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To the Present-Day Observer, the Differences Between the Place of Christianity in Japan and South Korea Could Hardly Be Plainer

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To the Present-Day Observer, the Differences Between the Place of Christianity in Japan and South Korea Could Hardly Be Plainer Christian Culture and Military Rule: Assimilation and its Limits during the First Decade of Japan‟s Colonial Rule in Korea, 1910-19 by Michael Isaac Shapiro A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Andrew E. Barshay, Chair Professor Irwin Scheiner Professor John Lie Fall 2010 Christian Culture and Military Rule: Assimilation and its Limits during the First Decade of Japan‟s Colonial Rule in Korea, 1910-19 Copyright 2010 by Michael Isaac Shapiro 1 Abstract Christian Culture and Military Rule: Assimilation and its Limits during the First Decade of Japan‟s Colonial Rule in Korea, 1910-19 By Michael Isaac Shapiro Doctor of Philosophy in History University of California, Berkeley Professor Andrew Barshay, Chair This is a study of the encounter between Japanese imperialism and Korean Protestantism during the the first decade of colonial rule in Korea (1910-19), typically referred to in historiography as the “military rule” period. By examining how Japanese and Korean Protestants adapted themselves to the demands of Japan‟s colonial rule, it attempts to reveal how the efforts made to subordinate Korean Christianity to Japanese imperial rule became a means of symbolically colonizing Korean history. The dissertation explores how this colonial project played out across Japanese metropole and Korean colony by focusing on the Japanese empire‟s attempts to subordinate a global evangelical institution, the Young Men‟s Christian Association (YMCA) to an education policy premised upon the selfless devotion of Koreans to Japan‟s imperial house. Ultimately, it is argued that the result of this encounter was to fashion a base of Japanese hegemony in colonial Korea that had not existed in 1910 by allowing Koreans to articulate an autonomous cultural identity within the confines of their political domination by the Japanese empire. i Acknowledgements I would like to express my gratitude to my dissertation advisers at the University of California, Berkeley. They have given much patience and conscientious attention to a dissertation topic that went through many phases and transformations before taking its present form. During my coursework, Andrew Barshay and Irwin Scheiner of the History Department spurred the development of intellectual interests that ultimately led to my choice to study how imperial Japan approached the challenge of governing over Korean Christianity. They have both shaped my thinking about the practice of history in ways which I can only hope are reflected in my dissertation writing. I am thankful to John Lie of the Sociology Department for providing much encouragement in the early stages of my dissertation writing as well as for his insightful comments throughout. Hiraishi Naoaki of the Institute of Social Science, University of Tokyo, provided me with a year-long institutional affiliation as well as several letters of introduction over the course of my dissertation research in Japan. His seminars on Japanese intellectual history, although not directly related to my research have deeply enriched my knowledge of Japanese though about the foundations of political legitimacy. I am one of many graduate students from the United States who has been touched by the kind generosity of the late Pang Kijung of Yonsei University. During a ten-month stay in South Korea, Professor Pang not only provided me with access to Yonsei‟s library holdings, but helped me to gain access to rare library materials that proved crucial to my dissertation research. Sadly, Professor Pang passed away before this dissertation was brought to completion. I owe special thanks to George M. Wilson and Jurgis Elisonas, my undergraduate mentors at Indiana University, Bloomington, who first sparked in me my passion for the study of Japan‟s past. In particular, it was Professor Wilson who helped me to muster the nerve to spend my junior year studying abroad in Japan, an experience that has proven to be life altering, to say the least. Without his encouragement, I am sure I would not have had the courage to pursue a doctorate in Japanese history. Financial assistance for this dissertation was generously provided by the Japan Foundation Doctoral Research Fellowship, the Fulbright Institute for Internationational Education, the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, as well as several grants from the Graduate Division, Department of History and the Center for Japanese Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. My greatest debt of gratitude is to my family. My parents, Barry and Mary Shapiro, and my brother Eben, have all provided me with consistent support and encouragement even when pursuing my research has taken me far away from them, sometimes for years at a time. To my wife, Kyoko, who has given so much in accompanying me across ii several national boundaries and seeing me through the many peaks and valleys of the dissertation writing process, I can never fully express my thankfulness. This dissertation is dedicated to her. iii Contents Introduction 1 Chapter One: Imperialism, Anti-colonialism and the Young 17 Men‟s Christian Association in Japan and Korea Chapter Two: Spiritual Periphery: Empire and Providence 92 In the Meiji Protestant Apprehension of Korea Chapter Three: A Colonial State under Siege? 