Why Japan Annexed Korea

If there's one thing I'm well aware of by now when it comes to modern East Asian history, it's that no amount of evidence or context is going to change the minds of those who don't want theirs changed, so pleasurable is the satisfaction they get from entertaining the absurd belief that the people of one particular country have militarism in their very DNA; for such individuals, this post should hold no interest whatsoever, and I kindly suggest they move on to sites like this one where they can indulge their hatred of all things Japanese to their hearts' content.

For everyone else, this review of the Russo-Japanese War by Vice Admiral Yoji Koda of the Maritime SDF should prove educational, giving as it does a perspective on historical events in the region few people in the West are ever exposed to. One doesn't have to agree with the correctness of the perspective which drove Japan's leadership to make claims on Korea, but I think on reading this it ought to become clear that their motives weren't entirely unreasonable either: a nation with only a single brief period of foreign aggression in its entire previous 1300+ years of existence doesn't just suddenly go on an expansionist spree for the sake of it, and the prospect of an ever-expanding Russia using Korea as a launching pad for further campaigns was one no sane or responsible Japanese leadership could passively have allowed to happen. Korea was, as the saying went at the time, "a dagger aimed at the heart of Japan."

I think the events discussed in Vice Admiral Koda's paper hold fruitful lessons for the present day, as the geopolitical circumstances which originally invited Japan's presence in the Korean peninsula still exist to a certain extent: Korea is still divided against itself, with opposing factions relying on differing outside powers for support, and just beyond the Korean peninsula lie both a rising authoritarian empire and a decaying one, both ruled by leaders tempted to stir up trouble abroad to boost their support at home. As long as Russia and China continue to be actors worth taking seriously in a military sense, Japan's security will continue to be dependent on Korea's, and the best course the Koreans can take to ensure that their neighbors across the sea don't have to get involved in their internal affairs is to keep Russian and (especially) Chinese influence in their country to a minimum - which is the exact opposite of the policy followed by the Roh government.

Comments

[Factory]

Erm, so you are saying that the Japanese occupation of Korea was justified, but foreign intervention by the Chinese and Russians is not?

[Chuckles]

[...Erm, so you are saying that the Japanese occupation of Korea was justified, but foreign intervention by the Chinese and Russians is not?...]

Way to be obtuse.

[Abiola]

You know, I'm no psychic, but somehow I saw that one coming. "Factory", you win today's Derrida Award for "Special Achievement in the Field of Egregiously Reading What One Wishes to Find into a Text Regardless of its Contents."

[Joseph]

I'm having problems with the link. Can you check to see if it is broken? Or, give me another link?

[Abiola]

The link works just fine from here. Perhaps someone on your end doesn't want you looking at US DOD servers - you should be able to find the article in Google's cache.

[Mod Mephisto]

I've tried in both Google and Yahoo!, but the server times out. I even tried two online directories through grad school, but the article is too recent.

Damn!

[Abiola]

Here's a tinyurl link with the IP address of a working Google cache copy hardcoded in:

http://tinyurl.com/mdxtu

[Randy McDonald]

"[T]he best course the Koreans can take to ensure that their neighbors across the sea don't have to get involved in their internal affairs is to keep Russian and (especially) Chinese influence in their country to a minimum - which is the exact opposite of the policy followed by the Roh government."

I'm a bit confused. If--as you've said, fairly convincingly--Japan is no longer the aggressively imperialistic nation-state of the early 21st century, what _does_ Korea have to fear from Japan? A second Japanese protectorate is hardly likely, after all. If one _is_ a possibility, then cultivating links with Russia and especially China would be a perfectly sound move for the South Korean government.

[Mod Mephisto]

Thanks!

[Randy McDonald]

Further thinking on the argument that Japanese interests in Korea are so important as to justify the annexation and colonization of that nation makes me think of the Baltic States. Even now, you'll find Russian nationalists who'll defend the annexation of the Baltic States in 1940 as an entirely justifiable defensive move by Stalin's Soviet Union to forestall an invasion from the west and to control Korean hostility. Never mind that the Baltic States looked to foreign powers in the first place because they were afraid of Soviet imperialism, or that said imperialist move created hostility (in the Baltic States themselves and in their neighbours. The Soviet homeland needed to be defended, no matter how, and that's that. To hell with the neighbours' wishes. Indeed, the fact that, after 1945, many Balts participated in Soviet institutions and Soviet society is taken as proof that they wanted to be Soviets after all.

The people defending Japanese empire-building in Korea are acting from more-or-less the same mindset and for more-or-less the same motives as the people defending Russian imperialism in the Baltic States and elsewhere. So, then.

[Abiola]

Randy,

It's exactly tiresome, nonsensical stuff like yours which I had in mind when I suggested CrissCross as an alternative to reading this, especially your claptrap about "justification", as if international relations suddenly became a morality play only where Japan is concerned: it is the height of stupidity to elevate an explanation of the strategic rationale behind an action into a "justification" for it, as if the Japanese should have simply stood back and allowed imperialistic Russians to expand right unto their doorstep, paving the way for more humiliations from the white world.

