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WAR AND PEACE 285

and seal. The sole discord in the well-orchestrated spectacle was

struck when he refused to kneel as a sign of respect before the imperial

edict of investiture, but that dissonance was quickly resolved when a

resourceful attendant improvised the excuse that a boil in the knee

joint prevented his master from genuflecting.

At a banquet the next day, Hideyoshi appeared with crown and

scepter in his Chinese costume before his paladins, some forty of them

also freshly promoted to Chinese official ranks and richly caparisoned

in Chinese ceremonial garb. At the end of the festive entertainments,

he had his expert in diplomatic correspondence, the Zen priest Saisho

Shotai (1548-1605), read the message from the Chinese emperor.

From that reading, Hideyoshi realized that this imperial rescript con-

tained not one word about his seven demands and was nothing more

than an instrument for binding him to vassalage. He burst into a rage,

abused Konishi, threatened the Ming ambassadors with death, and

then dismissed them abruptly. Having thus rung down the curtain on

the tragicomedy of the false surrender document, the dupe of the

show, Hideyoshi, was left susceptible to the argument of Kato

Kiyomasa and others who maintained that to resume the war was the

only way to expunge the humiliation. The Korean people would have

to pay the price for a stratagem that had failed.

The

second

campaign of aggression

In the meantime, the Japanese troops in Korea had settled down to

garrison life in their string of forts that stretched from Ungch'on in

the west to Sosaeng in the northeast. Some 78,600 of the invasion

force were left after the withdrawal from Seoul. They fought no

significant military actions after the sixth month of 1593, when they

took the great Korean fortress of Chinju by storm, thereby demon-

strating once more that they could not so easily be forced off the

peninsula. Instead, the common draftees cultivated the fields and rice

paddies around their positions. The generals, too, engaged in activi-

ties little different from those they might have pursued in peacetime

in their own country. They hobnobbed with one another and with the

merchant burghers

(rnachishu)

of Sakai and other war profiteers at-

tracted to their camps. They held tea ceremonies in tea houses of the

sukiya

type built by carpenters summoned from Japan, exercised their

72 A compendious summary of the sources regarding the failed ceremony of investiture may be

found in

Chosenshi,

4th series, vol. 10, pp. 628-31; a photographic reproduction of the edict

designating Hideyoshi as the King of Japan is appended as Figure 9.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

286 JAPAN'S RELATIONS WITH CHINA AND KOREA

literary skills at sessions of linked verse

(renga

and wakan) convoked

in the properly Japanese ambience of chambers specially constructed

in the

shoin

style of architecture, played the peculiarly Japanese game

of kickball

(kemari)

on authentically laid out courts, and caroused in

the Japanese manner at sake parties given diversity by amateur dis-

plays of dancing

(rambu).

In short, they made themselves right at

home in Korea. If they were bored by lack of action, hunts relieved

their ennui even as they served to supply one of their master's fancied

needs:

The tiger population of Korea had to suffer because Hideyoshi

believed tiger meat to be a balm that would restore his tottering

health.

The pent-up energy of these garrison troops, augmented by new

levies sent from Japan to form an army of 141,500, was released on

Korea in Hideyoshi's second campaign of aggression, which began on

Keicho 2.7.15 (August 27, 1597) with an event rare in this war, a

Japanese naval victory. As a result of this battle, which was fought off

Koje Island, the inept Korean commander, Won Kyun (an intriguer

who had succeeded in displacing Yi Sun-sin from his post half

year

previously), lost his life; the Korean navy lost its base on Hansan Island

and its domination of the southern coast, being obliged to withdraw far

to the west; and the conditions were created for the Japanese to advance

in force into Cholla Province, something they had not been able to do in

the first campaign. Indeed, the occupation of Cholla and Ch'ungch'ong

provinces, through the rapid deployment of a massive force from its

bases in Kyongsang Province, was the operational plan of Hideyoshi's

armies in their return venture to Korea. If they reached their objectives,

the Japanese would dominate the southern half of the peninsula; if they

held their gains, they would in effect obtain the partition of Korea,

which was Hideyoshi's - vastly reduced - war aim of

1597.

be sure,

boasts about a future conquest of China do not fail to appear in the

marching orders he issued to the daimyo in advance of the second

campaign, but they sound halfhearted.

