Japan, Koshikan (Korea) records, 1894-1910

Printable guide [HTML]
Request items

Summary

Creators:
Japan. Kōshikan (Korea)
Abstract:
Photocopies of originals no longer exist. Correspondence, dispatches, instructions, reports, treaties, agreements, lists, and charts relating to Japanese-Korean relations, and to the internal administration and foreign affairs of Korea. Includes reports of the Japanese Residency General (1906-1910) and Government-General (1910) in Korea. Also available online at http://koreanhistory.or.kr/.
Extent:
7 cubic foot boxes, 23 microfilm reels (8.8 Linear Feet)
Language:
Mainly in Japanese
Preferred citation:

[Identification of item], Japan, Koshikan (Korea) Records, [Box no., Folder no. or title], Hoover Institution Library & Archives.

Background

Scope and content:

The history of Japanese penetration into Korea and the gradual take over of the peninsula remains to be written. To a large extent this is due to the lack of documentation, as up to the end of the Second World War the Japanese zealously guarded their records and kept them secret. Most of the Japanese archives dealing with Japanese policy and activity in Korea were stored in the Archives and Documents Section of the Japanese Government-General in Seoul, and even Japanese scholars were unable to consult them. In 1940, however, the Government-General's Office for the Compilation of Korean History (Chosen Sotofuku Chosen Shi Henshukai) which had up to that time published a number of documentary volumes on pre-modern Korean history, was allowed to examine the records in the custody of the Government-General for the purpose of compiling a history of modern Korea. For the next few years this group selected and photographed some one hundred thousand pages of the most important documents covering the period from the Sino-Japanese War of 1894 to the Japanese annexation of Korea in 1910. Plans to continue the reproduction of archives beyond 1910 were dropped owing to the scarcity of photographic supplies during the Pacific War. In August 1945, at the time of the surrender, the Japanese authorities burned the original documents in the Government-General, as well as the photostats in the possession of the history group.

Fortunately, Mr. Shin Sok-ho, the senior Korean scholar on the project, at a risk to his life managed to remove the photographic plates and bury them in his garden. After the arrival of the American troops, these plates were placed in the National History Museum, which was then organized for the purpose of collecting, editing and publishing materials on Korean history. The plates, however, gradually deteriorated and in 1948 Professor Shin Sokho, by that time the Director of the Museum, appealed to the Hoover Institution for photographic supplies in order to make a new set of prints from the original plates before they would completely deteriorate. The Hoover Institution responded immediately and two sets of positive prints were made, one each for the Korean National History Museum and the Hoover Institution. The Korean set of these documents, however, was not yet safe. During the Korean War the original plates and a part of the prints were destroyed, making a portion of the Hoover Institution collection unique. Unfortunately, in a few years as a result of poor photographic work the Hoover set began to discolor. In 1957, Dr. Nobutaka Ike, Curator of the Japanese and Korean Collections, arranged for the microfilming of all the prints, thus preserving this important body of archival material.

These archives are basic source material for the study of the history of modern Korea, international relations in the Far East, and Japanese policy and actions in Korea during the critical fifteen years preceding the annexation. They also portray, in some detail, the political and economic policies and activities of Russia, the United States, Great Britain, France and other countries in Korea, as well as Korean domestic politics. The collection consists of some five hundred folders of documents of the Japanese Legation in Seoul (1894-1905), the Japanese Residency General in Korea (1906-1910), and a few documents of the Japanese Government-General that extend a few years beyond 1910. The documents include Japanese diplomatic correspondence originating in the Foreign Office in Tokyo, in the Seoul Legation and in the various Japanese consulates in Korea, as well as in other Japanese diplomatic and consular posts. The folders contain instructions emanating from Tokyo to Japanese missions in Korea; reports submitted to Tokyo by Japanese diplomatic and consular staff in Korea; records of conversations of Japanese diplomats with Korean officials and with foreign diplomats in Korea; diplomatic correspondence of the Korean government with Japan and with other foreign countries; instructions to Japanese military and police commanders in Korea and their reports to Tokyo; copies of letters to and from the American, Russian, British, French and other diplomatic personnel in Korea (some of them in the original language); drafts and texts of treaties and agreements, lists, charts, and personal correspondence.

