다보하시 기요시(田保橋潔)의 근대한일관계사 연구에 대한 검토

Review on Tabohashi Kiyoshi’s Study on Modern History of Korea-Japan Relations

Tabohashi Kiyoshi (田保橋潔) was newly appointed to a professor of Kyungsung Imperial University in 1927. He started researching on the history of international relations of three countries in East Asia for a decade before the Sino-Japanese War broke out, and published a book titled “近代日支鮮關係の硏究” in 1930 and a complemented book titled “近代日鮮關係の硏究” in 1940. The book “近代日鮮關係の硏究” is evaluated as the first empirical study that compiled the history of war diplomacy of the Sino-Japanese War, ranging over not only the diplomatic historical materials of Japan but also the materials of China and Joseon. The most outstanding point of the 『近代日鮮關係の硏究』 is the part that arranged the diplomatic war among Russia, the U.K., China (Qing dynasty), and Japan on the verge of the Sino-Japanese War, by mobilizing the historical materials of those countries to the maximum extent. The Japanese academia calls it as “war diplomacy” or “Mutsu (陸奧) diplomacy”. Tabohashi successfully organized this part by fully utilizing the materials of each country, especially the war diplomacy between Mutsu and Li Hongzhang. In this book, Tabohashi mostly describes the process of Japanese invasion of Joseon in an objective manner. However, that does not necessarily mean that he describes it in a critical remark. He is well demonstrating that there was a conflict between the realistically negative theory of the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the unreasonably strong view of the Japanese military over dispatching troops to Joseon in 1894. He also gave details about that the Japanese navy and army launched a preemptive attack on the Qing’s navy and army without any declaration of war. However, he was very critical of the politics of the Emperor Gojong, Queen, relatives, Daewongun, and the independent party. Therefore, he argued that it was only natural for Japan to merge Joseon. He also argued that the rule of the Japanese Government-General of Korea on Joseon made a significant progress in public security, industrial development, and stabilization of living, and wrote that the people of Joseon was expressing appreciations of the imperial grace of Japanese Emperor. He had a seriously distorted awareness of the reality of the colonized Joseon.