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Assimilating Seoul

Japanese Rule and the Politics of Public Space in Colonial Korea, 1910–1945
by Todd A. Henry (Author)
Hardcover Paperback eBook
Price: $34.95 / £30.00
Publication Date: Feb 2014
Edition: 1st Edition
Title Details:
Rights: World
Pages: 316
ISBN: 9780520958418
Trim Size: 6 x 9
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About the Book

Assimilating Seoul, the first book-length study written in English about Seoul during the colonial period, challenges conventional nationalist paradigms by revealing the intersection of Korean and Japanese history in this important capital. Through microhistories of Shinto festivals, industrial expositions, and sanitation campaigns, Todd A. Henry offers a transnational account that treats the city’s public spaces as "contact zones," showing how residents negotiated pressures to become loyal, industrious, and hygienic subjects of the Japanese empire. Unlike previous, top-down analyses, this ethnographic history investigates modalities of Japanese rule as experienced from below. Although the colonial state set ambitious goals for the integration of Koreans, Japanese settler elites and lower-class expatriates shaped the speed and direction of assimilation by bending government initiatives to their own interests and identities. Meanwhile, Korean men and women of different classes and generations rearticulated the terms and degree of their incorporation into a multiethnic polity. Assimilating Seoul captures these fascinating responses to an empire that used the lure of empowerment to disguise the reality of alienation.

About the Author

Todd A. Henry is Associate Professor of History at the University of California, San Diego.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Note on Place Names
Preface and Acknowledgments

Introduction. Assimilation and Space: Toward an Ethnography of Japanese Rule
1. Constructing Keijo: The Uneven Spaces of a Colonial Capital
2. Spiritual Assimilation: Namsan’s Shinto Shrines and Their Festival Celebrations
3. Material Assimilation: Colonial Expositions on the Kyongbok Palace Grounds
4. Civic Assimilation: Sanitary Life in Neighborhood Keijo
5. Imperial Subjectification: The Collapsing Spaces of a Wartime City

Epilogue. After Empire’s Demise: The Postcolonial Remaking of Seoul’s Public Spaces

Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index

Reviews

"A major contribution to the study of the history of twentieth-century Korea."
— Korea Journal
"A most welcome addition to the field of Korean studies."
— American Historical Review
"[Assimilating Seoul] delivers an impressive contribution to the growing collection of research on Japanese imperial history in Korea, and the Japanese-Korean relationship in particular. ... It defies categorization as either a Japanese or Korean history to serve as a valuable artery of both during the time of Japan’s colonial subjugation of the peninsula."
— Reviews in History
"The first in-depth study in the English language of the history of Seoul in the first half of the twentieth century . . . entertaining and highly readable . . . a welcome addition to the growing literature on Korea’s colonial history and on urban history more generally."
— H-Net
"A detailed study of Korean and Japanese identity and adaptability in the colonial setting... Assimilating Seoul will be required reading for anyone studying the Japanese colonial period in Korea, for scholars of colonialism in general, and for students wanting to look beyond purely nationalist narratives for understandings of the past."
— Pacific Affairs
"A new and insightful perspective."
— Sino-NK
"Henry does an excellent job . . . Highly recommended."
— Choice
"Assimilating Seoul provides a nuanced view of Japan’s colonial endeavor in Korea. . . . A respectable contribution."
— Japanese Studies
"Bold and ambitious . . . A timely and provocative study."
— The Journal of Asian Studies
"An important test case showing the potential validity and effectiveness of employing sociocultural-based case study methods in explorations of urban colonial society as a way to overcome the limitations of political historical approaches to the past."
— Journal of Contemporary Korean Studies
"Assimilating Seoul provides a wealth of information and brims with fresh insights... Henry's adept probe into the city's physical and conceptual ambits is remarkably perceptive." 
— Journal of Japanese Studies
"Beautifully written... The reader can feel the author’s genuine passion for understanding the people of whom he writes. Assimilating Seoul is essential reading for all students of twentieth-century Korean society. Directed as much at engaging historians based in South Korea as those elsewhere, the book is bound to spur debate."
— Journal of Korean Studies
"As a pioneering work on an important subject so far glaringly under-researched outside of South Korea and Japan, it enriches the scholarship on Korean history in English. . . Henry’s book represents first-rate, pioneering scholarship."
— Monumenta Nipponica
"Moving beyond top-down accounts of colonialism, Assimilating Seoul offers a richly textured, on-the-ground understanding of how Japanese rule operated and was contested in Seoul. The book’s careful and vivid reconstruction of the entanglements of the state with city residents makes the powerful argument that the materiality of colonial power should be understood in the configuration and experiences of urban spaces. It is a splendid combination of urban and colonial histories." —Gyan Prakash, author of Mumbai Fables

"In this illuminating examination of spatial politics in Japanese-occupied Seoul, Todd Henry takes us into the labyrinth of colonial governmentality.  His captivating analysis of public ritual, city planning, and industrial expositions reveals the varied uses of urban form as a technology of rule--as well as the limitations of state power. A model study of the colonial city."—Louise Young, author of Beyond the Metropolis: Second Cities and Modern Life in Interwar Japan

"Few issues in the history of world colonialism are as conceptually challenging as the problem of assimilation within the Japanese empire. Henry offers a fascinating approach to the contentious politics of what it meant to be a Korean colonial subject under Japanese rule. The many answers to this problem are sure to stimulate debate."—Andre Schmid, Professor of East Asian Studies, University of Toronto

"This is one of the best books on modern Korean history I've read in recent years. Henry breaks new ground, especially in English, in his focus on the 'spaces' of colonial rule, and his command of such rich and varied primary sources is impressive. Assimilating Seoul is a fascinating read."—Carter J. Eckert, Yoon Se Young Professor of Korean History, Harvard University