Statement on Social Class Made by Japanese Resident in Korea and Appearance of Class Struggle in Literary Section in the 1920s in Korea

Abstract

This paper analyzes the literary writings on class conflict written by Japanese individuals residing in colonial Korea during the 1920s in order to examine their perspectives on proletarian theory and class struggle. In the 1920s, a number of critiques and articles about labor and tenant disputes appeared in Japanese magazines published in colonial Korea such as Joseon geup Manju and Joseon gongron. Since these literary works depicted the class struggle from the point of view of laborers and tenant farmers, it could be assumed that there was a groundswell of proletariat-esque sentiment, not to say socialist realism, among Korea-residing Japanese who wrote for the magazines. Further, some of the works set in colonial Joseon not only criticized Japanese capitalists who exploited Korean workers and tenant farmers but also presented working class solidarity transcending nationality without describing the conflicts between the colonial rulers and the ruled. This paper explores the rationale why these literary writings made frequent appearances in the 1920s by focusing on the political and cultural context of colonialism, the so-called Munhwa Tongchi(Cultural Ruling), along with the influence of socialism at the time.

Keywords

• Japanese People in Colonial Korea
• Cultural Ruling
• Proletarian Literature