JAPAN AND COREA.
It is as nearly impossible to write the history of Corea and exclude
Japan, as to tell the story of mediæval England and leave out France.
Not alone does the finger of sober history point directly westward as
the immediate source of much of what has been hitherto deemed of pure
Japanese origin, but the fountain-head of Japanese mythology is found
in the Sungari valley, or under the shadows of the Ever-White
Mountains. The first settler of Japan, like him of Fuyu, crosses the
water upright upon the back of a fish, and brings the rudiments of
literature and civilization with him. The remarkable crocodiles and
sea-monsters, from which the gods and goddesses are born and into which
they change, the dragons and tide-jewels and the various mystic symbols
which they employ to work their spells, the methods of divination and
system of prognostics, the human sacrifices and the manner of their
rescue, seem to be common to the nations on both sides of the Sea of
Japan, and point to a common heritage from the same ancestors. Language
comes at last with her revelations to furnish proofs of identity.
The mischievous Susanoō, so famous in the pre-historic legends, told in
the Kojiki, half scamp, half benefactor, who planted all Japan with
trees, brought the seeds from which they grew from Corea. His rescue of
the maiden doomed to be devoured by the eight-headed dragon (emblem of
water, and symbolical of the sea and rivers) reads like a gallant
fellow saving one of the human beings who for centuries, until the now
ruling dynasty abolished the custom, were sacrificed to the sea on the
Corean coast fronting Japan. In Kiōto, on Gi-on Street, there is a
temple which tradition declares was “founded in 656 A.D. by a Corean
envoy in honor of Susanoō, to whom the name of Go-dzu Tenno (Heavenly
King of Go-dzu) was given, because he was originally worshipped in
Go-dzu Mountain in Corea.”
Dogs are not held in any honor in Japan, as they were anciently in
Kokorai. Except the silk-haired, pug-nosed, and large-eyed chin, which
the average native does not conceive as canine, the dogs run at large,
ownerless, as in the Levant; and share the work of street scavenging
with the venerated crows. Yet there are two places of honor in which
the golden and stone effigies of this animal—highly idealized indeed,
but still inu—are enthroned.
The ama-inu, or heavenly dogs, in fanciful sculpture of stone or gilt
wood, represent guardian dogs. They are found in pairs guarding the
entrances to miya or temples. As all miya (the name also of the
mikado’s residence) were originally intended to serve as a model or
copy of the palace of the mikado and a reminder of the divinity of his
person and throne, it is possible that the ama-inu imitated the golden
Corean dogs which support and guard the throne of Japan. Access to the
shrine was had only by passing these two heavenly dogs. These creatures
are quite distinct from the “dogs of Fo,” or the “lions” that flank the
gateways of the magistrate’s office in China. Those who have had
audience of the mikado in the imperial throne-room, as the writer had
in January, 1873, have noticed at the foot of the throne, serving as
legs or supports to the golden chair, on which His Majesty sits, two
dogs sitting on their haunches, and upright on their forelegs. These
fearful-looking creatures, with wide-open mouths, hair curled in tufts,
especially around the front neck, and with tails bifurcated at their
upright ends, are called “Corean dogs.” For what reason placed there we
know not. It may be in witness of the conquest of Shinra by the empress
Jingu, who called the king of Shinra “the dog of Japan,” or it may
point to some forgotten symbolism in the past, or typify the vassalage
of Corea—so long a fundamental dogma in Japanese politics. It is
certainly strange to see this creature, so highly honored in Fuyu and
dishonored among the vulgar in Japan, placed beneath the mikado’s
throne.
The Japanese laid claim to Corea from the second century until the 27th
of February, 1876. On that day the mikado’s minister plenipotentiary
signed the treaty, recognizing Chō-sen as an independent nation.
Through all the seventeen centuries which, according to their annals,
elapsed since their armies first compelled the vassalage of their
neighbor, the Japanese regarded the states of Corea as tributary. Time
and again they enforced their claim with bloody invasion, and when
through a more enlightened policy the rulers voluntarily acknowledged
their former enemy as an equal, the decision cost Japan almost
immediately afterward seven months of civil war, 20,000 lives, and
fifty millions of dollars in treasure. The mainspring of the “Satsuma
rebellion” of 1877 was the official act of friendship by treaty, and
the refusal of the Tōkiō Government to make war on Corea.
