The March 1st Movement and the Governor-General of Korea

　This year marks the 110th since the position and offices of the Governor-General of Korea were created. Sited at the foot of Nam Mountain (Namsan), the Governor-General Building provided offices for the governor-general himself as well as the inspector general for political affairs. Organizationally, the Governor-General included a Secretariat and sections for general affairs; internal affairs; finance; agriculture, commerce, and industry; and legal affairs. The Governor-General had a wide range of duties spanning military affairs, administration, and lawmaking, and he required a large governing structure to carry them out. Accordingly, the governor-general and this governing structure ruled over Korea as an institution of unprecedented size. It lasted until Japan’s defeat bringing World War II to an end in August 1945. Image 1 shows the signed master copy promulgating the establishment of this institution.

　The Japan Center for Asian Historical Resources has made available a large number of materials related to the Governor-General of Korea. Among them is a collection of publications put out by the Governor-General’s Office itself. In this article, we are going to look at some of the items from this collection. These documents can be found through the Advanced Search section of the JACAR website in the folder marked “Naikaku Bunko (Cabinet Library)” under the National Archives of Japan tree on the left. The core of the Naikaku Bunko is a collection of books that date back to the days of the Edo shogunate. However, as the Cabinet’s library, it also holds printed works produced since the Meiji period by government offices at all levels, including from colonial administrations. Opening the “Naikaku Bunko (Cabinet Library)” folder reveals another folder titled, “Korea’s-Governor General Office Publications.” Here, you can look at 143 items that this office produced [*].
　The publications gathered here span from the end of the Meiji era through the middle of the Shōwa era. They were drafted and published by various units within the Governor-General organization. They include such items as an official history of the Governor-General of Korea, Shisei 25-nen shi [A history of 25 years of administration], all manner of reports and statistics, and numerous items that touch on aspects of everyday life such as works on the customs of Korean tenant farmers, on Korean seasonal events, and on Korean shamanism.

　At first glance, this body of work also appears to include some materials that have no relation to Korea. For example, one publication is a study of education in Ireland, while another is an investigative study of policies on the teaching of German in Poland when it was still a part of Prussia.
　Why was it that the Office of the Governor-General of Korea created booklets like these about conditions in Europe? The publication dates for these materials provide some insight. The booklet on education in Ireland was published in May 1920, while that on language policy in Prussia-held Poland came out in October 1921. This meant that they appeared, respectively one year and two-and-a-half years after Korea had seen the emergence of a massive independence movement.

　That independence campaign is known today as the March 1st Movement. At the time, the momentum behind an effort to regain independence was on the rise in Korea. University students around Seoul (renamed “Keijō” [Gyeongseong] by Japan after annexation) had been thinking about an independence movement since around January 1919, while Christian and Cheondogyo leaders also had already begun talking among themselves about one starting around November 1918. The February 8 Independence Declaration issued in 1919 by Korean students studying in Tokyo was also another direct stimulus.
　At 2 p.m. on March 1, 1919, a group of students and local residents gathered together at Pagoda Park in Seoul to read aloud a Declaration of Independence. Demonstrators then formed a procession and chanted in chorus calls for Korean independence. Workers went on strike, students stayed away from schools, and shops also closed as a protest. The independence movement spread throughout Korea, and protesters skirmished with the military police in encounters that gradually grew more antagonistic. At the JACAR website, we have available seven volumes from the Army Ministry under the series, Chōsen sōjō jiken ni kansuru shorui [Documents on Disturbances in Korea]. According to one of these documents, “Independence movements in Korea” [Chōsen ni okeru dokuritsu undō] (from Taishō 8-nen naishi dō 10-nen tomo 7-satsu sono 1 Chōsen sōjō jiken ni kansuru shorui (mitsujugō sono ta); Ref. C06031080400), two to three thousand people joined the procession through the streets of Seoul. Given that it also says three companies of foot soldiers and one platoon of cavalry were mobilized, one can get a sense of just how big the independence movement was.

　In the aftermath, the Governor-General of Korea as an organization made a change in how it handled politics. With Admiral Saitō Makoto appointed the new governor-general, he extolled replacing military government with an approach to rule that was aimed at “cultural politics.” At the same time, he would adopt a philosophy of “an extension of the home territories” as his administrative strategy. The program called not for keeping the Korean people down with military force, but rather getting their cooperation while eventually changing Korea into something akin to Japanese home territory. In the years after the Second Sino-Japanese War, this policy would be further strengthened in the form of “Japan and Korea as one body” (naisen ittai). In any case, such documents as the booklets on education in Ireland and language policy in Prussia-held Poland were published right during this period of transition to “cultural politics.” So, what did these two publications discuss?
　The booklet on Ireland, Airando kyōiku jōkyō, was published by the Governor-General of Korea’s Educational Affairs Bureau. It was divided into three sections, for elementary, middle, and high school education. Each section examined the role of boards of education and went into detail about how determinations were made in Ireland about schools, educational systems, textbooks, and teachers.
　Ireland had merged with Great Britain at the start of the 19th century. However, there had been ongoing strife over independence for Ireland. Coincidentally, in 1919, just as independence movement arose in Korea, a unique Assembly of Ireland (Dáil Éireann) formed in Dublin and issued a declaration of independence. The Irish War of Independence would follow on the momentum this generated.
　In an appendix to Airando kyōiku jōkyō titled "Ikokujin dōka no ato" (Signs of assimilating a foreign people), the writer observes that the British called for using an educational approach aimed at "inculcating and assimilating" the Irish people. Based on the fact that it includes a comment here to the effect that "it would be pleasing if the officials charged with governing Korea also saw this as a useful object lesson," we can see the Governor-General of Korea's interest in "assimilating a foreign people."

