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

by Samuel Hawley

  ...Henceforth, trade relations shall be renewed and both the government and the merchant ships of each nation shall be permitted to sail to the country of the other for trade purposes.

  International friendship and good will shall be permanent, misunderstandings and misinterpretations being eliminated. Duly authorized state ministers of the two nations shall make sworn statements to this effect in written form, and exchange these statements as evidence of good faith and sincerity.

  ...[I]f all the foregoing terms are accepted by Tai-Min [China], notwithstanding the fact that Korea had been rebellious against our country, we are willing, in order to show our good will to Tai-Min, to divide the eight provinces of Korea into two main divisions, and to return four provinces, including the one in which the national capital is situated, to the King of Korea....

  When we return the four provinces to Korea, that nation shall send one of her royal princes and one or possibly two of her statesmen of rank of state minister across the sea to Japan and have them remain here as hostages.

  In 1592, the first division of our troops captured two royal princes of Korea and held them as prisoners of war....[O]ur four representatives [Konishi, Otani, Ishida, and Mashita] shall arrange with Chin Yugeki [Shen Weijing] with respect to the returning of these two royal princes to their home.

  The state ministers in power in Korea should make sworn statements in written form to the effect that henceforth Korea shall neither oppose Japan nor overlook her generosity, and shall remain faithful to Japan, generation after generation....[492]

  The two Chinese envoys found these seven demands appallingly presumptuous. Items one and four in particular were so far beyond the realm of possibility that they must have seemed a joke. To give up one of the daughters of the Wanli emperor in marriage to the emperor of Japan signified that Hideyoshi expected a relationship of equality to be established between the two nations, something that from the Chinese perspective could never exist. China, after all, was the Middle Kingdom, the center of the world, the land without peer. If approached with the proper degree of humility, Beijing might condescend to accept Japan as a vassal state on a par with Korea. But it could never, ever, acknowledge Japan as an equal. To do so would be to turn the world on its head. As for the partitioning of Korea—Hideyoshi proposed keeping the provinces of Kyongsang, Cholla, Chungchong, and Kangwon—this too was met with disbelief, for it was asking China to relinquish a portion of its inviolate sphere of influence, one of the very things that made it so great.

  Konishi and his colleagues did their best to soothe the irate envoys, pointing out that these seven conditions were not a list of intractable demands, but rather terms to be discussed and negotiated upon. With regard to items one and four, for example, the joining together of the two imperial families in marriage and the partitioning of Korea, they pointed out that Hideyoshi was not insistent on gaining both demands. For China to relent on either one of these points would be regarded as an acceptable basis for peace. And the return of the two captive Korean princes, Konishi hastened to add, was to take place regardless of the outcome of negotiations. It was a gift, a show of sincerity on Hideyoshi’s part that the envoys could take back with them to Beijing.[493]

  Konishi was probably correct when he told the Ming envoys that Hideyoshi intended the demands as a starting point for negotiations. Just how much the taiko was willing to compromise, however, remains unknown. The demands themselves already represented a great step down from Hideyoshi’s initial plan to conquer Korea and China and make them a part of his envisioned empire. Now he was willing to settle for some sort of equal partnership with the Ming, with Korea somewhere underfoot, shouldering the blame for the war so that the two big powers could save face. It might to fair to say, therefore, that he was not prepared to bend very much further.

  It is interesting to note that Hideyoshi was dealing with the Wanli emperor much as he had with rival daimyo during his campaign to unify Japan, notably his foremost preunification rival, Tokugawa Ieyasu. Just as Hideyoshi had driven Tokugawa into accepting peace in the 1580s by convincing him of his own willingness to engage in a long and costly war, so the taiko took the fight out of the Ming in 1593, maintaining a chain of camps in southern Korea and laying waste to Chinju to let them know that he meant business. As Hideyoshi had demanded hostages from Tokugawa, he now asked for a daughter from the Wanli emperor, plus a Korean prince and top officials. As he had appeased Tokugawa by allowing him to retain most of his previous land holdings, Hideyoshi now offered to let the Wanli emperor retain suzerainty over the northern half of Korea.[494]

  But of course the Wanli emperor was no daimyo, and the Ming empire no mere rival’s domain. China was not prepared for a moment to negotiate with Hideyoshi as an equal or to meet him even halfway on the demands he had made. Had Hideyoshi known his adversary better, he would have understood this. But it is evident that he did not. When the truth of Beijing’s intractability finally became clear, the taiko’s spontaneous display of rage is ample testimony to the fact that he did indeed expect the Wanli emperor to accept him as an equal, and to give in to at least some of his demands.