Despite the fact that these important documents have been available for some ten years, not many scholars have used them. Only a few Stanford graduate students and visiting scholars have consulted these materials, partly because lack of an index made it extremely difficult to use them. One had to go through thousands of pages to find the needed references. In the spring of 1958, shortly after assuming the Curatorship of the Japanese and Korean Collections, the present writer proposed to compile an accurate checklist and an analytical index to the documents in order to make these historical materials readily available to scholars. Special research assistance funds were provided by the Committee on East Asian Research of Stanford University, while the Hoover Institution assumed all publication costs. The work to prepare annotations for each document file and to compile an index was assigned to Mr. Andrew C. Nahm.

In order to ascertain the availability of accurate checklists and indices to these archives in Korea, an attempt was made, in June 1958, to contact Professor Shin Sok-ho, then the Director of the Korean Committee for the Compilation of National History and also the President of the Historical Society of Korea. In the meantime the annotation and indexing of the Hoover Collection went forward. In February 1959 we were fortunate to receive from Professor Shin the first two issues of Sahak yongu (The Study of History), a quarterly published by the Historical Society of Korea in Seoul. The first issue, which was dated August 15, 1958, contained a list of the archives in question and brief descriptive annotations covering the folders for the first two years. The second issue (December 1958) continued the coverage up to 1900. The third issue which appeared shortly thereafter in the spring of 1959 included the document annotations for the period up to 1903. It is expected that the subsequent issues of the journal will bring the series up to 1910. No index has appeared so far. The list published in the first issue of Sahak yongu differed from the lists sent to the Hoover Institution from Korea in 1948. Subsequently we also received from Professor Shin a new and revised "Master List of Titles of Documents of Japanese Secret Archives in Korea." Unfortunately this new list differed from the list published in Sahak yongu and from the old Korean lists, and both showed discrepancies when checked against the folders annotated in the journal.

Nevertheless, with Professor Shin's cooperation we have attempted to compile a comprehensive list of all the extant files, whether at the Hoover Institution or in the collection of the Committee for the Compilation of National History in Seoul. As a result of this work, an Addendum was prepared which lists all the folders identified from the above-mentioned lists of extant files, and at the same time the Index to our Checklist was expanded to include also this Addendum. (Since many folders have similar titles, there may be some duplication.) Most of the files listed in the Addendum have been located in Korea and it is hoped that they will be microfilmed and added to our collection. The folders which are in the Hoover Institution and no longer available in Korea have been reproduced and sent to the National History Museum in Seoul.

There are 294 folders in the Archives, and 139 in the Addendum. Of the latter, thirty items appeared only in the new Korean "Master List" while three others appeared only in the first issue of Sahak yòngu. The Archives lists folders totalling over 33,000 frames (over 66,000 pages of documents). The Addendum lists folders totalling 10,324 frames (over 20,600 pages of documents) plus a number of folders which give no indication of the number of frames. The total number of pages in all the folders listed in Part I is probably close to one hundred thousand.

The annotations are descriptive rather than critical, and selective rather than comprehensive. Emphasis was placed on Korean foreign relations (especially with Japan), and the policies toward Korea and actions in Korea of Japan, China, Russia and other powers. Additional topics such as Korean internal politics were covered only partially, as listing all the topics dealt with the documents would have enlarged the size of the checklist substantially.

The appendices were provided to facilitate the use of the documents. While some of the information contained in them was readily available, others involved extensive research and compilation. The chronology (Appendix I), averaging some twenty entries per year, is based on Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Russian and American sources. Its purpose is to provide additional reference data for the users of this checklist; hence the selection of dates was primarily motivated by the topics found in the documents. It was not planned as a chronology of the most important events in modern Korean history and Far Eastern international relations.

Photographic prints and microfilms of all the documents listed in here as "Archives" can be consulted at the Hoover Institution. Microfilms of individual reels may be ordered by mail.

Finally, it remains to acknowledge with thanks the generous assistance of the Committee on East Asian Research of Stanford University, the friendly help of the staff members of the Hoover Institution's Japanese and Korean, and Chinese Collections, as well as the cooperation of the staff of the East Asiatic Library, University of California at Berkeley, who put at our disposal the valuable Asami Collection and their other rich source materials on Korean history.

