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Treacherous Translation Culture, Nationalism, and Colonialism in Korea and Japan from the 1910s to the 1960s
serk-bae suh
Global, Area, and International Archive
University of California Press
berkeley los angeles london
Acknowledgments ix
Preface xiii
introduction 1
Translation and the Colonial Desire for Transparency
1. translation and the community of love 18
Hosoi Hajime and Translating Korea
2. treacherous translation 46
The 1938 Japanese-Language Theatrical Version of the Korean tale Ch’unhyangjŏn
3. the location of “korean” culture 71
Ch’oe Chaesŏ and Korean Literature in a Time of Transition
4. translation and its postcolonial discontents 104
The Postwar Controversy over Tōma Seita’s Reading of Kim Soun’s Japanese Translations of Korean Poetry
5. toward a monolingual society 135
South Korean Linguistic Nationalism and Kim Suyŏng’s Resistance to Monolingualism
Notes 161
Bibliography 199
Index 211
Contents
46
As the war with China dragged on following Japan’s initial military suc- cesses in 1937, the Japanese colonial authority stepped up the total mo – bilization of colonial Korea for the war e}ort. The importance of Korea came to be spotlighted because of the large size of its population and its geographical proximity to China and Manchuria. Consequently, interest in Korea and the Asian continent grew in Japan. Modern Korean litera- ture for the first time drew substantial attention from the Japanese liter- ary establishment. Quite a few Japanese literary luminaries, including Yasuda Yojūrō, Hayashi Fusao, and Kobayashi Hideo, went to Korea on their way to Manchuria and met writers and poets in the Japanese colony and the occupied territories. Korean literature of the day, including short stories and poetry, also came to be translated into Japanese. The bulk of Korean-language literary works, however, remained unknown in Japan. It was in that context that the Japanese-language theatrical play based on a traditional Korean story Ch’unhyangjŏn (The Tale of Spring Fragrance)1 was staged at the Tsukiji Theater in Tokyo in early 1938 and later that year was performed in Japanese in Korea as well.
This chapter examines the 1938 staging of Ch’unhyangjŏn, a love story derived from a Korean folktale, and the ensuing controversy. In particular, the staging of the play in Korea provoked heated debate over the issue of translation. As part of the controversy, Korean and Japanese intellectuals tackled such issues as colonialism, nationalism, and culture. I use this concrete historical case to criticize the very influential view that the ideal model of translation is an equal exchange between two lan- guages. I argue that such a view was inscribed both in the logic that the colonizers used to justify the colonial translation and in the thinking of the colonized who resisted it. In other words, I focus my criticism on the
2. Treacherous Translation The 1938 Japanese-Language Theatrical Version of the Korean Tale Ch’unhyangjŏn
Treacherous Translation / 47
view of translation as equal exchange. To achieve this goal, I employ the arguments of Karl Marx, who astutely critiqued symmetrical reciproc- ity in equal exchange, and those of Emmanuel Levinas, who stringently insisted on the asymmetry of the ethical relationship between the self and the other. I read Marx through Levinas to reveal the ethical aspect of Marx’s political economy and Levinas through Marx to explicate the implications of Levinas’s ethics for radical politics in order to criticize the idea of equal exchange based on reciprocity, which is not only inherent in the conventional view of translation but also prevalent in the colonizer’s justification for colonial dominance.2
translation and colonial discourse
As Naoki Sakai has argued, translation can reify boundaries between two languages by leading to the assumption that each language is exter- nally independent and internally unified.3 If one person were to encoun- ter another who is speaking a language absolutely foreign to him, that person cannot even tell whether the verbal sounds the other is making are semantically and syntactically comprehensible verbal expressions or merely a series of idiosyncratic exclamations incomprehensible to any- one else or even imitations of animal sounds. If, say, a second stranger approached the person and informed him that the sounds in question belong to, say, a local version of the Zoque language spoken by a hand- ful of people in Ayapan, Tabasco, Mexico, and she happens to be one of the very few outsiders who have learned the language and that she is willing to translate what the man is saying.4 Only after she o}ers her account of what language the man is speaking and serves as an inter- mediary with him in dialogue do the incomprehensible sounds coming out of the man’s mouth register as a language, one identified as a dialect of the Zoque language. The first person cannot even begin to locate the boundaries between the man’s language and his own until the translator steps in and represents him in language. A hypothetical situation like this one, which appears unlikely to occur, however, shows the way in which translation makes it possible to schematize the di}erence between incomprehensibility and comprehensibility in language as boundaries between languages. In other words, only after the initial absolute for- eignness of what the man is enunciating is tamed through translation as the relative foreignness of language is it possible to envision boundaries between known and unknown languages. Furthermore, once boundaries between the two languages are demarcated, the foreign language can be
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imagined as internally homogeneous and externally autonomous equal to other known languages. Put di}erently, although it is often taken as a given that human language is divided into di}erent languages with clearly demarcated boundaries, the idea of language split into such sepa- rable, and thus countable, units as Russian, English, Korean, and so on cannot make much sense unless linguistic boundaries are schematized through translation.
By forcing attention to the di}erences between languages, translation in the conventional sense thus reifies the autonomous, homogeneous language communities the di}erences between which it is intended to bridge. Such reification tends to position the two language communi- ties on the same plane. In other words, the assumption that there exist internally unified and externally independent languages leads to a sec- ond assumption, that there exists an equal relationship between the lan- guages and communities associated with those languages. Translation from that perspective is nothing less than reciprocal exchange between two languages and language communities. The ideal translation in this sense, as George Steiner claimed in After Babel, is exchange without loss of meaning or aesthetic value.5
However, as Tejaswini Niranjana has argued, the idea of translation as equal exchange tends to be oblivious to, and thus becomes complicit with, the hegemonic domination inscribed in the very process of transla- tion. She asserts that Steiner’s view of the ideal translation as exchange without loss is not only futile but also treacherous in the colonial context because it masks the unequal power relationship that sets the condi- tions for colonial translation. Whereas Niranjana focuses her criticism of colonial translation on the problems concerning the representation of the colonized and their culture by a process of translation that is always permeated by unequal power relationships, I call attention to the homol- ogy between translation and colonial discourse.6 As briefly mentioned in the preface, both translation and colonial discourse are simultaneously based on the di}erence between the colonized and the colonizer and intended to overcome it. Even though Steiner urged translators to try to reach the ideal of exchange without loss, he nonetheless admitted that it cannot be realized. The ideal cannot be reached because of the inerasable di}erence between languages, just as the abolition of colonial discrimi- nation cannot be achieved because of the unyielding di}erence between the colonized and colonizer in colonial discourse.
