Dudden Japan's Colonization of Korea (2)

Japan's Colonization of Korea DISCOURSE AND POWER
Alexis Dudden
UNIVERSITY OF HAWAI'I PRESS HONOLULU
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Contents
Acknowledgments ix
1ntroduction I
I Illegal Korea 7
2 International Terms of Engagement 27
3 The Vocabulary of Power 45
4 Voices of Dissent 74
5 Mission Legislatrice 100
Coda: A Knowledgeable Empire 131

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 CHAPTER 2

INTERNATIONAL TERMS

OF ENGAGEMENT

International terms won the twentieth century. Terms such as independence and sovereignty became the means of discursive exchange in markets and par­liaments around the world, but their everyday usage has obscured the histori­cal process that made them the vocabulary of modern international relations. Use of these terms has simply become common sense. The new, post-9/11 U.S. doctrine of "preemptive strike" introduces still-unmeasured dimensions to these terms; yet at the end of the twentieth century, the whole body of inter­national terms was heralded as "the constitution of mankind' upheld by many as an ideal and untouchable form.' Disparate political interests, including the member states of the International Monetary Fund, North Korea's reclusive leader Kim long-il, and U.S. militia leaders (who incite fear of the United Nations), all speak in terms of the "sovereignty" of their own "independent" nations. Recent self-determination movements in East Timor and Kosovo defined their wars using these terms—which are the same terms their oppres­sor regimes used to constitute themselves—further attesting to the power of these expressions.

In the late nineteenth century, the young Meiji government engaged Japan in international terms, a decision that stands to this day as one of the most significant changes in Japanese modern history. In a short period of time, Japanese officials determined to establish their newly reorganized nation in the terms of international law, thus relocating Japan's place in the world and redefining power in Asia. These terms became Japan's new legal discourse of power. As aggrandizers of the Japanese empire described their policies in this

27

28 7apan's Colonization of Korea International Terms of Engagement 29

discourse, they legitimated their nation's imperialist expansion. As they did so, the vocabulary they used became the prevailing political terminology used throughout Asia.

It is important to bear in mind that the terms themselves did not make Japan imperialist. Rather, Japanese policymakers used the terms to describe their early-twentieth-century empire as legitimate. At the time, throughout the world, leaders of colonizing nations used international terms to describe their countries' imperialist expansions as legitimate, and the vocabulary they used became legal precedent. The terms of international law were, therefore, part and parcel of the terms of colonialism, and their global use at the begin­ning of the twentieth century embedded them as the dominant, discursive form in international relations at the time.

In the 1850s, American and European warships began to arrive off Japan's coastline. The Western method of opening Japan to commerce was to threaten war against the Tokugawa shogunate (1603-1868) should it refuse to sign trade treaties.2 The documents that representatives of these nations brought with them were written in the vocabulary of international law, peppered with terms such as sovereignty and independence. A number of Tokugawa minis­ters, as well as their rivals, signed such papers without fully understanding the scope of their contents.

What was most remarkable about this episode—as will be detailed later in this chapter—was the ability of Japanese officials to negotiate with the so-called barbarians, in light of nearly 250 years of self-imposed isolation from foreigners that had existed under Tokugawa rule. The United States govern­ment had not prepared its demands in Japanese or even Chinese. Rather, these exchanges were made possible through the efforts of generations of Toku­gawa-era scholars, who undertook linguistic studies based on their fascina­tion with words. These scholars often worked in secret when the government deemed their scholarship heretical. The work of these wordsmiths enabled

⦁ the initial negotiations with the barbarians, but more importantly it led to the transformative, Meiji-era outcome of making the new discourse of interna­tional relations meaningful in Japanese. Because these scholars' work made it possible to translate international terms into Japanese, Meiji leaders made informed decisions about engaging Japan in the "civilized arena" of the early twentieth century.

Writing international law into Japanese represents more than a reaction­ary response to prevent Japan itself from being colonized. The terms of inter­national law embodied a pivotal element—a larger method of creating inter‑

national order. Meiji political and legal theorists recognized in these terms a means by which Japan could engage in the power politics of the day.

By definition, international law is a performative discourse in which rep­resentatives, acting at the behest of sovereign states, negotiate with similarly entitled foreign envoys. In this relationship, the representatives mutually define one another in a politics of display. At the turn of the nineteenth cen­tury, international law classified the world in terms of "completely sovereign and independent" countries and places where sovereignty was "limited and qualified."3 The "limited and qualified" regimes were, therefore, definitionally dependent in some way on alien regimes for their own identities. Responding to what the world's self-defined Powers proclaimed to be a universal means of exchange, Japanese state strategists resolved to use these forms. By the turn of the twentieth century, this decision created a perception among the "civi­lized" world that Japan was the modern, legal nation in Asia.

As the modern international system developed, international terms fed on and were fed by theories of the nation-state. Although international law pre­sumed to transcend national distinctions with universalist claims, only gov­ernments that successfully subscribed to nation-state theories could partici­pate. Carol Gluck's benchmark analysis of Meiji Japan richly demonstrates how Meiji officials reshaped the country in keeping with the substance and style of a modern nation.4 As a matter of course, Meiji officials and their advi­sors refashioned Japan according to a broader discourse of power among nations. By examining how Japan engaged in these terms, we can deepen our understanding of the reflexivity of the modern form of nation building. View­ing the Meiji effort in an international context recalls various assumptions and limits of the nation writ large, as well as highlighting some present-day legacies.

Late-nineteenth-century theorists of the nation-state created what Prasen-jit Duara calls "regime[s] of authenticity," which were fashioned by state-builders who "invoked various representations of authoritative inviolabil-ity.115 International terms afforded such immutable authority. Claims to national existence in one country mirrored similar claims in other countries; in conjunction they created an "authentic regime'

"6 Only governments that described themselves in modernity's terms fit into the workings of interna­tional law, and Japan's decision to define itself within this discourse enabled the Meiji government to participate as a subject. In his 1875 Outline of the The­ory of Civilization, for example, the famous Meiji-era enlightenment thinker, Fukuzawa Yukichi, repeatedly urged Japanese leaders to label the country

30 SIapan's Colonization of 'Korea International Terms of Engagement 31

"independent" in order to participate as a civilized state in the enlightened world.7 At the same time, individual voices and groups that challenged the assumptions of such governments—like the Korean envoys to The Hague in 1907—found hope in international terms, but they were often rendered pow­erless from voicing what the authentic regimes judged as inauthentic claims In other words, only the era's "thinkable" participants counted as "authentic" in international law.

So-called universalist ideas—including the concept of a sovereign state acting independently—were historically generated within the emerging dynamic of capitalist political economics. The vocabulary of international law could not be separated from the material conditions of industrializing capitalism. Nor, for that matter, were its terms meant to be distinct from such conditions. These terms, like others generated within this dynamic, rendered the condi­tions of the capitalist social order normative and legal, and Meiji internation­alists made the terms commonplace in Japanese.

In any discussion of historical change from Tokugawa to Meiji Japan, it is critical to remember that Japan's Tokugawa economy prepared the way for Meiji entrepreneurs to capitalize quickly on the postrevolutionary era's newly available commodities of labor and materials.8 At the same time, it is equally vital to grasp that the process of industrialization tore apart and refashioned all social relations (and still does) whenever and wherever it occurred.9 The Meiji government's famous decision to erase prior social categories by out­lawing distinctions between "high" and "low" generated the legal underpin­nings for the creation of a new mass of Japanese subjects, who comprised, in Marx's phrasing, the "free, unprotected, and rightless" labor that would pro­pel Japan into the twentieth century.'° Marx's words are worth noting here. In Capital, written the same year that the Meiji government came to power (1868), Marx's critique of the social conditions surrounding him is replete with the terminology of "freedom" and "protection" that states increasingly relied on to describe the politics of imperialism as enlightened practice.

The 1868 Meiji ishin (variously understood in English as a "revolution" or "restoration") wove anew the terms of governance in Japan. The government's engagement in international terms has proved as important in the long run as its creation of a mass military and an industrial fiscal policy. Americans and Europeans arriving in Japan demanded that the Tokugawa government "open" Japan to the world. They also insisted that Japan agree to do so by signing the documents of "amity and commerce" brought ashore by the Americans and

Europeans. Students of European languages and technologies (known at the time as "Western studies scholars' or yogakusha) investigated the meaning of the terms written in these texts and rendered Japanese expressions for words such as "independent?'

Although the leading antigovernment forces decried the Tokugawa govern­ment's diplomatic negotiations as treacherous—and despite their widespread slogan to "expel the barbarians' at one of the first meetings of the antigovern­ment forces after the overthrow of the Tokugawa government—the new Meiji government declared its intention to conduct itself with all nations "accord­ing to international law."" Soon after claiming control of the government, the Meiji Council of State issued a series of instructions to the young emperor concerning relations with foreign countries. Led by former "Revere the Emperor—Expel the Barbarian" activist Sanjo Sanetomi, the council pro­claimed its intent to "fix [its] eyes on the conditions of the times and avoid corrupt customs of the past."12 The following month, ministers gathered in front of the emperor and swore to uphold five principles that the government's financial planner, Yuri Kimimasa, and others drafted as the regime's famous Charter Oath. Again, vowing to "break with the evil customs of the past," the officials proclaimed to accord their actions with the "just ways of the world" (tenchi no kodo), an expression that was just one of the phrases used to render "law of nations" or "international law," into Japanese.13

The founding principles of the Meiji government, therefore, not only negated the prior government's practices, but also indicated that Japan would henceforth conduct foreign policy in terms that manifested the internal reordering of the country. For the architects of Meiji Japan, building the new nation-state necessarily meant creating one that would engage openly with the world in international terms. The profound shift from distrusting all things foreign to participating actively in the international system did not take place easily or without confusion. The preponderance in the new government of former retainers from Satsuma (a region in southern Japan) fostered an approach to policy that reflected an awareness of foreigners beyond the Asian world. In 1868, when the Satsuma men came to power, they knew firsthand that during the previous several hundred years, when the Tokugawa govern­ment sealed off Japan from much of the world, the concept of "foreign" had expanded well beyond a China-centered sphere to include in its practical meaning Europeans and New Worlders . Because of this, these leaders were disposed to build quickly on the efforts of generations of scholars from throughout the country who had long studied the far-flung aliens, thus

32 rlapan's Colonization of J(orea International Terms of Engagement 33

enabling Japan to engage with the vocabulary of power dominant in a wider "foreign" arena of the time.

An even more direct way of understanding the Meiji leaders' conscious decision to engage Japan in international terms comes through knowing that the practical terms of this law were first introduced to the Chinese character world by China, but the Chinese chose not to reorder their policies by these terms.14 In 1862, bureaucrats at the Zongli Yamen—the office established by the Qing court to cope with the dramatic influx of Europeans and Americans to China—began to read parts of the prevailing text of practical international relations of the day, Henry Wheaton's Elements of International Law. Wheaton, a scholar of government and law at Brown University, moved between acade­mia and government service, working also as a young diplomat in Paris where he studied continental law firsthand. In 1863, the American minister to China, Anson Burlingame, decided to introduce a missionary friend of his, William Martin, to members of the Zongli Yamen because he knew that Martin had been working on a Chinese translation of Wheaton's text. Martin, a Presby­terian missionary from Indiana, later wrote of this moment: "The Chinese ministers expressed much pleasure when I laid on the table my unfinished ver­sion of Wheaton, though they knew little of its nature or contents?"5 Over­all, there was slight interest in the book among the group of Qing officials who were on good terms with Americans and Europeans, but no one suggested using these different laws with their alien terms for relations with other Asian governments. As far as China was concerned, there was no need to redefine the terms of international relations within the region, because the long-standing formula sustained China at the apex.16

Rulers of countries of what is now East and Southeast Asia had long manip­ulated the influence of Chinese emperors. They either sent envoys to engage in subordinate exchanges with the Chinese leaders or, like the Tokugawa sho-gunate, actively degraded the emperors to elevate claims of their own rule. Early in the eighteenth century, the well-known example of shogunal advisor Arai Hakuseki's concern for naming the shogun, vis-à-vis the Korean king, revealed a desire to place Japan on a par with China by purposefully avoiding reference to China.17 Nonetheless, whichever method of self-legitimation was performed, rulers in the region conducted written legal exchanges with other regimes through the common currency of mutually intelligible Chi­nese-character terms (kanji). Diplomatic agreements, which defined centu­ries of protocol between Japan's Tokugawa-era and Korea's Chosön-era rulers, derived meaning from a shared diplomatic discourse, because the terms ref­ erenced a mutually comprehensible Chinese lexicon. Regardless of whether these contracts mentioned China, China's intellectual authority in the region was manifested through the continued use of its legal terms, derived from continental practice. Moreover, when there were disagreements, translators or negotiators themselves could write out disputed points to make them clear. This practice was known as "brush-talking"

