Emperor of Japan: Meiji and His World, 1852’1912 (150 page)

The meeting was attended by the emperor, the prime minister, representatives of the imperial family, and other high-ranking personnel. The emperor announced that he was ceding to the emperor of Japan sovereignty over Korea and that he had personally signed and affixed the imperial seal to the commission of full power. He gave the document to Yi Wan-yong, who in turn submitted the treaty of annexation for the emperor’s inspection and explained its provisions. The emperor was pleased to approve them.

As soon as the meeting had ended, Yi Wan-yong went to the Residency General to inform Terauchi what had happened at the meeting and to show him the commission of full power. He asked Terauchi to sign the treaty. Terauchi, after inspecting the document, pronounced it to be complete and accurate. He remarked that it was a blessing for both Japan and Korea that such a restrained and amicable solution to the political situation had been found, that it was an occasion for congratulations. He and Yi put their signatures to both Japanese and Korean texts of the treaty.
²⁷

On August 29 the text of the treaty was published in Japan along with an imperial rescript:

We, bearing in mind the necessity of maintaining peace permanently in East Asia and ensuring the future safety of Our empire and, taking cognizance of the fact that Korea has always been a hotbed of disorder, in the past asked Our government to reach an agreement with the Korean government to place Korea under the protection of the empire, in the hopes of extirpating disorders at their source and ensuring peace.

During the more than four years that have elapsed since then, Our government has assiduously striven to improve Korean facilities, and its achievements have been considerable; but they have still not been sufficient to make complete the maintenance of order under the present system in Korea. Feelings of fear abound within the country, and the people do not live in peace. It has become clear that in order to maintain peace within the community and to advance the well-being of the people, reform of the existing system is inevitable.

We, together with His Majesty the emperor of Korea, reached the conclusion, in view of this situation, that there was no alternative to uniting Korea with the Japanese Empire, in this way responding to the demands of the times; We have therefore decided to unite Korea permanently with the empire.

His Majesty the emperor of Korea and members of the imperial family will, after unification, receive appropriate and generous treatment, and the people, direct recipients of Our compassion, will know greater security and happiness. Industry and commerce will see marked development under good government and peace. We are absolutely certain that peace in East Asia will as a result have stronger foundations than ever before.

We shall appoint a governor general of Korea, and expect him, in keeping with Our orders, to command the army and navy and to exercise general control over all governmental business. We expect that government officials and public servants, in obedience to Our wishes and in accordance with the situation, will choose whether it is preferable to be fast or slow in the development of facilities and, in this way, inspire confidence in the people in the blessings of order and peace.
²⁸

As usual in the case of rescripts issued in the emperor’s name, it is not clear what part (if any) he had in the expression, but probably the text accorded with his opinions concerning Korea’s immediate fate. At this distance from the events, we can see that everyone involved in the decision to join Korea to Japan was seriously mistaken. Koreans who believed that the union would result in mutual prosperity should have foreseen, in the light of their experiences with foreign countries, that profit for the foreign country would always take precedence over any desire to bring prosperity to the Koreans. They should have realized, too, that even if figureheads like their king were permitted to enjoy a comfortable retirement, the mass of Koreans were likely to be exploited. The Japanese, who were ahead of the Koreans in every aspect of modern civilization, would surely not hesitate to take advantage of this superiority.

Those Japanese who sincerely believed in the professed aims of their country should have realized that there was nothing to indicate that the military men who ruled in Korea as governor generals would display any real interest in Korea except as a possible springboard for further Japanese expansion on the continent. And although it should have been easy to predict, no one seems to have feared the worst aspect of the annexation: that the Japanese in Korea would conduct themselves with the arrogance of a master race, and the Koreans, in order to survive under Japanese rule, would have to learn how to please the Japanese, humiliating although this sometimes proved.

Even if it had foreseen how Japanese rule would affect its people, at this stage the Korean government was incapable of resisting. The emphasis in the treaty of annexation on the good treatment that would be accorded to the king and the nobility probably reflected the belief of the Japanese that as long as the upper classes were satisfied, it did not much matter if there was discontent among the ignorant masses.

The Korean emperor, soon to be only a king, could not be a rallying point for Korean independence, as he made clear in a rescript issued on August 29 in which he spoke of his futile efforts to reform the government ordinances. Furthermore, he was handicapped by a long-standing debility, originating twelve years earlier when he drank poisoned coffee. His exhaustion had reached its limits, and there was no hope that he would recover his strength. Day and night he had attempted to think of some solution to the problems facing the country, but in the end he had found nothing, and it seemed best to turn over the responsibility to someone else. He had decided to surrender Korea’s sovereign power to His Majesty, the emperor of Great Japan, the neighboring country, a man he had long trusted, believing that he would ensure peace in East Asia and preserve the livelihoods of the people of the entire country. He urged the people not to worry about the state of the nation or the times but to go about their work tranquilly, obeying the civilized new regime of the Japanese Empire and enjoying the blessings. He declared that his abdication did not mean that he had forgotten his people; rather, he had acted entirely out of a deeply felt desire to save them.

