Based on an essay by Shoichi Watanabe, this article examines why the Japan-Korea union was not “colonization” but “annexation,” through the history of English terminology, the Encyclopedia Britannica, the realities of Japanese rule in Korea, and the life of Park Chung-hee. It questions the real history that postwar Japanese people were never properly told.

2020-06-19
By improving the police system and advancing internal administration, public order also improved in remote districts where thieves and bands of robbers had been rampant.
The peace of Korea had continued without a cloud since the annexation.
I am republishing, after organizing and correcting punctuation and other details, the chapter I published on 2019-03-13 under the title, “Even the phrase ‘Texas annexation’ contains no meaning of ‘plunder’ or ‘conquest.’”
The currently available Rekishi-tsu, a special April 2019 issue of the monthly magazine WiLL titled Countdown to the Disappearance of “Korea” in 202X, priced at 980 yen, is a book that every Japanese citizen must read.
The reason is that it is filled with the true history that, for some reason, was never told and never reported to the many Japanese people who, after the war, did nothing more than read newspapers such as the Asahi Shimbun and watch NHK.
The following essay published in it is an important legacy left to us by our great senior Shoichi Watanabe, a giant born in Yamagata Prefecture, who lived out his life as a treasure of Japan.
Korea Was Not a “Colony”
“The 36 years of colonial rule by Imperial Japan” is nothing more than the Korean side’s claim.
There are voices on the Japanese side that echo it as well.
But how does it look from the perspective of world history?
There is a vast difference between a union of countries and a colony.
Pizarro’s invasion and “colony”
In Meiji 43, 1910, Japan and Korea united.
There is a way of thinking that regards this as Japan’s “colonization” of Korea, and indeed that has become the general tendency.
Of course, South Korea and North Korea make such claims out of political interest.
Therefore, first of all, let us clearly recognize that the so-called “Japan-Korea annexation” was the union of two empires, and not the colonization of one by the other.
We must not forget that Korea became the “Korean Empire” thanks to Japan in the Sino-Japanese War.
The story begins there.
In other words, it was a union between empires.
For example, in English documents, the Japan-Korea union is described as “annexation.”
This gives a completely different impression from “colonization,” which means “the making of a colony.”
To look at history fairly and objectively, it is also important to know how words were used at the time.
We must not judge the past by the common sense of the present.
Even if we understand this intellectually, we tend to measure history by today’s yardstick.
Therefore, although it may sound somewhat pedantic, I would like first to explain, as clearly as possible, the difference between “annexation” and “colonization,” based on British dictionaries and other sources.
First, let us consider the etymology of colonization.
The “colo” in “colonization” means “to cultivate” or “to dwell.”
The past participle “cultum” of this Latin verb means “cultivated” or “refined,” and the English word “culture,” meaning both cultivation and education, also comes from it.
The derivative of “cultum,” colonia, meant “farm” or “territory.”
Originally, it referred to land inhabited by Roman citizens who moved to newly conquered lands as the Roman Empire expanded, especially discharged soldiers called “veterans.”
They possessed Roman citizenship and also played a role in imperial defense as garrison soldiers.
It may be easiest to understand them as something like Japan’s tondenhei settler-soldiers.
If we look at Britain, there were nine Roman coloniae on the island of Britain.
Well-known areas include London, Bath, Chester, and Lincoln.
All of them were Roman coloniae at the time.
Now, the word “colonia,” which in Roman times meant “farm” or “territory,” eventually came to be used also in the sense of the Greek word “apoikia.”
The Greeks settled in Syracuse and on Italian islands and built independent, self-governing “colonies.”
That was “apoikia,” meaning a place where people lived independently from the metropolis, the mother polis, but in Latin that too came to be called colonia.
Then when did the word “colony,” which in modern English refers to a “colony,” begin to be used?
The first person to use the word “colony” in English was Richard Eden, a sixteenth-century English translator.
He used the word “colony” for the first time in his translation of a book describing the conduct of Francisco Pizarro, the Spaniard who destroyed the Inca Empire in Peru and destroyed its civilization.
It appears in the book he published in 1555, The Decade of the New Worlde, or West India.
Britain sent criminals into its colonies
The modern word “colony,” that is, “植民地,” entered English as a word that evoked the cruel invasion and plunder by Pizarro, who drove the indigenous people of Peru to the verge of extinction during the Age of Discovery.
