The passing of Korea/Introductory
The Passing of Korea
INTRODUCTORY
THE PROBLEM
THERE is a peculiar pathos in the extinction of a nation. Especially is this true when the nation is one whose history stretches back into the dim centuries until it becomes lost in a labyrinth of myth and legend; a nation which has played an important part in the moulding of other nations and which is filled with monuments of past achievements. Kija, the founder of Korean civilisation, flourished before the reign of David in Jerusalem. In the fifth century after Christ, Korea enjoyed a high degree of civilisation, and was the repository from which the half-savage tribes of Japan drew their first impetus toward culture. As time went on Japan was so fortunate as to become split up into numerous semi-independent baronies, each under the control of a so-called Daimyo or feudal baron. This resulted, as feudalism everywhere has done, in the development of an intense personal loyalty to an overlord, which is impossible in a large state. If one were to examine the condition of European states today, he would find that they are enlightened just in proportion as the feudal idea was worked out to its ultimate issues, and wherever, as in southern Europe, the centrifugal power of feudalism was checked by the centripetal power of ecclesiasticism one finds a lower grade of enlightenment, education and genuine liberty. In other words, the feudal system is a chrysalis state from which a people are prepared to leap into the full light of free self-government. Neither China nor Korea has enjoyed that state, and it is therefore manifestly impossible for them to effect any such startling change as that which transformed Japan in a single decade from a cruel and bigoted exclusiveness to an open and enthusiastic world-life. Instead of bursting forth full-winged from a cocoon, both China and Korea must be incubated like an egg.
It is worth while asking whether the ultimate results of a slow and laborious process. like this may not in the end bring forth a product superior in essential respects to that which follows the almost magical rise of modern Japan; or, to carry out the metaphor, whether the product of an egg is not likely to be of greater value than that of a cocoon. In order to a clear understanding of the situation it will be necessary to follow out this question to a definite answer. The world has been held entranced by the splendid military and naval achievements of Japan, and it is only natural that her signal capacity in war should have argued a like capacity along all lines. This has led to various forms of exaggeration, and it becomes the American citizen to ask the question just what part Japan is likely to play in the development of the Far East. One must study the factors of the problem in a judicial spirit if he would arrive at the correct answer. The bearing which this has upon Korea will appear in due course.
When in 1868 the power of the Mikado or Emperor of Japan had been vindicated in a sanguinary war against many of the feudal barons, the Shogunate was done away with once for all, and the act of centralising the government of Japan was complete. But in order to guard against insurrection it was deemed wise to compel all the barons to take up their residence in Tokyo, where they could be watched. This necessitated the disbanding of the samurai or retainers of the barons. These samurai were at once the soldiers and the scholars of Japan. In one hand they held the sword and in the other a book; not as in medieval Europe, where the knights could but rarely read and write and where literature was almost wholly confined to the monasteries. This concentration of physical and intellectual power in the single class called samurai gave them far greater prestige among the people at large than was ever enjoyed by any set of men in any other land, and it consequently caused a wider gulf between the upper and lower classes than elsewhere, for the samurai shared with no one the fear and the admiration of the common people. The lower classes cringed before them as they passed, and a samurai could wantonly kill a man of low degree almost without fear of consequences.
When the barons were called up to Tokyo, the samurai were disbanded and were forbidden to wear the two swords which had always been their badge of office. This brought them face to face with the danger of falling to the ranks of the lower people, a fate that was all the more terrible because of the absurd height to which in their pride they had elevated themselves.
At this precise juncture they were given a glimpse of the West, with its higher civilisation and its more carefully articulated system of political and social life. With the very genius of despair they grasped the fact that if Japan should adopt the system of the West all government positions, whether diplomatic, consular, constabulary, financial, educational or judicial, whether military or civil, would naturally fall to them, and thus they would be saved from falling to the plane of the common people. Here, stripped of all its glamour of romance, is the vital underlying cause of Japan's wonderful metamorphosis. With a very few significant exceptions it was a purely selfish movement, conceived in the interests of caste distinction and propagated in anything but an altruistic spirit. The central government gladly seconded this proposition, for it immediately obviated the danger of constant disaffection and rebellion and welded the state together as nothing else could have done. The personal fealty which the samurai had reposed in his overlord was transferred, almost intact, to the central government, and to-day constitutes a species of national pride which, in the absence of the finer quality, constitutes the Japanese form of patriotism.
