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CHAPTER 10
JAPAN IN KOREA
JAPAN is indeed a wonderful land. Nothing in history has quite paralleled her rise during the last fifty years. Her progress has been remarkable alike in war, in industry, in statesmanship, in science. Her admirals and generals, her statesmen and administrators, have accomplished feats with which only the greatest feats of the picked men of corresponding position in Europe and the two Americas during the same time can be compared — and in order to match in the aggregate these great men of a single island nation, more than one of the countries of the Occident must be drawn on.

Among the Japanese administrators of high note is Count Terauchi, and among Japan's many feats of consequence is her administration of Korea. Count Terauchi is the Governor-General of Korea — Chosen, as the Japanese term it — and he has just compiled and published at Seoul (Keijo) a report on the "Reform and Progress in Chosen" ^$or the years 1912-1913. It is in English; and no book of the kind recently issued is better worth the study of statesmen and of scholars interested in every kind of social reform. Moreover, its study is of capital consequence .from the standpoint of those who recognize the importance of bringing home to our people the knowledge of the admirable and masterly achievements of the Japanese in the difficult task of colonial administration.

In its essence the work that has been done in Korea under Count Terauchi is like that done under similar conditions by the chief colonial administrators of the United States, England, France and Germany. Korea as an independent nation could not keep order at home and was powerless to strike an effective blow on her own behalf when assailed from abroad. She had been dominated by Russia, so that all obligations of foreign powers to help her keep her independence had lapsed long before the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese war; and under the circumstances her subsequent domination, and, in 1910, her final annexation by Japan was inevitable. The Japanese have restored and enforced order, built roads and railways, carried out great engineering works, introduced modern sanitation, introduced a modern school system and doubled the commerce and the agricultural output, substantially as the most advanced nations of Europe and America have done under like conditions.
All of these matters and many others—such as the administration of justice, the founding of industrial and agricultural banks, the establishment of government experiment farms, the revenues, the government monopoly in ginseng and salt manufacture, the charitable institutions— are treated in full in the volume before me, and in addition to the letter-press there are numerous first-rate photographs.

One of the interesting touches in the book is that describing the way tourist parties of Koreans are formed to visit Japan and study its advanced systems of agriculture, industry and education. The visits are generally timed so as to see a national or some local industrial exhibition. Tourist parties of Korean countrymen often visit the capital, Keijo, with a similar educational purpose. The Japanese are endeavoring to introduce their language, culture and industry into the country, and are taking very practical steps to introduce the Koreans to the high modern civilization of the new rulers of the land.

One of the great works done by the Japanese in Korea has been in reforesting the country. This has been carried on in the most scientific manner—a manner, I regret to say, smacking more of German efficiency than of any large-scale forestry process in our own country. Over five million trees have been planted, the best European models serving as examples. Arbor Day has been instituted, and is celebrated just as in various states of the American Union, the school children being especially interested. But, with their usual wisdom and far-sighted, practical good sense, the Japanese officials not only adopt anything foreign that may be useful, but also develop anything native that can be made more useful. The provincial governments have devoted much energy to the revival of an ancient Korean guild, the Songkei, which had for its object the promoting of interest in pine forests. All kinds of interesting contrasts between the very old and the very new are brought out incidentally; as, for example, the trouble of the health authorities with the Korean "grave geo-mancers," and their efforts to substitute the hygienic practice of cremation for burial.

An excellent instance of the kind of foresight which ought to be imitated in the United States is the action taken in protecting whales. Whaling on the east coast of Korea is very lucrative; but the whales have been over-fished; and the government has now established a close season, has prohibited all whaling outside certain areas, has limited the number of vessels that can be employed, and has forbidden the capture of mother whales accompanied by their young.

All this of which I speak is only to indicate what the volume tells of Japanese administration in Korea. To describe it fully, and to comment on it with knowledge, would need an expert. I am writing as the merest layman. My purpose is simply to call attention to the matter. It is to be wished that the Japanese society would repub-lish the volume and make it generally accessible.

But the chief lesson it teaches is one which by rights our people ought already to know well. Japan is as advanced and civilized a power as the United States or any power in Europe. She has as much to teach us as we have to teach her. In true patriotism—for there is no such thing as true patriotism that does not include eager and foresighted desire to make one's country able to defend herself against foreign attack—Japan is far ahead of us. There is no nation in the world more worthy of admiration and respect. There is no nation in the world with which it is more important that the United States should be on terms of cordial friendship and absolutely equal mutuality of respect.

Japan's whole sea-front, and her entire home maritime interest, bear on the Pacific; and of the other great nations of the earth the United States has the greatest proportion of her sea-front on, and the greatest proportion .of her interest in, the Pacific. But there is not the slightest real or necessary conflict of interests between Japan and the United States in the Pacific. When compared with each other, the interest of Japan is overwhelmingly Asiatic, that of the United States overwhelmingly American. Relatively to each other, one is dominant in Asia, the other in North America. Neither has any desire, nor any excuse for desiring, to acquire territory on the other's continent. With the exception of the Philippines, which the present Administration has definitely committed the United States to abandon in the near future, the insular possessions of each clearly appertain to their respective continents; Hawaii is almost as much American as Formosa is Asiatic. Neither has any interest in the Pacific Ocean itself except to keep it as a broad highway open to all. . Each is a good customer of the other. Each has something to learn from and something to teach the other. Each has every interest in preserving the friendship of the other. For either to incur the hostility of the other would in the end turn out to be a folly, a calamity unrelieved by the slightest benefit. It may almost be said that the farsightedness and intelligence of any citizen of either country can largely be measured by the friendly respect he feels and shows for the other country. Neither territorially, nor in commercial interest, nor in international rivalry, is there any excuse for clashing. The two nations should for all time work hand in hand.

