Emperor of Japan: Meiji and His World, 1852’1912 (148 page)

Despite Mizobuchi’s reassurances, the verdict was predictable. On February 14 An was sentenced to death.
⁴⁹
The decision was made not by persons in the courtroom but by the Foreign Ministry. On December 2 Foreign Minister Komura Jutar
ō
sent a cable saying, “As far as the government is concerned, An Chung-gun’s crime is extremely grave, and it considers that it is appropriate in his case, as a means of discouraging crime, for the extreme penalty to be applied.”
⁵⁰

Although An had expected this verdict, he was greatly incensed when it was pronounced. He had hoped that he might be recognized not as an assassin but as a prisoner of war, a righteous soldier who had killed an enemy of his country. This plea was ignored. Judge Hiraishi had earlier promised An that even if he were found guilty, a stay of execution of at least a few months would surely be granted, but the order from T
ō
ky
ō
called for prompt action. The date for the execution was set for March 26. An did not appeal the verdict, considering that it would be useless. All he asked was a postponement of two weeks in the execution so that he might complete his study “On Peace in East Asia.” He asked the help of the prison warden, Kurihara Sadakichi, but Kurihara, though deeply sympathetic, was powerless to change the date. As a last favor, An asked for white silk Korean clothes in which to die, and Kurihara obliged.
⁵¹
Not long afterward, depressed over his failure to save An, Kurihara resigned as warden and returned to Japan.

On March 9 and 10 Father Wilhelm heard An’s confession, said mass, and administered the sacraments.
⁵²
During the last weeks of his life, An continued writing. On the morning of his execution, he put on white clothes. A photograph taken at that time shows him looking calmly into the distance. All that is visible inside the whiteness of the clothes is his head with its intensely black hair, eyes, and mustache and his hands folded together over his knees. An was hanged later that morning, on March 26. A Japanese doctor pronounced him dead at ten that morning. An’s body was carried to a common burial grounds about two miles away.

Emperor Meiji’s reactions to An Chung-gun’s death are not known, but probably he felt it was appropriate that the man who had killed his most valued adviser, It
ō
Hirobumi, should be punished by death. Despite An’s earnest request, it is unlikely the emperor was informed of his reasons for assassinating It
ō
. In any case, It
ō
’s death came as a terrible blow to the emperor. He did not reveal this openly; his activities were much the same as before It
ō
’s death. But Hinonishi Sukehiro, who served the emperor as chamberlain for many years, recalled that his shock on learning of the death of It
ō
was so great that he seemed to have suddenly become an old man. It
ō
’s funeral in T
ō
ky
ō
attracted a crowd of 400,000 mourners.

An Chung-gun has been treated as a patriot and hero, especially in the theater. In China, among the plays was one written by Chou En-lai and his wife, Teng Yin-chao. In Korea, An is celebrated as a national hero, and Harbin has acquired for Koreans the character of a sacred place because it is the site of the revival of their national spirit.
⁵³

There was a speedy reaction in Japan to news of It
ō
’s assassination. Ishikawa Takuboku published in the
Iwate nippo
the following day an article that opened

October 26. Cloudy. Shortly after three this afternoon a dispatch arrived from afar that caused unimagined consternation in a corner of T
ō
ky
ō
. Cries of disbelief, words of shock and grief spread moment by moment; then, when day was at last coming to an end after a light rain, shouts of “Extra!” in voices filled with sinister overtones, filled the whole city, throwing people’s hearts into sudden commotion, as if a hundred tides had gushed forth at one time. Everyone, old or young, high born or low alike, was equally stupefied by this shocking news that has affected our entire people. Indeed, the news was so bad it truly astonished the people of Japan, and at the same time it was a major event of worldwide importance. And this news spread today from one corner of our empire to the other. It was a day when in every part of the country voices were raised in an overflow of grief. Ah, Lord It
ō
is dead!
⁵⁴

Takuboku went on to recall It
ō
’s recent visit to the T
ō
hoku region:

I can visualize the expression on the faces of the people of Morioka when they learn this tragic news. It is less than a hundred days since they welcomed and said goodbye to his lordship when he traveled in the north. Yes, no sooner had he returned to his country after resigning his post of governor general, before he had even time to warm his seat, he toured the T
ō
hoku and Hokkaid
ō
with the Korean crown prince. He returned to Japan, only to hurry off on a journey to northern Manchuria.

Takuboku concluded the essay: “He was reproached by some critics. But who can deny that today’s Meiji Japan owes most to the low-keyed progressivism that characterized his entire life?”

Chapter 59

The annexation of Korea by Japan, formally proclaimed in the treaty signed by both parties on August 22, 1910, was precipitated by the assassination of It
ō
Hirobumi ten months earlier. Undoubtedly the murder by a Korean of the most respected Japanese statesman intensified feelings in Japan that the Koreans were lawless and could not govern themselves. It is also likely that if It
ō
had not been assassinated, he would have served as a restraining influence on the advocates of annexation, even though the decision to unite the two countries had been made a year earlier and the Japanese government was waiting only for a suitable occasion to carry out this plan.

Japan had fought two wars with the ostensible purpose of preserving Korean independence. But more important than the independence of Korea, a matter of limited interest to most Japanese, was Japan’s determination to prevent China and Russia from interfering with its own plans to exploit Korean resources. Some Koreans (like An Chung-gun) accepted the Japanese war aims stated by the emperor in his declarations of war on China and Russia as expressions of genuine determination to maintain Korean independence. A few Koreans, even more impressed by the Japanese than An Chung-gun, began openly to advocate a union of the two countries.

