Published on October 17, 2019.
Based on Kiyoshi Nagae’s book review in the monthly magazine WiLL, this article introduces Koji Matsumoto’s The Origins of Korean “Anti-Japanism.”
It examines the views of Masakazu Yamazaki, Ryotaro Shiba, and Hisahiko Okazaki on Korea, and summarizes the book’s arguments on the Japan–Korea annexation, sōshi-kaimei, anti-Japanese education in South Korea, and the reality of Korean cooperation with Japan, grounded in nearly one thousand documents.

October 17, 2019.
In addition to their original “surname,” being able to have a Japanese-mainland-style “family name” was “not a bad thing.”
Because they were allowed to use their “surname” as their “family name,” several million people did so.
The following is from a book review published in the book review section of the monthly magazine WiLL, in Kiyoshi Nagae’s “This One Book of the Month,” under the title Koji Matsumoto’s The Origins of Korean “Anti-Japanism.”
Masakazu Yamazaki, who received the Order of Culture last year for his contributions to culture over half a century, says that in the last war Japan produced neither a Hitler nor Nazis, but instead the entire nation cooperated in the war.
Therefore, he argues, the entire nation has no choice but to continue apologizing to the victimized countries, especially to Korea, whose “state Japan annexed, whose national language Japan took away, and whose names Japan even forced people to change”（Ushio, November 2013 issue）.
Ryotaro Shiba, who also received the Order of Culture.
In his grand travelogue Kaidō o Yuku, serialized in Shukan Asahi, the first overseas destination he chose was Korea.
When a Korean woman asked him what he wanted, he answered, “To a rural village where I can taste the feeling of ancient times when our words were understood,” while writing that what he really wanted to say was, “I am going to the land of my ancestors.”
Like Kim Tal-su, whom he deeply respected, he viewed Japan and Korea as descendants of the same horse-riding people.
Former Ambassador to Thailand Hisahiko Okazaki, whom Prime Minister Abe looked up to as a model.
After serving in Seoul, he wrote What I Thought in the Neighboring Country, but praised Korean resistance before and after annexation as “one of the fiercest among colonized peoples,” and was ashamed of sōshi-kaimei as a “folly” comparable to “annihilating a people” or “American slavery.”
This book rejects all such views.
It devotes about one thousand documents to its proof, of which 240 are untranslated Korean, that is, Chosŏn, Chinese, and English documents.
The documentary evidence that does not fit into the main text is placed in more than 870 notes, totaling 112 pages in small type.
It is a major work that one can only urge people to read, but if I were to summarize it roughly, perhaps it could be rendered as follows:
“Annexation penetrated ideally through moderate Japanese rule and the cooperation of Korean residents.
Precisely because of that, however, the residents lost the place to put their hearts when Japan was defeated.
For the rulers, in order to regenerate South Korea, they had no choice but to recast the people’s spiritual core, and by means of false history education they clothed the nation in ‘anti-Japanism.’”
After all, it is said that conversations at private banquets among the national leadership were in Japanese.
South Korean textbooks describe Japan during the annexation period as “so vicious that no parallel can be found in world history.”
And today, “the entire people continued to fight” has become the common understanding of the nation.
The counterevidence is the scene of the return-home press conference of Kim Ku, president of the Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea, after he came back from Shanghai.
Asked how those who had cooperated with Japan should be treated, he answered, “Every single person in Korea is a collaborator with Japan.
All of them should go to prison.”
France executed 10,000 collaborators with Germany, and Italy executed 15,000.
In South Korea, not a single person was executed.
On the contrary, the book cites personnel records showing that leaders in every field, beginning with the heads of the three branches of government, were people who had been active during the annexation period.
The book also records many statements by figures such as Ham Sok-hon, the “Gandhi of Korea,” but its basic tone is that “there were no pro-Japanese factions; they had been Japanese.”
The Constitution of the Republic of Korea declares in its preamble that it “inherits the legitimacy” of the Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea, but that provisional government was never trusted by its compatriots.
This book also explains in detail the meaning of sōshi-kaimei, the process by which it was introduced, and the reaction to it.
In Korea, there were “surnames” indicating patrilineal bloodlines, but there was no “family name” as a designation of the household.
A “family name” was newly established in order to create family registers.
Lim Jong-guk, who devoted his life to investigating the conduct of pro-Japanese collaborators, wrote that “people competed with one another to create family names.”
In addition to their original “surname,” being able to have a Japanese-mainland-style “family name” was “not a bad thing.”
Because they were allowed to use their “surname” as their “family name,” several million people did so.
More people did not change the “given names” they had received from their parents, such as “Dae-u” or “Gyeong-yeol.”
The author is a former career official of the Ministry of International Trade and Industry, now the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, who worked at the Japanese Embassy in Seoul in the mid-1980s.
Since then, he has probably spent tens of thousands of hours searching widely for materials both inside and outside Japan, reading them closely, and compiling this book.
Because of my work, I too have read quite a few books on Korea and the Korean Peninsula, but I was stimulated by this one.
It is also the first book for which I have ever so eagerly awaited rebuttals and opposing views.
My thanks.