The first chapter, “A Long Engagement,” provides a narrative overview of the Japan-Korea relationship until the end of World War II. I could have relied exclusively on secondary works by other historians who have written immense amounts about this period of history. However, I supplemented such work with contemporary reports from the U.S. and Japanese media, to inch somewhat closer in time to the action.Such sources are not without their own problems, of course. One easily detects racism and outright contempt in them. Nonetheless, in these reports I found so much more texture and color, more impassioned opinions and poignant quotations than any historical narrative provided. This reinforced for me the power of using primary sources as proximate to the events and people as one is able to obtain. The result is a substantially different narrative of colonial Korean history than one is likely to find elsewhere.Moreover, I reassess the meanings of the slogan “cultural rule” (bunka seiji), used by the Japanese to characterize a shift in colonial policy after the 1919 national uprisings in Korea. I also argue that the desire to document and curate Koreana was an imperative throughout the colonial period, rather than an ephemeral, unsustained project of the purportedly “liberal” 1920s.Some readers might enjoy chapter 4 the most: this recounts how Korean folk music and dance became mass cultural products in 1930s Japan, around the same time that pressures to assimilate Koreans to Japanese culture intensified.My intention is to communicate information about the past in a manner that is intelligible, informative, and thought-provoking to non-historians. If the reader also enjoys reading, then so much the better.One of my fears all along with this project has been that it might offend Koreans. I iterate throughout the book: I am not trying to minimize their national suffering, nor exonerate Japanese somehow by pointing out the affection and interest many of them had in Koreana.But I am not inclined to endorse or promote Manichean views of life, either in the past or present. I do believe there is good and evil, but I don’t think my primary responsibility as a historian is merely to revere the good and castigate the evil.I think the message is conveyed more effectively when presented in a calmer, more nuanced way. None of us is anything less than a complex whole, and we do well to acknowledge the comparable complexity of the people whose historical traces we pursue.Finally, I have pledged to donate 100% of my royalties from Primitive Selves to Tahirih Justice Center, a charity that arranges pro bono legal, social, linguistic, and medical services for immigrant women and girls who are victims of gender-based violence, trafficking, and abuse.