73 See, for instance, the letter addressed by Asano Danjo no Shohitsu Nagayoshi and Kinoshita

Daizen no Daibu Yoshitaka to Hashiba Kikkawa Jiju (Kikkawa Hiroie)on [Bunroku 3.]i2.25

(February 5, 1595), in which Kikkawa is ordered to send Hideyoshi the "head, meat, and

entrails" of a tiger, "well salted" and "without leaving anything out" but the skin, which "is

not needed here"; Kikkawa-ke

monjo,

vol. 1, no. 769, pp. 737-8. Also see the vermilion-seal

letters in which Hideyoshi thanks Kikkawa for tigers sent from Korea; ibid., nos. 132-3, pp.

98-100, dated [Bunroku 3J12.20 and [Bunroku 4J4.22.

74 The initial Japanese order of battle and Hideyoshi's basic strategy in the second campaign are

outlined in two documents issued over his vermilion seal, dated Keicho 2 (1597).2.21, and

sent to Hashiba Satsuma Jiju (Shimazu Yoshihiro); Dai Nihon

komonjo,

lewake 16: Shimazu-

ke monjo, vol. 1, nos. 402-3, pp. 392-6 and 396-402.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

WAR AND PEACE 287

Anticipating the Japanese resumption of the war, the Chinese court

in the second month of

1597

decided to send a new expeditionary force

to the support of its vassal state, Korea. By the middle of the sixth

month, the advance guard of this army reached Namwon, a town in

Cholla close to the Kyongsang border, fortified the place, and pre-

pared to stand a siege there. Two months later, however, Namwon fell

to a strong Japanese force under Ukita Hideie (daimyo of Okayama,

1573-1655), putting all of Cholla Province at the mercy of the invad-

ers.

At the same time another large Japanese army, under the overall

command of Mori Hidemoto (the future daimyo of Yamaguchi, 1579-

1650),

poured forth in three streams from Kyongsang and burst into

Ch'ungch'ong Province to challenge the main body of the Ming expedi-

tionary force, which was based in Seoul. A division of this army, led by

Kato Kiyomasa, even penetrated Kyonggi Province, reaching Chik-

san, less than seventy kilometers away from Seoul. This time, how-

ever, the Japanese got no farther. They were blocked on the border of

Ch'ungch'ong and Kyonggi by the Chinese army. Their fleet, too, was

blocked from coming to the support of

the

land forces. It had rounded

the southwestern corner of the peninsula and was heading for the

Yellow Sea through the Myongnyang Strait when it was intercepted

and defeated by the Korean navy under its reinstated commander Yi

Sun-sin.

The naval battle of Myongnyang, which took place on Keicho

2.9.14-16 (October 24-26, 1597), marked the turn of the tide in

Hideyoshi's second Korean campaign. The Japanese lost the initiative,

were again forced on the defensive, and withdrew to fortified places

along the coast closest to Japan. This time, their fortress belt stretched

farther than it had after the first campaign, forming an arc that ex-

tended more than two hundred kilometers from Sunch'on in the west

through Sach'on and Pusan to Ulsan in the east. Soon enough, the

Japanese generals in Korea were given ample reason to conclude that

their forces were in fact overextended. Kato Kiyomasa's fortress at

Ulsan, still under construction, was invested in January 1598 by a

great Chinese-Korean army and could be relieved only with great

difficulty. The siege of Ulsan was a near thing, and the experience

impelled the Japanese commanders to request permission to reduce

their perimeter by abandoning some of the more exposed forts.

