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Recent colonial compensation lawsuits reflect the metamorphosis of historical grievances in collective public memory into tort claims in private law. This article provides a synthetic view of the nexus of colonial law and history in South Korea–Japan relations, focusing on cross-border litigation brought by former forced laborers and victims of sexual servitude known as "comfort women" during World War II. The concept of public policy (ordre public) in Korea, which has colonial origins, has long served law courts as the standard for deciding the validity of a juristic act. But of late heavy reliance on the general clauses of law in legal proceedings has risked turning history and law into handmaids of national spirit, muddling historical accountability and legal liability. Improvement of South Korea–Japan ties should start from a more accurate understanding of colonial laws and a rounded appreciation of their shared legal history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Throughout the Japanese colonial period, Korea's reading public paid close attention to Chinese revolutions against Japanese and Western empires. Korean nationalists viewed China's revolutionary struggles as important for liberating Korea from Japan, a stance that reveals a transnational basis of Korean nationalism in the colonial era. One such nationalist was Sin Ŏnjun (1904–38), Tong'a Ilbo 's Shanghai-based correspondent, who played a critical role in conveying the momentous events in contemporary China to colonized Koreans. Drawing on Sin's example, this article shows how Sino-Korean transnationalism constituted Korea's left-wing, progressive nationalism in the 1930s. Although Sin Ŏnjun was a nationalist rather than a communist, he highlighted the communist struggles in China in his dispatches. He saw communism as the only viable way of solving China's internal and external problems, although he, at the same time, disapproved of Chinese communists' "terrorist methods." This article argues that this position also reflected his stance in favor of a broad communist-nationalist alliance in the Korean independence movement. He saw Korea's liberation agenda as closely related to the revolutionary events in China, thus accomplishing a synthesis between Korean nationalistic and social aspirations and an East Asia–wide transnational paradigm of a universal emancipatory struggle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article employs the history of Confucianism in modern Japan to critique current scholarship on the resurgence of Confucianism in contemporary China. It argues that current scholarship employs modernist formulations of Confucianism that originated in Japan's twentieth-century confrontation with Republican China, without understanding the inherent nationalist applications of these formulations. Current scholarly approaches to Confucianism trace a history through Japanese-influenced U.S. scholars of the mid-twentieth century like Robert Bellah to Japanese imperialist and Chinese Republican nationalist scholarship of the early twentieth century. This scholarship employed new individualistic and modernist visions of religion and philosophy to isolate fields of “Confucian values” or “Confucian philosophy” apart from the realities of social practice and tradition, transforming Confucianism into a purely intellectualized “empty box” ripe to be filled with cultural nationalist content. This article contends that current scholarship, by continuing this modernist approach, may unwittingly facilitate similar nationalist exploitations of Confucianism. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines the divergent approaches pursued by Japan and South Korea in their attempts to resolve an issue that is related to a fundamental responsibility of sovereign states: the protection of citizens. The case considered here is North Korea's abduction of Japanese and South Korean nationals. In Japan, the abduction issue has taken center stage in the country's North Korea policy, whereas in South Korea, recent administrations have downplayed the issue—despite the fact that nearly 500 South Korean citizens remain detained in North Korea, compared to fewer than 20 known Japanese abductions. The authors find that the key to understanding the divergent responses lies in the politicization of specific, ostensibly apolitical demands for the state to fulfill its duty to protect citizens. In particular, the proximity of the abductions issue to key nationalist themes, which politicians in each country use to mobilize support, prevents the matter from being addressed in a neutral way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the transnational appeal of the Korean folk song "Arirang" in the cultural and political strains of the colonial encounter between Korea and Japan. The author believes the status of the song as an emblem of Korean national identity depended on Japanese imperialism and mass culture. Koreans believe the song expressed sorrow, indignation and resistance in the face of subjugation. However, for the Japanese, the song revealed truths about the abandonment of traditional lifeways in Japan.

Examines the policing of young male factory workers in the cities of Japan during the wartime years 1937 to 1945. Impact of the wartime juvenile delinquency on the social order and norms in Japan; Initiatives and programs launched to guide and discipline youth workers; Efforts made by professionals to improve nationalism among the youth.

Explores the international education movement episode in the history of modern Japanese education that was not discussed in the literature on the country's nationalism. Correlation between education and nationalism; Period in the history of Japan in which this movement took place; How the principal supporters of the movement saw themselves.