EPOCH OF THE THREE KINGDOMS.—HIAKSAI.
The history of the peninsular states from the time in which it is first
known until the tenth century, is that of almost continuous civil war
or border fighting. The boundaries of the rival kingdoms changed from
time to time as raid and reprisal, victory or defeat, turned the scale
of war. A series of maps of the peninsula expressing the political
situation during each century or half-century would show many
variations of boundaries, and resemble those of Great Britain when the
various native and continental tribes were struggling for its mastery.
Something like an attempt to depict these changes in the political
geography of the peninsula has been made by the Japanese historian,
Otsuki Tōyō, in his work entitled “Historical Periods and Changes of
the Japanese Empire.”
Yet though our narrative, through excessive brevity, seems to be only a
picture of war, we must not forget that Hiaksai, once lowest in
civilization, rapidly became, and for a while continued, the leading
state in the peninsula. It held the lead in literary culture until
crushed by China. The classics of Confucius and Mencius, with letters,
writing, and their whole train of literary blessings, were introduced
first to the peninsula in Hiaksai. In 374 A.D. Ko-ken was appointed a
teacher or master of Chinese literature, and enthusiastic scholars
gathered at the court. Buddhism followed with its educational
influences, becoming a focus of light and culture. As early as 372 A.D.
an apostle of northern Buddhism had penetrated into Liao Tung, and
perhaps across the Yalu. In 384 A.D. the missionary Marananda, a
Thibetan, formally established temples and monasteries in Hiaksai, in
which women as well as men became scholastics. Long before this new
element of civilization was rooted in Shinra or Korai, the faith of
India was established and flourishing in the little kingdom of Hiaksai,
so that its influences were felt as far as Japan. The first teacher of
Chinese letters and ethics in Nippon was a Corean named Wani, as was
also the first missionary who carried the images and sutras of northern
Buddhism across the Sea of Japan. To Hiaksai more than to any other
Corean state Japan owes her first impulse toward the civilization of
the west.
Hiaksai came into collision with Kokorai as early as 345 A.D., at which
time also Shinra suffered the loss of several cities. In the fifth
century a Chinese army, sent by one of the emperors of the Wei dynasty
to enforce the payment of tribute, was defeated by Hiaksai. Such
unexpected military results raised the reputation of “the eastern
savages” so high in the imperial mind, that the emperor offered the
King of Hiaksai the title of “Great Protector of the Eastern Frontier.”
By this act the independence of the little kingdom was virtually
recognized. In the sixth century, having given and received Chinese aid
and comfort in alliance with Shinra against Korai, Hiaksai was ravaged
in her borders by the troops of her irate neighbor on the north. Later
on we find these two states in peace with each other and allied against
Shinra, which had become a vassal of the Tang emperors of China.
From this line of China’s rulers the kingdoms of Korai and Hiaksai were
to receive crushing blows. In answer to Shinra’s prayer for aid, the
Chinese emperor, in 660, despatched from Shantung a fleet of several
hundred sail with 100,000 men on board. Against this host from the west
the Hiaksai army could make little resistance, though they bravely
attacked the invaders, but only to be beaten. After a victory near the
mouth of the Rin-yin River, the Chinese marched at once to the capital
of Hiaksai and again defeated, with terrible slaughter, the provincial
army. The king fled to the north, and the city being nearly empty of
defenders, the feeble garrison opened the gates. The Tang banners
fluttered on all the walls, and another state was absorbed in the
Chinese empire. For a time Hiaksai, like a fly snapped up by an angry
dog, is lost in China.
Not long, however, did the little kingdom disappear from sight. In 670
a Buddhist priest, fired with patriotism, raised an army of monks and
priests, and joining Fuku-shin (Fu-sin), a brave general, they laid
siege to a city held by a large Chinese garrison. At the same time they
sent word to the emperor of Japan praying for succor against the
“robber kingdom.” They also begged that Hōsho (Fung), the youthful son
of the late king, then a hostage and pupil at the mikado’s court, might
be invested with the royal title and sent home. The mikado despatched a
fleet of 400 junks and a large body of soldiers to escort the royal
heir homeward. On his arrival Hōsho was proclaimed king.
Meanwhile the priest-army and the forces under Fuku-shin had
reconquered nearly all their territory, when they suffered a severe
defeat near the sea-coast from the large Chinese force hastily
despatched to put down the rebellion. The invaders marched eastward and
effected a junction with the forces of Shinra. The prospects of Hiaksai
were now deplorable.
For even among the men of Hiaksai there was no unity of purpose.
Fuku-shin had put the priest-leader to death, which arbitrary act so
excited the suspicions of the king that he in turn ordered his general
to be beheaded. He then sent to Japan, appealing for reinforcements.
