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KMID : 0857920200230020041
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Yonsei Journal of Medical History
2020 Volume.23 No. 2 p.41 ~ p.62
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The Intellectual Genealogy of Physical Anthropological Anatomy Knowledge in Colonial Korea: Focusing on the Biometric Study in Statistical Method
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Sihn Kyu-Hwan
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Abstract
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Kubo Takeshi (1879?1921) and subsequent scholars from the Keijo Medical College Department of Anatomy and the Keijo Imperial University Department of Anatomy all tried to prove the superiority of the Japanese by using statistical methods in biometric studies to prove Kubo’s hypothesis. However, these studies could not prove Kubo’s hypothesis that the Japanese were superior to the Korean people, and ultimately, proving Kubo’s hypothesis became impossible to prove. Rather, studies by the post-Kubo generation concluded that Japanese and Koreans were physically similar. This logic, which reinforces the similarities between Korean and Japanese biometrics, can be used as an important argument for organizing the theory on Japanese?Korean common ancestry (Nissen d?soron, 日鮮同?論) and the assimilation of the Korean Peninsula into Japan (Naisen ittai, ?鮮一?) in the preparation of the Sino-Japanese and Great East Asia Wars in the 1930s and 1940s. While Kubo’s hypothesis failed to produce substantial results in subsequent physical anthropology studies, blood group anthropologists made a breakthrough in indeed proving the ethnic superiority of the Japanese. They figured out that the racial factors were stratified into Western, Middle, and Asian-African types, with the northern and central Korean Peninsula belonging to the Asian-African type and Japan and the southern Korean Peninsula belonging to the Middle type. In particular, Japan ranked higher than the southern Korean Peninsula, so the hierarchy was organized with Japan first, then the southern Korean Peninsula, the central part, the northern part, and Manchuria. However, racial factors also differed in Japan from region to region, with those living further north closer to the Asian-African type. In this case, it was difficult to determine the result of exchanges between Japan and Korea, as well as to clearly distinguish the gap between Japanese and Korean people. Since Kubo’s time, scholars have made various attempts to prove the ethnic superiority of the Japanese through empirical methodologies. However, the physical and blood group anthropology results have made the superiority of Manchuria, the Korean Peninsula, and the Japanese archipelago completely contradictory. Researchers are also unable to defend all the hypotheses needed for colonial medicine and use their findings only for convenience.
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KEYWORD
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Kubo Takeshi, Colonial Korea, Physical Anthropology, Blood Group Anthropology, Ethnic Superiority, Biometrics
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