This

75 Copy of a letter addressed by Ukita Hideie and twelve other captains to Hideyoshi's right-

hand men tshida Jibu no Sho (Mitsunari), Natsuka Okura no Daibu (Masaie), Mashita

Uemon no Jo, and (Maeda) Tokuzen'in (Gen'i) on [Keicho 3J1.26; Shimazu-ke

monjo,

vol. 3,

no.

1206, pp. 59-63.

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288 JAPAN'S RELATIONS WITH CHINA AND KOREA

request fell on deaf ears, as Hideyoshi was determined to cleave to all

of his bases in Korea, come what may.

Hideyoshi's death and

the

Japanese withdrawal

The moving spirit of the war did not, however, have long to live. In

the late summer of 1598, as new Chinese and Korean armies assem-

bled to prepare another offensive against his troops, Hideyoshi lay

dying in his palatial castle at Fushimi. When he died on Keicho 3.8.18

(September 18, 1598), the management of affairs fell into the hands of

his inner circle of councilors and commissioners, who knew that they

must end the war quickly or themselves assume the responsibility for

the continued squandering of Japanese manpower and resources in a

foreign campaign that held little promise of success. Moreover, the

members of that governing camarilla, who by no means formed a

united group themselves, surely realized that they lacked the coercive

power with which Hideyoshi had compelled daimyo of diverse inter-

ests to join together in the invasion of the mainland. They therefore

had little choice but to seek as urgently as possible to disengage the

Japanese troops from the enemy, extract them from the peninsula, and

bring them safely home.

At first, they tried to keep the news of Hideyoshi's death from

becoming public knowledge. A letter signed by Ishida Mitsunari and

the rest of Hideyoshi's "Five Commissioners" (go

bugyo)

exactly a

week after their master's demise tells Nabeshima Naoshige reassur-

ingly that "the Taiko is at length recovering from his illness," while

informing him that two special emissaries are being sent to inspect the

situation on the Korean front. A companion piece orders Nabeshima

to go to Pusan and receive further instructions from those emissaries

in person. Another piece of official correspondence, addressed on the

same day to Shimazu Yoshihiro by one of the "Five Commissioners,"

Mashita Nagamori (1545-1615), likewise maintains that "Our Lord

has in the past few days at length been recovering from his illness,"

while asserting that "some time ago he issued instructions for peace."

The details will be explained by the two inspectors being sent to

Korea, and the daimyo are ordered to consult with them on how to

bring about a settlement of the war. Copies of the memoranda issued

to the inspectors reveal the terms on which the "Five Commissioners"

were prepared to negotiate a withdrawal from Korea. In exchange for

the surrender of the Japanese forts there, they were willing to accept

that a Korean prince be sent as hostage to Japan or to content them-

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

WAR AND PEACE 289

selves with the delivery of an unspecified amount of rice, tiger skins,

leopard skins, and honey from the Koreans.

How Japanese expecta-

tions had shrunk since the beginning of the war and since the heady

days of Hideyoshi's seven demands!

But the Japanese were not to retire from Korea unopposed and

unscathed. Before the special emissaries of the

gobugyo

and the orders

they bore had had a chance to reach the peninsula, the Chinese and

Korean armies struck hard at the key positions of the Japanese fortress

belt. Ulsan was attacked first but once again was held by Kato

Kiyomasa. Nine days later, on Keicho 3.10.1 (October 30, 1598), it

was the turn of Sach'on, which was assaulted by a Chinese and Korean

force so large that the commanders of the successful Japanese defense,

Shimazu Yoshihiro and his son Tadatsune (the future daimyo of

Kagoshima, Shimazu Iehisa, 1578-1638), were officially credited with

taking 38,717 heads in this one battle.

Although this figure is exag-

gerated, it is true that the mass of the attacking army was decimated

after being lured into an exposed position under the walls of the well-

designed Japanese fort, where it was raked by a terrific fusillade.

Indeed, the effect of the victory of the Shimazu at Sach'on can hardly

be overestimated, as it was the Shimazu contingent, left intact after

this fight, that later covered the withdrawal of the western wing of the

Japanese army from Korea.

