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

by Samuel Hawley

  The Korean mission, still in the company of So Yoshitoshi and the monk Genso, left Kyoto almost immediately after this and traveled south to the port of Sakai, near Osaka, to await Hideyoshi’s reply to the letter they had delivered from King Sonjo. Their mission on the whole must be deemed a failure. To begin with, they had done little to gather intelligence that would be useful to the government in Seoul—above all, of Hideyoshi’s true intentions, and of the military strength he had at his command. The mission instead became caught up in recording everything that was “wrong” with Japan, and all the ways in which it diverged from the Chinese-oriented model of correct political and social order.

  Their assessment of Hideyoshi—or more particularly Vice-Ambassador Kim’s assessment, for his would hold sway—was perhaps the mission’s greatest failure. They did not fully appreciate the power he possessed, and in turn the danger he posed. They focused instead on his lack of decorum, taking this to mean that he was contemptible and uncivilized, an unworthy recipient of a goodwill mission from the Dragon Throne in Seoul. In fact, Vice-Ambassador Kim chaffed under the very obligation of having to appear before him at all. Hideyoshi was not an emperor. Japan already had one of those, a false emperor by the name of Go-Yozei. (To the Koreans there was of course only one “true” emperor, the Ming emperor of China.) Hideyoshi was not a king either, although the letter from Seoul honored him with this undeserved title. The only title he claimed for himself was kampaku, or regent, up to the end of 1591, and taiko, or retired regent, thereafter, making him little more than a senior court official, an advisor to the throne. For a mission from the Choson court to appear before him was therefore not only inappropriate, it was humiliating.

  A second shortcoming of the Korean mission was that it was unable to impress upon Hideyoshi and his inner circle exactly where Korea stood—namely that it was prepared to welcome Japan into its Chinese-centered world as a fellow tributary state but that it never for a moment entertained the thought of submitting to Hideyoshi or Japan. In fairness, it would have been difficult if not impossible for Hwang and Kim and their compatriots to convey such a message. In addition to the communication difficulties they faced—much of their “talk” with their Japanese hosts would have been conducted in writing using Chinese characters—they were allowed no direct contact with Hideyoshi himself, and anything they conveyed to his underlings probably never made it back to his ear for the simple reason that it was unhealthy to tell Hideyoshi what he did not want to hear. He had commanded that the Koreans send a tribute mission to him and submit. So Yoshitoshi subsequently appeared with a mission in tow, Hideyoshi drew his own conclusions, and no one around him dared tell him the truth.

  Hideyoshi therefore never understood that the party of Koreans that came to Kyoto was merely a goodwill mission. To him it was a tribute mission, a sign that the Koreans had acceded to his demand for submission and that his conquest of Asia was proceeding as planned. He was in fact so pleased with the “tribute mission” that he bestowed a court promotion on So Yoshitoshi, the man who had brought the Koreans to heel, together with the honor of using the family name Hashiba, the name Hideyoshi himself had used for a time back in the early 1580s.

  With so much misunderstanding in the air, it was not surprising that the reply from Hideyoshi to King Sonjo that was eventually handed to the Koreans at Sakai proved highly unsatisfactory. After reiterating his greatness, Hideyoshi thanked King Sonjo for sending a “tribute mission” and “surrendering to the Japanese court” and now ordered him to prepare to join Hideyoshi in his conquest of China. The Korean envoys protested vigorously, and eventually the Japanese relented by removing the reference to Korea’s “surrendering to the Japanese court.” But everything else remained.[100]

