THE INVASION—ON TO SEOUL.
For the pictures of camps, fleets, the details of armory and
commissariat, and all the pomp and circumstance that make up the bright
side of Japanese war preparations in 1591 and 1592, we are indebted,
not only to the Japanese writers, but to those eye witnesses and
excellent “war correspondents,” the Portuguese missionaries then in
Kiushiu, and especially to Friar Louis Frois. He tells us of the
amplitude, vigor, and brilliancy of Taikō’s measures for invasion, and
adds that the expenses therefor greatly burdened the “ethniques” or
daimiōs who had to pay the cost. Those feudatories, whose domain
bordered the sea, had to furnish a mighty fleet of junks, while to man
them, the quota of every hundred houses of the fishing population was
ten sailors.
The land and naval forces assembled at Nagoya, in Hizen, now called
Karatsu, and famous for being the chief place for the manufacture of
Hizen porcelain. Here a superb castle was built, while huge inns or
resting-places were erected all along the road from Kiōto. The armies
gathered here during the war numbered 500,000 men; of whom 150,000
formed the army of invasion, 60,000 the first reserve, while 100,000
were set apart as Taikō’s body-guard; the remainder were sailors,
servants, camp followers, etc.
Beside the old veterans were new levies of young soldiers, and a corps
of matchlock men, who afterward did good execution among the Coreans.
The possession of this new and terrible weapon gave the invaders a
mighty advantage over their enemies. Though firearms had been known and
manufactured in Japan for a half century, this was the first time they
were used against foreign enemies, or on a large scale. Taikō also
endeavored to hire or buy from the Portuguese two ships of war, so as
to use their artillery; but in this he failed, and the troops were
despatched in native-built vessels. These made a gallant display as
they crowded together by hundreds. At the signal, given by the firing
of cannon, the immense fleet hoisted sail and, under a fresh breeze,
bore away to the west.
Their swelling sails, made of long sections of canvass laced together,
vertically, at their edges, from stem to boom (thus differing from the
Chinese, which are laced horizontally), were inscribed with immense
crests and the heraldic devices of feudalism, many feet in diameter.
Near the top were cross-wise bands or stripes of black. The junks of
Satsuma could be distinguished by the white cross in a circle; those of
Higo by the broad-banded ring. On one were two crossed arrow-feathers,
on others the chess-board, the “cash” coin and palm-leaves, the
butterfly, the cloisonné symbol, the sun, the fan, etc. Innumerable
banners, gay with armorial designs or inscribed with Buddhist texts,
hung on their staves or fluttered gaily as flags and streamers from the
mastheads. Stuck into the back of many of the distinguished veterans,
or officers, were the sashi-mono, or bannerets. Kato Kiyomasa, being a
strict Buddhist, had for the distinctive blazon of his back-pennant,
and on the banners of his division, the prayer and legend of his sect,
the Nichirenites, “Namu miyo ho rengé kiō” (Glory to the Holy Lotus, or
Glory to the salvation-bringing book of the Holy Law of Buddha). On the
forward deck were ranged heavy shields of timber for the protection of
the archers. These, at close quarters, were to be let down and used as
boarding planks, when the sword, pike, and grappling-hook came into
play. Huge tassels, dangling from the prows like the manes of horses,
tossed up and down as the ships rode over the waves. Each junk had a
huge eye painted at the prow, to look out and find the path in the sea.
With the squadron followed hundreds of junks, laden with salt meat,
rice-wine, dried fish, and rice and beans, which formed the staple of
the invaders’ commissariat for man and horse. Transport junks, with
cargoes of flints, arrows, ball, powder, wax candles, ship and camp
stores, “not forgetting a single thing,” sailed soon after, as well as
the craft containing horses for the cavalry.
Taikō did not go to Corea himself, being dissuaded by his aged mother.
The court also wished no weaker hand than his to hold the reins of
government while the army was on foreign shores. The men to whom he
entrusted the leadership of the expedition, were Konishi Yukinaga and
Kato Kiyomasa. To the former, he presented a fine war horse, telling
him to “gallop over the bearded savages” with it, while to the latter
he gave a battle-flag. Konishi was an impetuous young man, only
twenty-three years of age. He was a favorite of Taikō, and sprung like
the latter from the common people, being the son of a medicine dealer.
His crest or banner was a huge, stuffed, white paper bag, such as
druggists in Japan use as a shop sign. In this he followed the example
of his august chief, who, despising the brocade banners of the imperial
generals, stuck a gourd on a pole for his colors. For every victory he
added another gourd, until his immense cluster contained as many proofs
of victory as there are bamboo sticks in an umbrella. The
“gourd-banner” became the emblem of infallible victory. Konishi also
imitated his master in his tactics—impetuous attack and close following
up of victory.
