The Corean yang-ban abused their independence by intrigue. They failed to discern that the petty arts of the plotter endangered their existence as a nation. After her second great war, Japan saw clearly that to allow her neighbor state, wherein there was no sharp distinction between the Court and the Government, to remain, as of old, the hot-bed of intrigue, would jeopard her own existence. She therefore did for Corea what Great Britain has done for Egypt, the United States for Cuba, and the French for Annam. Corea is now numbered among protectorates.
When our narrative closed in September, 1904, the Japanese were building a trunk line of railroad, nearly six hundred miles long, which should traverse the whole peninsula from Fusan to Wiju (Ai-chiu, pp. 181, 364). Port Arthur had not surrendered. The real goal of the Japanese armies, the city of Mukden, containing the mausoleums of the Manchiu dynasty now ruling in Peking, “the possession of which would put the heart of China in the palm of Japan’s hand,” was yet unreached. Yet those who in the early seventies had helped to train the boys who made the public-school army of Japan, had no fear of its ultimate triumph.[1]
On the 3d of January, 1905, Port Arthur was formally surrendered, and its evacuation completed January 7th. The main Japanese army fronting Mukden was quickly reënforced by Nogi’s division on the left, or west, and by Kawamura’s army, out of Corea, on the right, or east. The great campaign of hard fighting, destined to last nearly a month, opened amid a snow-storm on the 23d of February. By the 28th the fighting was general along the whole front of nearly one hundred miles. On the 10th of March [[499]]Oku’s columns entered, by the southern gate, the city of Mukden. The Russians lost nearly thirty thousand in dead and over forty thousand prisoners. The Japanese pursuit northward lasted until April 14th.
On the 27th and 28th of March “the battle of The Sea of Japan” took place, in which the Russian armada of thirty-eight modern ships of war was, “by the grace of Heaven and the help of the gods,” annihilated.
By invitation of President Roosevelt, the envoys of the two warring nations, de Witte and Rosen for Russia, and Komura and Takahira for Japan (both of the latter the writer’s former pupils in Tokio), met at Portsmouth, N. H.; whence, in the thirties, had sailed Captain Edmund Roberts, commissioned by President Jackson, and the first American diplomatist in the Far East. The Japanese won a signal diplomatic victory, securing the main points of their contention.
The peace treaty which was signed recognized in the first article Japan’s predominant position in Corea, political, military, economic, as well as her right to supervise that country’s affairs and to protect it, Russia agreeing not to obstruct Japan’s proceedings in any respect. One of the first and worst results for Corea was the immediate entrance within her borders of a horde of low-class, insolent Japanese adventurers, who, by their cruelties and spoliations of natives, nearly neutralized the well-meant plans of good men in Tokio.
Following up the results of the decisive war, the Mikado sent his highly honored servant, Baron Komura, to Peking to arrange matters amicably with China, and then turned his attention to Corea. The protocol of March, 1904 (p. 495), had been quickly followed by the abolition of the Peddlers’ Guild (so long used by pro-Russian intriguers) and by the visit of Marquis Ito, who bore a reassuring message of fraternity and good-will. Mr. I. Megata, one of the most experienced and skilful officers of the Treasury Department in Tokio, was sent to Seoul as financial adviser, and Mr. Durham Dwight Stevens, an American gentleman, who united ability and tact to long and varied experience in diplomacy in the Far East, accepted the post of assistant at the Corean Foreign Office. These gentlemen, like all their predecessors, encountered insuperable difficulties in dealing with a government that was [[500]]nominally carried on at the Council Board, but in reality directed from the harem or by clan factions in secret intrigue.
Occupied so seriously with other matters, few attempts were made at first by the Japanese Government in the interest of real reforms that could benefit the Corean people. Meanwhile, it must be repeated, tens of thousands of the Mikado’s subjects, many of them of the most truculent temper and disreputable character, crowded into the peninsula, committing acts of rapine and brutality which neutralized many of the best measures of wise statesmen. When the proposition, approved of in Tokio, was made that all uncultivated land in the peninsula should be open to Japanese occupation and enterprise, and the water rights and supply be shared by these aliens, the Corean people, as a body, made systematic protest. All the circumstances considered, this sudden act of virtual spoliation was a colossal blunder. In the eyes of the Coreans it was not only “stealing water from another man’s field”—so terrible a crime in lands of rice culture, where irrigation is a vital necessity—but the theft of the very soil itself. At once a storm of opposition arose that swept the peninsula from end to end. The Corean Emperor was besieged with petitions to resist the Japanese demands. A society called Po-an, for the preservation of safety and peace, was formed, which met in Seoul in excited discussion, and began the propagation of what seemed to the Japanese authorities a campaign of sedition. The meetings of the Po-an were broken up by the police, and the Japanese garrison of Seoul was augmented to six thousand men. Though other Corean societies were formed, the excitement died out, the Japanese not pushing their scheme, the Corean noblemen showing little or no real patriotism, and the people little power of persistent unity. On October 13, 1904, General Hasegawa took control of the military situation.
Yet it is the simple truth to state that while the Japanese soldier, superb in discipline and noble in human qualities, is respected by the Corean, the low Japanese, who so often proves himself a rascal, is feared and despised. It is unfortunate that these disreputable characters were so long under such slight control from Tokio. On the other hand, notwithstanding that Japan, in the treaty of 1904, had guaranteed the independence of Corea, yet the Government in Seoul, choked by palace cliques, languished [[501]]in chronic feebleness. Unable to keep order at home, to pay its legation bills abroad, or to separate itself from that “Forbidden Interior” of mystery in the boudoir inhabited by a mob of women, eunuchs and hangers-on, which curses China, Corea, and so long cursed old Japan in both Yedo and Kioto, what guarantee was there for the peace of Asia and the world? For the preservation of this, the Mikado’s Government was responsible, while every complication in Corea involved Japan also.
After long deliberation, the statesmen in Tokio agreed that the surest exit out of the labyrinthine difficulty was to take charge of Corea’s foreign relations and place a controller-general at the capital, with subordinates at the chief cities and seaports, leaving internal affairs to be directed from Seoul. The Mikado despatched Marquis Ito—“patient, able, and authoritative”—to Seoul.