A street in Fusan — possibly Benten-dori — in the 1890s / Robert Neff Collection
By Robert Neff
In the winter of 1883, Percival Lowell, an American, paid a short visit to Fusan (modern Busan) while en route to Seoul via Jemulpo. According to him:
“Fusan is composed principally of one long street, turning half-way in its course at right angles to itself. The village has taken the form of a carpenter’s square, with the bay, or rather two bays, to mark its outside limits, and a steep hill, in what would be the inside angle of the square, to bar its extension inland. Down the middle of the main street [Benten-dori — now Gwangbok-ro] runs a canal a few feet wide, spanned at intervals by planking. Along its sides are rows of trees. At the outer corner of the square is the knoll from which the town takes its name; for Fusan — in Korean, Pusan — means ‘kettle mountain,’ and the name was given the place from a fancied resemblance in this knoll to a kettle upside down. A Japanese temple now crowns the top, and the whole is covered with trees.”
Lowell spent little time in the port — merely a short excursion of sightseeing and dining while waiting for his steamship to finish transferring cargo — so his description is rather anemic. However, other sources provide more detailed descriptions and indicate Fusan was in some ways more cosmopolitan than Jemulpo.
In October 1883, one foreign resident described Fusan as a Japanese settlement consisting of 600 houses, which were “for the most part substantially built specimens of Japanese architecture, two stories high,” and provided housing for the 1,800 Japanese residents. The finest buildings were the Japanese consulate, the 1st National Bank, the offices of several Japanese traders, the steamship offices and the Kofukutai Hotel. In addition, the port had a hospital, school, post office and police station. The two-storied Korean Imperial Customs Service’s office was at the western end of the port and was also considered to be quite grand. In addition, a telegraph office was in the final stages of completion. He did not refer to Korea as the Land of the Morning Calm or even as the Hermit Kingdom, but instead deemed it the “Land of Promise.”
A map of Fusan in 1885 from a regional directory / Robert Neff Collection
The Japanese newspapers had a great deal to say about Fusan — much of it negative and filled with reports of Korean outrages and plots to drive foreigners from the peninsula. However, one “special correspondent” (most likely the previously-mentioned resident) denounced these reports as “utterly false.” According to him, it was “an absolute fact that the Coreans are delighted to see Europeans arriving in their country, and are longing for the day when the British, American, German and other flags will fly from the consulates of these nations’ representative at this port…” He then went on to give a long list of things he found remarkable about Korea including the streets of Fusan being broad and fairly well-constructed with trees planted along the entire main street. Somewhat sarcastically, he also found it remarkable that the Japanese settlement, despite having 2,000 residents, “had no street lamps alight at night, except outside the police station.”
According to another resident — whom I believe was Chesney Duncan, a member of the Korean Imperial Customs Service — Fusan was also an ideal place for tourists who were seeking adventure or a comfortable place to rest.
According to him, “Fusan has two restaurants and a good Chinese store.” We have already discussed the troubles surrounding the “good Chinese store” (Ting Hick & Co) and by the time Duncan’s account was published, Ting Hick & Co. had probably already moved to Jemulpo.
As to the restaurants, there were more than just two. In the summer of 1881, a Japanese newspaper reported there was a large number of restaurateurs in the port who also acted as trade brokers when their legitimate business was dull. Most likely Duncan was referring to restaurants that catered to picky foreign visitors who were unable or unwilling to try a different type of cuisine. Jennie Lovatt, the wife of Customs Commissioner William Lovatt, mentioned there were at least two restaurants where foreign [Western] style meals were served.
A view of Benten Street in the early 20th century / Robert Neff Collection
Unfortunately, neither Duncan nor Jennie mentioned the names but we can make some educated guesses using other sources. One of these restaurants was probably Kofukutai Hotel, whose proprietor was K. Maki who was assisted by K. Seki. It was here that Lowell dined in late 1883 and again in early 1884. Lowell wrote:
“The same teahouse girl waited on us. Through the opened shoji was saw the sunlight of the street below, the Japanese wending their ways hither and thither, and stopping with their ceremonious bows, as they met a friend, to chat awhile.”
