20세기 전반 일본인 연구자들의 ‘만주사’ 만들기

This paper examines the common ground Japanese historians shared about the Manchurian history and how it has changed over time, using diachronic histories of the Manchurian past they employed during the first half of the 20th century.
Japanese historians thought Manchuria had historically been an area where several forces, including Manchurian, Mongolian and Chinese forces, struggled for power. This systematization of Manchurian history explained the ongoing competition for rights among imperialist powers, including Japan, in Manchuria in the early 20th century as a historical phenomenon consistent with Manchurian history’s development process.
However, in the 1930s, Japanese historians’ systemic treatment of Manchukuo failed to recognize the country as a state in the international community. They emphasized Manchukuo’s birth as a natural, historical consequence of development.
Manchurian history gradually organized in the form of nation-history, even at a crude level.
As such, the Japanese historicity of Manchukuo in the first half of the 20th century changed from local history to a national one. Just as Manchukuo was an experimental site for constructing a modern state, studies and descriptions of Manchurian history were also experiments in ‘history making’, whose effect produced an interest in Manchuria and led to the founding of Manchukuo.