Customer Reviews

The Abacus and the Sword: The Japanese Penetration of Korea, 1895-1910 (Twentieth-Century Japan: The Emergence of a World Power)

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The reviews for this book here on Amazon are divided, and you can understand both responses, respect and rage.

This volume is what it claims to be: an account of colonization, Japan of Korea from the late 1890s to the early 1920s (but ending before the more brutal culling of the Imperial War Machine in the 30s and 40s).

The first half collects the various arguments made in Japan from the 1860s onward: cultural, racial superiority, expansion and capitalism, contending and competing with the West, in the creation of justifying colonization. Particularly useful if the reader has the basics on the ideology of colonialization, Albert Memmi, Franz Fanon, Edward Said etc. Or the other way around: for the reader who is reading up on colonial writings would find the non-Western discourse on colonialization interesting, the discourse on racial destiny and the Japanese "burden" to enlighten Asia, compared to the "White Man's burden."

The second half of this book catalogues, with official figures and many personal accounts of Japanese life in Korea, for the middle-class and aspiring middle-class entrepreneurs who sought to take advantage of the colonial government and the expansionist policies of the time. And it is particularly useful as a (scholarly) portrait of people, history written from the bottom up, instead of mainly from governments policy and war.

The book is written by a Japan scholar, from Japanese documents, so the reader must take into account the sources (and sympathies) involved, the author's lack of current Korean, Korean sources and scholarship, and the text's (near) absence of Korean agency alongside the efforts at Japanese economic absorption. It offers only a hint (in the occasional phrase) at the tolls of economic policies on "normal" Korean people as people (human beings with lives and names), in its report of the lives of "normal" Japanese. But perhaps that is not this volume's purpose.

For a volume written 10 years ago, it's a valuable and readable resource, more useful when read with the collected essays in "Colonial Modernity in Korea" that was published around the same time (Eds. Gi-wook Shin and Michael Robinson, 1998) for a fleshed out view of life in the late 19th century and early 20th.

Hopefully, almost 10 years after this volume, and with the emerging generation of East Asian scholars, trained in Korean, Japanese, and Chinese, we'll find fuller, more nuanced and complex accounts of history.

The author reviews the history behind the annexation of Korea and presents it in the context of the industrialization of Japan. On a conceptual level the book is intriguing, but I feel that it trivializes the ethnic cleansing performed by the Japanese on the Korean race. The author admittedly knows that his research was biased by the generous amount of Japanese documents and not only the lack of Korean documents but his inability to read Korean language. All in all its worthwhile for readers interested in recent Asian history, Japan's industrial movement, or understanding Korean political history.

This is a scholarly work and not "popular history." I say the book is important because this is really not a covered subject. Aside from being a bit boring and confusing for people not an expert in Japanese political hisotry during Meiji, I found it disturbing that the author cited only Japanese and English sources. And the majority of English sources are old (1960s). In the intro, the author freely admits he neither speaks or reads Korean (!)

So, this is a one sided version of history (from the imperialist side). We will have to wait for some of the very good Korean accounts to be written or translated into English. In the meantime, try Bruce Cumming's work on Korean modern history.

I wrote a thesis in college about the Japanese seizure of Korea, and my main argument was that there was no nefarious plot to take over Korea; rather, the annexation was the result of conflicting elements within the Japanese government. (The annexation was, of course, a victory for the reactionary elements.)

This book illustrates that there WERE elements within the Japanese government who wanted to help Korea reform. They certainly had ulterior (read: self-centered) motives in doing so, namely economic/financial gain. But there was, at least according to this book, a noted absence of imperialistic/expansionist attitudes by Meiji Japan towards Yi Choson Korea, at least for a time.

It is a challenging examination of that time from the Japanese point of view, and it certainly merits a reading from the serious historian.

One of the many aspects of East Asian relations insufficiently appreciated in Western nations is the troubled history of Japan and its neighbors, specifically Korea. Peter Duus' The Abacus and the Sword: The Japanese Penetration of Korea, 1893-1910 is a an economic analysis of the relationship between Japan and Choson Korea before the Japanese Occupation. A very demanding book by a reputable Japan scholar, Abacus and the Sword requires a beginner's acquaintance with Japanese and Korean history, and a knowledge of international relations in the nineteenth century is also helpful

For those living outside of Korea, the reasons for Meiji Japan's occupation of Korea may seem unimportant, but, in all the countries of Northeast Asia, Japanese responsibility for many actions committed in the 20th Century are highly controversial and relevant. Debates concerning North Korean policy, Japanese militarization, Japanese war guilt, comfort women, Japan's economic recession and endemic corruption are all subjects affected by the histories of Japan and Korea. But this book also contributes to the discussion concerning colonialism and imperialism.