As Homi Bhabha has argued, the denial of di}erence between the colonizer and the colonized coexists and works together with the
Treacherous Translation / 49
acknowledgement of that same di}erence to perpetuate colonial domina- tion.7 As a consequence, colonial discourse is haunted by the ambivalence that results from the simultaneous recognition and denial of di}erence between the colonized and the colonizer. My acknowledgment of this simultaneous denial and recognition of di}erence is not, however, simply a reiteration of the criticism of the Manichean opposition between the colonized and the colonizer, overdosing on the notion of ambivalence in colonial discourse that Bhabha valorized as subversive disruption of colo- nial domination. In other words, my argument is not to slavishly follow an abstruse theory abstracted from the experience of European coloniza- tion. As Oguma Eiji has documented well by drawing on scholarly writ- ings, newspaper and journal articles, and memoirs by Japanese people about the Japanese colonies, Japanese colonial discourse also oscillated between the acknowledgement and disavowal of the di}erence between the Koreans and the Japanese.8
As slogans like “harmony between Japan and Korea” (nissen yūwa) and “Japan– Korea as one body” (naisen ittai) imply, Japanese colonial assimi- lation (dōka) policy was theoretically directed at the amalgamation of Koreans and Japanese, but in practice, it entailed unilaterally forcing Koreans to “become” Japanese. Enforcement of the assimilation policy intensified after the beginning of the Sino-Japanese War in 1937. As men- tioned above, the Japanese state needed to secure support from Koreans for its war e}ort because of Korea’s geographical proximity to China and Manchuria and its large population.9 The assimilation policy, how- ever, could not eradicate the di}erences between Koreans and Japanese. According to its logic, discrimination could come to an end only when all di}erences between the colonized and colonizer disappeared. Existing di}erences between the colonized and the colonizer served to legitimize discriminatory practices.
The unreachable promise of erasing di}erence between the colonized and colonizers is ubiquitous in colonial discourse. Colonial domination relies on the di}erence between the colonized and the colonizer, which in turn serves to justify the colonial hierarchy and discriminatory prac- tices. Simultaneously, however, colonial discourse asserts that the dif- ference between the colonized and the colonizer will disappear in the future, along with discrimination, when the colonized finally succeed in becoming assimilated into the colonizer. But the erasure of di}erence is delayed forever. Accordingly, colonial discourse is plagued by ambiva- lence because it oscillates between the colonial practice of fixating the identity of the colonized on their di}erence from the colonizer and the
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gesture of eradicating the di}erence, which justifies colonial discrimina- tion. In short, colonial discourse depends on the dual operation of empha- sizing and denying the di}erence between the colonized and the colo- nizer. On that point, colonial discourse and translation are homologous. Translation recognizes di}erences between languages and cultures and simultaneously intends to bridge them. Colonial discourse thus operates homologously with translation as understood conventionally.
The place of equal exchange in the conventional definition of transla- tion is also homologous with the strategy of colonial discourse, which never fails to render the relationship between the colonizer and the colo- nized as something reciprocal and beneficial to both. Colonial discourse never stops describing pairs placed in lopsided power relations as sym- metrically reciprocal. It portrays the colonial relationship as reciprocity by insisting that colonial development benefits the colonized and by disregarding the violence and injustice on which economic and social development under colonial rule rests. It works to convince the colonized that colonial violence, injustice, and discrimination are somehow bear- able in exchange for the virtues of a modern market economy and the social institutions that colonial power introduces. The dignity, justice, and autonomy of the colonized are (de)valued to the point they can be traded for the colonizers’ investment in modern infrastructure and the introduction of capitalism.
For example, there have been numerous scholarly and nonscholarly arguments made that Japanese colonial rule significantly advanced the economy in Korea. One of the most memorable instances of such an argument was a statement made by Kubota Kan’ichirō, the chief Japanese delegate at the diplomatic talks between Japan and South Korea in 1953. Kubota told his Korean counterparts that the contributions made by Japan to the economic development of Korea during the colonial period cancelled out any demand from the South Korean government for com- pensation for Japan’s colonization of Korea.10 In other words, what colo- nial discourse continues propagating, even in the postcolonial era, is that colonial domination o}ered equal exchange between the colonizers and the colonized! As Marx pointed out, it is not two parties equal in eco- nomical, political, or cultural power that establish equal exchange. On the contrary, it is the equivalents in the act of exchange that posit the two parties as equal to each other.11 Thus, what should be problematized is the insistence on symmetrical reciprocity in colonialism and equal exchange and not the impossibility of symmetrical reciprocity or the unattainabil- ity of exchange without loss in translation.
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Marx o}ered a sharp critique of the presumption of symmetrical reci- procity.12 In Grundrisse, he pointed out that circulation of exchange values relates to the two most important ideological concepts of bourgeois soci- ety, freedom and equality based on symmetrical reciprocity.13 Put simply, the parties to an exchange come of their own volition into a relationship of exchange on equal terms because it is assumed that the relationship is beneficial to both of them. Deriding French socialists of his day who regarded exchange and exchange value as “a system of universal freedom and equality” and blamed capital for disrupting equal exchange, Marx argued that the emergence of capital in the development of the system of exchange is “merely the realization of equality and freedom, which prove to be inequality and unfreedom.”14 Marx cogently suggested that it is pointless to privilege exchange and exchange value as the source of equality and freedom over capital because exchange value will inevitably turn into capital, whereas labor for production will develop into wage labor.15 Thus he criticized the bourgeois ideology of equality and freedom premised on symmetrical reciprocity in equal exchange for operating in agreement with the inequality and unfreedom inherent in the relation- ship between capital and wage labor.
As is well known, in his Critique of the Gotha Programme, Marx clari- fied his criticism of symmetrical reciprocity in exchange by proposing his famous dictum, “from each according to his ability to each according to his need.”16 What one takes is not to be determined by what one gives but rather by what one needs. For Marx, justice is not served by sym- metrical reciprocity mediating equal exchange on which the bourgeois ideas of freedom and equality rest. Rather, justice can be achieved only when such symmetrical reciprocity is liquidated in favor of unlimited care for the demands of others. This in turn establishes an inevitably asymmetrical relationship between the self and others. Certainly it is an ethical imperative that obliges one to give up symmetrical reciproc- ity and give in to the demands of others who need more than they can provide one in the relationship.
The ethicality of Marx’s critique of symmetrical reciprocity comes into clearer view when read side by side with Levinas on the responsibil- ity of the self for the other. In conversation with Philippe Nemo, Levinas argued that “the intersubjective relation is a non-symmetrical relation. In this sense, I am responsible for the other without waiting for reciprocity, were I to die for it. Reciprocity is his a}air.”17 Levinas thus insisted on the self ’s unceasing concern for the other, even while realizing that the other cannot be reduced to an object that can be appropriated by the self
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for its own interests. In contrast to the ethical relationship of asymmetry, symmetrical reciprocity presumes that the other and the self are equal to each other in the relationship and thus interchangeable. It presupposes that the other is the same as the self and thus denies the singularity of the other as well as of the self.