The other establishment was Nish Restaurant, which served as a boarding house or hotel and was arguably the most popular establishment with the foreign employees of the Korean Imperial Customs Service.
One of these employees was George William Harrison, a Briton, who stayed at the Nish Restaurant for about a month. We don’t know what type of people were the hotel’s normal clientele but the British authorities described Harrison as one of the “class of the needy and questionable adventurers, known under the appellation of ‘roughs,’ who suddenly turn up in every field, however remote, in which law is proceeded by enterprise.” The assessment of Harrison was surprisingly accurate.
Harrison lived up to his reputation as a deadbeat and Hariya Kichizo, proprietor of the Nish Restaurant, ended up filing charges against him for failure to pay for his lodging and bar tab — about $19. Although Kichizo appears in some early diplomatic correspondences from Korea, it is unclear if he ever received his money.
Harrison’s story, however, does not end with his exploits in Fusan. At the end of December 1883, Harrison and another former employee of the Korean Imperial Customs Service were brought before a consular court in Shanghai for forging Korean Customs documents and were sentenced to six months’ imprisonment with hard labor. It is at this point Harrison’s name fades from the pages of history.
Drinking was part of the culture — and these restaurants made a tidy sum by providing over-priced alcoholic beverages to their guests, but to those in the know, cheap and even free alcohol could be obtained if you knew where to look. Customs Commissioner William Lovatt complained about one of his employees who “got drunk on the free bad brandy, given out lavishly at the bathing house” and subsequently made himself sick — eventually coming down with a bad case of cholera.
According to Duncan: “Bachelors can, if wishing to prolong their stay [in Fusan], be made fairly comfortable” in one of the hotels or restaurants in the port — provided they do not forget their mosquito nets as there were none offered. However, he quickly corrected himself:
“I should say, tea houses in preference to hotels. Those who have visited Japan, know the former, and of hotels, in the foreign sense, there are none.”
A quick glance through the regional directories reveals there were several additional “hotels” in Fusan including Yaksakaro Hotel and Kangetsuro Hotel — both on Saiwai Street.
Not everyone dined and dashed in Fusan although some wished they had dashed and not dined. A Japanese man employed by the steamship company invited William Lovatt to dinner at the Naniwa Café located on Fusan’s main street. Lovatt was less than pleased.
“A couple of our Japanese friends got drunk. We had a wretched dinner and left early.” Lovatt felt he “deserved some credit for spending three miserable hours in a Japanese café.” Perhaps Lovatt should have been more appreciative to his host; a few months later the poor man lost all of his goods when the Korean boat he was on sank. He spent the next couple of days drowning his sorrows with alcohol.
While Duncan seemed to encourage tourism, those who did make the trip to Fusan weren’t always impressed with the hospitality they were shown. In the fall of 1884, George C. Foulk, an American naval officer attached to Seoul, traveled overland to Fusan, arriving on Nov. 29, and stayed in a Japanese hotel where he had his “first European food for twenty-nine days [but] it did not taste well.” Perhaps if he had described the hotel in his journal we would be able to name it, but apparently he was too busy writing about the handful of Westerners living in the port. He had a lot to say and none of it flattering.
He found most of the foreign employees of the Korean Imperial Customs Service to be a miserable, whining group who “talked much and bitterly on the envy, jealousies, petty meanness, spying, etc., among customs officers.” According to him, they all lived with Japanese women and were “one-horse people throughout.” In his journal he complained about being “constantly watched, and undoubtedly the object of the wretched spying of the customs gang and the Japanese.”
After only three days in Fusan, Foulk began his long return trip to Seoul. Although he didn’t state it in his letters, he was probably happy to escape the port’s petty intrigue, but Foulk would soon find himself awash in even more intrigue and danger — on Dec. 4 the failed Gapsin Coup began.
My sincere appreciation to Diane Nars for her invaluable assistance. For more information about life in Fusan in the mid-1880s, I strongly recommend Wayne Patterson’s book, “In the Service of His Korean Majesty.” If you want to know more about Foulk, I encourage you to read Samuel Hawley’s book, “Inside the Hermit Kingdom.”
Robert Neff has authored and co-authored several books, including Letters from Joseon, Korea Through Western Eyes and Brief Encounters.