Why did an isolationist victim of Western imperialism become a conqueror itself? Instead of championing the rights of weaker nations, Japan determined to imitate it's American transgressors and build an empire of it's own, to compete with the West. This is Duus' starting point, which he painstakingly traces in its political and economic history. Duus argues, that industrialization was the condition for Japanese imperialism, not the reason. Furthermore, British, French, and American government support for empire-building affected how the Japanese government policies worked.

Although he admits so himself, I would prefer if Duus had used more Korean sources, especially when discussing the Korean resistance armies (uibyong-gun), but he uncovers the Japanese players and popular Japanese attitudes without bias. The other side of the equation is important, though, namely how Korea fell so easily to foreign domination. Duus also discusses the other international players, Russia and China. And the last chapter on Japanese cultural domination invaluably narrates how Japan obliterated a nascent Korean identity. Still, the Japanese accounts of Korean conditions are insightful, since Korean accounts are sparse and suspect.

Given the politicized nature of the two countries' relationship, the reader must be skeptical of any history. Undisputed data is sparse and analysis, particularly on the Korean sides, has progressed little from conspiracy theories. Any amount of sober analysis is welcome, and Duus delivers.

I was outraged when I started reading this book. I seldom read a history book so biased as this one. If the author had bothered to read Korean history books written by Korean scholars ( and some of them are translated in English for heaven's sake), this book would not have written in this manner.

The late 19th century and half part of the 20th century was the darkest period of Korean history. We lost our country and become subjected to the most brutal and oppressive colonization by Japanese government. The atrocities committed to Koreans during this period are only comparable to the Holocaust by Nazi Germany during the Second World War.

At the pacific war accelerated, they began to draft Korean men to fight or work in slave like conditions in mines and factories. They took young Korean girls with promises of jobs and then turned them to become " Comfort Women", the sex slaves of Japanese soldiers in various parts of Asia.

The use of Korean language and books were banned. They demanded that we changed our names to Japanse names. The systematic cultural genocide began to escalate. Rice and other crops were taken to Japanese armies and left Korean people in near starvation. Many Koreans left their homeland to China and Manchuria, even Russia in search for better lives.

When you write a book about Holocaust, you don't just ask German Nazi soldiers and fail to talk to Jewish victims. And this is exactly what the author had done here.

If the German government had paid compensations to various victims of Nazi era, why is it that Japanese government had not paid a cent to numerous victims of their brutality during the war and occupation of Korean penninsula?

They still have the arrogance to talk about the superioty of Japanes people and why the annexation of Korea was for the good of Korean people. I demand an apology from the author of this book to all Korean people.

This is an excellent book. I appreciate the sharp research and insightful interpretation of this period of East Asian History. My only criticism would be that I wish the thesis of Archaic, medieval-millitaristic form of imperialism as practiced by Japan and Russia in their colonial expansion was elaborated upon. Otherwise, I do buy into Professor Duus apologetic of defensive mechanism turned into opportunism (and eventually tyranny and abuse). This is not an easy book to read however, and requires an ability to read history in a objective manner. It is written from a selective point of view, and as Professor Duus explains in the introduction, it is a book wiha an emphasis on the Japanese experience (ie. primarily Japanese documents, testimony, statistics, etc). In my opinion, it makes for interesting reading when a book is relative to an unpopular perspective (another book in that vein would be "Redcoats and Rebels: An English Perspective of The American Revolution")and there should be dissension in interpretation if one is to have a decent historical dialogue. One should remember as one reads the book that the period between the Meiji restoration and Korean annexation was a period in which Japan was in the process of becoming a wester-style imperialist power. What I find facinating is that Japan conscioussly decided to play the European colonial/economic game; but ancient Confucian reverberations unconscioussly dictated how the game was to be played by the Japanese. The "onne-san" idea regarding sibling relationships, (ie. older brother/youger brother), as a basis political and economic relationship that led a struggling-to-become-western Japan to intervene "on behalf" of a reticent-Yangban-entrenched Korea is credible and, if one is familiar with the hierachial nature of Japanese society, logical. Finally, as an asian-american who was brought up despise Japanese imperal expanision in East Asia, (and the cultural smothering, tyranny and brutallity that went with it), it was hard for me too to swallow the possibility that Japan inacted in its expansion as a defense mechanism, but the evidence as disscussed in this book is compelling.

Somebody says that it was biased because it was written by Japanese documents. But his remark is questionable because there should be books written by various sources, not only by Korean scholars. On the contrary to his opinion, books based only on Korean information sometimes look distorted because of the Korean governments' anti-Japan propaganda.
Viewed from both sides, truth can be seen.