러일전쟁과 종군일기: 군의의 기록을 중심으로

Abstract

Japan began their full-fledged colonial invasion taking opportunity of the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War in 1904. During the 1 year and 8 month duration, the war was supported by large-scale human and material resources, with one million and eighty-thousand soldiers, consuming a total cost of around two billion yen. To the soldiers, the Russo-Japanese war was the first opportunity to encounter the culture of another country. Thus soldiers began to record their new experiences which they were not able to see or experience in Japan, in written form in the form of letters and journals. From these records, wartime journals included records about the situation of the war, everyday life on the battlefield as well as personal feelings about the war. Together with the combatting soldiers' perception of the war, it is possible to see the reality(detailed illustration) of the war and therefore it is natural to pay attention to soldiers' journals for this purpose. Although various studies on the Russo-Japanese War, dealing with its political, diplomatic and military aspects have been accrued, since Ooe Shinobu's research on social history in the 1980s, the subject of research has been expanding to cover studies on slavery to military support. There are particularly many studies being conducted on the wartime journals of individual soldiers. Although there are many such studies regarding soldiers' perception of a disparate culture during the special circumstances of the Russo-Japanese war, recently, as new materials are discovered one after another, studies stray from the common perception, and approach war from a new perspective, as a break away journey from everyday life, or focus on written records such as journals. In such manners, new and diverse approaches are being experimented. However, until the present, studies focusing mainly on the perceptions of common peasants and soldiers have been carried out, and those regarding other strata have not been conducted. Therefore, this research, unlike previous studies centered on soldiers, will focus on the class of medical officers in examining the Russo-Japanese War. In comparison to common soldiers who were enlisted by order for conscription, medical officers joined the military voluntarily to take part in the war, and because their rank was of officer level, they were given more varied roles than common soldiers, and therefore believed to be able have broader experience of the war. The ranks of the three medical soldiers to be examined in this research are second and third medical officers. These officers did not take part in the war directly, but were able to observe the war closely by treating injured soldiers, taking charge of sanitation and education of hygiene workers. Thus they were of distinctive a rank which could carry out the role of doctors during the war. Therefore, this research has analyzed the journals of three medical officers, and examined the detailed illustrations of what roles medical officers took charge of during the war. For a year and eight months, in the Russo-Japanese war, medical officers not only recorded the status of treatment for injured soldiers, but also left detailed records of the structure of medical institutions, providing information of the Japanese military's medical system at the time of the war. In addition, in the war journals of medical officers information on army life which was an important part of the war, can also be found. In particular, from clothing, food and housing to military events, general life in the barracks is viewed from the unique perspective from the rank of medical officers, which sheds new light on the reality of everyday lives of soldiers during the war and proceeds to aid the comprehensive understanding of the Japanese military and military officers during the Russo-Japanese War.