A day after the battle of Sach'on, Konishi Yukinaga's fortress at

Sunch'on was attacked by yet another huge land force. When this

attack by land was repelled, a combined Chinese and Korean fleet

tried and failed to take Sunch'on by sea. These were, however, only

limited defensive successes for the Japanese: Having warded off the

76 Tokuzen['in] Gen'i, Asa[no] Dan[jo no Shohitsu] Nagamasa, Ishi[da] Ji[bu no Sho] Mitsu-

nari, Mashi[ta] U[emon no Jo] Nagamori, and Na(ga)[tsuka] O[kura no Daibu] Masaie to

Nabeshima Kaga no Kami (Naoshige), dated [Keicho 3.J8.25;

Nabeshima-ke

monjo,

nos. 131—

in Saga kenshi hensan iinkai, ed., Saga-ken shiryo

shusei:

komonjo-hen,

vol. 3 (Saga: Saga

kenritsu toshokan, 1958), pp. 402-3. Mashi[ta] U[emon no Jo] to Shimazu Hyogo no Kami

(Yoshihiro), same date, Shimazu-ke

monjo,

vol. 2, no. 986, p. 222; copies of the memoranda

addressed by the "Five Commissioners" to the two special emissaries, Tokunaga Shikibu-kyo

Hoin (Toshimasa) and Miyagi Choji[ro] (Toyomori), same date, ibid., nos. 984-5, pp. 274-6;

copy of the oath sworn by the two inspectors regarding their mission on Keicho 3.8.22, ibid.,

no.

982, pp. 271-2. Note that the announcement of Tokunaga's and Miyagi's mission to

Korea, dated [Keicho 3J8.25, was sent to Shimazu Yoshihiro and his son Tadatsune over

Hideyoshi's vermilion seal, even though the hegemon had been dead a week; Shimazu-ke

monjo, vol. 1, nos. 423 and 435, pp. 415, 425.

77 "Five Commissioners" to Hashiba Satsuma no Shosho (Shimazu Tadatsune), dated Keicho 4

(i599)-!-9) Shimazu-ke

monjo,

vol. 2, no. 1070, pp. 362-3. Cf. the memorandum written in

similar language and addressed on the same day to Shimazu Tadatsune by the "Five Council-

ors"

(gotairo) of the Toyotomi house, (Tokugawa) Ieyasu, (Maeda) Toshiie, (Ukita) Hideie,

(Uesugi) Kagekatsu, and (Mori) Terumoto; ibid., vol. 1, no. 440, pp. 429-30. Note that both

documents are copies, not originals, and therefore suspect.

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290 JAPAN'S RELATIONS WITH CHINA AND KOREA

initial assaults, the contingents of Konishi and the other captains of

the Sunch'on garrison were blockaded in their fort by the Chinese

squadron under Ch'en Lin and the Korean warships commanded by

Yi Sun-sin. In the event, Konishi was able to evacuate Sunch'on only

because the Shimazu sent a naval force to his rescue. The Japanese

relief force was mauled severely by the Chinese and Korean fleet, but

the victorious admiral, Yi Sun-sin, was killed at the height of this

encounter, which is called the battle of Noryang, and Konishi's divi-

sion of the Japanese army made good its escape from Sunch'on.

The naval engagement of Noryang, which took place on the night of

Keicho 3.11.18-19 (December 16-17,1598), was the last battle of the

war. One week later, on Christmas Eve 1598, the weary troops of Dom

Agostinho Konishi and the other rearguard elements of the army that

Hideyoshi had sent to conquer the Asian mainland six and a half years

earlier reembarked at Pusan and set sail for their home islands. The

long Korean adventure was over.

