Brokers of EmpireBetween 1876 and 1945, thousands of Japanese civilians merchants, traders, prostitutes, journalists, teachers, and adventurers left their homeland for a new life on the Korean peninsula. Although most migrants were guided primarily by personal profit and only secondarily by national interest, their mundane lives and the state's ambitions were inextricably entwined in the rise of imperial Japan. Despite having formed one of the largest colonial