PRESERVING THE RUINS OF IDENTITY: COLONIAL ARCHAEOLOGY AND PHOTOGRAPHY IN THE KOREAN PENINSULA

In the past century, archaeological sites have become the most recognized national symbols representing the antiquity, historical continuity, and artistic nature of cultural patrimony and racial identity. This is especially true in Asia, where national governments, local and municipal authorities compete to register their cultural and natural monuments to be included on the prestigious list of UNESCO sanctioned World Heritage Sites. More importantly, archaeological remains have also been targeted for reconstruction and development as major tourist attractions in order to lure both foreign as well as domestic visitors to their heritage destinations. In a conscious attempt to promote a distinctive cultural identity to separate themselves from their neighbors close-by, most national cultural institutions such as tourism boards, museums, and bureaus of cultural properties have lavished their budgets on sites and remains glorifying conquest dynastic founders, generals/heroes who fought battles against foreign invaders as well as architectural and technological achievements. Whether these national narratives of resistance and independence of heroes who saved their nations are real or imagined, these monuments are displayed as irrefutable historical sources of identity for all to see and learn. The standard nationalistic propaganda is that the people with the intervention of these institutions were able preserve their unique racial and cultural heritage «intact» since time immemorial. Hence, their racial, spiritual, and artistic legacy lives on amidst the carefully restored ruins of royal tombs, temples, palaces and fortresses. However, in reality for more than a hundred fifty years since the opening of the treaty ports, the unprecedented pace of urbanization and economic development in East Asia have transformed the formerly mostly agrarian landscape into a dynamic region with the world's largest cities including Tokyo, Seoul, Shanghai, Beijing, Hong Kong, and Taipei. To this day, in any one of these places the forces of industrialization marches on resulting in countless numbers of archaeological, historical sites and remains that have been bulldozed to make way for yet another freeway, high-rise apartment complex, shopping mall, factory, dam, airport, and/or land reclamation project.

Japan was the first country in Asia whose nation building politicians, bureaucrats, and scholars during the mid-Meiji era realized belatedly that wealthy Western collectors, antiquity dealers, and looters were smuggling art objects to meet the high demand for fashionable «Oriental» decorative arts. Meiji administrators were also concerned that such indiscriminate trafficking would also leave the country devoid of any worthy «antiquities» to display at imperial museums and world fairs. Thus, the Japanese search for a modern national identity like their contemporary nineteenth century European counterparts inspired the first systematic art and archaeological surveys of the remains and relics of imperial cultural heritage. The Meiji government's cultural preservations' laws (1872-1907) were designed to prevent the sale and export of antiquities, illegal excavations of imperial tombs, and were accompanied by the building of museums for exhibitions and the registrations of shrines and temples possessions in Nara and Kyoto. The two decades from the 1880's – 1900's leading prior to the annexation of Korea in 1910 also marked a critical phase in Meiji cultural history with the establishment of the academic disciplines of anthropology/archaeology, art history, and history at Tokyo University. Torii Ryuzo, Yagi Sozaburo, Sekino Tadashi, Ito Chuta, and Imanishi Ryu, all Tokyo university graduates represented the first generation of field researchers whose trips to Manchuria, Korea, China, Mongolia, Inner Asia, and Taiwan were facilitated by Japanese military expansion and occupation following their victories in the Sino-Japanese and Russo-Japanese wars.

The field collections they brought back to Japan included prehistorical materials, art objects, and archaeological remains as well as photographs, maps, illustrations, letters, books, and catalogues. Regarded as the earliest «scientifically» recorded research materials, they occupy a central place amongst the vast historical archives on East Asia belonging to Tokyo University 's libraries, former imperial universities and museums, and the Toyo Bunko. Dating to the earliest years of the 1900s-1910's, they constitute invaluable firsthand accounts documenting how fieldwork in the Korean peninsula was initiated by colonial administrators and anthropologists who were searching for ethnographic, archaeological, and artistic evidence of ancient civilizations and advanced races «similar» to that of ancient Japan. Japanese archaeologists relied on Korean archaeological data in their reconstruction of imperial origins because of two main reasons: First, since the promulgation of the 1897 antiquities laws, the Imperial Office (Kunaicho) had restricted access and excavations of imperial burials in Japan. Secondly, by government decree all prehistoric remains and Kofun finds were to be deposited at two instititutions, the Tokyo University Anthropological Laboratory and the Imperial Museums in Tokyo, Kyoto and Nara . The inaccessibility to excavated data or research materials for analysis in Japan contrasted with ample opportunities for surveys and research abroad driving young ambitious archaeologists to the Korean peninsula. As a result, throughout the colonial period, the Chosen Sotokufu funded digs were widely recognized as superior in methodology, excavations technique, and state of the art equipment over that of anything in Japan achieving international acclaim. This paper will take a critical gaze at analyzing the photographs of some of the most famous Three Kingdoms and Silla periods remains (c. 3rd-10th century A.D.) including burial mounds, Buddhist art and architecture published in the annual Chosen Sotokufu excavation reports (CSTF 1918-1937, 1919-1930) and the fifteen volumes of the Albums of Korean Antiquties (CSTF 1915-1935).

The medium of photography played a pivotal role in the Chosen Sotokufu's politically motivated goal of recording, reproducing, and disseminating the images of «Korean/Japanese» imperial artifacts (kokuho) for specialists as well as the general public in Japan. This is because whether they were pottery, bronze weapons and mirrors, or burial forms because of the perceived «objective» nature of excavated materials, they were touted as the «proto-types» that could be used for «cross-dating» kofun remains and burials in Japan. Even now Korea's remains are still preferred as the comparative materials of choice as the more «antiquated» and «authentic» remnants since «sacred» tombs are still not open to researchers. Thus, Japanese archaeologists, past and present have upheld Korea's archaeological and art historical remains as the key “scientific” evidence for the existence of a proto-Japanese conquest race and civilization whose racial/cultural lineage could be traced to the Korean peninsula (Nissen Dosoron). Therefore, the ultimate goal of Korean archaeological studies in the colonial period was to collect, preserve, periodize, photograph, and exhibit art and artifacts that could serve as time-less «symbols» of Japan's imperial identity inscribed into spectacular monuments and relics.

In the post-colonial era, amongst the many Japanese war time atrocities, leading historians in both North and South Korea have condemned the Chosen Sotokufu employed professors, archaeologists and art historians for the plunder of Korean antiquities. Ironically, these nationalistic historians have pointed to the same set of archaeological reports, maps, and art catalogues as the main sources that helped the looters and antiquity dealers identify the best locations to dig for the most desirable and lucrative relics to be sold on the black market. This paper concludes by providing an overview of the ethics and politics of collecting cultural properties involved in the “de-colonizing process.” The topics and issues raised in this work are echoed today in many other continents from the Americas, to Africa, Asia, and Australia where on a daily basis there are court battles, public debates, and staged demonstrations over the return of cultural treasures waged by former individual owners, artisans, religious organizations, indigenous peoples, national governments, and museums.