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Objects of Desire: Japanese Collectors and Colonial Korea

Objects of Desire: Japanese Collectors and Colonial Korea positions 8:3 Winter 2000 that the appreciation of ceramics “begins with Yi dynasty and ends with Yi dynasty.”1 There is a faint but unmistakably colonialist air that attaches to the fetish of Yi dynasty wares in Japan. It seems to exhale from the very name Yi dynasty, a slightly archaic term referring to the rule by the royal Yi house of the immensely long period from 1392 to 1910. Koreans and most scholars of Korea today—in Japan as elsewhere—call the period by its formal, rather neutral realm name, Choson. Perhaps it is relevant here that Choson, unlike ˘ ˘ Yi dynasty, was the name by which the Korean regime chose to be known while it was in power; only after the Yi monarchy lost its authority, with the advent of Japanese colonial rule (1910–1945), did the external, yet oddly familiar and informal perspective implied by “Yi dynasty” gain general currency. In any event, the term persists in Japan, especially in reference to the categories of Korean art and crafts that became increasingly popular during the 1920s and 1930s and that remain salient among collectors and others today.2 Yet the relation between Japanese colonial power in Korea and the http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png positions asia critique Duke University Press

Objects of Desire: Japanese Collectors and Colonial Korea

Brandt, Kim
positions asia critique , Volume 8 (3) – Dec 1, 2000
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Publisher
Duke University Press
Copyright
Copyright 2000 by Duke University Press
ISSN
1067-9847
eISSN
1527-8271
DOI
10.1215/10679847-8-3-711
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

positions 8:3 Winter 2000 that the appreciation of ceramics “begins with Yi dynasty and ends with Yi dynasty.”1 There is a faint but unmistakably colonialist air that attaches to the fetish of Yi dynasty wares in Japan. It seems to exhale from the very name Yi dynasty, a slightly archaic term referring to the rule by the royal Yi house of the immensely long period from 1392 to 1910. Koreans and most scholars of Korea today—in Japan as elsewhere—call the period by its formal, rather neutral realm name, Choson. Perhaps it is relevant here that Choson, unlike ˘ ˘ Yi dynasty, was the name by which the Korean regime chose to be known while it was in power; only after the Yi monarchy lost its authority, with the advent of Japanese colonial rule (1910–1945), did the external, yet oddly familiar and informal perspective implied by “Yi dynasty” gain general currency. In any event, the term persists in Japan, especially in reference to the categories of Korean art and crafts that became increasingly popular during the 1920s and 1930s and that remain salient among collectors and others today.2 Yet the relation between Japanese colonial power in Korea and the

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positions asia critique – Duke University Press

Published: Dec 1, 2000

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