중국 고고학 성립기 일본인의 중국 조사

Abstract

Archaeological investigations by Japanese researchers into the Chinese region began in the late 19th century and continued until shortly before Japan’s defeat in the 1940s. During this period, archaeological investigations including the excavation of many ruins were conducted. This aspect was common in many regions of East Asia during the period of Japanese imperialism. There were different purposes between Japan’s archaeological investigations in Taiwan as a basic survey for Japan’s colonial rule and Japan’s archaeological investigations in colonial Joseon as the source of supplemental data for explaining Japan’s prehistoric and ancient times. However, both were possible because they were conducted as exclusive investigations by Japanese researchers. However, unlike colonial Joseon or Taiwan, China was not a colony of Japan, and in addition to the surveys by Japanese researchers, other investigations were underway by Europeans or China’s independent academic institutions such as the Central Research Institute. In this process, Japan attempted a joint investigation with Peking University as a means to seize hegemony in East Asian archaeology, but investigations in the Jungwon Region did not materialize for reasons such as internal problems in the Chinese archaeological community and anti-Japanese sentiments. Eventually, they were inevitably confined to investigations into Manchuria and the Liaodong region that had been occupied by Japan, and these investigations was conducted only by Japanese people. In this process, Chinese archaeology, which was growing into modern studies of the time, was greatly influenced by European archeology, whereas the influence of Japanese archaeology was not very pronounced. However, within Japanese archaeology, the results of investigations into the Chinese region were highly important and became an ultimate target of Japanese archaeology named “East Asian archeology.” As this shows, the results of surveys on the East Asian region by Japanese people during the age of Japanese imperialism were not necessarily connected to this region’s academic development. For example, although the results of Japanese people’s research on northeastern China had no significant impact on the academic establishment of Chinese archaeology, the fact that this research became a foundation for the advancement of Japanese archaeology is likely a characteristic of Japanese imperialism-oriented archaeology.