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“Bite, Bite against the Iron Cage”: The Ambivalent Dreamscape of Zoos in Colonial Seoul and Taipei

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 December 2019

Joseph Seeley  and
Aaron Skabelund Open the ORCID record for Aaron Skabelund [Opens in a new window]
Joseph Seeley
Affiliation:
Joseph Seeley ([email protected]) is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Virginia. Aaron Skabelund ([email protected]) is Associate Professor of History at Brigham Young University.
Aaron Skabelund
Affiliation:
Joseph Seeley ([email protected]) is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Virginia. Aaron Skabelund ([email protected]) is Associate Professor of History at Brigham Young University.
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Abstract

This article examines the zoological gardens established by Japanese imperialists in colonial Seoul (1908) and Taipei (1914). Drawing on multilingual sources, it argues that zoos explicitly exposed the unequal interethnic and interspecies hierarchies that undergirded the colonial project. The colonial zoo was an ambivalent “dreamscape”: a carefully constructed landscape of iron cages and manicured pathways wherein colonizers’ dreams of ordering the natural world and colonized populations existed in uneasy tension with the actual experiences of zoo visitors and encaged zoo animals. Intellectuals sometimes criticized zoo excesses or identified the bondage of caged animals with the colonized experience. Yet these zoos also enjoyed immense popularity as Japanese, Korean, and Taiwanese visitors alike participated in the physical and discursive subjugation of zoo animals. Sensitivity to these contradictions, this essay contends, is essential for understanding both the broader significance of these institutions and their contested legacies today.

Keywords

animal historycolonial educationinterspecies hierarchyJapanese imperialismKoreapostcolonial legaciesresistanceTaiwanWorld War IIzoos
Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 79 , Issue 2 , May 2020 , pp. 429 - 454
Copyright
Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 2019

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