Performative Educational Rhetorics At a Korean Women’s College During Japanese Occupation, 1930–1943

Abstract

Few Anglophone rhetoric studies have explored how colonial environments affected the work of American-supported schools and performances. Korea’s first women’s college, however, used hybrid Korean, American, and Christian cultural references in the pageantry, visuals, and music of its 1930 May Day to negotiate Japanese colonization. These May Day “performative educational rhetorics” acknowledged colonial authority while resisting Japanese assimilation objectives until they were silenced during Japan’s Pacific War. Unlike American-operated schools in U.S. colonies and occupied territories, therefore, Japanese colonization rendered performances not only of Korean but also Christian and American identities as potentially subversive symbols of freedom.

Notes

1. I am grateful to my RR reviewers Lisa Mastrangelo and Lisa Shaver for their generous mentoring. My deep gratitude to Jessica Enoch for boundless support and encouragement. I am indebted to 양미란 Miran Yang for translation, historical, and cultural advice throughout the writing process. I also thank the Ewha Archives at Ewha Womans University and the Ewha Museum at Ewha Girls’ High School (including 서은진 Seo Eun-jin) for permission to use and share archival materials, with very special thanks to 손현지Son Hyunji at the Archives for locating Appenzeller’s letters.

2. Ewha Womans University is the descendent of Ewha College. The irregular “Womans” in the singular and without an apostrophe is the official English spelling of the university’s name today. (https://www.ewha.ac.kr/mbs/ewhaen)

3. See Cumings 64.

4. The “First Sino-Japanese War” of 1894–95 and “Russo-Japanese War” of 1904–05

5. Roosevelt approved the 1905 “Taft-Katsura Memorandum” recognizing Japan’s control of Korea in return for the US colonization of the Philippines, thereby betraying the 1882 US-Korea mutual defense treaty (Choi 10; Yim 30).

6. Cumings chapters 2–3

7. https://www.ewha.ac.kr/mbs/ewhaen/subview.jsp?id=ewhaen_010401000000

8. Like Korean, Japanese puts the family name first and the personal name last.

9. 신여자 Sin Yeoja (new woman) (Choi 227)

10. Americans know it as the “yin-yang.”

11. “梨花 專門 [學校]” (이화전문[학교] i-hwa jeon-mun [hak-gyo], “pear blossom professional [school]”

12. Today, many South Koreans call it 남대문 Namdaemun (“Great South Gate”).

13. Ironically, Sungnyemun had been designated by the Japanese colonial government as Korea’s first “national treasure” (Pai 22). I am grateful to Satoru Hashimoto for pointing this out.

14. Literally, “Shall [we] say that Alyeongbi is far? Ji-Eun, we.”

15. My translation.

16. See Bix for a provocative condemnation of Emperor Hirohito.

17. For example, the Western imperial powers’ rejected Japan’s “Racial Equality Amendment” during the Paris Peace Conference of 1919.

18. 梨[花] 專[門 學校] i[hwa] jeon[mun hag-gyo] pear [blossom] professional [school]

19. 美善真 mi-seon-jin

20. My translation.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Nathan Tillman

Nathan Tillman researches Korean history and rhetoric, especially in the twentieth century. His book manuscript focuses on Korea’s first college for women to explore the educational rhetorics that Korean women educators crafted to negotiate Japanese colonialism and Korean nationalism. He teaches rhetoric, professional writing, and world literature at the University of Maryland, where he earned his PhD in 2019.