' and the discourse of exchange relied on a shared comprehension and valuing of the continentally ordered terminology.18 In short, the regimes in this region had long legitimated them­selves and their policies in a common form that ultimately sustained the dom­inant position of Chinese knowledge, because they all relied on Chinese terms for exchange.19

In face of these traditional methods of exchange, the Meiji regime's con­version to international terms radically transformed the hierarchy of power within the region. Japanese officials wrested power away from the continent and became the definers of the new terms of exchange. This point may be illustrated by an example from a 1905 discussion of privileges that Japan wanted in Manchuria. Qing representatives, led by Yuan Shikai, expressed con­cern over the phrasing of a Japanese diplomatic note while meeting with Japa­nese envoys Komura Jutaro and Uchida Yasutoshi. According to the Japanese minutes of the conversation, Yuan asked for clarification of the term "protest" (kogi), a term that "was not usually used" in China.20 His interpreter, Tang, asked Uchida, "What is the meaning of kogi?" Uchida replied in English, "Pro­test?' In English, Tang replied, "Have you this word?" "Yes said Uchida. Tang inquired further, "Legally?" "Yes' said Uchida. "Legally and diplomatically?' Tang responded, "We have not had it. This is a new word." Returning to inter­preted Japanese, another Chinese minister mused, "The British Ambassador Mr. Satow like this term?' Yuan Shikai added, "I learned this term from Mr. Satow?' The Japanese minister Komura interjected, "It puzzles me to learn that you do not like this term?' The minutes noted general laughter.2' Despite the recorded levity of the moment, the men's conversation indicates a major his­torical shift. The Meiji emperor's representatives demonstrated that the gov­ernment of Japan was officially conducting foreign relations in terms that were new to the kanji world and fluent with the terms the Powers used; thus, they were not deferring to China's long-held position in the region as definer of terms.

Ultimately, the Meiji decision to reorder Japan's foreign relations collapsed the distinction between contracting with kanji-educated and kanji-illiterate places. As early as 1798, Japanese political thinker and government advisor

34 Japan's Colonization of Korea International Terms of Engagement 35

Honda Toshiaki bemoaned the impenetrability of his native tongue. "The vast number and inconvenience of kanji render them unusable in exchange with foreign countries;' he explained.22 At the time, Honda already saw a double order of diplomacy, with the kanji world discrete from the "foreign" world. Within a mere century, however, Japanese legal and political scholars. had translated the terms of international law into Japanese, either by redefining extant kanji terms (e.g., hogo [to protect] into hogokoku [protectorate]) or by creating new terms (e.g., dokuritsu [independent]). They created a vocabu­lary that made sense when it was translated back into the European languages that originated the terms, and also ensured that Japan could name itself in the kanji region as the definer of knowledgeable practice with the modern world. Although Japanese leaders ranged from hot to cold in sentiments and policies toward Asia during the final decades of the nineteenth century, the double-tiered terms of diplomatic interaction disappeared, and Japan legally con­tracted with all nations according to a shared lexicon.

Historians and literary scholars have long divided texts of Meiji interna­tional law texts into two categories: those that relied on the Chinese govern­ment's initial efforts and those that did not.23 In the early 1930s in Japan, the desire to locate native origins in everything and anything encouraged literary critic Osatake Takeki to notice a particularly "Japanese theoretical stance" in one of the numerous books of international law consulted by the Meiji gov-ernment.24 Despite the fact that the Meiji government had adopted a text by the scholar of Chinese studies Shigeno Yatsusugu, Osatake found "truer" understanding of what was at stake in Japanese sources, including, for exam­ple, linguistic scholar Uryu Mitora's use of "ködO" ("official way") over Shi-geno's choice of "köhô" ("international law"). These analyses highlight nuances among various schools of thought in the tempestuous atmosphere in which international terms became Japanese, as well as their historiographic legacy.25

Because the Meiji example of the interconnection of words and power is so tangible, my inquiry steps around a concern for origins and "true" meanings and focuses instead on how the terms were put into practice. Although the search for specific moments when thinkers finally translated certain words into Japanese may rectify the work of forgotten translators and scholars, approaching translation from such a perspective often leads to assertions of mistranslation. Furthermore, although analysis along such lines can yield compelling discussions of a particular language's past, it runs the risk of doing battle with a universal language—a pre-Babellian ur-lexicon.26 The mistrans­ lation approach assumes an eventual correct translation and can blot out the importance of the historical activity of preliminary attempts at new concepts. Therefore, I follow Pierre Bourdieu's observation of the futility of trying to understand "the power of linguistic manifestation linguistically," and instead I examine instead how international terms became what Bourdieu called "legitimate speech127

There is an unfortunate and almost unyielding opinion that Japanese are simply copycats and have never invented anything of importance on their own. To imply even slightly, however, that those concerned with Meiji Japan's place in the world copied only silhouettes of alien knowledge would fail to understand how Japanese thinkers and diplomats engaged the discourse of international terms as a form of power. Moreover, the view that Japanese only imitate modern political forms—and, according to this logic, never really understand them—entrenches the idea that the Europeans and Americans who invented such forms created them in a pure vacuum or along the lines of some Platonic good.28

From its inception, the encoders of international law in Europe and the United States defined it as a domain exclusively practiced by nations that had achieved a certain level of civilization. In the late eighteenth century, political theorists began reworking an accepted notion of jus gentium (the law of nations) into a measurable discipline of positive law. In 1789, Jeremy Bentham coined the term "international" to redefine the ideas of law and ambassado­rial protocol previously theorized by earlier thinkers such as Hugo Grotius, Samuel Puffendorf, and François de Callières: "The word international, it must be acknowledged, is a new one; though, it is hoped, sufficiently analogous and intelligible. It is calculated to express, in a more significant way, the branch of law which commonly goes under the name of the law of nations."29 Although many of its practitioners continued to use the expression "law of nations" along with "international law"—and many still do—Bentham designated a new phenomenon that was taking root at the time. He codified the intercourse among nations as a knowable and discrete science that could be studied, taught, and expanded on as a discipline, and he named international law as its attending terminology.30

Legal theorists conceived of the terms of international law in a discourse resonant with prevailing European and American theories of civilization, the­ories that named the independent nation-state as the perfect form of political achievement. In his 1836 tome—Elements of International Law: With a Sketch of the History of the Science, which ultimately formed the basis of international

36 gapan's Colonization of Rorea International Terms of Engagement 37

law in Asia—Wheaton asserted that "international law, as understood among civilized nations, may be defined as consisting of those rules of conduct which reason deduces, as consonant to justice, from the nature of the society existing among independent nations." 31

Because Wheaton's text wound up in Japanese translation and was used as one of the sources in drafting the Meiji government's new foreign policy, it is worth noting how Wheaton himself described the importance of the law. Like most of his contemporaries, he did not presuppose a blank world, but rather emphasized how Christianity propelled the law and the civilization he espoused: "International law may therefore be considered a positive law. The progress of civilization, founded on Christianity, has gradually conducted us to observe a law analogous to this in our intercourse with all nations of the globe, whatever may be their religious faith?'32 Such awareness directed the presumed "we" in Wheaton's thinking to write laws of international exchange that bespoke the inner meaning of "our" civilization's progress.33

Although Wheaton acknowledged that non-Christians had forms of exchange, he believed that such heathens would remain uncivilized until "we" brought them civilization and converted them to its more perfect methods: "It may be remarked, in confirmation of this view, that the more recent inter­course between the Christian nations in Europe and America and the Moham­medan and Pagan nations of Asia and Africa indicates a disposition, on the part of the latter, to renounce their particular international usages and adopt those of Christendom.

'34

Editors of subsequent versions of Wheaton's textbook never discussed whether the violence that European and American imperialists were unleash­ing upon non-Christians around the world might have propelled those peo­ple "to renounce their particular international usages?' Rather, they affirmed that the science was spreading naturally as predicted.35 In his 1866 edition of Elements of International Law, for example, Richard Dana wrote: "Already the most remarkable proof of the advance of Western civilization in the East, is the adoption of this work of Mr. Wheaton, by the Chinese government, as a text­book for its officials?'36

Ascribing the terms of international law to the purview of civilized nations solidified the legality of practicing these terms. Expositors of civiizational the­ory maintained that civilization, like the terms that rode on its back, was a knowable thing. "I say fact, and I say it advisedly' declared the early-nine­teenth-century French historian François Guizot. "Civilization is just as much a fact as any other—it is a fact which like any other may be studied, described, and have its history recounted?'37 Provided that an American or European permutation of civilization rested at the top, this "fact" underwrote the most fundamental assumption of international law: its terms were legal everywhere because the most civilized nations of Christendom had created them.

As mentioned earlier, the terms of international law scripted colonizing politics and inscribed them as the dominant form of international relations. It was in these terms that leaders of colonizing nations described their countries' takeovers and annexations of other countries as legal. Self-defined sovereign nations assumed legal control over nonsovereign entities, and this control over dependent countries defined the controlling regime as sovereign. These rela-tionships—which defined their legitimacy as they were practiced—cemented the legitimacy of colonizing politics. When the Meiji government engaged Japan in this discursive order, colonizing politics traveled around the globe to what was considered the "far" end of civilization at the time.38 Colonizing policies announced their legitimacy by announcing that they were legitimate. The circularity of the logic allowed the colonizer to explain his or her domi­nant position over the colonized by explaining the action of colonization according to an unseen, yet seemingly undeniable, higher authority such as "the natural order of things."39 The terms of international law—the law of nations—afforded just such a transcendent authority to all its practitioners and enabled colonizers to make sense to each other. When Japan—the coun­try on the world's "far" end, which built an empire to rival those built at the world's "center"—engaged with these terms, the discourse of enlightened exploitation became the internationally legal terminology of power.

For centuries, all knowledge in Japan—foreign and indigenous, ranging from botany to economics—was routinely rendered into some form of intelligible Japanese script (Chinese-style Japanese [kanbun] or Japanese) in order to be of use to the government or its critics. Moreover, and of most direct impor­tance to the translation of international terms, Japan's history of Dutch and Western studies laid the practical foundations for translating these terms of power—terms that were arguably more alien than Chinese ones, but alien just the same.

The vast number of new terms floating through early Meiji Japan invigor­ated dictionary authors.40 Debates spun around the viability of Japanese, and several authors reiterated Honda Toshiaki's earlier frustrations and suggested doing away with the language altogether. In 1872, educational reformer Mon Arinori pleaded with Yale University's William Whitney to help him create a

38 japan's Colonization of Korea International Terms of Engagement 39

new language for Japan because, as Mori saw it, Japanese was a "deranged Chi­nese" that was unusable in a modern nation.41 Two years later, the inaugural journal of the Meiji Six Society, (Meirokusha) featured a lead article by the progressivist Nishi Amane in which he advocated writing Japanese in "West­ern letters" (,voji).42 Even nativist Kurokawa Mayori argued for a contempo­rary resurrection of romaji—the practice of writing Japanese in the Roman alphabet—from its sixteenth-century Jesuit missionary roots, so as to make Japanese more accessible to foreigners.43 An environment in which opposing poles of the political spectrum challenged the future of the country's language for similar reasons—let alone its terms of governance—brings into relief the volatility of the moment.

In 1887, legal scholar Mitsukuri RinshO spoke at the opening ceremony of the Meiji Law School in Tokyo. After thanking the school for inviting him, he introduced himself: "My grandfather was the Dutch studies scholar Mitsukuri Genpo, and ever since I was a little boy I also did Dutch studies. . . . Toward the end of the bakufu rule, however, when English studies came into fashion, I switched from Dutch to English. I worked diligently on my English, but because I didn't have [a textbook]—my school didn't have one either—I worked haphazardly.. . . I wanted to go to the West very much."'

Mitsukuri also recalled accompanying the shogun's brother, Tokugawa Aki-take, at the Paris Universal Exposition in 1867: "I went to France. I became proficient at reading some French, and after a year I returned to Japan. The Meiji ishin occurred very shortly after that. I didn't have even a smattering of

knowledge about the original texts, but in the second year of Meiji [1869], the government ordered me to translate the French criminal codes. . . . I didn't

understand them.... There were no annotations, no glossaries, no instruc-tors."45 By invoking the legacy of his grandfather, Genpo, Mitsukuri pointed to the important intellectual lineage of Dutch and Western studies in Meiji Japan and drew attention to the basis for his government's ability to translate the prevailing, yet entirely confusing, terms of international politics.

