B. Duroselle as ‘la décadence.’ This massive documentary collection, however, still dose not provide a full picture of the forces which shaped French East Asian policy in the years before the outbreak of the Pacific War. Understandably focused upon European developments, it begins and ends, from the Far Eastern perspective, in medias res; that is, after the outbreak of the Manchurian crisis and before the Japanese occupation of Indochina. Moreover, like other compilations of what statesmen and diplomats said to each other, this one slights economic factors and, though to a lesser extent, the role of public opinion. Even taken in their own terms, the documents perhaps reveal more about what others said and did to the French than about what they themselves accomplished. That points to a more fundamental problem, for one can question whether anything so gelatinous as the French responses or lack thereof to developments largely beyond their control can even be described as ‘policy.’ Still, although much more work in archives and private papers will be necessary before the entire story can be pieced together, these documents do shed light on what passed for French policy in East Asia during the years before the outbreak of World War II.


1983 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 79-94
Author(s):  
Grant K. Goodman

During the period of American colonial rule in the Philippines prior to the Pacific War, the attitude of most thoughtful Filipinos toward Japan seemed to waver as though tantalized between fear and fascination. For while there was often a genuine concern, principally as a result of Japanese-American tensions, that a predatory Japan was literally counting the moments to an invasion and conquest of the Islands, there was also the tremendous admiration of one Asian people for another and an almost awe-struck eagerness to emulate the startling successes of Japan in achieving modern nationhood in its fullest sense. To this generalization Manuel Luis Quezon (1878–1944) was no exception.


2001 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 217-244
Author(s):  
XIXIAO GUO

Late 1946 was a time of anticlimax in the history of Sino-American relations. For four years since the outbreak of the Pacific War, thousands of American servicemen had been in China rubbing shoulders with the Chinese. When victory finally came, more United States troops (mainly the marines of the Third Amphibious Corps) poured in, and the Chinese hailed them as heroes. In less than a year, however, as hostilities between the Kuomintang (KMT) and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) closed in, the Americans were caught in the crossfire. Along the communication lines in North China, armed clashes between US and CCP forces escalated; in the cities, anti-American rallies became daily occurrences. The Chinese now became hostile to its erstwhile allies; wherever US servicemen went, they received boos from the locals. The rupture seemed to be irreversible: US forces started to evacuated, George Marshall, the presidential envoy to China, also ended his yearlong mediation, thus bringing the extraordinary intercourse between the two nations to an anticlimactic conclusion.


2008 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 341-359 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ashutosh Varshney

In 2001, using violent junctures in the life of a seventy-year-old Indonesian as a metaphor for the whole nation, Benedict Anderson summarized the history of violence in Indonesia in a poignant manner:A seventy year old Indonesian woman or man today will have observed and/or directly experienced the following: as a primary school age child, the police-state authoritarianism of … Dutch colonial rule …; as a young teenager, the wartime Japanese military regime, which regularly practiced torture in private and executions in public …; on the eve of adulthood, four years (1945–49) of popular struggle for national liberation … at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives; as a young mother or father … the cataclysm of 1965–66, when at least 600,000 and perhaps as many as two million people … were slaughtered by the military; in the middle age, the New Order police-state, and its bloody attempt to annex East Timor, which cost over 200,000 East Timorese lives …; in old age, the spread of armed resistance in … Aceh and West Papua, the savage riots of May 1998 … and … the outbreak of ruthless internecine confessional warfare in the long peaceful Moluccas. (Anderson 2001, 9–10)


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