Empire and the Higher Education in East Asia

Organizer: SAKAI Tetsuya, Visiting Professor

　This project aims at analyzing the institutions, functions and legacies of higher education in the Japanese Empire with special attention to the context of modern East Asian history. There are few, if any, previous studies in this field. One exceptional case is Umakoshi Toru’s study “Kankoku Kindai Daigaku no Seiritsu to Tenkai” (The Establishment and Development of Modern Korean Universities) (Nagoya Daigaku Shuppankai, 1995). Although Umakoshi analyzed Keijo Imperial University as a typical example of a Japanese colonial university in comparison with the idea of establishing a Korean People’s University under Japanese imperial rule, there still remain several unsolved problems. The political, social and cultural functions of the Japanese colonial universities should be further investigated. Another exceptional case is the series by Iwanami Koza “Teikoku Nihon no Gakuchi” (Academic Discourses in Imperial Japan) (Iwanami Shoten, 2006). While that series covers the wider contexts of knowledge and institutions in Imperial Japan, it does not focus on colonial higher education. This project, therefore, can be said to be the first interdisciplinary research project on higher education in the Japanese Empire.
　This project is composed of the following three parts. Part I reconsiders the institutions and principles of Japanese colonial higher education compared with cases from western empires. Part II analyzes the functions of colonial higher education as part of the structure of Japanese imperial rule. Part III discusses the legacy of colonial higher education in Korea and Taiwan after the end of World War II.