Published on July 12, 2019.
Presented as a chapter originally published on May 6, 2018, this passage draws on the Sankei Shimbun series “Across the Strait: Tales of the Land of Morning” to discuss how Keijō developed into a modern metropolis during the period of Japanese rule.
Through concrete testimony about infrastructure, commercial districts, and the richness of daily life, it presents the reality of Korea’s modernization and raises strong doubts about the historical narrative spread after the war.

2019-07-12
“I remember listening to records on holidays, and going to see the cherry blossoms at Changgyeongwon, too. Until the end of the war, goods were plentiful, and there were no air raids. It really was a wonderful city.”
What follows is a chapter I published on 2018/5/6.
The following is from the serialized feature “Across the Strait: Tales of the Land of Morning” carried on page 6 of today’s Sankei Shimbun.
When I reluctantly appeared on the internet bearing The Turntable of Civilization, the president of South Korea at that time was Lee Myung-bak.
As a reader of the Asahi Shimbun who watched news programs on their affiliated television stations and NHK, I knew that South Korea was a country that continued anti-Japan education… and so I had absolutely no desire to visit South Korea and never went, and therefore knew nothing about the Korean Peninsula.
Exasperated by his abnormal words and deeds in his later years, I investigated South Korea on the internet for the first time, and in barely one hour came to know the reality of the Korean Peninsula.
This article gave me the feeling that only now, at long last, that reality is finally appearing on the pages of newspapers, but it is a genuine article that conveys unmistakable facts, and it goes without saying that it is an article all Japanese citizens must read.
All emphasis in the text other than the headings is mine.
Why did Keijō become a city of one million?
The Japanese quarter that developed out of “mud and mire.”
Seoul, the capital of South Korea, has a population of about ten million, the center of politics and economics, and the forefront of culture and information.
It is now one of the major cities not only of Asia but of the world.
This city had been the capital of the Yi Dynasty, Hansŏng, for 500 years since the end of the fourteenth century.
During the period of Japanese rule, 1910 to 1945, it was called “Keijō,” developed as a modern city, and before the end of the war its population, that of Keijō-fu, had already exceeded one million.　　
The philosopher Yoshishige Abe, 1883 to 1966, who lived there for about fifteen years as a professor at Keijō Imperial University and later served as principal of the old First Higher School, Minister of Education, and head of Gakushuin, left behind many essays depicting this beautiful and brilliant capital.　　
In “Keijō and Athens,” written in 1928, he wrote the following.
“When I first came to Keijō, I immediately thought that in some way it resembled Athens in Greece… The scenery looking down over the Han River from in front of the Chōsen Shrine brought back to me the memory of looking out over the sea from atop the Acropolis…”
Abe was posted to Keijō in Taishō 15, 1926, more than fifteen years after the annexation of Korea by Japan.
If Abe had instead come to this city in the final years of the Yi Dynasty or during the era of the Korean Empire, when “premodern” conventions and traditions were as if shut up unchanged within the city walls, how would he in fact have felt?　
From Meiji 38, 1905, before annexation, there is a passage describing the city by Masanosuke Katō, a journalist who later served in the House of Peers.
“Only the main streets were comparatively clean, but when one came to the back streets of the city, there were places only eight or nine shaku wide, about two and a half meters, through which carts and horses could not pass, and the stench arising from the decay of sewage and refuse struck one’s nose… The only buildings within the walls worth seeing were the two palaces, Gyeongbok and Changdeok, the Japanese barracks, and the legations of the various countries.” From Kankoku Keiei.　
It was the Japanese who took over the businesses of Westerners who had initially handled electricity, waterworks, and city tramways in Keijō, and through several urban plans developed the infrastructure, the social capital, and transformed it into a modern great city.　
Land avoided by Koreans.
When Japanese began living in this city at the end of the nineteenth century, the first settlement was a place on the northern foot of Namsan called “Chinkoge.”
It was literally low wet ground, and when rain fell, water flowed in from Namsan and it became muddy.
It was an area where few Koreans lived either.　
The Japanese steadily improved this land, built roads, and constructed houses, shops, and public institutions.
From there, bustling districts such as Honmachi, later Chungmu-ro, and Meijimachi, Myeong-dong, spread out, and the south side of Cheonggyecheon, which ran across the city, came to be identified as the Japanese district, while the north side became the Korean district.　
Let us rely once more on Katō’s pen.
“The houses in the Japanese settlement included Western-style buildings and Japanese-style two-story houses, the shops were broad and neat, and traffic was busy… The number of Japanese settlers increased year by year… In April of Meiji 38 the population was 6,296…” Same source.　　
In the Japanese quarter, department stores such as Mitsukoshi, Chōjiya, and Mitsunakaya entered, and hotels, restaurants, cafés, and movie theaters opened one after another.
Fashionable young people, called modern girls and modern boys, flocked there, and spending time in the central shopping district of Honmachi came to be called “Hon-bura,” in imitation of Gin-bura in Tokyo and Shinsaibashi-bura in Osaka.　
Chiyoko Masaki, 91, whose father served as an architectural engineer for the Government-General of Korea, was born in Keijō in 1927, and after graduating from a girls’ high school, found employment at a fisheries company located in the center of Keijō.
“Honmachi was a lively shopping district that could compete with anything in the home islands. I often went shopping at department stores such as Mitsukoshi and Chōjiya. I remember listening to records on holidays, and going to see the cherry blossoms at Changgyeongwon, too. Until the end of the war, goods were plentiful, and there were no air raids. It really was a wonderful city.”
This is the true reality of the Korean Peninsula at the time of the Japan-Korea annexation. Thanks to coming under Japanese rule, the Korean Peninsula passed peaceful and prosperous years untouched by the Second World War. The time has long since come when not only Japanese citizens but people all over the world must know that the reason the Korean Peninsula now says Japan colonized it, forcibly took people away, and the like, these “bottomless evils” and “plausible lies,” is nothing more than the product and consequence of the propaganda of the dictatorial state of the Kim family, and of the dictatorship of Syngman Rhee, who falsified history in order to oppose Kim Il-sung and began the totalitarianism called anti-Japan education.
This article will continue.