From about the beginning of the Christian era until the fifteenth
century the relations between the two nations were very close and
active. Alternate peace and war, mutual assistance given, and embassies
sent to and fro are recorded with lively frequency in the early
Japanese annals, especially the Nihongi and Kojiki. A more or less
continual stream of commerce and emigration seems to have set in from
the peninsula. Some writers of high authority, who are also comparative
students of the languages of the two countries, see in these events the
origin of the modern Japanese. They interpret them to mean nothing less
than the peopling of the archipelago by continental tribes passing
through the peninsula, and landing in Japan at various points along the
coast from Kiushiu to Kaga. Some of them think that Japan was settled
wholly and only by Tungusic races of Northeastern Asia coming from or
through Corea. They base their belief not only on the general stream
and tendency of Japanese tradition, but also and more on the proofs of
language.
The first mention of Corea in the Japanese annals occurs in the fifth
volume of the Nihongi, and is the perhaps half-fabulous narrative of
ancient tradition. In the 65th year of the reign of the tenth mikado,
Sujin (97–30 B.C.), a boat filled with people from the west appeared
off the southern point of Chō-shiu, near the modern town of
Shimonoséki. They would not land there, but steered their course from
cape to cape along the coast until they reached the Bay of Keji no Wara
in Echizen, near the modern city of Tsuruga. Here they disembarked and
announced themselves from Amana Sankan (Amana of the Three Han or
Kingdoms) in Southern Corea. They unpacked their treasures of finely
wrought goods, and their leader made offerings to the mikado Sujin.
These immigrants remained five years in Echizen, not far from the city
of Fukui, till 28 B.C. Before leaving Japan, they presented themselves
in the capital for a farewell audience. The mikado Mimaki, having died
three years before, the visitors were requested on their return to call
their country Mimana, after their patron, as a memorial of their stay
in Japan. To this they assented, and on their return named their
district Mimana.
Some traditions state that the first Corean envoy had a horn growing
out of his forehead, and that since his time, and on account of it, the
bay near which he dwelt was named Tsunaga (Horn Bay) now corrupted into
Tsuruga.
It may be added that nearly all mythical characters or heroes in
Japanese and Chinese history are represented as having one or more very
short horns growing out of their heads, and are so delineated in native
art.
Six years later an envoy from Shinra arrived, also bringing presents to
the mikado. These consisted of mirrors, jade stone, swords, and other
precious articles, then common in Corea but doubtless new in Japan.
According to the tradition of the Kojiki (Book of Ancient Legends) the
fourteenth mikado, Chiu-ai (A.D. 192–200) was holding his court at
Tsuruga in Echizen, in A.D. 194, when a rebellion broke out in Kiushiu.
He marched at once into Kiushiu, against the rebels, and there fell by
disease or arrow. His consort, Jingu Kōgō, had a presentiment that he
ought not to go into Kiushiu, as he would surely fail if he did, but
that he should strike at the root of the trouble and sail at once to
the west.
After his death she headed the Japanese army and, leading the troops in
person, quelled the revolt. She then ordered all the available forces
of her realm to assemble for an invasion of Shinra. Japanese modern
writers have laid great stress upon the fact that Shinra began the
aggressions which brought on war, and in this fact justify Jingu’s
action and Japan’s right to hold Corea as an honestly acquired
possession.
All being ready, the doughty queen regent set sail from the coast of
Hizen, in Japan, in the tenth month A.D. 202, and beached the fleet
safely on the coast of Shinra. The King of Shinra, accustomed to meet
only with men from the rude tribes of Kiushiu, was surprised to see so
well-appointed an army and so large a fleet from a land to the
eastward. Struck with terror he resolved at once to submit. Tying his
hands in token of submission and in presence of the queen Jingu, he
declared himself the slave of Japan. Jingu caused her bow to be
suspended over the gate of the palace of the king in sign of his
submission. It is even said that she wrote on the gate “The King of
Shinra is the dog of Japan.” Perhaps these are historic words, which
find their meaning to-day in the two golden dogs forming part of the
mikado’s throne, like the Scotch “stone of Scone,” under the coronation
chair in Westminster Abbey.
The followers of Jingu evidently expected a rich booty, but after so
peaceful a conquest the empress ordered that no looting should be
allowed, and no spoil taken except the treasures constituting tribute.
She restored the king to the throne as her vassal, and the tribute was
then collected and laden on eighty boats with hostages for future
annual tribute. The offerings comprised pictures, works of elegance and
art, mirrors, jade, gold, silver, and silk fabrics.
Preparations were now made to conquer Hiaksai also, when Jingu was
surprised to receive the voluntary submission and offers of tribute of
this country.
