Japanese Pioneers of Geographical Studies on Korea Before and After Colonial Period Narrated by HIGUCHI Setsuo

Japanese urban and commercial ex-geographer, HIGUCHI Setsuo (1924-2021), was educated at Ritsumeikan University and served for 21 years as a high school teacher in Kyoto City. He was subsequently employed as a full-time teacher at five universities including his alma mater, Osaka University of Education. He specialized in urban and commercial geography, however, his interest in rice persisted since his boyhood because his father operated a rice dealership in Takatsuki Town, an Osaka suburb. A large quantity of Korean rice flowed into the Kansai area (Osaka-Kobe-Kyoto) before World War II to compensate for shortages of domestic rice. In such a context, the latter part of Higuchi’s research attended to the distribution of Korean rice, periodical markets in South Korea, and regional investigation of Jeju Island. This scholarly note is based on Higuchi’s self-narrated history of his long research career, which was recorded by the Japan Science Promotion Society in 2003. This paper utilizes old and important books and reports, Higuchi’s academic exchanges, and his field surveys in South Korea in the 1970s and 1980s to examine his reflections on some senior Korean geographers and rice distribution related research