APAN

Vol.2 No.2
Fall 2018ISSN 2433-4456

REVIEW

150th Anniversary of Meiji Restoration
The World and Japan 150 Years from Meiji‒ Looking Back on History ‒Kazuya Sakamoto

The Building of the Meiji State andConstitutional Government
Sumio Hatano

Colonial Development of Modern Industry in Korea,
1910-1939/40
Mitsuhiko Kimura

Japan and the Modern World: Lessons from Meiji
Frederick R. Dickinson

The Reality of the Mobilization of Koreans
During World War II‒ An analysis based on statistics and written records
Tsutomu Nishioka

External and Internal Reconciliation:
War Memories and Views of History Regarding
Japan in Postwar Taiwan
THE J A P A N
I NS T I T UTE O F
IN T E R NA TI O NA L
A F FA I R SJohn Chuan-Tiong Lim

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APAN

Vol.2 No.2
Fall 2018

REVIEW

150th Anniversary of Meiji Restoration
1 The World and Japan 150 Years from Meiji – Looking Back on History – �03

Kazuya Sakamoto
Prof. Kazuya Sakamoto specializes in the histor y of Japan-U.S. relations. He received his
Ph.D. at Kyoto University. He ser ved as a member of Japan-China Joint Histor y Research,
the reviewing panel on the Japanese foreign policies organized by Ministry of Foreign Affairsof Japan, and Advisory Panel on Reconstruction of the Legal Basis for Security set up by theJapanese cabinet. He was also a member of the expert committee on reviewing the secret deals
between Japan and the US.

2 The Building of the Meiji State and Constitutional Government�������11

Sumio Hatano
Professor Emeritus Sumio Hatano is the chief editor of Documents on Japanese Foreign Policy
published by Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan. He is also Director-General of Japan Center
for Asian Historical Records. His major is diplomatic history of Japan, and he finished his PhD
at Keio University. He was a visiting researcher at East Asian Institute in Columbia University
and at Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies in Harvard University. He taught at Universityof Tsukuba as a professor for years and joined in Japan-China Joint History Research.

3 Colonial Development of Modern Industry in Korea, 1910-1939/40������23

Mitsuhiko Kimura
Mitsuhiko Kimura is Professor of Economics and Economic History at School of International
Politics, Economics and Communication, Aoyama Gakuin University. Graduated from Hokkaido
University and received Doctor of Economics from Osaka University. Wrote mainly on
economic development in Korea under Japanese rule and North Korean economy after 1945.
Major works in English are: “Financial Aspects of Koreaʼs Economic Growth under JapaneseRule,” Modern Asian Studies 20, 1986, “Public Finance in Korea under Japanese Rule: Deficit
in the Colonial Account and Colonial Taxation,” Explorations in Economic History 26, 1989,“Standards of Living in Colonial Korea: Did the Masses Become Worse-off or Better-off underJapanese Rule?” Journal of Economic History LIII, 1993, and “From Fascism to Communisum:
Continuity and Development of Collectivist Economic Policy in North Korea, ” Economic
History Review LII, 1999.

1

4 Japan and the Modern World: Lessons from Meiji��������������45

Frederick R. Dickinson
Frederick R. Dickinson is Professor of Japanese History, Co-Director of the Lauder Institute ofManagement and International Studies, and Deputy Director of the Penn Forum on Japan (PFJ)at the University of Pennsylvania. He received an MA and PhD in History from Yale University
and holds an MA in International Politics from Kyoto University. He is the author of War andNational Reinvention: Japan in the Great War, 1914 - 1919 (Har vard, 1999), Taisho tenno(Minerva, 2009) and World War I and the Triumph of a New Japan, 1919-1930 (Cambridge,2013). Currently, he is working on a global history of modern Japan.

5 The Reality of the Mobilization of Koreans During World War II– An analysis based on statistics and written records ������������53

Tsutomu Nishioka
Professor Tsutomu Nishioka has served as the head of the Section of History Studies at theInstitute of Moralogy since 2017. He previously was a professor at Tokyo Christian University,where he began teaching in 1991. He is a scholar specializing in Korean peninsula studies, forwhich he developed a passion early in his education. He was an exchange student at Yonsei
University in the International Division (1977-78) during his undergraduate studies at Tokyo
International Christian University (BA, 1979). While completing his masterʼs degree in Area
Studies at Tsukuba University (MA,1983), he was selected as a Foreign Ministry Research
Fellow for which he was assigned to the Embassy of Japan in Seoul, South Korea, from 1982-84.
He is known for his research and prolific writing on contemporary Korean issues and served as
the Editor in Chief of the foreign affairs journal Gendai Koria (Todayʼs Korea) from 1990-2000.

6 External and Internal Reconciliation:
War Memories and Views of History Regarding Japan in Postwar Taiwan�61

John Chuan-Tiong Lim
John Chuan-Tiong Lim is an associate fellow at Academia Sinica in Taiwan. He received his
PhD in International Relations from the Graduate School of Law and Politics at the Universityof Tokyo. His research interests are centered on the politics of cultural identity and nationalism
in East Asia. He is the author of Identity Politics in “Peripheral East Asia”: Okinawa, Taiwan andHong Kong (「辺境東アジア」のアイデンティティ・ポリティクス：沖縄・台湾・香港 ) (Tokyo:
Akashi Shoten, 2005), Who is Chinese?: The Identity Issue of Taiwanese and Hongkongese ( 誰
是中國人？：透視臺灣人與香港人的身份認同 ) (Taipei: Readingtimes, 2017), The Okinawan
Studies in 21st Century (21 世 紀 視 野 下 的 琉 球 研 究 ) (Taipei: The Cross-Strait Academic
Publisher, 2017). He has also published numerous articles in Japanese and Chinese. His essays
have appeared in Chinese and Japanese newspapers, including Ming Pao, United Daily News,
Taipei Times, Asahi Shimbun, Okinawa Times, and Ryukyu Shimpo.

2

Kazuya Sakamoto

The World and Japan 150 Years from Meiji– Looking Back on History –*Kazuya Sakamoto**
Abstract
We stand at a historical milestone that marks 150 years from the Meiji Restoration of
1868, during which Japan radically changed its national polity in the face of the advance ofWestern powers and set itself on the path to dokuritsu jison (independence and self-respect).
After its defeat in the Second World War, Japan joined forces with Western countries in theconstruction of a liberal world order based on such values as freedom, democracy, and therule of law. It is correct to say that an end to fighting signifies an end to war in that armed
conflict between nations ceases, but a true end to war takes more than this. Peace mustbe established among the warring nations, and this requires the completion of certain
processes of postwar settlement, without which the war is not over. Only now are we able toreflect on our past perception of history not for the purposes of self-criticism and apology,
but to chart our future course. The phrase that comes to mind in describing Japan 150 years
from the Meiji Restoration is “independence and self-respect,” the philosophy of the noted
Meiji thinker Yukichi Fukuzawa. This slogan of Fukuzawa is as important to Japan 150
years from Meiji as it was to Meiji Japan. The critical difference with Meiji Japan is that thisindependence and self-respect is to be realized within the development of the liberal worldorder.

For a number of reasons, the year 2018 affords us an excellent opportunity to look backon the history of Japanʼs diplomacy and national security. It also provides an appropriatevantage point for surveying the future.

I. Milestone in Histor yFirst and foremost, as the subject of this symposium notes, we stand at a historical milestonethat marks 150 years from the Meiji Restoration of 1868, during which Japan radically changed
its national polity in the face of the advance of Western powers and set itself on the path todokuritsu jison (independence and self-respect). During these 150 years, Japan learned from theWest to become a modern constitutional state, rebuilt itself as a modern industrialized nation,and eventually entered into war with the United States and Britain, the two leading powers of theWest. After its defeat, Japan joined forces with Western countries in the construction of a liberal
world order based on such values as freedom, democracy, and the rule of law.
You may object that this is far too general a presentation of history, but I would argue thatit provides a meaningful platform for us to review the history of Japanʼs diplomacy and national
security and also to look forward to the future.
*

This is an edited transcript of the keynote speech of a symposium “150 Years from the Meiji Restoration―Modernization and Japan in a Global Context―” held by JIIA and Kansai Association of Corporate
Executives in March 2018.

** Prof. Kazuya Sakamoto is a Professor of Graduate School of Law and Politics at Osaka University
specializing in International Politics and Diplomatic History.

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Japan Review Vol.2 No.2 Fall 2018

The World and Japan 150 Years from Meiji – Looking Back on History –As the framework of the Group of Seven (G7) clearly shows, Japan has today become oneof the major proponents of the liberal world order. There is no question that its diplomatic andsecurity policies are focused on contributing to maintaining and furthering this world order andworking within it to preserve Japanʼs own security and prosperity and enhance Japanʼs politicalstanding in the world.
Therefore, I believe that all examination of Japanese diplomacy and national security must be
premised on these historical developments that have defined the history of Japanʼs relations with
the West since the Meiji Restoration.
This year marks not only 150 years from the Meiji Restoration, but also the centenary of theend of the First World War in 1918. Exactly 50 years after the Meiji Restoration and seven years
after the end of the Meiji period (1868−1912), Japan stood beside the United States and Britain
as one of the warʼs victors. It became a permanent member in the postwar League of Nations andcame to be known as one of the “Big Five” nations.
Japan adopted Western technologies, institutions, and thought in its effort to catch up with
the Western powers and pursued its vision of a “fukoku kyohei (rich country and strong army)”
by concentrating its energies on fostering modern industries and reinforcing its military. Japanfought two wars̶the Sino-Japanese and Russo-Japanese Wars̶and paid for them in blood,
sweat, and tears. It then made herculean efforts to revise the unequal treaties entered into force
at the close of the Edo period (1600−1868), and as a result of these endeavors achieved the major
accomplishment of emerging from the First World War as a prosperous nation.
Although Japan stood with the United States and Britain among the victors at the end of theFirst World War, the situation changed thereafter as Japan increasingly came into conflict withthese nations while working toward a new postwar world order. Eventually, this would develop
into a world war with them (and China) over the establishment of a new order in the Asia-Pacific.
The question of why this happened has already been thoroughly examined and discussed.
Still, it is worth revisiting it now, a centur y after those events. At the ver y least, such a reexamination would be extremely helpful in organizing our thoughts.
In addition to being 150 years from the Meiji Restoration and 100 years from the end of theFirst World War, this year also marks the 30th year of the Heisei period (the imperial era ofEmperor Akihitoʼs reign), and what is effectively its final year. We knew from a hundred years agothat the first two milestones would take place this year, but no one knew that these milestones
would also coincide with the last year of the Heisei period. In Japan, where we use both theWestern calendar and imperial eras, this coincidence adds profoundly to the significance of thismilestone year.
The immense physical and mental shock that accompanied Japanʼs destruction and defeat in
the Second World War against the United States, Britain, and China does not bear repeating here.
Recovery from the physical shock was relatively quick, and Japan was able to recover during the
Showa period. Indeed, it achieved more than mere recovery. Japan surprised the world with its
emergence as a major economy, and its people came to enjoy a level of affluence that far exceeded
anything experienced in the prewar years. What is more, Japan has become a country able toassist other countries in promoting their own economic development.
By contrast, recovery from the mental shock took much longer. Problems related to historicalperception and contrition became enmeshed with diplomatic relations, and I believe it has taken
the entire 30 years of the Heisei period to process that shock. In this context, the significanceof the statement on the 70th anniversary of the end of the Second World War released by thegovernment of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in 2015 should not be underestimated.
Next year will mark the start of a new imperial era. At that point, the Showa period will nolonger be the previous era in the minds of the Japanese people, but will instead recede two eras
into the past. What this means is that our historical understanding of the Second World War will
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Kazuya Sakamoto

become less and less a question of apology and remorse, and increasingly a point of reflection
from which to consider the future. The passage of the 30 years of the Heisei period and the startof a new imperial era will have a very significant impact on how we mentally process the Second
World War. I believe this will lead to a change in our mindset.

II. The Abe Statement
Let us consider what it takes to end a war. It is correct to say that an end to fighting signifies an
end to war in that armed conflict between nations ceases. But a true end to war takes more than
this. Peace must be established among the warring nations, and this requires the completion ofcertain processes of postwar settlement, without which the war is not over. This brings us to thequestion of how these processes can be completed.
Although there are no well-defined rules here, common sense informs us that in order tobring the war to a true end, national borders must be redrawn, war criminals must be punished,issues of claims and compensation must be settled, and a peace treaty or its equivalent must be
concluded. In Japanʼs case, postwar settlement with the United States and Britain was completedwith the signing of the San Francisco Peace Treaty six years after the war ended in the summerof 1945. Its settlements with China were achieved through the Japan-Taiwan Peace Treaty signedwith the Nationalist government of Taiwan seven years after the war, and the Japan-China Joint
Communiqué concluded with the Beijing government 27 years later. Setting aside the Soviet
Union and the matter of the Northern Territories, Japanʼs postwar settlements have therefore
been completed with all nations.
It should be noted, however, that these are legal processes of settlement between nations. So,
do they signify full postwar settlement? Perhaps in theory, but the reality is more complicated.
Nations are ultimately collections of people, which means that some process of moral settlement
must also be considered. It is unrealistic to think that the completion of legal processes will allow
us to forget the past and return to normal relations. Actions have human and material costs andconsequences, and there is a moral and ethical need to come to terms with these consequences.
Remorse must be expressed concretely both in words and deeds, and long-term efforts must be
made to heal the rift and rebuild relations.
The difficulty with a moral settlement is that established rules and norms are lacking evenmore than for the legal settlements. It is therefore not something that can be dealt with byfollowing a prescribed course of action, and it also cannot be dealt with by simply acceding to
the requests of another nation. If it were that straightforward, moral settlements would be nodifferent from legal settlements.
Beginning in the 1980s, problems concerning historical perception emerged with China andSouth Korea, and they pertain to this moral settlement for the Second World War. The issue
became very serious because of the Japanese peopleʼs divided response to the criticism of Japanʼs
perception of history leveled by the Chinese and South Korean governments. Some inside Japanagreed with the criticism and admitted that part of the public did indeed subscribe to a faulty
understanding of history. This group argued that failure to correct these misconceptions wasevidence that moral obligations to make amends for the war had not been met, and that therefore
the war had not truly come to an end. They felt that this omission needed to be rectified as theprimary task in Japanʼs diplomatic relations with China and South Korea, and that the government
needed to clearly refute the faulty perception of history that remained in places. However, others
strongly opposed this position, and the entire nation was soon embroiled in an angry debate.
An examination of the problem reveals that the government itself did not have a faulty
perception of histor y. The point is that the government has never subscribed to any specifichistorical interpretation, for example concerning the causes of the Second World War.
In this case, therefore, Japan should have done what it always had, which was to say that the5Japan Review Vol.2 No.2 Fall 2018

The World and Japan 150 Years from Meiji – Looking Back on History –interpretation of history should be left to historians and not made a subject of debate between
governments. However, there were many in Japan who felt that this approach would damage
diplomatic relations with China and South Korea. Ultimately, therefore, it was concluded that the
government should present an understanding of history that would satisfy both those countries.
This led to the statement by Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama in 1995 on the 50th anniversaryof the end of the war.
Perhaps all would have been well if ever yone had found the Murayama statement to besatisfactor y. That would have put the question of historical perception to rest and ended thewrangling with China and South Korea. However, the problem with this short statement wasthat it made very facile use of such terms as “aggression” and “colonial rule” without giving any
context. Japan had fought against many countries in the course of the Second World War and thewar had many complex aspects to it. But the Murayama statement sounded as if Japan and Japanalone was in the wrong in all aspects of the war. This gave rise to a very strong reaction in Japan.
Seeing this, China and South Korea redoubled their criticism and cited Japanʼs domestic reaction
as evidence that Japan was not adequately contrite. This further fed the debate that was raging inJapan̶a debate that came to divide the nation on the question of whether to affirm or negate the
Murayama statement.
The problem of historical perception is not about how we can close the gap in our mutual
perceptions so that we can be friendly neighbors. The real question is how we can develop
friendly relations notwithstanding the differences that may persist in our perceptions of history.
What distinguishes the Abe statement that was released twenty years after the Murayama
statement is its recognition of this very point. Regardless of whether its historical perception
would accord with those of the Chinese and South Korean governments, the Japanese
government decided to indicate its historical understanding of the Second World War, limiting its
statement to the bare minimum required. The Abe statement did not seek to refute the Murayama
statement. Instead, it sought to “recast” the Murayama statement to provide historical context tosuch terms as aggression and colonial rule that had been used in the earlier statement. Having
established the historical context, the Abe statement then proceeded to touch on apologies andexpressions of remorse. It explained the path of peace that Japan has walked after the war andexpressed gratitude to the countries that had worked to build peace with Japan in the postwar
world. Finally, although no repeated apology was given for the damage done by Japan in the war,
the document stated that Japan would continue to reflect upon its past actions.
The Abe statement was a success for a number of reasons. The first reason is the reactionof the great majority of Japanese people, who had no real objections to the statement. The otherreason is that Shoichi Watanabe, the renowned conservative critic who died last year, praised theAbe statement highly and gave it a score of 120 points out of 100. If that is his appraisal, I would
have to give the statement 100 points just for its efficacy. The most important thing about the Abestatement was that, unlike the Murayama statement, it did not ignite divisive debate at home.
To achieve this outcome, the Abe statement had to satisfy both supporters of the Murayama
statement and those who had criticized it. The solution was to avoid refuting the earlier statement
and instead to simply recast it. This was very important in convincing those who, like Watanabe,
had severely criticized the Murayama statement.
The governments of China and South Korea did not severely criticize the Abe statement. Ifthey had done so, the government could have said, once the statement was released, that thiswas the Japanese governmentʼs understanding of history and that it was widely supported by thepeople. Japanese government could have offered to explain further if there were any problems
with this understanding and stated that, while it would not repeat the apologies that were made in
the past, it was prepared to explain how it reflected on the past.
No other country in the world has issued a statement of its historical understanding of the
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Kazuya Sakamoto

war like the one made by Prime Minister Abe. Should any country repeat the claim that Japanʼs
perception of the war is unpardonable, we are now in a position to rebut that claim by asking
which country Japan is being compared to.
Only now are we able to reflect on our past perception of history not for the purposes of selfcriticism and apology, but to chart our future course. This brings to mind what E. H. Carr, theBritish historian, noted in his famous lecture entitled “What is History.” To paraphrase his words,
Carr said that history is an unending dialogue between the past and the present, and a dialogue
between the present and the future. I believe we are now able to reflect on the Second World War
in this context, and apart from any need to arrive at a moral settlement.

III. Three Points of Reflection
When we look back to the Second World War from within this framework, there are of course
many reasons for reflection and remorse. But, standing at this milestone 150 years after the Meiji
Restoration, I believe there are three points of reflection that deserve our special attention as weseek to contribute with renewed commitment to furthering the liberal world order that Japan
worked with the West to build in the postwar period. These are the Manchurian Incident, theTripartite Pact entered into by Japan, Germany, and Italy, and the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity
Sphere. Due to time considerations, I will limit myself to the main points of the argument.

The Manchurian Incident
Let us start with the Manchurian Incident of 1931. Japan resorted to the use of military force toprotect its imperialistic interests in China, an action taken notwithstanding the promise madethree years earlier in the Kellogg–Briand Pact not to use war to resolve international disputes.
This marked the first step toward deteriorating relations with the United States and Britain overthe matter of China. Ultimately, Japan would tread the path to war. Japan will never do this again.
Japan is now committed to its renunciation of war not only by observing international law,
but also by writing a pledge to renounce war into the Constitution. This solemn pledge has been
upheld for more than 70 years, and Japan is determined to abide by its pledge in the future.
Perhaps it can be argued that this in itself is evidence of appropriate reflection. But in order todeepen this reflection, we need to consider certain questions. If war and military force cannot be
used as a means to resolving international disputes, then what means are available? What are weto do when talks and negotiation fail?
Suppose an international dispute arises over economic interests. Because Japan is alreadya major economic power, it can make a concession in order to arrive at a resolution, or it may
simply give up on resolving the dispute. But can the same apply to an international dispute that
affects Japanʼs national security? Japan can of course use militar y force to defend itself. The
right of self-defense is recognized in the Kellogg–Briand Pact and the United Nations Charter.
Moreover, it is protected by the Constitution of Japan (at least according to the interpretation of
the government).
But the problem is how to define self-defense. In fact, in the Manchurian Incident, Japanjustified it as an act of self-defense. Putting that question aside and looking back on Japan ʼsdiplomatic and security policies over the past 150 years, the most significant difference made in
the first and second halves of this period was the treatment of the Korean Peninsula. In the firsthalf Japan included the security of the peninsula in its scope of self-defense, but in the second half
it did not. Aritomo Yamagata, an elder statesman in the Meiji period, divided self-defense into twolines to be guarded: the line of sovereignty, which pertains to defending the security of national
territor y, and the line of interest, which pertains to defending the security of places closely
related to the security of national territory. Yamagata went on to argue that the Korean Peninsula
was within Japanʼs line of interest. Even the Sino-Japanese War over the Korean Peninsula was
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Japan Review Vol.2 No.2 Fall 2018

The World and Japan 150 Years from Meiji – Looking Back on History –claimed by Munemitsu Mutsu, the then minister of foreign affairs, to be a war of self-defense.
This claim was made in the context of Yamagataʼs framework of the meaning of self-defense.
In postwar Japan, self-defense has applied solely to the line of sovereignty. The line of interest,on the other hand, has been defended in cooperation with the United States, and later throughwhat has come to be called the Japan-US Alliance, ever since the Korean War that began in
1950. Given that Japan cannot employ military force for the security of the Korean Peninsula,this alliance has been maintained on the understanding that Japan will cooperate through otheravailable means.
I have two points to make on this matter. We often hear people say that a nation must be
prepared to defend itself. That is quite understandable. However, discussions of self-defense
must extend to the question of ensuring the security of the line of interest as well. Otherwise,
what results is a half-baked discussion. It is important to remember that collective self-defense
constitutes the basic principle of self-defense in the contemporary world, and that Japan needs
the Japan-US Alliance for maintaining peace and security in the Far East.
My second point is that the Japan-US Alliance, together with NATO, provides a foundation
for the security of the free world. In this sense, the defense of Japan is very deeply related to thedefense of the free world and the preservation of the liberal world order.

Japan-Germany-Italy Tripartite Pact
The second matter that requires our reflection is the Tripartite Pact signed by Japan, Germany,and Italy in 1940. By allying itself with Germany, the enemy of the United States and Britain,
Japan also established itself as an anti-Anglo-American nation. For Japan, it was a complete
miscalculation to think that the Tripartite Pact would act as deterrence in preventing war with theUnited States. The very opposite turned out to be true. The mistaken assessment of the power ofGermany was a huge error on the part of Japan.
This is probably the most important point for reflection concerning the Tripartite Pact. But
I personally focus on Japanʼs critical error in allying itself with Nazi Germany, the worldʼs worst
racist nation. Due to this choice, postwar Japan was made to bear the stigma of having allied itself
with the nation that perpetrated the Holocaust. While that is itself regrettable, what Japan should
truly regret is that it allied itself with a country whose creed and values were the exact opposite
of its own.
When the Paris Peace Conference convened to determine the settlement of the First World
War, Japan advocated the inclusion of the principle of racial equality in the Covenant of the newly
founded League of Nations. Although the Japanese proposal failed due to the obstruction of US
president Woodrow Wilson, it won the support of many countries including China. At the end of
the First World War, the world was still standing on the side of racism and racial discrimination
with full impunity. Japan ʼs call to share the principle of racial equality as a universal value
constitutes a brilliant achievement in Japanʼs diplomatic history and is something we should be
proud of. All of this was blotted out by Japanʼs alliance with Nazi Germany.
After the Second World War, the world accepted the principle of racial equality as proclaimed
in the United Nations Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. If Japan had notallied itself with Germany, I believe Japanʼs contribution to the realization of this principle andvalue would have been more widely acknowledged.
As a member of the free world, Japanʼs diplomacy today is based squarely on espousing theprinciples and values of freedom, democracy, and the rule of law. In a sense, this is Japanʼs second
attempt at the principle- and value-based diplomacy that became stalled halfway in the prewar
years due to the alliance with Germany. As in the case of its advocacy for racial equality, I believe
this also represents an important contribution by Japan to the world.
Freedom, democracy, and the rule of law are values born in the West. The very fact that Japan
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Japan Review Vol.2 No.2 Fall 2018

Kazuya Sakamotois proclaiming their universality constitutes its contribution to establishing these as universal
principles and values in the world today. For example, consider the framework of the G7. This isa gathering of the developed countries that are leading the free world with these principles andvalues. As Japan is a country with a history and culture totally different from those of the West,I believe that its presence in the G7 is critically important in proving the universality of liberalprinciples and values to the world. If the remaining six countries had created a framework, such agathering would have been nothing more than a gathering of the leaders of the free “West” rather
than the free “world.”

Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere
One more important point concerning the Second World War that demands our reflection isthe concept of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. Japan withdrew from the League of
Nations following its disputes with Europe and America over the Manchurian Incident and thefounding of Manchukuo. Upon quitting the League of Nations, Japan issued an imperial rescript
stating that the withdrawal from the League of Nations did not mean that Japan would henceforth
stand aloof in Asia or isolate itself and neglect to maintain friendly ties with the nations of theWest.
But this commitment began to change with the passage of time. First, it was argued that theimportance of harmonious cooperation between Japan, Manchuria, and China was so great thatthe partial contravention of the interests of the West could not be helped. Next, once the Second
World War had started, Japan took the position that Western imperialists had to be ejected fromthe Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.
It is true that the concept of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere contained elementsof sympathy for Asian masses suffering under Western colonial rule, as well as a reaction toWestern racism. It also reflected Japanʼs emotional response to the dissatisfaction it felt forWestern attitudes toward it in several areas, notwithstanding the fact that Japan had been such an
assiduous student of the West.
However, Japan basically began promoting the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Spherebecause it believed this concept would contribute to its own national security and economic
prosperity, and believed it would raise Japan ʼs standing in the world. In other words, Japanconcluded that the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere would serve its own national interests.
The truth was that Japan did not have the power to ensure the security of all the East Asian
countries. Even supposing that the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere had succeeded, itwould have been extremely difficult for Japan working within that bloc to become the major
economic power that it did become after the war. In the postwar period, Japan achieved dramatic
economic development within the framework of global economic development, or in other words,
within a “global co-prosperity sphere.” The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere was, I think,probably too narrow and restrictive in scope.
My problem with the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere would not be solved even if it
had been accomplished through peaceful means. The fundamental problem that I find with thisconcept is that the very idea of creating an exclusive Asian region was deeply flawed.
The concept of a Greater East Asia underestimated the forces of globalization that were
unleashed in the world in the latter half of the 19th century and continued unabated since aroundthe Meiji Restoration. Globalization had reduced the size of the globe and transformed theworld into a single entity. Not fully cognizant of these changes, Japan subscribed to a worldview
oddly reminiscent of the three-cornered contest that prevailed during the Three States Period in
Chinese history. Germany would triumph and lead Europe, the continents of North and SouthAmerica would be led by the United States, and Japan would be the leader in Asia. However,regionalism is fundamentally unviable in a globalized world.
9Japan Review Vol.2 No.2 Fall 2018

The World and Japan 150 Years from Meiji – Looking Back on History –Therefore, if Japan wishes to be a leader̶in many meanings of the word̶among nations,
it must not seek to become the leader of Asia. In an increasingly globalized world, Japan shouldmake effective use of its unique characteristics and capabilities to help bring the world closer
together, and to occupy an honored place in international society by standing as one leader
among many leaders of the world.

IV. 150 Years from Meiji: Independence and Self-Respect
In light of all that I have said today, the phrase that comes to mind in describing Japan 150 years
from the Meiji Restoration is “independence and self-respect,” the philosophy of the noted Meiji
thinker Yukichi Fukuzawa. Meiji Japan sought to build a nation of independence and self-respect
so that it could stand on a par with the West. I believe this slogan of Fukuzawa is as important toJapan 150 years from Meiji as it was to Meiji Japan. The critical difference with Meiji Japan is that
this independence and self-respect is to be realized within the development of the liberal worldorder. The world is one, and Japan must cherish the values of the liberal world order and perfect
the mechanisms of collective self-defense with its ally, the United States. Independence and selfrespect is to be realized within this framework. And if Japan were to consider the path of a “richcountry and strong army,” it must do so not solely for its own sake but for the sake of the entire
free world.

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Sumio Hatano

The Building of the Meiji State and Constitutional Government
Sumio Hatano*

Abstract
Was the Meiji Restoration a “Revolution” in a modern world? If so, what kind of revolution
was it? These questions have been debated to this day. Revolutions since the beginning of
the nineteenth century have usually signified the abolition of monarchies, and monarchs
have generally been unable to voluntarily implement fundamental social reforms. However,in the case of Japan, restored imperial rule (government by the imperial court) served as
the axis for modern reforms when the new government opened up Japan, immediately
implemented modern reforms, and built a centralized constitutional state. Such a turn of
events is uncommon in world history. While the Japanese parliamentary system, which isat the core of the countryʼs constitutional system, risked collapse on several occasions, it
has remained intact to this day. Instead of a discussion of whether the Meiji Restoration
was a revolution, this paper focuses on why a constitutional system of government̶parliamentarism̶was adopted as one of the outcomes of that “revolution” and took hold inJapan, and discusses the operational features it had.

Was the Meiji Restoration a “Revolution?”W

as the Meiji Restoration a “Revolution” in a modern world? If so, what kind of
revolution was it? These questions have been debated to this day. What weknow for certain is that, even if we agreed that the Restoration was a revolution
accompanied by civil wars, the number of victims it claimed was small. The Boshin
War that preceded the Restoration claimed 8,200 lives and the Satsuma Rebellion that followed
it claimed 12,000 victims. Including executions, the total number of deaths was still fewer than
30,000. By contrast, the victims of the French Revolution numbered more than 1 million if we
include the Napoleonic Wars, and the Russian and Chinese Revolutions claimed even more lives.
Likewise, if we look at the change of political system, the birth of the new government
through the overthrowing of the Bakufu (shognate) system and the return to monarchical rule(the imperial court) was a coup dʼétat that restored imperial rule, but this process of creating
a government cannot be termed a revolution. However, if we are to understand the sonnō jōimovement (“revere the emperor, expel the barbarians”) in the wake of Commodore Matthew
Perr y ʼ s Expedition as a sustained movement calling for the establishment of an emperorcentered unified government and independence from foreign interference, then we may call the
Restoration a “nationalist revolution” (Kitaoka 2011, 32–33).
At the same time, some years after the restoration of imperial rule, a social transformation
appropriate to a modern revolution took place. The transformation entailed reforms beginningwith the abolition of feudal domains and the establishment of prefectures in 1871, as well as the*

Sumio Hatano is the chief editor of Documents on Japanese Foreign Policy published by Ministry ofForeign Affairs of Japan. He is also Director-General of Japan Center for Asian Historical Records.

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The Building of the Meiji State and Constitutional Government

penetration of the effects felt throughout society. In particular, the introduction of conscription,
which aimed to build militar y power on a broad popular base, came as a major shock. The
governmentʼs order concerning conscription at the end of 1872 squarely rejected the raison dʼêtreof the traditional samurai warrior class and extolled the “equality of all people.” In early-modern
Japan, all people belonged to a social group and it was almost impossible to move between
groups. This framework was removed, individuals came to possess equal rights, and people
were left to compete with each other. The exception was the peerage, consisting of former feudallords and court nobility. In 1876, in the wake of a ban prohibiting samurai from carrying swords,
hereditary pension bonds were issued and stipend payments were discontinued. This measure
allowed the government to cut expenditures by a third. For the lower-class samurai, said tonumber 2.5 million when including their families, the discontinuation of stipends, the dismantlingof the system that sustained their status, and the elimination of warrior privileges were major
blows (Mitani 2012, 4–10; Sansom 1966, 77).
Reforms such as the dismantling of status systems and the redistribution of rights createdmany sources of capable personnel and imparted dynamism to the process of state formationin modern Japan. On the other hand, why were these far-reaching social changes in the form oflarge-scale social liberalization and removal of privileges accepted, especially by the dominantsamurai class, without much resistance? It is true that some warrior clans rebelled, but therebellions were not on a scale that caused massive casualties.
We cannot interpret the acceptance of change as the realization of the will of a conqueror
who sought to impose democracy following defeat in a war against a foreign enemy, as was thecase during the US occupation of Japan after the Second World War. The opening of Japan in thebakumatsu period during the final years of the Tokugawa shogunate was not the result of a war
with a foreign power, but the result of treaty negotiations. If that is the case, we still do not havean adequate explanation for why major changes such as the collapse and reorganization of thestatus system happened (Mitani 2012, 1–20, 84–92).
This paper is not a discussion of whether the Meiji Restoration was a revolution. It focuseson why a constitutional system of government̶parliamentarism̶was adopted as one of theoutcomes of that “revolution” and took hold in Japan, and discusses the operational features
it had. The Ottoman Empire was the first non-Western countr y to introduce constitutional
form of government, but the first Turkish constitution was short-lived. Yet, while the Japaneseparliamentary system, which is at the core of the countryʼs constitutional system, risked collapse
on several occasions, it has remained intact to this day. Exploring the significance of the systemʼssurvival is a project that seeks to uncover the historical characteristics of Japanʼs state-building.
Revolutions since the beginning of the nineteenth century have usually signified the abolitionof monarchies, and monarchs have generally been unable to voluntarily implement fundamentalsocial reforms. However, in the case of Japan, restored imperial rule (government by the imperial
court) served as the axis for modern reforms. To many, the “return to imperial rule” meant goingback to Japanʼs Edo-period seclusion. Yet on the contrary, the new government opened up Japan,
immediately implemented modern reforms, and built a centralized constitutional state.
Such a turn of events is uncommon in world history and is not easily understood, but I would
like to focus on two historical factors. I first examine the characteristics of the early-modern
political structure that preceded the Meiji Restoration. In other words, this is a search forconditions of modernization in the political structure of early-modern Japan. My second focus is
the Western powersʼ demands for the opening of Japan, what we can call the “Western shock.”
As is well-known, China and Korea were likewise directly exposed to the Western shock in thenineteenth century. However, all three nations ended up walking their own path. This had to dowith each countryʼs early-modern political structure, so I will start by briefly discussing this topic
using existing research.
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Sumio Hatano

Political Development in East Asia
In the 1960s, when the comparative study of modernization was popular, a theory of Japanese
exceptionalism was proposed, arguing that Japanʼs modernization was possible because it was the
only country in Asia to have experienced feudalism. Subsequently, this type of research receded,
and researchers shifted their focus to looking for the conditions that enabled each East Asian
countryʼs political development during its early-modern history.
One study argues that Chinese dynasties since the Song absorbed the military strength ofregional powers and transferred the governance of territories from landowners to bureaucrats
who were recruited through imperial civil service examinations. In line with the conditions ofChinaʼs economy, a simple state organization was formed where the emperor was in direct controlof the land and people. Confucianism (Zhu Xi Neo-Confucianism) later spread across East Asia
as the preeminent doctrine for operating such a system (Miyajima 2004). Korea was the classic
example of this kind of East Asian early-modern state.
The centralized systems of China and Korea, legitimized by Neo-Confucianism and supported
by a civil service bureaucracy recruited through competitive exams, were difficult to destroy,
both from within and from without. By contrast, the reception of Neo-Confucianism in Japan wasincomplete and there was no Neo-Confucian civil service. Japan was governed by hereditary
warriors rather than civil officials and so was passive in its reception of Neo-Confucianism, theopposite of Korea where it was wholeheartedly embraced (Miyajima 2004, Mitani 2012, 253–257).
Western civilization was imported into China and Korea as well, but in China ʼs case, thebureaucrat class that made up the core of the political structure did not actively seek to study
Western science. In Koreaʼs case, there were bureaucrats who showed an interest in Westernscience, but they were eliminated during the political strife of the early nineteenth century. In
Japan, Christianity was indeed considered taboo, but Japanese were tolerant of Western culture.
In China and Korea, the intellectuals discouraged Western culture, but early-modern Japan
actively studied the West and spread the acquired knowledge. Japanese intellectualsʼ interestin the natural sciences made them receptive to modernization and built the foundation forunderstanding industrial technology (Sato 1992, Mitani 2012).
This analysis focusing on the bureaucratic system based on Confucianism and civil service
examinations was suggested by Sato (1979). Sato went further, saying that Kokugaku (National/
Native Learning) and other innovative schools of thought rapidly rose to eminence because noteven the type of Confucianism sponsored by the Bakufu ever became established as orthodoxy
in Japan. Put differently, he argued that the countryʼs intelligentsia enjoyed greater intellectual
freedom and had a more open attitude toward Western civilization, compared with theircounterparts in neighboring Asian countries.
Moreover, Sato argued that while the Bakufu was powerful in the governance structure of
Edo-period Japan, its legitimacy depended on the imperial court, and governing was largely
delegated to the domains. This multidimensional political system of more than 250 relatively
independent rival domains made the swift mobilization of people on a national scale impossible,
making it difficult to deal with foreign threats in the short term. However, the possibility ofchange is greater in a multidimensional system, which increases the ability to adapt to crises in
the long term.
The leadership of each domain strongly identified with their domains, were keenly interested
in the economic development of their own domain, and were free from the anti-commercialismof Confucianism. In some of the domains that experienced significant economic development,
society was highly sophisticated and administrative needs grew, which promoted the developmentof bureaucratic organization and improved the peopleʼs literacy and numeracy (reading, writing,arithmetic). On the other hand, during the bakumatsu period, the formation of nationwide
networks for goods and information fostered a sense of national unity (Sato 1992).
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The Building of the Meiji State and Constitutional Government

Summarizing the above, in terms of the initial conditions needed for commencing
modernization, early-modern Japan was in a better position than China or Korea. It is difficult toconnect each of these factors in causal relationships to the introduction of constitutional forms ofgovernment, which is the aim of this essay, but we can see that a favorable environment for the
reception of Western constitutionalism had been formed.
Making one further addition, I would argue that an important condition for a functioning
constitutional system is that people are trained in equal and free debate, with public opinion being
formed on the basis of debate. Society in early-modern Japan was organized based on the social
status of people, but at the same time, there was room for discussion that transcended the lines
of social status (Mitani 2017). For example, the Shoheizaka Academy (founded 1797), which wasunder Bakufu protection, was opened up to teachers and students from domains across Japan,
rather than just Bakufu retainers. The Academy taught not only Confucianism but the humanities,
geography, and other subjects as well. Graduates went on to build a network that transcendedsocial status and domanial affiliation (Makabe 2007). These activities supported the introductionof parliamentary politics.

Foreign Crisis and the Emergence of the Consultative System of Governing inJapan
It is too simplistic to say that the sudden exposure to the West laid down the initial conditions
for political modernization in early-modern Japan, which in turn led to a constitutional system ofgovernment. It is true that the conditions for modernization were steadily developing in earlymodern Japan, but reforms for enabling modern political systems were not making progress.
This gap was allowed to be remained by the long peace sustained by a policy of seclusion.
The national seclusion policy served as a defense against foreign threats, but it also hindered
the development of political society and social mobility. The Bakufuʼs clever conciliatory measuresvis-à-vis the Daimyo (feudal lords) nipped their opposition in the bud. Edo and Osaka merchants
were gaining economic strength as commerce developed, but they did not seek independence
from the Bakufu. In a context of national seclusion, trade partners were not to be found abroad, so
the merchants had nowhere to turn but to the domestic warrior class. In this way, there existed
no new political power that could replace the authority of the Bakufu until the bakumatsu period(Sato 1992, 72–73).
At the same time, early-modern Japan was a highly integrated society, so the appearance ofpowerful external enemies strengthened that societyʼs identification with a shared destiny thattranscended region and social status, and created an urge for solidarity to resist external enemies.
The foreign crisis that tested the system was the arrival of Perryʼs fleet.
Satsuma, Choshu, and other influential domains known as yūhan strongly demanded the
Bakufu relax measures including the sankin kōtai policy of forcing feudal lords to alternate where
they lived between their domain and the capital of Edo. The yūhan further urged the Bakufu to
pay closer attention to the opinions of all of the domains, so as to strengthen national unity. At
the same time, the Bakufu not only instructed the domains to assist the strengthening of coastal
defenses around the time of Perryʼs arrival; the Bakufu also asked the domains for their opinions
about opening the country, despite their status as outsiders in the Bakufuʼs policymaking process.
This served to expand the Bakufuʼs consultative tradition through the formation of public opinion
by debate. The Bakufu used consultative mechanisms involving elders (rōjū) and other close
associates to aid the shogunʼs decision-making, and this was selected as the political strategy for
dealing with the foreign crisis (Mitani 2017, 61–62).
The consultative system had two aims. It aimed to reflect the opinions of feudal lords (daimyo)
in Bakufu administration, as well as allowing political groups to check one another by preventing
any particular group from accumulating too much power. Neither was in anticipation of a future
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Sumio Hatano

parliamentary system, but the latter aim of limiting power was regarded as especially important.
In order to realize impartial politics, it is necessary to place restraints on the exercise of power.
The idea that a constitution and a parliament can create checks on power was also adopted
by Kato Hiroyuki and Fukuzawa Yukichi, who studied Western constitutionalism. They saw
constitutionalism as characterized by the idea of placing limits on the person or persons who aresovereign̶be they a monarch or the people as a whole. (Sugawara 2014)
The Bakufu repeatedly emphasized “national unity” in the face of foreign crisis and lent an
ear to the domainsʼ opinions, but was wary of the political emergence of the yūhan and became
extremely passive when it came to their participation in Bakufu administration. The fact thatthe Bakufu changed its seclusion policy yet was passive with regard to regime change for thesake of national unity caused the yūhan to distrust the Bakufuʼs leadership and undermined thelegitimacy of the Bakufu (Sato 1992, 84).
This was made strikingly obvious by the issue of the imperial approval of the treaties ofcommerce. In 1858, the Bakufu sought to prevent criticism from the yūhan and weather its crisisof legitimacy by trying to obtain imperial approval for five treaties of commerce. However, theimperial court refused to grant its approval out of fear of opening the country to foreigners ̶amove that further weakened the Bakufuʼs leadership.
Despite the Bakufuʼs loss of authority, there existed no powerful political group to take its
place. The court had strengthened its authority to rival that of the Bakufu but was otherwise
weak in power politics, while even the stronger domains were incapable of overwhelming otherson their own. Furthermore, there were conflicting opinions among yūhan on issues such as
expelling foreigners and opening the country to the world, making it difficult for the yūhan toform a federation of domains. In spite of such turmoil, Japan did not descend into a major civil
war or domestic conflict. That is because the sense of foreign crisis served to suppress suchdevelopments.

The Centralization of Power and Political Participation

The sense of foreign crisis in the wake of Perryʼs arrival was shared by both the Bakufu, which
had no way of dealing with the foreign pressure without daimyo cooperation, and the daimyo,
who suppressed their challenge to the Bakufu system in the face of foreign pressure. The civil
war between the new government and the old Bakufu forces was gradually wound down by thetwo antagonists, thereby avoiding a lengthening of the conflict and foreign intervention. The
objective of the anti-Bakufu movement had less to do with breaking down the old order and wasmore aimed toward overcoming political opposition to allow for a unified response to the foreign
crisis. The anti-Bakufu movement moved to position the emperor as a figure with authority that
surpassed that wielded by the Bakufu, consolidate various groups under that authority, andinstitute reforms. The result was the declaration of the restoration of imperial rule in January
1868.
The declaration of the restoration of imperial rule was a statement that the new government
would take the Bakufuʼs place and would govern the country in the emperorʼs name. The new
Meiji government quickly sought other countriesʼ approval of its legitimacy and simultaneously
announced domestically that its first foreign policy would be to engage with other countries inaccordance with international law (February 1868). When the new court-centered government
was established with the declaration of the restoration of imperial rule, many people wereastonished as they had believed the new government would return to a policy of expelling
foreigners and national seclusion.
The declaration of the restoration of imperial rule followed the reform principle of kōgi, oftentranslated as “public opinion.” The principle of kōgi signified that influential daimyo would takepart in politics through debate. Both the pro-Bakufu camp (the Tokugawas) and the anti-Bakufu
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The Building of the Meiji State and Constitutional Government

forces that sought to make the imperial court the center of politics (Satsuma and Choshu) agreed
that the court should not play an active role in conducting politics, but that there was a need forpolitics to be conducted through kōgi by including the participation of the daimyo (Suzuki 2002).
The pro- and anti-Bakufu forces agreed that future political power, whatever its form, must be
based on the principle of kōgi (Mitani 2017, 64–65).
Furthermore, as the new government required the support of many domains for the sakeof domestic stability, the emperor summoned nobles and lords in March 1868 to announce
the Charter Oath as the new stateʼs basic policy for national administration. The first clausedeclared that “Deliberative assemblies shall be widely established and all matters decided bypublic opinion.” The intention of the oath was to reject despotism in politics and expand politicalparticipation, to build a society in which individuals could exercise their talents, and to acquire
knowledge by joining the ranks of the international community, especially developed countries,
without adhering to old customs. The imperial notice promulgated at the same time as theCharter Oath explained the aim of the restoration with reference to the international situation,saying that a continuation of the bakufu regime would have incurred the disdain of foreign states
and brought about disadvantages, making it necessar y for the emperor to take control overpolitics in order to confront the Western powers. The oath was signed by roughly 500 nobles andchief retainers from various domains (Suzuki 2002, 12–22).
Next, a statement known as the Document of the Form of Government was promulgated inJune. A political body called the Grand Council of State, modeled after the traditional politicalorganization of the imperial court, was created. Basic governance mechanisms and procedures,
including the centralization of power in the Grand Council, the separation of powers, and theelection of officials, were established. The intent was to distribute authority within the GrandCouncil of State, even as power was being centralized there, in an effort to avoid giving too much
power to any single figure. However, while decision-making authority was mainly vested in thelegislative body (Giseikan), the authority and role of the organization corresponding to the lower
house of parliament (Kakyoku) was severely limited. The Kakyoku was abolished after threemonths. Yet, the failure of the Kakyoku did not eliminate the need for the formation of public
opinion. A body for conducting debate continued to be maintained, under different names such as
Kaigisho and Shūgi’in (Mitani, 2012).
In the initial years of the Meiji period, what was called the parliament was nothing morethan an assembly for lords where domain representatives gathered to discuss their views on
the government. The assembly was transformed into a parliament that functioned as a corecomponent of the constitutional system only after a series of reforms that followed the abolition of
domains and establishment of prefectures in 1871, as well as through knowledge gained from theexperience of leaders who visited the West̶in particular the Iwakura Mission of 1871–1873.
In particular, the elimination of domains as independent administrative units transformed
the domains into prefectures that were directly controlled by the new government. This not
only facilitated rapid progress toward the creation of a centralized state, but also expanded thepotential of the parliamentary system as a space for forming public opinion on a national scale.

Visions for a Constitutional System

The nineteenth century was a time when the concepts of the nation state and nationalism̶the
products of Western modernity̶began circulating throughout the international community. The
objectives of the Mission were to learn from Western civilization, decide on the stateʼs policy forsystem reform, and lay down the groundwork for revising the treaties that Japan had been forced
to sign. Kume Kunitake, who left a detailed record of the mission, visited Belgium and wrote,“A nation that lacks an autonomous populace will see its power wane, and it will be difficult tomaintain that nation.” The challenge of a civilized nation is to develop its peopleʼs patriotism and16
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Sumio Hatano

nationalism, and Kume viewed the constitution as the tool for fostering such feelings. This focus
on Western civilization was shared by all leaders in the mission (Takii 2003, 60–61).
In July 1873, Kido Takayoshi, who returned home ahead of the rest of the Iwakura Mission,
submitted a memorandum to the emperor, arguing that it was imperative to expand the Charter
Oath and establish a constitution. Securing the independence, wealth, and power of the state
was possible only by mobilizing the people under the sovereign. He argued for the need ofimperial rule and strong leadership by the emperor-led government through the establishmentof a constitution. Kido opposed the “ conquer Korea argument” (seikanron) by prioritizing
domestic reform, and did so in line with his plan for constitutional reform. Kido initially advocatedan autocracy, but his ideal was a constitutional monarchy coupled with a growth in national
consciousness.
Kidoʼs vision of the constitutional system almost exactly matched Okubo Toshimichiʼs idea of
constitutional government. In the memorandum he wrote in 1873 after returning to Japan, Okubo
presented three types of government that would allow for the centralization of power. These were
1) an autocracy with a constitution, 2) constitutional popular “co-governance” (democracy), and3) “co-governance” by the monarch and the people (constitutional monarchy). He argued that ofthese, type 3) was the most suitable for Japan to stimulate the peopleʼs political participation. Type1) was not advisable for Japan as it was only possible when the people are ignorant and cannot
be otherwise governed. Type 2) was ideal but was only possible in a country such as the UnitedStates where the people had freed themselves from tradition. The second choice also came withthe risk of intensifying factional antagonism and political chaos, which could lead to tyranny. This
made constitutional monarchy desirable, but the Japanese population was not enlightened enoughto manage the workings of a constitution on their own. Thus, they had no choice but to create apolitical system using the emperorʼs authority until political structures were developed enough tofacilitate a constitutional monarchy (Sato 1992, 179–206). After suppressing the Satsuma Rebellion
led by Saigo Takamori, Okubo attempted to create a regional administratorsʼ assembly (assembly
consisting of governors) in preparation for the opening of the parliament (Mitani 2012, 160–161)
before he was assassinated in 1878.
In this way, the leaders of the new government envisioned a constitutional monarchy that was
based on the introduction of a parliamentary system as the political system best suited to Japan,
and began working toward establishing a constitution. The biggest issue in the debates about aconstitution was how much power the parliament should have. In other words, the question was
about how they could secure the peopleʼs participation, which was needed in a constitutional
system of government.