Although the "closed" conditions of Tokugawa Japan fostered a firm, con­servative official knowledge that sustained the Tokugawa order, the "opening"

with Korean and Chinese envoys and with Dutch merchants at Nagasaki

brought books that enabled scholars to examine their own system from within, even if such inquiry cost them their lives. Understanding Dutch stud‑

ies from this perspective helps counter a tradition in the field that has viewed seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Dutch studies as merely an escape from the rigidity of Tokugawa's official Confucian thought. Scholars such as Tetsuo

Najita have criticized this opinion by stressing that the primary objects of Dutch studies were compatible with the Confucian ethic of "saving the peo­ple" (saimin), asserting that any inquiry into language comprised a vital ele­ment of the teachings of Confucian studies.46 In 1639, the Tokugawa regime banned travel abroad, as well as open contact with the Dutch merchants in Nagasaki. Soon afterward, several scholars and interpreters, intrigued by the Dutch, began compiling word lists derived from interactions with them. These forgotten scholars were described by Sugimoto Tsutomu as "soldiers of words'47 In short, these "soldiers" constituted the intellectual frontline that paved the way for a body of knowledge to grow.

Over time, other scholars used these preliminary word lists to develop larger schools of thought concerning what the words described; these schools were first called Dutch and then Western studies. Historians in general agree on when these schools coalesced into recognizable forms. For example, in 1771, when Maeno Ryötaku and Sugita Genpaku secretly dissected a corpse, they searched Dutch texts for information they found lacking in Chinese books in order to perform their experiment .48 In contrast to the Tokugawa government's earlier policy of declaring such studies heretical and punishable by death, these men openly published their findings, the New Text on Human Anatomy (Kaitai Shinsho), without penalty. This historical moment is widely considered the origin of Dutch studies .49 In similar fashion, in 1855 the gov­ernment officially renamed its Bureau for Translating Barbarian Documents (Bansho Wagegoyo) to the Bureau for Western Studies (Yogakusho) to accom­modate scholars busy with, among other things, the letters and treaties that Matthew Perry brought with him in 1853. Publications such as Hirose Takean's General Description of America (1854) and Masaki Toku's General Description of England (1854) further attest to the shogunate's open desire for texts about "the West" at the time, and mark this decade as the beginning of Western studies .50 By the early Meiji period, the expressions "Dutch" and "Western" were indistinguishable in popular parlance, and decades later Japan's famous internationalist Nitobe InazO reminisced that at the time "[the word] Oranda did not necessarily mean 'Dutch.' The term was comprehen­sive enough to include all of Europe and America. It was, therefore, a disap­pointing revelation to learn later on that Holland was not the entire Western world. "5'

Around 1800, the Tokugawa government began ordering new kinds of maps, which indicated an official desire to express their control of Japan in ways that made sense to foreigners who were not Korean or Chinese. Such

40 gapan's Colonization of Korea International Terms of Engagement 41

demands, moreover, permitted new kinds of quests for knowledge outside the kanji world. Studies arising from matters that did not ostensibly threaten the Tokugawa way of governing—such as autopsies, astronomy, and plant and animal taxonomies—broadened into a riskier desire to know about and to engage the mechanisms of power that sustained alien regimes. Russia in par­ticular had begun to challenge the Tokugawa claim that Ezo (present-day Hokkaido) was Japanese territory, and the Tokugawa government wanted to demonstrate its control.52 A map of the world, dated 1792 and thought to have been made by either military theorist Hayashi Köhei or painter Shiba Kokan, depicted Japan and Ezo as separate realms.53 In the early 1800s, a Russ­ian ship returned several Japanese castaways to Japan, along with a Russian world map in which Ezo was drawn as non-Japanese territory.

The terms of legal sovereignty did not yet concern the shogunate, but the process of delineating the official reach of Tokugawa lands caused great anxi­ety for the governing house. The shogunate wanted to make sure that Ezo was included in its lands. In addition, officials sensed the urgency of representing Great Japan's territory (Dai Nippon) on a detailed longitudinal and latitudi­nal map similar to the Russian one, so that the Russian "barbarians" would understand. In 1809, the government requisitioned a complete map of Japan from cartographer mO Tadataka.54 Until his death in 1818, mO drafted numer­ous depictions of the territory of Japan that included Ezo and Kunashiri, the latter being a region that is in dispute to this day and continues to prevent the governments of Japan and Russia from signing a treaty to officially end World War II. ma's maps depicted Japan so precisely and exquisitely that the German adventurer Philipp Franz von Siebold made free use of them to make his famous maps—maps that, according to most sources, reintroduced Japan to the world in the late 1820s, rendering it ripe for the external world's "opening."55

The shogunate wanted to make its territorial claims about the extent of the area of Japan understandable to all foreigners. This desire converged with the efforts of scholars who were just beginning to openly study alien forms of gov­ernance and military power. At the same time, it is critical to understand that, when the terms of international law arrived in Japan in the mid-nineteenth century, they did not suddenly reveal to Japanese officials that claiming land was the basis of ruling power. Maps from the seventh century c . E. (known as the "Gyogi maps," after the Korean monk who introduced them) reveal that this concept had been in place in Japan for more than a thousand years.56 Despite long-standing Japanese knowledge of the territorial basis of power, the introduction of terms such as "sovereignty" fostered a new awareness that claiming land in international politics was a legally defined privilege. It was, furthermore, a privilege sanctioned as a form of "national" defense. The efforts of generations of scholars culminated in the Meiji declaration of national ter­ritorial sovereignty as one of its foundational terms of governance. Although the government strongly made this claim, Mitsukuri RinshO alluded to the confusion of how this moment became possible during his 1887 speech at the Meiji Law School, when he recalled his frustrations at not having had a book for his English studies. A contemporary biography of Mitsukuri quoted one of his classmates to illustrate the mayhem involved in teaching and learning the languages and techniques of power prevalent in Europe at the time: "The students brought whatever books they had to school. One brought a book on physics, another brought an economics text. When one brought a geography book, someone else brought a book on law. Military texts, histories—the stu­dents brought their miscellaneous books [from home] and asked the teacher to instruct them."57

As Mitsukuri himself pointed out, many young Japanese who later became important Meiji diplomats and translators began their educations in this unsettled atmosphere. Whether the scholars and legal theorists who fashioned Japanese terms for the vocabulary of international law redefined existing kanji or coined new combinations, they clearly did not thwart their initial efforts by worrying whether the Japanese renderings fully captured the original French, English, or German.

The texts of international law available in Japan by the early Meiji era—along with the jumble of scripts in diplomatic notes—reveal the creative volatility that existed regarding the shaping of new terms in something as apparently normative as the legal vocabulary among nations. At the time, for example, there was not even a standard term for "international" (most often bankoku was used, but increasingly today's term, kokusai, appeared). The first books in Japan concerning the practice of international law—what literature scholar Sawa Omi has described as "the epitome of bakamatsu-era Western political thought"—appeared at this time of makeshift language studies. 58

In 1862, the Tokugawa government sent Nishi Amane and Tsuda Mamichi to Leiden University, in the hope that what they learned there would yield the knowledge to help resurrect the disintegrating regime. When Nishi returned to Japan in 1866, he turned his notes from Simon Vissering's tutorials on inter­national law into the basis for his compilation Bankoku KOhO Yakugi. The Tokugawa government's now twice-renamed Bureau of Translation and For‑

42 Slapan's Colonization of Korea International Terms of Engagement 43

eign Affairs (the Kaiseijo) published the text in kanbun in 1868. The same year that Nishi published his book, Tsutsumi Kokushishi wrote a synopsis of William Martin's Chinese rendition of Henry Wheaton's Elements oflnterna-tional Law (Bankoku Koho Yakugi), offering the first description of the terms of the science fully rendered in the Japanese language.60

Nishi and Tsutsumi's efforts to translate into Japanese the terms that dom­inated international and diplomatic discourse indicate how both men under­stood the power inherent in these terms. For his part, in the opening state­ments of his book Bankoku KöhO Yakugi, Tsutsumi proposed that "a translator earnestly searches for the spirit" of the text.6' Nishi, on the other hand, had worked as the shogunate's interpreter during the treaty talks with American consul Townsend Harris, negotiating in Dutch with Harris's interpreter. 12 Nishi and Tsutsumi wrote descriptions of international law, not practical manuals for how to use the terms. Their work was, therefore, akin to the early Nagasaki translators—the "soldiers of words"—who enabled later schools of thought to flourish.

To compound the confusion, in an effort to make international legal terms meaningful in actual use, an anti-Tokugawa regional daimyo—the Satsuma ruler Shimazu Hisamitsu— commissioned the first text of international law in Japan that attempted to render the terms practical in Japanese. By the mid-1860s, the Tokugawa shogunate's hold on government had almost collapsed, and envoys from several of the "first-rank" nations tried to align themselves with various regional daimyo—in particular those critical of the shogunate. These local rulers, in turn, wanted to understand the international terms used by the foreign envoys. Especially after British ships firebombed Kagoshima in 1863, to avenge the murder of merchant Charles Richardson, the powerful Satsuma daimyo ordered Shigeno Yatsusugu, a teacher in the realm's Confu­cian academy at the time, to negotiate with British representatives. When the talks ended, Shimazu (an outspoken advocate of "expelling the barbarian") then ordered Shigeno to translate into Japanese a complete version of Martin's Chinese rendering of Wheaton's International Law. 63 Shigeno was a scholar of Chinese studies by training, and, in response to Shimazu's request, in 1869 he produced a facing-page rendering of the text, which juxtaposed his own Japa­nese translation of Martin's Chinese version with Martin's original transla­tion of Henry Wheaton's book. Unlike Nishi and Tsutsumi, Shigeno did not attempt to describe or generalize broad features of international law or its historical place in European thought. Rather, he offered working definitions in Japanese of the fundamental terms of international law. Shigeno's book explained international terms through the medium of what had been the legal-reference language in the region until that time: Chinese. Shigeno made the terms workable in Japanese by providing ready, comparative explanations that were comprehensible to most educated members of his domain at the time.

Less than a generation later, Mitsukuri Rinsho played historian and even made light of the random atmosphere in which such international vocabu­lary became Japanese:

There were, in fact, many parts that I didn't understand. And even when I did understand, I was at a loss because there were no words to trans­late the terms. Today young men use terms such as right and obligation with ease. But when I was young, I used these terms with great difficulty in translation. I didn't claim to have invented anything, however, so I wasn't able to get a patent. (Laughter. Applause.) The words raito [right] and oburigeshyon [obligation] were translated as kenri gimu in the Chinese version of International Law, and I took them, but I wasn't stealing.64

Mitsukuri's academic career as one of the foremost scholars of French law in Japan in the 1870s and 1880s stemmed in part from his language studies and his timely "command" of French.65 During these decades, the Meiji govern­ment reworked Napoleonic criminal codes into Japanese, and legal thinkers debated whether the regime should adopt German or French civil codes. Mitsukuri actively participated in these projects. Granting him the privilege of hyperbole in memory, as a writer of the terms around which this activity revolved, he was very much a part of the process of making these legal terms Japanese. Mitsukuri described how recently radical concepts such as "right" and "obligation" had fallen asleep in the language, as it were—how they had become normative terms.66 In using the terms of international law for Japan, legal theorists, policy writers, interpreters, diplomats, journalists, and others rendered terms such as "sovereignty" and "independence" commonplace. Mitsukuri's admonition to the young students who "use[d] these words with ease" brings into relief a landscape in which terms that totally transformed political interaction in Japan had become customary within twenty years.

Before moving on to the next chapter to consider how Meiji diplomats transformed international terms into Japanese practice, by way of closure here it is instructive to think about the government's official measure of itself vis-à-vis such terms at the outset of the twentieth century. Beginning in 1874, the

44 Slapan's Colonization of Korea

Japanese Foreign Ministry began publishing an English-language compilation of its activities—treaties, agreements, protocols—that it conducted with the Powers. By all measures, the book was a dry, chronological compendium that made a convenient reference book for foreign legations or students interested in developments in the "far" end of the world. By 1899, the preface to the fourth edition recounted the text's history, as well as self-consciously indicat­ing how far the Japanese government believed it had come: "In order to afford an easy opportunity to consult the Conventional Agreements regulating for­eign intercourse of this Empire, a volume containing the Treaties and Conven­tions concluded between Japan and other Powers was first published by this Department in 1874; a revised edition was issued in 1884 . . . and the latter publication was followed by a supplementary volume in 1899."67 The promot­ers of Japan's newly expanding place in the world clearly defined Japan among the Powers by referring to them as the "other" ones. Meiji leaders had made international terms Japanese in practical application and law; such terms enabled Japan to conclude new trade treaties with England and Germany, for example, and they confidently displayed the transformation abroad.