In other words, an individual is put into an unceasing cycle of equal exchange with others in which that individual tries to maximize his or her benefit in symmetrical reciprocity based on the assumption that the others are also trying to get the most out of exchange. As a consequence, symmetrical reciprocity does not allow for the absolute otherness of the other. Put di}erently, equal exchange based on symmetrical reciproc- ity pivots on the cunning calculation that one does to benefit from the relationship in proportion to what one contributes to it. This symmetri- cal reciprocity does not take into account the unlimited responsibility imposed on the self toward the other. According to Levinas, such a situ- ation is unethical.
Special importance is accorded to language in Levinas’s ethics. Throughout his two most important works, Totality and Infinity and Other wise Than Being,18 Levinas hinted that language is itself the rela- tionship with the other, who is foreign to the self. The essence of lan- guage is not the transmission of ideas between interlocutors but is instead what indicates “the irreversibility of the relationship between me and the other.”19 It is worth repeating in a discussion on the ethicality of language that, in Otherwise Than Being, Levinas made a distinction between the two aspects of language, what he called the saying and the said. As discussed in some detail in the preface, the said refers to the content, idea, and theme of discourse.20 On the other hand, saying describes the event in which the self is summoned to approach the other in discourse.21 Although Levinas admitted that the saying can be manifested only in the said, he clearly prioritized the former over the latter because it is the very condition of possibility of discourse as an ethical relationship. The self ’s freedom is constrained in language by the other. The self is helplessly exposed to misunderstanding and the refusal of understanding by the other, which it cannot control.22 Despite the uncertainty presented by the saying, the self is responsible for engaging in dialogue with the other. Thus language is ethical practice in the relationship with the other. As I will discuss below, this essence of language as ethical is what I intend to emphasize in dealing with the problem of translation, which surfaced in the controversy over the Japanese-language version of the popular Korean romance Ch’unhyangjŏn staged by the Japanese theatrical company Shinkyō in 1938.
Treacherous Translation / 53
ambivalent text and treacherous translation Ch’unhyangjŏn is believed to have been first developed as p’ansori tradi- tional one-man opera and later transcribed into written form. The oldest extant text of Ch’unhyangjŏn is a classical Chinese verse, seven charac- ters per line, written by Yu Chinhan in 1754, reportedly after listening to a p’ansori performance of the story.23 Although the text has been pre- sented in numerous versions, its main storyline can be summarized as a love story between Ch’unhyang, the daughter of a kisaeng (courtesan), and Mongnyong, the son of the local magistrate in a southwestern city called Namwŏn during the Chosŏn period. They fall in love and secretly marry despite the di}erence in their social positions. Fate separates them when the hero’s father is transferred to a new position in the capital. The new local magistrate, Pyŏn Hakto, is enthralled by Ch’unhyang’s beauty and tries to make her his concubine, but she refuses out of loyalty to her husband and endures harassment and even torture and imprisonment at Pyŏn’s hands. Meanwhile Mongnyong, having passed the civil service examination and taken the post of the king’s secret inspector, returns to Namwŏn to save Ch’unhyang, and the story ends happily.
Ch’unhyangjŏn’s popularity grew during the colonial period.24 From the mid-1930s on, theatrical performances of the story were increasingly frequent on the stage in Korea.25 Thus it was not surprising when the Tōkyō Haksaengyesuljwa (Tokyo Students’ Art Theater), a Korean stu- dent theatrical company based in Tokyo, staged the Korean dramatist Yu Ch’ijin’s Korean-language play of the story in Tokyo in 1937.26 After seeing it, the playwright and director Murayama Tomoyoshi (1901– 1977) was im pressed by the story and decided to stage his own theatrical version in Japanese.27 Murayama was one of the leading figures in the Puro re taria Engekidōmei (Japan Proletarian Theater League). In 1934, Murayama had proposed the consolidation of various leftist theatrical companies that had been weakened under the government pressure into one progressive theatrical company, and that year he founded Shinkyō Gekidan (Shinkyō Theatrical Company). Until it was closed by the gov- ernment in 1940, Shinkyō continued to stage realistic plays with social agendas and consequently maintained its reputation as the premier leftist theater company in Japan.28
In an article published in the journal Chōsen oyobi Manshū (Korea and Manchuria) just before his play was first staged in Japan in 1938, Murayama explained why he chose to stage a Japanese-language version of the story.29 First, Murayama wanted to present Korean culture to the
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Japanese people as what he regarded as one of the maternal bodies (botai) of Japanese culture. Second, he specifically selected Ch’unhyangjŏn from among Korean literary works because it was the most popular and thus most representative literary creation of Korea. Third, he hoped to enter- tain Koreans living and working in Japan and expected many of them to see the play. He claimed that because the story contained the soul of Korea, he would attempt to depict the Koreanness (Chōsenteki na mono) of the story as precisely as possible.30
Murayama asked the writer Chang Hyŏkchu to write a Japanese- language script.31 There were good reasons why Murayama chose Chang. First of all, Chang was familiar with the story because he was also plan- ning to stage Ch’unhyangjŏn in cooperation with novelist Yuasa Katsue, although the project stalled and did not come to fruition.32 Furthermore, Chang was the most famous Korean writer in Japan who worked in the Japanese language in the 1930s. He made his literary debut in Japan when his novella Gakidō (The Path of Hungry Ghosts) won second place in the Kaizō literary award competition of 1932. The story described the hard- ships faced by Korean peasants under the Japanese rule. The Akutagawa literary award had not yet been founded, so at the time the Kaizō award was a rare and competitive venue for newcomers to gain access to the literary establishment.33
Chang studied various versions of the story, including a changgŭk (Korean opera) version.34 From the beginning, however, he emphasized that the script would be his own and not merely a translation of some existing text.35 After finishing his script, he published it in March 1938 in the Japanese literary journal Shinchō (New Tide).36 Murayama felt that Chang’s script lacked dramatic tension and made his own revisions with the help of Yu Ch’ijin, whose Korean-language play he had originally been inspired by.37 It is interesting to note that Murayama also took the liberty of introducing elements of kabuki, long promoted as one of the most Japanese forms of stage art, into the play even though he had pledged that he would present the Koreanness of the story as faith- fully as possible.38 He also experimented with cross-gender casting in the play, probably following Kabuki practice in which male actors play female roles. However, Murayama reversed the conventions of kabuki by casting a female actor for the role of the hero. Actress Akagi Ranko was cast as the hero Yi Mongnyong, and Ichikawa Haruyo, a movie star of the Nikkatsu studio, as the heroine Ch’unhyang.39 Other male roles were played by male actors. Incorporating elements of kabuki was an impor- tant innovation, Murayama explained, which opened up new possibilities
Treacherous Translation / 55
for modern theater.40 His decision provoked controversy: One reviewer argued that kabuki-style acting infused into the play made it dicult to locate “Koreanness,” and another regarded it as a symptom of the com- mercialization of the Shinkyō theatrical company.41
Nonetheless, reviews of Murayama’s staging of Chang’s play were mostly favorable, but for varying reasons. Both the government and critics of the government appreciated the success of the play for utterly di}erent reasons. For example, Hirata Isao, the thought prosecutor noto- rious for his role in the tenkō (ideological conversion) of the Communist Party leaders Sano Manabu and Nabeyama Sadachika, wrote a review in the magazine Teatoro (Theater) reflecting the essence of the government response. Although praising the play primarily for “keeping away from ideology and o}ering a fantasy,” Hirata maintained that, by incorporat- ing elements of the kabuki style into a modern drama, the play contrib- uted to the further development of the Japanese traditional performance art. More important, he extolled the performance as an e}ort to promote the harmony between Japan and Korea and did not forget to mention the importance of Korea in the current situation of the Sino-Japanese War.42
Alongside Hirata’s review, Teatoro published another review by Fuse Tatsuji, the lawyer famous for his e}orts defending leftists and Koreans. Fuse read an allegory of the plight of the colonized into the play. Calling attention to the discord between responses from the Korean and Japanese audience members, he found that certain scenes evoked tears from the Korean audience but laughter from the Japanese. He encouraged Japanese audiences to ponder the meaning of anger and tears of the Korean audi- ence and insinuated that the emotions of the Korean audience were re – lated to the colonial reality in which they were caught. He continued to imply that Ch’unhyang’s determined faithfulness to her husband in the face of threats from the local magistrate signified more than one woman’s loyalty to her lover. In the end, he suggested that Ch’unhyang was ele- vated to a heroic character to reproach an unjust authority.43
The diverse and even conflicting views presented by the reviews sug- gest that the play itself was a text haunted by ambivalence, allowing viewers to read various subtexts into it. Critical intellectuals and gov- ernment ocials both surely saw the play, with its exotic costumes and kabuki-style acting, as a departure from Shinkyō’s reputation as a leftist theatrical company, and one review criticized it for the same commer- cialism Hirata, the thought prosecutor, praised it for.44 However, in the tradition of leftist theater, the play still retained certain scenes, including Korean peasants su}ering from unjust rule, which could be interpreted
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as political messages. It thus allowed viewers to see the play as criticism of the Japanese colonial rule if they stretched their sensitivity to colonial injustice enough to juxtapose the play with the colonial realities under which the colonized were placed.