163 Yun Ch‟iho and the Colonial Contest over the Young Men‟s Christian Association under Military Rule Chapter Four: Cultural Autonomy within Military Rule: 227 Yoshino Sakuzō and the Korean Students in Imperial Tokyo Chapter Five: The Limits of Assimilation: 303 Tokutomi Sohō and Maeil sinbo Epilogue 363 Bibliography 366 1 INTRODUCTION As the only non-Christian power amongst the modern empires, imperial Japan faced a unique challenge in colonizing Korea, a country undergoing a wave of Christianization at the end of the Chosŏn period (1392-1910). In particular, Protestant Christianity by 1910 had not only established itself as a permanent force on the Korea peninsula, but was also protected by its affiliation with a world-spanning network of Christian missions. Hence, imperial Japan could not openly proscribe Christianity in Korea without exposing itself to the ostracism of the other modern (Western) empires. No action toward limiting the influence of Christianity on the peninsula could be taken without taking into consideration the global context of missionary Protestantism. In addition to this global challenge, however, there was also an important historical context to imperial Japan‟s encounter with Korean Christianity. In colonizing Korea, Japan had presided over the demise of the Chosŏn dynasty and with it the dissolution of Korea‟s long history as a politically independent state. In contrast to earlier colonizing efforts directed toward the Ainu, Ryūkyū, or Taiwanese peoples, then, the colonization of Korea was made in the shadow of the inescapable awareness of Korean history. Indeed, the spread of Protestant Christianity across a broad cross-section of Korean society was in no small sense a response to the end of the Chosŏn monarchy. For many Korean converts, Christianity provided a spiritual substitute for the political vehicle of the nation-state as a means of transmuting Korea‟s historical identity in response to the challenges of the modern world. For Japan, then, the question of how to colonize Christianity in Korea thus simultaneously became a question of how to colonize Korean history itself. This dissertation attempts to explain what the consequences of this encounter between Japanese imperialism and Korean Christianity were during the first decade of Japan‟ colonial rule in Korea (1910-19). It is not, however, primarily a study of colonial policy toward religion. Rather it is an examination of how Protestant Christians themselves— Japanese and Korean—adapted themselves to the demands of colonial rule. There is a historiographical subtext to my decision to focus on this issue. The “military rule” period (as this decade is often referred to in Japanese and Korean historiography) has correctly been seen as an unusually repressive period in which the Japanese empire relied overwhelmingly on brute force in installing its institutions of colonial rule in Korea. This view has led, however, to a tendency to discount the ideological significance of this early period of Korea‟s colonial history. Typically viewed either as a tragic endpoint for a failed “dynastic” modernity or a repressive backdrop against which to explain the emergence of “colonial” modernity in the 1920s, it is rarely treated as a subject worthy of study in and of itself. In examining the ideological encounter between the Japanese empire and Korean Christianity during military rule, then, I am attempting to bring out the covert significance of this period. 2 In a nutshell, the argument of this dissertation is that there were two ideological contexts crucial to understanding this encounter: one imperial, the other global. By imperial context, I mean the Japanese colonial ideology of assimilationism, which saw the identity of its colonial subjects rigidly as an extension of Japanese identity. The global context I refer to is the rise within Protestant Christianity of a lay evangelical culture at the turn of the twentieth century that allowed for evangelical work to be adapted to the local circumstances of the mission field. As I will attempt to explain, the tension between these two ideological forces allowed for multiple interpretations of the historical meaning of Korea‟s colonization. Let me unpack my argument below. Like other empires, Japan imagined its colonial ideology in terms that were continuous with the language of political legitimacy at home. Japanese assimilationism was rooted in the quasi-religious notion, first disseminated in Japan, of a genealogical bond uniting the Japanese emperor with his subjects by virtue of the unbroken lineage of imperial rule. The clearest ideological expression of this attitude was in the Imperial Rescript on Education, promulgated in 1890, which tied the pursuit of learning to a sense of selfless devotion to the fortunes of Japan‟s imperial house.
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