The mikado, willing to help an old ally, and fearing that the Chinese,
if victorious, might invade his own dominions, quickly responded. The
Japanese contingent arrived and encamped near the mouth of the Han
River, preparatory to a descent by sea upon Shinra. Unsuspecting the
near presence of an enemy, the allies neglected their usual vigilance.
A fleet of war-junks, flying the Tang streamers, suddenly appeared off
the camp, and while the Japanese were engaging these, the Chinese land
forces struck them in flank. Taken by surprise, the mikado’s warriors
were driven like flocks of sheep into the water and drowned or shot by
the Chinese archers. The Japanese vessels were burned as they lay at
anchor in the bloody stream, and the remnants of the beaten army got
back to their islands in pitiable fragments. Hōsho, after witnessing
the destruction of his host, fled to Korai, and the country was given
over to the waste and pillage of the infuriated Chinese. The royal
line, after thirty generations and nearly seven centuries of rule,
became extinct. The sites of cities became the habitations of tigers,
and once fertile fields were soon overgrown. Large portions of Hiaksai
became a wilderness.
Though the Chinese Government ordered the bodies of those killed in war
and the white bones of the victims of famine to be buried, yet many
thousands of Hiaksai families fled elsewhere to find an asylum and to
found new industries. The people who remained on their fertile lands,
as well as all Southern Corea, fell under the sway of Shinra.
The fragments of the beaten Japanese army gradually returned to their
native country or settled in Southern Corea. Thousands of the people of
Hiaksai, detesting the idea of living as slaves of China, accompanied
or followed their allies to Japan. On their arrival, by order of the
mikado, 400 emigrants of both sexes were located in the province of
Omi, and over 2,000 were distributed in the Kuantō, or Eastern Japan.
These colonies of Coreans founded potteries, and their descendants,
mingled by blood with the Japanese, follow the trade of their
ancestors.
In 710 another body of Hiaksai people, dissatisfied with the poverty of
the country and tempted by the offers of the Japanese, formed a colony
numbering 1,800 persons and emigrated to Japan. They were settled in
Musashi, the province in which Tōkiō, the modern capital, is situated.
Various other emigrations of Coreans to Japan of later date are
referred to in the annals of the latter country, and it is fair to
presume that tens of thousands of emigrants from the peninsula fled
from the Tang invasion and mingled with the islanders, producing the
composite race that inhabit the islands ruled by the mikado. Among the
refugees were many priests and nuns, who brought their books and
learning to the court at Nara, and thus diffused about them a literary
atmosphere. The establishment of schools, the awakening of the Japanese
intellect, and the first beginnings of the literature of Japan, the
composition of their oldest historical books, the Kojiki and the
Nihongi—all the fruits of the latter half of the seventh and early part
of the eighth century—are directly traceable to this influx of the
scholars of Hiaksai, which being destroyed by China, lived again in
Japan. Even the pronunciation of the Chinese characters as taught by
the Hiaksai teachers remains to this day. One of them, the nun Hōmiō, a
learned lady, made her system so popular among the scholars that even
an imperial proclamation against it could not banish it. She
established her school in Tsushima, A.D. 655, and there taught that
system of [Chinese] pronunciation [Go-on] which still holds sway in
Japan, among the ecclesiastical literati, in opposition to the Kan-on
of the secular scholars. The Go-on, the older of the two
pronunciations, is that of ancient North China, the Kan-on is that of
mediæval Southern China (Nanking). Corea and Japan having phonetic
alphabets have preserved and stereotyped the ancient Chinese
pronunciation better than the Chinese language itself, since the
Chinese have no phonetic writing, but only ideographic characters, the
pronunciation of which varies during the progress of centuries.
Hiaksai had given Buddhism to Japan as early as 552 A.D., but
opposition had prevented its spread, the temple was set on fire, and
the images of Buddha thrown in the river. In 684 one Sayéki brought
another image of Buddha from Corea, and Umako, son of Inamé, a minister
at the mikado’s court, enshrined it in a chapel on his own grounds. He
made Yeben and Simata, two Coreans, his priests, and his daughter a
nun. They celebrated a festival, and henceforth Buddhism [1] grew
apace.
The country toward the sunrise was then a new land to the peninsulars,
just as “the West” is to us, or Australia is to England; and Japan made
these fugitives welcome. In their train came industry, learning, and
skill, enriching the island kingdom with the best infusion of blood and
culture.
Hiaksai was the first of the three kingdoms that was weakened by civil
war and then fell a victim to Chinese lust of conquest.
The progress and fall of the other two kingdoms will now be narrated.
Beginning with Korai, we shall follow its story from the year 613 A.D.,
when the invading hordes of the Tang dynasty had been driven out of the
peninsula with such awful slaughter by the Koraians.