  Back in Seoul, Ambassador Hwang and Vice-Ambassador Kim appeared before King Sonjo and his ministers in March of 1591 to give their respective assessments of Hideyoshi. Hwang, the Western faction member, described Hideyoshi as having the piercing eyes of a man of resourcefulness and daring. He seemed fully prepared to start a war, the ambassador said, and posed a great danger to Korea. Easterner Kim Song-il strongly disagreed. Hideyoshi had the eyes of a rat, he countered, and was not to be overly feared. He did not pose a danger, and would not start a war. There was, in short, no pressing need to take defensive measures.[101] With the balance of power in Seoul now swinging back in the Easterners’ favor, this assessment of Kim’s was accorded the most weight. During the following months, as additional evidence accumulated of Hideyoshi’s warlike intentions, the realization gradually spread on both sides of the factional divide that Japan did indeed pose a legitimate threat and that Ambassador Hwang might have been right after all. By then, however, the issue had become politicized, making it difficult for anything to be accomplished in the way of defense preparations. Any call for the strengthening of forts and the raising of armies, regardless of how well-intentioned, was in effect a call to support the Western faction and consequently drove the now-dominant Easterners to argue against such measures. As will be seen in the next chapter, a few determined individuals did manage to get some defensive work done despite this political deadlock. But it would be too little, too late, to meet the maelstrom to come.

  The monk Genso and Yanagawa Shigenobu had in the meantime followed the Korean embassy back to Seoul and were doing all they could to get the government to accept Hideyoshi’s unacceptable demands. Hideyoshi wanted a fight with China, Genso lied in a meeting with Kim Song-il and others, because China had for so long refused to accept Japan as a vassal. He thus had every right to proceed with his armies to Beijing to demand its recognition. All the Koreans had to do was clear the way and escape all harm. When the Koreans vigorously protested, Genso pointed out that Korea had actively participated in China’s attempt to invade Japan in the late 1200s, and so it was only reasonable for Hideyoshi to expect them to allow him merely to pass now that he was setting out to exact his justifiable revenge. Again the Koreans refused.[102]

  If there was one thing both factions could agree upon, it was that Hideyoshi’s wild talk and grand schemes should not go unchallenged. A letter of response in which Seoul finally made its position clear was accordingly drawn up and handed to Genso and Yanagawa for delivery to Kyoto. Hideyoshi’s plan to invade China, the letter began, was beyond comprehension, and his demand that Korea join him in the undertaking an indication of just how little he understood of the world. For Korea and China were like one family, “maintaining the relationship of father and son as well as that of ruler and subject. This inseparable and amiable relationship between Chung-Chao [China] and our kingdom is well known throughout the world. Your kingdom should be acquainted with this fact.”

  We shall certainly not desert ‘our lord and father nation’ [China] and join with a neighboring nation in her unjust and unwise military undertaking. Moreover, to invade another nation is an act of which men of culture and intellectual attainments should feel ashamed. We shall certainly not take up arms against the supreme nation. As all the members of our nation are just and righteous persons, as well as cultured and intellectual in their attainments, [they] know how to revere ‘our lord and father nation’.... We urgently hope that you will reflect on these things and will come to understand your own situation as well as ours. We would conclude this letter by saying that your proposed undertaking is the most reckless, imprudent, and daring of any of which we have ever heard.[103]

  This was not what Hideyoshi wanted to hear. The Koreans had just sent to his palace what he had chosen to believe was a tribute mission offering their submission, and now they were scolding him like a schoolboy who had failed to learn his lessons. He immediately sent So Yoshitoshi back to Korea with one final warning: submit to me peacefully and open the way to China or face my armies and be destroyed. Yoshitoshi, appreciating the escalating danger of the situation, did not venture all the way to Seoul to deliver this message but handed it to the authorities in Pusan and remained aboard his ship in the harbor. When a reply w
as not forthcoming, he returned to Tsushima to prepare for war. Over the next several months the few remaining occupants of Pusan’s “Japan House” packed up their things and quietly followed suit. By the spring of 1592 the compound was deserted.[104]

  * * *

  Korea was not the only target of Hideyoshi’s “conquest through diplomacy” campaign of 1588 to 1592. He sent similar messages to the Ryukyu Islands, Taiwan, the Philippines, and India, informing the people there of his greatness and demanding that they submit.

