What is 'Chosen Haiku'?

During the Japanese colonial period (1910-45), Japanese inhabitants of Chosen enjoyed composing Haiku, collectively referred to as ‘Chosen Haiku’. From the 1920s to 1930s, the literary world of Chosen Haiku started to question the essence of Chosen Haiku. The key theme debated in contemporary literary circles was ‘local color’. Specifically what this local color was became a popular keyword in literature and arts. Especially, in the world of arts, the word is well known to describe the art-work of Chosen artists such as Insung Lee in the late 1920s. However, in the world of Haiku, the term started to be used when Matsu no Mi was published by the Haiku writers such as Tokoshi Kusume in the 1920s. This local color now refers to Chosen Haiku. This article will identify what ‘the local color’ meant to Chosen Haiku and discuss how the quest for an identity of Chosen Haiku was related to the identity of Japanese residents in Chosen