The

legacy

of the Korean invasion

The Korean war was a complete failure for the Japanese, who won

most of their battles but gained none of their objectives; having suf-

fered grievous losses, they withdrew ignominiously from the penin-

sula. In the long run, the war was to prove a disaster for the victorious

Ming Empire, which could ill afford the vast expenditures required by

its intervention in Korea. The drain on its public treasury and its

military manpower seriously weakened a Chinese regime that was

already burdened with an enormity of external and internal problems

and made it sink deeper into the dynastic decline that was to overcome

it half a century later. Korea, the other ostensible victor, was left a land

in ashes and anguish. Not only had it been ravaged by its Japanese

invaders; it also had been humiliated and maltreated by its Chinese

allies,

whose concept of universal sovereignty permitted them to nego-

tiate with the common enemy single-handedly and without concern

for the wishes of the Koreans and whose sense of

mission of justice

did not prevent them from raping and pillaging the very people they

were supposedly protecting against aggression.

The war was fought with terrible cruelty, and its history is marked

with atrocities that are amply attested in the contemporary records of

the Japanese themselves. The manifestos published by the invading

generals to announce the second coming of the Japanese in 1597 order

all farmers to return to their homes and agricultural work or to be

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WAR AND PEACE 291

sought out and killed. They further declare that all officials will be

killed as a matter of course, along with their wives and children, and

that their houses will be burned, and they promise rewards for those

who inform on officials in hiding.

The style is that of the

Bekanntmachung

that became altogether familiar in occupied Europe

between 1939 and 1945, and the way the occupiers went about their

task was also distressingly similar. In both cases, they suffered under

the delusion that they could keep a resistance movement from forming

by terrorizing the populace into collaboration.

In the manhunts conducted by the Japanese in the pursuit of this

policy in Korea, many thousands of Koreans were killed or mutilated.

No distinction was made among combatants and noncombatants,

men, women, and children. The headhunters did not have to produce

the head itself to obtain credit for a victim (in view of the numbers

involved, that would have caused a logistical problem). Nor did they

take scalps; instead, they collected noses. The noses taken by a unit

were gathered together, preserved with salt, packed in casks, and sent

on to the inspectors general of

the

field

armies in Korea for forwarding

to Hideyoshi's headquarters in Japan. A running account was kept, as

the noses formed a sort of capital: Their number represented the

quantification of that intangible quality, martial valor, and could be

used as the basis for calculating future rewards for the captains of the

search expeditions and their troops.

Some idea of the sanguinary excesses of the Japanese invaders in

Korea may be obtained from the receipts preserved in the archives of

two daimyo families, which record that Kikkawa Hiroie's contingent

submitted no fewer than 18,350 noses to Hideyoshi's field staff in a

period of little more than a month (between 9.1 and 10.9) in the year

1597 and that Nabeshima Katsushige's band was credited with at least

5,444

noses between 8.21 and 10.1 of the same year.

A mound made

of the grisly trophies of the Korean invasion - known under the misno-

mer Mimizuka, "mound of ears" - may still be seen in Kyoto near

Hideyoshi's foundation, the temple of Hokoji, where it was erected in

1597.

Like his contemporary Ivan the Terrible, who had masses said

for the repose of the souls of his victims, Hideyoshi had Buddhist

78 See, for instance, the manifesto issued in the name of "Ninon Bizen no Chunagon Hideie"

(that is, Ukita Hideie) and dated Keicho 2.9.-, Shimazu-ke

monjo,

vol. 2, no. 970, pp. 253-4,

and those signed by Shimazu Hyogo no Kami Yoshihiro and twelve other captains, which

were issued to various locales in the same month, ibid., nos. 971-3, pp. 254-60.

79 SeeKikkawa-kemonjo, vol. i.nos. 138-9and716-22,pp. 105-6and662-7;

anc

'Nabeshima-ke

monjo,

nos. 115-18 and 121, pp. 386-8 and 391-2. There are slight discrepancies in the chart

summarizing these receipts that is set out by Kitajima,

Chosen

nichinichiki,

p. 305.

292 JAPAN'S RELATIONS WITH CHINA AND KOREA

services performed over

the

miserable evidence of his continental expe-

dition's true nature. The chief officiator at the ceremony, Saisho Jotai,

did not fail to mention the profound feelings of mercy and compassion

that had moved his patron Hideyoshi to offer this spiritual bouquet to

the dead.