Debates on Constitutional Government
Kato Hiroyuki (1867) was likely the first to introduce the Japanese term rikken seitai as a concept
corresponding to constitutional government. In 1875, the proclamation of the Imperial Edict on
Gradual Constitutional Government caused the concept to quickly take root, and the movement
calling for the opening of a parliament gained momentum. However, the nature and power of theparliament at the heart of the constitutional government were subject to various interpretations.
Amid such developments, the memorandum submitted to the government by Okuma
Shigenobu at the end of 1879 positioned political par ties at the center of constitutional
government. Until Okuma ʼ s memorandum, political par ties had not been considered in
discussions about constitutional government, so this triggered debate. The memorandum was
one of the causes of the 1881 Political Crisis, but it also created an irreversible momentum toward
constitutional government in modern Japan (Suetake 2011, 30–33).
Okumaʼs concept of a constitutional government called for the leader of a party gaining aparliamentary majority to be given both legislative and executive power. If no majority is gained,
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The Building of the Meiji State and Constitutional Governmenta leader or political leader from another party should be picked and the government replaced,according to Okuma. Inoue Kowashi criticized this practice adopted by British-style party cabinet
systems of placing legislative and executive power in the parliament, noting that the cabinet
in Prussia was the sovereignʼs cabinet and not the partiesʼ cabinet. Inoue also argued that the
government should be the sovereignʼs government and not the parliamentʼs government, meaningthat the government exists outside the influence of the political parties. Inoue emphasized that
the Prussian king was not swayed by the parties but is a figure who governs within the scope ofthe constitution, and proposed to Iwakura Tomomi that a Prussian-like monarchy was the form ofgovernment Imperial Japan ought to choose.
Inoue was opposed by Okuma as well as by Fukuzawa Yukichi. Fukuzawa held that theevolution of civilization cultivates a “progressive spirit” yet also creates friction in society, andcame to advocate the party cabinet system as a political system capable of absorbing such
friction and antagonism. At the same time, Fukuzawa expected the emperor to fulfill a functionof “capturing the spirit of the Japanese people” by withdrawing from governance and removing
himself from political conflict (Suetake 2011, 34–38).
However, Inoue was vehemently opposed to placing the emperor in such a symbolic positionof reigning without ruling. He argued that as Japan headed toward the adoption of a constitutional
system, the countr y ought to maintain the distinctive feature of imperial governance̶directrule̶that is, the emperor ruling the nation in person. Inoue repeatedly explained the benefits of
the Prussian system to Ito Hirobumi and Inoue Kaoru. Japan thus began heading in the directionof a Prussian-style constitutional monarchy as a model for its political system. The opening ofparliament was promised to take place in 1890, and both the government and the private sector
started to prepare for the event. Many political parties were born in the 1880s, but they were all
short-lived. The significance of the parties within the constitutional system was not understood
until after the establishment of the Meiji Constitution (Suetake 2011, 40–62).

The Significance of the Separation of Powers
A Prussian-style constitution gave stronger authority to the executive than a British-style
constitution, making the choice of who should be in charge of administration a significant
question. It became important to establish an executive branch that could withstand criticism
from the parliament, and which possessed greater legitimacy than parliament. Ito Hirobumi took
on the role of creating such an executive.
In 1883, upon his return from Europe, where he had studied the continentʼs constitutions,
Ito began working to create Japanʼs imperial house and peerage systems. The enactment of theImperial Household Law sought to protect the imperial house from parliamentar y influence.
Work on a peerage system was a prerequisite for the establishment of the House of Peers.
These steps were taken in pursuit of the national goal of creating a nation on par with Europeanmonarchies. In 1885, when Ito became prime minister, he created a cabinet system andstrengthened its executive power. The cabinet system implemented a strict separation between
the imperial house and the government. On the one hand, this system relieved the emperor ofany political responsibility, but it also allowed the cabinet to administer the country regardless ofthe emperorʼs wishes.
However, opposition from Inoue Kowashi, who feared that the strengthening of the cabinet
would threaten the emperorʼs sovereignty, prevented the Meiji Constitution from containing any
references to the cabinetʼs position and authority or even its existence. There was another factor
hindering the emergence of a strong cabinet. It was the introduction of an advanced separation of
powers in the structure of the Meiji Constitution (Mitani 2017).
The separation of powers had been a central part of the Meiji governmentʼs constitutionalist
vision since the declaration of the restoration of imperial rule. The restoration of imperial rule18
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Sumio Hatanomeant recovering the emperorʼs authority and making imperial governance the cornerstoneof the state. Imperial governance did not mean the revival of the Bakufuʼs absolute power, andthe imperial system needed a mechanism for eliminating absolute power. The separation of
powers was thought to be an effective means of curbing power. The separation of power that was
realized through the practices of the Bakufuʼs consultative system was a political strategy that
had been selected to deal with the foreign crisis of the mid-19th century. The consultative systemof aggregating diverse opinions through discussions among the elders functioned to prevent
power from being concentrated in any one political group. The system had sought to enable
the Tokugawa shogunate to exercise leadership in an environment of greater administrative
specialization that had been created with the establishment of national Bakufu rule (Mitani 2017,
42–44, 67–68).
The Bakufuʼs consultative system was in a broad sense a way of forming “public opinion.”
This evolved into the “public opinion government” at the core of the new Meiji governmentʼsvision of the constitutional state. The principle of “public opinion,” as embodied in the conceptof kōgi, contained within it the seeds of two ideas: parliamentarism and the separation of powers.
The notion of kōgi gave legitimacy to imperial governance, acted to effectively stimulate popular
dynamism, and helped establish the first operational constitutional monarchy in Asia.
If we take the principle of constitutional government to mean placing checks on power using
rules, and expanding popular political participation through parliament, then we can agree thatthe idea of public opinion had its origins in the concept of kōgi̶used by the Bakufu in politicalmanagement.

The Emperor System and Constitutionalism
There are two ways of understanding the Meiji Constitution. One is to interpret it as a set ofbasic governing principles in accordance with Western constitutionalism. This revolves aroundan interpretation of the Meiji Constitution as lex scripta, or written law. It acknowledges that theestablishment of a constitution was a prerequisite to entering the West-centered international
community of the nineteenth century on equal terms. The other way of interpreting the Meiji
Constitution is to focus on the unwritten rules and customs that regulated the state systemalongside the explicit text of the constitution, as well as their historical background. In fact, theMeiji Constitution was not unrelated to the basic rules of the past state system in Japan, including
the ritsuryō legal system and the Bakufu–domain system, and its text alone was not sufficient tocope with various matters of statecraft.
With regard to the latter understanding, the view of the emperor as a superior being whose
status did not have to be put in writing, or as transcending the constitution, had a major influenceon how the constitution was managed and interpreted. As explained in the constitution ʼ scommentary (kenpō gikai), the emperorʼs position in the Meiji Constitution did not start with theestablishment of the constitution, and was seen as originating in the “native national polity.” Theconcept of kokutai, often translated as the “national polity,” has been interpreted in various ways,
but in the Meiji Constitution, Japan was seen as a state governed since antiquity by the emperor,
whose continuity was emphasized. However, while the emperorʼs legitimacy was supported by all
forms of authority and power throughout Japanʼs long history, it had been common practice forthe emperor to entrust the actual exercise of power to the political system of the era. Unlike theWest, the emperor had almost never ruled as an absolute monarch.
In the West, constitutional systems of government generally developed from absolutemonarchies. The concept of an absolute monarchy did not exist in Japan, so it was not possible
to introduce constitutional systems of government without first creating something resemblingan absolute monarch. Thus, when establishing the Meiji Constitution, the documentʼs drafters
created a theoretical construct that assumed the existence of the emperor as an absolute
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The Building of the Meiji State and Constitutional Government

monarch and held that the emperor voluntarily limited his own absolute power. As such, theMeiji Constitution provided for the emperorʼs supreme authority, but it also limited the exerciseof that authority in accordance with advice from supporting government institutions. In this way,the emperorʼs position in the Meiji Constitution was interpreted as possessing the dimensions ofboth a constitutional and absolute monarch (Kitaoka 2010, 76–77). If the aspects of an absolutemonarch were emphasized, the emperor would literally rule as a sovereign and bear the
responsibility of all decisions made (the imperial sovereignty doctrine). By contrast, emphasizing
the aspects of a constitutional monarch would highlight the functions of parliament and cabinet as
the emperorʼs advisory bodies.
In this way, the constitutional theory behind the Meiji Constitution combined the ideas ofthose who interpreted the constitution through the concept of imperial sovereignty, as expoundedon by scholars such as Hozumi Yatsuka, and those who espoused a stance emphasizing theparliament. The doctrine of imperial sovereignty fundamentally rejected parliamentarism andparty politics. In the 1930s, the doctrine received over whelming support from government
officials and military authorities who valued administrative expertise and consistency in policy.
However, even when the military began to assert itself in politics, the parliament was far frompowerless. As previously discussed, one factor that helped sustain parliamentarism was the factthat the ideology and customs of kōgi, which stressed the importance of free debate that went
beyond the boundaries of social status during the Bakufu era, were never rejected.
Another factor goes back to Fukuzawa Yukichiʼs On the Imperial Household (1882), which
separated the emperor from politics and made him the nationʼs spiritual and moral center (Suetake
2011, 38–40). This idea was adopted and carried forward by Minobe Tatsukichi and others, andthe fact that it did not lose its legitimacy as one of many interpretations of kokutai can be said tohave acted as a breakwater protecting constitutionalism from the doctrine of absolute imperial
sovereignty. Moreover, the traditional idea that the emperor and the people had never been
adversaries throughout history, but rather had worked together in the management of the state ina cooperative relationship, as well as concepts such as wachū kyodō (harmonious cooperation) andkunmin kyōchi (joint rule by the monarch and the people) provided support for the factors that
helped sustain parliamentarianism.
Japanese constitutionalism sought to come to terms with the limitations of the doctrine ofseparation of powers through struggle. The relationship between the emperor, the parliament,
and the cabinet was shaped by the interaction between the political interpretation of theconstitution held by the government of the day and the ideals of those who drew up theconstitution. For example, Ito Hirobumi sought to limit the power of the parliament when drafting
the constitution, but was not seeking to reject parliament or political parties. The constitutional
politics envisioned by Ito consisted of harmonious interactions between the three agencies ofthe sovereign, the parliament, and the administration. In particular, he regarded as crucial thecollaboration between the government and the parliament based on an independent executive
branch (Takii 2003, 116–118).
The legislative and executive branches were theoretically able to exercise their own authority
in accordance with the separation of powers, but a complete separation between the legislativeand executive branches was never possible. Successive governments have continued to worry
about how to regulate the branches and facilitate their cooperation. Modern-day systems ofgovernance still face the exact same problem.

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Sumio Hatano

References
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Iwanami Shoten.
Enomoto, Hiroaki. 2015. Kōgiyoron to bakumatsu ishin no seiji henka [Public Opinion and
Political Transformation in Restoration at the End of the Edo Period]. Ph.D. dissertation, Chuo
University.
Ito, Yukio. 1999. Riken kokka no kakuritsu to Itō Hirobumi [Establishment of a Constitutional
Country and Hirobumi Ito]. Nagoya: University of Nagoya Press.
Kitaoka, Shinʼichi. 2010. Nihon seijishi [Japanese Political History]. Tokyo: Yuhikaku.
Kokaze, Hidemasa. 2004. Ajia no teikoku kokka [Asian Empire State]. Tokyo: Yoshikawa
Kobunkan.
Makabe, Hitoshi. 2007. Tokugawa kōki no gakumon to seiji [Learning and Politics in the Late
Tokugawa Period]. Nagoya: University of Nagoya Press.
Ministr y of Foreign Affairs of Japan, ed. 1957. Nihon gaikō bunsho [Documents on JapaneseForeign Policy]. Book 1, Vol. 1.
Mitani, Hiroshi. 1997. Meiji ishin to nashonarizumu—bakumatsu no gaikō to seiji hendō [Meiji
Restoration and Nationalism–Diplomacy and Political Change at the End of the Edo Period].
Tokyo: Yamakawa Shuppansha.
__________. 2012. Meiji ishin o kangaeru [Thinking About the Meiji Restoration]. Tokyo: Iwanami
Gendai Bunko.
Mitani, Taichiro. 2017. Nihon no kindai to wa nan de atta no ka [What Was Modern Japan?].
Tokyo: Iwanami Shinsho.
Miyajima, Hiroshi. 2004. Higashi Ajia ni okeru kindaika, shokuminchika o dō kangaeru ka [HowWe Should Think About Modernization and Colonialization in East Asia]. In Shokuminchi
kindai no shiza—Chōsen to Nihon [Viewpoint of Modern Colonies--Korea and Japan]. Edited by
Miyajima, et al. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten.
Ohishi, Makoto. 1995. Nihon kenpōshi [Japanese Constitutional History]. Tokyo: Yuhikaku.
Sakamoto, Takao. 1995. Shōchō tennōsei to Nihon no raireki [Symbolic Monarchy and Japanʼs
Historical Trail]. Tokyo: Toshi Shuppan.
Sasaki, Takashi. 2002. Meiji jin no rikiryō [Human Ability in the Meiji Era, History of Japan 21].
Tokyo: Kodansha.
Sansom, George B. 1966. Seio sekai to Nihon, ge. Translated by Madoka Kanai, et al. Tokyo:
Chikumashobo. Originally published as 1949 The Western World and Japan—A Study in theInteraction of European and Asiatic Cultures. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

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Sato, Seizaburo. 1979. Response to the West: The Korean and Japanese Patterns. In Japan: A
Comparative View. Edited by Albert M. Craig. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
__________. 1992. “Shi no chōyaku” o koete—seiyō no shōgeki to Nihon [Beyond the “Leap ofDeath”̶The Impact of the West and Japan]. Tokyo: Toshi Shuppan.
Suetake, Yoshiya and Tomoki Takada, eds. 2011. Nihon seitōshi [Japanese Political Party History].
Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kobunkan.
Sugawara, Hikaru. 2014. Magikku wādo to shite no rikkenshugi [Constitutionalism as a Magic
Word]. In Jiyūshugi no seijika to seiji shisō [Liberal Politicians and Political Thought]. Edited by
Koichiro Matsuda and Kaoru Iokibe. Tokyo: Chuokoron-Shinsha.
Suzuki, Jun. 2002. Ishin no kōsō to tenkai [Vision and process of the Meiji Restoration (History ofJapan, vol. 20)]. Tokyo: Kodansha.
Takii, Kazuhiro. 2003. Bunmeishi no naka no Meiji kenpō [The Meiji Constitution from the
Perspective of the History of Civilization]. Kodansha Sensho.
__________. 2010. Itō Hirobumi [Hirobumi Ito]. Tokyo: Chuokoron-Shinsha.
__________. 2014. Itō Hirobumi to Yunaiteddo Sutētsu [Hirobumi Ito and the United States]. In
Kindai Nihon no rī¯dāshippu [Modern Japanese Leadership]. Edited by Ryoichi Tobe. Tokyo:
Chikura Shobo.

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Mitsuhiko Kimura

Colonial Development of Modern Industry in Korea,
1910-1939/40*
Mitsuhiko Kimura**
Abstract
Under Japanese rule, the Korean economy under went momentous change, so much sothat, from a global perspective, it constituted an exceptional case in the first half of the20th centur y. Between 1912 to 1939, traditional primar y industr y (mostly agriculture)shrank from about 70% to about 40% of GDP, meanwhile, the proportion of mining andmanufacturing industries combined in the total economy grew significantly, from about 5% toabout 20%. In short, it represented a rapid transition from a primarily agricultural economy
to a primarily non-agricultural one. During this transition, the agricultural sector itself
underwent change. The policies of the Government-General and the development of themoney economy led to improved farming techniques and changes in crop selection. Overall
agricultural production increased steadily. In the meantime, industrialization in Korea beganwith small and medium-sized plants that simply processed raw materials. Then, as early as
the 1910s, modern industries arose, particularly ironmaking plants. From the 1920s until
1930s, a private-sector enterprise built a large-scale chemical industrial complex founded on
development of power plants. What must be emphasized here is that the colonized people
themselves contributed widely to industrialization in Korea. Koreans positively responded toexternal stimulus and took the initiative in following Japanese models and learning skills inbusiness and industrial technologies, thereby demonstrating entrepreneurship of their own.

Korea lacked modern industr y when it was annexed by Japan. How did the Korean
economy change under Japanese rule?
Changes in Koreaʼs industrial structure clearly indicate economic transformation.
According to recent estimates, agriculture, forestry, and fishery (as calculated by theamount of value added) accounted for approximately 70% of GDP (Gross Domestic Product) in
1912 (Table 1). This percentage declined decade by decade to about 40% in 1939. In less than 30
years, then, traditional primary industry (mostly agriculture) shrank to less than half the total
economy in terms of value of products. Conversely, the proportion of mining and manufacturingindustries combined in the total economy grew significantly, from about 5% to about 20% during
the same period.
In this article I will examine changes in, first, the agricultural sector and, second, the mining
and manufacturing sector over the period from annexation in 1910 until 1939/40.

*

This article is an English version of Kimura, Mitsuhiko.“Kindai sangyo no hatten [Development ofmodern industry].” Chap. 2 in Nihon tochika no chosen: tokei to jissho kenkyu wa nani wo kataruka. [Korea
under the rule of Japan: what statistics and empirical research tell us]. Tokyo: Chuokoron-Shinsha,
2018.

** Mitsuhiko Kimura is Professor of Economics and Economic History at School of International Politics,
Economics and Communication, Aoyama Gakuin University.

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Colonial Development of Modern Industry in Korea, 1910-1939/40

Table 1 Proportion of Total GDP by Industr y (based on nominal prices)(%)
Agriculture, forestry

Mining andElectricity, gas andand fisherymanufacturing

construction

Services

1912

68.1

4.9

1.9

25.1

1920

61.8

7.4

2.7

28.1

1930

49.0

9.4

6.3

35.3

1939

41.1

18.6

9.1

31.3

Note: Figures show a three-year average centered on the indicated year.
Source: Kim Nak-Nyeon, ed., Shokuminchi-ki chosen no kokumin keizai keisan [Economic growth in Korea 1910-1945], 315.

1.

Agriculture

Growth of Production
While the agriculture, forestry, and fishery sector shrank in relation to other sectors, its products
grew. From 1912 until 1939, agricultural production (in terms of real value added) rose by
an average of 1.9% annually (Kim Nak-Nyeon, op.cit., 406, table I-6). During the same period,
agricultural products in Japan grew at a much lower rate, 1.0% (Ohkawa et al., Choki keizai tokei 1:
Kokumin shotoku [Long-term economic statistics 1: National income], 228, table 26).
The coverage of the original statistics issued by the Government-General of Korea in the
1910s was limited. Therefore, estimates of the growth rate of Korean agricultural products
from 1910 through 1919 are based on many assumptions that might result in overestimation.
Even when we disregard this early period and limit our assessment to the years 1920 to 1939,
however, we still find a high average annual growth rate of 1.5%. Such rapid growth is rarely foundelsewhere unless a vast area of new land is being cleared or large labor surplus is available.
Rice accounted for the largest proportion of total agricultural output in value. Throughout theperiod of Japanese rule, rice accounted for more than 40% of it almost every year, with a peak of
54% occurring in 1934.

Rice Production
In the early 1910s, the annual amount of rice produced in Korea stood at around 12 million koku (1koku = 180 liters). It subsequently grew rapidly, reaching 27 million koku by 1937. Since cultivatedland area increased less than 15% during that period, the increase in production is mainly
attributable to greater productivity per unit area. By 1937, production per tan (about 991.7 square
meters) had reached 1.6 koku, an increase of over 80% compared with the beginning of the period.
Geographically, the largest gains in productivity accrued in northern Korea. Because of theadded factor of expanded cultivated area, rice production in northern Korea grew more sharply.

Improved Varieties of Rice
Before annexation, the Resident-General of Korea in 1906 established the Research Station ofModel Agriculture (which later became an Agricultural Experimental Farm) in Suwon, near
Hanseong (present-day Seoul), where they initiated research on the selective breeding of rice.
Satellite stations and seed nurseries were also established throughout Korea. After annexation,
the Government-General selected superior varieties from these facilities, distributed them tofarmers free of charge, and provided guidance on cultivation methods for them.
The main varieties selected at the time included Wase-shinriki (originally from Kumamoto
Prefecture; features high yields even with little fertilizer; also known as Sou-shinriki); Kokuryomiyako (originally from Yamaguchi Prefecture; high-quality rice well-suited to manufacture of24
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Mitsuhiko Kimurasake); and Tama-nishiki (originally from Tochigi Prefecture; high-quality rice featuring drought
resistance).
At the time of annexation, the dissemination rate of these improved varieties of rice in Korea
was virtually nil. Subsequent dissemination occurred quickly, however, exceeding 50% by 1920. In
that year, improved varieties accounted for 62% of total output of rice.
It is said that the Government-General went so far as to mobilize police officers to disseminate
the improved rice varieties. However, such rapid dissemination could not have been achieved
solely through gover nmental guidance (or “ coercion ” ). At the time, the gover nmentalorganization established was neither strong nor systematic enough to implement such a program
throughout Korea. Therefore, the rapid dissemination that did occur can only be explained by apositive response on the part of local producers.
Compared with native ones, the improved varieties of rice from Japan afforded Korean
farmers higher incomes. In addition to higher yields and more stable crops, the superior qualityof the new varieties commanded higher prices in the rice market.

Active Participation of Korean Farmers
Tenant farming was already widespread in Korea before Japan came on the scene. In the 1910s,
about 70% of all farming households were either combined owner/tenant farmers or pure tenant
farmers, with about half of the arable land area cultivated by tenant farmers. Of all rice paddies,nearly 70% were cultivated by tenant farmers.
Many Korean landowners were repor tedly absentee landlords who had no interest in
managing their farm and even did not live in local villages. Before annexation, the actual workof running some of the farms fell to Japanese who lived in Korea. They bought Korean land andleased it to tenant farmers to cultivate crops with an emphasis on rice. In the rice belt of southern
Korea, there were Japanese individuals and companies who owned anywhere from several
hundred to several thousand hectares of rice fields. The largest company of this type was Toyo
Takushoku Kabushiki Kaisha (the Oriental Development Company), a national enterprise of theJapanese Empire founded in 1908.
It was only natural that these Japanese landowners would be first to adopt the improved
varieties of rice. Their main objective was to maximize their income by exporting the rice theycollected as rent from tenants to the home market in Japan.
Even as late as 1920, however, Japanese living in Korea owned only about 10% of the total
cultivated rice area in Korea. This fact suggests that Koreans also played a part in widely
disseminating improved varieties of rice. Behind the scene was there a rapid growth of the money
economy. Korean farmers gained a strong incentive to acquire cash as manufactured goods
entered Korea from Japan, taxes and other governmental fees were levied, and commercial
fertilizers came on the market. In Korea, rice was by far the most important cash crop. Therefore,
it hardly comes as a surprise that once Korean farmers understood the advantages of improved
varieties of rice as a means to earn cash, they would spontaneously make the transition to those
improved varieties. Whether the impetus came from the landowners or the tenant farmers
may have depended on particular circumstances. In either case, Koreans responded to market
opportunities newly opened to them.
This response to market opportunities was not limited to Korea. The same phenomenon
can be found in many parts of Asia and Africa in the 19th and 20th centuries. In Southeast Asian
countries such as Burma (Myanmar), Thailand, and Indochina, rice production burgeoned withthe expansion of the export market. In those cases, so-called peasants who were seeking to gain
cash transitioned from traditional rice cultivation for self-support to expanded commercial riceproduction (Myint, Kaihatsu tojokoku no keizaigaku [The economics of the developing countries],
38–43).
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Colonial Development of Modern Industry in Korea, 1910-1939/40

There were, however, notable differences. These countries had large undeveloped areas, andthe increase in rice production depended on the cultivation of newly cleared land. During thattime, productivity per unit area declined.
One reason for this decline was that no changes occurred either in the varieties of rice being
grown or in cultivation methods. Also, clearing operations started with fertile land with a goodwater supply and gradually expanded to land with less and less advantageous characteristics(Wickizer et al., Monsuun ajia no beikoku keizai [The rice economy of monsoon Asia], 256;
Watanabe, Kaihatsu keizaigaku kenkyu [Development economics], 37–43).
In short, Korea was a special case because the development of the money economy not only
led to increased cash crop production but also triggered a change in cultivation methods (as was
also the case in Taiwan under Japanese rule). As a result, Korean farmers showed a more active
and innovative response to market opportunities than did farmers in Southeast Asian countries.

