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

by Samuel Hawley

  Chapter 2: China: The Ming Dynasty in Decline

  [26] Chu Hsi and Lu Tsu-ch’ien, Reflections of Things at Hand, trans. Wing-tsit Chan (New York: Columbia University Press, 1967), 69.

  [27] Confucius, The Analects (Lun yu), trans. D. C. Lau (London: Penguin Books, 1979), 155 (book 19:13).

  [28] John Fairbank, China. A New History (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992), 130.

  [29] Louise Levathes, When China Ruled the Seas: The Treasure Fleet of the Dragon Throne, 1405-1433 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994).

  [30] Ray Huang, 1587. A Year of No Significance: The Ming Dynasty in Decline (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1981), 89-90.

  [31] Edward L. Dreyer, Early Ming China. A Political History, 1355-1435 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1982), 76-79. By 1393 at least 326 wei had been formed. (Ibid., 79.)

  [32] From 1480 until approximately 1590 the annual cost of maintaining China’s border garrisons increased by almost nine times, from 559,000 ounces of silver to 4.94 million ounces. (Albert Chan, The Glory and Fall of the Ming Dynasty (Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 1982), 197-98.)

  [33] Huang, 1587, 160.

  [34] Chan, 51.

  [35] Minister of War Chang Shih-ch’e in 1562, in Elisonas, “Trinity,” 252-253.

  [36] Chan, 201.

  [37] Ibid., 205-207.

  [38] Ming Shih, chpt. 322, quoted in Kwan-wai So, Japanese Piracy in Ming China During the 16th Century (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1975), 181.

  [39] Charles Hucker, “Hu Tsung-hsien’s Campaign Against Hsu Hai, 1556,” in Chinese Ways in Warfare, ed. Frank Kierman Jr. and John Fairbank (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1974), 274-282; So, 144-156.

  [40] Ray Huang, “The Lung-ch’ing and Wan-li Reigns, 1567-1620,” in The Cambridge History of China, vol 7, The Ming Dynasty, 1368-1644, Part 1, ed. Denis Twitchett and John Fairbank (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 557.

  [41] Francisco de Sande, Governor of the Philippines, “Relation of the Filipinas Islands,” June 7, 1576, in The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, vol. 4, trans. and ed. Emma Blair and James Robertson (Cleveland: A. H. Clark, 1903), 58-59.

  [42] “Memorandum of the Various Points Presented by the General Junta of Manila,” in Blair and Robertson, vol. 6, 197-229. (The meeting was held on April 20, 1586; the memorandum was prepared and signed on July 26.)

  [43] Huang, 1587, 42.

  [44] Qi Jiguang, Lien-ping Shih-chi (1571), ibid., 172-173.

  [45] Ibid., 156-188; L. Carrington Goodrich, ed., Dictionary of Ming Biography, vol. 1 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1976), 220-224.

  [46] General Qi was even dragged into the picture and accused of procuring a young plaything for Chang at great personal expense. (Huang, 1587, 184-185.)

  [47] Charles Hucker, The Censorial System in Ming China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1966), 43.

  [48] Wang Yi-t’ung, Official Relations Between China and Japan, 1368-1549 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1953).

  Chapter 3: A Son Called Sute: “Thrown Away”

  [49] Hideyoshi to Koya, no date (1589), in Boscaro, Letters, 34. Although Hideyoshi addressed this letter to Koya, one of his wife O-Ne’s ladies-in-waiting, he undoubtedly intended it to be read to O-Ne herself.

  [50] Hideyoshi to Lady O-Mandokoro, 1/5/Tensho 18 (June 2, 1590), ibid., 39.

  [51] Hideyoshi to Koya, no date (1589), ibid., 34.

  [52] Hideyoshi to Chunagon, 24/10/no year (1585-91?), ibid., 25. (Chunagon was one of O-Ne’s ladies-in-waiting.)

  [53] Hideyoshi to Lady Gomoji (Go-Hime), undated, ibid., 9.