CHAPTER 3

THE VOCABULARY OF POWER

'For centuries, a shared knowledge and practice of kanji had facilitated offi­cial relations in what is now called the East Asian world. When the Meiji gov­ernment chose to engage Japan in international terms, however, it ruptured this order. Politicians and diplomats went beyond scholars' word lists and dic­tionaries and entrenched the terms in practice. They made these international terms legal precedent.

During the final years of the Tokugawa regime, the United States and the European nations bound Japan with the so-called unequal treaties. As histo­rians have long explained, these treaties mirrored similar arrangements else­where and granted extraterritorial privileges for foreigners in Japan. Some Meiji statesmen accepted these arrangements as a temporary condition, but others decried them as an affront to national dignity. Most political biogra­phies and general histories of this period make it clear that debates over treaty revision preoccupied the generation running the country.' From the perspec­tive of international terms, because the Powers imposed conditions that restricted Japanese sovereignty through these treaties, Japan was not a full subject in international law. All of the Japanese texts on international law at the time quoted Henry Wheaton's basic explanation: "states which are thus dependent on other States, in respect to the perfect external sovereignty, have been termed semi-sovereign States'2 Evocative of the privileges that still ben­efit members of the U.S. military in many places around the world, for exam­ple, extraterritorial privileges at the time meant that certain foreigners in Japan (Americans, French, English, Germans, Dutch, and Russians, for exam­ple) were not subject to Japanese law. According to the logic of the day, this

45

46 gapan's Colonization of Korea The Vocabulary of Power 47

provision strongly indicated that members of the international arena did not consider Japan civilized enough to fully belong in their sphere.

Examining pressing debates in Japan at the time from the vantage point of international terms reveals a significant yet underappreciated historical trans‑

formation. The ability of Meiji state aggrandizers to engage Japan wholly as a

fully sovereign state in the international community depended heavily on its newly chosen discourse of power. From 1868 onward, policymakers used these

terms successfully vis-à-vis the Powers, eradicating the remaining tendrils of extraterritoriality by 1911. Not coincidentally, during the same forty-year period—Japanese leaders also relied on international terms to rewrite policy within Asia. In particular, Meiji rulers used these terms to forge the path to Japan's annexation of Korea in 1910.

The intellectually volatile atmosphere of the early Meiji period prevailed when Japan embarked on its mission to redescribe the country's place in the world. Scholars did not yet agree on translations for even the most funda­mental terms, and the statesmen required tutors at almost every step of poli-cymaking. An example from a preliminary stage in Japan's new relations with Korea brings this condition into relief. The 1876 Treaty of Kanghwa estab­lished Japanese settlement areas in Korea. Needless to say, Koreans did not calmly accept these unprecedented incursions. In 1882, in an incident known in Korean as the Imo Gullan, several hundred unpaid and unfed Korean troops protested the Japanese presence in Seoul, as well as the Korean court's failure to pay its soldiers, killing some twenty Japanese soldiers and setting fire to the Japanese legation building.

Meiji Council of State members Ito Hirobumi and Inoue Kaoru consulted the government's French legal scholar, Gustave Boissonade, on how best to respond according to international law.3 Several years earlier, the Japanese ambassador to France met Boissonade and invited him to Tokyo to advise scholars and policymakers in drafting new legal codes. 4 Soon after his arrival, Boissonade's role broadened, and politicians and law students alike came to rely on him as an encyclopedia of civilized and modern European legal prac­tice. In 1882, Boissonade answered ItO and Inoue's questions in a series of memoranda that explained the nature of relations between what he termed "unequal states?'

Ukawa MorisaburO, a student of French language and French law, trans­lated Boissonade's notes for Ito and Inoue. Ukawa's efforts reveal the wordy sediments that often collected in official documents, as scholars and diplo­mats wrote new terms within the same legal and diplomatic procedures that explained their meanings. For example, Boissonade's "Opinion Concerning the Korean Incident" defined the rules for contracting with "semi-tributary states" (han zokku). In his translation, Ukawa juxtaposed the spelling of a kata-kana word, shusurenti (transliterating the French suzerainté from Boisson-ade's original), next to the kanji compound, kankatsuken. In another essay, however, suzerainté was written into katakana as shüzurenute, and kankatsu-ken had become jOkuni no kankei (relations with a higher/superior country).' French words such as violation, reparation, and annexation were transliterated into katakana and either printed next to kanji or left as is. In most cases, the names of the translators remain unknown, but their creations reveal the prac­tical possibilities of one of the era's most challenging intellectual fields.

In stark contrast to the confusion of the early 1880s, little more than thirty years later, in 1905, R6—now special ambassador to Korea—recounted in international terms his version of Japan's recent history in Asia.6 On the eve of establishing Japan's protectorate relations with Korea in November 1905, ItO summoned Korean cabinet ministers to his hotel room in Seoul and, according to the Japanese Foreign Ministry's record of the moment, gave the following lecture:

Diplomatic relations between East and West have developed remarkably, especially in this region, and diplomatic techniques [gaikojutsu] have also made great progress. The days of indulging in dreams of closed ports are over. Those dreams inevitably invited a country's ruin. As you are all aware, Korea is no longer a Chinese tributary state.... In the eigh­teenth year of Meiji [1885], I went to Tianjin entrusted with [Japan's] mission and succeeded in establishing Korea's [new] status. Although [China] formally altered [the status of] its notorious Korean depen­dency system, it continued to harbor intentions of restoring Korea as its tributary state in name and in reality. . . . At the time, I explained that should China act according to those wishes and return Korea to depen­dency status, it ought not to have voiced fears that other countries would annex Korea. I firmly advocated your country's independence, and in the end I attained it and dashed China's ambitions.

Fully aware that the international arena sanctioned Japan's increasing rule of Korea, Ito did not miss this chance to slight what he knew the Powers per­ceived of as the Koreans' inability to govern themselves. He drew attention to Korea's domestic turmoil of the 1890s and described how Japan had then acted as what the international community might call a "friend" of Korea:

48 Slapan's Colonization of Korea The Vocabulary of Power 49

In the twenty-seventh year of Meiji (1894), the Tonghak disturbance occurred in your country, and China could not pass up this opportunity. In the name of suppressing this disturbance, China attempted to fulfill long-cherished desires [of conquest] by dispatching large numbers of troops to your country. The result of which was the origin of the dis­pute between Japan and China. China's defeat in war brought about the Bakan [Shimonoseki] Peace Treaty in which we established Korea's sta­tus as independent.

Having redefined the Sino-Japanese War as the Korean War of Independence, ItO explained that Japan was dragged into its recently victorious war with Rus­sia for similarly humanitarian principles:

Russia grew more aggressive . . . and made a grab for Korea besieging by land and sea. Watching Russia try to annex the peninsula, who became alarmed for the sake of your country? For the fate of the Orient [tOyo]? It was Japan. Japan took up arms and sacrificed life and property.

Deftly precluding the issue of whether the Koreans had any say in what was happening, ItO concluded that the current events were faits accomplis, a style endemic to the discourse of enlightened exploitation. Japan was on the verge of robbing Korea of its international existence, and ItO explained this process as not just inevitable but as already having taken place. Again in the circular logic of this discourse, Japan's establishment of Korea as its protectorate was made legitimate before it happened: "So now, the preservation of your coun­try's territory—a result of our victory in that war—manifests the state of things as well as the opinion of the world. As the territory of Korea is now wholly preserved, and the peace of the Orient restored, we will encourage the progress of peace into perpetuity. We accept the mandate from your country [to take over Korea's] foreign affairs because there will be increasing interrup­tions in the future of the Orient?'

As narrated by Japan's greatest statesman of the day, the country's recent and future international history was that of a nation with an intimate near-past with Korea, both as its victorious liberator and benevolent protector. Before turning to ItO's encounter with Korean officials at the time, I will exam­ine how he and other Meiji politicians and scholars practiced their new "diplo­matic techniques" (gaikojutsu) during the late nineteenth century to enable Japan to arrive with such confidence at this moment. Meiji state aggrandizers negated the old regional order during this period, and they did so in the fully legal terms of enlightened exploitation.

Although the unequal-treaty debates ostensibly revolved around Japan's stat­ure vis-à-vis the Western world, by engaging in international terms, Meiji state-theorists demonstrated their determination to rewrite Japanese policy in a way that did not distinguish between the Western world and Asia. As a result, other important debates taking place at the time naturally became entangled with Meiji politicians' overarching obsession with treaty revision. In particu­lar, what came to be known as the Conquer Korea debates of the early 1870s rivaled the passions over the unequal treaties. Examining the outcome of these debates through the lens of international terms makes it possible to see how Meiji leaders measured the world around them.7 These politicians' new poli­cies toward Korea reveal how international terms formed the basis of Meiji Japan's worldview, an important point to remember when considering that Japan ultimately colonized Korea in the open and with the approval of the global community.

Not unusually, domestic problems fanned the fires of many foreign policy debates in Meiji Japan. In the early 1870s, resentment by some participants in the overthrow of the Tokugawa, who had failed to gain powerful positions in the new government, compounded with other dissatisfactions and climaxed over the Meiji decision to strip former samurai of their right to bear arms. In the Conquer Korea debates, some of these disgruntled participants took advantage of a diplomatic dispute—in fact, a terminological dispute—to advocate for war against Korea.

The dispute arose when the Korean king refused to acknowledge the new Meiji regime and its emperor because, in the region's traditional relations, Korea recognized only China's emperor as the "son of heaven?' (The Tokugawa shogunate had avoided this problem because its "shogun" contracted with Korea's "king' ranks the Chosón court viewed as compatible and beneath China's emperor.) The famous revolutionary SaigO Takamori declared Korea's rebuff a greater affront than the unequal treaties with the West, and he urged war with Korea—a war that would enable him in midlife to again wield arms.

In his late forties, Iwakura Tomomi was also arguably an elder, serving in a government comprised of mostly very young men. He opposed SaigO and rushed home from his renowned world tour to prevent SaigO from acting. Iwakura's opposition to his fellow revolutionary firebrand was not because he

50 fJapan's Colonization of Korea The Vocabulary of Power 51

agreed with Korea's refusal to recognize the legitimacy of the Meiji ruler. Rather, to stop Japan from going to war, Iwakura and his fellow travelers—Okubo Toshimichi, Kido Takayoshi, Okuma Shigenobu, and ItO Hirobumi—cut short their famous world odyssey, known as "the Iwakura Mission" (1871­1873), because in Europe they had learned firsthand the material conditions substantiating the furious rhetoric of the Great Game.8 They visited Western parliaments and congresses wherever they traveled and also inspected the militaries and industries interwoven with the Great Game debate, confirming what they had imagined before their tour and learning much more. They returned to prevent Japan from starting a war abroad with Korea because they knew that such action might invite military intervention by colony-hungry Europe, an intervention their young government's disorganized infrastruc­ture could not match.

The participants of the Iwakura Mission learned without a doubt that Japan needed a mass military to maintain its claim to sovereignty, but they also redoubled their sense of the importance of describing Japan as a sovereign power in international terms. As part of his contribution to the debate over treaty revision with the West, even before he left for Europe, Iwakura prepared a document, entitled "Opinion Paper on Diplomatic Relations' in which he decried the inequity of the treaties that "disgraced the Japanese Empire."' He asserted, "We should not endure the affront. We must expand our sovereignty {kokken] ?' 10 The world tour of imperialist debate that Iwakura and his com­rades experienced only intensified Iwakura's convictions. Obsession with treaty revision did not, however, efface the nearer "Korea problem?' as it was often called. Because the problem arose during discussions of how to create a wholly new international policy for Japan, the drafters of Japan's Korea policy made these policies compatible with those that Japan would maintain with the rest of the world. At a practical level, Meiji's foreign policy authors articulated policies toward Korea that were fluent with general policies they wrote with the international arena.

In February 1874, discussing the humiliation that the Meiji government continued to endure as the Korean court still refused to recognize it, states­men and recent world travelers Okubo Toshimichi and Okuma Shigenobu issued the joint "Protocol Concerning the Sending of Emissaries to Korea?" The authors detailed several new diplomatic policies. They drew specific attention to the Soryokan, the trade office in Pusan, which had been known throughout the Tokugawa period as "Japan House" (Wakan/Waegwan) and, as far as Japanese records were concerned, had been under the Tsushima dai-myo's control.12 Two years before they wrote their report, the Meiji govern­ment renamed and assumed control of this building and its functions. As Okubo and Okuma explained, the Soryokan should be viewed as "an exten­sion of our country's sovereignty [kokken]. It occupies the land for one office, it protects [ hogo] the officials and secures trade routes."" The trading center had existed for centuries, but the new government emphasized how they now controlled it, and they redefined it in new terms to manifest Japan's national, sovereign rights.