Increased Input of Fertilizer and Sanmai Zoshoku Keikaku
Research on improved varieties of rice was pursued continuously. In the late 1930s, Ginbozu
was the most commonly planted variety in southern Korea. This was a high-yielding variety
introduced from the Hokuriku region in northern-centered Japan.
In northern Korea, a variety called Rikuu no.132 that originated in Akita Prefecture was
widely planted. It was not only high-yielding but resistant to cold-weather damage and blight. It
is well known that Kenji Miyazawa, who as a famous farmer/poet, provided agricultural guidancein the Tohoku region in northeastern Japan where cold-weather damage was almost an annual
event, worked diligently to disseminate this variety, which also was deemed delicious and highly
prized in the marketplace (and is the forerunner of Koshihikari and Sasanishiki varieties today).
Most improved varieties of rice required large amounts of fertilizer, and the consumptionof fertilizer in Korea increased significantly under Japanese rule. This included self-supplied
fertilizer (green manure, compost, etc.) and commercial fertilizer (fishmeal, oil cake, chemicalfertilizer, etc.). Consumption of ammonium sulfate (a type of nitrogenous fertilizer) in particularincreased in the 1930s. This development was closely related to the construction of modern
fertilizer factories in Korea, as will be discussed below.
Despite these advances, far less fertilizer was consumed by ordinary farmers in Korea than
was consumed by farmers in Japan, even in the 1930s.
In 1920, the Government-General initiated Sanmai Zoshoku Keikaku (Rice Production
Development Program), with the purported goals of meeting growing demand for rice in Korea,
boosting the economies of farming families, and contributing to a solution to food shortage
problems in the Japanese Empire.
The program set the ambitious goal of pursuing land improvement policies (improving
irrigation, converting land use, and clearing new fields) and improvements in agricultural
practices as a whole to increase annual rice production by 9.2 million koku (an increase of 60%
compared with 1920) within 15 years.
Implementation did not proceed as planned, however, primarily for the following threereasons: rising prices inflated construction costs; interest rates on anticipated loans were higher
than expected; and the special corporation slated to serve as the implementing agency was neverformed.
The Government-General started over with a revised program implemented in 1926. Like
its predecessor it was ambitious, with the goal of increasing annual rice production by 8.2
million koku in 14 years. The content of the revised program, however, was more refined, callingfor direct government intervention to arrange large amounts of low-interest funding for land
improvement and the purchase of fertilizer. Also, the program established two land reform
agencies: Chosen Tochi Kairyo Kabushiki Kaisha (Korea Land Improvement Company, a half26
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Mitsuhiko Kimura

public, half-private entity) and a land improvement division within Toyo Takushoku.
Starting in the 1930s, farmers in Japan who were suffering economically from a serious
recession strengthened their opposition to the impor tation of Korean rice. This made it
unavoidably necessar y to reduce the goals of the revised program to increase Korean riceproduction and resulted in the dissolution of the land reform agencies above.
There is much debate concerning the political background, significance, results, andeconomic impact of Sanmai Zoshoku Keikaku. I will not explore it in detail here. I simply pointout that rice production in Korea increased from about 14 million koku to 18 million to 19 million
koku between the years 1920–21 and 1931–32.
Sanmai Zoshoku Keikaku is considered a first large-scale agricultural development plan in theJapanese Empire (Tohata and Ohkawa, Chosen beikoku keizai ron [Rice economy in Korea], 12).
It was formulated and implemented by the Government-General, indicating that the latter was not
simply an administrative organ, but also a large corporate entity that promoted the developmentof rice production as an industry.

Complementar y Policies Pursued by the Government-General
Quality assurance is critically important if a cash crop is to be well-received by the market, and
the Government-General made serious efforts in this area as well. In its unimproved state, Koreanrice had many defects such as incomplete dryness and contamination by husks, straw, dirt, andakamai (a wild, old variety of rice colored red). For this reason, Japanese rice distributors wereautonomously conducting grain inspections in open ports even before annexation.
In 1915, the Government-General promulgated regulations that placed rice inspection underprovincial authority. In 1917, the regulations were revised so that inspections were paid out ofprovincial budgets. In 1932, the further step was taken of opening grain inspection centers andmaking the inspection of rice for export a national operation.
Concerning packaging, the Government-General in 1927 issued kamasu (straw bag) inspection
regulations designed to improve bag quality and ensure uniformity. In 1932, specifications forstandardized straw bags were established.
The Government-General also promoted rice storage operations. Rice sales tended tobe concentrated in the fall and winter after har vest, during which time lower prices wereunavoidable. Modern storage facilities were necessar y both in rice-producing regions and at
ports where rice was loaded, both to maintain rice quality and to adjust the selling period.
In 1930, the Government-General announced a plan to construct rice storage facilities in
Korea, which formed the basis for the establishment of Chosen Beikoku Soko Kabushiki Kaisha(Korea Rice Storehouse Company). The purpose of the company was to construct and operate“commercial” rice storehouses at ports and “agricultural” rice storehouses in rice-producing
regions, as well as providing low-interest financing secured by stored rice. Under the plan,
construction of the commercial rice storehouses proceeded rapidly; by 1933, they had a combined
capacity of 1.6 million koku.
Before harvested rice reaches consumers, it must be husked and polished. This processing
was done by private companies; the Government-General was not directly involved in it until
the latter stages of World War II. I will explore the issue of rice processing in a later section
discussing manufacturing industry.

Stagnation in the Production of Other Food Crops
Under Japanese rule, production of barley, millet, and soybeans, which were main dry-field foodcrops, stagnated, because of a low dissemination rate of improved varieties and a decline inproductivity per unit area.
The Government-General did not show much interest in non-rice crops. It did not formulate
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Colonial Development of Modern Industry in Korea, 1910-1939/40

a field improvement plan until 1931, and even then it was much smaller in scale than the plan
formulated for rice.
Soybeans were useful to farmers as a cash crop. The native soybeans cultivated in Korea werealready of a high quality and were liked in Japan as raw material for tofu, miso, and soy sauce.
They were the preferred market choice even over the well-known soybeans grown in Manchuria.
In the second half of the 1910s, the export of Korean soybeans increased dramatically (from500,000 koku in 1914 to 1.3 million koku in 1919). This reflects the influence of World War I, when
the soybean market exploded. Exports remained at a high level in subsequent years, to the point
where exports represented 20–30% of total Korean soybean output by the 1930s.
If soybeans were a good cash crop, why did production not increase when the money
economy developed in Korea?
Regional observation reveals that, while soybean production declined in southern Korea in the
1920s and 1930s, it increased slightly in northern Korea. It is not easy to ascertain the reasons forthis relative waxing and waning between regions, but it may be due to farmers in northern Korea
responding to market opportunities, thus planting more soybeans. On the contrary, farmers inthe south turned to another cash crop, cotton, which promised greater profits than soybeans, as I
will discuss below.
One food crop of f the general trend above was potatoes, the production of which rose
substantially beginning in the 1910s. The center of potato production was in the eastern partof northern Korea. Compared with other crops, potatoes were highly productive per unit area,
serving as an important food crop for poor farmers.
Finally, maize production also increased in the 1930s, mainly in the western part of northern
Korea. One reason for this, which I will discuss in more detail later, is that a modern cornstarch
factory was built in Pyongyang that used maize as a raw material, thereby raising the market
price for it.

Dissemination of Upland Cotton and Growth of Sericulture
Cotton was first cultivated as a summer crop on the Korean peninsula in the 14th and 15th
centuries, prior to its introduction to Japan. Cotton cultivation grew during the Edo Period(1603–1867) in Japan, but quickly declined after the Meiji Restoration (1868) in the face of cheap
imports. The Japanese government formulated policies designed to bolster, if only by a little, theproduction of raw cotton in regions under its control for use in Japanʼs rapidly growing cotton
textile industry.
In 1905, Menka Saibai Kyokai (the Cotton Cultivation Association) was founded in Tokyo,
which established a seed orchard for upland cotton and a ginning mill in Korea. Upland cotton,
which originated in South America and was improved in the United States, accounted for most of
the raw cotton being cultivated globally at the time. The value of yarn spun from upland cotton
was higher than that of yarn made from Korean native cotton.
After annexation, in 1911, the Government-General initiated its first six-year plan for thepromotion of cotton production, which focused on replacing native cotton by upland cotton insouthern Korea. This plan was extended one year and completed in 1918. By that year, the areaof land planted with upland cotton had increased to about 94,000 chobu (1chobu = 0.992 hectares)
close to the 100,000 chobu anticipated by the plan. During the same period, the area under native
cotton cultivation declined from about 60,000 to about 36,000 chobu.
The second ten-year plan for the promotion of cotton production began in 1919. Major goalsof this plan were to grow cotton by clearing new land for cultivation and converting existing
fields to cotton and to increase yield per unit area by improving cultivation methods, with afocus on upland cotton in southern Korea and also native cotton in the western part of northern
Korea. In 1928, the final year of the plan, the cultivated area for upland and native cotton reached
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approximately 140,000 and 70,000 chobu, respectively.
During the period implementing the plan, however, the price of raw cotton declined,
preventing the anticipated targets from being achieved. The price continued to decline after
the term of the plan, prompting the Government-General to suspend further efforts to expand
cultivated area and concentrate instead on increasing production entirely through improvements
in yield per unit area.
After the Manchurian Incident in 1931, a stable supply of raw cotton became even more
important for the Japanese Empire. The Government-General accordingly formulated a new plan
designed to increase both the amount of cultivated land devoted to cotton and the yield per unit
area. In the 1930s, yield per unit area did not improve substantially, but the cultivation of uplandcotton did expand, particularly in the western part of northern Korea.
Overall, upland cotton had a higher yield in terms of monetar y value per unit area thannative cotton. Its yield was even higher than that of the competing crop of soybeans, with some
exceptional years. Upland cotton offered Korean farmers the long-term prospect of higher
income, which explains why they converted their fields from native cotton and soybeans to uplandcotton.
Thus, the development of Korean cotton crop under Japanese rule resulted in more than a sixfold increase in total production by the end of the 1930s as compared with the early 1910s.
Agricultural statistics for Korea show large increases in cultivated area and production
amounts for many crops in the 1910s. It is difficult, however, to judge whether these increases
actually occurred or whether, in those early years, insufficient surveys created apparent gains.
Two crops that showed relatively high production values were daikon (horse radish) and hakusai(Chinese cabbage). In both cases, however, production leveled off from the 1920s on.
Sericulture grew steadily throughout the period of Japanese rule. After annexation, theGovernment-General promoted sericulture by spreading improved breeds of silkworm andpromoting mulberry cultivation and silkworm breeding techniques. In 1925, it formulated a 15year plan to increase cocoon production by one million koku. Under a series of policies, there wasa substantial increase in the number of cocooneries, the area of mulberry orchards, and the total
output of cocoons. Farmers were engaged in sericulture as a rare side business for earning cash
income.

2.

Mining and Manufacturing: A Sudden Rise from an Undeveloped State

Growth Rates and the Policies of the Government-General
From 1911 until 1940, Korean mining and manufacturing industries grew sharply. In terms of realvalue added, the annual growth rate averaged about 12% for mining and 9% for manufacturing.
Expansion was especially rapid in the 1930s, with annual growth rates approaching 20% and 10%,respectively.
It is generally said that the Government-General adopted toward the manufacturing industry
in Korea suppressive policies in the 1910s, passive in the 1920s, and active in the 1930s. It is
certainly true that, compared with the agricultural sector, the Government-General did not havemuch interest in industrialization in Korea in the 1910s and 1920s.
However, it cannot be said that the 1910s were an era of suppression. Many researchers
mention the Company Ordinance as the main basis for suppressive policies. Promulgated by theGovernment-General in 1910, it required official permission for a company to be established.
According to the “suppressionist,” the purpose of this Ordinance was to prevent the developmentof commerce and industry in Korea, particularly Korean-owned capital. They stress that many
applications to establish companies submitted by Koreans were rejected. But this view is simply
the result of a misreading of the data. In fact, a high percentage of applications for company
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formation submitted by Koreans were approved.

Rice Husking and Polishing Plants Distinctive to Korea
Small and medium-sized businesses typically start up not as fully formed companies but insteadunder individual management. The first businesses to form in this manner in Korea were rice
husking and polishing plants.
Traditionally, Korean rice farmers did not husk their own rice. They either sold theirunhusked rice to huskers or polished their rice directly from the husked state (producing halfpolished rice known as kanpaku, “Korean white”) and sold it. After husking, the huskers either
sold the unpolished brown rice to polishers or polished the rice themselves.
The husking and polishing industry in Korea rose before annexation when Japanese nationals
established small-scale plants in rice distribution areas and at ports. Unhusked rice was more
expensive to transport, and insufficient dryness of half-polished rice made it prone to rot. This
made it important to husk and polish the rice before it was exported, a task that Japanese ricetraders took upon themselves.
Koreans emulated the Japanese, entering the field. In 1912, there were 67 husking/polishingplants (with either ten or more employees, or motorized operations) run by Japanese nationals,
and 23 run by Koreans in all of Korea. Japanese-owned plants had an average of 30 employees
and Korean-owned plants had an average of 11. The plants were mostly of small-scale, but among
Japanese-owned plants there were some that employed more than 200 workers.
In Japan, the usual practice was for farmers to husk their own rice using their own equipment
and sell the resulting brown rice to retailers. The retailers polished the rice and sold it toconsumers. Thus Japan and Korea were different in this regard. The Korean practice of husking
and polishing rice in factories was distinctive and contributed to reduced processing costs andmore uniform quality of the product, which increased market value of Korean rice. However,
because Korean farmers entrusted husking operations to independent plants, they were forced toaccept lower prices for the rice they harvested.
Husking and polishing operations grew in tandem with increased rice production and export.
In 1932, there were 1,156 husking/polishing plants operating in Korea that employed five or moreworkers: 373 of them were operated by Japanese nationals, and 783 of them by Koreans. Although
the average size of the Korean-owned plants was smaller than that of the Japanese-owned plants,
their total number was higher than that of the Japanese-owned plants.
Among Japanese-owned plants, some large plants emerged with a rice polishing capacity thatexceeded one million koku per year. The largest of these was Chosen Seimai Kabushiki Kaisha(Korea Rice Polishing Company) operated by Heitaro Kato, a native of Yamaguchi Prefectureborn in 1881. Kato was called the “king of rice polishing in Korea.” (Kato was also the founder ofKanemi Soko (Kanemi Storehouse), which precipitated a mass poisoning known as the “rice oil
disease incident” in Japan in the 1960s.)
In 1935, more than 30,000 workers were employed in rice husking and polishing plants in
Korea.

Large-Scale Coal Development
Anthracite
In 1907, the Resident-General of Korea established Heijo Kogyosho, a mining office in Pyongyang,for the purpose of development of anthracite. After annexation, the Government-General took
over operation of the enterprise and installed more equipment for coal extraction. Because mostof anthracite in Pyongyang took the form of coal dust, much of it was transported after extraction
to the Briquette Manufactory of the Japanese Navy in Tokuyama, where it was processed into
briquettes.
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In 1922, management of Heijo Kogyosho was transferred from the Government-General to
the Japanese Navy in response to the latterʼs request to emphasize the mining of Pyongyang
anthracite. When the transfer was made, the Navy renamed Heijo Kogyosho as the Pyongyang
Mining Division of the Naval Fuel Arsenal. In the 1920s, the Navy relocated part of briquette
manufacturing equipment from Tokuyama to Pyongyang, thus increasing the production capacity
there.
In 1928, the Pyongyang Mining Division achieved a coal output capacity of 140,000 tons per
year, the highest output of any coal mining operation in Korea. In the same year, the Division
manufactured 45,000 tons of briquettes, representing nearly half of all briquette production in
Korea. During this period, nearly all of the briquettes came to be consumed in Korea to heat
homes and power railway boilers.
In 1936, administrative reforms resulted in yet another change in the name of the mining
office, Mining Division of the Naval Fuel Arsenal.
At the time, anthracite reserves in Pyongyang were estimated at between 500 and 600 million
tons, an amount considered to be virtually limitless. Some might wonder about the link between
the ancient capital of Pyongyang and coal production, but in fact the city had the nickname “CoalCapital” because of its location over a vast coal field.
In the private sector, Chosen Muentan Kabushiki Kaisha (Korea Anthracite Company) was
founded in 1927, in which Mitsubishi Seitetsu (Mitsubishi Iron and Steel Comapany) was themain investor. The company always maintained close ties with the Government-General as it
mined anthracite in and around Pyongyang and manufactured briquettes.
Some of the highest quality anthracite in Korea was found at Ryuto Kogyosho (a mining officein Ryongdung) in Pyeonganbuk-do in the northwestern part of northern Korea. This mine wasdeveloped by Katakura Shokusan (Katakura Industrial), affiliated with Katakura Seishi Boseki(Katakura Silk Reeling and Weaving Company). The unlikely connection between silk andcoal can be explained by the suitability of anthracite as a means of heating cocooneries. Thus,
anthracite contributed to the development of Korean sericulture. In 1935, Ryuto Kogyosho was
producing about 60,000 tons of coal per year.
Anthracite was mined in southern Korea as well. Two mines in particular, located in theeastern part of southern Korea (the southern part of Gangwon-do), were well-known producers:
Sanchoku Tanko (a coal mine in Samcheok) and Neietsu Tanko (a coal mine in Yeongwol). The
former was operated by Sanchoku Kaihatsu (Sanchoku Development), a subsidiary of Nichiden
Kogyo (a power company in Japan) established in 1936; the latter was operated by Chosen
Denr yoku (Korea Electric Power Company), a member of the Toyo Takushoku group. Coal
reserves at Sanchoku Tanko were said to be enormous, totaling several hundred million tons; it
was also the only mine in Korea that produced anthracite in non-dust form. For this reason, thecoal from Sanchoku Tanko was mainly used in the production of carbide and castings.

Soft (Smoky) Coal
Most soft coal in Korea was low-grade (low-carbonization) lignite, not the kind of high-quality
coking coal found in Hokkaido and Kyushu. The soft coal produced in Korea was primarily
used to power locomotives, but some was also sold for home heating. Compared with Japanesecoal, Korean coal had a high chemical content that resulted in high reactivity with hydrogen.
Therefore, it drew attention in the 1930s as a raw material for the manufacture of synthetic oil(liquid fuel made by crushing coal and adding hydrogen).
Production of soft coal in Korea was almost entirely limited to the north. Its development wasundertaken by several big companies and sole proprietorships, including Meiji Kogyo (Meiji
Mining) and Chosen Yuentan Kabushiki Kaisha (Korea Soft Coal Company).
Meiji Kogyo began developing coal and gold mines in Korea around the time of annexation. It
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obtained mining rights in Anju, Pyeongannam-do (in the southwestern part of northern Korea)
and began developing a coal mine there in 1912, with reserves estimated at 50 million tons. The
Anju coal mine was the first in Korea to pursue mechanization with the introduction of electric
drills and drainage pumps manufactured by the German company Siemens in 1928. It produced
lignite for home and railway applications.
Another successful mine operated by Meiji Kogyo was the Sariwon coal mine, which was also
located in the southwestern part of northern Korea, in Hwanghae-do. The company obtainedmining rights in 1914 and opened the mine in 1931. The coal produced there was of nearly thesame quality as coking coal, featuring good combustibility, strong thermal power, and cleanburning that made it suitable for use in furnaces and boilers.
Chosen Yuentan Kabushiki Kaisha was established in 1939, when small and medium-sized
soft coal mines formed a consortium capitalized at ¥15 million through mediation efforts by theGovernment-General aimed at increasing coal production. The participating companies were:
Hokusen Tanko, Toyo Takushoku, Totaku Kogyo, and Aso Kosan, all of which contributed
their mines as in-kind investments. Operations centered on the Kogonwon coal mine in
Hamgyeongbuk-do in the northeast. This, along with the Sariwon coal mine and the Yuseon coalmine (discussed in more detail below), was one of the main soft coal mines in Korea. In 1935,
it had 3,000 employees and produced 30,000 tons of lignite annually. The quality of the coal was
high, with a high calorific value of 6,000 to 7,000 calories per gram and low ash and sulfur content,
making it a popular choice for railway and home heating use.
Among sole proprietorships, Iwamura Kogyo was particularly successful. It was founded by
Choichi Iwamura, a native of Kumamoto Prefecture (1881–1948) who resided in Korea. In 1938,
Yamaichi Shoken (Yamaichi Securities) bought a 40% stake to create a stock company capitalizedat ¥10 million. Iwamura Kogyo operated several mines in northern Korea, including the Yuseon
mine in Hamgyeongbuk-do. The Yuseon mine was one of the best in Korea in terms of both
quality and quantity of the coal, which was sold for use in home heating and railway (express
locomotives) applications.

Early Development of Iron Mines and Establishment of Steelworks
Dating to the 1910s, iron mine development got an early start in Korea and formed the basis forthe construction of several steelworks. Immediately after annexation, the company Mitsubishi
Goshi Kaisha (Mitsubishi Joint Company) purchased an iron mine in Kyomipo, Pyeongannam-do(near the Taedong River) in the southwestern part of northern Korea. It subsequently continued
to purchase nearby iron mines as well as anthracite coal mines in the same province and planned
the construction of a steelworks.
Masatake Terauchi, the Japanese Army general who served as the first Governor-Generalof Korea, played a leading role in this process. Through the mining bureau of the GovernmentGeneral, Terauchi helped Mitsubishi conduct mine sur veys and smoothed the way for the
disposal of large tracts of land owned by the Japanese Army in Kyomipo. He also encouraged
development by leasing to the company 400,000 tsubo (1 tsubo = 3.3 square meters) of property
that had been earmarked for railway use, and by waiving tariffs on imported construction
supplies.
The construction of the ironworks in Kyomipo (Kenjiho Seitetsujo) began in 1914, but work
was substantially delayed by the outbreak of World War I. The facility was finally completed
in 1918, and two blast furnaces with an annual production capacity of 50,000 tons each wereactivated. In the previous year, Mitsubishi had established Mitsubishi Seitetsu (headquartered inTokyo), which was capitalized at ¥30 million. The operation of Kenjiho Seitetsujo was entrusted to
Mitsubishi Seitetsu.
Kenjiho Seitetsujo introduced the most advanced technologies available at the time,
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including byproduct recovery furnaces. In 1919, an open-hearth furnace and rolling equipment
manufactured by Mitsubishi Shipyards in Nagasaki and Kobe were added to create a fully
integrated production system ranging from pig iron to finished steel. A major purpose of
production of the steel material was to supply Mitsubishi shipyards with steel plate and largescale section steel for naval vessels. In 1921, the facility began producing high tensile-strength
steel plate for naval applications. In the same year, it raised pig iron production to 83,000 tons,
steel production to 51,000 tons, and steel material production to 30,000 tons.
Subsequently, an economic downturn and a reduction in Japanese Navy forces resulted ina considerable decline in the steel market. In response, the company suspended operations at
the steelmaking division of Kenjiho Seitetsujo until 1933. Even during that time, however, theproduction capacity of its pig iron division increased, reaching 150,000 tons in 1931. This wasmore than that of Kamaishi Seitetsujo in Japan, and slightly more than 20% of the production
capacity of the largest steelmaking facility in the Japanese Empire, Yawata Seitetsujo.
In 1934, Nihon Seitetsu (Japan Iron and Steel Company) was created when Mitsubishi
Seitetsu joined a large consortium of steel companies. The operation of Kenjiho Seitetsujo was
entrusted to the new company at that time. Immediately after Nihon Seitetsu was formed, a plan
was formulated to expand the production facilities of all the companies under the consortiumʼsumbrella. The blast furnaces at Kenjiho Seitetsujo were renovated (Furnace No. 1 was removed
and replaced by a newly constructed 120,000-ton furnace), and a new coke oven and a byproductplant were constructed. In 1934–35, open-hearth furnaces Nos. 2 and 3 started their operations.
In the eastern part of northern Korea, the Riwon iron mine began operating in the mid-1910s
for the purpose of supplying Yawata Seitetsujo with iron ore. The ore mined at Riwon was ofrelatively high quality, with an average iron content of 50–55%, and reserves were estimated atseveral tens of millions of tons. In 1927, the planned extraction amount was 80,000 tons.
The Riwon iron mine had large amounts of fine ore that could not be processed with a blast
furnace. To utilize it, Nippon Koshuha Jukogyo (Japan High-Frequency Heavy Industries) was
founded in 1935. The new company built a factory in Songjin, not far from Riwon, and began
making steel (special steel in particular) from fine ore using its electrical furnace technology.
The Musan iron mine was said to be one of the largest iron mines not only in Korea but all of
East Asia, with estimated reserves of 1.5 billion tons. Located deep in the northeastern part ofnorthern Korea, it was hard to access and full development did not begin until the second half ofthe 1930s.

