근대관광을 통해 드러난 일본의 제국주의: 1900년대 이후 일본의 조선관광과 여행안내서를 중심으로

Abstract

This paper is examines tourism as a perspective, based on the presupposition that modern tourist practices are a visualization of imperial desire. The consciousness of Western imperialism encouraged people to distinguish themselves from others geographically and psychologically, and generate interest in the others' culture, so the others' heterogeneous culture became a way to define their identity. In this sense, imperialism was an indispensible, implicit condition for tourism. By providing modern Westerners the experience of 'seeing', tourism met their curiosity for the new and exotic. This imperial consciousness is reproduced through tourist guides, maps, photographs, and descriptions. This study's ultimate objective is to address the question, "How do images derived from tourist activities attract the eyes of tourists?"This paper concretely deals with Japanese tourism. After winning the Sino-Japanese War and Russo-Japanese War, Japan turned from the object to subject in tourist actions. Japan could experience an imperial consciousness and Orientalism through sightseeing in Manchuria and Chosun, which it acquired through conquest. Like Western countries, Japan tried to define the view of tourism in advance, through the production and distribution of many images as well as tourist actions. Japanese tourist guidebooks for Chosun connote an imperial consciousness and a view through Orientalism. Through these, Japan produced two images of Chosun: 'pre-modern' Chosun, and 'Chosun annexed and modernized by Japan'. Maps, one of significant information in travel guidebooks visualized Chosun's topography changed after the emergence of railways. These are not merely to offer information on railways as transportation but to indicate that the advent of geometric, straight railways decontextualized tradition and society. What this study intends to underscore is a modern consciousness triggered by railways, abstraction and decontextualization is closely associated with Japan's imperial desire. This paper first describes a correlation between the traits of modern visualization and modern tourism to prove the above assertion. To do this it investigates the feature of modern visualization that exists as the subject of views, only within a social framework, and modern tourist actions. It also presents these modern tourist actions as associated with imperialist desire through an examination of the development of modern tourism in Japan. Finally, it addresses the repetitive reproduction of imperialistic consciousness and modern visualization through images and writing in tourist guidebooks.