ABSTRACT
WHILE at home a constitutional struggle was in progress, Japan was making, in her new overseas possessions, those mistakes which seem inevitable in the ungrateful task of ordering the affairs of alien peoples. The annexations of Formosa and Korea had gratified national pride, but the thoughts of the nation were by long ingrained habit insular, and little real interest was taken in the new territory, nor was any sense of responsibility apparent. Those things were for the officials to see to, and there was not even a Colonial Department for members of the Diet to badger with questions. In Korea the Japanese authorities had a particularly difficult task. During the last days of the Hermit Kingdom even the outward decencies of diplomatic intrigue were cast aside, and in 1895 the Queen had been murdered by a gang of Japanese and Korean bullies under direction of General Viscount Miura, the Japanese Minister, and with the complicity of General Kusunose, Commander of the Japanese troops. Miura thereafter became a national hero and a political oracle, and Kusunose lived to become Minister for War. For twenty years before the annexation Korea had been overrun by Japanese ruffians and adventurers, and when annexation came at last, General Terauchi, a good soldier and strict disciplinarian, but a man with all the typical shortcomings of the military mind, was put in as Governor-General. Of the great differences between restoring order and governing a people General Count Terauchi had little understanding.
