XXX Международный конгресс ИИСАА. 19–21 июня 2019 г. Т. 2

Секция XVII 188 XXX Международный Конгресс по источниковедению и историографии стран Азии и Африки Korea. Save for a small number of publications 1 , the Japanese contribution to the making of North Korea is rarely discussed in academia, though such a notion sounds almost immediately commonsensical when stated. Indeed, the Korean case, where a socialist regime, for better or for worse, absorbed and developed the tendencies of its colonial and fascist-militaristic predecessors, is not alone even in Asia. In Europe, such an observation would resonate with that of the German sociologist Ralf Dahrendorf, who judged that in East Germany, the “social revolution of National Socialism […] was continued and, if anything, accelerated and radicalised” 2 . The object of this paper is not to expand the extent of Japanese accountability for North Korean developments; nor is the paper attempting to negate the centrality of Korean initiative in the resistance movement, and the subsequent conduct of the revolutionary state. This paper would have succeeded if it could contribute to breaking down nation-centred history writing that presumes historical processes to be contained within state borders. It would also be important to consider that the composition of North Korea was not only influenced by the Japanese left, but most importantly, by what existed in a ‘twilight zone’ that could be described as ‘Neither Left nor Right’ 3  —where Japanese socialists placed hope in, and collaborated with, reformist bureaucrats and militaristic ideology. The seemingly-different path taken by North Korea had also been derived from sources common to Japan and South Korea. 1. The Colonial Legacy In 1932, Governor Ugaki Kazushige [ 宇垣一成 ] started a “Rural Revitalisation Campaign” which set up and mobilised Councils for Rural Revitalisation “in every province, county and district”; “Financial co-ops were also mobilized in the campaign to create owner-cultivators” 4 . The movement’s main objective was to have every 1 Notable exceptions include Kimura Mitsuhiko’s book A Hidden Aspect of Relations between Japan and North Korea in the Postwar Era — North Korean Acquisition of Jap- anese Advanced Technology and Products and its Intelligence for this purpose, and his article — “From Fascism to Communism: Continuity and Development of Collectivist Eco- nomic Policy in North Korea”; CharlesArmstrong’s North Korean Revolution makes detailed analysis of the continuities in legality, food mobilisation and other administrative institutions; this is whilst various aspects of colonial-era social movements and official policy have been discussed in Gi-wook Shin and Michael Robinson, eds., Colonial Modernity in Korea. 2 Dahrendorf, Society and Democracy in Germany, 412. 3 To borrow a term first used by Ze’ev Sternhell in describing the Fascist movement in France. 4 Shin and Han, “The Rural Revitalisation Campaign”, 86. This is whilst financial coop- eratives, which had 685 branches covering a million members in 1933, helped matters such as resolving debt, and “extended a total of 52 million won to members as low-interest loans to obviate usury, benefitting almost a half-million peasant households.” In addition to this was the siksan’gye [ 殖産会 ] which “often functioned as peasant co-ops for purchasing and marketing and became the main village-level organisation”.