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Militarist Songs and Instrumentalized Femininity: Focusing on the Korean Popular Music of the Japanese Colonial Era

  • Journal of the Korean Society for Musicology
  • Abbr : JKSM
  • 2018, 26(2), pp.69~108
  • DOI : 10.34303/mscol.2018.26.2.002
  • Publisher : The Korean Society for Musicology
  • Research Area : Arts and Kinesiology > Musicology > Other Musicology
  • Published : December 30, 2018

Lee Eun Jin 1

1이화여자대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

As the imperialist war led by Japan intensified, the popular music of Korea inevitably underwent a considerable change. The music business hitherto following commercial logic was forced to follow the new policies of the Japanese government, producing a large number of militarist songs as a result. Militarist song, one of the subcategories of the so-called pro-Japanese popular songs, denotes the songs produced after the Sino-Japanese War with the purpose of glorifying war and encouraging people to take part in the war and sacrifice themselves. When the recording companies began to seriously concentrate on producing militarist songs, a new image of woman appeared in the popular music world. It was the image of a mother, hitherto excluded from the lyrics of popular songs. The new trend of displaying a mother as the speaker of the lyrics was influenced by the new discourse of ‘the Mother of the Military Nation,’ increasingly emphasized in both Japan and Korea as Japan entered into an all-out war system. By emphasizing the strong maternal instinct of a wife supporting the rear ground, the militarist songs offered consolations to the soldiers at war and disciplined women in the rear to absorb the virtues of ‘the Women in the Rear Ground.’ Moreover, the militarist songs at the time restored the traditional image of women to represent the identity of ‘the Women in the Rear Ground’ in relation to the old feminine identity. This type of narratives appears in the songs that introduce a wife who pledges to maintain the true love for and fidelity to her husband. In these songs, the true love and fidelity are also directed towards her country. The act of pledging a true love is represented as the act of pledging loyalty to the country, following her husband’s examples. Through this type of narratives, the militarist songs of this period played an important role in disciplining women to absorb the virtues of ‘the Women in the Rear Ground,’ which combines old feminine values with the sense of loyalty to the country.

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