Large-scale Nonferrous Metal Refiner yDuring the rule of the Resident-General, Kuhara Kogyo (Kuhara Mining Company) began ageological survey of Korea. Kuhara Kogyo was the precursor of Nippon Kogyo, a leading mining
company in Japan before World War II. It is one of the predecessors of todayʼs JXTG Holdings Inc.
Beginning in 1915, Kuhara Kogyo aggressively pursued the development of gold, silver,
copper, lead, and zinc mines in northern Korea. It also planned the construction of a refinery forprocessing gold, silver, and copper ore. The new plant was sited at Chinnampo (on the outskirtsof Pyongyang), which was convenient for shipment by sea. Construction began in May 1915 andoperations began in October of that year. Initially, the plant had a production capacity of crude
copper at 216 tons per month and employed 1,400 workers.
Facilities at the refinery were subsequently expanded, including the completion in 1936 of a
600-foot (183-meter) chimney, the tallest in the world at the time. In locations such as Ashio and
Besshi in Japan, smoke from metal refineries had caused serious damage to forests and farms.
The tall chimney was intended to prevent the same kinds of problems from occurring in andaround Chinnampo.

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The Forgotten Munitions Plant
There was a munitions plant in Pyongyang when Korea was under Japanese rule. After WorldWar II, this fact was forgotten not only by the general public but also by most scholars of modern
Korean history. Because the plant was under the direct control of the Japanese Army, no records
of it were included in materials that would ordinarily be viewed by those scholars, particularly
the publications of the Government-General. The annual administration report of the GovernmentGeneral of Korea does not mention the plant at all, and industrial statistics announced by theGovernment-General do not include the outputs at the plant.
The Pyongyang munitions plant, however, was not a secret facility. Located near the center ofPyongyang, it was familiar to city residents before WWII. Built in 1917, the plant was originallycalled Chosen Heiki Seizosho and was attached to the Tokyo artillery arsenal. Subsequently, it
underwent two transformations before becoming Heijo Heiki Seizosho under the jurisdiction of
the Kokura arsenal of the Japanese Army armory in 1936.
The main products of the plant included artillery shells, aircraft bombs, rolling stock, leather
goods, hemp-made weapons, and materials for the manufacture of instruments. Nearly 200
workers were employed at the plant in 1923, but this number subsequently increased, reaching
about 450 by 1936. In that year, armories in Japan employed thousands (one in Osaka had morethan 8,000 workers). Compared with them, the workforce at Heijo Heiki Seizosho was quite
small. Also, compared with the standard size of ordinary factories in Japan, the plant was only of
medium size, without particular distinction. In the Korean context, however, it was counted as alarge factory.

The Growth of Onoda Cement
Immediately after annexation, a primar y cement maker in Japan, Onoda Cement, set about
establishing operations in Korea to meet anticipated growth in demand for cement for railway,
road, harbor, and other construction projects. Limestone, an ingredient in cement, could be foundin vast quantities in various regions of Korea, particularly in the north.
Completed in the suburbs of Pyongyang in 1919, the new Onoda Cement plant had cuttingedge equipment for the time, with an annual production capacity of 34,000 tons. In later years
Onoda Cement expanded its Pyongyang plant and built two more in the eastern part of northern
Korea: the Wonsan plant in 1928 and the Komusan plant in 1936.
In the second half of the 1920s, the combined supply capacity of the Pyongyang and Wonsan
plants exceeded Koreaʼs total demand for cement. Onoda Cement therefore restricted production
at these plants and set its sights on selling its products in Japan and Manchuria.
The competitors of Onoda Cement, Ube Cement and Asano Cement, countered Onoda ʼsbusiness strategy by constructing large plants in Korea in the second half of the 1930s (Ube in
1936, and Asano in 1937, both in the western part of northern Korea).

The Development of the Silk Industr y and the Cotton Spinning and Weaving
Industr y
Katakura Seishi Boseki was founded in 1920. Its predecessor, Katakura Gumi, made plans to enter
the Korean market after the Sino-Japanese War and initiated a survey of Korean sericulture andsilk industries. After annexation, Katakura Gumi established forestry divisions in several locations
in northern Korea. In 1913, it opened a cocoon purchasing office in the southern Korean town ofDaegu, and went on to build a silk-reeling factory there in 1918.
In 1919, the silk company Yamaju Gumi, which was based in Shinshu, Japan, also built afactory in Daegu. In the same year, Jotaro Yamamoto, who began his career at Mitsui Bussan(Mitsui & Co.) (and later served as the president of the South Manchuria Railway Company),
teamed up with Ozawa Gumi and other companies in Shinshu to establish Chosen Kiito Kabushiki
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Kaisha (Korea Raw Silk Company) which, like the others, set up operations in Daegu. Thus,
Daegu became the center of mechanized silk reeling in Korea.
In 1927–28, Katakura Seishi Boseki established more factories in Seoul, Hamhung (in theeastern part of northern Korea), and Jeonju (in the western part of southern Korea) (In Seoul,
the company purchased an existing small factor y and expanded it). At about the same time,
Gunze Seishi, Toyo Seishi, and Zenhoku Seishi (the latter two affiliated with Mitsui Bussan) also
built factories in Korea.
Koreans also established silk-reeling companies and built factories. Two of the more
prominent Korean-owned companies were Chosen Seishi and Chunan Seishi. The former was
founded in 1919 by a nobleman who belonged to the Korean aristocracy prior to the Japanesecolonial period; its factory was located in Seoul. The latter was founded in 1926 with a factory
located in the central part of southern Korea.
Many other small-scale factories were set up throughout Korea under both Japanese andKorean ownership and management. At the end of 1934, there were 84 mechanized silk-reelingfactories operating in Korea with workforce of five or more employees. Forty percent of them,that is, 34 factories, were operated by Koreans and 19 of those were located in Daegu.
In the area of cotton spinning and weaving, Chosen Boshoku Kabushiki Kaisha (Korea
Spinning and Weaving Company) was established in 1917 by Utaro Noda (who participated in
the founding of Miike Boseki), Kyohei Magoshi (who used to work at Mitsui Bussan), Jotaro
Yamamoto, and others. The company set up operations in Pusan and built a large spinning andweaving factory there in 1922.
In 1919, the Kim family, who had vast landholdings in the western part of southern Korea,
established Keijo Boshoku Kabushiki Kaisha (Keijo Spinning and Weaving Company). The
company bought and operated a small factor y that previously belonged to Keijo Orihimo
Kaisha, which was set up in 1910. The factory subsequently achieved remarkable growth. Keijo
Boshoku also built cotton ginning plants and dyeing plants all over Korea and became one of thepreeminent Korean-owned companies. Underlying this growth was generous financial support
provided by Chosen Shokusan Ginko (Korea Industrial Bank), a half-public, half-private financial
institution founded by the Government-General (Eckert, Nihon teikoku no moshigo [Offspring of
Empire], 123–140).
In the 1930s, two of Japan ʼs major cotton spinning and weaving companies, Toyobo andKanebo, built factories in Korea.
One example of a Korean-initiated small to medium-sized business in the cotton weaving
field was a factory in Pyongyang that made knitted socks. It was founded by a Korean resident
in Pyongyang in 1906, who introduced machinery from Japan. The sock-knitting industry grew
sharply in the 1920s and had 33 cotton sock plants operating in Pyongyang by 1934. Nearly allof them were small plants that employed fewer than 50 workers, but three of them grew in scale
having 100 –200 workers.

Pulp and Paper Industr y Led by Oji Seishi
Oji Seishi (Oji Paper Company) became the driving force of the pulp and paper industry in Korea.
The ample conifer forests on the banks of the Yalu River enticed Oji Seishi to set up operations
in Korea at an early date. In 1917, the company founded a subsidiar y called Chosen Seishi,
which constructed a pulp mill in the following year in Sinuiju, located on the border between thenorthwestern part of northern Korea and Manchuria. The mill produced sulfite pulp and groundpulp from raw wood, and supplied its products to paper mills operated by Oji Seishi in Japan.
The Government-General supported Chosen Seishi and preferentially sold governmentowned lumber grown and harvested in the Yalu River basin to the company. The Sinuiju pulp mill
had a site area of 210,000 tsubo and an annual production capacity of 10,000 tons, making it one of35
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the largest factories in Korea. After experiencing a downturn following World War I, the mill in
Sinuiju was further expanded in 1925 and began to produce rolled paper.
Furthermore, Oji Seishi undertook to develop virgin forest in Hamgyeong-do in the easternpart of northern Korea. In 1935, it established a subsidiary called Hokusen Seishi Kagaku Kogyo(Hokusen Paper and Chemical Industry), which constructed a mill in Kilju in the eastern partof northern Korea. This was the first mill in the world to produce rayon pulp (an intermediatematerial for chemical fiber) using larch wood as raw material.
The Kilju mill had an annual production capacity of 25,000 tons, which was more than that ofcompetitive pulp mills operating in Japan. In 1937, the Kilju mill accounted for 36% of all rayon
pulp produced in the Japanese Empire. Rayon textiles were one of Japanʼs main export products
at the time, and the Kilju mill served an important function as an intermediate material processor.

Shitagau Noguchi and the Development of Large-Scale Electric Power andChemical Plants
After annexation, the Government-General actively conducted surveys on hydroelectric powersources in Korea. The first round of surveys was implemented from 1911 until 1914; the second
from 1922 until 1929; and the third was initiated in 1936. Each round resulted in an expansion in
the number of hydroelectric power sources amenable to development. Most of them were on the
Yalu and Tumen rivers and their tributaries in northern Korea.
In 1926, Shitagau Noguchi (1873–1944) founded Chosen Suir yoku Hatsuden Kabushiki
Kaisha (Korea Hydroelectric Power Company) with a capitalization of ¥20 million and began
hydraulic development on the Pujon River, a tributary of the Yalu River. Noguchi was originally anengineer from the electrical engineering department of Tokyo Imperial University, but became anentrepreneur in 1908 with the establishment of Nippon Chisso Hiryo (Japan Nitrogen Fertilizer
Company), which manufactured chemical fertilizer.
The Pujon River flowed to the north of the Kaema Plateau and converged with the Yalu
River. Noguchi planned to change its course through watershed modification to achieve largescale power generation. The first step was to build a dam to flood valleys and create an artificial
lake along the river. The next task was to dig water transmission tunnels through the mountains
to drop water from the reservoir into the Japan Sea. Noguchiʼs inventive idea was to utilize thedifference in elevation between the reservoir and the ocean to generate electricity. He further
planned to construct power plants in four locations.
The huge scale of electric power development on the Pujon River was unprecedented in theJapanese Empire. To initiate it, it was necessary to construct a railroad for material transport. The
first power plant was finally completed in 1929.
Using the same methodology, Noguchi was also engaged in development of power sourceson the Changjin and Hochon rivers, two other tributaries of the Yalu River. Construction of power
plants on these rivers began in 1933 and 1937, respectively. The scale of both of these projects
surpassed that of the Pujon project.
Noguchiʼs ultimate goal was to build a chemical fertilizer plant in northern Korea that would
have access to ample and inexpensive electrical power. He invested ¥10 million to establish
Chosen Chisso Hiryo Kabushiki Kaisha (Korea Nitrogen Fertilizer Company) in 1927 (whichmerged with its parent company, Nippon Chisso Hiryo, in 1941), and began the construction of aplant in Hungnam (in the eastern part of northern Korea), which was completed in 1929.
The Hungnam plant was comprised of facilities engaged in ammonia synthesis, electrolysis,ammonium sulfate manufacture, machiner y manufacture, and catalysis. It had an initial
production capacity of ammonium sulfate of 400,000 tons annually, which far exceeded that of
Nippon Chisso Hiryoʼs plants in Japan (in Nobeoka and Minamata). Unlike the equipment in
the plants in Japan, which had mostly been imported from Europe and North America, all of
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the equipment in the Hungnam plant (except the nitrogen separator) had been manufactured
by Japanese companies (including Yasukawa Denki, Fuji Denki, Shibaura Seisakusho, Kobe
Seikosho, and Hitachi Seisakusho). Thus, the construction of the Hungnam plant provided astrong stimulus for the development of machinery industry in Japan.
Pyrites are essential for the manufacture of sulfuric acid, and these were procured frommines in Japan and throughout Korea. The main source in Japan was the Yanahara mine in
Okayama Prefecture; in Korea in the 1930s, pyrites were mainly mined in the northeastern part.
To promote the development of pyrites mines in Korea, Noguchi invested ¥1 million to establish
Chosen Kogyo Kaihatsu Kabushiki Kaisha (Korea Mining Development Company) in 1929.
After its founding, the Hungnam fertilizer plant continued to expand. In addition to ammonium
sulfate, its output was diversified to include ammonium sulfate-phosphate, superphosphate oflime, lime nitrogen, and other products, which it shipped in large quantities within Korea and to
Japan.

A World-Class Chemical Industrial Complex
Noguchi constructed another chemical plant, in Pongung, about 4 kilometers away from the
Hungnam fertilizer plant. It began processing soybeans in 1936. Construction was completed on alime nitrogen facility in July of that year, enabling the mass manufacture of caustic soda (sodiumhydroxide), ammonium chloride, carbide, lime nitrogen, and other products.
The manufacturing method for caustic soda was perfected at the Nobeoka plant in Japanand involved the electrolysis of salt using the mercury process. The caustic soda was shipped toaffiliated chemical plants.
The manufacturing of ammonium chloride was initiated with the intention of making effective
use of the chlorine that was produced through the electrolysis of salt. In Korea, ammonium
chloride was either sold as fertilizer or purified and sold to manufacturers of batteries. Chlorine
was also used as a raw material in the manufacture of hydrochloric acid, bleaching powder, andliquid chlorine. It was rare even in Japan for a single plant to manufacture multiple chemical
products simultaneously through the rationalized use of salt.
Limestone, a raw material used to make carbide, was transported by freight cars to the plantfrom a limestone quarry owned by the company located north of Pongung. When there was a
shortage, the rest was procured from Onoda Cementʼs Wonsan plant.
At the Pongung plant, the large amounts of powdered carbide generated as a byproduct of
the carbide manufacturing process were simply thrown away. To avoid such waste, technology
was developed that enabled the utilization of powdered carbide, which provided the basis for theconstruction of branch facilities dedicated to the production of acetylene, acetylene black, andglycol. Acetylene black was sold primarily as a material for making printing ink and rubber filler.
The branch facility for glycol added hydrogen to acetylene to produce ethylene, the base material
for manufacturing glycol. Other products made from acetylene included butanol and acetone.
Glycol, butanol, and acetone are basic chemical products used to make solvents, synthetic resins,
pharmaceuticals, and other products.
Noguchi built one related factory after another to create a huge chemical industrial complex
in Hungnam. This complex was counted as one of the greatest in the world.
Noguchi also pursued urban development in Hungnam, including the construction of a harborand housing. This was a unique feature of industrial development in Hungnam: a private-sector
entrepreneur was engaged in development of infrastructure and factory construction at the sametime.

Noguchi’s Other Projects

Noguchiʼs projects extended beyond Hungnam. In 1932, he built a coal carbonization plant in the37
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Colonial Development of Modern Industry in Korea, 1910-1939/40

town of Yongan in Hamgyeongbuk-do in the northeastern part of northern Korea. Using lignite
available nearby, the plant manufactured gasoline from tar and produced methanol and formalinfrom water gas. Formalin is a base material used to make explosives and carbolic resin (Bakelite).
The plant in Yongan included chemical facilities, machiner y manufacturing facilities, and an
inhouse thermal power plant. The power plant burned semicoke and supplied power not just to
the plant but, through an electric power company (Chosen Denki), to surrounding cities.
In 1935, on the basis of technological development in Yongan, Noguchi founded Chosen
Sekitan Kogyo (Korea Coal Industr y Company), a new firm capitalized at ¥10 million thatengaged in direct coal liquefaction. While operating the plant in Yongan, the company built in1936 another plant in Aoji, in the extreme northeastern corner of northern Korea, near theborders of Manchuria and the U.S.S.R.
The plant in Aoji featured such cutting-edge equipment as high-efficiency gas generators
and Japanʼs first 5,000 hp gas compressors capable of generating 240 atm of pressure each. Allof the important equipment at the plant was manufactured by Japanese companies, including
Kobe Seikosho, Hitachi Seisakusho, and the Kure naval arsenal. For raw material, it used lignite
obtained from a nearby company-owned mine. Technological development was avidly pursued
by engineers from the naval fuel arsenal in Tokuyama. They were joined by Professor Yoshikiyo
Oshima of Tokyo Imperial University, an authority on fuel science. At its peak, the plant had a
production capacity of 50,000 tons of liquefied coal per year.
Research and commercialization of liquid fuel made from coal had already been undertakenby the Germans, British, and Americans. In Japan, it was the Navy that first showed an interest,with the Japanese government formulating “the summar y plan for the promotion of artificial
petroleum” in 1936 and implementing the “national liquid fuel policy” from the following year. In
this context Noguchi pursued the commercialization of liquefied coal in Korea.
Noguchi gathered many talented engineers and guided them as they introduced anddeveloped advanced technologies. Funding was initially provided by Mitsubishi Ginko (MitsubishiBank), with later financing provided by Nippon Kogyo Ginko (The Industrial Bank of Japan) andtwo of Koreaʼs main financial institutions: Chosen Ginko and Chosen Shokusan Ginko.
Noguchi was intimately connected to the Government-General, particularly close to Kazushige
Ugaki, the sixth Governor-General. Ugaki had a strong interest in Noguchiʼs enterprises andassisted in their development.

The Overlooked Machine Industr y
It is widely said that the machine industry languished in Korea under Japanese rule, but this is
not true. It did grow during the colonial period, although not as flamboyantly as the other sectors,
particularly the chemical industry (as described above).
Many of the Japanese companies that built metal and chemical plants in Korea added
machinery manufacturing facilities where they produced and repaired the machinery they used.
Because these machine shops did not take the form of independent companies or factories, theyhardly ever appear in the statistics and data of the time. Nevertheless, they played an importantrole in Koreaʼs industry.
The machine plant in Hungnam was the largest machine manufacturing facility in Korea. It
was constructed in 1928, at the same time that the Hungnam fertilizer plant was built. It expanded
as the chemical industrial complex in Hungnam developed, and manufactured, renovated, andrepaired the chemical machiner y needed by the industrial complex. Nearly all of the newly
designed machines were manufactured at this plant. It possessed a full complement of equipment
comparable to that of an independent machine manufacturing company, including electric
furnaces for casting, large hammers for forging, various lathes, and presses for manufacturingcans.
38Japan Review Vol.2 No.2 Fall 2018

Mitsuhiko Kimura

The Railway Bureau of the Government-General also operated machine manufacturing
facilities throughout Korea. The largest of these was the Gyeongseong plant, founded in 1905.
This plant started out as a small railway repair facility but gradually expanded. In 1927, it started
producing steam locomotives. By 1939, it had 854 machine tools and a workforce of 1,700 skilledlaborers (of which 595 were Japanese).
Two powerful independent machine manufacturing companies should also be mentioned:
Chosen Shoko and Ryuzan Kosaku.
Chosen Shoko Kabushiki Kaisha (Korea Industrial and Commerce Company) wasestablished in 1919 by Seishichiro Nakamura, a Japanese national living in Korea. Born in 1872
in Nagasaki Prefecture, Nakamura founded Nakamura Gumi, a sea transport company. Active
in many commercial and industrial fields, including civil engineering, oil, fertilizer, machinery,ironworking, shipbuilding, and transport, Chosen Shoko was known as the “Mitsui Bussan of thePeninsula” and was the predecessor of Sankyu Inc., a modern-day general distribution company
based in Kyushu. Its first plant was built in Chinnampo in 1910, and engaged in the manufacture
and repair of mining and refining machinery.
Ryuzan Kosaku Kabushiki Kaisha (Ryuzan Manufacturing Company) was an ironworks
founded in 1919 by Tsunejiro Tagawa, a native of Shimane Prefecture who was born in 1884.
Af filiated with the Railway Bureau, it grew quite large by the 1930s, operating plants in
Gyeongseong and Incheon that manufactured locomotives, rolling stock for passenger and freighttrains, and various other railway equipment.

Rubber Processing, Fish Oil Manufacture, and Agricultural Product Processing
Star ting in the 1920s, r ubber processing plants (mainly for r ubber boots) flourished inPyongyang. Nearly all of them were small-scale enterprises owned by Koreans, although severalof them developed workforces to 100 people or more. In 1939, there were 13 rubber processing
plants in Pyongyang, only one of which was Japanese-owned. Two of them had workforces inexcess of 200 people.
The fish oil business prospered with the growth of the sardine fishing industry. In 1923, large
schools of migrating sardines suddenly appeared off the eastern coast of Korea. In response,
Japanese nationals introduced Japanese-style purse seine fishing using motorized boats,giving birth to a burgeoning sardine fishing industr y. In the first half of the 1930s, Japanesecompanies founded modern fish processing plants near fishing harbors: Chosen Chisso ʼs oil
plant in Hungnam and a plant of Chosen Yushi (Korea Oil and Fat Company) in Chongjin. These
plants produced large volumes of sardine oil (used in the manufacture of soap, foodstuffs, andpharmaceuticals) and fish meal (for fertilizer).
Meanwhile, many Korean-owned small-scale plants for fish-oil processing sprang up,
numbering more than a thousand by the late 1930s. At that time, Korean sardine oil accounted forthree-quarters of all sardine oil produced in the Japanese Empire and was an important resource
for the oil industry both in Japan and Korea.
Reaching its peak in about 1940, the Korean sardine fishing industr y was said to be on a
global scale. Subsequently, the sardines stopped migrating near Korea and the industry rapidly
declined, bringing an end to the fish-oil processing.
A noteworthy development in the field of agricultural product processing in Korea occurredin 1931, when Nippon Corn Products built a corn processing plant in Pyongyang. The company
was a subsidiary of an American company (with some investment by Mitsubishi). Introducing
American-style machine technology, it processed corn grown in Korea and Manchuria to makesuch products as cornstarch and dextrose. The cornstarch was important both as food (mixed
with rice, wheat, and barley) and for industrial applications, including newly developed ones suchas pigment and gunpowder manufacture. The Pyongyang plant won reputation to be the largest
39
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Colonial Development of Modern Industry in Korea, 1910-1939/40

agricultural processing plant in Asia.

An Over view: Mining Output, Total Number of Plants, Proportion of Heavy andChemical Industries
From annexation in 1910 until 1935, coal production increased dramatically from 80,000 tons to
2 million tons per year (Table 2). Iron ore production increased from 140,000 tons to 230,000
tons. Production of graphite (used to make desiccants, steelmaking crucibles, and electrodes),barite (the source ore of barium sulfate, a chemical additive), tungsten (for making metal alloys),and various other minerals also increased. The district of Kanggye in Pyeonganbuk-do in thenorthwestern part of northern Korea was known worldwide as a source of vein graphite.
Other products that do not appear in the same table include rare minerals such as antimony
and mica, which were mined in the 1920s. In the 1930s, extraction began at a magnesite mine in
Tanchon in Hamgyeongnam-do in the eastern part of northern Korea. It had one of the largest
magnesite reserves in the world, estimated at several hundred million tons of high-grade ore.
The total number of industrial plants in Korea increased approximately from 300 to 6,500
between 1912 and 1939 (Table 3). This increase was particularly evident among Korean-owned
plants, which first surpassed the number of Japanese-owned plants in 1932. Although most
Korean-owned plants were quite modest in size with fewer than 50 employees, some relatively
large plants also developed, with 15 plants employing 200 or more workers by 1939. A large partof the Japanese-owned plants were also small and medium-sized, but their average size was larger
than that of their Korean-owned counterparts. Japanese-owned plants accounted for 90% of alllarge-scale plants, far outnumbering those owned by Koreans.
Not only did industry as a whole experience growth, but the proportion of total industrial
output accounted for by heavy and chemical industries (machiner y, metals, and chemicals)
increased largely from only 6% in 1911 to 12% in 1920, 17% in 1930, and 40% in 1939.

Table 2 Outputs of Main Ores
(1,000 tons)GoldandsilverCopper Zinc

Iron
(pig
iron)

PyriteGraphite Coal

BariteFluorite Tungsten Quartz Alunite

1910

10.3

0.4

―

140.4
(―)

―

0.8

78.5

―

―

―

―

―

1915

8.8

0.0

8.1

259.2
(―)

―

0.5

229.1

―

―

―

―

―

1920

21.5

―

3.4

447.2
(85.2)

―

11.2

289.0

―

―

―

28.8

―

1925

17.0

1.0

3.5

351.4
(101.9)

―

14.1

622.3

―

―

―

75.9

―

1930

13.4

5.6

3.8

532.5
(151.4)

―

20.1

884.1

6.1

2.3

0.0

47.3

11.7

1935

58.1

1.6

2.2

228.2
(147.8)55.6

45.1 1,991.2

11.0

9.7

0.9

38.7

81.5

Source: Chosen sotokufu tokei nenpo: Showa 6 nen [Statistical yearbook of the Government-General of Korea: 1931],
182–185; Chosen sotokufu tokei nenpo: Showa 10 nen [Statistical yearbook of the Government-General of Korea: 1935],
149–151.

