The Imjin War: Japan's Sixteenth-Century Invasion of Korea and Attempt to Conquer China

by Samuel Hawley

  The news was received with dismay in Seoul. Just hours after the first reports of the disaster arrived on September 3, King Sonjo summoned his ministers and representatives from the Border Defense Council to discuss the situation and decide how best to respond. Sonjo began by expressing his dissatisfaction with the course of action the navy had pursued. “We should have concentrated only on protecting our naval base at Hansan-do,” he said. “This disaster occurred because Won Kyun was pushed to attack too soon.” At first Sonjo was careful not to mention from where this pressure to attack had come, but eventually his true feelings came out: “This happened because the commander in chief [Kwon Yul] put so much pressure on Won to attack.”

  But recriminations were useless now, as Sonjo himself acknowledged. “This is in the past,” he said. “Now we have to select a new supreme naval commander and collect whatever ships are still left in the area. And we have to report this to China.” The representatives of the Border Defense Council remained silent, evidently unwilling to confront this central issue of whom to choose to replace Won Kyun. Finally Minister of Punishments Kim Myong-won and Minister of War Yi Hang-bok said what everyone else knew must be done. They recommended that Yi Sun-sin be rehabilitated and returned to his former command. King Sonjo readily complied. The order reappointing Yi Sun-sin supreme naval commander was drawn up that same day and dispatched immediately to the south.[657]

  * * *

  Yi Sun-sin, counting the days in his mountain hut at Chogye near the southwestern coast of Kyongsang Province, received first word of the fate of the Korean navy as night was falling on August 28. The news was brought to him by an exhausted sailor, naked and bleeding, who told of “a thousand Japanese vessels” in the waters off Pusan and of the subsequent scattering and retreat of Won Kyun’s navy. Subsequent reports revealed that the battle had been a rout. According to one, “Won Kyun hardly saw the enemy before he ran away to land first, followed by other commanders and chief officers, deserting their ships and crews.”[658]

  Water. Thunder. Great disaster. The signs in the Book of Divination had been correct.

  On August 30 Commander in Chief Kwon Yul rode up from his nearby headquarters to visit Yi and discuss possible courses of action. With the limited information they had, they were unable to reach any decision as to how best to meet the Japanese thrust into Cholla that they both knew now was coming. Finally Yi proposed that he embark westward on an unofficial inspection tour along the coast to determine the state of the region’s defenses and in turn how best to proceed. Kwon agreed. Yi gathered his small entourage of loyal followers and set off that same day on a journey that would cover more than seven hundred kilometers and last thirty days.[659]

  Two weeks later, during a stop on the border between Kyongsang and Cholla, Yi Sun-sin had a dream. In it he saw portents that an august command would soon arrive from the king. He was thus not surprised when an emissary arrived from Seoul the next day, bearing a royal order reappointing him to the post of supreme naval commander of the three provinces of Kyongsang, Cholla, and Chungchong. “I prostrated myself before the written royal orders,” Yi wrote in his diary, “and presented...my sealed and waxed acknowledgement of their receipt.

  “I then started on my journey without delay, taking the road to Tuch’i.”[660]

  CHAPTER 25

  The Japanese Advance Inland

  It was now September 1597. The Korean navy under Won Kyun had been destroyed the previous month, leaving the sea route clear around Korea’s southwestern tip and into the Yellow Sea. The rice fields of southern Korea were also ready to harvest, offering the prospect of plenty of food. It was therefore time for Hideyoshi’s army to begin its land offensive, the big push north from Pusan.