The Japanese army remained in Corea only two months, but this brief
expedition led to great and lasting results. It gave the Japanese a
keener thirst for martial glory, it opened their eyes to a higher state
of arts and civilization. From this time forth there flowed into the
islands a constant stream of Corean emigrants, who gave a great impulse
to the spirit of improvement in Japan. The Japanese accept the story of
Jingu and her conquest as sound history, and adorn their greenback
paper money with pictures of her foreign exploits. Critics reject many
elements in the tradition, such as her controlling the waves and
drowning the Shinra army by the jewels of the ebbing and the flowing
tide, [2] and the delay of her accouchement by a magic stone carried in
her girdle. The Japanese ascribe the glory of victory to her then
unborn babe, afterward deified as Ojin, god of war, and worshipped by
Buddhists as Hachiman or the Eight-bannered Buddha. Yet many temples
are dedicated to Jingu, one especially famous is near Hiōgo, and
Koraiji (Corean village) near Oiso, a few miles from Yokohama, has
another which was at first built in her honor. Evidently the core of
the narrative of conquest is fact.
At the time when the faint, dim light of trustworthy tradition dawns,
we find the people inhabiting the Japanese archipelago to be roughly
divided, as to their political status, into four classes.
In the central province around Kiōto ruled a kingly house—the mikado
and his family—with tributary nobles or feudal chiefs holding their
lands on military tenure. This is the ancient classic land and realm of
Yamato. Four other provinces adjoining it have always formed the core
of the empire, and are called the Go-Kinai, or five home provinces,
suggesting the five clans of Kokorai.
To the north and east stretched the little known and less civilized
region, peopled by tribes of kindred blood and speech, who spoke nearly
the same language as the Yamato tribes, and who had probably come at
some past time from the same ancestral seats in Manchuria, and called
the Kuan-tō, or region east (tō) of the barrier (kuan) at Ozaka; or
poetically Adzuma.
Still further north, on the main island and in Yezo, lived the Ainos or
Ebisŭ, probably the aborigines of the soil—the straight-eyed men whose
descendants still live in Yezo and the Kuriles. The northern and
eastern tribes were first conquered and thoroughly subdued by the
Yamato tribes, after which all the far north was overrun and the Ainos
subjugated.
In the extreme south of the main island of Japan and in Kiushiu, then
called Kumaso by the Yamato people, lived a number of tribes of perhaps
the same ethnic stock as the Yamato Japanese, but further removed.
Their progenitors had probably descended from Manchuria through Corea
to Japan. Their blood and speech, however, were more mixed by infusions
from Malay and southern elements. Into Kiushiu—it being nearest to the
continent—the peninsulars were constantly coming and mingling with the
islanders.
The allegiance of the Kiushiu tribes to the royal house of Yamato was
of a very loose kind. The history of these early centuries, as shown in
the annals of Nihon, is but a series of revolts against the distant
warrior mikado, whose life was chiefly one of war. He had often to
leave his seat in the central island to march at the head of his
followers to put down rebellions or to conquer new tribes. Over these,
when subdued, a prince chosen by the conqueror was set to rule, who
became a feudatory of the mikado.
The attempts of the Yamato sovereign to wholly reduce the Kiushiu
tribes to submission, were greatly frustrated by their stout
resistance, fomented by emissaries from Shinra, who instigated them to
“revolt,” while adventurers from the Corean mainland came over in large
numbers and joined the “rebels,” who were, in one sense, their own
compatriots.
From the time of Jingu, if the early dates in Japanese history are to
be trusted, may be said to date that belief, so firmly fixed in the
Japanese mind, that Corea is, and always was since Jingu’s time, a
tributary and dependency of Japan. This idea, akin to that of the claim
of the English kings on France, led to frequent expeditions from the
third to the sixteenth century, and which, even as late as 1874, 1875,
and 1877, lay at the root of three civil wars.
All these expeditions, sometimes national, sometimes filibustering,
served to drain the resources of Japan, though many impulses to
development and higher civilization were thus gained, especially in the
earlier centuries. It seemed, until 1877, almost impossible to
eradicate from the military mind of Japan the conviction that to
surrender Corea was cowardice and a stain on the national honor. But
time will show, as it showed centuries ago in England, that the glory
and prosperity of the conqueror were increased, not diminished, when
Japan relinquished all claim on her continental neighbor and treated
her as an equal.