Listening to you on the Japanese is like hearing a broken record: all it does is provide an occasion to see your unreasoning bias and willful ignorance of the nature of the country's historical circumstances to be revealed for everyone to see. Why you think such puffery is going to change the mind of someone who - unlike you - has actually *been* there, speaks the language, and knows the country's history and customs inside out, is beyond me. Save yourself the wasted effort and myself the annoyance by sparing me the insulting claptrap about "apologetics" in future, since you clearly have nothing of real value to add to this discussion. You can keep entertaining your fantasy Japan in which unsparing movies like this one

http://wiki.d-addicts.com/Ryuuten_no_ouhi_-_Saigo_no_koutei

aren't made, the Emperor himself doesn't say things like the following

http://mdn.mainichi-msn.co.jp/national/news/20060607p2a00m0na008000c.html

unimaginable from the lips of Queen Elizabeth II, and politicians show as much pride in the aggression of their forefathers as Europeans like Gordon Brown do in theirs, but don't stand in the way of those who are open to learning something reality-based about a country you dislike so much while knowing so little about. 邪魔にしないで下さい。

[cruelruler]

nice forum

i'm a first time reader and i'll definately be back

[Randy McDonald]

"[I]t is the height of stupidity to elevate an explanation of the strategic rationale behind an action into a "justification" for it."

I quite agree. Unfortunately, as Criss Cross notes this is, in fact, what the people behind the Yasukuni Shrine are doing.

http://www.crisscross.com/jp/news/374932

"Yasukuni Shrine, which honors about 2.47 million war dead, has started distributing free brochures in Korean, Chinese and English to enhance the understanding of the Shinto shrine amid disputes with China and South Korea over Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's repeated visits there, its officials said Wednesday.

The brochure explains the history and other details of the shrine. "There are an increasing number of visitors from China, Taiwan and South Korea, and the brochure is aimed at enhancing foreign visitors' understanding of Yasukuni Shrine," an official said.

The brochures say Yasukuni enshrines those who "were cruelly and unjustly tried as war criminals by a sham-like tribunal of the Allied Forces."

They also refer to the Japan-China war, which started in 1937, as the China Incident and to World War II as the Great East Asian War.

"War is truly sorrowful. Yet to maintain the independence and peace of the nation and for the prosperity of all of Asia, Japan was forced into conflict," the brochures say."

Surely these people deserve as little respect as those Russian nationalists who claim that the Baltic States' annexation was justifiable on strategic grounds.

"[A]s if the Japanese should have simply stood back and allowed imperialistic Russians to expand right unto their doorstep, paving the way for more humiliations from the white world"

... and allowing the Japanese to inflict new humiliations on their neighbours, too. That's why Asians were quickly disappointed when Japan turned out not to be interested in liberating them after all. This was the Burmese experience, for instance:

http://www.ahrchk.net/hrsolid/mainfile.php/1993vol03no01/2041/

"The Japanese army's advance was accompanied by raping, .looting and murder. Witnesses reported women's bodies lying in the street after the army had passed through; they had been killed after being gang raped. Ordinary people were conscripted as porters to carry supplies and ammunition to the border areas. Suspects questioned by the Kempeitai were tortured by electric shock, their repeated immersion in water and the extraction of their fingernails. Many people suffered and died. These methods were passed on to the Burmese army and are still in use today.

There were also acute economic problems. Prices jumped to more than 300 times their pre-war level, and the level of rice exports decreased to 11% of its previous amount. Food and basic materials were in short supply, and rampant inflation caused widespread suffering."

"Why you think such puffery is going to change the mind of someone who - unlike you - has actually *been* there, speaks the language, and knows the country's history and customs inside out, is beyond me."

Respect for you, for starters.

Speaking as someone who thinks your blog has generally set quite a high standard, I feel obliged to tell you that your Japanophilia has overtaken your reason on this issue. You've made convincing arguments that the extent of Japanese revisionism is overestimated, convincing me; you've certainly not made convincing arguments against the existence of Japanese revisionism or imperialism, and you've not sufficiently accounted for the exceptional brutality of Japanese colonialism.

[Chuckles]

The brochure is certainly a brain dead idea - no question about that; but Randy, you are hard to understand - what exactly is this supposed to mean?

[...you've certainly not made convincing arguments against the existence of Japanese revisionism or imperialism, and you've not sufficiently accounted for the exceptional brutality of Japanese colonialism...]

Nowhere has anyone denied Japanese revisionism on this blog; Abiola has talked about Ishihara and Aso on this blog and your exceptionally brutal Japanese colonialism is a myth. You have an axe to grind for one reason or the other: Anyone can see that the approach of this blog to the Japan question has been consistently comparative. Why you choose to ignore this lies more, not in Japanophilia, but in an irrational fixation with Japan: A fixation that is as irrational as the fixation of some with Jews.