The world knows the effective work of the Japanese press bureau,
organized with the aid of foreign advisers, before the Japan-Russia
War. This included the publication of Professor Nitobe’s book on
_Bushido_ in Philadelphia, glorifying to the highest pitch of the
warm Oriental imagination everything Japanese. This had much to do
with preparing the way for the Japanese advance in Manchuria. That
press bureau has been strengthened, and has its inspired organs in
some of the large cities of the Occident. No other country is able to
color the news on occasions as Japan is able. With the cry of _lèse
majesté_, Japan, Germany and Russia seem to be successful in stamping
out much of the independent criticism of the taxed, or those to whom
equal opportunity has been denied. There seems to be only one hope for
real liberty in Japan and elsewhere, the rise again, as in Bunyan’s,
Milton’s and Franklin’s time, of the independent pamphlet and book,
whose one motto shall be, “No taxation without real representation.”
The Japanese have appointed the Koreans, Count Yi and Viscount Cho, to
represent the absorbed Korean people, and these two men are expected
to sign every document praising the rule of the Japanese, which
document is then wired over the world by the thoroughly organized
press agency. The former immense missionary influence of the Americans
among the common people is slowly being choked out, and the large
foreign gold and other mining industries of Korea, which promised so
well, are also now under strict watch. In other words, the system of
dummification has been applied to Korean politics, and the famous
American teachers and political advisers have found it well to leave
the peninsula. I would instance the long articles in the New York
_Times_ of June 6, 1912, and the New York _Herald_ of September 1,
1912, in which the American Presbyterian and other churches charge
the Japanese bureaucracy with wholesale persecution, “planting” of
evidence, imprisonment and torture of thousands of Korean political
prisoners as late as 1912. Two methods of colonization face each other
in contrast at the threshold of China--the Japanese method in Korea,
and the American method in the Philippines. Both are progressing
commercially, but the latter alone is progressing educationally and
altruistically, so far. It is noticeable in Korea that the Japanese are
breaking down many beautiful walls and temples to build in their place
ugly utilitarian houses. They pay very little respect to those whom
they have conquered. They are obliterators of art, where art detains
utility. The name of the land has been changed to Chosen. In Manchuria,
despite conventions, the Japanese maintain ten times the railway guard
of soldiers agreed upon. Japan will bear friendly watching everywhere,
as the American writers, Millard and Homer Lea, are constantly urging.
Her armaments cost her a heavy taxation and she is searching for ways
to recoup herself.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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