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Mitsuhiko Kimura

Table 3 Number of Plants by Size and Nationality
No. of
Employees

1912
Japanese-owned Korean-owned

1932Japanese-owned Korean-owned

1939Japanese-owned Korean-owned(Factory
Workers)
5-49

159

87

1,887

2,445

2,040

3,731

50-99

(77.9)
27(92.6)
3(92.5)
82(97.7)
40(80.1)
231(95.2)
135

100-199(13.2)
11

(3.2)
2

(4.0)
33

(1.6)
12

(9.1)
150

(3.4)
38

200-

(5.4)
7

(2.1)
2

(1.6)
39

(0.5)
5

(5.9)
125

(1.0)
15

Total

(3.4)
204

(2.1)
94

(1.6)
2,041

(0.2)
2,502

(4.9)
2,546

(0.4)
3,919

(100)
(100)
(100)
(100)
(100)
(100)
Note: Figures for 1912 indicate plants that employed 10 or more people or that utilized motors. Figures for 1932 and1939 indicate plants with facilities that employed five or more factory workers or plants that employed five or morefactory workers at all times. Figures in parentheses indicate the proportion (as a percentage) of the total number ofplants accounted for by plants of the indicated size.
Source: Umemura and Mizoguchi, eds., Kyu Nihon shokuminchi keizai tokei [Economic statistics of former Japanesecolonies], 52.

3.

Participation of Koreans in the Remarkable Development

Transition to Non-agricultural Economy
Under Japanese rule, the Korean economy under went momentous change, so much so that,from a global perspective, it constituted an exceptional case in the first half of the 20th century. In
short, it represented a rapid transition from a primarily agricultural economy to a primarily nonagricultural one.
During this transition, the agricultural sector itself underwent change. The policies of theGovernment-General and the development of the money economy led to improved farming
techniques and changes in crop selection. Overall agricultural production increased steadily.
Industrialization in Korea began with small and medium-sized plants that simply processed
raw materials. Then, as early as the 1910s, modern industries arose, particularly ironmaking
plants. From the 1920s until 1930s, a private-sector enterprise built a large-scale chemicalindustrial complex founded on development of power plants.
The Government-General pushed construction of infrastructure such as transportation andcommunication networks and simultaneously supported industrial development in several sectors
from the earliest days after annexation. The scope of those activities was expanded in the late
1920s and thereafter.
From the perspective of comparative economic histor y, such industrialization as seen in
Korea never occurred in Western colonies. This contrast between Japanese rule over Korea
and Western colonization is particularly evident with regard to the construction of hydroelectric
power plants on a scale beyond those in the home country, as well as the giant industrial complex
based on them.
What must be emphasized here is that the colonized people themselves contributed widely
to industrialization in Korea. It is true that the Government-General and Japanese nationals(both companies and individuals) led the way and official policy coupled with Japanese financing,technology, and know-how played central roles. But at the same time, Koreans positively
responded to external stimulus and took the initiative in following Japanese models and learning
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Colonial Development of Modern Industry in Korea, 1910-1939/40

skills in business and industrial technologies, thereby demonstrating entrepreneurship of theirown. The remarkable development achieved was thus the result of the combined efforts of thecolonizer and the colonized.
From this point of view, the shortcomings of the so-called “colonial dependence theor y”
become apparent. On the basis of Marxian economics, the dependence theory has had a strong
impact on researchers and other intellectuals interested in colonial history. It focuses attention
on the relationships of dominance/subordination and exploiter/exploited that play out between
a colonizing countr y and its colony. Such a view reduces the colonized to a group of totally
powerless people, ignoring the positive contributions they make to economic growth.
Today, Mar xism is in decline, but the emotionally charged issues of inflicting/suffering
harm and atonement have gained currency, and the deeply rooted dependence theory has been
maintained. This perspective, however, cannot ultimately explain the changes in the Korean
economy from the 1910s through the 1930s.

The Small Presence of Chinese
Finally, what merits consideration is that Chinese nationals (ethnic Chinese born in Qing Chinaor the Republic of China) made up less than 0.5% of the total population in colonial Korea. Thisdistinguishes Korea from the colonies in Southeast Asia, which all had a relatively large presenceof Chinese.
In Southeast Asia, the western colonizers lived in limited districts, especially urban locations,and tended to work either in administration and international trade or on plantations. In thesecountries, Chinese tended to work as laborers in agriculture or civil engineering projects, orin enterprises operating in such fields as commerce and transportation or small to medium
enterprises in food-processing fields like rice polishing, or in marginal administrative positions.
In these capacities the Chinese supplemented the economic activity and reign of the Westerncolonizers. Thus, new economic opportunities were monopolized by the hard-working andadaptive Chinese, and, as a result, the colonized population was unable to free itself from work
centered on traditional agriculture.
This phenomenon did not occur in Korea, where the economic activity of Chinese nationals
was limited to such small areas as vegetable farming and China-related trade. Had there beena larger Chinese population in Korea, it would probably have been much more difficult for
Koreans to participate in new business ventures. Indeed, they may well have been placed below
the Chinese in the economic pecking order. The lack of Chinese influence, then, should not bedismissed, as the past literature did, in the issue of industrialization of Korea under Japanese rule.

References
Chosen Nokai. 1944. Chosen nogyo hattatsu shi: hattatsu hen. [The history of the development of
Korean agriculture: Development]. Seoul: Chosen Nokai.
Chosen Nokai. 1944. Chosen nogyo hattatsu shi: seisaku hen. [The history of the development of
Korean agriculture: Policies]. Seoul: Chosen Nokai.
Eckert, Carter J. 2004. Nihon teikoku no moshigo: Kochan no Kimu ichizoku to Kankoku shihonshugi
no shokuminchi kigen 1876-1945. Translated by Masayo Kotani. Tokyo: Soshisha. Originallypublished as 1991. Of fspring of Empire: The Koch’ang Kims and the colonial origins of Korean
capitalism, 1876-1945. Seattle and London: University of Washington Press.
Government-General of Korea. 1911-1944. Chosen sotokufu tokei nempo, meiji 43 nen - showa 17
nen. [Statistical yearbook of the Government-General of Korea, 1910-1942]. Seoul: Government42
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General of Korea.
__________. 1944. Nogyo tokei hyo: showa15 nen. [Table of agricultural statistics: 1940]. Seoul:
Government-General of Korea.
Hirai, Koichi. 1997. Nihon shokuminchi zaiseishi kenkyu. [Study of public finance in the Japanesecolonies ]. Kyoto: Minerva Shobo.
Iinuma, Jiro. 1982. Nitteika Chosen ni okeru nogyo kakumei. [The agricultural revolution in
Korea under Japanese imperialism]. In Shokuminchi-ki Chosen no shakai to teiko. [Society andresistance in colonial Korea]. Edited by Jiro Iinuma and Kang Jae-eun. Tokyo: Miraisha.
Kang, Jae-eun, ed. 1985. Chosen ni okeru Nitchitsu Kontserun. [The Nitchitsu industrial complex
in Korea]. Tokyo: Fuji Shuppan.
Kawai, Kazuo. 1986. Chosen ni okeru sanmai zoshoku keikaku. [Rice production development
program in Korea]. Tokyo: Miraisha.
Kim, Nak-nyon, ed. 2008. Shokuminchi-ki Chosen no kokumin keizai keisan 1910-1945. [Economic
growth in Korea 1910-1945]. Translated by Moon Ho-il and Kim Seung-mi. Tokyo: University ofTokyo Press.
Kimura, Mitsuhiko. 1983. “Shokuminchi-ka Chosen no mensaku ni tsuite.” [On the production ofcotton in colonial Korea]. Azia kenkyu 30, no.1.
__________. 2016. Kitachosen keizaishi: 1910-1960. [Economic histor y of North Korea: 19101960]. Tokyo: Chisen Shokan.
Kimura, Mitsuhiko and Keiji Abe. 2003. Kitachosen no gunji kogyoka: Teikoku no senso kara Kin
Nissei no senso e. [Military industrialization in North Korea: From the Empireʼs war to Kim Il
Sungʼs war]. Tokyo: Chisen Shokan.
Myint, Hla. 1981. Kaihatsu tojokoku no keizaigaku. Translated by Shuzo Kimura and Toshio
Watanabe. Tokyo: Toyo Keizai Shimposha. Originally published as 1965. The Economics of theDeveloping Countries. New York: Praeger.
Norinsho Nettai Nogyo Kenkyu Senta, ed. 1976. Kyu Chosen ni okeru Nihon no nogyo shiken
kenkyu no seika. [The results of Japanese agricultural research tests in Korea]. Tokyo: Norin
Tokei Kyokai.
Ohkawa, Kazushi, Nobukiyo Takamatsu, and Yuzo Yamamoto. 1987. Choki keizai tokei 1, kokumin
shotoku [Long-term economic statistics 1, national income]. Tokyo: Toyo Keizai Shimposha.
Tohata, Seiichi, and Kazushi Ohkawa. 1935. Chosen beikoku keizai ron. [Rice economy in Korea].
Tokyo: Nihon Gakujitsu Shinko Kai.
Umemura, Mataji, and Toshiyuki Mizoguchi, eds. 1988. Kyu Nihon shokuminchi keizai tokei,
suikei to bunseki. [Economic statistics of the former Japanese colonies: estimates and analysis].
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Watanabe, Toshio. 1978. Kaihatsu keizaigaku kenkyu. [Development economics]. Tokyo: Toyo
Keizai Shimposha.
Wickizer, V. D. and M.K. Bennett. 1958. Monsuun Ajia no beikoku keizai. Translated by Torao
Tamai and Yoshio Hirota. Tokyo: Nihon Hyoron Shinsha. Originally published as 1941 The Rice
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Yoshida, Keiichi. 1954. Chosen suisan kaihatsu shi. [The history of the development of the Koreanmarine products industry]. Shimonoseki: Chosuikai.

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Frederick R. Dickinson

Japan and the Modern World:
Lessons from Meiji
Frederick R. Dickinson*
Abstract
From the “Japan bashing” era of the 1980s, we have entered another era of “Japan passing,”
this time even more serious than during the Clinton administration. Selling Japan was easy
when the Japanese economy was the envy of the world. In 2018, however, academics andpundits need an extra incentive to talk about Japan. How might we restore international
attention to Japan? We might do so by looking at Japan through a global prism. The historyof Meiji and modern Japan have limited relevance for those outside Japan unless wechange the fundamental focus of our examination. Investigations should aspire not simply
to explain the when, where, what, and how of modern Japan. Rather, a history of Meiji andmodern Japan should, most fundamentally, be fashioned as a history of the modern world.
A global history of modern Japan recognizes the power of Edo era Japan; talks about Meiji
as critical to the rise of modern economics, politics and empire; and understands Japanʼsvital contribution to an internationalist and integrated twentieth- and twenty-first century.
A global history of modern Japan is, in essence, a history of the modern world throughthe prism of Japan, and it indicates that continued Japanese leadership in the twenty-first
century may help sustain a world political and economic order that lacks full American
support.

I

have been thinking and teaching about Japanese histor y for thirty-five years. When I
began my academic career, Japan was a ver y different place. In 1980, while I was an
exchange student at Sophia University in Tokyo, the Japanese economy boomed, andJapan was the envy of the world. Like everyone else, I eagerly purchased the latest in audio
gadgets, a Sony Walkman, and marveled at the fax machines that had begun to revolutionize
communications among Japanese firms. A year earlier, American sociologist Ezra Vogel had
published a sensational book titled, Japan as Number One. Vogel hailed not only Japanese
economic and technological superiority, but real organizational strength, as well.1
Although intended originally for an American audience, Japan as Number One sold many
more copies in Japan. While good for the world economy, after all, Japanese economic mightraised significant anxiety in the U.S. Proud of their country as the industrial engine of the world
since World War I, many Americans saw in Japanʼs new economic power visions of a darker
national future. At the same time that Japan became the envy of the world, in other words, shebecame the source of growing fear. By 1985, the U.S. trade deficit with Japan had ballooned to $50
billion. In 1987, a group of Republican Congressmen judged it politically advantageous to smash a
Toshiba boombox to pieces with sledgehammers on Capitol Hill.
Clearly, Japan in the 1980s and 90s did not receive the kind of publicity that Japanesestatesmen and citizens desired. But it did, at least, make the headlines. This is the great*
1

Frederick R. Dickinson is Professor of Japanese Histor y, Co-Director of the Lauder Institute ofManagement and International Studies, and Deputy Director of the Penn Forum on Japan (PFJ) at the
University of Pennsylvania.
Ezra Vogel, Japan as Number One: Lessons for America (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press,
1979).

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Japan and the Modern World: Lessons from Meiji

difference between teaching Americans about Japan in the 1990s and doing so today. Despite
its continuing centrality to world politics, economy, and culture, Japan today is largely invisible
outside the Asia-Pacific region. That is not entirely the fault of Japanese statesmen and citizens.
Geopolitical shifts have drawn the attention of policy-makers, pundits, and students elsewhere.
From a time of “Japan bashing” in the 1980s, we have entered an era of “Japan passing” moresustained than during the Clinton administration in the 1990s.
A perfect recent example was the Trump administrationʼs January 2017 decision to withdraw
from the Trans-Pacific Partnership. The announcement was, of course, a reflection of a distinctly
impetuous negotiating style by the American president. But it also reflected significant changes in
American foreign policy posture under the Obama administration. Despite the powerful show of
support for Japan and Asia in Obamaʼs declaration of an “Asia pivot” in November 2011, Japanesepolicy-makers spent much of the Obama years lobbying Washington to actually live up to the
grand promises of the “pivot.”

Toward a Global Histor y of Modern Japan
Selling Japan was easy when the Japanese economy was the envy of the world. In 2018, however,academics and pundits need extra justification to talk about Japan. What can be done? Let us
begin with the Meiji era. There are two common narratives of Meiji Japan. One was popular in theimmediate postwar era. The other was a product of Japanʼs subsequent high economic growth.
The devastation of World War II moved many in Japan to ask pointed questions about thecauses of the calamity. The most influential narrative for at least three decades was the scathingcritique of the Japanese state promoted by the Historical Science Society of Japan (Rekishigaku
kenkyūkai). According to the Rekishigaku kenkyūkai, the war stemmed from the pathology of the
Meiji state. The product of an “incomplete” revolution in 1868, the state suffered from “feudal
remnants,” particularly, a triumvirate of power between the emperor, military, and bureaucracy(described as an “emperor system,” or tennōsei), which made for an oppressive, authoritarianpolity bent upon foreign conquest.2
The economic boom of the 1960s helped generate a more positive vision of nineteenth-century
Japan. In the hands of a group of conservative American scholars inspired by a new focus on“modernization” among American political scientists, the Meiji era became associated primarily
with the rise of a modern Japan.3 In a series of six edited volumes published in the 1960s, thisso-called “modernization school” gradually replaced the dark vision of Japanese militarism andimperialism with a tale of surprisingly modern Japanese political and economic development.4
As Japan became the first Asian country to host an Olympic Games in 1964, this more positive
vision of Meiji and modern Japan certainly made sense. After the 1990ʼs economic crash, however,the vision of Meiji “modernization” is no longer any more useful in luring non-Japanese audiences
than the earlier tale of a militarist/imperialist Japan.
How may we look at Meiji, therefore, in a way that makes sense for the twenty-first century?
What kind of history of Meiji is serviceable for our present circumstances and for the future? The
2

Rekishigaku kenkyūkai, ed., Kindai Nihon no Keisei (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1953).

3

For a convenient introduction to and critique of this modernization school of American Japan specialists,
see John W. Dower, “E. H. Norman, Japan, and the Uses of History,” in John W. Dower, ed., Origins of
the Modern Japanese State: Selected Writings of E. H. Norman (New York: Pantheon, 1975), pp. 3–108.

4

Included in this “modernization series” were Marius B. Jansen, ed., Changing Japanese Attitudes Toward
Modernization (1965), William W. Lockwood, ed., The State and Economic Enterprise in Japan (1965), R. P.
Dore, ed., Aspects of Social Change in Modern Japan (1967), Robert E. Ward, ed., Political Development
in Modern Japan (1968), Donald H. Shively, ed., Tradition and Modernization in Japanese Culture (1971),
James William Morley, ed., The Dilemmas of Growth in Prewar Japan (1972), all published by Princeton
University Press.

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Frederick R. Dickinson

obvious answer is embodied in a term that has recently become very popular: global. Why not
produce a global history of modern Japan?
The term “global” can mean many things. It might be most useful, however, as an indicationof the principle focus of historical analysis. The history of Meiji and modern Japan have limited
relevance for those outside Japan unless we change the fundamental focus of our examination.
Investigations should aspire not simply to explain the when, where, what, and how of modern
Japan. Rather, a history of Meiji and modern Japan should, most fundamentally, be fashioned asa history of the modern world. A global history of modern Japan is, in essence, a history of themodern world through the prism of Japan.

A Global Histor y of Tokugawa
To get a sense of a global histor y of Meiji first requires analysis of its antecedent. A criticalfoundation for the narrative of a dynamic, modernizing Meiji has long been the contrasting visionof a dark, “closed” Tokugawa. The idea of a “closed” Tokugawa has, of course, been around much
longer than Japanʼs high growth era. It derives, in fact, from German naturalist and physician,Englebert Kaempfer, who spent two years in Japan as chief surgeon with the Dutch East India
Company between 1690 and 1692. Kaempfer published an account of his travels when Japan had
begun to scale back trade, a development that spelled disaster for the Dutch East India Company.
According to Kaempfer, this “closing” of Japan was counter to the will of God.5 The Japanesetranslation of Kaempferʼs idea̶the term “sakoku”̶came to circulate among shogunal counsels
in the early nineteenth century as the bakufu debated whether to allow greater trade with theoutside world.6
The idea of a “closed” Japan, in other words, had political utility for the Dutch in the earlyeighteenth century, the Japanese in the early nineteenth century, and for American modernization
scholars in the mid-twentieth century. However, most historians today reject the idea of “sakoku”
as a gross misrepresentation of reality. Tokugawa Japan systematically managed foreign trade andits borders. But it continued a vibrant trade with China, Korea, the Ainu, Southeast Asia and theWest throughout the era. The trade was mediated by a substantial Chinese merchant community
in Nagasaki, the Dutch factory in Deshima (Nagasaki), the Shimazu family of Satsuma, the Sōfamily of Tsushima, and the Matsumae domain in Hokkaido.
If we abandon our singular focus on the tale of a “modern Japan” in the nineteenth century,
we may not only avoid the ahistorical claim of “closure” in the early modern period. We may
also discover ways that Tokugawa Japan actually helped define the contours of the early modern
world. Historians typically associate the early modern era with the rise of a Western world. Thereis, of course, no denying the impressive new power of the West from the fifteenth century. But theability of the Tokugawa polity to define the terms of trade with the West until 1854 raises serious
questions about the usual tale of a “rise of the West.”
Western historians have fashioned a formidable legend of Western power by forefronting
stories of Western success and concealing evidence of dependence and failure. Thus, earlymodern history is dominated by tales of the Age of Exploration in the Americas. Modern history,
in turn, focuses on European industrialization and colonization in Africa and South Asia.
A critical component of the Age of Exploration is, of course, the over whelming allure ofriches in East and Southeast Asia. The preeminent hero of the Age of Exploration, Chritsopher
Columbus, was inspired by the great tale of riches in China found in the classic travelogue by
5

Englebert Kaempfer, Amoenitatum exoticarum politico-physico-medicarum (Henrici Wilhelmi Meyeri,
1712).

6

Beatrice M. Bodart-Bailey, ed. & trans., Kaempfer’s Japan: Tokugawa Culture Observed (Honolulu, HI:
University of Hawaii Press, 1999), p. 19.

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Japan and the Modern World: Lessons from Meiji

Marco Polo.7 And we know that the Jesuit missionaries who arrived in fifteenth-century Japan
found the Japanese to be “the best heathen who have yet been discovered.”8 From the perspectiveof East Asia, in other words, the Age of Exploration is less a story about the “rise of the West,”
more a tale of the great allure of Asia.
More importantly, the experience of Western states in East Asia pales by comparison with theiractivities in the early modern Americas and in modern Africa and South Asia. While sixteenthcentury Spanish conquistadors gobbled up Central and South America, Britain colonized India in
the nineteenth century and European states carved up Africa after the 1884 Berlin Conference, noWestern state ever succeeded in colonizing China, Japan, or Korea. Western scholars have longdescribed Chinese, Japanese, and Korean resistance to Western approaches as East Asian failure
to adopt the norms of modern political and economic intercourse. From the perspective of East
Asia, however, this resistance represents enduring East Asian strength and a distinct limit on theability of Western states to control events in the Age of Imperialism. Like early modern China andKorea, Tokugawa Japan continued to control its own terms of trade and diplomacy through theearly nineteenth century. In global terms, Edo Japan represents not Japanese failure in the faceof overwhelming European strength but formidable Japanese strength in the context of enduring
European weakness.

A Global Histor y of Meiji
If Edo Japan was an era of formidable Japanese strength, we can assume that there is someremnant of that strength in Meiji, as well. Meiji, of course, typically begins with a dramatic sceneof Japanese capitulation. Commodore Matthew Perry arrives in Uraga Bay in 1853 with the latest
in naval technology̶steam power̶and compels Japan at gunpoint to begin a new relationshipwith the United States. It is the beginning, moreover, of an “unequal treaty” system in Japan,
which deprives Japan until the early twentieth century of its sovereign right to set its own tariffs
and to try foreign nationals in its own courts.
Despite the indignity, however, recent scholarship emphasizes the degree to which bakufu
officials were able to significantly shape their new relationship with the intruding Westernstates. While the U.S. sought to open Shinagawa to American trade and residence, Japanesenegotiators skillfully changed this to Yokohama, farther from Edo and off the main Tokugawa
era thoroughfare, the Tōkaidō. Although the 1858 commercial treaty between the U.S. and Japan
originally called for eight ports to be opened by 1863, the bakufu pared this to six, and Edo,
Osaka, and Hyōgo remained closed through the fall of the dynasty in 1868.9
Western historians like to accentuate the idea of Japanese “ capitulation” by describing
Japanese development in the latter nineteenth centur y as “ Westernization. ” By contrast,
understanding the formidable power of Edo Japan and recognizing the significant ways in whichbakumatsu and Meiji leaders fashioned their own fate enables us to see the much broader global
significance of nineteenth-century Japan. The most interesting history of Meiji is not the tale of“Westernization” but of how much Meiji, in fact, contributed to the contours of the nineteenthcentury world.
Western historians commonly describe nineteenth-centur y Japan as a “late-developing”
state. But Japan was the first Asian state to industrialize. More importantly, like France, the U.S.,7

For the latest analysis of Marco Poloʼs travels and influence, see Hans Ulrich Vogel, Marco Polo Was in
China: New Evidence from Currencies, Salts and Revenues (Leiden: Brill, 2012).

8

To quote founder of the Jesuit order, Francis Xavier, who arrived in Kagoshima in 1843. Quoted in John
K. Fairbank, Edwin O. Reischauer & Albert M. Craig, East Asia: Tradition and Transformation (Boston:
Houghton Mifflin, 1973), p. 31.

9Michael Auslin. Negotiating with Imperialism: The Unequal Treaties and The Culture of Japanese
Diplomacy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004), p. 86.