Peter A. Berton

6. Each entry in the Archives gives: (1) a free English translation of the title of the folder with western date(s), (2) the original Japanese title in parentheses with the Japanese date(s) at the head, (3) number of frames in the folder, (4) the microfilm reel number in which the folder was microfilmed, (5) annotation of the documents, (6) physical description of the frames in the folder, such as illegible, unnumbered, or damaged frames, in addition to information relating to missing frames, and numbers of frames containing documents written in languages other than Chinese or Japanese, and (7) the inclusive dates of the documents.

7. The entries in the Addendum give information similar to those in the Archives. However, since no photographic copies of the documents were available to the compiler, and only less than the half of the numbers of the "missing folders" were annotated in Sahak yongu (see Nos. 1-3), he was unable to provide information relating to items (4), (5), (6), in the foregoing paragraph.

8. In the Addendum, following the folder numbers, certain information is given in parentheses, e.g. (1894-4). For the most part this information was secured from the chronologically arranged "Master List" (see 5 above). This "Master List" arranged the documents by year, and within each year, the documents are numbered consecutively. The numbering, unfortunately, does not correspond to the original folder number. For example, Folder No. 1 "Reports on the suppression of the Tonghak Rebellion, 1894 (Meiji 27-nen Togakuto seito ni kansuru shohohoku)" is the 4th entry under 1894 in the "Master List." In Folders No. 531-533 the prefix SY has been used. This prefix refers to Sahak yongu (No. 1, Aug. 1958). This was necessary because in these three instances there appears to be a discrepancy between the "Master List" and the "General List" (see 5 above). In these three cases, the annotation was taken from Sahak yongu.

9. Some folders in the Addendum do not have the additional information in parentheses described in the preceding paragraph. The titles of these folders do not correspond to the titles in either the "Master List" or the "General List" prepared by the Historical Society of Korea in Seoul. While it is possible that these folders may no longer be in existence (many folders were destroyed during the Korean War) they are listed for reference.

10. The annotation indicates the most important subjects contained in the folder. To facilitate finding the documents, the subjects are listed in order of appearance. The annotation also gives the dates of the earliest and the latest documents. No annotation was made when the title was self-explanatory.

11. Some folder titles bear no relation to the contents of the folders, and in these instances, correct information is given in the annotation.

12. Japanese Legation always means the Japanese Legation in Korea.

13. Although Gaibu means literally the Korean "Foreign Office," it was often rendered as "Korean government," because many of the Japanese Legation papers sent to Gaibu were actually addressed to Korean Prime Ministers.

14. The Archives and the Addendum are both indexed.

15. The Index comprises subject information obtained from the titles of the folders and from the annotations; in addition it includes geographical and personal names mentioned in the documents themselves.

16. Since practically all the documents deal with Japanese-Korean relations, this subject was not indexed except for several important Japanese-Korean treaties and agreements.

17. Korean relations with other foreign countries appear under "Korea, relations with..." See also entries beginning with the word "American," "British," "Russian," etc.

18. The subject "Rebellions and uprisings" includes also local disturbances.

19. A separate index, "Language Index," lists the folders which include documents in languages other than Japanese and Chinese.

20. Romanization systems used: Revised Hepburn, Wade-Giles, and McCune-Reischauer (except well-established geographical names such as Seoul, Inchon, Pyongyang or Tokyo).

Andrew C. Nahm

Biographical / historical:

The Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace at Stanford University undertook in 1954 to publish guides which would give to the scholars and students a possibility of getting acquainted with the holdings of its Library. Two separate series were designed to fulfill this task: a) the Collection Surveys, of which three issues appeared to-date, * and b) the Bibliographical Series, continuing a series begun before World War II. **

The Collection Surveys deal with particular area collections. They describe the holdings with a view to topical concentration and chronological order. The surveys are not lists of materials contained in the particular area collections; they do, however, contain titles of the most important source material as well as selective lists of newspaper and periodical holdings. In addition, they attempt to evaluate the collections for research purposes, and to indicate their strengths and shortcomings.

The issues of the Bibliographical Series contain detailed lists of the Library's holdings on particular subjects and problems which might be of special interest to scholars and students. Their value to scholars is enhanced by annotations discussing each listed item.

The present publication is the fifth in this Bibliographical Series. Its preparation and publication is to be particularly welcomed, because it makes available to scholars a unique body of material which the Hoover Institution has been privileged to help preserve. In 1948 the Hoover Library received an urgent plea from the Director of the Korean National History Museum to help photostat a group of archival materials that were gradually fading, namely the archives of the Japanese Legation in Seoul and of the Japanese Residency-General in Korea for the crucial period of 1894 to 1910. These were indeed indispensable for the study of modern Korean and Japanese history and of Far Eastern international relations from the Sino-Japanese War to the annexation of Korea in 1910. The necessary photographic supplies were shipped immediately and two copies were made: one for the Korean National History Museum, and the other for the Hoover Institution.

