제국일본을 부유하는 영화(인)들

On Films (and People) Floating around the Japanese Empire

In Korean film history, there were three periods which can be called the Golden Age. The first was from the 1920s till 1930s during the period of Japanese colonization, the second was in the 1960s, and the third was from the end of 1990s. While each of these three periods had different historical backdrops and political/social contexts, they still share common characteristics. One for instance was a large number of people who tried to produce films across state borders, or who involved with the film industry beyond borders. This paper focuses on the first Golden Age, from the 1920s till the 1930s, and looks squarely at people who tried to engage with the film industry beyond borders as well as the factors which enabled them to do so. Within the Japanese empire, it was hardly possible for filmmakers to produce films at one location. She/he usually migrated from place to place without settling down, from the imperial capital Tokyo to the “Dream City” Keijo (Kyongsung) where films make money, and to stateless Shanghai. Especially an enormous number of people was involved with the film industry across “border” between Japan and colonial Korea. There are, however, still very few studies on this subject. What I found in this study are as following: 1) There was a significant involvement of Japanese in Korea to the film industry in Keijo during the 1920s and the 1930s; 2) as the number of cinemas run by Japanese in colonial Korea increased, the competition among cinemas became fierce; and 3) such a situation often brought about conflicts with the film production and censorship by the General Headquarters of Korea. Acknowledging the flourishing reprinting of film magazines from the pre-war period in the recent years, I would like to emphasize in the end the necessity of studying further about the relationship between the film industry and Japanese in Korea who have been long-forgotten both in Japanese and Korean film histories.