  [54] Hideyoshi to Tomoji, 4/9/no year (1585-91?), ibid., 22.

  [55] Hideyoshi to O-Chacha (Yodogimi), no date (1590), ibid., 43. “Denka” was Hideyoshi’s title as kampaku.

  Chapter 4: Korea: Highway to the Prize

  [56] This view of the origins of the name Nippon was first suggested by William Aston in his translation of the Nihongi (Chronicles of Japan), and is reiterated in Bruce Cumings, Korea’s Place in the Sun (New York: W.W. Norton, 1997), 38.

  [57] Ilyon, Samguk yusa, trans. Tae-hung Ha and Grafton Mintz (Seoul: Yonsei University Press, 1972), 32-33.

  [58] Masuid, Meadows of Gold and Mines of Precious Stone, quoted in Cumings, 37.

  [59] David Pollack, The Fracture of Meaning (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1986), 12, 15-23, and chpts. 1 and 2 passim.

  [60] Wang, 17-18.

  [61] J. S. Gale, “The Influence of China Upon Korea,” Transactions of the Korea Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 1 (1900): 24.

  [62] At the start of the Choson dynasty in 1392, this “grading” of foreign nations was made quite clear by the government ranking accorded to visiting envoys to the court in Seoul. On a scale from the lowest rank of 9B to the highest of 1A, the Jurchen envoy, for example, was pegged at 4B – more to appease these troublesome people than out of any high regard the Koreans had for them—while the Ryukyu Islands faired more poorly at 5B. Etsuko Hae-jin Kang, Diplomacy and Ideology in Japanese-Korean Relations (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997), 50-51.

  [63] Ibid., 66.

  [64] Between 1392 and 1422, for example, Korea sent some 45,000 horses to the Ming court (Henthorn, History, 154). China reciprocated with shipments of things like cotton cloth and silk.

  [65] Donald Clark, “Sino-Korean Tributary Relations Under the Ming,” in The Cambridge History of China, vol. 8, The Ming Dynasty, 1368-1644, Part 2, ed. Denis Twitchett and Frederick Mote (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 273 and 279; Dreyer, 115.

  [66] Gale, “Influence of China,” 11.

  [67] The words of a Chinese envoy to the Korean court in 1487, in J. S. Gale, “Han-yang (Seoul),” Transactions of the Korea Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 2 (1902): 38.

  [68] Clark, “Tributary Relations,” 280 and 283. The number of embassies the Koreans sent to China increased markedly during times of crisis or uncertainty, whereas during periods of quiet they tended to be less frequent.

  [69] Etsuko Hae-jin Kang, 55.

  [70] Korean envoy Kang Kwon-son on a visit to Iki island in 1444, in Elisonas, “Trinity,” 243.

  [71] Letter from Korean king Taejong to Tsushima daimyo So Sadamori, 7th month, 1419, in Etsuko Hae-jin Kang, 59.

  [72] Sin Ch’ojung, “On the Deceitfulness of Buddhism,” and Yun Hoe, “On the Harmfulness of Buddhism,” in a memorial submitted to King Sejong in 1424, quoted in Peter Lee, ed., Sourcebook of Korean Civilization, vol. 1 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), 551-552.

  [73] Edward Wagner, The Literati Purges: Political Conflict in Early Yi Korea (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1974).

  [74] Hanguk chongsin munhwa yonguwon, Hangukin mul daesajon, vol. 2 (Seoul: Chungang ilbo, 1999), 2056-2057; Peter Lee, trans. and ed., Pine River and Lone Peak. An Anthology of Three Choson Dynasty Poets (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1991), 11-20 and 43-44. (Chong Chol’s pen name was Songgang, “Pine River.”)

  [75] Richard Rutt, trans. and ed., The Bamboo Grove. An Introduction to Sijo (Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 1971), poem 13.

  [76] Ha Tae-hung, Behind the Scenes of Royal Palaces in Korea (Seoul: Yonsei University Press, 1983), 162.

  [77] Hulbert, vol. 1, 338-340.

