Fragmented Geographies: Japanese and German Fieldwork on the New Colonial Peripheries of Northeast Asia, 1925-1950

Start date: 1 October 2018
End date: 31 January 2025
Funder: Academy for Korean Studies; Leeds Arts and Humanities Research Institute
Primary investigator: Adam Cathcart
External co-investigators: Prof. Dr. Christine Moll-Murata (Ruhr-Universität Bochum), Dr. Suzanne Stein (Ruhr-Universität Bochum), Dr Robert Winstanley-Chesters (University of Edinburgh)

Description

This project tracks the trajectory of German and Japanese geographers working in Korea and Northeast China before, during, and after the Second World War, and the physical impact of Japanese expansion on those landscapes.

As Japan’s continental empire expanded and its alliance tightened with Germany, scholars from both nations explored the new periphery, engaging in studies of terrain, rural landscapes and geology. The project draws from primary sources in Japanese archives, including notebooks of geographers like Tada Fumio which describe in detail the process of fieldwork, as well as a wealth of publications by German geographers influenced by Karl Haushofer and his geopolitical school of the time. By tracing their research pathways and career trajectories, the project discovers new interconnections of colonial research and Cold War knowledge.

Case study; Tada Fumio

Tada Fumio was a geographer whose career was indelibly linked to Japan’s continental expansion, including studies of Korean geology, desertification in Inner Mongolia, and the practice of academic geography in Seoul. Gustav Fochler-Hauke, another case study, explored the landscapes of the puppet state of Manchukuo with great range in the mid-1930s, producing a massive geography of the region which preceded his enlistment in Operation Barbarossa and, after the war, teaching in Buenos Aires and Munich.

Funding

This work has so far been sustained and supported by three small grants.

The initial funding came from two small research awards from the Academy of Korean Studies, which supported research trips to archives in Seoul and Tokyo (grant numbers AKS-2022-R-093 and AKS-2020-R66). A generous 'Pump Priming Award' from the Leeds Arts and Humanities Research Institute enabled the group to expand cooperation between UK and German researchers, funding a joint panel at the Royal Geographical Society annual conference in 2024 and travel to meetings at Ruhr University Bochum and the Institute of East Asian Studies at University of Duisberg-Essen.

Interdisciplinarity

Using the history of geography, the project seeks to go beyond the now-abundant field of the intellectual history of transnational fascism, or the study of wartime intellectuals in the German and Japanese alliance. Instead, we centre our energies in fieldwork studies along frontiers where linkages among colonies and newly colonised actors can be better understood. It therefore develops the fields of environmental history, histories of transwar fascism, as well as the impact of German-Japanese ideas and research practices in and upon postwar Asia

Publications and outputs

Adam Cathcart and Robert Winstanley-Chesters, ‘German Studies of Koreans in Manchuria: Gustav Fochler-Hauke and the Influence of Karl Haushofer’s National Socialist Geopolitics’, European Journal of Korean Studies, 18.1 (2018), 131-141.

Adam Cathcart, Christine Moll-Murata and Robert Winstanley-Chesters, ‘Colonial Academics and Japan’s Inner Asia Ambitions: Keijо̄ Imperial University and Studies of Mengjiang or Inner Mongolia’, European Journal of Korean Studies 23.2 (2024), 97-116.

Robert Winstanley-Chesters and Adam Cathcart, ‘Fragmented Geographies: Tada Fumio and Japanese Imperialism in Manchuria, Mengjiang, and Korea’, Journal of Historical Geography, Vol. 83 (2024), 23-35.

Robert Winstanley-Chesters and Adam Cathcart, ‘Encountering the Silk Road in Mengjiang with Tada Fumio: Korean/Japanese Colonial Fieldwork and Research Connections and Collaborations’, Acta Via Serica 7.1 (2022), 131-148.