After a successful 20-day run at the Tsukiji Little Theater in Tokyo in March and April, the performance toured Osaka and Kyoto. According to Murayama, many in the audience in these cities were Korean. Later that same year, Shinkyō launched a tour of Korea, marking, as Mura- yama proudly claimed, the first time a Japanese theatrical company had performed for Korean audiences in Korea.45 The play was performed by Japanese actors, in the Japanese language, for colonized Korean audi- ences, and Murayama expected it to promote cultural exchange in the- ater between Japan and Korea.46 Akita Ujaku, a dramatist and writer who went to Korea with Shinkyō, wrote in the Japanese-language Seoul news- paper Keijō Nippō (Seoul Daily) that the company wanted to perform in Korea not just because it had been successful in Japan but because it was desirable to show Koreans the results of the “cultural blending between the two peoples.”47
In contrast to mixed reviews in Japan, the response from Korean re – viewers was uniformly unfavorable, skeptical, and even hostile. In the criticisms of the Korean critics Chang’s script was derided as a poor translation that failed to measure up to the original story. In a Japanese- language review printed in a Japanese-language journal, Chōsen (Korea), the philologist Sin T’aehyŏn harshly criticized the play for failing to deliver an “accurate” representation of Korean customs and culture. He ascribed Chang’s inadequate interpretation of the story to his lack of background knowledge about Ch’unhyangjŏn.48 In the Korean-language newspaper Chosŏn Ilbo (Korea Daily), the literary critic Yi Wŏnjo also disapproved of Chang’s “translation” of the original language of Ch’unhyangjŏn. Yi saw Ch’unhyangjŏn’s particular value resulting from the p’ansori form in which it was narrated. Because Ch’unhyangjŏn in written form had been transcribed from songs performed before audiences, it retained the meter of the original verses. Thus he argued that the value of Ch’unhyangjŏn had everything to do with its language, and held that Chang’s rendering of the story neutralized the musicality of the original Ch’unhyangjŏn, which he credited for its artistic value.49
Chang responded by adamantly claiming that his script was his own creation, not a translation. Chang correctly acknowledged the multiple origins of the story.50 He pointed out that there were a number of di}er- ent versions of Ch’unhyangjŏn, including p’ansori and changgŭk versions
Treacherous Translation / 57
as well as those in written form.51 Chang explained that initially he tried to translate the story word by word from existing written versions but found it impossible to preserve the charms of the original tale. As a con- sequence, he decided to write his own modern Ch’unhyangjŏn, borrowing only the storyline, characters, and setting. By emphasizing the di}er- ence between his own and previous versions of Ch’unhyangjŏn, Chang attempted to establish a case for his claim that the script was his own creation and not a translation of another’s original. He also insisted on the heterogeneous origins of the story to argue that there was no single reference point for his script and that it was not a translation parasitically dependent on the original text.
If Chang’s claim was not unreasonable, neither was the Korean critics’ insistence that his script was, in fact, a translation. Inasmuch as Chang asserted on several occasions that he wrote the script with the intention of introducing Korean culture to Japanese audiences, what he did with Ch’unhyangjŏn was to present the story to those who did not share the language and culture as well as to those who regarded it as their own.52 In other words, he translated an original story that was deemed representa- tive of Korean culture into another language so that it could be under- stood by Japanese audiences. As long as Chang’s script was connected to the original story that supposedly represented authentic Korean culture and customs and as long as Chang’s intention with the script was to show Korean culture and customs to Japanese people who did not know much about them, Koreans regarded the play as a translation in a nega- tive sense, as a secondary, parasitic copy of an original. Korean critics took issue with Chang’s representation of the original story because they deemed it to be an inaccurate translation.
