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The eight-year-long period from Japan’s initiation of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937 to its unconditional surrender in 1945 forced Japan to invest its national economy and industrial and scientific technologies in the war. In addition, in the name of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, Japan initiated its assimilation and Kominka (Japanisation) policies (皇民化政策) in the colonies Korea and Taiwan. Japan used education as a tool to expand its influence over members of society, and attempted the frequent use of Japanese and Kominka (皇民化) in daily life to penetrate the awareness of people in the colonies. Japan also started to enforce various assimilation policies. A comparison of the implementation of Kominka policies (皇民化政策) in Taiwan and Korea shows that, in terms of school admission rates and frequency of use of Japanese, the proportion of school admission rates for frequent speakers of Japanese to primary education in Taiwan are significantly higher than those in Korea. Moreover, in terms of primary education, national schools were implemented in both Taiwan and Korea according to the “National School Order” promulgated in 1941. Japan made use of the term “education equality” to win people over. In fact, it aimed to strengthen the concept of Kominka (皇民化), the education of militarism, and to force the Taiwanese and Koreans to become “imperial citizens” loyal to the Emperor. Japan’s ultimate objective was to create an environment that met military needs for civilian and military resources. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses the assimilation policies of the Japanese Empire in Korea during the kōminka era from 1937-1945. The policies obliged Japanese settlers in Korea to increase their contributions to the war effort, while being denied civil rights like voting, autonomy and free speech. The kōminka policies also obliged women to promote Japanese culture in the peninsula in terms of clothing, food and sensibility.

This study looks at how education policies in colonial Korea changed over time in order to accommodate the needs of the colonial authorities during the period of Japanese colonial rule in Korea (1910-1945). The colonial experience can be divided into four different periods according to the four Educational Ordinances issued in 1911, 1922, 1938, and 1943 by the colonial government with each period corresponding to a historic event or context. The constitutive relevance of colonial discourse for an understanding of education can be found in the gradual transformation of the education sector in Korea under colonial rule. It is evident that Japanese colonial policy was inherently contradictory in principle and in practice. On the one hand it sought the assimilation of the Koreans, while on the other it maintained its discriminatory and exploitative practices. Such contradiction was obvious within the colonial education system. As the principal instrument of assimilation, education was regarded as the primary means to subordinate the ethnic identity of the colonised and to transform them into loyal imperial subjects. An overview of the four different periods relevant to the changing circumstances to which the education sector responded reveals the social-historical implications of the instrumentality of colonial education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines Japanese use of the Korean tri-lingual press in promoting its policy of assimilation in colonial Korea. The author distinguishes between discussions of the policy in the English-language newspaper "Seoul Press," the Korean-language "Maeil sinbo," and the Japanese-language "Keijō shinpō." Themes of modernization, Korean identity, and colonial administration were emphasized in these newspapers. The ways in which Japanese prejudice towards Koreans and discriminatory administrative actions undermined assimilation and a positive relationship between the two nations are explained as well.

Daejangchon, a village community of Japanese immigrants in colonial Korea, was unique in that it was built in rural area, unlike other Japanese communities in Korea which were typically built near cities. The large-scale development projects of the Japanese colonizers, such as Hosokawa Farm in Daejang-chon, transformed a small village into a modern "town." The radical changes brought to Daejangchon by development resulted in alienation from surrounding villages. The failure of Daejangchon to promote substantial growth for Korean peasants made clear the failure of naisen ittai (Japan and Korea as one body), the professed assimilation policy of Japan. The rapid decline of Daejangchon after liberation proved that the colonial development did not encourage substantial progress in conditions for local Koreans and was unwelcomed by the locals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Before the phases of foreign receptivity, China was a magnet for Japan, Korea, and other peoples of eastern Eurasia. It would be fallacy to think that the flow of cultural influence was all unidirectional from the China Mainland eastwards to the Peninsula and the Japanese Islands. Although the contact and exchange were multidirectional, there were periods of intense interaction and periods of relative isolation between these areas. The present essay discusses the early time when Japan was in complex interaction with the Korean Peninsula and China, from where the expert technicians, administrators and religious practitioners have come and got assimilated with the Japanese society. Cultural innovations in the Japanese Islands were integrated with Jomon practices so that the Yayoi culture was a wholesale importation from the Asian continent. The burial forms expressed a new belief system and social order. Cultural transformation by all means was most apparent in the Kofun period of mounded earth tombs. The tradition of building such tombs in Japan began in the 3rd century in the Nara Basin (homeland of the Yamato state) and spread westwards. Yamato, the first state to evolve in Japan, was consolidated by the introduction and adaption of the Chinese administration system that is clearly reflected in the burial goods. In order to establish the political relationship, the items of prestige were exchanged among the nobles. An extremely valued possession was the horse with its garment pieces. Crossing from Korea, horse-riding people used to leave their possessions in the tombs by the latter half of the 5th century. Although their own tomb style is the typical 6th-century style of the stone passageway and chamber, until local craftsmen could be trained to build such tombs Koreans at first deposited the trappings in the earlier style tombs with small stone-lined receptacles near the top of the mound. Excavations in Japan provide the hard evidence for horse sacrifice, an act specifically prohibited in the Japanese Chronicle (Nihon Shoki), which states that it was carried out at the owner's death. The live burials were proscribed, and the haniwa -- clay cylinders and funerary sculptures -- were ordered instead. Throughout the Kofun period these low-fired clay sculptures were erected on the tomb surface. Haniwa horses, sometimes placed in an entire line, stood guard on the tombs. They also might have signified a public statement of status, wealth, and privilege. The horse was represented in three different haniwa forms: wearing a full set of decorative garment; without it; and, on rare occasions, carrying a rider. The horse furniture and ornaments are found in many tombs, showing the prevalance of horsemanship in Yamato times. When we look at the haniwa horse, we are struck with the similarity between its trappings and those in present-day use. The saddle and stirrups, the bridle and bit are practically the same nowadays in Japan. Horses came to be used as strategic equipment in mounted warfare, thus horse trappings were developed. The earliest trappings had more of a practical use for riding. The later ones are larger and more ornamental, especially the rump and bit ornaments. The stirrups seem to outnumber other trappings but get less notice than the fine gilt-bronze decorated pieces. The stirrups are occasionally larger than those in Europe, but the shapes do not differ very much. The bits are of a closer resemblance. The gilt-bronze bridle-bit with small bells from the Otani tomb (Wakayama) is one of the finest in Japan. Its S-shape can be traced to Scythian sources suggesting continuing cultural contact and exchange across the Eurasian steppes. The elegant floral patterns derive from the 6th-century work in China. The same tomb also revealed the only horse helmet found in east Asia from this period.… [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the 1930s, an entrepreneurial class began to form within the overwhelmingly working-class Korean minority community in prewar Japan. This article examines how certain Koreans attained socioeconomic success and how they became assimilated into Japanese society in the process. As a case study, it focuses on the career of prewar Japan's most successful Korean entrepreneur-turned-politician, Park Chungŭm, to reveal how the internalization of Japanese values that came with success disconnected such individuals from the vast majority of Koreans residing in Japan, while offering them only a problematic sense of identification with the Japanese. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]