The Study of Korean Confucianism in Keijō Imperial University: formation and Development of Modern Knowledge (『京城帝国大学の韓国儒教研究――「近代知」の形成と展開』)

This book is funded by the Alumni Association of Kansai University. This book clarifies the history of modern academism between Japan and Korea in the viewpoint of cultural interaction. The modern era in Asia has been a period of major upheaval and transformation. The impact of modernization, war, and Japanese colonization have inevitably resulted in nonobjective interpretations by Asian scholars of the political and economic relationships that emerged among the nations of the region. This has been particularly true concerning the problematic relationship between colonial Korea and imperialistic Japan in the modern era. The university established in 1926 by the Japanese Government-General, Keijō Imperial University, was at the heart of modern Korean scholarship and continues to influence Korean academe to this day. There has been little research on the Japanese scholars who taught at the university or details on their work. Throughout this book I focused on understanding these three points: 1) I elucidated the details of the Korean Confucianism studies at Keijō Imperial University, which haven’t been known up until now. 2) I shed new light upon Japanese scholars Takahashi Tōru, Fujitsuka Chikashi, and Abe Yoshio. In this dissertation, I rediscovered those professors’ life, work, activities and their connections with other scholars of East Asia. 3) I examined the development of Korean Confucianism studies by Japanese scholars and I proved their works were an important part of Korean academy in Modern times