  [78] Cho Kwang-jo, “On the Superior Man and the Inferior Man,” Peter Lee, Sourcebook, vol. 1, 505.

  PART 2: PRELUDE TO WAR

  [79] Elisonas, “Trinity,” 271.

  [80] Ha Tae-hung, Behind the Scenes, 166.

  Chapter 5: “By fast ships I have dispatched orders to Korea…”

  [81] Adrian Forsyth, A Natural History of Sex (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1986), 40.

  [82] Berry, 91.

  [83] A typical Japanese nagae-yari (long-shafted spear) of the later sengoku period was 3 ken (4.8 meters) long, making it more of a pike than a spear. This was the length favored
by Hideyoshi, Tokugawa Ieyasu, and several other prominent daimyo. Oda Nobunaga outdid them all by equipping his spear corps with gigantic 3½ ken (5.6 meter) long weapons, the longest spears known to have been used in Japan. (Turnbull, Samurai Warfare, 71-73).

  [84] Wilbur Bacon, “Record of Reprimands and Admonitions (Chingbirok),” Transactions of the Korea Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 48 (1972): 11-12.

  [85] Ibid., 11.

  [86] Sonjo sillok, vol. 4 (Seoul: Minjok munhwa chujin hee, 1987-89), 268 (20/10/Sonjo 20; Dec. 8, 1587).

  [87] Sonjo sujong sillok, vol. 3 (Seoul: Minjok munhwa chujin hee, 1989), 51-52 (9/Sonjo 20; Oct. 1587).

  [88] Yu Song-nyong, Chingbirok (Seoul: Myongmundang, 1987), 13; Sonjo sujong sillok, vol. 3, 85-86 (12/Sonjo 21; Feb. 1589).

  [89] Hideyoshi to the King of Korea, Tensho 17 (1589), in Hulbert, vol. 1, 347.

  [90] Yu Song-nyong, 13-14; Sonjo sujong sillok, vol. 3, 105-106 (7/Sonjo 22; Sept. 1589).

  [91] Sonjo sillok, vol. 5, 124 (18/11/Sonjo 22; Dec. 25, 1589) and 155 (6/3/Sonjo 23; April 9, 1590); Etsuko Hae-jin Kang, 93.

  [92] “[W]hether one was allowed to ride it [a palanquin] up to, or beyond, and then how far beyond, the castle gates, were carefully graded to rank and status.” (Ronal Toby, State and Diplomacy in Early Modern Japan (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1984), 193, n. 62). In the Koreans’ estimation Yoshitoshi’s rank did not give him the privilege to ride his sedan chair into the temple grounds.

  [93] Yu Song-nyong, 14; Etsuko Hae-jin Kang, 89.

  [94] The other major urban centers in Japan at this time—Osaka, Kamakura, Sakai, Nara, and Hakata—were much smaller, with populations ranging downwards from 10,000 (Berry, 275, n. 53).

  [95] Ibid., 202.

  [96] A Chinese account of what might be regarded as a typical Korean reception of a Ming ambassador in Seoul can be found in Richard Rutt, “Ch’ao-hsien fu,” Transactions of the Korea Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 48 (1973): 47-48.

  [97] King Sonjo to Hideyoshi, “King of Japan,” 3/Wanli 18 (April 1590), in Yoshi Kuno, Japanese Expansion on the Asiatic Continent, vol. 1 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1937), 301.

  [98] Yu Song-nyong, 15-16.

  [99] Dening, 283.

  [100] Hideoyshi to the King of Korea, winter, Tensho 18 (1590), in Kuno, vol. 1, 302-303; Sonjo sillok, vol. 5, 172-173 (13/1/Sonjo 24; Feb. 6, 1591).

  [101] Sonjo sujong sillok, vol. 3, 186-189 (2/Sonjo 24; March 1591).

  [102] Sonjo sujong sillok, vol. 3, 208 (3/Sonjo 24; April 1591).

  [103] King Sonjo to Hideyoshi, “King of Japan,” spring, Wanli 19 (1591), in Kuno, vol. 1, 303-304.