Konishi was a Christian, an ardent convert to the faith of the Jesuit
fathers, by whom he had been baptized in 1584. In their writings, they
call him “Don Austin”—a contraction of Augustine. Other Christian lords
or daimiōs, who personally led their troops in the field with Konishi,
were Arima, Omura, Amakusa, Bungo, and Tsushima. The personal name of
the latter, a former envoy to Corea, of whom we have read before, was
Yoshitoshi. He was the son-in-law of Konishi. Kuroda, as Mr. Ernest
Satow has shown, is the “Kondera” of the Jesuit writers.
Kato Kiyomasa was a noble, whose castle seat was at Kumamoto in Higo.
From his youth he had been trained to war, and had a reputation for
fierce bravery. It is said that Kato suggested to Taikō the plan of
invading Corea. His crest was a broad-banded circle, and his favorite
weapon was a long lance with but one cross-blade instead of two. Kato
is the “Toronosqui” of the Jesuit fathers, who never weary of loading
his memory with obloquy. This “vir ter execrandus” was a fierce
Buddhist and a bitter foe to Christianity. A large number of fresh
autographic writings had been made by the bonzes in the monasteries
expressly for Kato’s division. The silk pennon, said to have been
inscribed by Nichiren himself and worn by Kato during the invasion, is
now in Tōkiō, owned by Katsu Awa, and is six centuries old.
With such elements at work between the two commanders, bitterness of
religious rivalry, personal emulation, the desire to earn glory each
for himself alone, the contempt of an old veteran for a young aspirant,
harmony and unity of plan were not to be looked for. Nevertheless, the
personal qualities of each general were such as to inspire his own
troops with the highest enthusiasm, and the army sailed away fully
confident of victory.
What were the objects of Taikō in making this war? Evidently his
original thought was to invade and humble China. Then followed the
determination to conquer Chō-sen. Ambition may have led him to rival
Ojin Tennō, who, in his mother’s womb, made the conquest of Shinra,
and, as the deified Hachiman, became the Japanese god of war. Lastly,
the Jesuit fathers saw in this expedition a plot to kill off the
Christian leaders in a foreign land, and thus extirpate Christianity in
Japan. To ship the Christians off to a foreign soil to die of wounds or
disease, was easier than to massacre them. They make Taikō a David, and
his best generals Uriahs—though Coligny, slain twenty years before,
might have served for a more modern illustration.
Certain it is that it was during the absence of the Christian leaders
that the severest persecutions at home took place. It is probable,
also, that his jealousy of the success and consequent popularity of the
Christian generals created irresolution in Taikō’s mind, leading him to
neglect the proper support of the expedition and thus to bring about a
gigantic failure.
Finally, we must mention the theory of a Japanese friend, Mr. Egi
Takato, who held that Taikō, having whole armies of unemployed
warriors, all jealous of each other, was compelled, in order to ensure
peace in Japan, to find employment for their swords. His idea was to
send them on this distant “frontier service,” and give them such a
taste of home-sickness that peaceful life in Japan would be a
desideratum ever afterward.
The Coreans, by their own acknowledgment, were poorly prepared for a
war with the finest soldiers in Asia, as the Japanese of the sixteenth
century certainly were. Nor had they any leader of ability to direct
their efforts. Their king, Sien-jo, the fifteenth of the house of Ni,
who had already reigned twenty-six years, was a man of no personal
importance, addicted entirely to his own pleasures, a drunkard, and a
debauchee. Though the royal proclamation was speedily issued, calling
on the people to fortify their cities, to rebuild the dilapidated
castles, and to dig out the moats, long since choked by mud and
vegetation, the people responded so slowly, that few of the fortresses
were found in order when their enemies laid siege to them. Weapons were
plentiful, but there were no firearms, save those presented as
curiosities by the Taikō to the king. There was little or no military
organization, except on paper, while the naval defences were in a sad
plight. However, they began to enroll and drill, to lay up stores of
fish and grain for the army, to build ships, to repair their walls, and
even to manufacture rude firearms.
Yet even the most despondent of the Coreans never dreamed that the
Japanese, on their first arrival, would sweep everything before them
like a whirlwind, and enter the capital within eighteen days after
their landing at Fusan. One of the first castles garrisoned and
provisioned was that of Tong-nai, near Fusan. On the morning of May 25,
1592, the sentinels on the coast descried the Japanese fleet of eight
hundred ships, containing the division of Konishi. Before night the
invaders had disembarked, captured Fusan, and laid siege to Tong-nai
Castle, which at once surrendered. So sudden was the attack that the
governor of the district, then in the city, was unable to escape.
Konishi, writing a letter to the king, gave it into the hands of the
governor, and made him swear to deliver it safely, promising him
unconditional liberty if he did so. The governor agreed, and at once
set out for Seoul; but on reaching it he simply said he had escaped,
and made no mention of the letter. His perjury was not to remain
undetected, as later events proved. Without an hour’s delay Konishi’s
division, leaving Tong-nai, marched up the Nak-tong valley to
Shang-chiu.