  This realization, however, still lay more than three years away. Until then, mutual misunderstanding would be the order of the day, misunderstanding perpetuated by the representatives of both China and Japan. These intermediaries knew better than their masters just how far apart the two sides were. They also knew, however, that if a light were shone on this gaping void, negotiations would fall to pieces and fighting resume. It seemed to be in everyone’s best interests, therefore, to falsify a picture of approaching common ground.

  * * *

  The Koreans were nervous after the fall of Chinju. The question on everyone’s mind: was the attack on that city part of a larger Japanese push westward into Cholla Province, which they had failed to subdue during their offensive the previous year? At the beginning of August the worst fears seemed to materialize, as word spread that the Cholla towns of Kwangyang and Sunchon had been attacked and looted by the Japanese.

  Ming negotiator Shen Weijing had already been recalled to Seoul by this time to answer for the Japanese attack on Chinju. He was summoned into the presence of Commander in Chief Li Rusong, where he was subjected to a fiery harangue. “You told us the Japanese only wanted to retreat!” began Li. “You told us that there would be no more attacks! How do you account for what has happened at Chinju?”

  Shen explained that Chinju was a special case. Ever since failing to take the city in November of the previous year, the Japanese had been thirsting for revenge. But now the thing was done; they had brought the city to its knees. They had exacted their revenge and were satisfied. There thus would be no more offensives anywhere in the south.

  “But what of these reports from the Koreans?” Li shot back. “That the Japanese are already advancing into Cholla Province?”

  “Those reports are not true,” replied Shen. “The Japanese have no intention of attacking that province.”[495]

  As it turned out Shen was right. At his base at Yosu, Cholla Left Naval Commander Yi Sun-sin looked into the reports that nearby Sunchon and Kwangyang had been taken by the Japanese and found them to be false. The towns had indeed been attacked and looted, but the culprits had been Koreans clad in Japanese clothing. Many were refugees from neighboring Kyongsang Province, driven from their homes by the panic that had spread following the fall of Chinju. As was often the case in such social upheaval, some had turned to lawlessness in order to survive, with Sunchon and Kwangyang, lying directly in the path of retreat west from Chinju, becoming two obvious targets. The brigands, working together with opportunistic locals, broke into government warehouses and looted private homes, relying on their Japanese garb to keep the populace passive with fear.

  Yi Sun-sin kept his naval forces on alert for the next several days on the chance that he was wrong and the Japanese were indeed moving into Cholla. But the offensive never came. As Yi finally concluded, “Men’s rumors are
unreliable.”[496]

  * * *

  The two Ming envoys, Xu Yihuan and Xie Yongzu, had in the meantime returned to Korea from Hideyoshi’s headquarters at Nagoya. Traveling with them was a middle-aged Christian named Naito Tadatoshi, otherwise known as Naito Joan, “Joan,” the Portuguese version of “John,” being the Christian name he had been given at his baptism thirty years before. Naito carried with him Hideyoshi’s list of seven demands for delivery to Beijing. This task had been entrusted to him by Konishi Yukinaga in part because he was a trusted member of the latter’s household, and also because he could read and write Chinese characters, a necessary prerequisite for communicating directly with the Ming.[497]