  [104] Sonjo sujong sillok, vol. 3, 221 (6/Sonjo 24; July 1591).

  [105] King Shonei to Hideyoshi, 17/5/Tensho 17 (June 29, 1589), in Kuno, vol. 1, 305-306.

  [106] Hideyoshi to King Shonei, 18/2/Tensho 18 (March 23, 1590), ibid., 306.

  [107] Although the crowns of Portugal and Spain were united in 1580 under Philip II, a great deal of rivalry continued to exist between the two in the Far East: rivalry over empire, trade, and religious monopolies. It was therefore in keeping with the times that a Portuguese trader would try to turn Hideyoshi against a Spanish possession.

  [108] Hideyoshi to the Philippines, 15/9/Tensho 19 (1591), translated from the original Japanese in Kuno, vol. 1, 308-309, and from the Spanish translation received by the Governor of the Philippines in Blair and Robertson, vol. 8, 260-261.

  [109] Gomez Perez Dasmarinas to Hideyoshi, June 11, 1592, translated from the Spanish original in Blair and Robertson, vol. 8, 263-267, and from the Japanese translation in Kuno, vol. 1, 310-11.

  [110] Testimony of Antonio Lopez before Governor Dasmarinas, June 1, 1593, in Blair and Robertson, vol. 9, 45. (Lopez was a Chinese Christian who accompanied Father Cobo to Japan. The father died on the return journey to Manila.)

  [111] Hideyoshi to the Portuguese Viceroy of India at Goa, 25/7/Tensho 19 (Sept. 12, 1591), in Kuno, vol. 1, 313-14.

  Chapter 6: Preparations for War

  [112] The present-day city of Nagoya on central Honshu did not exist in the sixteenth century. It was then the site of the village of Nakamura, the birthplace of both Hideyoshi and his general Kato Kiyomasa.

  [113] “This witness saw with his own eyes that the city of Nangoya is a city of one hundred thousand or more inhabitants. This city was built and settled in five months. It is three leguas long, and nine leguas in circumference” (testimony of Captain Joan de Solis before Gomez Perez Dasmarinas, Spanish governor of the Philippines, May 24, 1593, in Blair and Robertson, vol. 9, 35).

  [114] Bernard Susser, “The Toyotomi Regime and the Daimyo,” in The Bakufu in Japanese History, ed. Jeffrey Mass and William Hauser (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1985), 137.

  [115] There was only one instance of a daimyo openly resisting Hideyoshi’s demand for troops. Umekita Kunikane, a vassal of the Shimazu clan on Kyushu, refused to participate in the Korean invasion and set out to attack Hideyoshi at his Nagoya headquarters in 1592. He was met and killed before he ever reached Nagoya (Berry, 278, n. 21).

  [116] Bert Hall, 208.

  [117] Katano Tsugio, Yi Sun-sin gwa Hideyoshi, trans. Yun Bong-sok (Seoul: Wooseok, 1997), 245; George Heber Jones, “The Japanese Invasion, ” The Korean Repository 1 (1892): 116.

  [118] Yi Hyong-sok, Imjin chollan-sa, vol. 2 (Seoul: Imjin Chollan-sa Kanhaeng hoe, 1967), 1714-15; Sansom, 318-19.

  [119] Hulbert, vol.1, 350.

  [120] Hideyohsi to Shimazu, Tensho 19 (1591), in The Documents of the Iriki, trans. and ed. Asakawa Kanichi (Tokyo: Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, 1955), 333. According to Hideyoshi’s orders Shimazu was to contribute 15,000 men to the invasion force, but according to Asakawa his actual contribution was no more than 10,000 and possibly less.

  [121] The muster rolls of the various companies assembled at Nagoya “suggest that no more than half of those on the strength of a contingent drafted for service in Korea were fighting men; the rest did construction and transport duties” (Elisonas, “Trinity,” 272).

  [122] G. A. Ballard, The Influence of the Sea on the Political History of Japan (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1921), 51; Kuno, vol. 1, 152-53.