At the same time, however, Meiji leaders became increasingly impatient with conducting negotiations from this office in Pusan and finally determined to establish a base in or near Seoul. In September 1875, in a maneuver remi­niscent of Saigo Takamori's offer early in the Korea debates—to get himself killed at the Korean court in order to provoke war—the Japanese warship Un'yo sailed uninvited into the waters around Kanghwa island, off the western coast near Seoul. The Un'yo sailed close enough to sustain the shelling that legitimated under international law Japan's subsequent invasion of Kanghwa, slaughter of Korean soldiers, and decimation of the buildings there. Japan's official History of National Defense (KokubOshi) records the incident as the Imperial Navy's first engagement in foreign waters.14

Arguably, therefore, gunboats opened modern diplomatic relations in Korea just as they had in Japan.S In the wake of the Un'yo adventure, ItO, Inoue Kaoru, and others consulted Gustave Boissonade—several years prior to the incident described at the outset of this chapter—before orchestrating the diplomatic talks that followed the warship's maneuver. Having only just arrived in Japan, the French scholar laid out a comprehensive Korea policy for Japan. Boissonade suggested three primary objectives the Meiji government should secure in its upcoming negotiations: (1) establishment of a trading port outside of Pusan, at Kanghwa; (2) unimpeded travel of Japanese ships in Korea's waters; (3) apology for the Kanghwa incident.16

In a separate memorandum, Boissonade listed eight more points the Japa­nese government should consider concerning the establishment of "the inde­pendent status of the Korean king" in order to declare his and Korea's "sover­eignty" (kunshuken and kunshukuni).17 The French advisor focused on the problem of international "diplomatic custom" (rendered as both kosazijo and, more phonetically, jzipuromachi kku no shudan) , in which only sovereign states could contract with one another. According to Boissonade, Japanese policy‑

52 fJapan's Colonization of 'Korea The Vocabulary of Power 53

makers faced particular difficulty in this matter because, "in relation to China, Korea is neither completely a vassal state [shinzoku no kuni], nor is it com­pletely independent [dokuritsu no kuni]—it holds a position in the middle." 8

He further stressed that the delegation to Seoul should make clear that the powers of the Tsushima daimyo—the SO family—no longer, existed. "As far as the government of Korea was concerned, His Imperial Majesty's government will succeed the SO's rights and trading privileges." 19 To align their new Korean policy with the standard of international law, Meiji policywriters had to con­tract with the Chosón court as a "sovereign' "independent" entity. They also had to impress upon the Koreans that, beginning with the SoryOkan in Pusan, the new Japanese government-controlled areas of trade and intercourse in Korea were the spaces of legal contact with Japan. Boissonade's explanations were crucial. He instructed Meiji Japan's new inscribers of international law in its rules as they implemented its terms, helping them to naturalize the terms in practice as Japan's discourse of power.

The military threat issued by the United States to Japan in the 1850s, and in turn mirrored by Japan to Korea twenty years later, sped up and determined the shape of the countries' respective trade negotiations. The terms of the treaties themselves, however, bound Japan to the United States and Korea to Japan in ways more enduring than the threat of imminent military attack. In 1876, Kuroda Kiyotaka commanded three warships and three transport ships with more than 800 men into the same waters that the Un'yo had entered, demanding that Korea begin new diplomatic relations with Japan.20 Photo-graphs of the Takao, Nisshin, and MOshun anchored in the waters off Kanghwa Island are jarringly similar to the sketches published in 1854 of the Susque­hanna, Mississippi, Saratoga, and Macedonia under Matthew Perry's com-mand.2' Echoing the terms that the United States and other Powers imposed on Japan two decades earlier, Japan legitimated its subsequent course of action in Korea according to the standards followed by the colonizing nations of the world.

The purpose of Kuroda's 1876 mission to Korea, as Perry's had been in Japan, was not to wage war but to establish trade relations. Numerous mem­bers of varying rank from Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Colonial Ministry accompanied the soldiers and sailors.22 As Kuroda and his entourage waited to learn whether the ChosOn court would receive them in Seoul, some of Japan's lesser emissaries had occasion to discuss the proposed treaty with their Korean counterparts. On 2 February 1876, Moriyama Shigeru, a secre­tary from the Foreign Ministry, recorded the minutes of a conversation he had earlier that afternoon in Incheon with Yuri ChasUng, aide to the ChosOn gov­ernment representative Sin Hon.23 He noted that Urase Hiroshi was present as interpreter.24 Like Perry to the shogunal officials in Shimoda, Moriyama emphasized to Yuri that Korea would surely incur the enmity of the "nations" (bankoku) should its government refuse to trade; he also threatened Yuri with the wrath of Russia, America, and France.25

Moriyama explained that only by concluding this treaty with Japan as an "independent" and "sovereign" country could Korea survive.26 The surety with which Moriyama recalled his words suggests the confidence with which he might have uttered these new expressions during his actual meeting. In response to a question about the meaning of "sovereign' he remembered say­ing that, "More than the fixed expression 'emperor' [kö] or 'king' [a], the ruler is the sovereign [kunshu] of a country. The sovereign of a country namely makes it an independent [country]. And when you call [the country] indepen­dent, both emperor and king have comparably equal rights [dötOhiken]."27 Moriyama wrote that Yuri then asked how this concept would be written into formal state correspondence and that he (Moriyama) obliged by writing out the following equation for him:

DaiNipponKokuKoteiChisha ChosenKokuaKezfuku

ChOsenKokuöDenka DaiNipponKokuKateiHeika

At face value, the moment between Moriyama and Yuri reveals an informal way that diplomats wrote new international terms into practice. The moment also indicates, however, the Meiji government's deeper objective of extracting Korea from the long-standing sadae (lit., "serving the greater") relations with China, which prevented Korea from being the fully independent nation needed by Japan for making treaties. According to the legal theory that Japan wanted to practice in the region, only such independent states could freely conduct relations with each other; or, as many scholars understood and trans­lated Henry Wheaton's terms into Japanese, only such independent nations could that "govern [themselves] independently of foreign powers."28

During the official negotiations several days after the conversation between Moriyama and Yuri, Japanese diplomats wrote their new terms into practice and precedent for relations with Korea. Japan's envoy Inoue explained to Sin and Yuri that the proposed treaty meshed with a larger international order, and that although the terms might be new to them, the treaty derived its legitimacy from this greater mean. According to the minutes, when Yuri asked to see the

54 Yapan's Colonization of Korea The Vocabulary of Power 55

treaty, Inoue responded that he had written the treaty in Japanese (kokubun) but that he would request a translation from the Office of Translation.29 Inoue

assured Yuri that "this treaty makes your country independent [jishu] as well.

It relies on the precedent of customary exchange among nations and is based on the just ways of the world [tenchi no kodo]?' Next, the transcript credits the translator Urase Hiroshi with explaining the treaty "point by point' where‑

upon Sin requested a Chinese text of the treaty.30 Quibbling began about whether it sufficed merely to attach a translation of the treaty to the final ver­sion, until Kuroda interrupted and reiterated Inoue's claim of the "precedent" of international law and "the just way of the world ."3' Both Inoue's and Kuro-da's remarks may seem mechanistic, but their statements point to the new way in which the Meiji government ordered its world, a way that allowed its rep­resentatives to define Japan's policies as both a departure from past practices and rooted in international precedent.

The Meiji delegates explained the treaty's terms to the Korean representa­tives before and during the sealing of the treaty, but as far as Korea's traditional relations with China were concerned, Japan's attempt to designate Korea inde­pendent at this time was not particularly successful. Sin responded by saying, "Until now, our country has conducted exchange only with your country. We had no trade with foreign countries, and for this reason we are unfamiliar with the laws of exchange among nations [bankoku kOsai no h6]."32

Despite whatever remained "unfamiliar" to the Korean men, two weeks later, on 26 February 1876, Kuroda and Inoue sealed the Treaty of Peace and Friendship with Sin and Yun.'3 Only independent governments could initiate and conclude treaties with each other according to international law, and the treaty's first clause announced that "Chosen being an independent state enjoys the same sovereign rights as Japan" (ChOsenkoku wa jishu no ho ni shite Nihon-koku to byOdO no ken wo hoyü seri). (In the official translation, quoted here, the Japanese expressions jishu and ken wo hoyü were used to embody the con‑

cepts of "independence" and 34 The terms with which the

Japanese government declared Korea independent, however, reveal various tensions pulling at Japan's desire for power. They also show some of the prob­lems that could arise from relying on older kanji to express new concepts. The literal translation for Japan's choice for independence in this document—

jishu ( )—expresses the idea of "self-rule?' The term did not, therefore,

threaten the existing practice of Korea's homage to the Chinese court, a rela­tionship that permitted Korea the privilege of administering itself. 3-1 As sub­sequent efforts by Japanese negotiators and politicians reveal, however, the

Japanese did ultimately locate a term for independence that dislodged Korea from tributary status as well as leaving the country susceptible to new forms of domination.36 Nevertheless, Japan declared Korea an "independent nation" in the Treaty of Kanghwa, displaying that the Meiji regime had begun to con­duct even its regional relations according to international law.37

Of equal significance, and in the fashion of emergent colonizers around the world, the Japanese government simultaneously impinged on the inde­pendence that it declared for Korea. Defined by Japan, Korea's new indepen­dence allowed Japan to establish a colonial outpost in Korea, a privilege inde­pendent Japan could contract only with independent Korea. Article 5 of the treaty designated two "treaty ports" at Incheon and Mokpo, in addition to the area around the SOryOkan, in Pusan, where Japanese laws would prevail. Arti­cle 10 introduced the term "extraterritoriality" (jigaiho) to the Korean penin­sula, ensuring that Japanese soldiers and businessmen would not be subject to Korean laws. Despite Japan's assertions of power, however, the treaty agreed to the condition that "official correspondence" from Japan to Korea would continue to arrive with Chinese translations attached, and also that Korea's communications to Japan would continue to be written in Chinese. Although pleased with the success of the treaty, Meiji state aggrandizers knew their dis­course would not be a powerful currency in the region until China acknowl­edged Japan's newly chosen terms as meaningful.

DIPLOMATIC TECHNIQUE

In 1885, during diplomatic negotiations with China in the port city of Tian­jin, Meiji envoys resolved a stronger means to dislodge the old order—a con­trast to Japan's 1876 accession, which permitted Korea to rely on Chinese translations in order to make its interactions comprehensible in the Asian region. In a remarkable example of what he would later call "diplomatic tech­nique' ItO Hirobumi negotiated the Tianjin Convention in 1885 in English. ItO spoke in a radically different language from anything that had ever been used before in diplomacy between Japan and China. English was the language of countries with which both Japan and China had difficulties at the time (England and the United States). In short, English was not a comfortable choice for anyone at the talks, but it was the European language ItO knew best. By speaking English, Ito confirmed Japan's desire to change forever the order of the regional discourse of power. Had ItO spoken in Japanese and attempted to use Japan's new Chinese character terms for "independence" or "sover‑

56 gapan's Colonization of Korea The Vocabulary of Power 57

eignty' for example, Chinese negotiators could have dismissed Japan's use of the kanji as meaningless misinterpretations of the characters' true meanings—

as defined by them. Brush-talking was useful, but the Chinese were its cham‑

pions. Articulating the same concepts in a wholly alien language allowed inter­national terms to retain their distant authority. Thus, English made the terms

nonnegotiable. Ito demonstrated that the national language in which the new concepts were uttered—he used English in this instance, and in the future others would use Japanese—did not matter as much as the relations that sus­tained their meaning. In so doing, ItO trumped the Chinese at their own long-held game.

