Instability of Empire: Earthquake, Rumor, and the Massacre of Koreans in the Japanese Empire
Lee, Jin-Hee
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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/87206
Description
Title
Instability of Empire: Earthquake, Rumor, and the Massacre of Koreans in the Japanese Empire
Author(s)
Lee, Jin-Hee
Issue Date
2004
Doctoral Committee Chair(s)
Toby, Ronald P.
Department of Study
East Asian Languages and Cultures
Discipline
East Asian Languages and Cultures
Degree Granting Institution
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Degree Name
Ph.D.
Degree Level
Dissertation
Keyword(s)
History, Modern
Language
eng
Abstract
Interestingly, precisely because of this unsettled nature of the violence---which thus defies any singular narrative that satisfactorily explains the incident empirically---the massacre of Koreans sheds light on the development of subjective narratives on collective violence in the culture of empire. In an attempt to explore the relationships that weave together disaster, rumors, massacre, and narrative-making in an empire, this project explores rumors, trial discourses, and commemoration as sites of analysis to create a window on the contested construction of multiethnic modern Japan. By analyzing a wide range of texts such as children's writings, paintings, and testimony, this project demonstrates the centrality of the colonial regime of representations in imagining the colonized others and the Japanese public. This project calls for methodological innovation in colonialism and imperialism studies by taking an archival journey to explore such non-conventional sites of historical analysis as rumors and other spaces of competing narratives through the visual, artistic, and literary manifestation across the metropole and the colony. Thereby, Instability of Empire calls attention not only to the impact of the presence of the colonized in the metropole but also the power of human imagination in practicing and interpreting violence, thus highlighting the incomplete nature of narrative control and the imperative imagining historical agency within the social in and beyond the archives .
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