  [123] Asao, 54; Samson, 288 and 309; Berry, 254, n. 46. With regard to Nobunaga’s iron ships, samurai historian Stephen Turnball writes that they were “reinforced in some way with iron. It is unlikely that they were covered with iron sheets, which would have made them ‘ironclad battleships,’ though a certain priest saw the ships as they put to seas, and describes these magnificent vessels as ‘iron-ships’” (Samurai Warfare, 38).

  [124] Boxer, Christian Century, 140-142.

  [125] Katano, 88; Yi Hyong-sok, vol. 2, 1720.

  [126] According to Hulbert, vol. 1, 350, Hideyoshi’s fleet “consisted of between three and four thousand boats. This gives us an intimation as to the capacity of the boats used in those days. According to this enumeration each boat carried sixty men. They were probably undecked, or at most but partially decked, boats of about forty or fifty feet in length by ten in breadth.” Hulbert’s description of the average transport as being fairly small is probably accurate, but the total number of 3,000 to 4,000 he cites is too high, having been based on the assumption that each vessel made just one crossing to Korea carrying a single load of soldiers. The entire force of 158,800 in fact did not cross to Korea all at once; it did so over the course of several weeks. It is likely, therefore, that many if not most of the transports ferried more than one load of troops across from Tsushima and Kyushu, a journey that in good weather could be done in a day.

  [127] The three top posts in the Korean government during the Choson dynasty were Prime Minister (yong-uijong), Minister of the Left (chwa-uijong), and Minister of the Right (u-uijong).

  [128] Bacon, “Chingbirok,” 16.

  [129] Ibid., 16-17; Etsuko Hae-jin Kang, 92-93; Hur, 705-6.

  [130] Sonjo sillok, vol. 5, 196-197 (24/10/Sonjo 24; Dec. 9, 15
91), and 197 (2/11/Sonjo 24; Dec. 17, 1591); Sonjo sujong sillok, vol. 3, 224-225 (10/Sonjo 24; Nov.~Dec. 1591). The subsequent official embassy to Beijing, led by Han Ung-in, left Seoul on December 9, 1591.

  [131] William E. Henthorn, “Some Notes of Koryo Military Units,” Transactions of the Korea Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 35 (1959): 67.

  [132] Samuel Dukhae Kim, “The Korean Monk-Soldiers in the Imjin Wars: An Analysis of Buddhist Resistance to the Hideyoshi Invasion, 1592-1598” (Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, 1978), 20.

  [133] The designations “Left” and “Right” army and navy are somewhat confusing as they were applied to the southern provinces of Kyongsang-do and Cholla-do, for when viewed on a map the “Left” regions in fact lay to the east and the “Right” regions to the west. This was due to the fact that the designations were assigned from the perspective of the capital of Seoul. Looking south from there, the eastern halves of Kyongsang and Cholla Provinces are indeed on the left and the western halves on the right.

  [134] See the chapter on “Military Command of the Choson Dynasty” in Yi Sun-sin, Nanjung Ilgi. War Diary of Admiral Yi Sun-sin, trans. Ha Tae-hung and ed. Sohn Pow-key (Seoul: Yonsei University Press, 1977), xiii-xv.

  [135] Yu Song-nyong, 18.

  [136] Wagner, 18.

  [137] Park Yune-hee, Admiral Yi Sun-shin and his Turtleboat Armada (Seoul: Hanjin Publishing Company, 1978), 67; Samuel Dukhae Kim, 21.

  [138] Sonjo sujong sillok, vol. 3, 223-224 (7/Sonjo 24; Aug. 9, 1591); Yu Song-nyong, 17-18; Samuel Dukhae Kim, 18.

  [139] Jho Sung-do, Yi Sun-Shin. A National Hero of Korea (Ch’ungmu-kong Society, Naval Academy, Korea, 1970), 54.

  [140] John Boots, “Korean Weapons and Armor,” Transactions of the Korea Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 23, part 2 (Dec. 1934): 3-18.