Transwar Continuities of Colonial Intimacy: Korean–Japanese Relationships in Korean Cinema, 1940s–1960s

ABSTRACT

This article explores Korean cinema from the 1940s to the 1960s with a focus on films about Korean–Japanese intimacy. In parallel with the promotion of Korean–Japanese intermarriage by the Japanese colonial government, a number of films produced during the colonial period portrayed intimate Korean–Japanese relationships, including marriages, friendships and affective communities. These representations disappeared immediately after the liberation, but they reappeared in the 1960s in South Korean cinema, owing to a shift in the government’s attitude toward Japan. Among Korean movies shot in Japan or featuring Japanese culture, colonial intimacy was a popular topic, particularly when it depicted romance between Korean men and Japanese women against the background of colonial history. This article argues that manifestations of colonial intimacy in Korean cinema between the 1940s and the 1960s – the transwar period – had a clear affinity with one another, portraying diverse emotions and affective relationships even in films featuring a propagandistic or nationalist militarised masculinity. I also highlight the inconsistencies of this period: whereas pre-1945 movies focussed on mutual support within affective communities, 1960s works more strongly foregrounded male heroes. All of these representations, however, critically reflect on the sociopolitical conditions of colonialism, the civil war and the Cold War.

KEYWORDS:

• Korea
• transwar
• colonialism
• Korean–Japanese relationship
• Korean cinema
• colonial intimacy
• romance
• affective communities
• Cold War
• Japanophone

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank my two anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful comments and the journal’s editor-in-chief, David Hundt, and regional editor, Jay Song, for their support. An earlier version of this article was presented at the Harvard–Yenching Institute in October 2019. I would also like to thank my discussant Yoon Sun Yang for her feedback.

Notes

1. I use the term “interracial” to describe the relationship between Koreans and Japanese and not to promote Korean or Japanese as “races” rather than “ethnicities”. In doing so, I hope to broaden discussions of inter-communal relationships in the discourse of race and to invite comparison with other colonial relationships in Asia and elsewhere.

2. I use the term “Asia–Pacific War” rather than World War II to highlight the war front in the Asian and Pacific theatre and the involvement of the Japanese Empire during World War II (see Fujitani et al., 2001, pp. 1–29). The term “Great East Asian War” (K. Taedongajŏnjaeng, J. Daitōa sensō) was commonly used in the wartime period in the Japanese Empire to reflect the imperial ideology.

3. Because of the incomplete state of data collection and preservation, there is room for debate about the numbers. For statistics and debates on intermarriage and legal changes in its status, see C. Yi (2017) and Kim (forthcoming).

4. For discussions of the colonial fictions involving Korean and Japanese intimate relationships, see Kim (2013; 2018; forthcoming).

5. I use the term “intimacy” to refer to close personal and sexual relationships such as romance and cohabitation/conjugality, but also to non-sexual relationships such as adoptions and friendships that contribute to the feeling of a large, family-like community. I here join the conversation on the cultural politics of emotion, defining intimacy as transformative cultural practice constructed by contemporary social conditions rather than as a static psychological state.

6. Regarding the history of leisure and consumption, Andrew Gordon (2007) defines a “transwar” frame for the context of Japan, spanning the decades of the 1920s through the 1960s. This frame effectively identifies “a causal dynamic in ‘transwar’ history going beyond the simple claim that continuities stretch across the purported break of World War II” (Gordon, 2007, p. 1), thus avoiding a “leapfrog interpretation” of “the ‘abnormal’ dark valley of wartime” (p. 4) and linking the pre- and postwar eras as one continuous timeline. Since the publication of Gordon’s study, the transwar framework has been used to highlight the continuities in prewar and postwar Japanese history (Choi, 2017, p. 3). More recently, Lin and Kim have explored the transwar framework with respect to East Asia more broadly, particularly in reference to Korea and Taiwan (2019, pp. 3–4). For the Korean case, I find the transwar framework useful to complicate the still prevalent view of the late colonial era as a “dark period” (amhŭkki), where propaganda was the only form of cultural production. Further, I define the Cold War era broadly to include the period of Korean participation in the Vietnam War (1964–1973), which influenced war memories in South Korean cinema. I should add that this article’s investigation of post-1945 films is limited to South Korean movies. North Korean cinema developed along a completely different trajectory after the Korean War and is outside the scope of my study.

7. Some few notable film studies on colonial intimacy are on the female friendships in Kimi to boku (You and I; Hinatsu, 1941) and Bōrō no kesshitai (Suicide Squad at the Watchtower) (Yi, 2016; Mizuno, 2012; Rhee, 2008; Watanabe 2012). Research on Korean–Japanese romance in 1960s movies has mostly discussed Hyŏnhaet’an ŭn algoitta (The Sea Knows) and its sequels while ignoring colonial-era movies with a focus on colonial intimacy (Ham, 2014; Kim, 2010; Lee, 2017).

