Guest Editor’s Introduction: Japanese Imperialism, Modernity, and Korean History

Abstract

As the guest editor of the present issue of the International Journal of Korean History, I ask that you oblige me in a slightly unconventional introductory essay. Given the contrast between the typical purview of this journal and the contents of the articles contained in this special issue, I decided that a direct and open address in an autobiographical, epistolary mode would be appropriate. The genesis of this special issue reaches back to a panel that I organized for the Association of Asian Studies 2019 AAS-in-Asia conference held in Bangkok, Thailand. The panel was entitled, “Displaced Subjects of Japanese Modernity,” and featured excellent contributions by the historian Tomoko Seto (Yonsei University) concerning the communal reckoning with the massacre of Koreans in Tokyo after the historic 1923 Great Kantō Earthquake, and Japanese literature expert Kathryn M. Tanaka (Hyogo University) on patient literature in Japanese Hansen’s disease sanitoriums throughout the empire, as well as insightful commentary from the historian Araragi Shinzō (Sophia University). My own paper was on the Manshū/Manchurian Japanese-language literary community. When the IJKH associate editor Leighanne Yuh approached me the following