Abstract

This study examined how the Chinese thing changes through Japan’s imperial policy and wartime mobilization policy while passing through the Sino-Japanese War and the Pacific War. Based on previous studies on Chinese perception and feelings toward China, the problematique of Chinese affect as established at a somewhat different point. In the wartime mobilization system, the Chinese, Chinese, and Chinese things become the target group, population, and place of affective politics represented by the hate politics of the wartime mobilization system. On the other hand, the Chinese thing becomes a hotbed that inspires, attributes, and energy, spreads, infects, and creates the most problematic qualities, spirits, and so that Joseon becomes the equal ‘hwangmin’. The Chinese thing sticks to the Korean thing like a disease, spreads antipathy toward the Japanese empire like a poison, and is compared to a cancer cell that sickens the sacred body of the Japanese empire. The Chinese thing is a disease that survives even if you try to exterminate it, a virus that infects even if you breathe, and it is also air itself. In other words, the Chinese has a strong spread and is a medium that carries germs and viruses, negative effects and ideas, customs, qualities, and grit to Joseon. This propagation-mediated physicality is the closest characteristic to the concept we call affect today.