The Japanese statesmen and leaders of thought are doing all they can to keep on the best possible footing with the United States. Although Japan was engaged in war she did everything in her power to make the California-Panama Exposition a success. Her exhibit was of peculiar importance, because the exhibits of most of the other great powers were greatly interfered with by the war.

Every consideration, permanent and temporary, makes the continuance of a good understanding between the two nations of capital importance. It is a grave offence against the United States for any man, by word or deed, to jeopardize this good understanding. To do so by the act of a state legislature is even graver. Any action by a state legislature touching on the rights of foreigners of any other nation should be taken with extreme caution, or it may cause serious mischief. Such action cannot possibly have good effect on the only matter that can ever cause trouble between Japan and the United States—the settlement in mass by individuals of either nation within the limits of the other nation. Such immigration is the only thing that can ever cause trouble between these two peoples; and if permitted it is absolutely certain that the trouble will be caused. It can be dealt with only by the two national governments themselves.

All true friends of international good-will between the two countries, all men who recognize that good-will for the other should be a prime feature of the foreign policy of each, will face this fact and deal with it. The treatment of it should be on an absolutely reciprocal basis. Exactly the same types and classes should be admitted and excluded, in one country as in the other. Students, travelers, men engaged in international business, sojourners for scholarship, health or pleasure, of either country ought to be welcomed in the other; and not thus to welcome them indicates defective civilization in the should-be hosts. But it is essentially to the interest of both that neither should admit the workers—industrial or agricultural or engaged in small trade—from the other, for neither country is yet ready to admit such settlement in mass, and nothing but grave harm can come from permitting it.

Instead of ignoring this fact, it would be better frankly to acknowledge and recognize it. It does not in any way imply any inferiority in either nation to the other; it merely connotes the acceptance of the truth that in international as in private affairs, it is well not to hurry matters that if unhurried will in the end come out all right The astounding thing, the thing unprecedented in all history, is that two civilized peoples whose civilizations had developed for thousands of years on almost wholly independent lines, should within half a century grow so close together. Fifty years ago there was no intellectual or social community at all between the two nations. Nowadays, the man of broad cultivation, whether in statesmanship, science, art or philosophy, who dwells in one country, is as much at home in the other as is a Russian in England, or a Spaniard in the United States, or an Italian in Sweden; the men of this type, whether Japanese or Europeans, or North or South Americans, are knit together in a kind of freemasonry of social and intellectual taste.

It is quite impossible that a movement like this shall be as rapid throughout all the classes of society as among the selected few. It has taken many centuries for Europeans to achieve a common standard such as to permit of the free immigration of the workers of one nation into another nation, and there is small cause for wonder in the fact that a few decades have been insufficient to bring it about between Japan and the American and Australian commonwealths. Japan would not, and could not, at this time afford to admit into competition with her own people masses of immigrants, industrial or agricultural workers, or miners or small tradesmen, from the United States. It would be equally unwise for the United States to admit similar groups from Japan. This does not mean that either side is inferior; it means that they are different.

Three or four centuries ago exactly the same thing was true as between and among the European countries from which the ancestors of the mixed people of the United States came. At that time English mobs killed and drove out Flemish and French workingmen; Scotchmen would not tolerate the presence of Englishmen even in time of peace; Germans and Scandinavians met on terms of intimacy only when they fought one another; and Russians as immigrants in western Europe were quite as unthinkable as Tartars. Normally, no one of these nations would then have tolerated any immigration of the people of any other. Yet they were all of practically the same racial blood, and in essentials of the same ancestral culture, that of Grseco-Roman Christianity. And their descendants not only now live side by side in the United States, but have merged into one people. What would have been ruinous even to attempt four centuries ago now seems entirely natural because it has gone on so slowly. To try to force the process with unnatural speed would have insured disaster, even after the upper classes of the countries concerned had already begun to mingle on a footing- of equality.

Surely these obvious historical facts have their lesson for Japanese and American statesmen today. Three centuries ago the students, the writers, the educated and cultivated men in England and France (countries of equal, and practically the same, civilization) associated less intimately than the like men of America and Japan do to-day, and any attempt at immigration of the workers of one country into the other would have been met by immediate rioting. Time, and time alone, rendered possible the constantly closer association of the peoples. Time must be given the same chance now, in order to secure a lasting and firmly based friendship between the Japanese and the English-speaking peoples of America and Australia.

The volume which has served as a text for this article is only one additional proof of the way in which Japan has modernized and brought abreast of all modern needs her high and ancient civilization. She is already playing a very great part in the civilized world. She will play a still greater part in the future. It may well be that she will prove the regenerator of all eastern Asia. She and the United States have great interests on and in the Pacific. These interests in no way conflict. They can be served to best purpose for each nation by the heartiest and most friendly cooperation between them on a footing of absolute equality. There is but one real chance of friction. This should be eliminated, not by pretending to ignore facts, but by facing them with good-natured and courteous wisdom—for, as Emerson somewhere says, "in the long run the most unpleasant truth is a safer traveling companion than the most agreeable falsehood." Each country should receive exactly the rights which it grants. Travelers, scholars, men engaged in international business, all so-journers for health, pleasure and study, should be heartily welcomed in both countries. From neither country should there be any emigration of workers of any kind to, or any settlement in mass in, the other country.