In 1904 Song Pyong-jun, an interpreter for the Japanese during the Russo-Japanese War, formed the Ilchin-hoe, a party committed to cooperating with Japan. The new party took in such figures as Yi Yong-gu, earlier associated with the Tonghaks, and came to collaborate with Japanese right-wing nationalists, notably T
ō
yama Mitsuru, Sugiyama Shigemaru, and Uchida Ry
ō
hei, the founder of the notorious Amur River Society.
¹
Uchida, a part-time employee of the Residency General, became an adviser of the Ilchin-hoe in October 1906 and from then on served as an intermediary between It
ō
Hirobumi and pro-Japanese Koreans. It
ō
decided late in 1906 to make use of the Ilchin-hoe and, from the following January, the Residency General provided the party with monthly grants of about 2,000 yen.
²

The first Korean cabinet to be formed after the creation of the Residency General was headed by Pak Che-sun. Although Pak, a well-educated man, favored the reforms proposed by It
ō
and got along well with him, he became depressed over reports that he was the prime target of anti-Japanese activity. There were also increasing outbreaks of “righteous army” resistance. Despite It
ō
’s request that he remain in office, Pak insisted on resigning. It
ō
had to organize a new cabinet in May 1907 and chose Yi Wan-yong
³
as prime minister and Song Pyong-jun as minister of agriculture and industry.

It
ō
delivered to the new cabinet a “pep talk” that included these words:

Whether Korea is to progress as at present or to be destroyed depends on no other country but Korea itself…. I am doing all that lies within my power to help you and to enable Korea to stand on its own feet. How is it possible for Koreans not to have awakened to this fact? … The most appropriate and urgently needed policy for the continued existence of Korea is the resolution to cultivate sincere friendship with Japan, and to share its future with Japan.
⁴

These words confirmed It
ō
’s conviction that cooperation with Japan was essential to Korea’s future prosperity, but he stopped short of proposing an immediate union of the two countries. He was, however, implicitly warning that if the Koreans failed to appreciate all that It
ō
was doing on their behalf, harsher policies might be adopted.

Anti-Japanese activity by “righteous army” soldiers in every part of the peninsula should have made it clear that the Korean people as a whole bitterly resented Japanese rule in their country, even though
some
Koreans were impressed by the reforms initiated by It
ō
, and others hoped that collaboration with the Japanese might bring material benefits to the country.

The members of Yi Wan-yong’s cabinet were solidly pro-Japanese, but otherwise there were divisions among them. For example, Yi himself was hostile toward the Ilchin-hoe, in part because he was an aristocrat and it was led by a man of humble origins. It
ō
’s chief concern, however, seems not to have been squabbles among the Koreans or anti-Japanese activity but the possibility of Russian intervention. In 1906, when a new Russian consul general was appointed to Seoul, the Russian government sent his credentials to the Japanese Foreign Office, in keeping with the convention of 1905 that provided for Japanese control of Korean foreign relations. However, the credentials were addressed to the emperor of Korea, an indication that Russia still considered Korea to be an independent nation.
⁵
It
ō
feared this meant that Russia had not renounced its ambitions of intervening in Korea. Indeed, it was probably in the hopes of improving relations with Russia that he made his fatal journey to Harbin.

Song Pyong-jun openly advocated Japan’s annexation of Korea, insisting that it would make possible a more successful administrative policy in Korea than the halfway status of a protectorate.
⁶
He was disappointed to learn in November 1906 that It
ō
, cautiously waiting to see how the present situation developed, was reluctant to take immediate action to force the Korean emperor to abdicate.
⁷
In 1908 Uchida Ry
ō
hei, deciding that It
ō
had no intention of annexing Korea, joined the Ilchin-hoe’s appeal to the Japanese government to get rid of It
ō
. Song resigned his cabinet post in 1909 and went to Japan, where he urged Prime Minister Katsura Tar
ō
to waste no time in annexing Korea.
⁸
It
ō
, fearing that Song’s resignation might lead to the cabinet’s collapse, promoted him to minister of the interior.

In any case, It
ō
himself had decided to resign, disappointed that during the three and a half years of the protectorate he had not won the allegiance of the Korean people. His gradualist policy had obviously failed. The intensification of activity by the “righteous army” as well as attacks from Japanese politicians, who claimed that It
ō
’s conciliatory policy had weakened Japanese prestige, made him feel there was no point in wasting more time in a thankless post. But even after his resignation as resident general in June 1909, It
ō
still wielded influence within the Japanese government, and his death meant that an important obstacle had been removed from the path of annexation.

The Ilchin-hoe (now headed by Yi Yong-gu) stepped up its advocacy of annexation after It
ō
’s death. On December 5, 1909, the Japanese press reported that on the previous day the Ilchin-hoe had issued a manifesto calling for annexation. Memorials to this effect were submitted to the Residency General and Prime Minister Yi with the request that they be transmitted to the emperors of Japan and Korea.
⁹
This was not mere opportunism: Yi Yong-gu was convinced that Korea was moribund, at death’s door, and that the only hope for its recovery was a union with Japan that would bring benefits to be shared alike by the Korean and Japanese peoples. His memorial to the emperor of Korea seems to reflect genuine convictions: