The Development of Modern Korean Confucian Studies at Keijō Imperial University

This dissertation clarifies the history of modern academism between Japan and Korea from the view point 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 has 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 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 the Korean academy in Modern times.