Emperor of Japan: Meiji and His World, 1852’1912 (147 page)

The dedication of the new shrine building at the Ise Shrine, a ceremony that occurs once every twenty years, took place on the night of October 2. The emperor sent officials to represent him but remained in T
ō
ky
ō
, where he performed “distant worshiping” from the palace. On this occasion the emperor, unusually of late, wore traditional robes, and all the chamberlains and civil and military officials were attired in appropriate vestments.
¹⁷
Although for years the emperor had declined to participate in most of the traditional rites, at the time of this important Shint
ō
ceremony, he felt impelled to manifest his firm belief in the gods.

On October 9 It
ō
, about to leave for Manchuria, had an audience with the emperor. He sailed from Moji on the sixteenth for Dairen, where he visited the sites of the battle for Port Arthur. He left Port Arthur for Harbin by train. On arriving in Dairen, It
ō
stated that his journey was essentially a pleasure tour to a country that he had not previously visited.
¹⁸
More likely, however, the real purpose of the journey was to discuss with Finance Minister V. N. Kokovtsev the forthcoming Japanese annexation of Korea.

It
ō
’s train arrived in Harbin on October 26 at nine in the morning. Kokovtsev boarded the train to welcome It
ō
. Russian guards were lined up along the railway platform, but judging from the photograph taken at the time, no special security precautions were in effect.
¹⁹
It
ō
was asked by Kokovtsev, the honorary commander of the railway guards, to review them, and he consented. He, Kokovtsev, and other officials stepped down from the train onto the platform. A photograph taken at this moment shows It
ō
, recognizable by his white moustache and beard, lifting his hat in salutation to the director of the Eastern Chinese Railway.
²⁰

When the review ended, It
ō
turned back to greet a delegation of Japanese residents of Harbin who had come to welcome him. He had taken a few steps in their direction when suddenly a young man in Western clothes leaped forward from behind the troops and, aiming his pistol at It
ō
,
²¹
fired six shots, the first three mortally wounding him.
²²
Members of It
ō
’s party carried him back inside the train, and doctors administered emergency treatment, but he died half an hour later. He was informed shortly before he breathed his last that the assailant had been a Korean. His last words are said to have been, “Damned fool!” (
baka na yatsu ja
).
²³

The assassin, An Chung-gun, was quickly seized by Russian guards, but before he was carried off, he managed to emit three cries of “Korea hurrah!”
²⁴
This was the first anyone realized that he was a Korean. It is hard to blame the Russians for having failed to distinguish his nationality at first sight. He was about the same height as the average Japanese (five feet, three inches), and his features were such that he could easily pass for a Japanese. He had also taken the precaution of dressing in the best Western clothes he could afford
²⁵
in order to look like a prosperous Japanese resident of Harbin welcoming It
ō
to the city.

An Chung-gun was born in 1879 to a
yangban
(noble) Korean family that could trace its ancestors back twenty-six generations.
²⁶
Seven moles on his chest and abdomen led to the nickname he often used, An Un-chil.
²⁷
It was expected that he would become a scholar, following his family’s traditions. His grandfather had six sons, all known for their literary skill, and among them Chung-gun’s father was the most brilliant. At the age of eight or nine, he was able to read the Four Books and the Three Classics of Confucianism and was acclaimed as a genius. Chung-gun, however, did not become a man of letters (although he was an accomplished calligrapher) but a man of action. Even as a boy he was known as a skillful marksman, and he preferred hunting to books. When he was first interrogated after being arrested, he gave as his profession “hunter.”
²⁸

In the account of his life he wrote in a prison cell while awaiting the death sentence, An related what had led to his conversion to Catholicism. His father, incensed over the violently anti-intellectual Tonghak rebellion, had formed a “righteous army” of some seventy soldiers who assumed responsibility for protecting their village from the rebels.
²⁹
An Chung-gun joined them, but they were no match in numbers for the Tonghak. He wrote that fighting them was like throwing eggs against a rock. But the “righteous soldiers” persevered and eventually won some victories against the superior Tonghak forces, only to be attacked by the new pro-Russian government.
³⁰

Fleeing the fighting, An Chung-gun took refuge with a priest named Wilhelm, known by his Korean name, Hong Sok-ku. He remained in hiding for several months in Wilhelm’s church. The priest encouraged An to use his enforced leisure to study Christianity, and he complied, spending much of his time reading the Bible and discussing Christianity with Wilhelm. The priest finally convinced An of the truth of Christianity, and An was baptized in January 1897. His baptismal name was Thomas.
³¹
For several years afterward, he and his father actively propagated the faith, and he remained a convinced Catholic to death. In his last letter, addressed to his wife, he asked that their elder son become a priest.
³²

An recalled in the narrative of his life that he had studied French for about three months with Father Wilhelm;
³³
it was the only foreign language he ever learned. When a friend asked why he had stopped studying French, An responded, “Anyone who studies Japanese becomes the slave of Japan. Anyone who studies English becomes the slave of England. If I were to learn French, I could not avoid becoming the slave of France. That is why I gave it up. Once the reputation of Korea rises in the world, people all over the world will come to use Korean.”
³⁴
It is apparent from An’s remarks that he had had some sort of disagreement with Wilhelm. Even though An’s faith in Christianity was not shaken, he no longer trusted foreign people.
³⁵

An was intensely nationalistic, but he also envisaged a union of the three great countries of East Asia—China, Korea, and Japan. Perhaps this conception was first suggested to him, paradoxically, by the doctrine of the Yellow Peril, the evil brainchild of the kaiser. An warned of the White Peril, exemplified by the predatory European nations that were pouncing on helpless Asia. The best way for the East Asian nations to end the threat of aggression from the Western powers was to unite. China and Korea especially, because they were even at that moment victims of European aggression, must cooperate to resist the European powers; if they did, the Europeans would withdraw and peace would return to East Asia.
³⁶

An was not anti-Japanese. The man he most admired was undoubtedly Emperor Meiji, and one of his most vehement accusations against It
ō
Hirobumi was that he had intentionally deceived the emperor, who desired not the subjugation of Korea but peace in East Asia and Korean independence.
³⁷
An’s knowledge of the emperor’s wishes was derived from the statement of Japanese objectives in starting a war with Russia in 1904.
³⁸
An was delighted to read about Japanese victories over the Russians and claimed that his compatriots shared his joy over the defeats suffered by one of the agents of the White Peril.
³⁹
He regretted only that Japan had broken off the war before Russia was reduced to total submission.

