earticle

영어

This study aims to reveal on Korea's representation in geography textbooks that served as a kind of window toward the world, based on the fact that textbooks had an important influence on the culture, consciousness and values of the Japanese people in school education continued until World War II since the introduction of the modern education system in Japan. To that end, Korea-related illustrations of geography textbooks for primary and middle schools compiled in Japan from the 1900s to before the defeat of World War II were analyzed and their characteristics considered in relation to the passage of time. Immediately after the Japan’s annexation of Korea, illustrations were used to provide awareness and information that Korea was newly included as a colony of the Japanese Empire. Over the 1920s and 1930s, illustrations containing the ideology of colonial rule were featured in earnest. Major cities have been marked as spaces that provide a justification for Korean history's heteronomy and its transition to imperialism, while industry-related illustrations have Japanese students aware of the legitimacy of exploitation and Japan's buoyancy augmented through colonial management. The lifestyle and customs of the localized Korean commoners are expanding and reproducing their pre-modern images and typing them into objects that need to be civilized. By the 1940s, it was reflected in the demands for “Korea and Japan are One” and preparing for the Pacific War. In this study, illustrations were considered by dividing them into historical, urban, economic, natural and cultural factors according to the subject, but apart from classifications according to the subject, Korea was represented for the ultimate purpose of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. And it emerged in the same context, not separating primary and middle school textbooks.