THE LAND OF FROZEN MISTS.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XLIX, Issue 13906, 6 November 1919, Page 6

THE LAND OF FROZEN MISTS.

The Japanese atrocities in Korea must jxot- be catalogued with those of the Germans in France and Belgium. That they are cruel there is no doubt, but- thev* have not been performed for the sheer lust of.' brutality that distinguished the horrors perpetrated by the Germans. The Japanese fighting man luates the Korean, and the Korean's most hated enemy is the Japanese. The reason must'be sought far back in the past. Long before the Korean and the Rus-so-Japanese wars Korea had been a thorn in Japan's side, and centuries ago in the days of Hideyoshi, tho great Shogun of Japan, Korea had been the grindstone on which Old Japan sharpened her flashing sword iblades. Chosen, as tho Japanese call Korea, has not always been a down-trodden land. In Hideyoshi's time —some 350 years ago—Korea was a great country. She was wealthy. She kept- an army, andrshe manned a fine navy—which the Japanese of those days learned to appreciate at their cost. Korea was one vast- feudal system. Her mountains and valleys were divided up. into provinces, each with its own _ "Yang-ban," or noble Governor, appointed direct from Keijo, the ancient eopital. These men held power of life and death. They ruled supreme. All of them were re-'j fined, brave, well-educated men, and without exception all of them had brought the practice of cruelty to a fine art.

In old Chosen life was cheap.. Even the "Yangbans" themselves were subject to the most gruesome of tortures at the august, command of the Emperor at Iveijo. Korea was rich. The growing strength of Chosen was a. menace to Japan. Korea lay hand in glove with China. The two combined were a powerful ally. Japan has never brooked a master. She parleyed with Korea much as Germany parleyed with France before 1870, and. to no purpose. Japan was then rising lo her zenith under the powerful Hideyoshi. She cast envious eyes across the Yellow Sea-. An immense licet set sail in 1592 under Generals Yukinaga and Fato Kyomasa, and met with disaster at the hands of the Korean Navy in the bay of Ftisan. The Japanese'who escaped, drowning tasted the pleasures of the "Yangban's" torture. They were boiled in oil. The.v were roasted alive. They were cut into little, pieces—slowly, horribly—day by day. . . .

So the Send was re-opened which had started in the dim early ages when tile mythical Empress Jingo of Japan had, set out to conquer Chosen.

Tile Oriental races know how to wait, and. waiting, Hideyoshi vowed revenge. He, started a large campaign, which, culminated six years later in the crushing defeat of the Koreans at, So-ehou in L~>9B. Here 39,000 Koreans were killed. Hideyoshi had the heads of these Koreans pickled for transportation to Japan. Thirty-nine thousand heads are a. big cargo, and shipping freight was costly in Hideyoshi's time. So the cars and noses of the unfortunate 39,000 were sent across the sea in lacquered boxes —a fitting revenge lor the miserable wretches who had perished—or lived for a. time—after Ftisan. To-day there stands a monument, in Kioto in the grounds of the Temple of Daibosnt.su near by Hideyoshi's grave, ft is known as the "Mimidzuka." or Ear Mound. Under it lie 39.000 pairs of ears and the noses. . . . Hatred of Korea is born in the Japanese fighting man. He cannot help it. 'ft is there. The atrocities reported in the Daily Express are the instinctive - outcome of the battle of Ftisan. unfortunate, it is true, cruel, without, doubt, but savoring of that medievalism which is their primary cause. ,

Japan is modernised. Admiral Saito. tho Governor of Korea, himself a. descendant of the fighting Samurai who bled and died in old Chosen, has guaranteed that the atrocities shall cease. That is well. Korea, has had her fill of blood, and terror and devastation. She is a country of the dead. Mr Gonliosuke Koma.i, the Japanese poet, tells the misery of ancient Chosen in two lines: ''Land of ghosts, robed in white. Idly drifting hither and thither." It is up to Japan to-dav to let tho dead sleep in peace, without adding fresh horrors to the Land of Frozen Mists. - D. L. B.