Originally published on October 17, 2019.
Continuing from the previous chapter, this article draws on a dialogue between Takayama Masayuki and Miyawaki Junko to discuss Korean society before the Japan-Korea Annexation, the classical Chinese world and status system, the formation of modern Korean, the spread of Japanese education and culture, historical interpretations of the March First Movement, and the psychological structure of Koreans who were forced after the war to deny their past as Japanese.

October 17, 2019.
Moreover, there was a rigid status system, and people of the lower classes were bullied by the upper classes and did not even have a consciousness of being Korean.
That is why, even when the Japan-Korea Annexation occurred, they regarded it as something happening above the clouds.
The following is a continuation of the previous chapter.
History Began with the Japan-Korea Annexation.
Takayama.
Come to think of it, when I was watching a wide show, it introduced that many anti-Korean books were being published, and among them the cover of my Korea and the Media Shamelessly Lie was shown very prominently. (laughs)
Miyawaki.
Is that not rather good publicity? (laughs)
Takayama.
I think there are other books more suitable to be called anti-Korean books.
There are also truly sensible books on Korean studies.
Matsumoto Koji’s The Origin of South Korea’s “Anti-Japaneseism,” published by Soshisha, and your The True Nature of China and South Korea, published by WAC, are such books, are they not?
Miyawaki.
Matsumoto’s book was an excellent work that proved the view of South Korea that I had been writing about until then.
With abundant materials, it demonstrates the way Koreans thought at that time.
Takayama.
I was the first to take it up, but after that everyone began to take it up actively in book reviews.
I would like Matsumoto to buy me at least a cup of tea. (laughs)
Okada Kunihiro also reads it carefully in Ashita e no Sentaku.
Since ancient times, South Korea had been ignored by everyone and existed like something in the shade.
That is why the thirty-six years of Japanese imperial rule can truly be called heaven.
Miyawaki.
According to Matsumoto’s book, Korean history began when Japan annexed the Korean Peninsula.
Until then, it was a world of classical Chinese, and only a handful of people read the Four Books and Five Classics; it was merely a part of Chinese civilization.
However, after the Japan-Korea Annexation, Korean culture was built on the foundation of Japanese culture.
When that happens, it no longer connects with the past.
Although Japan introduced classical Chinese, it read it in the Japanese manner.
Therefore, even old classical Chinese can be read as Japanese, and the tradition is connected.
In Korea, however, classical Chinese was read as classical Chinese in its Chinese-style pronunciation.
After that, Japanese was incorporated, and modern Korean was newly organized.
When that happens, classical Chinese becomes a foreign language.
Therefore, official documents, historical books, novels, and the like that had until then been written in classical Chinese became unreadable to everyone.
Takayama.
They adopted Japanese-made kanji and, in addition, came to use Hangul.
In the midst of that, Moon Hee-sang, who spoke of an apology from the Emperor, began saying something utterly absurd, demanding the revision of 213 legal terms in order to “discard Japanese-style expressions.”
Do they have the ability to create new words by themselves?
Miyawaki.
The Koreans of that time became Japanese without understanding why.
Until then, they had been Chinese without understanding why.
Takayama.
There were also times when they were Mongols without understanding why. (laughter)
Miyawaki.
Moreover, there was a rigid status system, and people of the lower classes were bullied by the upper classes and did not even have a consciousness of being Korean.
That is why, even when the Japan-Korea Annexation occurred, they regarded it as something happening above the clouds.
For that reason, there is not a single trace of resistance.
The claim, specially emphasized in present South Korean textbooks, that the entire nation made anti-Japanese protests in the March First Movement, is also all a lie.
Takayama.
Those who rose from the yangban class were steeped in Sinocentrism, so they would probably have preferred things to remain Chinese.
Miyawaki.
Japanese education and the Japanese political system spread, rice became tastier, sanitary conditions improved, the mortality rate declined, and infrastructure was developed.
By the 1940s, when life as Japanese had become familiar, a competition began: “Let us become more Japanese,” and “Let us come as close as possible to Japanese culture.”
However, Japan lost.
How would the Koreans have felt if, even though they had lived as Japanese, they were suddenly told, “You are not Japanese”?
Furthermore, America, which came next, spread the claim that “Japan was a very evil country.”
The Koreans had no choice but to say, “We were not evil Japanese.”
Thus they came to discard, suppress, and hide everything Japanese within themselves, and to push forward anti-Japanese sentiment.
But many of the outstanding people had grown up under the influence of Japanese culture.
Takayama.
Lawyers and politicians had received Japanese education, so they were pro-Japanese.
Miyawaki.
On the other hand, Syngman Rhee, who returned from America, was anti-Japanese, and he massacred soldiers who had been strongly influenced by Japan.
But, with the exception of Syngman Rhee, there was not a single Korean who had not received Japanese education.
And then one day, they were suddenly told, “Japan was an evil country.”
There is nothing more pitiful than that.
This article continues.