  King Shonei of the Ryukyus was the first of these to be approached. His was a small kingdom spread across a chain of islands between Japan and Taiwan that regarded itself as a vassal of Ming China but which for the sake of expedience also sent tribute to Japan. The Japanese consequently considered the islands a vassal of their own, falling within the jurisdiction of the Shimazu family of Kyushu, and assumed without question that King Shonei would submit. With the receipt of Hideyoshi’s first letter demanding submission, King Shonei thus began walking a tightrope between actual loyalty to China and the appearance of loyalty to Japan. In June of 1589 he wrote apologetically to Hideyoshi that “our small and humble island kingdom, because of its great distance and because of lack of funds, has not rendered due reverence to you. However, now, in compliance with the instructions that our great lord, Shimazu Yoshihisa, has sent us,...we have caused [an envoy] to proceed to your country, carrying with him a humble gift.”[105]

  Hideyoshi was pleased. “Of all the nations yours is the first to send an envoy,” he magnanimously replied, “together with rare and unusual things. This has pleased us greatly....From this time on, although our countries are separated by thousands of miles, we may nevertheless maintain friendly relations with the feeling that your country, together with the other nations that are within the four seas, constitute but a single family.”[106]

  Hideyoshi expected to win the submission of the Philippines in a similarly effortless manner, through written threats rather than actual invasion, for he had been informed by a Portuguese visitor to Japan that the islands were weak and largely undefended.[107] He therefore sent a letter to the Spanish governor in Manila, Gomez Perez Dasmarinas, stating that he was about to conquer China, “for heaven...has promised it to me,” and intended to snatch up the Philippines as well for its failure to submit and send tribute to him. One of Hideyoshi’s vassals, however, had recently assured him that Spain was a friend to Japan and that its colony in the Philippines would send an ambassador if asked. Hideyoshi therefore ordered his vassal, Harada Magoshichiro, to Manila to demand that an envoy be sent at once to his invasion headquarters at Nagoya.[108]

  This vassal Harada was a rather shifty character, a Japanese trader and adventurer intent on working the situation to his own advantage, much as the So family were attempting to do with their manipulation of relations between Korea and Japan. Upon arriving in Manila he did everything he could to soften the belligerent tone of Hideyoshi’s message so that a favorable response could be coaxed out of the Spaniards, including presenting them with gifts that he purported to be from Hideyoshi but that he very likely purchased himself. Despite his efforts, the Spaniards remained suspicious. Harada seemed just a common trader, not the sort of man to be entrusted with a diplomatic mission of such importance. The supposedly official document he carried was also written entirely in indecipherable Japanese, limiting the Spaniards’ understanding of it to Harada’s own suspect translation. After ordering coastal defenses strengthened, supplies laid by, and forts built in the hills surrounding Manila for the women and children to take refuge in should the Japanese invade, Governor Perez Dasmarinas accordingly drafted a cautious reply to Hideyoshi’s letter and placed it in the hands of a Spanish envoy to deliver personally to Japan. In it he observed that he had not been able to read or comprehend all that Hideyoshi had written, and that his reply was thus only “to the small portion of your letter that I understand, which had been no more than Faranda [Harada] has chosen to interpret for me.” The governor also expressed concern that Harada might be some sort of charlatan and requested that Hideyoshi confirm to the Spanish envoys being sent to him that the man was a legitimate ambassador and the message he had delivered genuine. “If it is such,” Dasmarinas stated, “then I shall respond to the friendship due so great a prince,” and King Philip II of Spain would in turn be glad to extend his hand “in true friendship and alliance.” Then: “Inasmuch as certain presents have been sent me but lately from Japon, which are of great value, I would wish to have some rare and valuable products of our España to send in return; but, since weapons are the articles most esteemed among soldiers, I am sending you with this a dozen swords and daggers.”[109]