A more genuine testimonial to the persistence of the spirit of com-

miseration amidst the horrors of war comes to us from a far less known

Japanese Buddhist priest, Keinen, the resident of a provincial temple

of the True Pure Land sect (Jodo Shinshu). Keinen, who was the

incumbent of the An'yoji in Usuki in Bungo - the recent domain of

the dispossessed Otomo family - accompanied the town's new master

Ota Kazuyoshi (d. 1600) on the second Korean campaign, in the

capacity of his physician. He wrote down his impressions of the cam-

paign in the poetic diary

Chosen nichinichiki

(Korean days), in which

the record of the events he witnessed is interspersed with religious

meditations, nostalgic reflections, and more than three hundred sim-

ple but affecting epigrams written in the form of tanka (thirty-one-

syllable Japanese poems) on whatever most concerned Keinen on a

particular day.

There is in this diary none of the bombast that is

common in other Japanese accounts of the Korean invasion. Instead, it

is an honest, vivid, and distraught portrayal of what went on. That the

author was no hero, and indeed was somewhat of a

naif,

does not

diminish the force of his images of death, destruction, and depravity,

or the strength of his expressions of faith in the Buddha's saving grace.

That grace seemed to Keinen to be the only hope for men who did not

stop to reflect on what they were doing. Everywhere about him,

Keinen saw covetousness, anger, and the ignorance of right and

wrong: From samurai to camp follower, all were infected with these

Three Poisons, which formed the substance of this war.

People being led away in chains and tight bamboo collars through

burning fields and hillsides that resounded with the wild voices of a

soldiery intoxicated with their own arson; parents being killed before

the eyes of their wailing children, who will be led away into captivity;

the slaughter of the innocents after the capture of Namwon, where no

80 Keinen, Chosen nichinichiki, ed. Naito Shumpo, in Chosen gakuho 35 (May 1965): 55-154,

accompanied by Naito's explanatory article, "So Keinen no

Chosen nichinichiki

ni tsuite," pp.

155-67. The text covers the seven months from Keinen's embarkation for Korea on Keicho

2.6.24 w Ws return to Usuki on Keicho 3.2.2. Quotations from pp. 102 and 104, entries for

Keicho 2.11.15 and 19.

For a more extended look at Keinen and his remarkable diary, see George Elison, "The

Priest Keinen and His Account of the Campaign in Korea, 1597-1598: An Introduction," in

Motoyama Yukihiko Kyoju taikan kinen rombunshu henshu iinkai, ed.,

Nihon

kyoikushironso:

Motoyama Yukihiko Kyoju taikan kinen

rombunshu

(Kyoto: Shibunkaku, 1988), pp.

25-41.

WAR AND PEACE 293

prisoners were taken; the dreadful punishments meted out for the

slightest remissness to Korean and Japanese laborers alike in the rush

to complete the fortifications at Ulsan - these being the scenes from

which he could not avert his eyes, it is no wonder that Keinen con-

cluded, "Hell cannot be in some other place apart from this.",

Keinen's most haunting image is that of the slaver:

Among the many kinds of merchants who have come over from Japan are

traders in human beings, who follow in the train of the troops and buy up

men and women, young and old alike. Having tied these people together with

ropes about the neck, they drive diem along before them; those who can no

longer walk are made to run widi prods or blows of the stick from behind.

The sight of die fiends and man-devouring demons who torment sinners in

hell must be like this, I thought.

How many people were taken thus into bondage? No accurate count is

possible, but it appears that no fewer than fifty thousand or even sixty

thousand Koreans were forcibly brought to Japan as a result of

Hideyoshi's war of aggression.

Most were simple farmers forced to

serve as laborers, but there were also numerous artisans and even some

scholars.