8. Several scholars have used the notion of “affective community” in different ways. For example, Leela Gandhi (2006) has labelled the anti-colonialist groups in India and Britain as “affective communities”, whose members were both colonised Indians and white British connected by friendship. While Gandhi’s use of “affective community” undergirds her theory of friendship as a form of radical political feeling, Emma Hutchison (2016) uses the term about people who collectively experienced trauma.

9. Some scholars have engaged with the transwar concept in respect to cultural productions in Korea (Hughes, 2011; Suh, 2013). In particular, Jinsoo An (2018) examines the representation of colonial memories in postcolonial films and shows a keen awareness of transwar continuities.

10. For the English translation of Korean titles, I generally follow the KMDb (Korean Movie Database, managed by the Korean Film Archive), but I also use other translations where appropriate.

11. The Daughter of the Governor General was never released in theatres (H. Yi, 2017). In this article, I do not discuss films centring on Korean–Japanese relationships unrelated to colonial intimacy. For example, Haengbokhan godok (Solitude in Blithe; Sin, 1963) and Ittangedo chŏ pyŏlbich’ŭl (The Same Starlight on this Land, 1965) are based on autobiographies of Japanese women living in post-liberation South Korea. Solitude in Blithe is based on Akashi Tokiko’s identically titled autobiographical essay (1961). Tonggyŏng piga (Tokyo Elegy; Hong, 1963) is shot in Tokyo but mostly deals with postwar romance among Koreans. Yijojanyŏng (Traces, 1967) and Chokpo (The Family Pedigree, 1978) are also beyond the focus of my article; both movies portray a young Japanese settler-artist enchanted by Korean beauty. To my knowledge, these are the only Korean movies of this era with Japanese men as protagonists. The films are based on Kajiyama Toshiyuki’s (1930–1975) postwar short stories “Richō zan’ei” (“The Remembered Shadow of the Yi Dynasty”) and “Zokufu” (“The Clan Records”), respectively.

12. The Korean Film Archive’s DVD collections were released from 2007 in several series, including the most recent one in 2017. On the Korean Film Archive’s archival recovery and collection, see Steven Chung (2011). Recent scholarship has also brought to light the contradictory messages of seemingly propagandist films of this era (e.g. Fujitani & Kwon, 2012; Jeong, 2019).

13. The first film produced by a Korean company with an openly militaristic propaganda theme was Kunyongyŏlch’a (Military Train, 1938), which investigated Korea’s military volunteer system. Other movies on this topic include Wakaki sugata (Portrait of Youth; Toyoda, 1943), Chosŏn haehyŏp (Chōsen kaikyō/Strait of Chosŏn, 1943), Ai to chikai (Love and the Vow, 1945), and Heitai-san (Mr Soldier, 1944). I do not argue that Korean national cinema showed no Japanese influence before the Korean Motion Picture Ordinance. Rather, Korean national cinema during the colonial period was born in the context of two cinematic empires, Japan and Hollywood (Chung, 2012).

14. Mimong was co-directed by Yamazaki Fujie and Yang Chunam and produced by the Japanese-owned Kyŏngsŏng Film Studio (see Pak, 2016).

15. The movie is based on an essay written by a Korean elementary school student in Gwangju that won the Keijō nippō competition and received an award from the GGK’s education bureau. The film was produced in collaboration with Japanese filmmakers and was directed by the Korean directors Ch’oe In’gyu and Pang Hanjun; the screenplay was written by the Japanese screenwriter Yagi Yasutarō (Watanabe, 2012, p. 92). Tuition was selected as a “good film” by the Japanese Ministry of Education to be released in Japan, but after the movie was completed, the Ministry withdrew its selection (see Chŏng, 2015).

16. Angels on the Streets was produced by Koryŏ yŏnghwa hyŏphoe (Korea Motion Picture Corporation) with the support of the GGK’s Ministry of Education, and distributed in Japan by the Tōwa Shōji Studio. The KMPC intended to distribute it in the metropole because it had been selected as a “recommended film for a general audience” by the GGK and featured a screenplay written by a Japanese screenwriter.

17. Anna is a Korean woman with a Korean sounding name in the original novel on which the movie is based, but she becomes ethnically ambiguous in the movie owing to her name and attitude. She is played by a Korean actress, Paek Ran, with her voice dubbed by a Japanese speaker.