  The Spanish envoy, a priest named Juan Cobo, arrived at Nagoya in the summer of 1592 to deliver Governor Dasmarinas’ letter to Toyotomi Hideyoshi. Hideyoshi was intrigued by the opening lines of the document listing the far-flung lands that King Philip II possessed and asked the Dominican to point them out on a map. Father Cobo obligingly made a present to him of a globe with each Spanish possession labeled in Chinese and the distances listed between them.[110] How would Hideyoshi have viewed this representation of a world ringed with Spanish colonies while little Japan lay nestled off to one side? Did it occur to him that the Spanish Empire, the greatest in the history of Europe, was as great in its western hemisphere as China was in the East? Did it give him pause to consider that in challenging Spain as well as China he was contending for supremacy with both of the world’s two great powers? Probably not. More likely he came away from his meeting with Father Cobo thinking that if the Spaniards could grab so much of the world, then surely he could grab even more. After all, he had sent a message to Manila demanding that an envoy be sent to him as a sign of the Philippines’ submission, and here the envoy was. The envoy came bearing a letter that, after being translated into the sort of Japanese Hideyoshi’s scribes knew he wanted to hear, contained a submissive tone absent in the original document. The letter was accompanied, moreover, by gifts looking very much like tribute, for whereas Governor Dasmarinas had written in Spanish that they were sent in thanks for the gifts he believed Hideyoshi had sent him, what Hideyoshi read in Japanese was that they were intended “to show due recognition to you.” In Hideyoshi’s mind, therefore, the Philippines had been won.

  The same process of diplomatic misunderstanding on Hideyoshi’s part bolstered by skewed translations and misrepresentations by retainers eager to please led him to believe that India was prepared to bow to him as well. The letter Hideyoshi dispatched to this distant land was delivered by Portuguese traders into the hands of the viceroy at Goa. Madrid was duly informed—Portugal had been annexed by Spain in 1580 and its colonial possessions subsequently claimed—and a Jesuit from Italy named Alessandro Valignano was ordered to Japan as a representative of India and in turn of Philip II. Valignano appeared before Hideyoshi in February of 1591, thereby adding India to the growing list of nations that Hideyoshi seems to have thought were being cowed into obeisance by his assertions of power and threats to invade. In his reply to the viceroy he stated, “Our authority has now been extended near and far to many nations in the outside world. These nations have manifested a sincere desire to maintain their existence under our benevolent rule. Rulers in the east, west, south, and north have made ready obeisance to us. The imperial commands of our sage Emperor may soon be transmitted to all corners of the world.”[111]

  Everything thus seemed to be going well for Hideyoshi in his campaign to conquer Asia through diplomatic correspondence. The nations of the world were all falling into line, preparing to greet his advancing armies and welcome his benevolent rule.

  Then he received the letter from the Koreans in the spring of 1591. This was the first open and unequivocal rebuff he had encountered so far to his demands for submission, and it must have angered him greatly. After dispatching his final warning to Seoul, he turned to the Ryukyu Islands’ apparently compliant King Shonei, demanding that he come to Japa
n with a large army to participate in the coming invasion of Korea. If he failed to do so, Hideyoshi warned, the Ryukyus themselves would be invaded.

  There was no way King Shonei could accede to Hideyoshi’s demands. Even if he wanted to aid Hideyoshi—and he did not—his kingdom was too small and his resources too limited to send any sort of force to Japan. He wrote back beseeching Hideyoshi to reconsider the matter. Hideyoshi eventually relented, requiring the Ryukyus instead to make annual payments of gold and silver and food, a reprieve of sorts, but one that would greatly burden the little kingdom in the years to come.

  By this time King Shonei had set in motion a chain of events that would have an impact on faraway Korea. Hideyoshi’s demands had driven him to write to his real sovereign, the emperor of Ming China, to ask for help, including with his letter copies of all of Hideyoshi’s correspondence. This was the first word the Ming court received of the Japanese warlord’s planned Asian conquest. They did not send the requested assistance to the Ryukyu Islands. They had enough to worry about at home, with a mutiny of troops along the northern border, a rebellion in the west, and above all the Wanli emperor refusing to allow his first son to be installed as heir. But King Shonei’s letter started the Chinese thinking: why had they not been warned of this by their most loyal vassal, Korea? Surely the Choson court knew more about this potential threat than King Shonei, far out at sea on his remote islands. Did Korea’s silence perhaps mean that it was in league with this barbarian Hideyoshi, and intended to turn against them?