This piece is based on a passage dated April 21, 2019, together with a continuation of an earlier essay from 2015.
Through references to Korean envoys, Fukuzawa Yukichi and Kim Ok-gyun, claims over the origins of taekwondo and Japanese culture, and a style of fabrication reminiscent of the comfort women issue, it critically examines distortions in historical perceptions surrounding the Korean Peninsula.
It also contrasts Umesao Tadao’s conclusions drawn from fieldwork with the abstract moralism of postwar cultural figures such as Kenzaburō Ōe, thereby highlighting deeper problems in Japan’s intellectual sphere.

2019-04-21
It would seem that Yukichi said, “There is no need to greet Korea,” because of the barbarity of having his friend Kim Ok-gyun executed and his body dismembered, and also because of this habit of theft.

The following is a continuation of the previous chapter.
The Korean envoys were a band of petty thieves.
For example, people say that the most disliked people in the world are Koreans, followed by the Chinese.
To speak in such a stereotyped way about a particular people is by no means a good thing.
But when one looks at history, the characteristic habits peculiar to each people appear quite honestly.
In the case of Koreans, would that be a habit of theft?

During the Muromachi period, they sent envoys three times, were astonished by gilding and waterwheels, learned the techniques, and went home.
They also greatly admired Japanese kana.
Soon afterward, Sejong, the fourth king of the Yi dynasty, announced Korean-style kana, that is, ŏnmun.
It was unmistakably intellectual property theft.

In the Edo period, they came twelve times, and those too were journeys of theft.
Once they entered an inn, they stole everything from tableware to the flower vase in the alcove to the bedding.
They even stole chickens from the yards of farmhouses and got into fights with townspeople.

In the Meiji period.
Fukuzawa Yukichi invited Korean students, but they soon stole money from the university safe.
It would seem that Yukichi said, “There is no need to greet Korea,” because of the barbarity of having his friend Kim Ok-gyun executed and his body dismembered, and also because of this habit of theft.

After the war, they falsely claimed to be nationals of a victorious country, stole land in front of stations throughout Japan, and started pachinko parlors.
They also stole Japan’s traditions.
They began claiming that the Japanese sword was originally an ancient Korean thing, and at the Ground Self-Defense Force Memorial Museum in Asaka there is a so-called Korean-style military sword said to have been presented by a Korean military attaché, but to all appearances it is a cheap imitation Japanese sword.
It is loathsome even to look at.

Japan’s karate was also stolen.
Choi Hong-hi, who had learned karate in Japan, after the war named it taekwondo in Korea and made it popular.
That in itself is his business, but what is unforgivable is the fabricated origin story of taekwondo.
It says, “Taekwondo was born and spread in Korea two thousand years ago,” but the reason there is not a single document concerning it is that during the period of Japanese imperial rule, “the Japanese burned everything, and those who knew the facts were seized and, after torture, reduced to ruined men.”

*Readers should notice that the logic here is exactly the same as what Koreans, down to Park Geun-hye, have been saying about the comfort women issue by making use of the fabricated reporting of the Asahi Shimbun.
Truly, Umesao Tadao was one of the world’s great scholars.
The conclusion he reached about the Sinic sphere after living and conducting fieldwork for several years across almost all of China and the entire Korean Peninsula — that it is a realm of “bottomless evil” and “plausible lies” — is entirely correct.
By contrast, the pseudo-moralism of the so-called cultural figures represented by Kenzaburō Ōe, who was born in Ehime, grew up reading the Asahi Shimbun, entered the University of Tokyo as an honor student, immersed himself in foreign books, and lived in Tokyo….
Who knows only the mountains of Ehime where he grew up, his own family, and the Japan and the world depicted by the postwar Asahi Shimbun….
That pseudo-moralism too stands out sharply.
To be continued.