The Coreans taught the Japanese the arts of peace, while the Coreans
profited from their neighbors to improve in the business of war. We
read that, in 316 A.D., a Corean ambassador, bringing the usual
tribute, presented to the mikado a shield of iron which he believed to
be invulnerable to Japanese arrows. The mikado called on one of his
favorite marksmen to practice in the presence of the envoy. The shield
was suspended, and the archer, drawing bow, sent a shaft through the
iron skin of the buckler to the astonishment of the visitor. In all
their battles the Coreans were rarely able to stand in open field
before the archers from over the sea, who sent true cloth-yard shafts
from their oak and bamboo bows.
The paying of tribute to a foreign country is never a pleasant duty to
perform, though in times of prosperity and good harvests it is not
difficult. In periods of scarcity from bad crops it is well nigh
impossible. To insist upon its payment is to provoke rebellion.
Instances are indeed given in Japanese history where the conquerors not
only remitted the tribute but even sent ship loads of rice and barley
to the starving Coreans. When, however, for reasons not deemed
sufficient, or out of sheer defiance, their vassals refused to
discharge their dues, they again felt the iron hand of Japan in war.
During the reign of Yuriaki, the twenty-second mikado (A.D. 457–477),
the three states failed to pay tribute. A Japanese army landed in
Corea, and conquering Hiaksai, compelled her to return to her duty. The
campaign was less successful in Shinra and Korai, for after the
Japanese had left the Corean shores the “tribute” was sent only at
intervals, and the temper of the half-conquered people was such that
other expeditions had to be despatched to inflict chastisement and
compel payment.
The gallant but vain succor given by the Japanese to Hiaksai during the
war with the Chinese, in the sixth century, which resulted in the
destruction of the little kingdom, has already been detailed. Among the
names, forever famous in Japanese art and tradition, of those who took
part in this expedition are Saté-hiko and Kasi-wadé. The former sailed
away from Hizen in the year 536, as one of the mikado’s body-guard to
assist their allies the men of Hiaksai. A poetical legend recounts that
his wife, Sayohimé, climbed the hills of Matsura to catch the last
glimpse of his receding sails. Thus intently gazing, with straining
eyes, she turned to stone. The peasants of the neighborhood still
discern in the weather-worn rocks, high up on the cliffs, the figure of
a lady in long trailing court dress with face and figure eagerly bent
over the western waves. Not only is the name Matsura Sayohimé the
symbol of devoted love, but from this incident the famous author Bakin
constructed his romance of “The Great Stone Spirit of Matsura.”
Kasiwadé, who crossed over to do “frontier service” in the peninsula a
few years later, was driven ashore by a snow squall at an unknown part
of the coast. While in this defenceless condition his camp was invaded
by a tiger, which carried off and devoured his son, a lad of tender
age. Kasiwadé at once gave chase and followed the beast to the
mountains and into a cave. The tiger leaping out upon him, the wary
warrior bearded him with his left hand, and buried his dirk in his
throat. Then finishing him with his sabre, he skinned the brute and
sent home the trophy. From olden times Chō-sen is known to Japanese
children only as a land of tigers, while to the soldier the “marshal’s
baton carried in his knapsack” is a tiger-skin scabbard, the emblem and
possession of rank.
As the imperial court of Japan looked upon Shinra and Hiaksai as
outlying vassal states, the frequent military movements across the sea
were reckoned under “frontier service,” like that beyond the latitude
of Sado in the north of the main island, or in Kiushiu in the south.
“The three countries” of Corea were far nearer and more familiar to the
Japanese soldiers than were Yezo or the Riu Kiu Islands, which were not
part of the empire till several centuries afterward. Kara Kuni, the
country of Kara (a corruption of Korai?), as they now call China, was
then applied to Corea. Not a little of classic poetry and legend in the
Yamato language refers to this western frontier beyond the sea. The
elegy on Ihémaro, the soldier-prince, who died at Iki Island on the
voyage over, and that on the death of the Corean nun Riguwan, have been
put into English verse by Mr. Chamberlain (named after the English
explorer and writer on Corea, Basil Hall), in his “Classical Poetry of
the Japanese.” This Corean lady left her home in 714, and for
twenty-one years found a home with the mikado’s Prime Minister, Otomo,
and his wife, at Nara. She died in 735, while her hosts were away at
the mineral springs of Arima, near Kobé; and the elegy was written by
their daughter. One stanza describes her life in the new country.
“And here with aliens thou didst choose to dwell,
Year in, year out, in deepest sympathy;
And here thou builtest thee a holy cell,
And so the peaceful years went gliding by.”