The need for the high-level meetings in Tianjin in 1885 arose from an impasse over how to resolve what Japanese and Chinese representatives euphemized as "the latest disturbance in Korea." On the evening of 4 Decem­ber 1884, Kim Okkyun, PakYOnghyo, and Hong Yöngsik led members of their "progressive faction" (the Kaehwa'pa, also sometimes referred to as the "pro-Japan faction") in a coup attempt against the Min faction at the court in Seoul. Takezoe Shinichirö, the Japanese representative in Seoul, promised Kim that should his men go forward with their attempt to rout the pro-China Mm group, 200 Japanese troops would back him up. After the coup began, how­ever, Takezoe quickly forgot his promise, and the coup failed horribly. During the ensuing mayhem, Takezoe not only fled for Japan with some of the pro­gressives but also set fire to the Japanese legations in Seoul to cover his tracks. Chinese, Korean, and Japanese soldiers shot in all directions, inflicting casu­alties on all fronts. The Yi court (with China's backing) denounced Takezoe and accused Japan of trying to overthrow the legitimate Korean government. Foreign Minister Inoue failed to reach an agreement with Korea in Seoul, so the Meiji government decided to send a delegation to the Chinese court. In late February 1885, as Ambassador Extraordinary, ItO embarked on negotiation of what was arguably modern Japan's first disarmament treaty.38

The negotiations in Tianjin resulted in a rare text prepared for the Meiji emperor, unusual not because it was bilingual (Japanese-English) but because it was largely the Japanese half that was translated.39 The author of the Report (most likely ItO Hirobumi's aide, Ito Myoji) created a playbook-like volume, transcribing the minutes of ItO Hirobumi's meetings as perfect dialogue and noting the closure of each day almost with a curtain cue. Descriptions abound, for example, of the men adjourning to dinner parties or to their quarters. Ito and Li Hongzhang held six meetings throughout April 1885, but the Report noted ItO's daring diplomatic technique of speaking English only once at the beginning of the first day: "The Minutes of the Conversation that follows, as well as those of subsequent ones, were taken down in English and afterwards translated into Japanese by Mr. Ito Miyoji.1140

The men's conversation ensued, with ItO Hirobumi playing "The Ambas­sador" and Li Hongzhang as "The Vice-Roy":

The Ambassador: (He spoke in English).

The Vice-Roy[sic]: (He spoke in Chinese and his remarks were inter­preted by Mr. Rahoroku in English. )41

Also only once on that day (and the only time in the proceedings) was there any indication that the Chinese representatives even acknowledged the unusual skill of ItO's maneuver:

The Vice-Roy: I must ask Your Excellency to be patient and conciliatory, and not cast upon me too much difficulty (smiling).

The Ambassador (to Rahoroku, the interpreter): I will proceed to make a general statement of the points of my negotiation, through my Chi­nese interpreter and so I will not trouble you for the moment.42

In fact, Ito's action did not completely take the Chinese negotiators by sur­prise. They had been notified ahead of time and brought along their own English-language interpreter. Before these negotiations, however, Chinese diplomats had never brought English interpreters to meetings with the Japa­nese. They brought Japanese interpreters or no interpreter at all. The ingenu­ity of ItO's technique was made even greater by his not dwelling on what he was doing, that is, by simply performing the negotiations in English and writ­ing his actions into practice.43

More than anything, ItO wanted to conclude a treaty with China in inter­national terms, but he continued to acknowledge China's position of power in the region. Following a month of talks, Ito and Li wrangled over how to pre­pare the final form of their agreement:

The Vice-Roy: All other modifications in your draft are very insignifi­cant. Now I can agree to this draft.

The Ambassador: Very well. I have no objection to any of them, they are nothing but modifications of composition that do not affect the meaning at all. So, we mutually agree to the draft.

The Vice-Roy: Now I have to consult with Your Excellency about the details of this Convention. When we enter into a treaty or convention

58 Slapan's Colonization of Korea The Vocabulary of Power 59

with a foreign Power, it is customary with my Government that the Chinese text is prepared by our hands, leaving the preparation of the other text to the Plenipotentiary of the foreign Powers, with whom we are treating. So, in this case you have to prepare the Japanese text.

When Li asked about the meaning of the second article in a draft of the treaty, Ito responded:

It simply means the right of war that every independent nation enjoys.

Thus, the present arrangement cannot effect in any way our right of waging war according to the Law of Nations. That clause may be modi­fied thus: "It is understood that the right of warfare according to the Law of Nations, shall not be affected?'44

Unlike the Korean representatives at the Kanghwa negotiations, the Chi­nese negotiators could not and did not plead ignorance of these rules. After all, two decades earlier Shigeno Yatsusugu had translated his text of international law from the Chinese government's version. Throughout the negotiations in Tianjin, however, Chinese diplomats insisted Japan must continue to recog­nize China's long-standing relations with Korea:

There is a striking difference between the position of Japan and that of China towards Corea. To China, Corea is a tributary state and has the obligation to report to her every matter that takes place in her country. But Corea has nothing more than a treaty obligation towards Japan.45

At Kanghwa, Japanese delegates named Korea independent. Ten years later, the Japanese envoys in Tianjin had no gunboats with which to reinforce their demands. The new terms that ItO wanted to write into practice, to equate Japan and China in independent state relations with Korea, had to be ignored or designated differently.

One of the very few discrepancies between the English and the Japanese in the Report is useful to mention here, in light of ItO's dilemma about describ­ing China vis-à-vis Korea. In the midst of the conversation over the final ver­sion of the treaty, the author included the following parenthetical note in the Japanese section:

The modifications in wording [included] changing Dai Shin Koku [the Great Qing Realm] to Chugoku [the Middle Kingdom, China] and deleting the Dai [Great] from Dai Nippon Koku [the Great Japanese Realm] in the first clause. . . . As there was no difference in meaning, this does not appear in the English written text.46

The author was not devious. There is no substantial difference in the English meaning. Throughout the English version of the Report, the names China and Japan are used. In Japanese, however—consonant with Chinese—Chugoku is a different name for China from Dai Shin Koku, one that transcends dynastic labels without getting entangled in the name of a particular ruling family. Importantly, though, Chugoku posits the centrality of China vis-à-vis the realms surrounding it according to its woridview, countries including Japan, Korea, and Vietnam. The term the Japanese wanted to use—Dai Shin Koku—would have made the name for the country read more like the one they wanted to use for Japan—Dai Nippon Koku. The Japanese lost their gambit in this instance to de-center China in Chinese characters, but, as the author of the Report noted, it did not matter internationally for those who would read this text in English, "as there was no difference in meaning?'

Throughout the twentieth century, English operated as the higher author­ity in numerous state-level diplomatic treaties in Asia.47 Although the Meiji government's decision to introduce English into its diplomatic arsenal sheds light on the subtle connection between words and power, it is a connection that has remained surprisingly undervalued. From a balance-of-power per­spective, the treaty negotiations in Tianjin were not about words but about the net reduction of troops in Seoul. And yet, China's position in the region to define law held only tenuously, because the Japanese cemented their new terms to effect even without soldiers present.

A decade later, in 1895, meetings held in Shimonoseki to sign a peace treaty concluding the Sino-Japanese War (1894-1895) confirmed that ItO's diplo­matic technique at Tianjin had transformed international relations within the kanji world for good. The fact that, at the end of the nineteenth century, China concluded treaties in English with delegates from London or Washing­ton (or any European capital for that matter) could be argued (although somewhat paranoiacally) to be a means of protecting the regime's interests from the "cheating barbarians" and their foreign words. Even if accurate, such an understanding would not explain how this practice came to order relations among places that shared a mutually communicable past. On 17 April 1895,

ItO Hirobumi and Mutsu Munemitsu sat on Japan's side of the table, and Li Hongzhang and Li Qingfang sat on China's, to sign the peace treaty of Japan's

first modern war. The treaty stipulated that an English translation be attached to the Japanese and Chinese texts, and article two of a protocol note further announced, "Should any differences in interpretation arise between the Japa­nese and Chinese texts, we agree to sanction the aforementioned English version." 48

60 rJapan's Colonization of Korea The Vocabulary of Power 61

The influential historian of Japanese imperialism W. G. Beasley mentioned in passing that an English text was agreed to at Shimonoseki, but he explained that "as a matter of national dignity it was the Chinese and Japanese texts that were signed."49 By downplaying the importance of the linguistic maneuver, Beasley appears to consider the Japanese action inevitable or insignificant. In doing so, however, Beasley unwittingly naturalizes the use of English onto the larger plane of international relations where it is now, of course, wholly unre­markable to know and conduct relations in English.

In addition, Akira Iriye, the well-known historian of U.S.—Japan relations, has also belittled the significance of Japan's strategy. Instead, Iriye focuses on the fact that because Japan's delegate Mutsu Munemitsu could "read and com­prehend what the Chinese delegate Li Hung-chang wrote in Chinese. . . the episode revealed not so much a cultural sharing as a cultural dependence on China even while its military might was proving superior. Mutsu's example, which can be multiplied, suggests that no matter how much one was influ­enced by Western civilization, Chinese learning was still considered the pre‑

requisite for Japanese 50 Of course, Chinese learning was essential for

educated Japanese—it remains impossible today to work effectively in govern­ment in Japan without knowing thousands of Chinese characters—but ItO's insistence on using international terms underscores Japan's shift to a non-Chinese referent of order. The discursive technique performed at Shimono­seki yielded a prize less concrete than the 200 million taels China paid Japan in indemnity for the war, but the prize set the terms of international relations within the kanji world for the twentieth century.

KOREA IN LEGAL TERMS

Between February 1904 and August 1910, the Japanese government wrote a variety of diplomatic agreements and policies with Korea that gradually erased the existence of the country. In November 1905, the Meiji emperor's envoys in Seoul usurped the Korean government's ability to conduct diplomacy. In the summer of 1907, ItO overthrew Emperor Kojong and paraded his son, Sun-jong, as Korea's new emperor. In short, Japan wholly gutted Korea's sover­eignty by the time it announced the formal annexation in 1910. And, most importantly, it had done so in legal terms.

In 1895, the Treaty of Shimonoseki redeclared Korea's independence when Japan and China agreed to recognize an "independent Korea." 51 By this time, the kanji for the recently alien term, dokuritsu, had gained currency in Japa­nese, Chinese, and Korean. Moreover, two years later, on 12 October 1897, the king of Korea renamed his country Great Korea (TaeHan) and himself its emperor (hwang'che). In doing so, the new emperor Kojong made official what members of various progressive groups had been working toward for more than a decade. He made the concept native practice in Korea when he announced, "The foundation of independence has been created and the right of sovereignty exercised' Historian Andre Schmid argues that with Kojong's proclamation, "The source of sovereignty rested unambiguously within the peninsula. In his first edict as emperor, Kojong reversed a five-century-long tradition" of tributary relations with China.52 The declaration emanated from within Korea and equated Korea with China and Japan in the terms of inter­national law. On 22 August 1910, however, the Japanese government used terms of the same discourse to execute a reverse technique that assumed Japan's complete and internationally legitimated sovereignty over Korea.

On 16 November 1905, the day before the Japanese seized control of Korea's foreign relations, Ito called Korean cabinet members together in his hotel room in Seoul. "I advocated your country's independence' he lectured, and "in the end, I attained it.... [But] we accept the mandate from your coun­try [to take over Korea's] foreign affairs because there will be increasing inter­ruptions in the future of the Orient.

'53 Korean Prime Minister Han Kyustll objected. "Korea's independence' Han said, "should be based on the country's own strength, yet we could count on Japan's aid and protection [fuchihogo] ." Education Minister Yi Wanyong quieted Han and said what ItO wanted to hear. "Japan" Yi countered, "has fought two wars over the Korea problem.... [By]

crushing Russia. . . the time has come for us to choose [Japan] Agricultural

Minister Kwön Chönghyun speculated that, if Korea were to lose its "inde­pendence in both name and reality," such a condition would be "worse [for Korea] than when Korea was a Chinese tributary state." Ito replied, "Your country does not have the necessary ability for its own independence. You haven't surpassed a false [state of] independence." 15 ItO's remark pointed to the prevailing and legally encoded view of the day, which historian Prasenjit Duara has explained as follows: "The right to maintain empire [as a] nation was centrally dependent on the ability to demonstrate that the colonies con­tinued to remain non- nations." 56As Japan redefined Korea as quasi-"inde­pendent' Korea became again such a "non-nation' and Japan inscribed its right to empire.

