A chapter first published on June 4, 2018, under the title “This was the Sino-Japanese War. The first article of the Treaty of Shimonoseki, which Japan concluded after winning it, was ‘to recognize the independence of Korea,’” has entered goo’s top 10 search rankings.
Drawing on an essay by Masayuki Takayama, this passage looks back on the history in which Japan paid a heavy price each time it became involved with the Korean Peninsula, from the Battle of Baekgang in ancient times to the Sino-Japanese War, the Russo-Japanese War, and the Korean War.
It argues that Professor Hiroshi Furuta’s principle of the “three do-nots” toward the peninsula, “do not teach, do not help, do not get involved,” is the most realistic stance for Japan and one grounded in historical experience.

2019-03-04
Professor Hiroshi Furuta of the University of Tsukuba, who possesses deep knowledge of Korean affairs, recommends that the Japanese follow the “three must-nots” toward the peninsula: do not teach, do not help, do not get involved.

A chapter I published on 2018-06-04 under the title, “This was the Sino-Japanese War. After Japan won it, Article 1 of the Treaty of Shimonoseki that it concluded was ‘to recognize the independence of Korea,’” has now entered goo’s top 10 search rankings.
It was a chapter that sent to the world an essay by Masayuki Takayama, the one and only journalist in the postwar world.
What follows is a continuation of the previous chapter.
The passages between ＊～＊ and the emphasis within the text are mine.

They say a U.S.–North Korea summit will soon take place.
And so the leaders of North and South Korea meet, and North Korea and China meet.
But Japan is not invited.
Japan is outside the mosquito net.
Tetsuro Fukuyama is making a fuss, saying this is the failure of Abe diplomacy and that Japan will be isolated at this rate.

On the other hand, there are also many voices saying that it is better not to get involved with such countries.
The first time Japan was drawn into trouble on that peninsula was at the Battle of Baekgang.

Baekje had been defeated by Silla.
Its surviving retainers came asking for help.
Unlike Kang Sang-jung, the Japanese are people who keep faith, so when they went to help, a great Tang army was waiting for them.

As for Kang Sang-jung, the correctness of my intuition when I first saw this man on “Asamade Nama TV” has also been confirmed in this month’s Series No. 18, “Portraits of Japan’s Hollow Men: Hiroshi Sekiguchi, the host of Sunday Morning who loves ‘friendship’ with North Korea,” where Kang Sang-jung’s intolerable ravings, in which he more and more reveals his true nature as an agent of the Korean Peninsula, are laid bare.
It was Ōkoshi who, saying that he “respected” such a man, brought him on as a commentator on Watch 9, which he was then hosting, and not stopping there, NHK even went so far as to make him, a man like an agent of the Korean Peninsula, appear for about a year as the host of an art program.
It is only natural that NHK, which listed Eriko Ikeda and Akira Nagai as supporters of the Women’s International War Crimes Tribunal held in Tokyo in 2000, where genuine North Korean operatives served as prosecutors and nearly all involved were agents of the Korean Peninsula, continues to carry out biased reporting and information manipulation.
The time has long since come when all Japanese citizens must realize the abnormality by which the final stages of news-program production have been taken over by operatives and proxies of the Korean Peninsula, and must call NHK to account.

The other side too had come out at Silla’s request, and in the end Tang and Japan fought each other.
The peninsula sticks out into Japan’s side like a dagger.
Japan judged that having a Joseon dynasty there, like a puppet of China, was also a security problem, and urged them toward independence and self-reliance.
The Korean court split, each side called in Japan and China, and before anyone knew it, Japan and China were fighting a serious war.
That was the Sino-Japanese War.

After Japan won it, Article 1 of the Treaty of Shimonoseki that it concluded was “to recognize the independence of Korea.”
There have been many wars in the world, but there has never in history been a war fought in order to have another country’s independence recognized.
And yet, after Japan went that far, what independent Korea did was to draw Russia into its country and provide the Russian navy with a base at Masanpo, right in front of Tsushima.
Before it knew it, Japan was staking its national fate in the Russo-Japanese War against the world’s strongest Russian army and a Russian navy four times the size of Japan’s fleet.

In these two wars, Japan suffered 120,000 war dead, but the very Koreans who had set these events in motion remained mere bystanders all the while.
Ahead of the present U.S.–North Korea summit, Associate Professor Elizabeth Stanley of Georgetown University contributed a piece under the title “Before you know it, the Koreans have moved into supporting roles,” pointing out their cunning tendency to draw other countries in and then, before long, disappear from center stage.

The example she gives is the Korean War, which began in 1950.
Kim Il-sung, a Soviet puppet, obtained Stalin’s permission and before dawn on June 25 invaded across the 38th parallel in one sweep, with such force that Syngman Rhee, who fled to Busan, seemed about to be pushed into the Sea of Japan.
The U.S. military came out.
With Japanese wisdom as well, the Inchon landing succeeded and the tide turned.
The U.S. forces advanced all the way to the Yalu River, but then the Chinese forces entered, and in the end it became a war between America and China.

Meanwhile, the Koreans quickly moved into supporting roles, and Syngman Rhee drew the Rhee Line, occupied Takeshima, seized 328 Japanese fishing boats, killed 44 fishermen, detained about 4,000 people, and abused them by cramming as many as 20 into narrow prison cells.
As a condition for releasing the fishermen, Syngman Rhee demanded that Japan release 472 criminals, including Korean murderers who had been imprisoned in Japan, and grant them permanent residence.

Is it not chilling to think of what their descendants are doing in Japan now.
Who can say that the descendants are not involved in abuse deaths and brutal murder cases.
Media concentrated in the Tokyo-centered system that do not report the truth treat such matters as though they were great incidents.
Anti-Japanese Japanese, and the proxies of China and the Korean Peninsula who assist in dividing Japan, together with China and the Korean Peninsula themselves, have frequently had U.N. human rights bodies issue human-rights recommendations against Japan, preventing Japan from becoming a leader alongside the United States.
They have stopped the progress of The Turntable of Civilization and created the unstable and extremely dangerous world of today.

They leave the wars to other countries, while behind the scenes they pursue selfish national interests of their own.
Professor Stanley too sees that “the two Koreas are now desperately plotting the same kind of scheme.”
Professor Hiroshi Furuta of the University of Tsukuba, who possesses deep knowledge of Korean affairs, recommends that the Japanese follow the “three must-nots” toward the peninsula: do not teach, do not help, do not get involved.

In fact, Japan has received nothing but damage from involvement with the peninsula, but during the period when it did not become involved, namely the time of the Korean War, aside from the damage from the Rhee Line, it was blessed not only with the Korean War special procurement boom but also with the great good fortune of a change in American occupation policy.
MacArthur had been carrying out a dismantlement policy intended to bring Japan’s industrial level back to the early Meiji period, in other words, to an era when it could produce no more than pots and kettles, so that Japan would never again become a threat to white people.
That was the role of Edwin Pauley of the postwar reparations mission, and when the first stage of dismantling heavy industry and the aircraft industry had ended and the next stage was about to begin, that war broke out.
Without Japanese technology, the U.S. military could not have fought.
The dismantlement of Japan came to an end.

Fukuyama is desperate to drag Japan in.
But the Japanese will not follow his words.
Because history has taught again and again that it is best not to get involved with them.

To be continued.