equal exchange and translation
The problems of translation as equal exchange and its collusion with colo- nial domination surfaced in a roundtable discussion among Japanese and Korean intellectuals convened in Seoul as the Japanese-language Ch’un- hyangjŏn went on stage there in late October 1938. The Japanese present included Murayama and Akita from Shinkyō, a Keijō Imperial University professor of Chinese literature named Karashima Takeshi, and Furukawa Kanehide, the director of the publication censorship department of the Government General. They were joined by the writer Hayashi Fusao, who was visiting Korea on his way to Manchuria and northern China. Koreans on the panel included Chang, the poet Chŏng Chiyong, the lit-
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erary critic and poet Im Hwa, the writer and Posŏng College professor Yu Chino, the literary critic Kim Munjip, the writer Yi T’aejun, and the dramatist Yu Ch’ijin, who had helped Murayama revise Chang’s script. 53
Convened under the title “Chōsen Bunka no Shōrai” (The Future of Korean Culture), the roundtable discussion had not been intended to be about the play, but the play quickly became the central topic of discussion. The Koreans argued in unison that Ch’unhyangjŏn could not be translated and that, once translated, its value was lost and it was not Ch’unhyangjŏn anymore. Hayashi countered by asking them whether they were suggest- ing a total denial of translation. Karashima shrewdly tried to maneuver the discussion in a di}erent direction, taking up a point made previously by a Korean participant who commented that professional writers in Korea faced economic diculties because of the small market for literary works there. He said that if Korean writers had their works translated into Japa- nese, they would find a bigger market among Japanese readers. However, Karashima’s economic argument failed to divert the Korean participants from continuing to return to the problem of translation. The Koreans insisted that, in the course of its translation into Chang and Murayama’s play, Ch’unhyangjŏn had lost its inherent value because it was impossible for it to be expressed in Japanese. In response to the persistence of the Koreans, Murayama admitted that Japanese might feel the same way about an English translation of Manyōshū, the thousand-year-old verse collection Japanese nationalist scholars considered the essence of Japan, but he also argued that a Japanese translation of Ch’unhyangjŏn was nec- essary because Japanese people could not read Korean. In response, Kim Munjip bluntly suggested that the Japanese-language Ch’unhyangjŏn was staged not for cultural but rather for political reasons.54
Having kept silent to this point, Yi T’aejun abruptly posed a question to the Japanese participants: He asked them whether Korean writers should keep writing in Korean or whether they should instead create literary works in Japanese. Akita and Murayama, following Karashima, adhered to a purely economic logic. They argued that because the num- ber of Japanese-language readers was greater than that of their Korean counterparts, it might be better for them to write in Japanese because they would have access to a larger market. Akita added that if they had diculty writing in Japanese, they surely could get their works trans- lated into Japanese, but Hayashi urged the Koreans to pen their writings directly in Japanese. Murayama o}ered a compromise that Korean writ- ers should create literary works in Japanese while reserving the Korean language for whatever expressions they deemed untranslatable.55
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The Korean intellectuals showed two levels of concern regarding colo- nial translation in the discourse centered on the staging of the Japanese- language Ch’unhyangjŏn. On one level, they were wary of any misrep- resentation of Korean culture and customs to the colonizer. On another level, they were even more suspicious of translation as an interim stage in the total assimilation of Korean culture into Japanese. The first level of concern troubling the Korean intellectuals addressed the colonized’s mis- trust of translation as representation of their culture and literature, and eventually of themselves. Translation framed as representation, they intu- ited, does not do justice to the original. The original is inevitably distorted in representation. In other words, the colonized complained about the inevitable di}erence of any translation from its original. Ch’unhyangjŏn could not be expressed in languages other than Korean. In the eyes of the Koreans, the translation of Ch’unhyangjŏn was not a complete exchange between Korean and Japanese. Something valuable was lost in transla- tion that was so essential to the story that Ch’unhyangjŏn was no longer Ch’unhyangjŏn without it. Di}erence in the medium of expression con- demned translation to the secondary and inferior position with respect to the original. The exchange transpiring in the course of translating Ch’unhyangjŏn was not an equal exchange. In short, their resistance to the translation pointed to their aversion to an unequal exchange. The Korean intellectuals insisted that any translation of Ch’unhyangjŏn and of Korean literature in general was impossible because it could not guarantee equal exchange between the two languages. They sensed that the questions surrounding the translation at issue, the one by Maruyama and Chang being staged in a colonial city in the colonizer’s language, were not just linguistic or literary but rather political. They did not flinch from declar- ing their suspicions that the staging of the Japanese-language play they considered a translation of a Korean original they knew and loved had much to do with the current political situation of the Sino-Japanese War, which required the total mobilization of the colony for Japan’s war e}ort.
The debate over the Japanese version of Ch’unhyangjŏn did not stop, however, at the colonizer’s imposition of, and the colonized’s resistance to, translation. The Koreans’ aversion to translation indicated their in – stinctive understanding of the collusion between colonialism and trans- lation, which provoked the second level of their concern over colonial translation. Just as translation may be intended to bridge the di}erences between two languages and cultures but cannot help but point out those very di}erences, so, too, colonialism aims at the erasure of di}erence between the colonized and the colonizer while simultaneously retaining
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discriminatory practices against the colonized marked with the di}er- ence it claims to eradicate.
The Koreans, as the colonized, knew well that the erasure of di}erence between them and the Japanese meant the extermination of their di}er- ence from the colonizer, not the other way around. In other words, when it comes to the intention of a colonial power to erase di}erence between the colonized and the colonizer, the burden of change and assimilation falls on the shoulders of the colonized. It is the colonized, not the colonizer, who must adapt to colonial expectations. In the realm of literature, the biggest di}erence between the colonized and the colonizer is language. If the erasure of di}erence was to take place in the realm of literature, then it would be tantamount to the extermination of the Korean language itself. Thus the roundtable debate concerning Ch’unhyangjŏn and transla- tion evolved into a discussion of Koreans’ creative writing in the Japanese language. In short, the second level of concern plaguing the colonized intellectuals was the problem of Koreans writing in Japanese. Koreans were faced with a fundamental threat to Korean-language literature: If Korean writers and poets wrote their works in Japanese, there would be no need for translation. The erasure of di}erence would lead to the condition in which exchange— translation— would become unnecessary. Koreans were being doubly trapped in a situation from which there was no exit. They resisted translation because they thought that it could not ensure equal exchange between a translation and the original because of di}erences between languages and cultures, and they sensed the looming end of the Korean language should the even-worse condition emerge in which translation was no longer necessary.
In response to the Koreans’ protests, the Japanese did not stop argu- ing that the translation was equivalent to the original and the product of a necessary exchange. The Japanese intellectuals admitted that the translation was di}erent from the original even though translation was intended to emulate that original to the point of becoming the same, as if that had been ever possible. The Japanese intellectuals hinted that even if the valuable quality to which the Koreans clung was lost in the course of translation, it was not without compensation. In reaction to the colonized’s protest against translation, the colonizers presented the logic of economy. They argued that if Korean writers produced works in Japanese, or at least had their works translated, they would be able to reach more readers. Korean writers who could not make ends meet by selling their writings in Korean were likely to be better o} if they found a market for their works among Japanese-language readers because they
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were more numerous than readers of Korean and clearly had an interest in the colony and its culture.
Below the surface of this logic, which is economic in the conven- tional sense, lurks another layer of the logic of economy that propagates exchange based on symmetrical reciprocity between the colonizer and the colonized. In other words, the translation, even though it is an imprecise representation of the original, is presented as something exchangeable for mercenary gain. The colonized are placed as one party of exchange on the same plane with colonizers who force translation on them as a trans- action in a literal sense. Even if exchange without loss is a tantalizing but unrealizable possibility in the transmission of a text from one language to another, it can only be realized extratextually. Put di}erently, the loss that transpires in the course of translation of the text is compensated for with material gain outside of the text. Such material compensation is equivalent to the alleged loss in value of the original text. In other words, the Japanese found a way to seduce the Koreans into commencing a cycle of exchange premised on symmetrical reciprocity one way or another.
