By this time the Japanese Churches were beginning to stir.  The Federation of Churches in Japan sent Dr. Ishizaka, Secretary of the Mission Board of the Japan Methodist Church, to enquire.  Dr. Ishizaka’s findings were published in the Gokyo.  I am indebted for a summary of them to an article by Mr. R.S.  Spencer, in the Christian Advocate of New York: 

“Dr. Ishizaka first showed, on the authority of officials, missionaries and others, that the missionaries could in no just way be looked upon as the cause of the disturbances.  Many Koreans and most of the missionaries had looked hopefully to Japanese control as offering a cure for many ills of the old regime, but in the ten years of occupation feeling had undergone a complete revulsion and practically all were against the Japanese governing system.  The reasons he then sketches as follows:  (1) The much-vaunted educational system established by the Governor-General makes it practically impossible for a Korean to go higher than the middle schools (roughly equivalent to an American high school) or a technical school.  Even when educated Koreans were universally discriminated against.  In the same office, at the same work, Koreans receive less pay than Japanese.  (The quotations are from the translation of the Japan Advertiser.) ’A Korean student in Aoyama Gakuin, who stayed at Bishop Honda’s home, became the head officer of the Taikyu district office.  That was before the annexation....  That officer is not in Taikyu now.  He is serving in some petty office in the country.  The Noko Bank, in Keijo (Seoul) is the only place where the Japanese and Koreans are treated equally, but there, also, the equality is only an outward form.’ (2) The depredations of the Oriental Improvement Co., the protege of the government, resulted in the eviction of hundreds of Korean farmers, who fled to Manchuria and Siberia, many dying miserably.  The wonderful roads are mentioned, it being shown that they are built and cared for by forced labour of the Koreans.  That most galling and obnoxious of all bureaucratic methods, carried to the nth power in Japan—­the making out of endless reports and forms—­has created dissatisfaction.  Dr. Ishizaka relates how an underling official required a Korean of education to rewrite a notice of change of residence six times because he omitted a dot in one of those atrocious Chinese characters, which are a hobble on the development of Japan.  This last opinion is mine, not the doctor’s. (3) The gendarmerie, or military police system, is mentioned, 13,000 strong, of whom about 8,000 are renegade Koreans.  Admittedly a rough lot, these men are endowed with absolute power of search, personal or domiciliary, detention, arrest (and judging from the reports, I would say torture) without warrant.  Bribery is, of course, rampant among them. (4) Associated closely with the police system, indeed controlling it and the civil administration and everything else, is the military government.