  Hideyoshi planned this second offensive in a very different manner from the first. In 1592 he had envisioned co-opting the Koreans into his empire with as little violence as possible, and so ordered his commanders to treat the locals with as much kindness as circumstances allowed. Hideyoshi harbored no such illusions in 1597. The Koreans, he now knew, were too stubbornly independent to be eased into his polity with a restrained approach. The only way to deal with them was with an iron fist. His orders this time were to “mow down everyone universally, without discriminating between young and old, men and women, the clergy and the laity—high-ranking soldiers on the battlefield, that goes without saying, but also the hill folk, down to the poorest and meanest—and send the heads to Japan.”[661]

  This request for heads, the usual trophies of war, was not meant to be taken literally. They were much too bulky to be shipped to Japan considering the numbers and the distance involved. But Hideyoshi did want evidence of the accomplishments of his army, proof that it was doing what he had told it to do. His troops were accordingly ordered to cut off the noses of the people they killed and to submit them at one of the designated collection points that would be set up. Here they were to be counted by specially appointed inspectors, then salted and packed in casks and shipped to Japan.

  The land offensive of 1597 thus was to be undertaken with a degree of ruthlessness that went beyond anything seen in 1592. As a prelude, the commanders of Hideyoshi’s armies issued proclamations to the Koreans in the regions they were about to invade stating that farmers who did not return to their fields would be hunted down and killed. Public officials would be executed as a matter of course, together with their wives and children, and their houses would be burned. Rewards were promised to anyone betraying an official attempting to hide. The common people, then, were to be allowed to live only if they did exactly as told. Everyone else was to be “wiped out.”[662] It would be a campaign of terror and extermination similar to that launched by the Nazis in occupied Europe in 1939. The armies of both Hitler and Hideyoshi, observes historian Jurgis Elisonas, “suffered under the delusion that they could keep a resistance movement from forming by terrorizing the populace into collaboration.”[663]

  The plan was to move inland in two main thrusts meeting in northern Cholla Province, one veering toward the right, the second to the left. Two great armies were organized for the purpose: a 65,300-man Right Army under the overall command of Mori Hidemoto and a 49,600-man Left Army under Ukita Hideie—a combined invasion force of 114,900 men.

  Ukita’s Left Army was the first to embark. Its objective: Namwon, held by allied Chinese and Korean forces. Troop movements began on September 11, Ukita marching west from Pusan as far as the Cholla border, then northwest toward the city. Other units followed by ship from camps at Pusan, Angolpo, Kadok Island, and points between, among them forces under Konishi Yukinaga, So Yoshitoshi, Shimazu Yoshihiro, and Hachizuka Iemasa. They made their way to Koje Island, then proceeded farther west into previously Korean-held territory, past Namhae Island and into Kwangyang Bay and finally up the Somjin River as far as their ships could go. When these forces stepped ashore the men were still fresh and only ten kilometers from Namwon. The one concern was the horses. The close confinement aboard the ships had left a large number of mounts unfit for immediate use. Konishi and his fellow commanders pastured the animals in nearby fields and camped beside the river to wait for them to recover their strength.

  Figure 8: Japanese Invasion Forces, September 1597 [664]

  RIGHT ARMY

  COMMANDER

  MEN

  Kato Kiyomasa

  Kuroda Nagamasa

  Nabeshima Naoshige

  & Katsushige

  Ikeda Hideshi

  Nakagawa Hidenari

  Chosokabe Motochika

  Mori Hidemoto*

  TOTAL

  10,000

  5,000

  12,000

  2,800

  2,500

  3,000

  30,000

  65,300

  LEFT ARMY

  COMMANDER

  MEN

  Konishi Yukinaga

  So Yoshitoshi

  Matsuura Shigenobu

  Arima Harunobu

  Omura Yoshiaki


  Goto Genga

  Hachizuka Iemasa

  Mori Yoshinari

  Ikoma Kazumasa

  Shimazu Yoshihiro

  Shimazu Tadatoyo

  Akizuki Tanenaga

  Takahashi Mototane

  Ito Yuhei

  Sagara Yorifusa

  Ukita Hideie*

  TOTAL

  7,000

  1,000

  3,000

  2,000

  1,000

  700

  7,200

  2,000

  2,700

  10,000

  800

  300

  600

  500

  800

  10,000

  49,600

  * Commander in Chief

  Not long into this period of convalescence, a report was received from a local priest that twenty thousand enemy troops were garrisoned inside Namwon, with twenty thousand reinforcements on the way. Konishi and his comrades held a meeting to consider their options in light of this information and decided that they should attack Namwon immediately, before these supposed reinforcements arrived, even though a number of their horses remained lame and unfit.[665] They broke camp and marched the short distance to the city on September 23, where they joined Ukita Hideie in surrounding the fortress.