  There was trouble from the very day Naito and the Chinese landed at Pusan. The envoys, informed by the irate Koreans of the recent sack of Chinju, approached Konishi Yukinaga to demand an explanation. How could Beijing believe that Japan sincerely desired peace when Japanese troops engaged in acts of aggression while negotiations were under way? Konishi did his best to explain the incident away, blaming the hawks within the Japanese camp, in particular Kato Kiyomasa. The Ming envoys, as eager as Konishi to keep negotiations alive, eventually accepted this and made no further protest. Kato’s grudging release of the two captive Korean princes at this time undoubtedly helped to ameliorate the situation. In accordance with Hideyoshi’s direct order, the two young men were set free from Kato’s Sosaengpo camp to be reunited with their father, King Sonjo, then making his way back to Seoul from his place of refuge in the north. At the urging of various government ministers, they would then proceed on to Pyongyang to personally thank Song Yingchang, the top Ming official in Korea, for facilitating their release after more than a year “in the tiger’s mouth.”[498]

  Hideyoshi’s seven demands, meanwhile, were heatedly debated on both sides. The Ming envoys, together with every Chinese general and official who learned of the paper, insisted that it be altered before being presented in Beijing, for it would never be accepted in its present condition and would only lead to renewed hostilities. Even Hideyoshi’s own commanders could not agree about its contents. They were by and large of one mind as to the need for peace, but could not agree on terms, even those set down by the taiko. Hideyoshi’s document, after all, was not addressed directly to the Chinese, but rather to Konishi Yukinaga and Hideyoshi’s three other representatives. They—or more precisely Japanese envoy Naito Joan—were to serve as Hideyoshi’s intermediary in the coming talks in Beijing. There was thus plenty of room for tinkering with the taiko’s demands before they ever reached Beijing. From the moment he set foot on Korean soil, Naito was thus inundated from both sides with urgent suggestions and arguments as to what he should and should not say when he reached China and appeared before the imperial court.

  * * *

  The Koreans for their part were dissatisfied. The Chinese high command had cut them out totally from the prosecution of the war and was now leaving them out of the peace negotiation process as well. King Sonjo and his government were not informed of the details of what had transpired at Nagoya, but they feared that the Chinese were entertaining thoughts of appeasement, something the Koreans did not want at all. What they wanted was revenge.

  For many, negotiator Shen Weijing became the particular focus of their growing resentment of the Chinese. He was viewed as unpredictable and untrustworthy, a silk-tongued schemer who would sell the Koreans down the river if it furthered his interests. King Sonjo developed such a hatred for the man that on one occasion he woke up in the middle of the night seething with anger and wanting to kill him.[499]

  Further concern was caused by the news that the Ming negotiators had returned from Kyushu with a “Japanese general” in tow, a representative from the enemy who would travel north through the length of their kingdom on his way to Beijing. King Sonjo observed that the Japanese were cunning, and had perhaps dispatched this so-called envoy merely to gather intelligence about Korea’s military strength and defenses. There was even talk of blocking Naito Joan’s way, but in the end nothing came of it. [500]

  * * *

  After an argument-filled but inconclusive few days in Pusan, Naito and the two Ming envoys proceeded on horseback north to Seoul. For Naito it was the start of what would be a painfully slow trip to Beijing, one that would take nearly a year and a half. The Ming government, suspicious of the continued Japanese presence in southern Korea and the recent attack on Chinju, would not give him permission to travel farther than Seoul, then Anju, and finally Liaodong, unable to satisfy itself that Hideyoshi was sincere in his desire for peace and not merely playing some sort of game. The release of the two Korean princes was an encouraging sign. But if the Japanese truly wanted peace, the Chinese pointed out, why did they keep the bulk of their army in Korea? And why had they established a chain of fortresses in the south? The Japanese responded in kind: if the Chinese truly wanted peace, why were their expeditionary forces still encamped in Korea?

  There was only one way to break the impasse: a mutual withdrawal of troops. On the first day of September 1593, Hideyoshi dispatched orders recalling roughly half of his soldiers from Korea, a total of somewhere between forty and fifty thousand men. The subsequent ferrying of troops back to Japan took place without interference from the Korean navy, Yi Sun-sin and his fellow commanders having received orders in August not to attack.[501] The troops that Hideyoshi left in Korea would remain in place for the next three years, until Ming protests finally prompted him to order a more complete withdrawal.

