The Fact That What Happened in All Colonies Was the Exact Opposite of What Japan Did on the Korean Peninsula
February 24, 2019
The following is a chapter published on July 10, 2018, under the title “Is He Not Someone Who Carries the DNA of the Korean Peninsula, Which It Is No Exaggeration to Describe as an Outrageous Slave State?”
“Until the Japanese went to Korea in the twentieth century, Korean women had no names.”
I found this opening passage in the introduction to the latest book by Masayuki Takayama, the one and only journalist in the postwar world.
Witnessing President Lee Myung-bak’s words and actions toward the end of his term, I wondered what kind of country South Korea really was.
Wondering what kind of country South Korea was and what kind of people Koreans were, I searched the Internet, the largest library in human history, for the first time.
As I have already mentioned, in just one hour I learned about South Korea’s history and realities.
I pride myself on having been the first person to tell the world clearly that the defining feature of the Korean Peninsula is the yangban.
When I learned how the yangban operated, I immediately recognized it as the prototype of the Japanese yakuza’s protection rackets.
Most of Japan’s yakuza are ethnic Koreans residing in Japan.
They make their living by extorting money and goods from others rather than working themselves.
This tradition remains very much alive among yakuza and politicians originating from the Korean Peninsula, particularly among the surprisingly numerous naturalized politicians of Korean origin in Japan’s opposition parties.
Last year, when Kiyomi Tsujimoto of the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan halted parliamentary deliberations for twenty days without the public’s permission, it was a clear manifestation of those memories and traditions.
A recent example is the behavior of Kim Jong-un and his delegation at the U.S.–North Korea summit in Singapore.
They did not even have the money to fly safely to Singapore, let alone pay for accommodation, yet they stayed at the most luxurious hotel without shame.
They not only oppress their people but drive them to the brink of starvation while continuing their nuclear weapons development without hesitation.
Even merely expressing dissatisfaction with the regime at a gathering of close acquaintances can result in being taken to a correctional camp, tortured, and ultimately killed.
Last year, when the United Nations adopted a resolution to report on and make recommendations concerning North Korea’s grave human rights abuses, I was appalled by the torture instruments that were revealed.
This was because they were the same instruments I had learned about during that earlier hour of research.
They were tools used to bring people to the perpetrators’ homes, confine them, and torture them when they could not hand over the money or food demanded of them.
Today, in this chapter, every Japanese citizen and people throughout the world must learn the real truth.
Until Japan annexed Korea in the twentieth century, women on the Korean Peninsula had no names.
In Korea, kings and the yangban ruled, while all other people belonged to oppressed classes.
Even scholars did.
Women were the private property of the yangban—in other words, slaves.
That is why women had no names.
The yangban treated women as objects.
Women were not only used for their masters’ sexual gratification but were also subjected to humiliations by their masters’ jealous wives, such as having sticks thrust into their breasts.
The yangban were not held accountable.
Whenever the river rose, their bodies would become caught on branches along its banks.
Until Japan annexed it, that was everyday life and reality on the Korean Peninsula.
In other words, the Korean Peninsula was a country where most of the population were slaves.
What, then, of Japan?
Japan is one of the few countries in the world, or perhaps the only one, that did not enslave people and had always abhorred the idea of owning slaves.
Searching Wikipedia for “Yasuke” makes this clear, but I will quote an excerpt below.
Yasuke, whose dates of birth and death are unknown, was a Black man who came to Japan during the Sengoku period.
As a slave owned by a missionary, he was regarded as a prospective gift to the warlord Oda Nobunaga, but Nobunaga took a liking to him and took him into his service.
Passage omitted.
On the twenty-third day of the second month of Tensho 9, corresponding to March 27, 1581, he was brought along as a slave when Valignano had an audience with Nobunaga.
The Shinchō Kōki describes him as “a black fellow who came from the Christian lands.”
He was approximately twenty-six or twenty-seven years old and was described as having “the strength of ten men” and “a body as black as an ox.”
After confirming that his skin was black, Nobunaga showed great interest in this Black man and negotiated with Valignano to have him remain in his service.
According to the Jesuit Annual Reports from Japan, Nobunaga named him “Yasuke,” formally granted him samurai status, and kept him close.
According to Taku Kaneko, Yasuke was a member of the castle lord’s household.
Also, according to Taku Kaneko, a manuscript held by the Sonkeikaku Bunko, presumed to be a copy of an autograph manuscript passed down in the Kaga Ota family, descendants of Ota Gyuichi, the author of the Shinchō Kōki, records that this Black man, Yasuke, was given a private residence and a sword to wear at his waist, and sometimes served as an equipment bearer.
It is no exaggeration to say that Japan had been a truly democratic country since ancient times, to a degree that other countries could not comprehend.
The Japanese were a rare people who lacked the inclination to treat others as slaves.
A lawyer who had graduated from Rikkyo University and held a senior position in the Japan Federation of Bar Associations went out of his way to visit the United Nations repeatedly, arguing that the women were not comfort women but sex slaves.
Ignorant people in the U.S. Democratic Party, represented by Hillary Clinton and others, then used this to reinforce their sense of superiority over Japan and their discriminatory attitudes toward it.
The Asahi Shimbun spread the story throughout the world on the basis of Seiji Yoshida’s lies.
Lawyers such as Mizuho Fukushima seized upon it as an opportunity to attack the Japanese government and extort money from it.
The lawyer who spoke boastfully in a Sekai Nippo interview about having established the use of the term “sex slaves” was, in fact, someone who carried the DNA of the Korean Peninsula, which had been an astonishing slave state until Japan annexed it.
For, even without invoking Nobunaga’s example, no true Japanese person would ever conceive of something like sexual slavery.
Katsumi Murotani, one of the commentators most familiar with South Korea’s realities, reveals in his regular column, “The Shape of Our Neighbor,” in this month’s issue of Hanada that this attitude of treating others like slaves still remains in South Korea.
His article, too, is essential reading not only for the Japanese people but for people throughout the world.
Once one understands how much malice lies behind the anti-Japanese propaganda spread throughout the world by a country of “bottomless evil” and “plausible-sounding lies,” it is only natural that the fools who call themselves intellectuals and have taken it seriously should go to hell.
Before then, they will recognize their own foolishness so acutely that they will wish the ground would swallow them up.
Katsumi Murotani’s article will be introduced in the next chapter and those that follow.