Japan's Colonization of Korea: Discourse and Power

Introduction

1 Translating international law into Japanese and using its terms in practice were among the most transformative aspects of Japan’s Meiji era (1868–1912). Doing so gave Japanese rulers a new method of intercourse with the United States and Europe and enabled them to reorder the vocabulary of power within Asia. Moreover, this discourse inscribed the legitimacy of Japan’s empire from the time of its creation. Although historians of modern Japan have long studied the staggering changes in Japan’s social, political, and economic fabric at the turn of the last century, they have paid less attention to the internal discourses that arose as Japan’s leaders described the country anew. To neglect these discourses is to ignore a critical element in the making of imperial Japan. The island nation had intentionally isolated itself for centuries, and the Meiji government used new discourses so that Japan would make new international sense, at a time when not making sense in this manner rendered a nation ripe for colonization. In the terminology of the day, the world’s emerging colonial powers viewed countries that shunned specific forms of international relations—particularly commercial relations—as “backward” or “barbaric.” In the face of new global terms of power, Tokyo policymakers created language to describe Japan’s rapid industrialization, mass militarization, and territorial expansion. The challenge for these officials was to craft a vocabulary that was consistent both with traditional Japanese practices and Japan’s new aspirations, and that was, furthermore, intelligible to an international audience . The encoders of Japan’s new place in the world never defined themselves collectively, but their efforts converged along mutual lines. The resulting disIntroduction 2 Introduction courses captured foreign terms to the fullest extent possible and presented Japan’s new policies as legitimate. In the process, the policymakers created perceptions of the justness of imperialist practices around the world at the time. Thus, rather than distinguishing the Japanese empire from others, these efforts confirmed Japan’s place in the international history of global empire. Unlike other diplomatic histories and imperialism studies, this book traces the construction and dispersion of terms that are too often considered transhistorical . Many scholars have ignored Japan’s discursive shift in this regard by assuming the naturalness of concepts such as sovereignty and independence, or they have blurred Japan’s intellectual history by describing the transition as yet another example of the “copycat Japanese.” Writing treaties and conducting diplomacy was by no means a new practice in Meiji Japan, but executing such transactions in the language of international law required new techniques . The scholars and state aggrandizers who translated international terms into Japanese did not create the imperialist nation that Japan would become. Their fluent use of this discourse, however, legitimated Japan’s imperialist claims within Japan and abroad. The Meiji regime’s incorporation of Hokkaido (1869), Okinawa (1871), Taiwan (1895), and the southern part of Sakhalin (1905) into the Japanese empire laid the groundwork for later imperialist expansion. Although Japan did not officially annex Korea until 1910, throughout the late nineteenth century , Meiji rulers in Korea vied doggedly with Europe and the United States over strategic privileges, mining and railroad rights, and souls to proselytize. Because it was important for Japan to engage other nations in competition, Meiji officials recognized that the need was more critical for Japan’s new policies toward Korea to make sense than for the country’s other colonial schemes. Within Japan’s expanding empire, therefore, the annexation of Korea significantly established the perceived legitimacy of Japan as a modern imperial nation. During the years between Japan’s opening of Korea in 1876—an opening that self-consciously mimicked the U.S. opening of Japan in 1853—and Japan’s annexation of Korea in 1910, Japan’s legal theorists, politicians, and translators defined the country’s Korean policy as legitimate under international law. The international arena’s quick and formally uncontested sanction of this act in 1910 confirmed the significance of these endeavors to Japan’s future empire. In the chapters that follow, I examine the discursive aspects of Japan’s annexation of Korea, with particular attention to the international legality of that moment. The international politics of imperialism taught Meiji state Introduction 3 aggrandizers that, if they were to gain full legitimacy for Japan as a colonizing nation, they needed to define their policies...