Even if the colonized’s culture and language are placed on the same plane as the colonizer’s by the ruse of the equal exchange of translation, the colonized do not become equal to the colonizer in political, economi- cal, and cultural power. Equal exchange in translation rests on symmet- rical reciprocity, which requires constituting equivalence between two languages. As Marx pointed out, it is not two individuals on equal terms who establish equal exchange. On the contrary, the equivalent value of the commodities exchanged posits the owners of those commodities as equal in the exchange.56 By forcing the colonized into equal exchange— through translation in the case of the roundtable discussion on the future of Korean culture— the colonizer demanded that the colonized recognize their relationship as symmetrical and reciprocal.
My argument has so far only interpreted the implications of the colo- nizer’s insistence on symmetrical reciprocity in his relationship with the colonized despite the asymmetry necessarily resulting from colo- nial domination. However, in the spirit of Marx’s famous 11th thesis on Feuerbach,57 the point is to propose what the colonized can do in response to radically challenge the legitimacy of that colonial domination. Before o}ering any suggestions, however, it is necessary to examine the surge of interest in Korean cultural tradition among intellectuals during the 1930s to situate the debates surrounding the staging of the Japanese-language Ch’unhyangjŏn in the intellectual atmosphere of colonial Korea of that time.
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cultural nationalism and resistance to colonialism
Debates over the staging of the Japanese language Ch’unhyangjŏn took place against a backdrop of surging interest among intellectuals in Korean cultural tradition. The two most influential Korean-language newspapers, Chosŏn Ilbo (Korea Daily) and Tong-a Ilbo (East Asia Daily), spearheaded this rise in interest during the 1930s. In January 1935, Chosŏn Ilbo ran a series of articles by such experts in Korean culture as Yi Pyŏnggi, Kim T’aejun, and Yi Hŭisŭng addressing Korean classical literature and literary traditions.58 The presumption of the series was that Korean society could maintain its unique culture by carrying on its tra- ditional arts in the face of a flood of cultural influence from the West and Japan. Tong-a Ilbo also published articles discussing the establishment of a Korean national literature (minjok munhak) based on its traditions.59 Preserving Korean cultural tradition had also been the center of discus- sion in national literature debates of the 1920s in Korea as nonsocialist, nationalist intellectuals advocated a national literature (kungmin mun- hak) by stressing the essential importance of Korean cultural tradition in literary writing.60 The advocates of national literature argued that the leftist writers’ emphasis on class conflict served to bring pernicious schisms into Korean society. The nationalist intellectuals believed that a national literature would awaken the consciousness of the Korean nation in the face of ever increasing pressures to slavishly follow Japan’s imita- tion of Western culture.61
However, there was a significant di}erence between the 1920s national literature debate and the revival of interest in Korean cultural tradition in the mid-1930s. As the Korean scholar of literature Hwang Chongyŏn points out, the 1920s debate emerged as a response by Korean nationalist intellectuals to the menacing rise of the Proletarian Literature Movement. The revival of interest in Korean cultural tradition in the 1930s, on the other hand, was a response to Japanese colonial rule. In that sense, it is noteworthy that it coincided with the demise of the Proletarian Literature Movement. In the atmosphere of ruthless suppression of any political resistance including the communist movement, Korean intel- lectuals turned to cultural tradition as a rare forum in which they were allowed to imagine Korea’s autonomy from Japan.
Korean cultural nationalism in the 1930s was, however, also a response to the economic boom triggered by Japan’s takeover of Manchuria in 1932.62 The Korean bourgeoisie saw the subsequent establishment of the
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state of Manchukuo as an economic opportunity. The editorial of Chosŏn Ilbo published on April 10, 1932, reflected this perspective, identifying the establishment of the state of Manchukuo as one of the conditions that would foster the economic development of Korea.63 Japanese aggres- sion in China did in fact help Korean enterprises flourish. For example, the Korean spinning and weaving company Kyŏngsŏng Pangjik, run by Kim Yŏnsu, invested substantially in Manchuria.64 The company also benefited greatly from the economic boom of the Sino-Japanese War in 1937.65 Tong-a Ilbo, which, along with Chosŏn Ilbo, instigated the Korean cultural revival of the 1930s, was owned by Kim’s family.
From the perspective of the Korean bourgeoisie, Korean cultural nationalism served to counter the internationalism of Korean leftists that emphasized solidarity with the Chinese people against Japanese imperialism. Moreover, Korean cultural nationalism served to mu£e the cry for class struggle from Korean workers by emphasizing the unity of the Korean nation over the class division of colonial society. Although Korean cultural nationalism could have been subversive to Japanese colo- nial domination by raising the national consciousness of Koreans, it did not pose a real threat because of a compromise the Korean bourgeoisie made with Japanese colonial domination. The Korean bourgeoisie gave up on political resistance to capitalize on Japanese expansionism in East Asia. In that sense, it is not too far-fetched to say that cultural national- ism was the ideology of the Korean bourgeois class.66
The zeal for Korean cultural tradition spread among Korean men of letters during the period. Munjang (Writing), the literary journal Yi T’aejun founded in 1939, devoted many of its pages to literary works expressive of a}ection for Korean cultural tradition. In such essays as “Kojŏn” (Classics), “Kowan” (Artifacts), and “Kowan gwa Saenghwal” (Artifacts and Daily Life), Yi himself expressed interest in and a}ection for Korean cultural tradition, which he considered to be rapidly disap- pearing from the daily life of the modern world.67 In “Ilpyŏnnakto” (A Fragment of Paradise) and “Tongbaeknamu” (Camellias), the modernist poet Chŏng Chiyong, another participant in the roundtable discussion on the future of Korean culture, experimented with a quasi-traditional style of writing peppered with archaic words and redolent of the rhythm of classical Chinese writing. He also tried his hand at imitating naeganche, the writing style of women of the Confucian literati class in the Chosŏn period.68 Yu Chino, another participant in the roundtable discussion, had dabbled in Marxism as a university student in the early 1930s and written stories dealing with social issues, but later turned to writing such short
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stories as his 1938 “Ch’angnangjŏnggi” (The Story of the Clear Water Pavilion), which described a disappearing world of tradition.69 The cul- tural nationalism Koreans expressed in the roundtable discussion about the Japanese language play Ch’unhyangjŏn thus reflected a more general interest in Korean cultural tradition in the 1930s.