An was sure that many Japanese shared his hatred of It
ō
Hirobumi’s policies. He described conversations with various Japanese prisoners of war. One, a member of the garrison stationed in Korea, wept as he told An how much he missed the family he had left behind in Japan. An said that if peace were restored to East Asia, there would be no need for a Japanese garrison in Korea. The soldier agreed, commenting that it was because wicked ministers had disturbed the peace that he had been compelled to come to this distant place, much against his wishes. He added that although he could not do it all alone, he would like somehow to kill It
ō
.

An had similar conversations with a Japanese farmer, a merchant, and a Christian minister, all prisoners. They deplored the present situation in Japan, and the merchant, like the soldier before him, wished he could kill It
ō
. An received from these men a strong impression of hatred for It
ō
, and he supposed that they typified the entire Japanese populace.
⁴⁰
He reasoned that if even Japanese wished to kill It
ō
, it was easy to imagine why Koreans, whose family and friends had been murdered on It
ō
’s orders, detested him. An claimed to have assassinated It
ō
in his capacity as a “lieutenant general of the righteous army” because It
ō
, by disturbing the peace of East Asia, had estranged Japan and Korea.
⁴¹

An still hoped that relations between the two countries would become closer, providing a model for the whole world to imitate. An urged a sympathetic Japanese prosecutor not to worry about whether or not he would be condemned to death; all he asked was that the emperor of Japan be told why he had committed the crime.
⁴²
He was sure that if the emperor realized how mistaken It
ō
’s policies had been, he would understand An’s action and rejoice. An expected that if in the future, following the wishes of the emperor of Japan, administrative policy with respect to Korea was improved, peace between Japan and Korea could be maintained for 10,000 ages.

By blaming on It
ō
every crime committed against Korea by the Japanese, An absolved from guilt not only the emperor, in whose name many of these crimes had been committed, but the entire Japanese people. Once Japan was free of the cancer that had corrupted relations between the two countries, which were meant to be friends because of the many traditions they shared, there was no reason that they could not enjoy peace for all ages to come. In such writings, An seems to have been obsessed with his image of the archfiend It
ō
, a modern equivalent of the Satan he read about in the Bible.

An accused It
ō
of fifteen specific crimes, including the murder of Queen Min. An’s most surprising accusation was that forty-two years earlier, It
ō
had killed Emperor K
ō
mei. He asserted that all Koreans knew this, but even if this rumor were true, it is hard to know why An thought killing K
ō
mei was a crime against the Korean people.
⁴³
An’s other accusations describe the unspeakable consequences suffered by the Koreans from the unequal treaties the Japanese had imposed on them. The last of the fifteen crimes of which It
ō
stood accused was that he had deceived the emperor of Japan and the rulers of other countries by pretending that Korea was at peace and thriving.
⁴⁴

It was undoubtedly with exhilaration that An fired his gun at the great enemy of the Korean people. No sooner had An fired six shots than he was overcome by Russian guards and carried off to prison. The
T
ō
ky
ō
nichinichi shimbun
for November 3 quoted An as saying in his prison cell, “I have ventured to commit a serious crime, offering my life for my country. This is the behavior expected of a noble-minded patriot. But giving me such inedible food is not the treatment a patriot should receive. I absolutely refuse to eat it.”
⁴⁵
According to the same article, he refused to eat anything for two days.

His treatment improved markedly after the Russians turned him over to the Japanese. Mizobuchi Takao, the public prosecutor, offered him gold-tipped cigarettes after finishing his interrogations and, in their chats afterward, showed his sympathy. An recorded in his autobiography that when he had revealed It
ō
Hirobumi’s fifteen crimes, Mizobuchi had exclaimed, “From what you have just told me, it is clear that you are a righteous man of East Asia. I can’t believe a sentence of death will be imposed on a righteous man. There’s nothing to worry about.”
⁴⁶

The other Japanese officials at the prison also were deeply impressed by An, whose attitudes and actions, much in the mold of a Japanese hero, seems to have struck a responsive chord in them. At New Year, An and the two Koreans who had been arrested as his accomplices were treated to traditional Japanese New Year’s delicacies. His bold calligraphy was so much in demand by his captors that he wrote more than fifty scrolls for them, all signed “An Chung-gun, a Korean in the Port Arthur Prison.”

An began to write his autobiography on December 13 and continued writing it during his trial, which began on February 7, 1910. At the trial, in accordance with the agreement signed between Japan and Korea providing that Japan would henceforth protect Korean citizens abroad, An was not permitted to have a Korean defense attorney. Everyone involved in the conduct of the trial—the judge, the prosecutors, the defense council, and the interpreter—was Japanese. This created a particular hardship because An did not understand Japanese. The interpreter did his job with the utmost care,
⁴⁷
and An’s attorneys sincerely attempted to secure an acquittal,
⁴⁸
but he felt almost unbearably isolated.