2024/03/04

※ The following is a Japanese back-translation of the English text provided, now translated into English again. It is not the original Japanese text. Notes identify passages whose meaning could not be established with certainty.

A Country That Has Long Turned to Japan for Help

South Korea’s National Character: A President Who Lies Without Feeling Ashamed
April 30, 2019

The following is from the latest book by Masayuki Takayama, a journalist without equal in the postwar world.

South Korea’s national character is such that its president lies without feeling ashamed.
Koreans say, “Japan colonized the peninsula as a foothold for conquering the continent.”
But I tell them unequivocally:
Japan had long been troubled by this peninsula and, if possible, wanted nothing more to do with it.

Hiroshi Furuta, a professor at the University of Tsukuba, explains the point succinctly: “Because it was still in antiquity until a hundred years ago.”

It is a country that has long turned to Japan for help with one thing after another.

During the Muromachi period.
In the reign of the king they call Sejong, envoys came three times.
In reality, they made many more attempts, but because they lacked seaworthy ships, most perished in the Tsushima Current.

The first envoys who finally arrived were eager to learn weaving, papermaking, and how to build waterwheels for irrigation.
〔The English word corresponding to “weaving” was “platting,” so its precise meaning cannot be established.〕

The Japanese kindly taught them.

After a while, they returned, once again in difficulty.
Scratching their heads, they asked to be taught again how to build the waterwheels whose construction had already been explained to them.
Forgetting things immediately was part of their national character.

“Oh, well,” the Japanese thought, and taught them again.
This continued throughout the Edo period.

When the Japanese went there in the Meiji era, there were no waterwheels.
There were no wooden buckets, either.
People cooked in earthenware vessels, living just as they had in antiquity.
〔Because this part of the English text was badly garbled, it has been supplemented according to the context.〕

They were a people who not only failed to progress but actually regressed.

This was exceedingly troublesome for the Japanese, but the peninsula where they lived resembled a dagger pointed at Japan’s flank.
Because of its geopolitical position, Japan ended up fighting China and then Russia.
〔The final sentence of the supplied English text was confused about the order of “China” and “Russia,” and the wording of the Japanese original cannot be confirmed.〕