The Korean cultural tradition that these Korean men of letters harked back to was, however, that of the ruling class of Confucian literati and not that of the peasants. This emphasis resonated with the Japan Romantic School’s call for a revival of Japanese traditional culture. Following the government’s crackdown on leftist movements in the early 1930s, the Japanese intellectuals aliated with the Japan Romantic School voiced their concerns about the rapid ascendancy of mass culture accompany- ing the economic boom after World War I. The popularization of culture was most visible in the emergence of the so-called one-yen-per-book (enpon) multivolume sets of Japanese and Western literature that the Japanese publishing industry mass produced to target the general pub- lic. In the eyes of the Japanese intellectuals, mass culture reduced the worth of an artistic creation to its exchange value as a commodity. The views of Yasuda Yojūrō, who advocated a return to Japanese classical lit- erature and denounced both Tokugawa-period commoners’ culture and the mass culture of his contemporary Japan, were representative: He not only denounced modern Japanese authors for their failure to carry on Japanese literary traditions but also criticized such modern literary forms as novels and literary criticism as imported genres alien to the Japanese mind.70 He went on to contend that the imperative task in the reasser- tion of Japanese literary tradition should be to recapture “the essence of Japanese poetry (nihon shi no kokoro) and its development in the history of Japanese literature.”71 Like the Japan Romantic School, the rising inter- est in Korean cultural tradition marked a more general intellectual trend of critical reflection on modernity in the 1930s and the 1940s.
Such contemporary Korean Marxist critics as Im Hwa criticized the surge of interest in Korean cultural tradition as regressive traditionalism. In a series of essays he wrote in 1936 under the name Im Insik for another Korean-language newspaper, Chosŏn Chungang Ilbo (Korea Central Daily), he denounced the interest as a reactionary mood that not only unscientifically glorified the past but also legitimized escapism.72 The attacks on the Korean cultural revival did not come only from Marxists, however. Another prominent intellectual who was skeptical about Korean cultural tradition was Ch’oe Chaesŏ, who was trained in English litera- ture and versed in English literary theories and who argued that cultural
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development in Korea should be instead anchored in European cultural traditions because Korean traditional culture could not o}er any contri- bution to the development of modern culture in contemporary Korea.73 As discussed in the following chapter, by the early 1940s, Ch’oe would become one of the most notorious collaborators with Japanese colonial- ism. An intellectual’s position on the Korean cultural tradition revival cannot be understood as a barometer of willingness to collaborate with Japanese colonialism.
It is not easy to elucidate what modernity stood for in the eyes of Korean intellectuals. Although it was unquestionably associated with the West, as further examined in the following chapter, it was also related to Japan because modernization had come to Korea with colonization by Japan. In that sense, Korean cultural tradition was one of the few remain- ing arenas in which Korean intellectuals were allowed to imagine the autonomy of Korea with respect to Japan. Thus the preference for Korean cultural tradition by such Korean intellectuals as Yi and the contributors to his journal Munjang has been favorably interpreted by later readers as a form of subversive, though passive, opposition to Japanese colonialism.74
Nevertheless, the cultural nationalism of Korean intellectuals failed to pose any meaningful challenge to Japanese colonial rule in Korea even if it did attempt to secure an autonomous space for Korean culture within the Japanese empire. Thus, toward the end of the roundtable discussion, when Hayashi proposed that Korean writers and poets should volunteer to serve the Japanese military in China as war writers, Yu Chino wel- comed the suggestion. Yu’s agreement made for a stark contrast with his assertion that Korean writers should keep writing in Korean when he rejected Hayashi’s forceful urging of the Korean panelists to produce lit- erary works in Japanese. Yu’s support for the Japanese war e}ort was met with no opposition from any other Korean at the roundtable.75
As demonstrated above, the Koreans at the roundtable were opposed to the translation of Ch’unhyangjŏn because they regarded it as unequal exchange. They adamantly maintained that something very important was lost in the course of translation. That something was the foundation on which they built their cultural nationalism. However, their cultural nationalism did not contradict their agreement to support the Japanese war e}ort. When the corps of writers that was to serve to “comfort” the Japanese imperial military (kōgun imon sakkadan) was organized in Korea in 1939, it included Chŏng Chiyong, Yi T’aejun, and Im Hwa, all roundtable participants. Nonetheless, my intention here is not to accuse these Korean intellectuals of being pro– Japanese collaborators. The three
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intellectuals were not particularly cooperative with the colonial govern- ment when compared with such infamous collaborators as Ch’oe Namsŏn, Yi Kwangsu, Hyŏn Yŏngsŏp, and Ch’oe Chaesŏ. I rather call attention to a specific juncture in which cultural nationalism coexisted with support for colonial expansion. My criticism targets how the roundtable participants mingled cultural nationalism of the colonized and collaboration with colonial expansion in their discussion of the Japanese-language staging of Ch’unhyangjŏn in Korea in 1938. I argue that the cultural nationalism and collaboration did not merely coexist but rather cooperated with each other in perpetuating the established regime of colonialism. By assuming a symmetrical relationship between the Korean and Japanese cultures and languages, cultural nationalism served to compensate for the political asymmetry between the colonized and the colonizer.76 However, cultural nationalism was not a substitute for resistance to colonial domination. The Korean cultural nationalism manifested at the roundtable discus- sion echoes the ethnic identity politics of multiculturalism promoted under the current dominant U.S. ideology. Although ostensibly a gesture toward tolerance within the borders of the American nation, multicul- turalism fails to challenge the unquestioning loyalty that the American nation state demands of individuals of every ethnic group, even in the face of the most obvious imperial aggression.77
Frantz Fanon once warned colonized peoples about becoming preoccu- pied with their own “authentic” culture and the colonizers’ slights toward it. In Fanon’s eyes, championing a native culture is ine}ective unless it is tied up with political and social struggles against colonial domination. “It is around the people’s struggles that African-Negro Culture takes on substance, and not around songs, poems, or folklore,” as Fanon suc- cinctly put it.78 When cultural nationalism is divorced from politics, it stops short of challenging colonial domination. Furthermore, because the cultural nationalism of the colonized tends to focus myopically on creat- ing autonomous space for native cultures within an empire rather than challenging regimes of colonial domination, it can blind the colonized to the colonial injustice inflicted on those outside their national community. In other words, cultural and linguistic nationalism tends to lead the colo- nized into callous indi}erence toward the colonial violence inflicted on other colonized peoples.
Assuming symmetrical opposition between Korean and Japanese cultures and languages, the colonized intellectuals’ cultural nationalism worked to compensate for political asymmetry between the colonized and the colonizer by positing cultural parity between the two. In the his-
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tory of the colonized peoples’ struggles against colonial domination are examples of how cultural nationalism among the colonized has served to help mobilize political resistance by the colonized against the colonizer, but what must be kept in mind is that there have been cases throughout history in which cultural nationalism fails to challenge the legitimacy of colonial domination. Such was the case of the Korean intellectuals at the roundtable discussion who agreed to support the Japanese war e}ort while being alert to any encroachment on what they saw as autonomous space of their own culture and language.
