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Taro Utsunomiya

Once Japan occupied the Korean Empire in August 1910 and established the General-Government for colonial rule, Japan began what is known as 'military rule,' ruthlessly exploiting Korea and its people and suppressing any resistance. At the same time, to glorify their colonial rule and brainwash the Korean people into giving up resistance, Japanese colonial authorities founded three newspapers that were published in three different languages: The Kyungsung (Seoul) Daily in Japanese; The Daily News in Korean; and The Seoul Press in English. While being integrated and separated, these three newspapers served as the mouthpieces of Japanese colonial authorities starting from August 1910. They made propaganda for Japanese colonial rule and war mobilization effort and ran editorials that justified Japan's several aggressive wars.

The fact that Japanese authorities often distorted facts and justified their rule in this way is confirmed in personal diaries, letters, memoirs, or testimonies as well as official government records. Therefore, these various sources need to be found and used if we are to criticize and refute the distorted claims of the Japanese government. A good example is the diary of Commander of the 'Joseon Army' Taro Utsunomiya (宇都宮太郞, 1861-1922), which was recently discovered and made public. Here, the 'Joseon Army' refers to the Japanese Army stationed in Korea to control 'Joseon (Korea)' as a colony.

Taro Utsunomiya was born in Saga Prefecture (佐賀縣) at the northwestern tip of Kyushu, Japan in 1886. After graduating from the Army War College in 1890, he embarked on a glorious military career. During the time of the Sino-Japanese War in 1894, he was on the Army Staff of the Imperial General Headquarters of Japan. During the time of the Russo-Japanese War in 1905, he served as an Army Colonel on the General Staff. Years later, in July 1918, he was promoted to the position of Commander of the 'Joseon Army.' In the next two years and one month, until August 1920, he exercised enormous power as Commander of the Joseon Army in Korea as a Japanese colony, as did the Governor-General of Korea. He received the honor of promotion to the position of Army General in November 1919 particularly for his contribution made earlier that year to suppressing the March 1st Movement. In August of the following year, his position changed from Commander of the Joseon Army to Military Political Officer of the Japanese Army. He dreamed of becoming the Army Chief of Staff, until he died of a stomach disease on February 14, 1922.

Containing Faithful Accounts of the March 1st Movement, Japan's Suppression of the Korean Independence Army, and Japan's Attempt to Conciliate Koreans

Taro Utsunomiya's diary consists of as many as fifteen volumes that documented events during a total of fifteen years (1900, 1907-1916, and 1918-1921). An avid writer for a military man, he wrote about 5,000 letters and about 2,000 documents in addition to his diary. His diary has been published into a three-volume book titled The Japanese Army and Asia Policy by Iwanami Shoten (岩波書店), a leading publisher in Japan.

When there were large marches and rallies across Korea starting from March 1st, 1919, he ordered the aggressive military suppression of the protests. As a result, thirty innocent Koreans in Jeam-ri, Suwon were notoriously killed by the Japanese troops under the command of Army Lieutenant Toshio Arita (有田俊夫) on April 15. Utsunomiya received a report on the Jeam-ri Massacre, and wrote about the decision to cover up this incident in his diary entry for April 18, 1919, as follows:

"As I have learned, thirty-two followers of Christianity and Cheondoism were locked up and killed in a church building after a few questions were asked, and about twenty houses were set to fire. . . (omitted) The simplest way to deal with this incident would be to treat the facts as they are . . . but it would mean that we admit to murder and arson, and therefore hurt the (Japanese) Empire . . . It was decided at a meeting that those Koreans had been killed because they had resisted, The meeting adjourned at midnight after making the decision not to admit to murder or arson."

After the March 1st Movement, the Korean troops fighting for their nation's independence, based in the North Gando Area (present-day Yianbian region of China), often crossed the Abrok River or the Mandu River and attacked the Japanese military and police. Utsunomiya decided that they must be stopped before they become a hindrance to Japan's colonial rule over Korea. Accordingly, he talked with the Feng Tian military faction of China and laid out plans to dispatch Japanese troops into Chinese territory to 'subdue' the Korean Independence Army. In early June of 1920, he organized the Yatsugawa unit that would cross the river and chase the Korean Independence Army. The Yatsugawa unit was ordered to intrude Bongodong in Yanbian and attack Hong Beom-do's unit of the Korean Independence Army stationed there, only to suffer a crushing defeat in what is famously known as the Battle of Bongodong. This battle is also documented in his diary.

An Invaluable Historical Record Worth Studying Carefully

Even though he left a huge volume of documents, it wasn't until January 2002 that they became known to the Japanese academia and began to be studied in earnest. His diary is an invaluable historical record that needs to be extensively reviewed and studied because its entries cover a wide range of Asian affairs including the confrontation between the so-called 'Jyoshu (長州)' and 'Saga (佐賀)' factions within the Japanese military government and China-Japan relations as well as Korea-Japan relations. In particular, his diary contains quite a few entries about Korea (Joseon) or Korean people that deserve our attention and efforts for careful research. He gave a faithful account of not only military affairs but also the attempts to reconciliate Koreans including the pro-Japanese spy Lee Hee-gan (李喜侃).

Unfortunately, however, to my knowledge, there are few earnest studies done in Korea on Taro Utsunomiya's diary. It is time that scholars who specialize in modern Korean history, the history of Korea-Japan relations or China-Japan relations, international relations, politics, or military affairs start studying his diary carefully with interest.

The Japanese Army and Asia Policy published by Iwanami Shoten