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Inspiring Voices - Nai Rhee Song

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162 pages

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Reared in a palace and educated at Gakushuin, the elite Peers School, Princess Masako was elegant, refined, and proper in all things royal and Japanese. She was also stunningly beautiful. It was therefore only natural that she was being groomed to be betrothed to a princeno less than Crown Prince Hirohito, the future Emperor of Japan. The rulers of the newly emerging Empire of the Sun, however, decided to offer the beautiful princess as a sacrifice on the altar of Japans imperialism. She, they conspired, must marry Yi Eun, the crown prince of Koreas Joseon Kingdom, whose national independence they were strangulating with their conquest ambition. As Korea was forced to become a part of Japan, so was Masako forced to become a part of Korea in order to symbolize the union of the two nations in mortal conflict. Like a fish in a net or a bird in a snare, Princess Masako turned and twisted to live, to be free, and to be happy. Painfully aware that events in her life were beyond her control, however, she decided to accept her destiny. Even so, the imposed destiny would not control her, for she decided to become a heroine, not a victim of her misfortunes, driven by her passion for love, life, and happiness. Masakos story is about the human spirit empowering a victim of misfortunes and an unwanted destiny to become a hero, transforming adversity into patches of paradise as beautiful as the rainbow.

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Publié par	Inspiring Voices
Date de parution	13 septembre 2013
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781462407071
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	15 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0240€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

Princess Nashimoto Masako

Copyright 2013 Song Nai Rhee.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Inspiring Voices
1663 Liberty Drive
Bloomington, IN 47403
www.inspiringvoices.com
1-(866) 697-5313

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery Thinkstock.

ISBN: 978-1-4624-0706-4 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-4624-0708-8 (hc)
ISBN: 978-1-462-40707-1 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013914676

Inspiring Voices rev. date: 07/14/2014

Contents
Prologue: Fate s Cruel Joke
Chapter 1: Princess Nashimoto Masako - Birth And Early Life
Chapter 2 : A Lightning Bolt
Chapter 3: Korea And Yi Eun In Japan s Claws
Chapter 4: A Destiny Unwished
Chapter 5: Korea Explodes In Rage
Chapter 6: From Ecstasy To Agony
Chapter 7: Recovery And Renewal
Chapter 8: European Tour
Chapter 9: Princess Deok-Hye, Another Fateful Twist
Chapter 10: War Time
Chapter 11: Korea During Wwii
Chapter 12: Korea After Liberation
Chapter 13: Masako In Postwar Japan
Chapter 14: From Rejection To A Taste Of Happiness
Chapter 15: Coming Home At Last
Chapter 16: An Angel From The Land Of Samurai
Epilogue: The Greatest Thing In The World
References
Glossary Of Names In The Story
End Notes

People call me the tragic crown princess But I have experienced love and happiness as a woman. I have also had dreams and hopes as beautiful as the rainbow
(Yi Bangja, 1985, p. 12)

In 1962, Princess Nashimoto Masako ( ) became Yi Bangja ( ) and a Korean citizen. Bang-ja ( ) is Korean pronunciation of Masako ( ).
This story unfolds against the background of the mortal Korea-Japan conflicts during the 20 th century and is based on Yi Bangja s publications, including:
Jinaon Seweol (Reflections on my Life), Yeoweon Press, Seoul, 1967 (in Korean)
Baram buneundaero, Mulkyeol chineundaero ( Following the Wind, Going with the Flow ), Hanjin Press, Seoul, 1980. (In Korean)
Nagareno Mamani ( Going with the Flow ), Keiyusha, Tokyo, (1983). (In Japanese)
Seweoliyeo Wangjoyeo ( My Life and the Joseon Royal Dynasty ), Jeongeum Press, Seoul, 1985 (in Korean)
The author is deeply grateful to Principal Kim Woo, the chief administrator of Jahye School and the Yi Bangja Memorial for granting him permission to use and adapt contents and photos of Yi Bangja s publications for this story.
Supplementary information is provided by works included in References, and the author expresses his appreciation to their authors and publishers.
All photos, unless referenced, are adapted from Yi Bangja s publications or created by the author.

Map of the Far East

PROLOGUE: FATE S CRUEL JOKE
T he Queen is dead! Her Majesty, the Queen, has been murdered!
The frantic shouts of a shaken palace guard broke the silence of the Seoul morning as the sun was just breaking out in the eastern horizon with its rays touching the majestic sky lines of Gyeongbok Palace and the gently flowing waters of the Han River.
It was in the early morning of October 8, 1895.
A group of terrifying Japanese soldiers and restless ex-samurai had broken into the forbidden inner private quarters of Gyeongbok Palace, the political center of Korea s Joseon Kingdom, slashing and slaying every palace guard in their path.

