A Portrait of a Japanese history professor at Keijo Imperial University, Korea

Abstract

This essay examines the education and research of Kaneko Gosuke, a western history professor at Keijo Imperial University. Western history was both highly emphasized in the preparatory course and suppressed within Keijo University's history department due to its double identities, one as a mirror in understanding the world and the Japanese Empire and the other as the explosive charge of threatening concepts like nationalism and democracy. Kaneko Gosuke could teach only introductory courses because western history as a major was not allowed in the university. However, by focusing merely on theoretical topics such as German historicism, Kaneko made his western history education acceptable to the Japanese colonial regime. The research of Kaneko, the only historical researcher in the Korean western history group, can be characterized by its Eurocentrism and its lack of engagement with the temporal and spatial context - that is, a colonized Joseon under Japanese imperial rule. His seemingly apolitical research contributed to an image of the West as a remote Eldorado, which could not be reached and to which Koreans were necessarily subordinate. In this way, he might have contributed to the perpetuation of the colonization of Korea.