69 - Colonialism, translation, literature: Takahama Kyoshi’s passage to Korea

Summary

In 1911, the writer Takahama Kyoshi serialized an account of his travels to Korea in Osaka Daily Newspaper and Tokyo Daily. The story is a fictionalization of his own experience of traveling to Korea twice in the same year. He feels sympathetic toward Koreans as a colonized people, yet at the same time he cannot help but feel proud to be a member of the Japanese nation. Despite his identification with Japan, the narrator sympathizes with his Korean translator Hong Wonson and with the kisaeng Sodam when he locates a sliver of contempt for the Japanese in their smiles. Language strictly differentiated the colonizer from the colonized, and Japanese was privileged as the colonizer's language. Although the narrator respects Hong for his excellent command of Japanese, at times he feels uncertain about whether Hong faithfully translates for him. Finding himself at the mercy of the translator, the narrator is acutely aware of his limitations in communicating with the colonized.