If one can speak of a positive effect of the war, then surely it was the

cultural contribution made to Japan by these captives. In particular,

Korean potters taken willy-nilly to Japan, who brought superior tech-

niques with them, caused a revolution in that country's ceramic pro-

duction. Some of the most famous types of Japanese ceramics - for

example, Arita ware and Satsuma ware - owe their origins to groups

of Korean artisans who were resettled in the domains of their captors.

A similarly great transformation in Japanese intellectual history has

also been traced to Korean sources, for it has been asserted that the

vogue for Neo-Confucianism, a school of thought that would remain

. prominent throughout the Edo period (1600-1868), arose in Japan as a

result of the Korean war, whether on account of the putative influence

that the captive scholar-official Kang Hang exerted on Fujiwara Seika

(1561-1619), the soi-disant discoverer of the true Confucian tradition

for Japan, or because Korean books from looted libraries provided the

new pattern and much new matter for a redefinition of Confucianism.

This assertion, however, is questionable and indeed has been rebutted

convincingly in recent Western scholarship.

81 Naito Shumpo, "Jinshin, Teiyu no eki ni okeru hiro Chosenjin no sakkan mondai ni tsuite:

Chosen shiryo ni yoru," pt. 3,

Chosen

gakuho (January 1965): 132.

82 See Willem Jan Boot, The Adoption and Adaptation of Neo-Confucianism in Japan: The Role of

Fujiwara Seika and Hayashi Razan (Proefschrift, Rijksuniversiteit te Leiden, Netherlands,

294 JAPAN'S RELATIONS WITH CHINA AND KOREA

The

restoration

of peaceful

relations

with Korea

In view of the war's dreadful ravages on Korea and of the heritage of

bitterness engendered by Hideyoshi's aggression, it is remarkable how

quickly normal relations between Japan and Korea were restored.

Naturally enough, the need to make peace appeared most urgent to the

So of Tsushima, whose island's economy .depended on access to the

peninsula. The So realized that the repatriation of the captives would

be the principal issue of any peace talks between the two countries.

Hence they pretended from 1599 onwards to play the part of an honest

broker in the repatriation. They sought thereby to ingratiate them-

selves with the Koreans, while at the same time proving themselves to

the Japanese national regime in their traditional role as experts in

Korean relations. From 1600, that regime was in the hands of Toku-

gawa Ieyasu (1543-1616, r. 1603-5

shogun) and of his successors in

the Tokugawa shogunate. This fact at first facilitated the diplomatic

tasks of the So, as the Tokugawa (whose armed contingents had not

been required to cross over to Korea) could be dissociated from the

outrages perpetrated by the armies of Toyotomi Hideyoshi and as their

advent to power could be represented as an epochal turn in Japanese

history. Eventually, however, the consolidation of the Edo bakufu

caused difficulties for the mediators from Tsushima, whose wings

were trimmed when the central government, intent on establishing its

own preeminence, concluded that it could not permit a small, periph-

eral feudatory to remain in effective control of the conduct of relations

with a foreign country.

By 1603, the So had returned some 800 prisoners to Korea; the next

year, their efforts were rewarded when the Korean government sent

the priest Yujong as an envoy to Tsushima with the welcome news that

residents of the island would again be permitted to come to Pusan for

trade. In the spring of 1605, So Yoshitoshi conducted Yujong and his

retinue to Fushimi, where the Koreans were received in audience by

Ieyasu and his son Hidetada (1579-1632, r. 1605-23), shortly to be

proclaimed the second Tokugawa shogun. This meeting is noteworthy

as the first direct contact between representatives of Korea and the

highest personages of the new Tokugawa regime, even if Yujong was

brought to Fushimi at Ieyasu's behest and without being accredited as

an ambassador to him by the Korean government. There followed the

1982),

chaps. 1-2, pp. 15-98, esp. pp. 83-5. Boot takes issue with the opinions Abe Yoshio

expressed in his "definitive" work Nihon Shushigaku to Chosen, 2nd ed. (Tokyo: Tokyo

daigaku shuppankai, 1971).