Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2015. xi, 277 pp. (Figures.) US$24.95, paper. ISBN 978-0-8223-5925-8.
Nayoung Aimee Kwon’s expertly researched and handsomely illustrated Intimate Empire: Collaboration and Colonial Modernity in Korea and Japan examines the frequent and varied cultural encounters between Korean and Japanese literary figures and literatures during the colonial period (1910–1945), as well as the disavowals of these ties for much of the postcolonial era. In so doing, Intimate Empire joins a growing corpus of scholarship, now liberated from the constraints of national literatures and literary histories, that rigorously probes the deep albeit regularly fraught interconnections between Korean and Japanese writers.
A principal concern of Kwon’s book is to move away from such binaries as assimilation and differentiation, as well as collaboration and resistance, and instead to reframe “the scandalous confluence of cultures under imperialism … within a more historical term of intimacy” (8). Kwon also seeks to redefine colonial modernity as “the experience of modernity in colonial subjection, whether through actual colonial domination or the hegemonic power and occupation of the West, both real and imagined.” For Kwon, colonial modernity is “a disavowed conundrum shared between the colonizer and the colonized in Korea and Japan, and more broadly shared throughout the non-West, with troubling implications for postcolonial legacies into the present” (10). Kwon uses the term “conundrum of representation” to refer to the impasse that the colonial modern subject was forced to negotiate. She divides this challenge into five categories: conundrum of (modern) subjectivity, of language, of history, of aesthetic representation, and of recognition. Intimate Empire probes the intricacies of these conundrums by shining the spotlight on a body of imperial-language texts by colonized cultural producers that reflect conditions of modernity lived under both direct colonial rule and the threat of Western imperialism.
Following the introduction, chapter 2, “Translating Korean Literature,” examines colonial debates regarding Korean literature, particularly focusing on the complexities of the colonial modern condition. As Kwon argues, “In the absence of Korea as a sovereign entity, the perceived lack of a modern national literature in the colony exemplified the paradoxes of the conundrum of representation in the imperial global order” (18). Chapter 3, “A Minor Writer,” highlights Kim Saryang, the Akutagawa Prize-winning author of the Japanese-language short story “Into the Light” (Hikari no naka ni), as a case study of the “minor” writer and translator. For its part, chapter 4, “Into the Light,” probes more deeply into this text, revealing how textually and metatextually it “embodies the complex process of imperial co-optation” (59) and how it does not, contrary to the assertions of metropolitan critics, embrace the form of the I-novel. Kwon rightly notes that this story, composed at a time when writings by the colonized were being both subsumed and marked as “different” vis-à-vis the canon of imperial literature, exhibits much of the “deep pain and anxiety about its own uncertain location in the cultural politics of representation in the empire” (78). In chapter 5, “Colonial Abject,” the scope broadens to the great recognition that the Japanese gave some colonial writers, which far from celebrating their individual talent, “relegated them to new secondary roles as ethnic translators or native informants.” They were expected to write “exotic self-ethnographies in translation for the consuming passions of the metropolitan audience” (82), which placed them in a clearly subordinate position.
Chapter 6, “Performing Colonial Kitsch,” takes up Chang Hyŏkchu, who although largely forgotten in the postwar years because of the alleged collaborative nature of his writings, achieved great prominence during the colonial period. As its title suggests, through the case study of the staging of Ch’unhyang, this chapter also deepens our understanding of the broader phenomenon of “colonial kitsch,” a term referring to the “devaluation and exoticization of the colony’s culture circulated as mass-produced commodities to fulfill imperial consuming desires” (104).
In chapter 7, “Overhearing Transcolonial Roundtables,” the focus turns to the staged and well-publicized discussions among colonizers and colonized. Kwon correctly argues that the roundtables were a relative failure in enhancing understanding between the two often very different groups. Chapter 8, “Turning Local,” reexamines the colonizer/colonized divide by contextualizing the increase in translated texts advertised as ethnographic “colonial collections,” exploring the significance of colonial literature “being collected and curated as mass-produced objects of colonial kitsch for consumption in the empire” (156). Chapter 9 introduces the life and works of Kang Kyŏngae, a Korean colonial writer who migrated to Manchuria, revealing the triangulated position of Korea between Japan and China. Chapter 10, “Paradox of Postcoloniality,” takes the reader into the postwar period, revealing as Eurocentric the assumptions undergirding postcolonial studies.
Intimate Empire provides valuable insight into Japanese imperialism. But at times it can be a bit repetitive, as Kwon tells us again and again that “binary thinking,” the “binary logic of national resistance and colonial collaboration,” is inadequate, that it is this “binary logic of resistance and collaboration which … still dominates the study of colonial literature.” Kwon is absolutely correct that discussing historical phenomena in terms of either/or is counterproductive, but she overestimates the extent to which this mode of thinking continues to monopolize scholarly discussion. In fact, much recent scholarly work outside East Asia on Japanese and other forms of colonialism has argued strongly for more nuanced understandings. Also, it is ironic that despite Kwon’s emphasis on thinking beyond binaries, she speaks constantly of “contact zones.” As has been pointed out, the term “zone” itself establishes separations, indeed binaries, that can unintentionally misrepresent colonial and postcolonial dynamics by not leaving space for the many phenomena that do not fit neatly inside or outside a particular “zone.”
But these are small concerns, given Kwon’s admirable use of archival materials and her clear command of the colonial literary scene in Japan and Korea. Intimate Empire is a most welcome addition to transcultural scholarship on East Asian literatures and cultures and sets an excellent example for future research on imperialism in East Asia and well beyond.
Karen Thornber
Harvard University, Cambridge, USA
pp. 907-909