2024/03/13

Women were the private property of the yangban—in other words, slaves.
“Is He Not Someone Who Carries the DNA of the Korean Peninsula, Which It Is No Exaggeration at All to Describe as an Outrageous Slave State?”
This is the title of the chapter I published on July 10, 2018.
“Korean women had no names until the twentieth century, when the Japanese went to Korea.”
I encountered this passage, which opens this section, in the preface 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 was.
Wondering what kind of country South Korea was and what kind of people Koreans were, I investigated for the first time using the Internet, the largest library in human history.
In just one hour, I learned about South Korea’s history and realities as already described.
I pride myself on having been the first to tell the world clearly that the yangban were what characterized the Korean Peninsula.
When I learned how the yangban operated, I immediately recognized it as the prototype of the Japanese yakuza’s “protection money” racket.
Most Japanese yakuza are ethnic Koreans residing in Japan.
They do not work themselves but live by extorting money from others.
This tradition remains alive among the yakuza and politicians originating from the Korean Peninsula, particularly among the surprisingly numerous naturalized politicians of Korean ancestry in Japan’s opposition parties.
Last year, Kiyomi Tsujimoto of the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan halted parliamentary deliberations for twenty days without the public’s permission, a clear manifestation of those memories and traditions.
A recent example is the attitude of Kim Jong-un and his delegation at the U.S.–North Korea talks in Singapore.
Although they lacked the money even to fly safely to Singapore, let alone pay for accommodation, they stayed without shame at the most luxurious hotel.
They not only oppress their people but drive them to the brink of starvation while continuing their nuclear weapons development with impunity.
Suppose someone so much as voices dissatisfaction with the regime at a gathering of supporters.
That person is then taken to a correctional camp, tortured there, and eventually killed.
Last year, when the United Nations resolved to report and make recommendations on North Korea’s grave human rights abuses, I was appalled by the torture instruments that were revealed.
Those torture instruments were the same as the ones I had learned about during that earlier hour of research.
They were tools used to bring people into houses, confine them, and torture them when they could not hand over the money or food demanded.
Today, in this chapter, all Japanese citizens and people throughout the world must learn the absolute truth.
Until Japan annexed Korea in the twentieth century, women on the Korean Peninsula had no names.
Kings and yangban ruled Korea, and all other citizens belonged to oppressed classes.
Even scholars did.
Women were the private property of the yangban—in other words, slaves.
That was why women had no names.
The yangban treated women as objects.
They were not only used for their masters’ sexual gratification but also subjected to humiliations by their masters’ jealous wives, such as having sticks thrust into their breasts.
The yangban should not be blamed.
Whenever the river rose, their bodies became caught on branches along its banks.
That was everyday life and reality on the Korean Peninsula until Japan annexed it.
In other words, the Korean Peninsula was a country where most people 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.
Looking up “Yasuke” on Wikipedia 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 considered a gift for the warlord Oda Nobunaga, but Nobunaga took a liking to him, and he entered Nobunaga’s service.
Passage omitted
On the twenty-third day of the second month of Tenshō 9, 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 monk from a Christian country,” approximately twenty-six or twenty-seven years old, possessing “the strength of ten men,” and having “a body as black as an ox.”
After confirming that his skin really was black, Nobunaga showed great interest in this Black man and negotiated with Valignano to have him handed over.
According to the Jesuit Annual Reports on Japan, Nobunaga gave him the name “Yasuke,” formally granted him samurai status, and kept him close to his own family.
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 Library, believed to be a copy of an autograph manuscript passed down in the Kaga Ōta family, descendants of Ōta Gyūichi, the author of the Shinchō Kōki, records that the 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 the rest of the world could not comprehend.
The Japanese were a rare people who had no inclination to treat others as slaves.
A lawyer who graduated from Rikkyō University and held an important position in the Japan Federation of Bar Associations repeatedly went out of his way to visit the United Nations and say that the women had been sex slaves rather than comfort women.
Ignorant people in the U.S. Democratic Party, represented by Hillary Clinton and others, used this to strengthen their own sense of sovereignty and their discriminatory attitudes toward Japan.
The Asahi Shimbun spread this story throughout the world based on Seiji Yoshida’s lies, and lawyers such as Mizuho Fukushima seized upon it as an opportunity to attack the Japanese government and extort money from it.
The lawyers who said in a Sekai Nippo interview that they themselves had established the designation of those women as sex slaves were, in fact, people carrying the DNA of the Korean Peninsula, which had been an astonishing slave state until Japan annexed it.
Because, even without invoking Nobunaga’s example, a true Japanese person would not conceive of something like sexual slavery.
Katsumi Murotani, one of the commentators most knowledgeable about South Korea’s realities, reveals in his regular column “The Shape of the Neighboring Country” in this month’s issue of the monthly magazine Hanada that this attitude of enslaving others still remains in South Korea.
His writing, too, is essential reading not only for Japanese citizens but for people throughout the world.
When one learns how much wickedness lies in the anti-Japanese propaganda spread worldwide by a country of “bottomless evil” and “lies that deceive people,” 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 deeply that they will wish the ground would swallow them up.
I will introduce Katsumi Murotani’s writing in the following chapters.