Unlike the Yi representatives in 1876 at Kanghwa, who pleaded that Korea was "unfamiliar with the laws of exchange among nations' the conversation

recorded thirty years later between ItO and the Korean ministers displays how commonplace working notions of international law had become in Korea as

62 rJapan's Colonization of J(orea The Vocabulary of Power 63

well. When Ito declared, "With the establishment of the second Japan-Britain Alliance [1905] and the Japan-Russia Peace Treaty, this [agreement] is the next step in recognizing Japan's position towards Korea. The world powers will not consider such a proposal from Japan at all irregular," Han Kyusiil again took exception: "Korea is on the verge of death, gasping for breath. The one thread of our remaining days exists in conducting foreign relations for ourselves. When you mandate our diplomacy to your country, we will submerge in despair as you sever our lifeline [to the outside] ?'57

Han, however, spoke into the wind in facing Japan's declaration to protect

Korea. Although Japan positioned itself as the definer of international rela­tions in Asia when it defeated China in 1895, the Powers paid much more

approving attention when it beat Russia in 1905; and when it came to Korea, they pretty much gave the Japanese free reign with regards to international terms. 58

Japan achieved victory against Russia by early spring 1905, and the now well-known "secret agreement" made shortly thereafter, between U.S. Secre­tary of War William Howard Taft and Prime Minister Katsura TarO, displays a mutual ease with discussing Japan's policies in the region through the dis­course of enlightened exploitation. A secretary at the Foreign Ministry cabled an English text describing the 27 July 1905 meeting to Komura JUtarO, Japan's head delegate to the upcoming talks in Portsmouth, New Hampshire:

Secretary Taft observed that Japan's only interest in the Philippines would be, in his opinion, to have these islands governed by a strong and friendly nation like the United States. .. . Count Katsura confirmed in the strongest terms the correctness of his views. . . . In regard to the Korean question Count Katsura observed that Korea being the direct cause of our war with Russia, it is a matter of absolute importance to Japan that a complete solution of the peninsula question should be made as a logical consequence of the war... Secretary Taft fully admit­ted the justness of the Count's observations and remarked to the effect that, in his personal opinion, the establishment by Japanese troops of a suzerainty over Korea to the extent of requiring that Korea enter into no foreign treaties without the consent of Japan was the logical result of the present war and would directly contribute to the permanent peace of the East.59

Katsura's agreement with Taft was concluded in an amorphous space, similar to the hotel room where Ito described Japan's plans to Korean ministers the following November. The agreement revealed that Japan's ultimate usurpation

of Korea would read legitimately in the terms of international law. In other "secret" talks the following week, Japan updated its 1902 friendship agreement with Great Britain and traded India for Korea in the process.60

Japan's determination to make Korea a protectorate before annexing it out­right was not an unusual practice in imperialist politics. In light of the fact, however, that all the world (except Russia) was applauding Japan's actions in Korea, it is noteworthy that Japan even bothered to follow this cautious path instead of simply annexing the country right away, as it had Taiwan in 1895 after defeating China. Japan's decision to establish the protectorate arrange­ment underscores the Meiji leaders' determination to describe its Korea policy in internationally recognizable terms. At the same time, I believe it indicates apprehension about exceeding potential limits the Powers might have set for Japan's privileges there.

In 1895, Japan did not hesitate to annex Taiwan, but it failed to secure what was arguably the bigger prize—the Liaotung peninsula on mainland China—when Russia, Germany, and France demanded Japan's return of territory to Chinese control, in what is known as the "Triple Intervention?' Japan's defeat of Russia in 1905 drew much greater international attention than Japan's vic­tory over China in 1895, because at the height of the politics of the "white man's burden' a "nonwhite" nation defeated a "white" one—a victory John Dower has described as "stunning" to the Powers.6' With intense focus from an international audience, therefore, Japan's domestic turmoil directly result­ing from the war with Russia presented a delicate political situation in Tokyo. The Hibiya Riots manifested the collective indignity stemming from Russia's refusal to pay Japan the customary indemnity due to the victor under inter­national law. These riots were directed generally at the huge price Japan had paid for its victory: hundreds of thousands of dead Japanese soldiers, military arsenals voided, and almost the entire budget of the country wasted, bringing about conditions of hyperinflation in rice prices, Japan's staple food. And more, Japan failed to gain the full international stature many thought Japan deserved. It is likely that the Meiji government's hesitation to annex Korea outright stemmed from fear that should the international arena reject such a move—as it had the 1895 attempt to take part of mainland China—Tokyo's leadership would fail to withstand the domestic turmoil that might follow.

Japan's discursive steps to describe its Korea policy in the international arena, therefore, deserve more consideration than they have been given in the past. Moreover, examination of these actions may usefully redirect entrenched positions concerning Korean colonization. Several historians have noticed Japan's anxiety over terminology when the country ultimately annexed Korea

64 gapan's Colonization of Korea The Vocabulary of Power 65

in 1910, but they have done so at the expense of examining a similar preoccu­pation over declaring the protectorate in 1905. In the field of Japanese impe‑

rialism studies, these historians have generated a prevailing view that Japan

did something unusual or even sneaky in 1910 when it used an oblique kanji expression (heigo) to define the annexation of Korea. This scholarly suspicion

has occasional contemporary political ramifications—for example, when South Korean opinion makers denounce Japan's colonial period as "illegal' asserting that Japan hid its policies by using a term unknown at the time in the kanji world. The scholarly and politicized lines of reasoning collapse, how­ever, in considering the terms of 1905 and 1910 together, revealing that Japan did not act treacherously, but rather that it acted imperialistically and with the approval of the international arena.

Hilary Conroy was one of the first historians to examine the importance Japanese state aggrandizers gave to naming the colonization of Korea. He assessed Japan's choice of terms for the annexation (heigo) in light of Pan-Asian thinkers and their involvement with the takeover.62 In his elaboration, Conroy relied on a pamphlet written in 1939 by a former secretary at the For­eign Ministry, Kurachi Tetsukichi, who claimed to have coined the term specif­ically for the Korean annexation: "Having newly invented the word heigo, I did not stress it too much, knowing there would be argument about jt."63

Conroy credited Kurachi as having "undoubtedly had the inside story on heigo, since he composed it himself" 6 This explanation does not hold, but I want to be clear that I am not seeking to debunk Conroy's source for its own sake. In his analysis, Conroy himself mentioned four terms Japan could have used to designate the takeover of Korea: gappo, gappei, heidon, and heigo. The term gappo, however, did not surface in Kurachi's recollection of the terms: "Korea was to come completely to Japan and there would be no treaties between Korea and other countries. [However,] the word heidon (annex, devour, swallow up) was too aggressive for use, so after various considera­tions I thought out a new wording, heigo, which until that time had not been used. This was stronger than gappei, meaning that the other's territory should become part of Japan's."65

Conroy believed that the Japanese should have chosen the term gappo (merger, amalgamation), because it embodied to him the "ideological basis of the partnership between Japanese reactionaries and their friends' In Conroy's view, the Foreign Ministry's term heigo circumvented what he saw as the real nature of the relationship between Japan and Korea.66 In 1939, Kurachi prob­ably had a spotty memory of the history of Japan's takeover of Korea. The 1905 protectorate agreement—not the 1910 treaty—ended the Korean gov­ ernment's ability to make treaties between Korea and other countries. Kura-chi's failure to consider the term gappO, however, led Conroy to conjecture that Kurachi was "perhaps too well educated to appreciate the meaning of gappo,

at least the way the reactionaries used it'67 Despite his well-documented importance of Asianist thinkers to the colonization of Korea, Conroy con­ceded that because his then-contemporary English-Japanese Kenkyüsha dic­tionary (the Webster's of Japanese) did not list gappo for "annexation' the official elision suggested that the government—its well-educated members—

"ran the annexation show." 68

I agree with Conroy that the Foreign Ministry designated the particular term it wanted to use, but I am not convinced that the government used the

term heigo because its functionaries were well bred. In 1906, Ariga Nagao, the

most famous scholar of international law in Japan at the time, published a book entitled A Treatise on Protectorate Countries (Hogokokuron) immediately

following Japan's designation of Korea as its protectorate.69 In this mammoth

work, Ariga discusses a wide range of colonial forms and uses the term heigo to describe the annexations of South Africa and Monaco.70 Ariga also quotes

Jules Ferry's speech concerning future French policy in northern Africa, again

using the term heigo to explain the debate over whether France should annex Tunisia.71 It is entirely possibly that Ariga himself did not coin the term heigo

in 1906, but the expression he used to translate the policies of other imperial‑

ist countries surfaced in Japan four years prior to his country's annexation of Korea. Rather than believing that the Foreign Ministry's secretary, Kurachi,

coined a new term for the takeover of Korea that was purposefully vague, I believe it much more likely that the Foreign Ministry chose this term in 1910 because they knew it already resonated in international meaning.

In his recent discussion of Japan's "penetration" of Korea, Peter Duus rewords Conroy's conclusions and focuses on the importance of understand‑

ing the "annexation" as "amalgamation?' Duus's emphasis moves away from

Japanese creativity, however, and toward a loosely worded suspicion that the Japanese government knew it was concealing its intentions: "Indeed the term

heigo is probably not best translated as 'annexation which implies adding one thing to another; it really means 'amalgamation a process of merger rather than accretion. The colonial takeover, legitimized as an act of reunion, was thus hidden behind a façade of putative commonality between the domina­tor and the dominated [emphasis mine] ?'72

I have emphasized the word "really" in Duus's quotation to underscore how he posits the idea of mistranslation as more significant than what the Japa­nese bureaucrats actually produced at the time. Despite a repertoire of cob‑

66 rlapan's Colonization of Korea The Vocabulary of Power 67

nial "annexation" treaties in English, French, and German, and despite the Meiji government's official English publication of the Annexation Treaty in

1910, Duus contends that the Japanese version "hid" the term's intended meaning. Pushed further, such reasoning necessitates seeing Japanese impe­rialist effort as intrinsically different from American and European standards For Duus, the Japanese term for annexation really meant something else: amalgamation. From an alternative standpoint, however, the particular term actually used might reveal that the Meiji regime defined Japan's actions to the world in a way that intersected with terms used by other nations. Both Con­roy and Duus (though Duus more explicitly so) have argued that the Japanese government's designation of the Korean annexation as heigo was strange, and that the term shielded a deeper meaning. But how is it that only European and American colonial "annexations" were normally defined, whereas the Japanese effort was a façade?

The international terms of enlightened exploitation blurred the rationale of colonial domination with numbing consonance around the world, demon­strated by Ariga's publication on protectorates the year after Japan's open theft of Korea's foreign affairs. Begun as an arcane academic inquiry, the discussion of the terms of imperialist politics developed into a full-blown scholarly debate in the wake of Japan's new powers in Korea. Moreover, such discussion suggests that because Japan did not shield its intentions in Korea in 1905, it was unlikely to hide them all of a sudden in 1910, when there was more inter‑

national approval for Japan's policies. The term hogo/poho (1 "protect")

appears in both Japanese and Korean versions of the 1905 agreement, which is now known commonly in Japanese as the "protectorate agreement," and in Korean by the corresponding calendrical year name, Ulsa.73 The term itself had a long history within the kanji world, denoting military or police control of a particular place or group. In the 1876 Kanghwa Treaty, Japan used the term to refer to the protection of its new legation and troops in extraterrito­rial settlements in Korea. In 1905, however, policymakers gave the term new meaning by translating a recognized element of enlightened exploitation—the "protectorate"—into Japanese practice. In addition to redefining hogo in this diplomatic agreement, the Japanese Foreign Ministry invented a wholly new term—tokanfu—to explain the form of colonial rule it would pursue in Korea. The Japanese version of the agreement transliterated the term in katakana—although it did not explain it in the Korean version—as Rejidento Generaru (Resident General, as in the French regime in Morocco) to designate its new branch of government in Seoul.

Ito Hirobumi assumed the post of Japan's first Resident General in Korea, and many scholars who have maintained a rosy glow for ItO argue that he never intended to "annex" Korea. Such logic blends into a larger line of argu­ment that places blame for the annexation squarely onto Japan's notorious Pan-Asianists and their amalgamation plans.74 According to this reasoning, Ito was content with the protectorate agreement. 'Whether ItO would ever declare Japan's rule of Korea an "annexation" can never be known, because Korean patriot An Chunggun assassinated him in 1909, a year before annex­ation took place. Personally, I believe that ItO wanted to rule Korea under any name; but regardless of the timing of his death, what can be known is that ItO presided over the total erasure of Korea's sovereignty during his rule there (1905-1909). In early 1906, he formally ascended to the position of Resident General, a new rank that ItO himself defined as answerable only to the Meiji emperor, thus legally marking the start of the Japanese colonial rule of Korea.

Like the early Meiji theorists and translators who tutored politicians step by step in foreign policymaking, scholars at the beginning of the twentieth century introduced the concept of the protectorate into Japanese practical usage, bringing into relief the conjunction of academic inquiry and policy-making. The broad readership these late Meiji scholars enjoyed, however, shows the exponential growth of their studies into a disciplined field in a half-century's time. Theorists of Japan's new place in the world worked as their predecessors had—as advisors to particular politicians—but they also pub­lished best-selling books, which well-informed Japanese subjects rushed to purchase.

Moreover, these efforts of scholars in the late Meiji era underscore the importance of the laws of war in international terms of engagement at the time, and also how such words interrelated with power at the outset of the twentieth century. Considering these scholars' work in international and domestic contexts further demonstrates the new naturalized order of nations in Asia at the time Japan annexed Korea in 1910. Ariga Nagao's fellow legal scholar, Takahashi Sakue, wrote a best-selling book the year before the Russo-Japanese War, entitled A Treatise on International Law during Peacetime (Heiji Kokusaihöron) (1903), in which he elaborated upon protectorate arrange-ments.75 The book became such a standard that it was reprinted at least ten times. Throughout the text's thousand pages, Takahashi quoted from English, French, German, and Chinese sources and referred to numerous British, con­tinental European, and American authors and historical examples. In straight­forward (albeit bone-dry) prose, Takahashi explained aspects of the "protected

68 flapan's Colonization of Korea The Vocabulary of Power 69

state/the protectorate" (hihogokoku) in sections entitled "Partially Sovereign States" and "Rights of Occupying Territory."76 Although such a publication might seem wholly unremarkable now, it is important to remember that only half-a-century earlier, the Japanese revolted against the Tokugawa regime for negotiating in the barbarians' terms, and the government often had difficulty finding anyone to explain them.

