This project uses QGIS mapping software to visualize newspaper coverage of Koreans in Fukuoka Prefecture between 1919 and 1939. My initial research suggests a positive shift over time in the public approval of urban Korean immigrant populations under close scrutiny after the anti-colonial independence protest s of March 1919. Based on thousands of newspaper articles from a Kyoto University database of Kyūshū Nippō, Moji Shinpō, and Fukuoka Nichinichi Shinbun, the visualization organizes articles as nodes in a layered chart, which animates trends over time in different regions of Fukuoka. In this gateway region between Korea and Japan, to what degree did mass media portray Korean residents as carriers of stigmatized negative attributes (impoverished, criminal, subversive) compared to lauded positive attributes (moral, productive, harmonious)? Using newspapers as a marker of state-approved discourse that influenced communal opinion, through this digitalization, we can view macro-scale historical continuity and change in oft-subliminal Japanese-Korean tensions.