An interesting field of research is still open to the scholar who will
point out all the monuments of Corean origin or influence in the
mikado’s empire, in the arts and sciences, household customs, diet and
dress, or architecture; in short, what by nature or the hand of man has
been brought to the land of Sunrise from that of Morning Calm. One of
the Corean princes, who settled in Japan early in the seventh century,
founded a family which afterward ruled the famous province of Nagatō or
Chōshiu. One of his descendants welcomed Francis Xavier, and aided his
work by gifts of ground and the privilege of preaching. Many of the
temples in Kiōto still contain images, paintings, and altar furniture
brought from Corea. The “Pheasant Bridge” still keeps its name from
bygone centuries; in a garden near by pheasants were kept for the
supply of the tables of the Corean embassies. The Arab and Persian
treasures of art and fine workmanship, in the imperial archives and
museums of Nara, which have excited the wonder of foreign visitors, are
most probably among the gifts or purchases from Shinra, where these
imports were less rare. A Buddhist monk named Shiuho has gathered up
the traditions and learning of the subject, so far as it illustrated
his faith, and in “Precious Jewels from a Neighboring Country,”
published in 1586, has written a narrative of the introduction of
Buddhism from Corea and its literary and missionary influences upon
Japan.
Under the chapters on Art and Religion we shall resume this topic. As
earnestly as the Japanese are now availing themselves of the science
and progress of Christendom in this nineteenth century, so earnestly
did they borrow the culture of the west, that is of Corea and China, a
thousand years ago.
The many thousands of Coreans, who, during the first ten centuries of
the Christian era, but especially in the seventh, eighth, and ninth,
settled in Japan, lived peaceably with the people of their adopted
country, and loyally obeyed the mikado’s rule. An exception to this
course occurred in 820, when seven hundred men who some time before had
come from Shinra to Tōtōmi and Suruga revolted, killed many of the
Japanese, seized the rice in the store-houses, and put to sea to
escape. The people of Musashi and Sagami pursued and attacked them,
putting many of them to death.
The general history of the Coreans in Japan divides itself into two
parts. Those who came as voluntary immigrants in time of peace were in
most cases skilled workmen or farmers, who settled in lands or in
villages granted them, and were put on political and social equality
with the mikado’s subjects. They founded industries, intermarried with
the natives, and their identity has been lost in the general body of
the Japanese people.
With the prisoners taken in war, and with the laborers impressed into
their service and carried off by force, the case was far different.
These latter were set apart in villages by themselves—an outcast race
on no social equality with the people. At first they were employed to
feed the imperial falcons, or do such menial work, but under the ban of
Buddhism, which forbids the destruction of life and the handling of
flesh, they became an accursed race, the “Etas” or pariahs of the
nation. They were the butchers, skinners, leather-makers, and those
whose business it was to handle corpses of criminals and all other
defiling things. They exist to-day, not greatly changed in blood,
though in costume, language, and general appearance, it is not possible
to distinguish them from Japanese of purest blood. By the humane edict
of the mikado, in 1868, granting them all the rights of citizenship,
their social condition has greatly improved.
From the ninth century onward to the sixteenth, the relations of the
two countries seem to be unimportant. Japan was engaged in conquering
northward the barbarians of her main island and Yezo. Her intercourse,
both political and religious, grew to be so direct with the court of
China, that Corea, in the Japanese annals, sinks out of sight except at
rare intervals. Nihon increased in wealth and civilization while
Chō-sen remained stationary or retrograded. In the nineteenth century
the awakened Sunrise Kingdom has seen her former self in the hermit
nation, and has stretched forth willing hands to do for her neighbor
now, what Corea did for Japan in centuries long gone by.
Still, it must never be forgotten that Corea was not only the bridge on
which civilization crossed from China to the archipelago, but was most
probably the pathway of migration by which the rulers of the race now
inhabiting Nihon reached it from their ancestral seats around the
Sungari and the Ever-White Mountains. True, it is not absolutely
certain whether the homeland of the mikado’s ancestors lay southward in
the sea, or westward among the mountains, but that the mass of the
Corean and Japanese people are more closely allied in blood than either
are with the Chinese, Manchius, or Malays, seems to be proved, not only
by language and physical traits, but by the whole course of the history
of both nations, and by the testimony of the Chinese records. Both
Coreans and Japanese have inherited the peculiar institutions of their
Fuyu ancestors—that race which alone of all the peoples sprung from
Manchuria migrated toward the rising, instead of toward the setting,
sun.