As I indicated in the previous posting, I read 宮田節子「朝鮮民衆と皇民化政策」and Brandon Palmer’s dissertation “Japan’s mobilization of Koreans for war, 1937-1945″ as a starter. Miyata Setsuko looks at similar sources (高等外事月報, 朝鮮思想運動 etc) and analyzes the reaction of Korean people to the 1937 Sino-Japanese war, the volunteer soldier system, and the conscription policy. Palmer also gives an account on how the Japanese authority mobilized Koreans as soldiers and labors.
Here are some of the points they make. Miyata emphasizes that Korean youth knew the real intention of the Japanese authority (本質を見抜く）when she analyzes the rumors that criticized the soldier recruitment. Both Palmer and Miyata argue that when the Japanese army (Chosengun) started the volunteer soldier recruitment in Korea, the original intention was to deepen 皇民化 ideologically, and the Japanese army had a much longer-term plan before implementing the universal conscription policy. In terms of the large number of peasants who applied, Miyata emphasizes the economically devastated rural situation at the time. Palmer also argues that all were “coerced” more or less, because of the massive propaganda, economic situation, pressure from local authorities etc.
There are a number of assumptions in their accounts that I think require attention. First of all, both of them trash the Japanese authority’s claim that Koreans demanded the recruitment (or the conscription system) as a mere rhetoric, but there WERE some Koreans who demanded it. The Japanese government probably took it seriously because such demand was reported extensively in the Japanese police’s internal reports (as I mentioned in the previous posting), in which there was no need to use propaganda. Rather, these reports were usually overly alarming.
Both Miyata and Palmer assume that the only proactive voice from Koreans is resistance against Japan, and when they complied, it was out of coercion or unavoidable situation. Palmer identifies “weapons of the weak” when Korean youth meant “Korea” when they said “I would like to serve our nation” in front of Japanese recruiters, for example — Palmer thinks this is a way of their resistance! I mostly agree with Miyata’s argument that the conscription was the only way for “差別からの脱出 (escape from racial discrimination)” when Koreans were completely deprived of the possibility of independence. However, is there no possibility that Koreans, even if they were not particularly pro-Japanese or economically desperate, demanded the conscription? Could we not regard such a movement as ‘proactive’? I looked at other cases of colonial conscription; one on the Irish conscription into the British army, and another on the Guinean conscription into the French army, both during the WWI. In both cases, colonial subjects ‘proactively’ joined their colonizers’ armies so that they would gain more bargaining power. In the Irish case, nationalists agreed on the conscription policy on the ground that they would gain autonomy eventually. From these examples, it is not hard to imagine, if the war had prolonged and Imperial Japan had mobilized Korean conscripts more intensively, it would probably had changed the power dynamics in colonial Korea.
Retrospectively, we tend to think that the conscription was one of the horrible mobilization activities that the Japanese government did because they needed more soldiers, and Koreans tried to resist, but were coercively mobilized. But in 1938, the conscription could have given an immediate political leverage to Koreans, and it is possible that Koreans regarded the issue more strategically, and the Japanese therefore were more cautious about the recruitment. So my argument here is that we should allow more space for Korean proactiveness other than coercion, collaboration and resistance.
Another major critique I have is the lack of account on the continuity between Japan’s domestic mobilization and Korean mobilization — Ugaki Kazushige might be a key figure in this continuity, and the miscalculation came from the direct application of the Japanese pattern. I am forming a hypothesis regarding these two rural mobilizations now. Anyways, before I forget, I will briefly introduce some interesting (but not related to my paper topics) incidents that I found in 特高外事月報 yesterday next time.