식민지주의 지식구조의 부메랑현상에 대하여

The “boomerang effect” of colonial knowledge on the Japanese settlers in colonial Korea

Past research on the post-colonialism mainly focused on colonizers’ discrimination against the colonized. This paper, however, deals with intra-discrimination among the rulers, drawing on the case of Japanese settlers in colonial Korea. Recent scholarship on post-colonialism shows that colonizers not only used political power but also knowledge as a tool for justification for colonization. The Japanese colonialists were not an exception. The Japanese colonizers employed a dualistic knowledge narrative such as “civilized vs. savage,” “advanced vs. backward,” “progress vs. stagnation,” and “center vs. periphery” to marginalize Korea and its culture. They used this knowledge system to justify Japan’s colonization of Korea to indoctrinate Koreans, while establishing their own authority. However, this paper shows that such a colonization strategy had a “boomerang effect” on Japanese settlers in colonial Korea when they returned to Japan afterwards: they themselves were discriminated against by native Japanese in the mainland of Japan who felt superior to the Japanese returnees from the colony. The resulting discrimination led to the increase in social discord within the Japanese society.