일본 석탄 연구사의 현황과 과제

Abstract

Modern Japan’s economic development has been based on its coal industry, and its importance in modern Japanese history cannot be overemphasized. Likewise, coal research history concerns itself with the relationship between the nation and industry, especially that of the nation’s intervention in the industry, including management and control, and its ties with business, labor, welfare, and a wide range of research areas such as local history. All these aspects can have great implications for the research history. This paper examines the current status and tasks of coal research history in Japan. To clearly examine the nation’s involvement in the natural resource, we will classify each event according to a time series and examine the current status of research history, with a focus on the times and the nation’s intervention. The events in the time series first look at the research status of mining history in the late modern and early Meiji periods, then research on coal during the Asian-Pacific War, followed by that of the period of occupation and high economic growth, and last, mines as cultural heritage and tourism resources. The data is then divided into private research and reviewing the current status of the research, by which the correlation between the nation’s intervention and all processes of the coal industry, including its entry, development, and exit, can be examined. Finally, the paper suggests further research in the methods of remembering and documenting the lives of the female workers and the Korean workers who are fairly invisible in existing research in coal research history and whose traces cannot be found easily.