| This dissertation examines both Japanese and Korean intellectual history in relation to colonialism and nationalism during roughly the last decade of Japan's colonial rule in Korea and the first decade of the postcolonial era. Through comparisons of Japanese and Korean discussions of nation and culture, I demonstrate the pervasive effect of colonialism on Japanese intellectuals' conceptualization of national culture. I also show how Korean intellectuals' cultural nationalism prevented them from strongly challenging colonial rule's claims to legitimacy.; The underlying concerns of my research include the implications of colonialism for the dominant conceptions of national culture in Japan and Korea, the limits of cultural nationalism as a form of resistance to colonial control, and the possibility of an ethical critique of colonialism based on the work of such thinkers as Karl Marx and Emmanuel Levinas. I draw on archival sources in Japan, South Korea and the United States, as well as a wide range of empirical, critical, and philosophical approaches, in the hope of contributing new perspectives on these issues. |
