Shokuminchi Chōsen ni okeru Chōsengo shorei seisaku: Chōsengo wo mananda Nihonjin (review)

1 86The Journal ofKorean Studies a global experience of coloniality (after all, 85 percent of the world was colonized by Europe, the United States, and Japan by the end of World War I). Yu Young-nan has brought considerable skill and experience to this translation of Yom's 1948 revision of Three Generations. Yu's translation combines faithfulness to the original with creativity and readability—a difficult balance to achieve. Due to Yu's fine translation, the English-speaking world can now come closer to understanding Korea's experience of a global, colonial modernity. Reviewed by Theodore Hughes Columbia University Shokuminchi Chösen ni okeru Chösengo shorei seisaku: Chösengo wo mananda Nihonjin [Japan's Korean Language Encouragement Policies in Colonial Korea: Japanese Who Learned the Korean Language], by Yamada Kanto. Tokyo: Fuji shuppan, 2004. 266 pp. ¥4,800. Japan is often criticized for its colonial language policies that aimed to replace indigenous languages with kokugo (literally, national language) or Japanese. Yamada Kanto, in examining the Japanese colonial administration's encouragement of Korean language study among Japanese living in Korea, demonstrates that if this administration intended to eliminate the Korean language, it was a delayed ambition. Realizing the value ofJapanese civil servants being able to perform their duties in Korean, the Government-General encouraged them, through financial and promotion incentives, to study the Korean language . The administration also offered an annual Korean language proficiency test to measure their progress in the language. Yamada's monograph joins a growing body of literature that examines the experiences that Japanese faced while residing on the Korean peninsula during the thirty-six years of Japanese colonial rule. Recently, former Japanese residents in Korea have begun to publish accounts of their experiences. This topic has also gained attention in a number of recent doctoral dissertations. With respect to colonial language policy, most research to date has focused on the Government-General's Japanese language policy, save for studies that have examined the influence that the Korean language media had on Korean society. Research on the Government-General's decision to encourage Korean language study among Japanese expatriates has received relatively less attention . Yamada criticizes the research that does exist for engaging in only discursive analysis while failing to thoroughly examine the "reality" of this policy. How were the policies implemented? What results did these policies Book Reviews187 produce? (14). These are just two of the questions that motivated Yamada's research. Japan's modern education institutions began offering Korean language instruction in 1872—at the height of the seikanron (invade Korea debate)— when the Kango gakusho (Korean Language School) opened its doors. This program lasted for only one year, but other schools soon followed. By 1905, when Korea became Japan's protectorate, six schools offered Korean language programs, the most popular being Töyö kyökai senmon gakkö (Oriental Association Professional School), which graduated over three hundred students between 1907 and 1920 (20). Most of these schools closed their doors in the 1920s as Korean language instruction shifted from archipelago to peninsula. By the wartime period, only two schools—Tenri University and Keijö University —continued to teach the Korean language (20). Japan's 1910 annexation of Korea encouraged debate over the role that the Korean language would assume in the new colony. Some pondered whether the language should be regarded as a dialect (högen) like other local variants of kokugo, such as the Kagoshima and Akita dialects (48-49). Others debated the language's practical use as a tool for education or communication in the colony. Diet member Yamamichi Jöichi argued that the administration encouraging Japanese to study Korean contradicted its assimilation policy: why should Japanese colonizers encourage their nationals to study the colonized people's language? Prime Minister Hara Takashi, Japan's most enthusiastic supporter of Japan's assimilation policy, responded, "Though the spread of kokugo [among the Korean people] was the administration's most pressing business,... the present situation in Korea requires the Japanese to directly study the Korean language ifthey hope to make direct contact with the Korean people" (56). In Korea, Government-General Education Bureau chief Sekiya Teizaburö criticized "Tokyo educators" for impractical recommendations that called for Korean...