<論説>戦時下朝鮮における日本語普及政策

Abstract

一九三〇年代後半、朝鮮総督府は朝鮮人を「皇国臣民」につくりかえることで長期的な植民地統治の安定を図ろうとする積極的な政策転換(「皇民化」政策) を行った。その焦点の一つとなったのは「国語」としての日本語の普及であった。四二年五月に二年後の徴兵導入が決定されると、朝鮮人への速やかな日本語の普及は喫緊の課題となり、植民地当局は日本語普及運動を展開した。本稿ではその過程や、そこで行われた言説を新聞記事などから検討する。この運動の中で講習会が多数組織され、従来教育の場には見られなかった女性の参加が見られた。新聞も日本語教材としての役割を果たした。朝鮮人の「自発性」が動員され、「国語熱」と称される状況が形成された。しかし、四四年の朝鮮入徴兵実施が近づくとともに植民地当局が朝鮮人に求める日本語の理解水準はむしろ高まり、また戦況の悪化にともなって朝鮮人の抵抗は日本語常用成績の悪化という形で示されることになる。このような状況下、日本語の普及は強制性をあらわにしていく。

In the late 1930s, Minami Jiro, the Governor-General of Korea, attempted a drastic change in colonial policy. The new policies were designed to remake the Korean people into loyal subjects of Imperial Japan and to stabilize Japanese colonial rule for the long term. Today, these policies are known as the "imperializing" phase of Japanese colonial policy. Japanese language dissemination was a major task in the "imperialization" of the Korean people because the Japanese language as "kokugo" (the national language) was believed to be an essential factor in becoming Japanese. During the late 1930s, the Government-General of Korea estimated that it would be possible to include Korean soldiers in the Japanese "imperial army" by around the year 1960 through the expansion of basic education. However, in May 1942, the Japanese Cabinet decided to extend the military-draft system to Koreans beginning two years hence. Thus, Japanese language dissemination became an urgent issue, both in practice and in principle. The Government-General expanded the movement to teach the Korean people, especially young men, the Japanese language. Newspapers included daily reports about Japanese lectures and the efforts of Korean students. Frequently, the students portrayed were women who had previously been excluded from any educational opportunities. These articles recounted how Korean women were studying Japanese with enthusiasm. It must, however, be noted that there were many pressures that caused Korean students to struggle to learn Japanese, such as the disadvantage of not speaking Japanese, particularly in official interactions, and worries about miscommunication with their children, who used only Japanese in school. The Mae-il Sinbo 毎日新報, the only newspaper published in Korean after 1940, is recognized as a direct organ of the Japanese Government-General. This newspaper sought to both disseminate information and provide Japanese language learning materials to its Korean readers. The Mae-il Sinbo had certain pages written in elementary Japanese with such items as scripts of basic Japanese conversations, essays about Japanese traditions, and reports about the campaign on the home front. In addition, the Mae-il Sinbo published Japanese compositions solicited from Korean readers. The Government-General tried to encourage and mobilize the Korean people's initiative. In official discourse, Korea was not a "colony", and Korean people wanted to become loyal "imperial subjects." Colonial officials claimed that there was neither the "extermination" of the Korean language nor the "enforcement" of Japanese. For the colonial authorities the ideal image was that the Korean people had chosen the Japanese language and abandoned Korean language of "their own free will." After the late 1930s, Korean people were considered "imperial subjects" by the Japanese only if they studied the Japanese language. Even so, Japanese colonialists became distrustful of the loyalty of Koreans as the institution of the military draft approached in 1944. Japanese authorities believed that loyal subjects should understand the Japanese language, and have mastered correct pronunciation, accent and spelling because Japanese was the language of the Emperor, and the Japanese national spirit could be understood only through the Japanese language. When the Japanese military was defeated and came under pressure, resistance appeared in the form of refusal to use Japanese. Against this increasing resistance, the use of repressive force by Japanese colonial authorities to make Koreans learn and use Japanese became more conspicuous. During the last year of colonial rule in Korean, available resources had been seriously depleted. Japanese lecture classes encountered difficultly getting lamp oil and newspapers had to reduce their number of pages. In February 1945, Mae-il Sinbo ceased to Publish the Japanese language page because of the need to use limited resources more efficiently. The Mae-il Sinbo Company instead began to publish a new weekly Korean-language newspaper that was designed to inform Koreans of official policies. Throughout the late 1930s and early 1940s, Japanese colonial authorities wrestled ever more intensively with the issue of the two meanings for teaching Koreans the Japanese language. Ideally, the Japanese language would be the correct kokugo necessary to make Koreans into loyal imperial subjects, but in reality the Japanese language had to be a means of communications capable of making them into useful soldiers and laborers. We see how contradictory and unstable both of these practices were in colonial Korea. In the end, use of Japanese language in the "official newspaper" was abandoned in the final year of Japanese colonization of Korea. This symbolizes the end of the Japanese colonialist's dream of constructing an eternal empire.