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The Chosŏn Korea government preserved maps of the three ports in Kyŏngsang Province opened to Japanese presence and trade. Those images show the structures where Japanese residents lived and the Waegwan, or Japan House, where visiting envoys, traders, and ship crew stayed while in the open ports. Significantly, the Korean official who compiled these three maps also marked civil and military administration head-quarters that were in or near the ports. He placed Japanese presence under the gaze of county magistrates and military officials. This composition reflected the state’s em-bedding of Japanese presence in military defense zones.

During the Edo period in Japan, the Emperor held authority in Kyoto, but the Shogun held power in Edo. This paper considers how the government of Chosŏn Korea responded to this situation by examining the roles of clothing in the 1682 Com-munication Embassy to Japan. Close examination of both literary and visual sources reveals that before entering the emperor’s capital of Kyoto, the Envoy and other Korean officials of high-ranking posts changed into formal clothing for entering the capital. Wearing formal clothing as a sign of respect, they displayed courtesy to the Emperor, and thus expressed propriety as foreign envoys. The formal clothing of the Envoy and the Vice Envoy were prepared by the Bureau of Wardrobe, which also demonstrates that the Korean government expressed goodwill through clothing and that the King of Chosŏn and his officials took propriety seriously.

The Chosŏn-era Korean embassies to Tokugawa Japan have been under scholarly scrutiny since 1894, but researchers are still probing their cultural, economic, and political impacts, because much is not yet clear. The memorabilia left in the wake of the embassies (scrolls, poetry collections, paintings, festivals) have been largely uncovered, catalogued, and are being analyzed for what they can tell us about elite and popular images of Koreans in Tokugawa Japan. The article introduces an unknown scroll in the possession of the British Museum. The scroll depicts the 1748 Korean Embassy to Edo and possesses unusual amounts of information. Nearly all officials, not just the three envoys, are identified by name and office. The end of the scroll includes three state documents (two from Korea to Japan and one reply) with lists of gifts from the Korean King to the Japanese shōgun and gifts from the envoys to the Japanese shōgun. There is also information on return gifts to Korean officials, a musical program, an equestrian program, and further biographical details on the three envoys and high officials. All of the information is prefaced with a list of past embassies.

This article sheds light on the immigration of Japanese wives of resident Koreans (zainichi Koreans) to North Korea through the so-called “repatriation program” carried out from 1959 to 1984. The history of the mass repatriation of resident Koreans from Japan to North Korea is beginning to be unearthed, but stories of Japanese spouses who moved to North Korea with their Korean families have remained largely untold. This article attempts to break the silence of Japanese wives that looms large in historical narratives on the Korean diaspora in Japan by drawing on their voices that appeared in newspapers and organ papers during the repatriation program and after its conclusion.

For the past three decades Japan’s conservative contingent has endeavored to rescue Japanese history from those who insist that Japan’s national narrative retain its more shameful elements. Arguments put forth by its supporters have surfaced in numerous monographs, textbooks, and other media outlets. This paper examines a similar effort that exploits the Internet, and specifically You Tube, as a medium of instruction designed to influence Japanese historical memory. It focuses on reinterpretations of Japan’s 1910 annexation of the Korean peninsula, and particularly a diatribe delivered by a business-man, Murata Haruki, in front of a government ministry building. His argument re-sembles other similar efforts seeking to script a “normal” national narrative that instills national pride, rather than national shame, among the Japanese people. Japan intended to annex, rather than colonize, the Korean peninsula; Japanese considered and treated the Korean people as their equal, rather than as their inferior. Pressure from Japan’s colonial and wartime-era victims has driven conservatives like Murata to explain a history that “normal countries”—victors in the Second World War—simply neglect. The national sentiment that conservatives like Murata seek to instill within their viewers strains inter-relations among Northeast Asian states at a time of increased discussion on building more intimate community relations in the region.