The year 1555 was the year when Mori Motonari defeated Sue Harukata at the Battle of Itsukushima and laid the foundation for his rule over the Chugoku region.
It was five years before Oda Nobunaga defeated Imagawa Yoshimoto at the Battle of Okehazama.
The verb “colonize,” meaning “to create a colony,” and the noun “colonization,” meaning “the making of a colony,” were first used by Edmund Burke in 1770.
In his book The Thoughts on the Present Discontents, he used the expression “Our Growth by colonization and by conquest.”
Six years later, in Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations, published in 1776, there is the usage “The discovery and colonization of America.”
It carries the nuance of scattering the Indians and forcibly seizing their land.
In Japanese terms, this corresponds to the Tanuma period.
The British poet and writer Robert Southey wrote The Life of Nelson in his later years and, on the recommendation of the novelist Walter Scott, also became Poet Laureate, but in his youth he was a man who dreamed of what is now forgotten as “pantisocracy,” which in Japanese would mean “a society of equal rights for all people.”
In Letters from England, published in 1807 and written under the premise that it was authored by a Spanish traveler named Don Manuel Alvarez Espriella, he wrote as follows:
“To colonize with criminals is one of the systems of England.”
In other words, he was criticizing Britain for sending criminals into its colonies.
He also said that the lives of British people were exposed to great danger, especially in terms of their industrial and commercial expansion.
From this period onward, the English word “colonize” carried an image of invasion and plunder, and all conscientious Englishmen used it in a negative sense.
The Japan-Korea union was “annexation”
By the 1830s, the words “colonizationism,” meaning colonialism, and “colonizationist,” meaning colonialist, had also come to be used in America.
These too have an entirely critical connotation.
The word “colonia,” which originally did not have a bad meaning, produced the word “colonize” as white people conquered countries of colored peoples during the Age of Discovery, and it came to carry the image of “plunder” and “invasion.”
As far as I know, that word “colonization” does not appear at all in British documents in relation to the Japan-Korea union.
All of them write “annexation.”
The word “annexation” is used by the British philosopher Francis Bacon in Union England and Scotland, said to have been written before 1626, in the expression “to make one compounded annexation from the lands of two countries, or peoples,” with a nuance of equality.
In 1875, James Bryce, a jurist and historian, wrote the following in The Holy Roman Empire:
“France, by the annexation of Piedmont, crossed the Alps.”
Here too there is absolutely no meaning of “plunder.”
The verb “annex” originally included the meaning “without subordination,” and there was originally no nuance that one side was above the other.
In A History of England, which appeared in 1846, originally a Latin book that had been published earlier, there is a statement that “Julius Caesar annexed Britain to the Roman Empire.”
In this case too, the nuance is strongly that Rome brought civilization to the island of Britain, and there is no sense of plunder.
There is no meaning of plunder or conquest
Furthermore, the word “annexationist” means an advocate of the annexation of Texas in America.
Even the phrase “Texas annexation,” realized by America in 1845, contains no meaning of “plunder” or “conquest.”
With this in mind, let us look at the twelfth edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, published in 1922.
There was still no description in the eleventh edition of 1911, the year after the Japan-Korea union, and it is in the entry “Korea” in the twelfth edition, published twelve years later, that the Japan-Korea union appears for the first time.
The Britannica, whose first edition appeared in Edinburgh, Great Britain, in 1771, was, in the period when it was published only in Britain, highly regarded around the world for the fairness of its information, together with The London Times, and was a highly trusted encyclopedia read by intellectuals all over the world.
There it is written as follows:
“On August 22, 1910, Korea became an integral part of the Japanese Empire.”
From the wording “integral part,” meaning an indispensable part, we can see that it was not regarded as a “colony.”
“The name of the country was restored to Chosen, which had been used about five hundred years earlier. Since 1906, when Japan acquired diplomatic rights, orderly and systematic progress had begun under Japan, and this union made that progress still more certain.”
However, it also says that “some people criticize the suppression of Korean nationalism,” and then continues with a description roughly to the following effect:
“By improving the police system and advancing internal administration, public order also improved in remote districts where thieves and bands of robbers had been rampant. The peace of Korea had continued without a cloud since the annexation, but in March 1919, a disturbance suddenly occurred. This was under the influence of the principle of self-determination advocated by U.S. President Wilson, but it was immediately suppressed. Japan had been carefully proceeding with reforms, but seeing this, it decided to hasten its plans. Notably, not only military men but also civilians could now become Governor-General of Korea, and the Governor-General, instead of being responsible only to the Emperor, came to be subject to the Prime Minister. Prime Minister Hara announced that he was advancing a policy of removing discrimination between Japanese and Koreans in education, industry, and the civil service system, and thus peace returned to Korea once again. After that, dissatisfied elements occasionally caused disturbances, but they were splendidly suppressed.”