  Fifty thousand Japanese soldiers now stood poised to attack Namwon. They were not faced by twenty thousand defenders as the priest had claimed. Gathered inside the fortress were only three thousand Ming troops led by General Yang Yuan, a thousand Koreans under Cholla Army Commander Yi Bok-nam, plus a number of civilians. The fortifications that the allied Chinese and Korean forces defended nevertheless demanded respect. The first obstacle the Japanese had to face was a deep trench encircling the fort. The bottom of the trench was lined with spiky-limbed tree trunks, making it doubly difficult to cross. Then there were the defenses of the fort itself, stout stone walls nowhere less than four meters high interspersed with towered gates rising higher still. To overcome these obstacles and take Namwon would require skill and guile in addition to force. Otherwise casualties would be unacceptably high.

  The tentative opening moves of the battle were made that same day, September 23. A small force of one hundred Japanese soldiers were the first to approach the fortress. They spread out in a wide arc and began peppering the walls with musket balls, drawing fire from the defenders within so that the daimyo commanders observing from the rear could determine the enemy’s positioning and strength.

  The Japanese began to attack in earnest the following day. The first obstacle to clear was the trench. Working under heavy cannon and arrow and musket fire from the fortress, units of Japanese began filling in the trench at several locations with straw and earth. When these crossing points were complete, large numbers of troops began streaming across to take cover among the remains of the houses clustered outside the fortress itself. General Yang Yuan had previously ordered these structures burned, but the smoking ruins still provided adequate protection.

  Figure 9: The Second Invasion, 1597-98

  A lull occurred in the fighting the next day, September 25, the day of the lunar equinox and the harvest festival of Chusok. Perhaps seeking to take advantage of the occasion, the Japanese raised a shout that they wished to talk. Yang Yuan sent out a man to see what they wanted. He returned, as Yang undoubtedly had expected he would, with a letter demanding the fortress’s surrender. Yang refused. With that the Japanese resumed their attack, stronger this time than before, and continuing on into the night despite a heavy rain.

  Throughout these days of fighting the Japanese commanders outside the fortress continued to scrutinize the walls and assess the strength and disposition of the forces within. Chinese troops were positioned at the east, west, and south of the enclosure; Korean forces guarded the north. They were growing exhausted by now, their arrows were running low, and the determination of some was beginning to wear thin. Ukita, Konishi, and their comrades correctly surmised that General Yang would expect an attack to come at those places where the walls were lowest and that he had accordingly stationed his men most thickly at these points. It was therefore decided to attack the wall at its highest point, by the fortress’s south gate, where few soldiers were likely to be. To prepare for this assault, the Japanese commanders sent their men into the nearby fields to cut and bundle up the rice stalks that were still green and wet from the previous day’s rain. The allies within Namwon noted these bundles being stockpiled outside but could not fathom what they were for. They found out the next day. When darkness had fallen on September 26, and before the moon was up, the Japanese unleashed a two-hour barrage of musket and cannon fire against Namwon, forcing the defenders to keep their heads down and deafening them with the noise. Under cover of this distraction, parties of men stole up to the wall and quietly began to erect a massive pile of straw, heaping it up against the stones until a spongy ramp led straight to the top. When the barrage finally stopped and the Chinese and Koreans were able to peek out, the ramp was complete and Japanese troops were storming over the walls, samurai Matsuura Shigenobu reportedly leading the way. The allies fought back as best they could, but were unable to drive the Japanese back or set fire to the pile of moist rice stalks they were using as a ladder. Soon the fortress was filled with thousands of Japanese attackers, samurai warriors at the lead, eager for the glory of hand-to-hand combat.[666]