The Throne Hall in Gyeongbok Palace
In savage rage, they were looking for Queen Min, the consort wife of Gojong, the king of Korea.
When they found her, after frenzied room to room searches, they brutally and mercilessly cut down the queen in the face of her terrified and helpless palace ladies-in-waiting.
The queen was slim and slight but still a beautiful woman at 44.
After thrusting a sword into the queen s abdomen once, twice, and thrice, some twenty of the bloody samurai soldiers violated the dying queen in turn, continuing their acts of desecration even after she had stopped breathing. The murderers then cut out the breasts of the queen and those of the palace women.
As their final act of savagery, they mutilated the queen s body with their swords from head to toe. They then dragged the slim, torn body outside, wrapped it in a blanket, doused it with kerosene, and burned it to ashes, leaving no trace of the queen.
W hen Japan embarked on the modern era under the leadership of Emperor Meiji in 1868 it eagerly aspired to become an imperialist power like the Western nations.
In addition, to solve the problems of its growing urban population and limited arable lands it set its eyes on the Asian continent and chose Korea as its first target of conquest.
In 1876, with armed threats the Meiji government forced Korea to sign an unequal treaty with Japan, which opened a way for ambitious Japanese to freely move into Korea and begin its economic and political exploitation.
Following its victory against Imperial China in the Sino-Japanese War in April, 1895, the Japanese in Korea became more aggressive, strangulating Korean interests in business, commerce, finance, and even in the political arena.
Gojong and Queen Min concluded that the Japanese were determined to destroy their nation and sought to protect Korean independence. Of the two, Queen Min was more forceful and determined in her opposition to the Japanese high-handed tactics and ambitions in Korea.
The Japanese were enraged, calling the queen a shrewd fox to be eliminated.
In August, 1895, Ito Hirobumi, Japan s prime minister, chose Viscount Miura Goro, a retired general in Japan s Imperial Army and a trusted fellow samurai from his hometown of Hagi in Yamaguchi Prefecture (old Choshu Domain), as resident minister extraordinary and plenipotentiary in Korea.
Miura had power and permission to do whatever he wanted to do, and his mission was to resolve the Korean problem.
Within a few weeks of his arrival in Seoul, Miura, firmly convinced that Japan s conquest ambitions in Korea would be thwarted by Queen Min, adopted an assassination plan code-named Operation Fox Hunt.
With meticulous planning, he organized a death squad consisting of regular Japanese soldiers, restless ex-samurai seeking adventure, and Japanese civilians with expansionistic ambitions.
At 3 o clock in the morning of October 8, Miura s assassination team was given the order to find and murder the queen.
It was Japan s first open act of diabolic trampling of modern Korea, making itself a mortal enemy of Koreans for years and decades to come.
Following the death of Queen Min, Gojong took Lady Eom, his favorite court lady-in-waiting, as his second wife, impressed by her intelligence, wisdom, and political sagacity.
Within a few days of the bloody murder, the Japanese aggressors, feeling triumphant, put pro-Japanese Koreans in key government positions, quickly turning Joseon Kingdom into a Japanese puppet.
Lady Eom advised Gojong to take refuge in the Russian Embassy for his personal safety as well as for launching counter-offensive measures against the Japanese. Russian friendship with Gojong would soon lead to the Russo-Japanese War, but that is another story.
Two years later, in 1897, Gojong had a son by Lady Eom and named him Yi Eun. He would become Korea s last crown prince.
F OUR years later, in 1901, far away across the ocean in Tokyo, an imperial princess was born in a palatial mansion built, of all people, by Miura Goro, the Japanese official responsible for the murder of Queen Min, the wife of Gojong, Yi Eun s father.
The princess was named Masako.
Sixteen years later, in 1917, Imperial Japan s rulers decided that Princess Masako would marry Crown Prince Yi Eun to enhance peace and harmony between the Japanese and the Koreans and Korea-Japan union.
A noble Japanese princess born in a house built by Miura Goro was bidden to marry a Korean, whose father was long in mourning over the death of his beloved consort wife, Queen Min, murdered by Miura Goro!
Was it humor, or was it a cruel joke which Fate plays on hapless humans from time to time?
Qoheleth, an ancient Hebrew philosopher, reflected on the fickleness and cruelty of Fate:
The race is not to the swift,
Or the battle to the strong,
Nor does food come to the wise,
Or wealth to the brilliant,
Or favor to the learned;
But time and chance happen to them all.
Moreover, no man knows when his hour will come,
As fish are caught in a cruel net
Or birds are taken in a snare
So men are trapped by evil times,
That falls unexpectedly upon them.
(Ecclesiastes 9:11-12)
Surely, in the summer of 1923, similar thoughts were going through the mind of Princess Masako, cloistered in the quiet recess of Rinn ji Temple, deep in the forest of Nikko, musing about the cruelties, uncertainties, and contradictions in her own life.
She had come to the temple to escape the steaming heat of Tokyo s summer, but in reality she was running away from the world of grief and pain in search of peace and tranq