One might be quick to protest that it is unfair to criticize the Korean intellectuals for their failure to dissent from Japanese expansionism in front of the colonial bureaucrat Furukawa Kanehide at the roundtable discussion. One might further point out that it was virtually impossible to raise a dissenting voice in general, especially during the last stage of Japanese colonial rule, without risking imprisonment and even death. However, the emphasis on the impossibility of voicing political dissent inadvertently points to the limitations of a cultural nationalism like the one expressed at the roundtable discussion. The cultural nationalism of the Korean intellectuals could be expressed only because the Japanese colonial authorities allowed it to be. As shown above, despite the presence of the colonial bureaucrat at the roundtable discussion, Korean intellectu- als voiced their displeasure with encroachment by the colonizers on “their own culture” while silently agreeing to cooperate with the war e}ort.
translation as an ethical as well as political practice
The 1938 roundtable discussion about the staging of the Japanese- language play Ch’unhyangjŏn in Korea o}ers a valuable point of departure for investigating further the issues of reciprocity and exchange in trans- lation and colonialism. The Korean critics sensed that the translation of Ch’unhyangjŏn did not ensure an equal exchange between the original and the translation and between the Korean and Japanese languages. The refusal by these Korean critics pointed negatively to the fact that they also adhered to the ideal model of translation as equal exchange. In other words, they believed that translation should guarantee equal exchange between an original and any translation made of it. Because they thought that Chang’s rendering failed to achieve equal exchange and, more important, that the original did not allow for such exchange, they rejected his Ch’unhyangjŏn. However, to envision a truly radical way
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of resisting colonial domination, it is necessary to be critical of the cul- tural nationalism of colonized intellectuals who are complacently fixated on “their own culture” but fail hopelessly to voice political criticism of their colonial master’s expansion into other countries. In lieu of a conclu- sion to our discussion, what I will attempt to do in the rest of the chapter is to configure translation as an ethical as well as political practice with the help of Levinas.
As discussed above, Levinas continuously attends to the ethical aspect of language throughout Totality and Infinity and Otherwise Than Being. He insists on the ethical aspect of language as the possibility of dialogue between the self and the other and between one community and another that do not share common foundations for preestablished understand- ing.79 In short, Levinas suggests that language enables the self to come into contact with the other, who is by definition foreign to the self. The engagement in dialogue with the other can be a traumatic experience because the self is vulnerable to misunderstanding and the rejection of understanding by the other, who does not share the logic and knowledge with the self. That is why Levinas describes the ethical aspect of language in terms of conversation between foreigners who do not share a common ground for understanding. Thus, dialogue between the self and the other who are foreign to each other is an event of translation. In Levinasian ethics, the essence of language cannot be the transmission of ideas between interlocutors. The essence of language is rather that it enables the self to engage in dialogue with the other, who is utterly foreign to the self. Language is the window through which the self approaches the other, and translation is the event of the self ’s encounter with other.
The idea of translation reformulated as an ethical practice requires the translator to humbly recognize that the task at hand is to encoun- ter the other in language that ultimately cannot be tamed, controlled, or completely appropriated. The translator cannot be absolved from the responsibility for the other inscribed in the original. In other words, the translator’s debt to the original cannot be paid o} completely in an equal exchange because such a transaction is impossible in the asym- metrical relationship with the other. On the contrary, the translator is never free from the exacting relationship. While engaging with the other as inscribed in the original text, the translator realizes the foreignness within each of the two languages between which the translator moves. Languages are porous to the outside. The openness of and foreignness in languages are, however, concealed until, in the course of translation,
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the translator releases them from the shackles of the idea of languages as autonomous and homogeneous.
Levinas’s insight is useful for formulating a critique of linguistic nationalism, which is inseparably connected to the idea of one national community the boundaries of which coincide with those of an autono- mous and homogeneous language community. The cultural and lin- guistic nationalism of the Korean intellectuals is understandable if one remembers that Korea was put under the pressure of colonial domination that, in its last stage, sought to erase the Korean language itself from pub- lic spaces. However, it must also not be forgotten that, while attempting to keep intact the autonomous space for their language and culture, the Korean intellectuals wound up cooperating with Japanese colonial expan- sion into the Asian continent. Their refusal of translation thus was little more than a myopic obsession with their autonomous space of language and culture within the empire. Cultural nationalism as such certainly failed to acknowledge translation as an ethical and political practice that existed to be critical of colonial domination and to envision new ways of relating to the other. What colonized intellectuals should do with trans- lation is thus neither reject it as unequal exchange nor yearn for equal exchange. The colonized should reconfigure translation in relation to the other by refusing the idea of equal exchange in language. Translation reconfigured as such is elevated to an ethical and political practice, thus implying fundamental criticism of colonial domination. Put di}erently, by disclosing the unethical nature of equal exchange and emphasizing instead the asymmetry of ethics, translation reframed as an ethical and political practice provides a radical criticism of colonial discourse that works homologously with a model of translation based on equal exchange and serves to propagate the idea of colonial domination as equal exchange in a reciprocal relationship between colonizer and colonized.
The relationship between the self and the other in Levinasian eth- ics should not be mistaken for the relationship with the other that is dominant in the tradition of Western thought that Levinas identifies as ontology.80 Although the ego is solidified through the erasure of the otherness of the other in ontology, the self is vulnerable to the ethical call from the other.81 In other words, whereas the ontological relation- ship with the other of ontology legitimizes the ego by sacrificing the alterity of the other, the other Levinas calls the self to face brings into question the legitimacy of that self in the ethical relationship. Thus, although the insistence on an ethical relationship between the colonized
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and the colonizer entails a clear demarcation between the two, it should not be regarded as a return to an old model of the Manichean relation- ship of ontology between the colonized and the colonizer on which rests both colonial domination and cultural nationalism. In other words, the ethical relationship between the colonized and the colonizer resists the constitution of the subjectivity of both the colonizer and the colonized as premised on such essentialist foundations as ethnicity, language, tra- dition, and culture. Not only does criticism of colonialism grounded in Levinasian ethics summon the colonizer to be vulnerable to the colo- nized’s accusation of colonial violence but it also reminds the colonized of their responsibility to other colonized peoples as an other, existing outside of the self ’s supposed national community bound by ethnicity, language, tradition, and culture.
However, the unlimited obligation of the self to the other does not mean that the colonized are as ethically culpable to the colonizer as the latter is to the former because the colonizer is as much the other to the colonized as the colonized are to the colonizer. The Levinasian ethical relationship should not be mistaken for the equalization of ethical responsibility between the colonizer and the colonized. Such an argu- ment bolsters a theory of equal exchange that the critique of symmetrical reciprocity disproves.82 Ethicality built on asymmetry requires the self to be responsible for the other regardless of whether the other reciprocates that care or not. The critique of equal exchange o}ered by the concept of translation as a political and ethical practice thus does not o}er the colo- nizer any excuses because it does not demand the same level of ethical obligation from the colonized and the colonizer and instead vehemently opposes any endeavor to dismiss the ethical obligation of the colonizer toward the colonized. Such ethicality emphasizes the insolvency of colo- nizers who forever fail to pay their debt to the people they have colonized. The theory thus denounces any attempt to posit the colonial relationship as reciprocally beneficial to both the colonizer and the colonized. The purpose of a critique of colonialism grounded in ethics is to criticize colonial discourse that relentlessly rehashes the logic of equal exchange between imperial aggression and defense of civilization, colonial exploi- tation and economic development, and free flow of capital and the spread of modern ideas and values.