  Okochi Hidemoto, author of the Chosen ki, was among them. After cutting off the heads of two men, he recalled that this was “the day dedicated to his tutelary kami (Hachiman) dai Bosatsu, [so] he put down his bloodstained blade and, pressing together his crimson-stained palms, bowed in veneration toward far-off Japan. He cut off the noses and placed them inside a paper handkerchief which he put into his armour.” Shortly thereafter Okochi brought down a third enemy warrior on a horse, this one with a thrust of his blade to the groin. The man fell off the far side of his mount into a group of nearby samurai, who promptly began to hack at his neck. Okochi instantly intervened, explaining his groin thrust and claiming the head for himself.[667]

  By this time Ming commander Yang Yuan was gone. When he saw that Namwon was about to fall, he led three hundred men in a retreat out the fortress’s west gate. They had to fight their way out through strong Japanese resistance. Yang himself was wounded twice by musket fire, and only one hundred of his men survived. Placing their commander on a stretcher, this small band managed to get clear of the battle and raced north. They reached Chonju to find it deserted. The Ming general assigned to hold the city, Chen Yuzhong, had not only ignored the call for help that Yang had sent him on the eve of the battle, he had fled north upon hearing of the fall of Namwon. Yang and his party thus continued on to Seoul. They arrived in the capital the following week.

  Back at Namwon almost everyone was dead, including Cholla Army Commander Yi Bok-nam and his men, every civilian who had remained in the city, and numerous others who had been cut down outside. The priest Keinen, serving with the Japanese army as a chaplain and physician, recorded in his diary that “the only people to be seen were those lying dead on the ground. When I looked around the fortress at dawn the next day I saw bodies beyond number heaped up along the roadside.”[668] He would later encapsulate the trauma of the scene in a poem:

  Whoever sees this

  Out of all his days

  Today has become the rest of his life. [669]

  After the battle the Japanese set to work cutting off the nose of every corpse. According to Okochi’s firsthand account, 3,726 noses were collected at Namwon. Konishi Yukinaga’s men accounted for 879 of them, Ukita Hideie’s contingent placed second with 622, Hachizuka Iemasa’s third with 468, and Shimazu Yoshihiro’s fourth with 421.[670] These were submitted by samurai to their daimyo commanders, then were passed on to the designated “nose collection officer” for salting, packing, and shipment home to Japan.

  * * *

  While Konishi and his Left Army colleagues were attacking Namwon, Kato Kiy
omasa and forward units of the Right Army were busy elsewhere. Leaving his coastal fort at Sosaengpo in the middle of September, Kato led his ten thousand-man force inland along a westerly route, intent on beating the Left Army to Namwon and attacking the fortress there first.[671] He was accompanied by the veteran Nabeshima Naoshige at the head of twelve thousand men, and by Kuroda Nagamasa with five thousand. They had advanced about sixty kilometers when they came upon the mountain fortress of Hwawangsansong, defended by a force of Korean volunteers under the famous “Red Coat General” Kwak Jae-u, recently returned to active military service as regional commander of Kyongsang Right Province. Judging the walls of the fort to be impregnable and the men inside dangerously determined, Kato, Nabeshima, and Kuroda decided to bypass this knot of resistance and continue on their way.[672]

  They felt differently about the next mountain fortress they came to, named Hwangsoksansong after the thousand-meter-high Mt. Hwangsok on the slopes of which it stood. This fortress guarded the strategically important mountain pass leading from Kyongsang Province to Cholla. It therefore had to be taken.

  Hwangsoksansong was one of several mountain strongholds in southern Korea that had been either built or repaired in the years leading up to the second invasion. Weapons and supplies were stockpiled inside, and local magistrates were instructed to lead civilians there for safety in the event of a renewed attack. When the Japanese began to move inland, Kwak Jun, the forty-seven-year-old magistrate of the surrounding county of Anum, was placed in charge of Hwangsoksansong. He entered the fortress with two of his sons, a son-in-law, and a force of several hundred militiamen. They were joined by Cho Chong-do, the elderly magistrate of neighboring Hanam County, together with his wife and children, and by Kimhae governor Baek Sa-rim, who had been sent by Inspector General Yi Won-ik to provide military expertise.