  The Chinese at the same time were pulling their forces back toward the north. On September 4 Commander in Chief Li Rusong left Seoul and, with the bulk of his expeditionary force, began the long march to the Yalu River and Liaodong Province beyond. This alarmed the Koreans, for they did not believe that the Japanese were sincere in their expressed desire for peace. In a report in October, the Office of the Inspector-General cautioned that the piecemeal troop withdrawals the Japanese were making were designed to trick the Chinese into pulling their own forces out of Korea. “Once the Japanese know that the Ming army has returned to China and we are left defenseless, they will surely return and attack us again. If they do, how will we stop them?”[502] The Chinese were not interested in hearing about such concerns. With the antiwar faction now ascendant in Beijing, they were committed to getting their troops out of Korea as quickly as they reasonably could. A reserve force of just ten thousand men under “Big Sword” Liu Ting and one other commander was left behind to guard the truce and act as a bodyguard for King Sonjo. They would remain in Korea until the end of 1594, when all Ming troops would be withdrawn.[503]

  On his way home to China, Li Rusong stopped to bid farewell to King Sonjo and members of the Korean government, who were then on a brief layover in the town of Hwangju, en route back to Seoul. During the course of his various farewells he spoke with much pathos of how his seven months on the peninsula had aged him. “For the sake of your country,” he told the Koreans, “my beard and mustache have all turned gray.” The Koreans acted suitably impressed, and nodded gravely as Li recounted again how his ancestors had originally come from Korea, and how his own father had thus urged him to do his best for their country. In private, however, at least one official groused, “Just because his ancestors came from Isan County doesn’t mean he knows anything about Korea.”[504]

  In the formal audience that followed between Commander Li and King Sonjo, no mention was made of the differences that existed between them on the matter of negotiating with the Japanese. This was a time for formal thanks, first to Li himself, and more important to the august personage who had sent him and whom he now represented on Korean soil, the Wanli emperor himself. “We have our country today because of your efforts on our behalf,” said Sonjo humbly. “It is a debt we can never repay.” He then got down on his knees and made a formal bow, hands clasped in front of his forehead, his head nearly touching the floor.

  Later in the meeting one of the Korean officials asked the comman
der if he would ever return to Korea. Li assured him that he would, for “how could I stay away so long as the Japanese remain?” He then mounted his horse and, with a pack train bearing the gifts bestowed upon him by his hosts, proceeded north to the Yalu and then west to Beijing. He would never return.[505]

  Li Rusong arrived in Beijing to a mixed reception. Officially he was awarded with the customary promotion and increase in stipend in recognition of his service. Unofficially he was denounced in many quarters for the policy of appeasement he had followed in his dealings with the Japanese. It was because of this negative sentiment that he was kept waiting for another posting for the next four years. Finally, in the face of considerable opposition, he was appointed regional commander of Liaodong Province in 1597. Not long after arriving in his new command, Mongol tribes from the north launched raids into Liaodong, providing Li with a chance to redeem himself in battle. His campaign against the marauders began well enough, with a heartening victory. In a subsequent night attack, however, Li stumbled into an ambush and was killed, along with many of his men. He was buried with full honors as a hero of the state. His vacant post was passed to his younger brother, Li Rumei.[506]

  * * *

  On August 29, 1593, a son was born at Osaka Castle to Yodogimi, concubine to Toyotomi Hideyoshi. The taiko received the news in Nagoya with joy and exultation. Here was the heir he had given up on ever having; here was the son who would preserve the name of Toyotomi after he himself was gone. Just days after the arrival of these happy tidings, Hideyoshi packed up his train and left Nagoya, never to return.

  Hideyoshi’s party must have made an interesting sight as it wended its way out of the castle and onto the main road to the north. European fashions, introduced by the Portuguese, were now all the rage among the nation’s elite, with everybody who was anybody making an effort to obtain at least one item of this strange and exciting garb. There were a few among the taiko’s retinue who had thrown themselves entirely into the craze, proceeding north in a complete outfit of cape, ruffed shirt, and breeches. Others contented themselves with a decorative crucifix or rosary. As for Hideyoshi, it is hard to imagine that he did not at least dabble in the trend with a ruff or belt or cross. Judging from what we know of his eccentric tastes—it is known, for example, that he liked veal, a dish that revolted most of his daimyo—a little excess in this regard would have been entirely likely.[507]