The myth of home exhibition 1915: implications of the home exhibition in Gyeongseong during the Japanese colonial period

Abstract

This study intends to historically examine the modern residential discourses of Joseon emerging in the 1910s through the Home Exhibition 1915 held in Colonial Joseon, and to critically explore the meanings of the home exhibition through a visual analysis of print publications discussing the exhibition content. In examining and exploring the home exhibition, this study found that imperial Japan secured the justification for its colonization of Joseon through the purported superiority of its “civilization”, and its attempts to improve Joseon homes were from the perspective of Japanese Orientalism. The so-called Colonial Policy of subjecting to Japan, which underlies the imperialistic state system, was the hidden factor driving the improvement mechanism encouraging the progression from sound home to sound society and to sound state. Therefore, the home exhibition held in 1915 represents a concrete representation of Japanese Orientalism. By publicizing this concrete representation in newspapers and magazines, Japan’s strategy of colonial cultural rule allowed for the Joseon public to be incorporated into the mechanism of Japanese Imperialism without feeling an aversion to it, and this strategy was expansively reproduced throughout Colonial Joseon.

Keywords

• home exhibition
• modern residential discourses
• japanese orientalism
• otherization
• japanese colonial period