JAPAN, COREA, AND " THE CHINA OF THE WEST." LTO
THE EDITOR OP THE " SPECTATOR."]
SIR, —I venture to think that you may regard the following extracts from private letters, recently received from Corea, of sufficient interest to merit publication. It is instructive to watch "the Great Britain of the East" at work on her sacred task of reform :-
"January 12th, 1895.—Last week the King went out in procession to the ancestral tombs to swear to the new constitution, personally conducted of course by Inouye. The Korean prime minister (a creature of Japan) accompanied him on horseback in a suit of European evening dress, with a bowler hat on his head ! And now an order has been promulgated forbidding the people any longer the use of long pipes I By such follies as these the Japanese are getting Europe to believe in their powers of civilising. Here are some more items of their civili ation in Korea. Amongst the quantities of foreign goods recently imported into Chemulpo from Japan are Chilean Margaux claret, French and Italian Vermouth, Martell's five star (!) brandy, &c., all the grossest imitations— bottles and labels complete—with the vilest compounds inside. Cotton goods, purporting to come from Manchester, but made in Osaka, are flooding the country, and have already ousted the English goods. The Koreans are to be made drunk on a -dozen of the best brandy for a dollar and a half, and are not to know the difference between the true and spurious English lawns, the former of which are of course much cheaper. This is a bright outlook for the prospects of the new commercial treaty which England has made wIth Japan. It is no secret that English commerce is to be driven from the East and supplanted by that of Japan. Japan knows well enough that England will not engage in a big and costly war to recover that which she
will have lost Port Arthur is now a Japanese town. Japanese merchants are settling there, and steamers running regularly from Kobe. On the other hand the sufferings of the First Army in Manchuria are said (by the Japanese) to be some- thing terrible."
"February 1st, 1895.—Yon ask, What is to be the end of it all P—a question to which no one out here can find any answer. My own opinion is that Japan has raised a Frankenstein. But the Powers—especially the China of the West, as Japan n ow contemptuously calls England—will not find it easy to smooth out this crumpled surface As to Korea, in spite of the sacrilegious oath which Inouye °Impelled the wretched King to take, declaring himself absolutely inde- pendent of every nation is the world,—Korea has ceased to exist, and is now as much a part of Japan as she can be. White clothes [i.e. the national clothing of Korea] are forbidden to officials; Chinese silks are forbidden to be worn; the people are no longer allowed to smoke their long pipes; native-made stuffs —which means Japanese materials—are to form the garments of the people in future. They have not yet been ordered to change the shape of their garments, nor to shave their heads, nor to learn Japanese. But these latter are spoken of quite freely, and are expected to come as soon as it suits Japan to issue the orders. The money for the public `reforms' is to be supplied by the Koreans themselves, who have been made to borrow five million yen from Japan, giving their country as security. All this is pretty well for a country which is absolutely independent of Japan and all other Powers."
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