From that day to this the wide distinction between the upper and lower classes in Japan has been maintained. In spite of the fact of so-called popular or representative government, there can be no doubt that class distinctions are more vitally active in Japan than in China, and there is a wider social gap between them than anywhere else in the Far East, with the exception of India, where Brahmanism has accentuated caste. The reason for this lies deep in the Japanese character. When he adopted Western methods, it was in a purely utilitarian spirit. He gave no thought to the principles on which our civilisation is based. It was the finished product he was after and not the process. He judged, and rightly, that energy and determination were sufficient to the donning of the habiliments of the West, and he paid no attention to the forces by which those habiliments were shaped and fitted. The position of woman has experienced no change at all commensurate with Japan's material transformation. Religion in the broadest sense is less in evidence than before the change, for, although the intellectual stimulus of the West has freed the upper classes from the inanities of the Buddhistic cult, comparatively few of them have consented to accept the substitute. Christianity has made smaller advances in Japan than in Korea herself, and everything goes to prove that Japan, instead of digging until she struck the spring of Western culture, merely built a cistern in which she stored up some of its more obvious and tangible results. This is shown in the impatience with which many of the best Japanese regard the present failure to amalgamate the borrowed product with the real underlying genius of Japanese life. It is one constant and growing incongruity. And, indeed, if we look at it rationally, would it not be a doubtful compliment to Western culture if a nation like Japan could absorb its intrinsic worth and enjoy its essential quality without passing through the long-centuried struggle through which we ourselves have attained to it? No more can we enter into the subtleties of an Oriental cult by a quick though intense study of its tenets. The self-conscious babblings of a Madam Blavatsky can be no less ludicrous to an Oriental Pundit than are the efforts of Japan to vindicate her claim to Western culture without passing through the furnace which made that culture sterling.
The highest praise must be accorded to the earnestness and devotion of Christian missionaries in Japan, but it is a fact deeply to be regretted that the results of their work are so closely confined to the upper classes. This fact throws light upon the statement that there is a great gap between the upper and lower classes there. Even as we are writing, word comes from a keenly observant traveller in Japan that everywhere the Buddhist temples are undergoing repairs.
It is difficult to foresee what the resultant civilisation of Japan will be. There is nothing final as yet, nor have the conflicting forces indicated along what definite lines the intense nationalism of the Japanese will develop.
But let us look at the other side of the picture. Here is China, and with her Korea, for they are essentially one in general temper. They cling with intense loyalty to the past They are thoroughly conservative. Now, how will you explain it? Some would say that it is pure obstinacy, a wilful blindness, an intellectual coma, a moral obsession. This is the easiest, and superficially the most logical, explanation. It saves time and trouble; and, after all, what does it matter? It matters much every way. It does not become us to push the momentous question aside because those people are contemptible. Four hundred millions are saved from contempt by their very numbers. There is an explanation, and a rational one.
One must not forget that these people are possessed of a social system that has been worked out through long centuries, and to such fine issues that every individual has his set place and value. The system is comprehensive, consistent and homogeneous. It differs widely from ours, but has sufficed to hold those peoples together and give them a national life of wonderful tenacity. There must be something in the system fundamentally good, or else it would not have held together for all these centuries with comparatively so little modification.
We have seen how the Japanese were shaken out of their long-centuried sleep by a happy combination of circumstances. There are doubtless possible combinations which might similarly affect China and Korea, but the difference in temperament between them and the Japanese renders it highly improbable that we shall ever see anything so spectacular as that which occurred in Japan. No two cults were ever more dissimilar than Confucianism and Buddhism; and if we were to condense into a single sentence the reason why China and Korea can never follow Japan's example it would be this: that the Chinese and Korean temperament followed the materialistic bent of Confucianism, while the Japanese followed the idealistic bent of Buddhism.
Now, what if the West, instead of merely lending its superficial integuments to China and Korea, should leave all the harmless and inconsequential customs of those lands intact, and should attempt instead to reach down to some underlying moral and fundamental principle and begin a transformation from within, working outward; if, instead of carrying on campaigns against pinched feet and infanticide, we should strike straight at the root of the matter, and by giving them the secret of Western culture make it possible for them to evolve a new civilisation embodying all the culture of the West, but expressed in terms of Oriental life and habit? Here would be an achievement to be proud of, for it would prove that our culture is fundamental, and that it does not depend for its vindication upon the mere vestments of Western life.
And herein lies the pathos of Korea's position; for, lying as she does in the grip of Japan, she cannot gain from that power more than that power is capable of giving - nothing more than the garments of the West. She may learn science and industrial arts, but she will use them only as a parrot uses human speech. There are American gentlemen in Korea who could lead you to country villages in that land where the fetich shrines have been swept away, where schools and churches have been built, and where the transforming power of Christianity has done a fundamental work without touching a single one of the time-honoured customs of the land; where hard-handed farmers have begun in the only genuine way to develop the culture of the West. That culture evinces itself in its ultimate forms of honesty, sympathy, unselfishness, and not in the use of a swallow-tail coat and a silk hat. Which, think you, is the proper way to go about the rehabilitation of the East? The only yellow peril possible lies in the arming of the Orient with the thunder-bolts of the West, without at the same time giving her the moral forces which will restrain her in their use.
The American public has been persistently told that the Korean people are a degenerate and contemptible nation, incapable of better things, intellectually inferior, and better off under Japanese rule than independent. The following pages may in some measure answer these charges, which have been put forth for a specific purpose,—a purpose that came to full fruition on the night of November 17, 1905, when, at the point of the sword, Korea was forced to acquiesce "voluntarily" in the virtual destruction of her independence once for all. The reader will here find a narrative of the course of events which led up to this crisis, and the part that different powers, including the United States, played in the tragedy.