You grade sixty tests, and what do you get?
\nThree months older and deeper in debt.
\nSt. Peter don’t you call me, cause I can’t go!
\nI owe book orders to the campus bookstore….<\/i><\/p>\n
***<\/p>\n
Books that still need to be written about Meiji Japan1<\/a><\/sup> :<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n Adamu at MutantfrogTravelogue did a nice survey of the Yasukuni Shrine’s Yushukan museum<\/a> which ignited a 60-response comment thread. One of the subtler distortions in the Shrine is their history of Korea-Japan relations. Adamu writes<\/p>\n The arguments made did not seem particularly pernicious or dishonest, though certain claims (such as \u201cJapan had repeatedly proposed national independence for Korea, but the West rejected the idea\u201d prior to formal annexation in 1905) seemed kind of disingenuous.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n My contribution <\/a> to the comments was to clarify:<\/p>\n On the Korean issue, they are being blatantly disingenuous: the various calls for Korean independence were targetted at blunting the influence of other regional powers over the Korean court, on the grounds that\u2014according to Japanese strategic calculations\u2014the only natural and legitimate influence in Korea should be Japanese. They called for Korean independence from China before the Sino-Japanese war (after which China explicitly recognized Japanese interests in Korea), then independence from Russia before the Russo-Japanese war (after which Russia and the US explicitly recognized Japanese innterests in Korea). It\u2019s still not a settled question as to when Korean annexation became Japanese policy, but there never was any question (after about 1876 or so) that control of Korea was critical to Japan\u2019s strategic situation.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n inspired by the difficulties my Meiji class students had with their topics ↩<\/a><\/p><\/li>\n