It is unlikely that Emperor Sunjong personally wrote this rescript, but the intensity of the conveyed emotions suggest that whoever wrote it was familiar with the emperor’s deepest feelings, and these
may
have been his words. Sunjong was frail, prematurely old, and toothless, but he wanted the Korean people to know that he had not given in to the Japanese without first exhausting his limited strength in a vain attempt to find some other solution to the crisis facing the country.
²⁹

On the same day, August 29, a series of imperial ordinances were issued, proclaiming that Han-guk was henceforth to be called Ch
ō
sen, that the government general of Ch
ō
sen had been established, that an amnesty was to be put into effect in Ch
ō
sen, and that there would be an extraordinary imperial bounty in Ch
ō
sen. Other ordinances dealt with duties on Korean merchandise imported into Japan, patents, designs, copyrights, and similar commercial matters.
³⁰
After long years of laxness under their own rulers, the Koreans were getting an early taste of Japanese efficiency.

Emperor Meiji expressed his gratitude to Katsura for his skillful handling of the treaty of annexation. On September 1 rites commemorating the annexation of Korea were celebrated with religious observances in the palace, with Iwakura Tomotsuna standing in for the emperor. On the same day the emperor sent Kuj
ō
Michizane to the Ise Shrine to report the annexation. On the third he sent Kuj
ō
to inform the tomb of Emperor Jimmu and on the fourth, the tomb of Emperor K
ō
mei.
³¹
Judging from the number of sacred places where the good news was reported, the annexation was judged to be of even greater importance than the victories in the wars with China and Russia.

On a much humbler level, on August 29, the
Yorozu ch
ō
h
ō
printed a song including, “Have you seen the likes? Don Saig
ō
is having a drinking party with King Enma.”
³²
Some thirty years earlier, Saig
ō
had espoused the conquest of Korea, but Korea had now become a Japanese possession without having to fight a war. Saig
ō
was celebrating with Enma, the king of hell.

The changed relations with Korea did not affect the emperor’s affection for Yi Eun, and from time to time he sent the prince a box of cakes or fruit. Now that the prince no longer had the title of crown prince, it was decided that he would be known as the Ch’angdok young prince.
³³

In October, Terauchi sent an official report describing events from the time he took office as resident general up to the annexation of Korea. He had reorganized the administrative organs and simplified procedures. He had drastically reduced expenses with a view to promoting regional administration. As the consequence of these measures, high and low, nobles and plebes in Korea all basked in the blessings of the emperor’s influence and were profoundly moved by the generous treatment and special favors they had received.
³⁴

Terauchi did not mention it in his report, but he had prohibited the use of the Korean
neng
ō
; all official documents would henceforth bear a date according to the year of Meiji’s reign. The name of the capital, Hansong, although it had been used for more than 500 years, ever since the Yi family built their capital on the site, was forbidden and replaced by Keij
ō
.
³⁵
Even at this early stage of the union, Terauchi seems to have been determined to destroy the Koreans’ national consciousness.

It is likely that some Koreans, particularly those of the upper classes, felt grateful for the greater efficiency of the government and the greater security for themselves under Japanese rule, but the vast majority were acutely unhappy under the rule of strangers, who treated them as inferiors in their own country and who eventually sought to rob them of their language and even their names. Most Japanese were pleased and proud to think that their emperor now ruled over not only the Japanese islands but Taiwan, Sakhalin, and now Korea. In the Far East, the Japanese had done better than the British, who had only Hong Kong and a couple of Chinese ports; the French, who had not gone beyond Indochina; or the Americans, whose rule in the Philippines was plagued by unrest. Few Japanese of the time seemed to be aware that colonialism was a poison that attacked not only the victims of colonialism but also the colonizers.

Chapter 60

The year 1911 began quietly. The emperor was now in his sixtieth year, and there were further signs that his health was failing. He was scheduled to go to the Aoyama parade grounds on January 7 for the first military review of the year, but on the recommendation of the chief surgeon, he canceled the review for reasons of health.

On January 10 he and the empress went to the Phoenix Hall to hear the annual first lectures of the year. As usual, there was one lecture each devoted to Western, Chinese, and Japanese learning.
¹
On the eighteenth the first poetry gathering took place in the customary manner. The emperor’s poem on the topic “A Cold Moon Shines on the Plum Blossoms” was

The poem is graceful, although the fragrance of plum blossoms in the early spring had been noted by earlier poets.

On the same day that this elegant gathering took place, the supreme court passed death sentences on twenty-four persons who had been found guilty of planning to assassinate the emperor. Two other defendants were sentenced to life imprisonment at hard labor. In the afternoon, Prime Minister Katsura Tar
ō
went to the palace with a transcript of the verdict and reported to the emperor on the circumstances of the case. The emperor listened to Katsura with evident distress and directed him to consider an amnesty and a reduction of the sentences.
³