Kato’s division, delayed by a storm, arrived next day. Landing
immediately, he saw with chagrin the pennons of his rival flying from
the ramparts of Tong-nai. Angry at being left behind by “the boy,” he
took the more northerly of the two routes to the capital. The two rival
armies were now straining every nerve on a race to Seoul, each eager to
destroy all enemies on the march, and reach the royal palace first.
Kuroda and other generals led expeditions into the southern provinces
of Chulla and Chung-chong. These provinces being subdued, and the
castles garrisoned, they were to make their way to the capital.
The Coreans proved themselves especially good bowmen, but inexpert at
other weapons, their swords being of iron only, short, clumsy, and
easily bent. Their spears, or rather pikes, were shorter than the
Japanese, with heavy blades, from the base of which hung tassels. The
iron heads were hollow at the base, forming a socket, in which the
staff fitted. The Japanese spearheads, on the contrary, were riveted
down and into the wood, which was iron-banded for further security,
making a weapon less likely to get out of order, while the blades were
steel-edged. The Corean cavalry had heavy, three-pronged spears, which
were extremely formidable to look at, but being so heavy as to be
unwieldly at close quarters, they did little execution. Many of their
suits of armor were handsomely inlaid, made of iron and leather, but
less flexible and more vulnerable than those of the Japanese, which
were of interlaced silk and steel on a background of tough buckskin,
with sleeves of chain mail. The foot soldiers on either side were
incased in a combination of iron chain and plate armor, but the Coreans
had no glaves, or cross-blades on their pikes, and thus were nearly
helpless against their enemy’s cavalry. The Japanese were
smooth-shaven, and wore stout helmets, with ear-guards and visors, but
the Coreans, with open helmets, without visors, and whiskered faces,
were dubbed “hairy barbarians.” They were beginning to learn the use of
powder, which, however, was so badly mixed as to be exasperatingly slow
in burning. Their very few firearms were of the rudest and most
cumbrous sort. They used on their ramparts a kind of wooden cannon,
made of bamboo-hooped timber, from which they shot heavy wooden darts,
three feet long, pointed with sharp-bladed, Y-shaped iron heads. The
range of these clumsy missiles was very short. The Japanese, on the
contrary, had at several sieges pieces of light brass ordnance, with
which they quickly cleared the walls of the castles, and then scaled
them with long and light ladders, made of bamboo, and easily borne by
men on a run. The Japanese were not only better equipped, but their
tactics were superior. Their firearms frightened the Corean horses, and
the long spears and halberds of their cavalry were used with fearful
effect while pursuing the fugitives, who were pierced or pulled off
their steeds, or sabred in droves. Few bodies of native troops faced
the invaders in the field, while fire-arrows, gunpowder, and ladders
quickly reduced the castles. Not a few of the Corean officers were
killed inside their fortresses by the long range fire of the
sharp-shooters in the matchlock corps.
The greater share of glory fell to Konishi, the younger man. Taking the
southern route, he reached the castle of Shang-chiu, in the
northwestern part of Kiung-sang, and captured it. Leaving a garrison,
he pushed on to Chiun-chiu. This fortress of Chiun-chiu is situated in
the northeastern part of Chung-chong province, and on the most
northerly of the two roads, over which Kato was then marching. It was
at that time considered to be the strongest castle in the peninsula. On
it rested the fate of the capital. It lay near one of the branches of
the Han River, which flows past Seoul. At this point the two high roads
to the capital, on which the two rivals were moving, converged so as to
nearly touch. Chiun-chiu castle lay properly on Kato’s route, but
Konishi, being in the advance, invested it with his forces and, after a
few days’ siege, captured the great stronghold. The loss of the Coreans
thus far in the three fortresses seized by Konishi, as reported by
Friar Frois, was 5,000 men, 3,000 of whom fell at Chiun-chiu; while the
Japanese had lost but 100 killed and 400 wounded. After such a victory,
“Konishi determined to conquer all Corea by himself.”
Kato and his army, arriving a few days after the victory, again saw
themselves outstripped. Konishi’s pennons floated from every tower, and
the booty was already disposed of. The goal of both armies was now “the
Miaco of the kingly city of Coray.” Straining every nerve, Kato pressed
forward so rapidly that the two divisions of the Japanese army entered
Seoul by different gates on the same day. No resistance was offered, as
the king, court, and army had evacuated the city three days before. The
brilliant pageant of the Japanese army, in magnificent array of gay
silk and glittering armor, was lost on the empty streets of deserted
Seoul.
When Taikō heard of the success of his lieutenants in Corea, especially
of Konishi’s exploits, he was filled with joy, and cried out, “Now my
own son seems risen from the dead.”