For ten years these archives remained largely unknown and unused; for lack of organization, only a few scholars and graduate students utilized them during this period. In 1958 Dr. Peter A. Berton, Acting Curator of the Japanese and Korean Collections, took the initiative in organizing the archives. Under his direction, Andrew C. Nahm, a native of Korea, a Ph. D. candidate in history at Stanford University, and a staff member of the Japanese and Korean Collections in the Hoover Institution, prepared this checklist and index to the archives. The compilation of the annotated list was facilitated by a grant received from the Committee on East Asian Research of Stanford University.

It is our hope that the present publication will make this valuable collection readily available to scholars throughout the country and abroad. We shall welcome comment and suggestions.

Witold S. Sworakowski

Assistant Director
The Hoover Institution
December, 1959

(*)
  1. Witold S. Sworakowski, The Hoover Library Collection on Russia, Stanford 1954, 42 p.
  2. Hildegard R. Boeninger, The Hoover Library Collection on Germany, Stanford, 1955, 56 p.
  3. No. 3: Nobutaka Ike: The Hoover Institution Collection on Japan. Stanford, 1958, 63 p.

(**)
  1. A Catalogue of Paris Peace Conference Delegation Propaganda in the Hoover War Library. Stanford, 1926, 96 p. (out of print)
  2. Nina Almond and Ralph Haswell Lutz, An Introduction to a Bibliography of the Paris Peace Conference. Stanford, 1935, 32 p. (out of print)
  3. Frederick W. Mote, Japanese-Sponsored Governments in China; 1937-1945. Stanford, 1954, 68 p. (out of print)
  4. Eugene Wu, Leaders of Twentieth-Century China. (Bibliography of Biographies) Stanford, 1956, 106 p.

Arrangement:

1. The documents listed in Part I consist of two parts: Archives and Addendum. Those in the Archives are at present available at the Hoover Institution. The Addendum lists documents identified from several lists of the photographic prints of the Japanese secret documents in Korea. All of the folders listed in the Addendum are in Korea, but arrangements are being made to microfilm and add them to the Hoover Institution collection.

2. The photographic prints of the documents in Part I were grouped together, when the prints were made in Korea, in "folders" roughly according to subject matter. Each folder is numbered consecutively in more or less chronological sequence.

3. A photographic print containing two pages of original documents is called "frame" for convenience. Each frame (not to be mistaken with the microfilm frame) in the folder, except for a few, is numbered consecutively. The number of frames given at the end of each entry is the number of photographic prints in each folder. The right side of each frame is referred to as "a" and the left as "b". Some frames are not numbered.

4. Each microfilm frame contains four frames, i.e., four photographic prints, arranged in the order of the folder number except in Reels No. 18 and No. 19.

5. The Addendum is likewise arranged according to folder numbers. Three sources were used in compiling the Addendum. The first was a "List of Missing Folders" prepared by the compiler by comparing the holdings of the Hoover Institution against the list of materials which came from Korea in 1948. This "List of Missing Folders" contains the folder numbers and titles of those folders which have not been received by the Hoover Institution. The second was a new chronologically arranged "Master List" of the entire archives prepared in 1958 by the Historical Society of Korea. The third was Sahak yongu (The Study of History), a journal published by the Historical Society of Korea in Seoul, which contained a chronologically arranged "General List" of the folders of the entire archives in issue No. 1 (Aug. 1958). Annotations for these folders are being published in this and subsequent issues of Sahak yongu.

Physical location:
Hoover Institution Library & Archives
Rules or conventions:
Describing Archives: A Content Standard

Access and use

Restrictions:

Microfilm use only. Materials must be requested in advance via our reservation system. If there are audiovisual or digital media material in the collection, they must be reformatted before providing access.

Terms of access:

For copyright status, please contact the Hoover Institution Library & Archives.

Preferred citation:

[Identification of item], Japan, Koshikan (Korea) Records, [Box no., Folder no. or title], Hoover Institution Library & Archives.

Location of this collection:
Hoover Institution Library & Archives, Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305-6003, US