The benefits Park Chung-hee received from Japan
Koreans causing riots was not something limited to the period of Japanese rule.
Even after independence, there were many rebellions, such as the Jeju Uprising in 1948 and the Gwangju Incident in 1980.
If anything, there were more than during the Japanese period.
In any case, in this description in the 1922 Britannica as well, the word “annexation” is used throughout.
Four years later, in the thirteenth edition published in 1926, an entry titled “Annexation of Korea” was established, and it stated that “the Sino-Japanese and Russo-Japanese Wars were wars to prevent Korea from becoming a dagger pointed at the heart of Japan,” and that “there was no method other than annexation by Japan to stop the whimsical and suicidal diplomacy of the Korean courtiers, and in the end, it reached its climax with the assassination of Ito Hirobumi.”
It is written with great sympathy toward Japan.
It also describes in detail how, after the union with Japan, the Korean Peninsula developed economically and became stable.
The statement that “the government in Tokyo considered it Japan’s responsibility to govern Korea, and the Korean royal family came to receive high honors and ample financial support” refers to Japan’s courteous treatment of the Yi royal family of Korea.
They were treated in a manner equivalent to Japan’s imperial family, and Princess Masako of the Nashimoto-no-miya family married Crown Prince Yi Un.
If this had been the royal family of a “colony” conquered by invasion, it would have been unthinkable for it to enter into marriage with the royal family of the home country.
There is no example of a Korean king taking as his wife a daughter of the Chinese imperial family.
In other words, through the union, Japan came to have three kinds of upper classes: the imperial family, the royal families, namely the Yi royal family, and the peerage.
Incidentally, among the Korean yangban families who became peers, there were 6 marquises, 7 counts, 22 viscounts, and 45 barons.
Until then, the Korean Peninsula had been ruled by the Qing dynasty.
Korea was a country that had been established by the Ming, and when the Ming was destroyed by the Qing, Korea resisted out of loyalty, and was thoroughly crushed by the Qing.
Unless one hears from someone who still remembers the period when Korea was a vassal state of the Qing, it is difficult to grasp just how terrible it was.
By chance, I once had a former North Korean deserter live in my house for about a year.
He was an educated man who had graduated from the old-system Pyongyang Middle School, and according to him, the reason Korea at the end of the Qing was so filthy was that if it was kept clean, Qing soldiers would come.
Therefore, the people made it so dirty that even Qing soldiers would not come near.
If there was delicious food, it would all be taken away, so cooking did not develop either, and what people ate was little more than scorched rice.
Because they had long been afraid of Japanese pirates and could not go out to sea, seafood cooking also did not develop, he said.
That is why, during the Sino-Japanese and Russo-Japanese Wars, the Korean people were cooperative toward Japan.
Regarding the union as well, as was fairly described in the Britannica, there certainly were opponents and terrorists, but the great majority of the people were overjoyed.
How much Koreans were saved thanks to the union can be understood by reading the biography of Park Chung-hee, who served five terms as president of South Korea from 1963 to 1979.
Park Chung-hee was born as the seventh child in a family of extreme poverty.
Poor Korea before the Japan-Korea union was like present-day North Korea, and many people died of starvation during the spring famine.
Therefore, there was no way that a seventh child should have been able to grow up.
Yet, because of the Japan-Korea union, he was not only able to survive, but also able to go to school thanks to Japan’s education policy.
Because he had excellent grades in elementary school, he advanced, on the recommendation of a Japanese teacher, to a normal school where tuition was exempted, then went on to the Army Military Academy in Xinjing, Manchuria, graduated at the top of his class, and was specially selected to enter the Imperial Japanese Army Academy.
Following a course that would have been unthinkable had Korea not united with Japan, he ultimately became president of South Korea and brought to his homeland the economic growth known as the “Miracle on the Han River.”
This may be called one striking example of the benefits South Korea received through the Japan-Korea union.
There were countless examples of this kind.
This essay continues.