As Ariga made even clearer in his text on protectorates, these scholars' per­sonal encounters with the Powers' use of such terms gave unequivocal author­ity to their research. Similar to the members of the Iwakura mission who trav­eled to Europe in the early 1870s and found European parliaments embroiled in the Great Game, when Ariga visited Paris in the late 1890s his trip coin­cided with what he described as a "clamorous debate about protectorate countries." 77As a result, he wrote that he was able to purchase "a mountain of pamphlets, books, and treatises" concerning France's forays into Madagas­car to use for a book of his own on the legal principles of protectorate arrange­ments that would include Japan.78 Furthermore, he noted that he collected materials on European policies towards Bosnia-Herzegovina and Cypress for a future study of "mandate territories" (inin töchi), not coincidentally the term that would soon define Japan's interests in Manchuria.

During the 1890s, Ariga and Takahashi gained not only domestic authority but also substantial international reputations. A brief examination into how they became Japan's articulators of international terms to such widespread audiences reveals the intrinsic relationship between such terms and how power was measured. Historians of modern Japan have long held that the country's victories against China and Russia at the turn of the century were the touchstones for proving Japan's power to the world, and it is also useful to consider how Meiji leaders described these wars.79 Japan's engagement in the laws of war was an equally vital component to securing the country's foothold among the colonial powers: in short, international terms defined Japan's vic­tories as legal. In 1894, when Japan declared war against China, then—Prime Minister ItO summoned Ariga to advise him. Ariga had studied law in Ger­many and at the time was a professor of international law at the Army War College in Tokyo, Japan's West Point.80 Because he was widely considered to be the country's most respected scholar of international law, ItO questioned him about the legality of Japan's declaration of war.8' Defining Japan's first mod­ern war according to the just-warprinciple required technique from a thinker most familiar with its terms, and ItO knew to seek out Ariga because he was teaching a course on the laws of war to young officers headed to battle. Ariga's explanation so impressed the prime minister that Ito dispatched him to the battlefield on 16 October 1894, to act as ongoing advisor to the commander of the Second Army, Minister of War Oyama Iwao.82 Throughout the winter, Ariga elucidated Oyama and his staff on questions of the legality of Japan's battles in Xinjin, Lushun (Port Arthur), and Weihai.

Immediately following the war, Ariga described his experiences in a sur­prisingly popular book.83 What was even more surprising, however, was that Ariga's book—like Ito's text for the Meiji emperor on the Tianjin talks, which was first written in English—was written and published in French in the first version of the text, with the Japanese text for domestic consumption appear­ing several months later.84 Creating the perception that Japan fought a just war with China required displaying the war in terms that made sense to Great Power consumers, but Ariga made sure that the Japanese text mirrored the French. From the opening line of both versions of his book, Ariga made it clear to readers that understanding the war in terms of law was simple: "The important point in the conflict between Japan and China . . . lies with the nations themselves, one did not observe the laws and customs of war, whereas, the other, on the contrary, enforced their respect as strictly as possible."85 Moreover, he assured his readers that the "ignorant Chinese" failed entirely to understand international law. Although some Japanese soldiers were unschooled in the finer points of international law, the commanders of Japan's military ki-iew "to practice benevolent and humanitarian policies unparalleled even in the wars of Western stateS?'86 Ariga served both as advisor to military commanders, explaining when it was legal to fire, and as propaganda scribe, detailing the army's actions as legitimate in international terms, which was a critical dimension in measuring the connection between words and power.

Ariga's books were not official government records, but his terms helped engender the perception of Japan as the legal nation in Asia, especially because he explained the war to a European audience. Significantly, during one of the first battles of this war—Japan's first modern war abroad—Japanese soldiers butchered people on the streets and in their homes in Lushun (Port Arthur). The army massacred Chinese civilians to such a degree that historian Inoue Haruki has recently suggested this moment eerily foreshadowed the horrors later and more famously remembered from Shanghai and Nanjing in the 1930s.87 The chaos in Lushun in 1894 caused a small stir in British and Amer­ican newspapers at the time, but the prevailing, so-called informed opinion quieted criticism, assessing that Japan acted according to the laws of war and defining China negatively in the same terms. Ariga's colleague, Takahashi,

70 rlapan's Colonization of !Korea The Vocabulary of Power 71

wrote his own description of Japan's legal engagement in this war—in English —in which he used his experience as advisor to Japan's navy to explain the war record according to prevailing international standards. Moreover, and ulti­mately perhaps to more effect than Ariga's work, Takahashi secured renowned Oxford legal scholar John Westlake to write an introduction to his text. Despite the known horrors in Lushun, Westlake had only praise for Japan's conduct: "In her recent war with China, [Japan] displayed both the disposition and the main ability to observe western rules concerning war. . . . Japan [thus] pre-sent[ed] a rare and interesting example of the passage of a state from the oriental to the European class.

"88

Like many of his fellow Japan-boosters in England, Westlake drew his conclusions without firsthand observation or, in fact, without any knowledge of what was occurring other than what the newspapers reported or what acquaintances—Japanese and not—told him. Not unusually, he learned of Japan through its national promoters such as Takahashi, people who could explain Japan's new international actions in terms that already made sense, and so he praised Japan's actions as a result. And, with far-reaching ramifica­tions, the late-nineteenth-century idea of describing wars as legal according to an international standard spread around the world along with imperial­ism, defining through its terms the countries and peoples at war as legitimate or not.89

Westlake's conflation of evolutionary success with the ability to perform international law—Japan's "passage" to the "European class"—demonstrates how the notion of a legal nation took form and shaped itself into a preced­ing-setting woridview. Moreover, the image of Japan-as-specimen reveals the upward route amidst the hierarchy of the world's people as presumed in inter­national law. A decade later, Japan's victory against Russia rapidly propelled the country up the great chain of being, and an illustration from Tokyo Puck printed during the final weeks of that war suggests the extent to which such reasoning was ingrained in Japanese audiences.90

In Figure 2, five men crowd around a table scattered with laboratory equip­ment, and one of the men (perhaps Russian) intently holds a pipette filled with liquid poured from a nearby bottle. The Imperial Navy's flag and the charac­ters for Dai Nippon (Great Japan—like Great Britain) appear on the bottle label. While the men scrutinize the vial, John Bull and Uncle Sam approvingly look on with a gaze, which I think resonates with Euro-American treatment of Japan much later in the century as "miraculous" and "enigmatic." 91

Despite Ariga's international reputation and predilection, he made it clear that he placed ultimate value on making the discourse of international terms in Japan normative in Japanese. In the preface to his book on protectorates, he stressed that, "although [he] culled facts from foreign countries to write [his book,]" he used "comparative examples from Japan to make the points read­ily understood ."92 He placed Japan's endeavors on equal footing with other imperialist powers and challenged his readers in the book's opening line, "Should Korea be declared Japan's protectorate?" 93Ariga did not let them think too long and answered right away: "My purpose for readers has been to develop a fair and uniform consideration of the question, What is a protec­torate?' and also to create a solid foundation for future Korea policy. In the coming years, I hope to make 'protectorate' a common expression.

'94

In the orderly fashion of a good social scientist, Ariga delineated four clas­sifications of protectorates (with examples for each) and detailed the legal principles and respective positions of each classification according to interna­tional law. He determined that the agreement made between Japan and Korea on 17 November 1905, was a "protectorate treaty, validly [yükO] concluded as expected' and he defined Korea in his second class of protectorates. 91 This type, Ariga explained, "does not fully manage its sovereignty by itself. Instead,

Image

FIGURE 2. "Japan's Enigmatic Passage to the European Class' an illustration from Tokyo Puck

72 Japan's Colonization of 1(orea The Vocabulary of Power 73

in place of the protected state, the protector state manages diplomatic and military rights." 96 In a section entitled, "Korea's Rights of Dignity' however, Ariga seemed to want to mollify the effects of the protectorate by writing, "Korea essentially possesses its sovereignty. . mandating only a little portion to Japan."97 Although ambiguous at times, Ariga offered lengthy legal expla­nations of Japan's policy, broadly situating Japan's control of international terms—in addition to its control of Korea—as a form of knowledge.

Indicative of the growth of the academic field of international law, Ariga's hypotheses and, in particular, his placement of Korea in that scheme did not go unchallenged. Tachi SakutarO reviewed Ariga's book in the October 1906 issue of Diplomatic Review (Gaikö Jiho), the international affairs journal that Ariga had started in 1898.98 Unlike Ariga, who learned international law amid everything else new to early Meiji Japan, Tachi could specialize in interna­tional law as a student at Tokyo Imperial University because this discipline had come into existence by his time.99 Tachi reviewed his mentor's work by first assessing the basic aims of Ariga's book and noting in praiseworthy terms that "Professor Ariga's love of learning cannot be separated from his consid­erations of matters of state." 100 Tachi grew critical, however, as he questioned Ariga's classification of protectorates into four groups. He wondered whether, for example, "The native people of India, the third kind [of protectorate], or those in Africa, the fourth kind.. . should not be counted among the first kind of protectorate country?" He also challenged Ariga's unsophisticated grasp of lofty theoretical issues. 101 Finally, Tachi zeroed in on Ariga's vague use of the terms "sovereignty" and "independence" and criticized him for "having lapped up the dregs of European and American scholars." 102 Ariga did not ignore Tachi's review, and a pointed debate between the two continued for the next several months in the pages of Diplomatic Review, the Journal ofInternational Law (KokusaihO Zasshi), and the Journal of the Association of Political and Social Sciences (Kokka Gakkai Zasshi). Neither scholar altered his position much (Ariga maintained, for example, that "while Korea is independent in name . . . it is not an ordinary independent country"), but ironically their squabble only served to strengthen Ariga's initial purpose: to make the term "protectorate" become a common expression.103 As the two argued about Korea's legal status, their debate confirmed the understanding that Japan's foreign policy read fluently in terms of a larger, global praxis.

Although none of the Powers officially challenged Japan's declaration of the Korean protectorate agreement, in 1906 Parisian legal scholar Francis Rey wrote an article for the Revue Générale de Droit Internationale Public con­ demning Japan's deplorable behavior in forcing the Korean government to sign the protectorate agreement.104 Rey declared that, because the Japanese diplomats had physically and mentally harassed the Korean emperor and had failed to obtain his signature to the agreement, they had violated the interna­tionally sanctioned method of concluding treaties. "Because of the particular circumstances in which it was signed' he wrote, "we do not hesitate to affirm that the treaty of 1905 is null." 105 Rey also expressed disappointment in Europe's far-off protege. "It must be regretted' he wrote, "that Japan's protec­torate over Korea, organized according to the rules admitted in the practice of civilized States, has in its origin a violation of rights. . . . This act constitutes the primary defect in policy on the part of Japan." °6

As described above, Tachi Sakutarö questioned Ariga Nagao's methodology and sloppy diction, not the legality of the protectorate system. Similarly, Rey declared Japan's agreement "null" because of aggressive behavior, not due to the illegality of colonization. The debate over Japan's actions in Korea revealed the success of the Meiji policymakers' larger project of placing Japan legally among "the civilized States."

A 1908 American assessment of Japan's relations with Korea voiced what I believe was the prevailing international opinion at the time and commented on the protectorate arrangement in the wake of the incident at The Hague in 1907, when Koreans had tried to disobey the conditions of this arrangement. Yale professor George Trumbull Ladd wrote what can really only be described as a paean to ItO Hirobumi—In Korea with Marquis Ito—in which he made the following judgment of 1905: "If all treaties made under such conditions may be repudiated.. . the peace of the world cannot be secured or even pro­moted by any number of treaties." 107

The text of Japanese-Korean relations between 1904 and 1910 became legal precedent through the terms "admitted in the practice of civilized States' a practice which did not necessitate that Japan act in a morally justifiable man­ner or in any way different from the actions of other, so-called civilized states. That the imperialist nations justified their actions as legitimate in these terms is precisely what calls the terms themselves into question, along with the lega­cies of their practice in the postcolonial world of the present. The following chapter examines this problem further and considers how Meiji officials restricted various individuals who tried more directly and more daringly than Rey to call into question Japan's use of international terms.