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Frederick R. Dickinson

Germany and other Western states that followed eighteenth-century British precedent, Japanesedevelopment was central to and helped define the story of nineteenth-century industrialization.
Japan introduced the infrastructure of a modern state at roughly the same time that new
conventions swept Western Europe and the United States. Even before the advent of Meiji, Japanboasted four modern shipyards. Telegraph service opened between Tokyo and Yokohama in 1870,
just twenty years after a telecommunications boom in the U.S. and Europe. Just as the creationof a US postal service followed upon the heals of the American revolution, the new Meiji leadersmobilized three years after the Meiji Restoration to establish a government-operated national
postal network. Japanʼs first rail link tied Tokyo and Yokohama in 1872, just three years after thecompletion of Americaʼs transcontinental railroad. Authorities adopted the Gregorian calendar on
New Yearʼs Day, 1873, several years after most of Catholic Europe and the United States, but wellbefore eastern Europe, Russia, and the Middle East. Japanʼs first public electric utility, the Tokyo
Electric Light Company, began operations in 1887, just five years after New Yorkʼs Edison ElectricCompany launched the worldʼs first public power station. Electric streetcars and hydroelectric
power arrived in Japan in 1895 and 1897, eight and nine years, respectively, after the same in the
U.S.10 Tokyo legislated compulsory education in 1872, eight years before the same in Britain.
Most importantly, Japan played a key role in defining the modern state. Appearing over a
century after the worldʼs first modern constitutions, the Meiji Constitution, nonetheless, joined
a vibrant ongoing global discussion over economic, legal, and political development. Distressedover the increasingly destructive human and environmental consequences of industrialization,
theorists such as English philosopher T. H. Green began calling in the mid-nineteenth century
for tighter state regulation.11 In constitutional theory, Rudolf von Gneist and Lorenz von Stein,with whom Itō Hirobumi had consulted during a tour in Germany in 1883, both stressed theimportance of a state structure designed to moderate the excesses of class conflict.
The Meiji Constitution thus symbolized a growing international departure from the classic
liberal faith in individualism, and laissez-faire and distrust of state power. As Itō declared in
Februar y 1889, “in the medieval period Montesquieu advanced the theor y of the separationof powers. ” But, “ according to a theor y based on careful study and on actual experienceand advanced by recent scholars, sovereignty is one and indivisible.”12 Drafters of the Meiji
Constitution viewed their project as the latest, most advanced experiment in constitutional
government, designed to moderate the excesses of classic liberalism. Western observers, in fact,
hailed the Meiji Constitution as a novel combination of internationally accepted constitutional
principles and indigenous cultural preferences. The London Times celebrated it for its “broadand catholic eclecticism, tempered by a purely native respect for the inalienable rights of the
EMPEROR.” That the emperor required ministerial consent, declared American Secretary ofState James G. Blaine, marked an improvement over the Constitutions of Europe and the UnitedStates.13
Diplomatically speaking, the “unequal treaties” marked a capitulation for Japan. But this“capitulation” was not only a great victory for the U.S. It marked a critical foundation for therise of American power. American historians tend to highlight this rise as a natural process of
10

Susan Hanley, Everyday Things in Premodern Japan: The Hidden Legacy of Material Culture (Berkeley,
CA: University of California Press, 1999), p. 191.

11

Germaine A. Hoston, Marxism and the Crisis of Development in Prewar Japan (Princeton, N.J. :Princeton University Press, 1986), p. 289.

12

Quotation in Ryūsaku Tsunoda, Sources of Japanese Tradition, 2 vols. (New York, NY: Columbia
University Press, 1964), vol. 2, p. 160.

13

Hidemasa Kokaze, “The Political Space of Meiji 22 (1889): The Promulgation of the Constitution and the
Birth of the Nation,” Japan Review, no. 23 (2011), p. 127.

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Japan and the Modern World: Lessons from Meiji

marshaling the impressive resources of the vast American continent (“manifest destiny”). But
without the distinction of vanquishing the well-established premodern Tokugawa state, American
power could have easily gone nowhere.
Japanʼs military defeat of Qing China in 1895 and Russia in 1905 had an even more decisive
effect on global history. The Sino-Japanese war turned the attention of the world toward Asia.
According to the grandson of American president John Qincy Adams, “Eastern Asia is the prize
for which all the energetic nations are grasping.”14 Intently searching for opportunities in the
Asia/Pacific after 1895, Washington leapt at the opportunity in 1898 to vanquish the Spanish
Empire and assume control of the Philippines. The power of the Meiji state, in other words, waspartially responsible for Americaʼs transformation into a Pacific empire.
Japanʼs defeat of Imperial Russia in 1905 marked an even greater global watershed. The
first instance in the modern era of the defeat of a Western empire by an Asian state, the RussoJapanese War forecast the rise of an Asia/Pacific Century. Asian revolutionaries such as Sun YatSen, Phan Bô.i Châu and Ho Chi Minh widely hailed the defeat of Russia as the dawn of a new age.
The most powerful significance of Meiji, in other words, is that it represents many larger
nineteenth-century global trends. Most importantly, Meiji Japan plays a critical role in actuallyfashioning global economic and political trends in the nineteenth-century. Meiji demonstrates thatboth nineteenth-century industrialization and nineteenth-century state-building were global, notjust Western enerprises. The American empire would not have emerged so dramatically in thelatter nineteenth century without the Meiji state. And Japanʼs defeat of Russia in 1905 forecast the
Asia/Pacific world in which we currently live.

A Global Histor y of Taishō
If our image of Meiji is strongly swayed by our understanding of Edo, discussions of Taishō
likewise have an enormous effect on our vision of Meiji. The Meiji-Taishō contrast is mostgraphically demonstrated by a comparison of the Meiji and Taishō emperors. As highlighted
by Donald Keeneʼs magisterial 900-page biography, the Meiji emperor remains enveloped inluminosity.15 By contrast, most scholars would echo Marius Jansenʼs complaint that the Taishōemperor “was unimportant in life and his death was irrelevant.”16 Of course, the more we decry
the Taishō emperor and his era, the more important the Meiji period becomes.
One could argue that a reevaluation of Taishō is even more critical than rethinking Edo intransforming our understanding of the importance of Meiji. After all, we see a full flowering inTaishō of what we only get a brief hint of in Meiji̶Japanese globalization. Taishō is global in atleast three important senses. First, Japan transforms from an agricultural to largely industrial
power during the Taishō era, particularly during the First World War. Second, the First World
War creates an incredible new U.S.-Japan economic interdependence. Between 1914 and 1939, theU.S. becomes the greatest source of machinery and consumer goods in Japan.17 By 1924, Japan,
in turn, becomes Americaʼs third largest trading partner, behind only Britain and Canada.18 Afterthe First World War, trans-Pacific trade becomes critical not only for the Pacific. It is essential for
14

Rupert Eric Davies, Richard J. Jensen, Jon Thares Davidan, eds., Trans-Pacific Relations: America,
Europe, and Asia in the Twentieth Century (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003), p. 3.

15

Donald Keene, Emperor of Japan: Meiji and His World, 1852-1912 (New York: Columbia University
Press, 2002).

16

Marius B. Jansen, The Making of Modern Japan (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2000), p. 495.

17

W. G. Beasley, Japanese Imperialism 1894–1945 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), pp. 127, 211, Tables 3,9, respectively.

18

Tsuneo Matsudaira, “Some Principles of Japanese Foreign Policy,” Advocate of Peace through Justice, vol.
87, no. 7 (July 1925), p. 408.

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Frederick R. Dickinson

the world economy, setting the stage for a global world after 1945.
Taishō is global in a third sense in the establishment of the foundations of twentieth-century
internationalism. The best glimpse of this is Japanʼs participation at the Paris Peace Conference.
Despite their relative detachment from most discussions over European security, two Japaneseplenipotentiaries participated in the leadership council of the conference, the Council of Ten, as
representatives of one of the five victor powers. Historians frequently highlight US-Japan tensions
at Paris over Japanʼs proposal of a “racial equality” clause in the covenant of the new League of
Nations and over Japanese presence in the Chinese province of Shandong.19 But Japan at Parisobtained its two most cherished demands: great power recognition of its new presence in China(Shandong) and in the South Pacific (the Marshall, Caroline and Mariana Islands).
More significant, however, was Japanʼs dramatic transformation from an initial victim of great
power imperialism in the latter nineteenth century to one of the worldʼs five great powers in
1919. This spectacular metamorphosis was possible only through Japanʼs remarkable geopoliticaladvance from the Sino-Japanese through the Russo-Japanese War and, most importantly, its
critical contribution to the allies between 1914 and 1918. Tokyo declared war in August 1914,
several weeks after initial declarations by the principal belligerents (Austria-Hungary, Germany,
Britain, Montenegro, Serbia, France, Russia) but many months prior to such important players
as the Ottoman Empire, Italy, and the United States. Between 1914 and 1918, Japan eliminatedGerman power in China and the Pacific; helped patrol Pacific sea lanes; helped escort British
imperial troops from Australia and New Zealand to the Indian Ocean; sent destroyers to help hunt
German U-boats in the Mediterranean; and supplied the allies with sorely needed arms, shipping,and loans.20
Japanʼs intimate involvement in the First World War and the Paris Peace Conference became
the foundation for an indispensable Japanese role in the international construction of a postwar
culture of peace after 1918. Japan was intimately involved in evey major postwar peace initiative̶the Peace Conference; League of Nations and its many affiliated organizations such as theInternational Labor Organization and the International Court of Justice; the Washington Naval
Conference; the Kellogg-Briand Pact, and the London Naval Conference.21 By contrast, the U.S.
failed to ratify the Versailles Treaty and refused membership in the League of Nations. And
France and Italy refused to abide by the terms of the London Naval Treaty.
In the 1930s, Japan would, of course, deal a serious blow to this interwar peace infrastructurethat it had so painstakenly helped to construct. But without Japan ʼ s pivotal contributions
throughout the 1920s, liberal internationalism would have imploded long before the 1931
Manchurian Incident. It most certainly would have had much greater difficulty re-emerging after
1945. Even after the Manchurian Incident, renowned Asianist Owen Lattimore recognized thepivotal role Japan had played in constructing a twentieth-century world. Japan, he wrote in 1932,is the “chief protagonist of Western civilization” in Northeast Asia.22 Japanese participation at theParis Peace Conference and in the construction of an interwar infrastructure for peace would
become a pivotal foundation for the multi-lateral and global age in which we live today.
19

See Naoko Shimazu, Japan, Race and Equality: The Racial Equality Proposal of 1919 (London:
Routledge, 1998) and Russell H. Fifield, Woodrow Wilson and the Far East: The Diplomacy of the
Shantung Question, Hamden: Archon Books, 1965), respectively.

20

For details, see Frederick R. Dickinson, “More than a ʻMomentʼ: Woodrow Wilson and the Foundationsof Twentieth Centur y Japan,” Japanese Journal of Political Science, no. 19 (Dec. 2018), pp.688-700
doi:10.1017/S146810991800035X

21

For details, see Frederick R. Dickinson, World War I and the Triumph of a New Japan (Cambridge:
University of Cambridge Press, 2013).

22

Owen Lattimore, Manchuria, Cradle of Conflict (1932).

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Japan and the Modern World: Lessons from Meiji

Conclusion
How, in the twenty-first century, might we restore international attention to Japan? We might
do so by championing a global history. A global history of modern Japan recognizes the powerof Edo; talks about Meiji as vital to the global project for economic, political, and imperial
development; and understands Japanʼs critical contribution in the Taishō era to an internationalist,
integrated, globalist twentieth- and twenty-first century. It also raises the very interesting prospectthat if Donald Trump had known this history, he might not have abandoned the Trans-PacificPartnership (TPP). Rather, he would have understood Japan as an important economic andpolitical partner for the future of Japan, the U.S., and the world.
Luckily for President Trump, the Japanese have extensive experience during the Taishō
era stepping into the leadership vacuum left by others. Japanese participation in the new liberalinternationalist order after World War I helped assuage the complications of a lack of fullAmerican participation in that order. Likewise, Japanese leadership in the twenty-first century
may very well help rescue a world political and economic order that lacks full American support.

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Tsutomu Nishioka

The Reality of the Mobilization of Koreans During World War II– An analysis based on statistics and written records
Tsutomu Nishioka*
Abstract
In 1965, Japan and South Korea normalized their diplomatic relations and Japan paid South
Korea 300 million dollars with no strings attached in accordance with the Agreement
Concerning the Settlement of Problems in Regard to Property and Claims and Economic
Cooperation. With this payment, both countries confirmed that all post-war claims, includingfor Koreans who participated in wartime mobilization, had been settled “completely andfinally.” Some refer to the wartime of mobilization of people based on the laws of the timeas an inhumane form of “slave labor.” This paper sheds light on the reality of the wartime
mobilization of Korean workers by analyzing official statistics and written records, showingthat there are layers of untruth to descriptions of young men forcibly being taken frompeaceful farm villages to work as slaves.

Japan governed Korea for nearly 35 years, from September 1910 to August 1945. In 1965,
20 years after Japanʼs defeat in the Second World War and the end of Japanese rule over
Korea, Japan and South Korea normalized their diplomatic relations by concluding a
number of agreements, including the Treaty on Basic Relations and the Agreement
Concerning the Settlement of Problems in Regard to Proper ty and Claims and Economic
Cooperation. At that time, Japan paid South Korea 300 million dollars with no strings attachedin accordance with the agreement. With this payment, both countries confirmed that all postwar claims, including for Koreans who participated in wartime mobilization, had been settled“completely and finally.”
Fifty-three years have passed since the signing of the treaties. Since the end of Japaneserule in Korea, 73 years have elapsed̶a period that is more than twice the duration of that rule.
Nonetheless, a South Korean court is currently handling a compensation lawsuit filed by “former
conscripted workers,” who worked for Japanese firms in Japan as wartime-mobilized workers
during the colonial period, and their descendants.
Some refer to the wartime of mobilization of people based on the laws of the time as aninhumane form of “slave labor.” Yet this is not the truth. In this paper, I will shed light on thereality of the wartime mobilization of workers, by analyzing official statistics and written records.

The Wartime Mobilization of Koreans As Recounted by Statistics

The expression “wartime mobilization of Koreans” refers to the sending of Korean laborers
from Korea to Japan (and Sakhalin, then called Karafuto, as well as islands in the Southern
Pacific) in accordance with the Plan for Sending Koreans to Japan, which was created in 1939
based on the National Mobilization Law. The mobilization of soldiers and people working for the
military is sometimes added to this definition. The people who were mobilized were sent to workat private-sector companies, where they were paid relatively high wages usually based on the*

Tsutomu Nishioka is Professor and Head of the History Laboratory at the Institute of Moralogy andVisiting Professor at Reitaku University.

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The Reality of the Mobilization of Koreans During World War II – An analysis based on statistics and written records

terms of their time-limited contracts of employment.
At the end of 1938, which was the 29th year since Japanʼs annexation of Korea, the Korean
population in Japan was 800,000 (according to Ministry of Home Affairs statistics; all figures until
1944 are from this source). We should realize that a great number of Koreans were already living
in Japan before the start of wartime mobilization. The population of Koreans in Japan before thestart of mobilization was almost 50 percent greater than the 550,000 who remained in Japan afterWorld War II.
Incidentally, the Korean population in Japan in 1911, the year after the annexation, wasno more than some 2,500, but it rapidly increased to about 30,000 in 1920, ten years after theannexation, and about 300,000 in 1930, another decade on.
Now, what was the Korean population in Japan in August 1945? No accurate statistics exist,
but Yoshio Morita, who was an authority on this issue, estimated that there were about 2 million
Koreans in the following way. (The data is from Ministry of Home Affairs statistics.) “The general
Korean population at the end of 1944 was 1,911,409 (excluding Sakhalin), with many evacuatingto Korea when the air-raids on Japan started in 1945. The statistics until May show that the
number of Koreans going back to Korea outnumbered those going to Japan by more than 10,000.
After that, ferry services were more or less suspended, so the number of Koreans in Japan at theend of the war was about 2 million, taking into consideration the natural increase in population,
and adding soldiers.” (Yoshio Morita, Sūji ga kataru zai-Nichi Kankoku–Chōsenjin no rekishi [TheHistory of Koreans in Japan in Numbers]).
By the end of 1938, a year before the start of the wartime mobilization of Koreans, 800,000
Koreans were living in Japan. This number increased to around 2 million by August 1945. Does
this mean that the difference of 1.2 million Koreans were brought to Japan as part of wartime
mobilization? Nothing could be further from the truth.

Eighty Percent of the Koreans Came to Work in Japan Voluntarily
When the war ended, there were 322,890 Koreans employed at locations designated for mobilized
workers, according to a survey by the Demobilization Bureau. At the end of the war, there were112,718 Korean soldiers and other military personnel in Japan, who were not included in thestatistics for mobilized workers. This gives a total of 435,608 Koreans, which corresponds toabout 22% of the 2 million Koreans in Japan at the end of the war. That figure is equal to about 36%of the 1.2 million increase in the Korean population in Japan that happened during the wartime
mobilization.
At the end of the war, only about 20% of the Koreans in Japan were working at locations formobilized workers. What does this mean?
It means that about 80% of the 2 million Koreans who were in Japan at the end of the war had
emigrated of their own volition. More precisely, 80% of the Korean population in Japan at the endof the war had either emigrated voluntarily or were the children of those who had remained inJapan voluntarily. In other words, the overwhelming majority of Koreans who traveled to Japan
during the wartime mobilization period from 1939 to August 1945 did so outside the framework of
the mobilization plan or chose to live in Japan of their own volition after ending their employment
at private-sector companies that had been designated for mobilized workers.
In order to understand the significance of these figures, and to get at the truth, we must firstunderstand the reality of the Koreans who moved to Japan before wartime mobilization.
Many people moved from the Korean peninsula to Japan during the 35 years of colonial
rule and especially during the years between 1921 and the end of World War II. In September
1923, groundless rumors that spread in the aftermath of the Great Kantō Earthquake led to the
tragic killing of Koreans in quake-stricken areas at the hands of vigilantes. However, the Korean
population in Japan, which had been 60,000 in 1922, continued to rapidly increase to 80,000 in
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Tsutomu Nishioka

1923, when the earthquake occurred, and to 120,000 in 1924, indicating that the flow of people
from Korea did not stop.
Most of the people moving to Japan from Korea were migrant workers and their families.
In fact, this movement of migrant workers did not end during wartime mobilization, but rather
surged. In order to understand this, we must first acknowledge that there were many workers
who migrated from Korea to Japan many years before the start of wartime mobilization.

Explosive Population Growth in Korea under Japanese Rule
What was the reason for this gigantic flow of migrant workers? There were three causes. First,
the number of Korean people grew explosively under Japanese rule. The Korean population was
13 million in 1910 when Japanese rule commenced, and it had grown to more than 29 million by
the end of World War II. There were 25 million Koreans in Korea, 2 million in Japan, 2 million in
Manchuria and North China, and 1 million in the Soviet Union.
Second, life was harsh in the Korean farm villages where most of the population growth
happened.
Third, at the time, Japan had a demand for labor that could accommodate numerous migrant
workers. Labor was needed in the cities, mines, and factories of Japan, so anyone who could pay
the travel expenses could make a living in the country. Due to the short distance, it was possible
to frequently go back and forth between Korea and Japan. The number of people making thejourney every year was more than 100,000 from 1925.

The Endless Stream of Illegal Immigrants
The arrival of a large number of undereducated Korean farmers with insufficient Japanese
language skills caused various forms of friction with Japanese society. Moreover, when Japan
entered a recession, some Japanese workers lost their jobs to Koreans. As will be discussed
more in detail in the next section, there were Koreans who escaped wartime mobilization when
it started and hindered the execution of the mobilization plan by finding employment in Japanese
non-military industries. As such, the Japanese government implemented administrative measures
to severely restrict the movement of people from Korea.
Statistics from the Government-General of Korea show that 163,760 workers and their families
were stopped from traveling to Japan at Busan and other departure points between 1925 and 1937
because they did not have the required certificates or otherwise failed to meet the prescribed
conditions. Furthermore, between 1933 and 1938, as many as 727,094 were stopped in theirhometowns, that is, their areas of residence in Korea. Between 1933 and 1937, for which we havestatistics, 1,087,563 applications to go to Japan were submitted (including re-submissions), of
which roughly 60%, or 651,878, were rejected. The acceptance rate was about 40%, or less thanhalf.
There was also a constant flow of persons who entered illegally without completing the formal
procedures. Measures to send back illegal immigrants to Korea were enforced in Japan. Statistics
from the Ministry of Home Affairs show that as many as 39,482 illegal border crossers were
found in Japan between 1930 and 1942; 33,535 of them were deported.
Of special relevance is that 22,800 illegal immigrants (equal to 58% of all illegal bordercrossers who were discovered between 1930 and 1942) were discovered and 19,250 (equal to 57%
of all those who were deported between 1930 and 1942) were sent home from 1939 to 1942, whichindicates that the number of illegal border crossers actually surged during wartime mobilization.
The Japanese government forcibly sent home about 20,000 Korean illegal border crossers in
the 4-year period for which we have statistics. The mobilization of Koreans for work in Japanwas conducted based on procedures established by law, and illegal immigrants who attempted
to find work outside of the established legal frameworks were deported. This fact was common
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The Reality of the Mobilization of Koreans During World War II – An analysis based on statistics and written records

knowledge back then, but it is all but forgotten today. This is the key to understanding wartime
mobilization.

Illegal Immigrants Were Deported
I have pointed out that measures were implemented against illegal immigrants during the same
period that Korean workers were mobilized to work in Japan, with about 20,000 being sent backto Korea during the period from 1939 to 1942, for which we have statistics.
Looking at records of these illegal border crossings, those wanting to go to Japan paid brokers
to be stowaways on small boats, forged travel certificates, pretended to be Japanese, or crossed
over as sailors or fishermen and then escaped.
Note that there were many illegal immigrants who pretended to be mobilized workers as soon
as wartime mobilization started. Illegal immigrants trying to pass themselves off as mobilized
workers were typically 1) those who struck deals with others who were actually supposed tobe mobilized and were given copies of their family registry, 2) those who answered the call tomobilization by taking the place of somebody absent, and 3) those who sneaked in with groups ofmobilized workers when the persons in charge were not looking. They would then escape as soon
as the group arrived in Japan.

The Early Phase of Mobilization and Recruitment: Four Times as Many MigrantWorkers as Recruited Workers
We have so far looked at the situation before wartime mobilization. Based on that, I would now
like to examine the reality of the wartime mobilization of workers. We can divide this period into
the early “mobilization” phase from 1939 to January 1942 and the later “government-mediatedrecruitment” and “conscription” phases from February 1942 to August 1945. Let us first have an
overview of the early period.
The National Mobilization Law was promulgated in April 1938, ramping up the systematic
mobilization of materials and labor needed for the war effort. In 1939, the following year, a major
labor mobilization under the National Conscription Order began in Japan, but this order did not
apply to Korea. Instead, Korean workers were mobilized through a recruitment process thatstarted in September 1939.
This was a recruitment of workers in areas designated by the Government-General, carriedout by businesses producing coal and operating mines in support of the war effort with theapproval of the Ministry of Health and Welfare as well as the Government-General. The recruited
workers traveled to Japan in groups led by their new employers or their representatives. As they
were traveling in groups, the difficulties of individual travel, including the need for individual
travel certificates and individual inspections at the points of departure, were greatly reduced.
This mobilization through recruitment continued until Januar y 1942. Let us ignore thenumbers for January 1942 and get an overview of the situation during the recruitment phase. I
want to examine the statistics for the years from 1939 to 1941.
The Korean population in Japan increased rapidly during this period. It was 799,878 at theend of 1938, but it had increased by 80% to 1,469,230 by the end of 1941. This was an increase of669,352, or almost 670,000 people. Since the natural increase in the population was 81,105, thenumber of Koreans migrating must have been 588,247 or about 590,000. Of these, the number of
recruited workers were 147,136, or about 150,000, according to Ministry of Health and Welfare
statistics, which is 25% of the total.
This means that about 440,000, or 75% of the migrant increase, consisted of people who
voluntarily traveled to Japan outside the framework of wartime mobilization. In other words, thenumber of migrant workers who went to Japan by themselves was three times larger than thenumber of wartime-mobilized workers. It was possible for individuals to make applications to
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migrate even after the start of the recruitment phase. Note that 15,549 illegal immigrants werediscovered and deported in this same period.
It is understandable that a large number of Koreans went to Japan in search of high-wage jobs
as the labor shortage grew more serious in the wartime economy of Japan. There was a huge
outflow of people from Korea. Of those people, only 1 in 4 came within the regulatory frameworkof wartime mobilization.
There was a shor tage of young men in Japan due to militar y conscription, which was
aggravated by the labor mobilization that started in Japan in 1939. This created a considerable
labor shortage that caused the wages of young male workers to soar.
Neither militar y conscription nor labor conscription initially applied to Korea, so there
remained quite a surplus of young male Korean workers. These young men headed for Japan insearch of high wages, just like water flows from high to low. This is what generated the flow of
600,000 migrant workers over a 3-year period.
The Japanese government tried to direct that flow of workers to the coal and metal minesthat were indispensable for the war effort, but were only able to obtain a little more than 50%of the workers stipulated in the mobilization plan and only 1/4, or 150,000, of the Koreans who
emigrated. The remaining 440,000 constituted a huge outflow of people to Japan that occurred
outside the framework of the mobilization plan. Among these people were those summoned byfamily members who had already established themselves in Japan.
One reason why many Korean workers rejected being recruited is that they did not want towork in the underground shafts of coal and metal mines. The majority were farmers and werelikely averse to working underground in coal and metal mines where discipline was strict.
Moreover, jobs for day laborers could be found throughout Japan at construction sites
managed by Korean foremen.