　As its title indicates, Doitsu zokuryō jidai no Porando ni okeru kokugo seisaku (German language policy in Poland during the years of Prussian rule) focuses on the Prussian government's policies for the German language in this territory. The author of the booklet was Hoshina Kōichi, a linguist who had studied in Europe and had a role to play in the Japanese government's own policies on Japanese language education. In the Foreword, Hoshina mentions, "This is something for this writer that is generally difficult to think about when it comes to the administration of our colonies. However, I believe that summing up previous research about Prussia-controlled Poland to serve as a reference is not necessarily useless for our own homeland to think about." In short, having pulled together information about Poland was useful to some degree for trying to govern Korea.
　What we think of as Poland today in the 18th century had been divided up among three nations: Prussia, Russia, and Austria. Independence movements frequently emerged. Two of the greatest revolts had occurred in 1830 and 1863. Poland recovered its independence in 1918 thanks to the collapse of Imperial Russia in the wake of the outbreak of World War I. If we consider this in light of the March 1st Movement that arose the following year in Korea, the implications of the Korea Governor-General having published this booklet that following year are rich.
　One of the passages in the introductory chapter to this booklet reads as follows: "To assimilate people of a different race, the safest—and moreover, the most expedient—approach is to do so through language education. Namely, to educate the governed in the language of the governor serves as a reason to naturally guarantee their allegiance." Clearly, from the outset of annexation, Japan had adopted this assimilationist attitude and therefore had an interest in disseminating the Japanese language in Korea. Kanazawa Shōsaburō, a linguist and graduate of one of the seven imperial universities, published a book in 1910 titled, Nikkan ryōkokugo dōkei-ron (An argument on the similarities between the Japanese and Korean languages). In this work, he tried to prove that Korean—like the language of the Ryūkyūs—was but "one offshoot" of Japanese. The Governor-General of Korea may well have been quite interested in how Prussia ruled Poland in light of such discussions going on in the background at the time.

　The "Korea's Governor-General Office Publications" contains numerous other items that were produced in response to policy necessities. For example, in connection with the March 1st Movement, there is this item: Chōsen tōji to Kirisutkyō (The administration of Korea and Christianity) (Ref: A06032002100). After the March 1st Movement, foreign missionaries from the United States and from European countries became even more critical of the Governor-General's rule. Accordingly, the Governor-General's office needed a policy for dealing with missionaries. Chōsen tōji to Kirisutkyō as a product of these investigations. Another item of interest is the publication about the customs of Korean tenant farmers noted earlier. Published in 1929, Chōsen no kosaku kanshū (Ref. A06032039300) mentions the increasing ferocity of agrarian disputes starting from the latter half of the 1920s.

　I have mentioned just a few of the items contained in the "Korea's-Governor General Office Publications" collection in this article. However, in the Naikaku Bunko (Cabinet Library) folder, you can find various other related collections, including "Taiwan Governor-General's Office Publications", "Guandong (Kwantung) Governor-General Office, Kanto Cho (Colonial Government of Guandong : Kwantung) Publications," "Karafuto Cho (Colonial Government of Karafuto) Publications," and "Nan'yo Cho (Territorial Government of South Seas Islands) Publications." I recommend that anyone with an interest in any of these topics explore these collections. Also, if you interested in knowing about what kinds of departments were created in "overseas territories" like those under the authority of the governors-general, you can find more details at the JACAR website within the "JACAR Glossary" section under the subsection article titled, "Homeland and Overseas, as Seen in Archival Records: Personnel Changes around Former Colonies and Occupied Territories." Please explore!

[*] “Korea’s Governor-General Office Publications” is available through the Layered Search materials section of the JACAR website. At the National Archives of Japan’s digital archive, these documents can be viewed by going to “Keyword Search” > “Cabinet Library” > “Japanese Books and Classics (except Tamon).”

　For the present manuscript, I used “Korea” as the search term to allow for both the northern and southern areas, and specified the date range as up to August 15, 1945.


Literature Cited
Cho Kyŏng-dal. Shokuminchi Chōsen to Nihon [Colonial Korea and Japan]. Tokyo: Iwanami shinsho, 2013.
Matsutani Motokazu. “Chōsen sōtokufu no tai Kirisuto-kyō seisaku” [The Governor General of Korea’s policies toward Christianity]. In Journal of Asian Cultures (published by The Research Institute for Oriental Cultures, Gakushuin University), No. 18, March 2016.
Yasuda Toshiaki. “Kokugo” no kindaishi: Teikoku Nippon to Kokugo gakusha-tachi [The history the ‘National language’ in the modern era: Imperial Japan and linguists of the Japanese language]. Tokyo: Chūō kōron shinsho, 2006.
Yoshino Makoto. Higashi-Ajia shi no naka no Nihon to Chōsen: Kodai kara kindai made [Japan and Korea in East Asian history: From ancient times to modern]. Tokyo: Akashi shoten, 2005.