It became more and more clear, however, that the aim of the Japanese was nothing else than the entire absorption of the country and the destruction of every trace of Korean nationality.  One of the most influential Japanese in Korea put this quite frankly to me in 1906.  “You must understand that I am not expressing official views,” he told me.  “But if you ask me as an individual what is to be the outcome of our policy, I only see one end.  This will take several generations, but it must come.  The Korean people will be absorbed by the Japanese.  They will talk our language, live our life, and be an integral part of us.  There are only two ways of colonial administration.  One is to rule over the people as aliens.  This you British have done in India, and therefore your Empire cannot endure.  India must pass out of your rule.  The second way is to absorb the people.  This is what we will do.  We will teach them our language, establish our institutions, and make them one with us.”

The policy of the new administration towards foreigners was one of gradual, but no less sure, exclusion.  Everything that could be done was done to rob the white man of what prestige was yet left to him.  Careful and systematic efforts were made, in particular, by the Japanese newspapers and some of the officials to make the native Christian converts turn from their American teachers, and throw in their lot with the Japanese.  The native press, under Japanese editorship, systematically preached anti-white doctrines.  Any one who mixed freely with the Korean people heard from them, time after time, of the principles the Japanese would fain have them learn.  I was told of this by ex-Cabinet Ministers, by young students, and even by native servants.  One of my own Korean “boys” put the matter in a nutshell to me one day.  He raised the question of the future of Japan in Asia, and he summarized the new Japanese doctrines very succinctly.  “Master,” he said to me, “Japanese man wanchee all Asia be one, with Japanese man topside.  All Japanese man wanchee this; some Korean man wanchee, most no wanchee; all Chinaman no wanchee.”

It may be thought that the Japanese would at least have learnt from their experience in 1895 not to attempt to interfere with the dress or personal habits of the people.  Nothing among all their blunders during the earlier period was more disastrous to them than the regulations compelling the men to cut off their topknots.  These did Japan greater harm among the common people than even the murder of the Queen.  Yet no sooner had Japan established herself again than once more sumptuary regulations were issued.  The first was an order against wearing white dress in wintertime.  People were to attire themselves in nothing but dark-coloured garments, and those who refused to obey were coerced in many ways.  The Japanese did not at once insist on a general system of hair-cutting, but they brought the greatest pressure to bear on all in any way under their authority.