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To what degree are historical animosities regarding another country relevant for foreign policy in the face of changes in the security environment? This paper seeks to answer this question in the context of Korea–Japan relations. While pundits have pointed to the Korean public's negative views of Japan—rooted in the colonial experience—as the explanation for the lack of cooperation between Japan and Korea in the security field, this paper argues changes in the level of common external threat can shift the public's priorities from perceived historical injustices toward the needs of security. Surveys from the period when the security environment was shifting markedly—the final years of the Cold War (1986–1990)—reveal that public opinion regarding Japan relative to other powers in the region began to deteriorate only after the security environment improved, pointing to a limit to the extent that "history" trumps security. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Focusing on the late 1920s to the mid‐1930s, this paper determines and analyses the societal conditions and structures leading to the immiseration of Korean farmers during the colonial period. Specifically, these were the deterioration of aspects of traditional society, indebtedness, and interest rates. These led to wide‐scale smallholder bankruptcies, resulting in their transformation into landless tenants, and ultimately resulting in a bifurcation into the “haves” and the “have‐nots” in the Korean countryside. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Large areas of Northeast Asia experienced drought in 1939. Agricultural production in Korea decreased significantly, but the drought did not cause famine in Japan despite its dependence on rice imports from Korea. The paper analyses the impact of the 1939 drought on the markets for rice and electricity in Japan. The authorities were ill-prepared for such a disaster but willing to use it for the purpose of covering for other problems. The drought thus accelerated the move of Japan's economic system towards a managed economy. A lower total rainfall in Japan in 1940 did not generate similar problems, suggesting that the broader political, economic, and social context is crucial to the identification of short-term climatic fluctuations as crises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article sets out to elucidate the role of Japanese Protestants in the education of Koreans during the early twentieth century. Scholarship has often assigned only marginal roles to Japanese Protestants within the history of Japanese imperialism, despite the remarkable success of western missionaries in Korea at the time. As imperial expansion progressed, Japanese Protestants intensified their efforts to take up a leading role in the education of Koreans in colonial Korea and in the metropole wishing to spearhead the assimilation of Koreans. By drawing on the colonial discourses of East Asian unity under Japanese leadership, Protestant churches strove to mediate and facilitate colonial policies in Korea. Yet there were also voices of dissent from prominent Japanese Protestants critical of the assimilation policies implemented by colonial authorities in Korea. This ambivalent stance of Protestantism towards Korea is further complicated by the fact that the Korean Young Men’s Christian Association in Tokyo served as an important venue of the Korean Independence Movement. Examining Christian magazines and journals of the time, this paper delves into the contentious debates among Japanese Protestants concerning the Korea Mission and the Japanese government’s strategy of assimilation through education. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Japanese New Wave filmmaker Nagisa Ōshima repeatedly tackled Japan's cultural and systemic discrimination toward Koreans in his films. The "Korean problem" is a complex issue that stems from a storied history between the two countries. However, Ōshima was undaunted at the task of confronting his Japanese audience with challenges to their potential biases. Ōshima incorporated essay film techniques in his films Forgotten Soldiers (1963), Diary of Yunbogi (1965), Death by Hanging (1968), and Three Resurrected Drunkards (1968) to disrupt the illusion of film and encourage self-reflection among the audience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study is part of a larger investigation into Japanese students' use of English and friendship buildup inside and outside Canadian English as a second language (ESL) institutes. Both qualitative and quantitative data were garnered primarily from formal in-depth interviews with nine Japanese students and questionnaire surveys with 216 students. Based on the data, the present study explores Japanese students' friendship with Korean students, large numbers of whom are enrolled in ESL schools in English-speaking countries. The study provides evidence of the frequent opportunities for members of these two groups to communicate with each other, which sometimes leads to Japanese students' overgeneralised positive perceptions of Koreans as a whole. Also documented are the varying impacts of Korean students' references to Japan's war-time invasion of Korea upon Japanese students, ranging from appreciation of this new knowledge to the development of negative perceptions of Korean students. Furthermore, the study reveals that the combination of quantity and quality contact can cause the formation and consolidation of bonding between Japanese and Korean students, which then opens up a historically sensitive dialogue without jeopardising their long-term relationship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]