18. Suicide at the Watchtower was directed by Imai Tadashi, who worked under the Tōhō Film Corporation. However, Ch’oe In’gyu’s role in the movie was more important than that of an assistant to the director, as he took part in the initial planning and production. In Love and the Vow, Ch’oe is the officially listed director, but he is known to have co-directed the movie with Imai (Watanabe, 2012).

19. Most Japanese colonialists continued to live as they did in Japan in their segregated communities, by for instance speaking exclusively Japanese, having Japanese-style food, and celebrating Japanese religious and folk festivals. This lifestyle was possible partly by having Korean housemaids (Suh, 2019). Some memoirs by colonial settlers published in Japan describe the lack of contact with Koreans and very low exposure to Korean culture (Kwŏn, 2008).

20. Delivering full Japanese dialogues was not an easy task for Korean actors. Pak Hyŏnhŭi (2008, pp. 71–120) argues that this switch in language was one of the reasons Mun Yebong disappeared from the main roles and Kim Sinjae became a new movie star.

21. The screenplay changed the background to Suwŏn and added several subplots to the main narrative. While the screenplay was written by the Japanese screenwriter Yagi Yasutarō, the film also had a Korean screenwriter, Yu Ch’ijin. At the film production site, the crew used Yu’s Korean screenplay for shooting (Chŏng, 2015).

22. Tuition ultimately failed to be shown in Japan despite efforts by the Tōwa Shōji Studio, which organised newspaper and magazine advertisements and previews in Japan. Eventually, Tōwa Shōji was able to release Angels on the Streets in Japan.

23. For this movie, only a 20-minute version of recovered film is available. In the scenario, Eisuke and Mitsue are set to marry in the future, although it is not clear in the recovered version how much of the screenplay made it into the film. The scenario was published in the movie magazine Eiga hyōron (July 1941, pp. 132–145) (see Iijima & Hinatsu, 2004[1941]).

24. Murai is a Japanese surname that must have been converted from his Korean name. The film does not indicate his original Korean name.

25. The top position is occupied by the border police outpost chief Takatsu, followed by the outpost’s Japanese patrolmen, the Korean patrolmen, the Korean members of the self-defence brigade organised by the village youth to support the outpost’s activities, and the Korean villagers in general. The lowest position is occupied by the Chinese restaurant owner Wang Long, whose son is one of the bandits, the enemies of the village. I borrow Mizuno Naoki’s grouping in discussing the racial hierarchy here (2012, p. 66).

26. Immediately after Syngman Rhee’s fall in April 1960, Korean movie distributors requested permission to import Japanese movies, although this was ultimately denied. Starting in January 1963, the Park government retightened censorship of “Japanese colour” in movies. At this time, the censorship department banned scenes featuring Japanese characters in Solitude in Blithe (Sin, 1963) when the movie was released. But during the transitional government, some critically acclaimed movies – the best movies of the decade, as pointed out by later critics – made it to theatrical release. These included The Sea Knows, Sarangban sonnim kwa ŏmŏni (Mother and a Guest, 1961) and Mabu (A Coachman, 1961) (see Ham, 2014, pp. 207–210).

27. The literal translation of the title is “The Hyŏnhaet’an Strait Knows”, but I follow the official English title listed in KMDb. The Sea Knows is based on a successful radio drama with the same title by Han Unsa (1923–2009), which aired in 1960–1961. Han himself was a student-draft soldier (haktobyŏng) during the colonial period. The film was directed by one of the most iconic South Korean directors, Kim Ki-young (1919–1998), who is best known for The Housemaid (1960).

28. Ticket sales for The Sea Knows reached 100,000 in the first month of screening, and the total nation-wide audience is speculated to have been between 250,000 and 300,000 (Ham, 2014, p. 208).

29. For further discussion of literary and cinematic commentary on Korean–US intimacy after the Korean War, see Kim (2018, pp. 275–277).

30. There are other films about family reunion efforts due to postcolonial separation among Korean families. For movies with Hyŏnhaet’an narratives, see Kim (2010, p. 579). It was difficult to determine whether some films on the list were able to be released in theatres.

31. Park’s regime first deployed medical support units to Vietnam in 1964 and subsequently troops in 1965–1966. More than 300,000 South Korean soldiers participated in the Vietnam War. Their withdrawal started in 1971 and was completed in 1973. Pak Yuhŭi observes that most war films in South Korea are about the Korean War, not the Asia–Pacific War (2014, p. 104).

32. After a long absence of colonial intimacy in Korean cinema, the topic gained new attention after the ban on Japanese cultural products was lifted in the late 1990s. Because this phenomenon is unrelated to the transwar context, I do not discuss it in this article.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the General Research Fund and Early Career Scheme of the Research Grant Council of Hong Kong.