The Later Phase of Mobilization: 40% Escaping Despite “Government-MediatedRecruitment”
With the start of the later period of mobilization in February 1942, the administrative body of theGovernment-General became directly involved in the process for mobilizing workers, which cameto be conducted through what was known as “government-mediated recruitment.” This was likely
a measure to change the situation whereby numerous workers were going to Japan outside theframework of wartime mobilization.
Coal mines, metal mines, construction companies, arms factories, and other businesses
requested the Government-General to provide the number of workers they needed. In response,
the Government-General assigned mobilization quotas to the provinces (corresponding toJapanese prefectures), which in turn assigned quotas to lower administrative levels such as
districts and townships. Recruitment posters soliciting applications were placed at provincial andtown offices, while government officials, the police, and persons of local influence were actively
involved in mobilization activities.
Legally binding conscription began in Korea in September 1944. By the end of March 1945,
there were almost no ferries traveling between Korea and Japan, effectively putting an end to
the wartime mobilization of Koreans. As such, it can be said that labor conscription and its penal
provisions were in effect for no more than seven months. Yet, this does not change the fact thatthe wartime mobilization was legal as Korea was under Japanese rule at the time.
The Korean population in Japan also grew during this period. There were 1,469,230 Koreansat the end of 1942, but this increased to about 2 million by August 1945. This was an increase ofabout 530,000.
The number of workers mobilized from 1942 to August 1945 was 520,548, or roughly 520,000.
That is about the same size as the 530,000 increase in the Korean population in Japan. Looking at
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the completion rate of the mobilization plan (defined as the percentage of the manpower targets
that were met), it was 88% for this overall period. It was 93% for 1942, 81% for 1943, 97% for 1944,
and 12% until August 1945. The completion rate for 1942-1944 was a comparatively high 95%.
We only have the 1942 figures for the natural increase in population, defined as population
growth not caused by immigration. If we take the natural increase of 1942, which was 33,000,
and use that as our standard for guessing the natural increase for the 2.5-year period from 1943
to August 1945, we get 33,000 x 2.5=82,500. This estimate suggests that the natural population
increase from 1942 to August 1945 was 115,500, or roughly 120,000. Since the total increase in the
Korean population in Japan and the number of people mobilized from 1942 to August 1945 wereabout the same, the natural increase in population of 120,000 should be equal to the difference
between the number of immigrants and the number of people who returned to Korea. The
immigrant workers and their families who had come to Japan outside the formal framework of
the mobilization process and who ended up going back home̶thus counterbalancing the natural
increase in population of 120,000̶probably returned to Korea to flee the war. In this period,
the number of migrants who came as individuals (as opposed to coming as part of a group) fell
drastically, and the number of people going back to Korea came to outnumber them as the war
situation deteriorated.
With almost no Koreans heading to Japan as individuals outside the framework of wartime
mobilization, it would seem that the regulated mobilization of workers of workers was realized
during this 4-year period and the situation was favorable compared to the previous three years
during which people were recruited.
The reality is that the wartime mobilization was not going according to plan in this period
either. Most of those employed through “government-mediated recruitment” escaped during theircontract period, instead becoming “free workers” hired as day laborers at construction sites. On
top of this, the majority of those who fulfilled their 2-year contracts disappointed their employers
by not renewing their contracts, opting to become “free workers” as well.
Statistics from the Ministry of Health and Welfare show that the percentage of mobilized
workers escaping since 1939 had gone as high as 37%, equivalent to 222,225 workers, by the endof March 1945. Besides this, there were 52,108 workers who returned to Korea after fulfilling
their contracts, 15,801 who were sent back for misconduct, and 8,904 others. Incidentally, there
were 288,488 people working at the locations designated for those mobilized during wartime,making for a total of 587,526 people who had been initially subject to the provisions of wartime
mobilization.
One popular explanation for the fact that about 40% of the workers escaped is that the workers
were treated badly and made to work under harsh conditions as if in a labor camp. Yet mostworkers did not return to Korea but started working elsewhere in Japan. As discussed above,
there were even those who pretended to be wartime-mobilized workers in order to travel toJapan and then immediately escaped to some other workplace that had been introduced to them
beforehand by brokers.
As a way to prevent escapes, the workers who were mobilized were organized in teams of
50–200 people with appointed leaders. They then traveled to Japan in groups. These teams werealso maintained after work started at the coal mines and other workplaces, and worker training
was conducted in teams.
Yet one survey showed that an astonishing 60% of the workers had no intention of working at
the coal mines for mobilized workers, but used the government-mediated recruitment process totravel to Japan and were thinking about escaping once in Japan. This survey was conducted by
the Institute for Science of Labour at the Chikuhō coalfield in Fukuoka over a period of two weeks
starting in early January 1942. Let us look at the entry on the workersʼ reasons for quitting theirjobs. Note that the citation contains the words “migrating Koreans were granted travel permits
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in October 1939.” This shows that “free recruitment” was understood as a measure that loosened
restrictions and permitted Koreans to travel to Japan to work. This hints at just how many
Koreans wanted to migrate for work:
Ever since migrating Koreans [literally “peninsular people”] were granted travel permits in
October 1939, about 3,000 Koreans have migrated to coal mine E [1 of 6 coal mines in thesurvey. Operated by a local zaibatsu. The mine was already taking in Korean workers.] as ofthe end of 1941. Yet of these, only 1,222 remained as of the end of 1941, while 1,778, or 59.26%,
have quit. Of the first group of 96 workers, only 36 remained to fulfill their 2-year contracts,
while the other 60 quit. That is a resignation rate of 62.5%.
According to comments from labor officials at the relevant coal mines, the following are thelikely causes.
(1) There are many taking advantage of the mobilization process (estimated to be about 60%)
who come to the coal mines in order to enter Japan and then quit. That is, they apply for this“migration” process in order to find employment in Japan. As a result, there are many people
without any intention of working in the coal mines who make use of “officially funded andofficially sanctioned travel,” with expenses paid by the companies. This is identified as theprimary cause of the high resignation rate. This was confirmed by all coal mine offices in thesurvey.
(2) Many are being enticed to work for others. There is intense scouting by individuals whose
job is to recruit people. This has to do with the employersʼ lack of preparation with regard to
the workers, who end up being enticed to leave, as well as the old hiring methods of the coalmines. In particular, despite the fact that the demand for migration permits is great not only
among coal mines and construction companies, but in all industries in Japan, the permits
that are issued go primarily to prioritized businesses. As a result of this big gap between thepermits issued and the demand among the many businesses that receive no permits, thebusinesses with such dramatic demand for labor saw the working force already in Japan as
a potential “source of manpower.” Their efforts to recruit such workers is what explains the“enticement” of workers.
This survey is from when “government-mediated recruitment” had just started, but a reportwith similar findings was published in the specialized journal Shakai seisaku jihō (Social Reform)
No. 280, in January 1944, during the third year when “government-mediated recruitment” was ineffect. In the journal, Tetsushirō Onodera, likely an expert on Korean labor issues, gives sevenfactors prompting the escapes of workers: 1) enticement from the outside, 2) intention to escapefrom the outset, 3) aversion to working in a mine, 4) dissatisfaction with wages, 5) food shortages,6) aversion to a disciplined lifestyle, and 7) excesses in the recruitment process. Of these,
Onodera identified factor 1) (enticement from the outside) as “accounting for the majority ofescapes.” He wrote that “The market price of one Korean worker on the labor market is generally
known to be 30 to 50 yen.” This means that brokers looked for mobilized workers in exchange for
30 to 50 yen per person. That is how big the demand for workers was.
In September 1944, as the number of Koreans wanting to travel to Japan was shrinking due toa deteriorating war situation and the risks of air-raids, the conscription order, which had applied
only to civilian staff of the military in 1941, was proclaimed for all of Korea. Koreans already at
locations for mobilized workers in Japan were also subject to the order, as the authorities tried toprevent workers from escaping. Yet, as described in the previous section, the number of people
at locations for mobilized workers at the end of the war was reported as only 322,890, or less thanhalf of the number of mobilized workers, according to statistics from the Ministry of Health andWelfare, so we can doubt the effectiveness of the legally binding conscription order.
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In other words, even in this period when mobilization was carried out using rather forciblemeans such as government-mediated recruitment and conscription, about 40% of the workers
escaped after arrival, meaning that the mobilization plan, which aimed to secure a large numberof migrant workers for coal mines and other locations, was effectively a failure.

The Failure of the Mobilization Plan
Until this point, we have looked at a variety of statistical data and have shed light on the reality ofthe mobilization plan for Koreans to Japan during the period from 1939 to August 1945. I would
like to conclude by examining what the situation was like by August 1945.
For the duration of the plan, the Korean population in Japan grew by 1.2 million, from 800,000
to 2 million. Of these, 320,000 were wartime-mobilized workers at the end of the war. In addition,
there were 110,000 Koreans mobilized as soldiers or other military staff. Besides them, there
were 770,000 Koreans not part of the mobilization plan, that is, Koreans and their families whochose to live in Japan of their own volition. This group also included a large number of people whocame to Japan through recruitment, “government-mediated recruitment,” or “labor conscription”
and then either escaped before the end of their contracts or opted not to renew their contracts
after their expiration, after which they chose not to return Korea but remained in Japan.

Conclusion
The following are my conclusions from the statistical analysis of the wartime mobilization of
Korean workers.
The wartime mobilization of Korean workers that was implemented based on the National
Mobilization Law from 1939 to 1945 was a policy that sought to control the avalanche of migrant
workers who were seeking employment at construction sites by mobilizing them for the relatively
unpopular coal and metal mines that were necessary for the war effort. This attempt at control
did not go well.
The Plan for Sending Koreans to Korea, created based on the National Mobilization Law, wasa policy that tried to efficiently redirect Korean manpower to industries necessary for the war
effort while numerous people were moving from Korea to Japan.
1.

2.

3.

4.

In the early period of recruitment from 1939 to 1941, there were 140,000 mobilized migrants
who came to Japan in groups and 440,000 migrants who came as individuals. That is, thenumber of Koreans who migrated outside the framework of the mobilization plan was about
three times greater than the number of those who migrated after being mobilized, meaningthat the plan failed. In the same period, 16,000 persons, corresponding to slightly morethan 10% of the number of mobilized workers, were sent back to Korea from Japan as illegal
immigrants.
In the later period of government-mediated recruitment and labor conscription from 1942
to 1945, the stream of migrants coming to Japan on an individual basis all but disappeared.
However, 220,000, or 37%, of the 520,000 mobilized workers escaped from the locations
for mobilized workers so that they could work elsewhere, outside the framework of themobilization plan. Again, things were not going according to plan.
The wartime mobilization plan, which sought to efficiently redirect Korean manpower toindustries necessary for the war effort, was unsuccessful due to the large number of Korean
workers who wanted to work at locations unrelated to the plan..
There are two layers of untruth to descriptions of young men forcibly being taken frompeaceful farm villages to work as slaves. Firstly, Korean workers wanted to work in Japan.
They were not forcibly taken. Secondly, the majority found their own jobs and did not subject
themselves to the control of the Japanese government as it sought to support the war effort.
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External and Internal Reconciliation:
War Memories and Views of History
Regarding Japan in Postwar Taiwan
John Chuan-Tiong Lim*

Abstract
Taiwanese society today is often characterized as a Japan-friendly society. Yet things are notquite so simple. The formation of differing war memories and views of history is caused
partly by the blending of selective elements of remembering and forgetting. Postwar
reconciliation between Taiwan and Japan can be seen at two levels̶external reconciliation
with Japan and internal reconciliation within Taiwanese society. Taiwanʼs postwar external
reconciliation with Japan seems to have proceeded relatively well. Taiwan has recognized
the contributions made by Japan during the colonial period. Of course, there exist a numberof historical issues between Japan and Taiwan. At the same time, Taiwan has shown
little inclination to use these issues with Japan for political purposes. In contrast, internal
reconciliation, that is, the work for promoting reconciliation within Taiwanese society,appears complex and unfinished even today. Two Taiwan-related controversies erupted
in 2015 in connection with the 70th anniversary of the end of the war. One of them wasa dispute concerning the views of wartime history held by Taiwan and Mainland China.
Another revealed the existence of different views of histor y within Taiwanese society.
Taiwan is left with the major challenge of how to share memories of different wartime
experiences to achieve reconciliation. The issue of postwar reconciliation af fects theformation of war memories and views of history in postwar society in numerous ways. As
such, when debating reconciliation, we ought to avoid simplifying relationships to thosebetween the perpetrator and the victim.

M

ore than seventy years after the end of the Second World War, reconciliation
between Japan and neighboring countries over the conflict and colonial rule
remains a major challenge. It goes without saying that progress in the reconciliation
process is important for strengthening mutual relations and achieving true peace.
The debate on reconciliation has frequently tended to simplify relationships to those between
the perpetrator and the victim. War and colonial rule can in no way be justified. Yet the issue of
postwar reconciliation is not merely an issue of wartime and colonial experiences or postwar
settlement, and affects the formation of war memories and views of history in postwar society innumerous ways. As such, I want to argue that reconciliation research needs to be conducted withmore diverse perspectives and greater attention to specifics.
Taiwanese society today is often characterized as a Japan-friendly society. Yet things are notquite so simple. The ways in which memories of the war resurfaced and the differing narratives
that were recounted in Taiwan in 2015, on the 70th anniversar y of the end of the War of
Resistance Against Japan, demonstrated the complexity of the reconciliation process in Taiwan.

＊

John Chuan-Tiong Lim is an associate fellow at Academia Sinica in Taiwan. Email: johnlim@gate.sinica.
edu.tw

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External and Internal Reconciliation: War Memories and Views of History Regarding Japan in Postwar Taiwan

In this essay, I look at some of the controversies surrounding the reconciliation process
between postwar Taiwanese society and Japan Taiwanʼs past colonizer and ruler as wellas the differences in war memories and views of history between waishengren ( 外省人 ) andbenshengren（ 本省人 ）that came to light in 2015. I will attempt to clarify the two-sided natureof external and internal reconciliation that can be found in Taiwanese society. The formationof differing war memories and views of histor y is caused partly by the blending of selective
elements of remembering and forgetting that I will identify.

I. External Reconciliation: Postwar Reconciliation between Taiwan and Japan
Reconciliation Attempts by the Taiwanese Government
Postwar reconciliation between Taiwan and Japan can be seen at two levels. One of them is at the
governmental level. The other is at the level of society.
With regard to the Taiwanese governmentʼs attempts at reconciliation, we can note themagnanimous attitude to postwar settlement displayed by President Chiang Kai-shek, which has
also been often acknowledged in postwar Japan society. The Sino-Japanese Peace Treaty was
concluded between Taiwan (Republic of China) and Japan in 1952, and people in Japan long felt
gratitude to Taiwan for gestures such as relinquishing the right to compensation.
Taiwanese society has recognized the contributions made by Japan during the colonial period.
Especially in comparison to China and South Korea, Taiwan stands out in the way in which it
remembers Japanʼs contributions. For example, Taiwan has recognized the contributions of Yoichi
Hatta1 to pre-war Taiwanese agricultural irrigation projects, especially the Chianan Canal. In 2011,
the Taiwanese government opened a museum dedicated to Yoichi Hatta, with President Ma Yingjeou attending and speaking at the opening ceremony. The ceremony was one manifestation of
how Taiwanese accept and honor the contributions and positive aspects of Japanese colonial rule.
As is widely known, so-called historical issues have long existed between Japan and its
neighbors in postwar East Asia. Of course, there exist a number of historical issues between
Japan and Taiwan, starting with the issue of comfort women. At the same time, Taiwan has shown
little inclination to use these issues with Japan for political purposes. Every time there is a major
incident related to historical issues between Japan and neighboring countries, Taiwan naturally
asserts its viewpoints, but generally avoids using historical issues to influence relations withJapan. Taiwan has been especially careful not to incite nationalism.

The Reconciliation Process at the Level of Taiwanese Society
Taiwan is known as one of the most Japan-friendly societies in the world, but this friendship withJapan gradually developed during the 1990s. One reason is that the older generation of people
in Taiwan who spoke Japanese started expressing their feelings for Japan in the 1990s. With theadvent of democratization in Taiwan, they became able to express their sentiment for Japan. In
most households, although many elderly people who experienced Japanese colonial rule could
speak Japanese, they refrained from doing so at home during the long postwar authoritarian era.2
It was common for grandchildren to not know that their grandparents spoke Japanese.
Another reason was the so-called “Japanophilia” phenomenon3 among young people in the1

Yoichi Hatta (1886-1942) was a Japanese hydraulic engineer. After graduating from Tokyo Imperial
University in 1910, he was employed by the Office of the Governor-General of Taiwan and was put incharge of waterworks as well as power generation and irrigation projects.

2

Taiwanʼs authoritarian era refers to the administrations of Chiang Kai-shek and Chiang Ching-kuo, fromthe end of World War II to the lifting of martial law and the start of democratization in 1987.

3“Japanophilia” ( 哈日 , hari) refers to those who are avid followers of Japanese culture.

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1990s, which is when Japanese pop culture really started attracting Taiwanese youth.4 Since then,Japanese comics and animated films, movies and pop music, as well as public baths, matcha, andother forms of Japanese traditional culture, have gained a strong following among the Taiwanese.
In short, there were circumstances that caused two generations to get a better impression ofJapan.
Yet there is one thing that we must not forget. The generation in-between, which was exposedto the Kuomintang governmentʼs “anti-Japanese” education, does not necessarily have the same
feelings for Japan as do the generations that preceded and followed it. We can now see that
this generation is catching up with the rest of Taiwanese society in its degree of openness toJapan. For example, even among second-generation waishengren in their 50s and early 60s at
my research institute, it is not uncommon for people in these age groups to say they understandJapan and to express their sense of closeness to the countr y. It can be claimed that a Japanfriendly structure that spans several generations now exists in Taiwanese society.5

Building Friendship between Taiwan and Japan
Looking at developments in recent years, we can discern the closeness of the two societies bylooking at the number of travelers and school trips between Japan and Taiwan. The number ofpeople traveling from Taiwan to Japan in 2017 was 4.56 million.6 As Taiwanʼs population is 23
million, this is quite a large number. The number of Japanese travelers to Taiwan rose to 1.9
million7 that year and continues to climb.
According to 2015 data, the number one foreign destination for Taiwanese high-school field
trips was Japan. The top overseas destinations for Japanese students until 2015 were the UnitedStates and then Singapore, but Taiwan overtook the United States as the most popular destinationin 2016. This is clearly an expression of the mutual trust that exists between Japan and Taiwan.
The affinity between Japan and Taiwan was also seen after the earthquake in 2011 that struck
northeastern Japan. As has also been reported in Japan, Taiwan strongly sympathized with Japanafter the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011 and provided donations of more than 20 billion
yen, which is more than the sum of donations received from other countries. Japanese people
are still expressing their gratitude for the assistance. Japan likewise provided relief after later
earthquakes in Taiwan, allowing feelings of mutual affinity to spread to citizens, as suggested by
the idea of a “Japanese-Taiwanese earthquake community.”

II. Internal Reconciliation: Lessons from the 2015 Controversies
The Historical Context: 70th Anniversar y of Victor y in the War of Resistance
Against JapanAs discussed above, Taiwanʼs postwar external reconciliation with Japan seems to have proceeded
relatively well. In contrast, internal reconciliation, that is, the work for promoting reconciliation
within Taiwanese society, appears complex and unfinished even today. Here I would like todiscuss a series of controversies that came about in connection with the 70th anniversar y of4

It could be said that the Japanese pop culture boom in Taiwan started before the 1990s, but postwar
restrictions on the dissemination of Japanese culture prevented the broadcasting of Japanese songs andTV dramas. These restrictions were lifted in 1993.

5

One demonstration of this inter-generational Japan-friendly structure in Taiwanese society is the craze
caused by the Japan-friendly movie Cape No.7 that premiered in August 2008. It was common to see
three generations of people going together to the cinema to watch the movie.

6

According to data from Taiwanʼs Tourism Bureau.

7

According to data from Japan National Tourism Organization (JNTO).

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victory in the War of Resistance Against Japan.
In 2015, the Kuomintang was in power under the administration of Ma Ying-jeou. That year,
the government was involved in a number of anniversar y events. Media organizations fromJapan and all over the world were eager to cover the military parade in Beijing that was held tocommemorate Chinaʼs victory in World War II, while the activities of the Ma administration did
not receive so much attention. One such activity was the publication of a pamphlet summarizing
the Republic of Chinaʼs position on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the end of the war. I
was invited by Taiwanʼs Ministry of Foreign Affairs to discuss what would go into the document
and to put it together.8 Attention was paid to what kind of statement Prime Minister Shinzo Abewould give in Japan on the 70th anniversary of the end of the war, but similar activities were
unfolding in Taiwan. Besides the pamphlet, a small-scale military parade was held in Taiwan.
One of the aims of these events by the Ma administration was perhaps to keep alive theRepublic of China ʼ s view of histor y. Amid growing fears that the “ naturally independent
generation”9 was losing their sense of pre-1949 Chinese history, the Ma administration had theaim of continuing a vision of the Republic of Chinaʼs history that extended more than 100 years
into the past, going all the way back to the Xinhai Revolution. Another aim was to emphasize thatwithout the victory in the War of Resistance Against Japan, the postwar Taiwan of today would notexist, thus stressing the intimate relationship between the Republic of China and Taiwan.

Controversy I: Taiwan and Mainland China
Two Taiwan-related controversies erupted in 2015 in connection with the 70th anniversary of theend of the war.
One of them was a dispute between Taiwan and Mainland China. The focal point was theMa administrationʼs fierce opposition to the Communist Party of China presenting itself as the“key pillar” ( 中流砥柱 ) in the War of Resistance Against Japan. The Ma administration refuted
this claim by saying that it was the Nationalist government that had contributed the most to the
victory and had suffered the most casualties. At the heart of this issue were the tensions andcontradictions between the view of history held by the Republic of China and that of the Peopleʼs
Republic of China. We can say that reconciliation has yet to be achieved on this issue between
Mainland China and Taiwan. We can also note that former Vice President and former Kuomintang
Chairman Lien Chan made a symbolic gesture by attending the Beijing militar y parade on
September 3, 2015. The Ma administration was opposed to Lienʼs attendance and mobilized public
opinion to step up criticism of Lien.10

Controversy II: Another View of Histor y inside Taiwan
There was another controversy in 2015 that revealed the existence of different views of history
within Taiwanese society. It started with an interview given by former President Lee Teng-huithat was carried in the Japanese magazine Voice. What gained attention was his remark that “When
I was young, I regarded Japan as my fatherland and I fought for Japan.”In response to this, the Ma administration once again expressed its displeasure and started
criticizing Lee Teng-hui. At the heart of the issue were the contradictions between the Republicof Chinaʼs view of history and the view of history held by people in Taiwan. As the controversy
8

The pamphlet emphasized how under the leadership of Chairman Chiang Kai-shek, the Kuomintang
government, as well as soldiers and the people, fought bravely in the War of Resistance Against Japan,
made tremendous sacrifices, and emerged victorious.

9

The “naturally independent generation” ( 天然独世代、tianran du shidai) refers to young people in
Taiwan with a strong awareness of Taiwan as an independent state.

10

Ma Ying-jeou also instructed people to leave messages on the Kuomintang website and Facebook page
criticizing the actions of Lien Chan.

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grew, there was opposition from those advocating the Taiwanese view of history as well. For
example, the mother of Taipei mayor Ko Wen-je said that she agreed with Lee Teng-hui based onher own experiences. In this way, historical controversies were communicated and discussed by
the Taiwanese media.

III. Conclusion
In conclusion, I first want to say that we can see considerable progress when it comes to external
reconciliation in Taiwanese society, meaning reconciliation with Japan. The building of intergenerational friendship with Japan has gone relatively smoothly. This also demonstrates one
aspect of the flexibility of Taiwanese society ʼs views of history and identity. Yet this does notnecessarily mean that the internal reconciliation of Taiwanese society is going well. It would seemthat reconciliation has yet to happen between two views of history.
Another point is worth making about the issue of selective remembering and selective
forgetting. This does not come up so often in debates within Taiwanese society, but theKuomintang does not necessarily have positive feelings for Japan because it fought Japan for eight
years and made countless sacrifices. In contrast, fighting Japan for eight years is an experiencethat is not present in the Taiwanese view of history. At the time, Taiwan was under Japanesecolonial rule, meaning that Taiwan was on the frontline as part of the Imperial Japanese Army andwas bombed by American aircraft flying over from China. In this sense, we can tell that a large
gap has existed between the Kuomintangʼs view of history and the indigenous Taiwanese view ofhistory. Perhaps this can be explained using the concepts of selective remembering and selective
forgetting? We are left with the major challenge of how to share our memories of different
wartime experiences to achieve reconciliation.
Finally, I want to say that when debating reconciliation, we ought to avoid simplifying
relationships to those between the perpetrator and the victim. The issue of postwar reconciliation
is not merely an issue of wartime and colonial experiences or postwar settlement, and affects
the formation of war memories and views of history in postwar society in numerous ways. As
such, I want to argue that more diverse perspectives and specificity are needed when conducting
research into reconciliation.

65
Japan Review Vol.2 No.2 Fall 2018

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