The operation ended on a sour note on April 25 with the arrival at Yi’s flagship of a field order from Ming general Dan Zongren, then visiting Konishi Yukinaga at his camp at Ungchon, commanding him to call off his attack so as not to jeopardize peace negotiations. “Many Japanese commanding officers have become filled with relenting hearts,” Dan wrote, “with their weapons packed up and their soldiers given rest to prepare to go home; therefore, your warships are also expected to return to their home bases and not approach the Japanese positions.” This angered Yi Sun-sin. He was opposed to any sort of settlement with the Japanese other than their complete and immediate destruction, and replied to General Dan that as “a subject of Korea...I cannot live with these robbers under the same heaven.” Yi concluded by saying,
Where is the evidence of packing their weapons to go home across the sea? You talk of peace, but it is a peace which the Japanese offer with their habitual trick and deception. However, we are not in a position to disobey your instructions, so we are going to forbear for a time while we report it to our King. In the meantime we wish Your Excellency to enlighten the Japanese fellows on the consequences of obedience and disobedience to heaven.[522]
Forbearing was in fact not so very hard for Yi to do; with the thirty-one enemy vessels already destroyed, there was little else for him to attack. He thus returned to his base on Hansan-do—and promptly fell ill with typhoid.[523]
In his official report on the operation, Kyongsang Navy Commander Won Kyun attempted to claim credit for all the enemy ships destroyed. Although desperately ill, when Yi Sun-sin heard of this he forced himself to sit up in bed and composed a harshly worded report of his own berating Won for lying and accusing his men of submitting the heads of Korean civilians as Japanese war dead to inflate their battle honors. Yi then gave a painstaking accounting of every Japanese ship destroyed to set the record straight. At the final tally Won’s forces had actually burned or sunk only eleven of the thirty-one vessels; Cholla ships had claimed the rest. Won visited the still very ill Yi a few days later to apologize for the inaccuracies in his account, and beseeched him to soften his own report before sending it on to Seoul. Yi agreed. He then returned to his sick bed and remained indisposed for the next two weeks.[524]
Although Commander Yi survived his encounter with typhoid fever, many of his men did not. During the coming months the disease would decimate the ranks of the unified Korean navy, now largely concentrated into a single camp on Hansan Island. By June, 1,704 sailors had died, 3,759 others were ill, and lack of manpower was becoming a serious worry. Yi wrote to Seoul complaining that local magistrates seemed oblivious to the emergency and were neglecting to send him reinforcements. “Under these circumstances,” he noted, “I was obliged to recruit wandering beggars to fill the vacancies..., but having been starved for food too long many of them soon died.”[525]
* * *
Negotiations between Japan and China, meanwhile, were in danger of falling apart. Naito Joan, the envoy sent north by Konishi Yukinaga to deliver Hideyoshi’s seven demands to Beijing, had been denied permission by the Ming to proceed any farther than Liaodong Province, and was now waiting on the Chinese frontier. The sticking point was the letter he carried. To Song Yingchang, the Chinese civilian official charged with overseeing military affairs in Korea, Hideyoshi’s demands were presumptuous and insulting, the rantings of a barbarian unfamiliar with the ways of the world. They thus did not merit transmission on to the capital, for they would only serve to cause offense and lead in all likelihood to a resumption of war.
Throughout the latter half of 1593 Konishi Yukinaga, working with Ming negotiator Shen Weijing, proceeded to drop Hideyoshi’s demands one by one in an attempt to break this impasse. He had little choice. It was Japan, after all, that wanted something from China, not the other way around. China’s world was already complete. On his own initiative Konishi pared the taiko’s demands down to the very bone, until finally he stated that his master would be satisfied with just one province of Korea, an indemnity payment of twenty thousand taels of silver from the Choson court, and a resumption of trade relations with China.
Song, not surprisingly, refused even this. All he would consent to consider was the revival of tribute trade as it had once existed between the two nations. For that to take place, however, Hideyoshi first would have to receive investiture as King of Japan, just as the Ashikaga shogun had done nearly two centuries before. In other words, he would have to become a vassal of the emperor of China.
This intransigence put Konishi Yukinaga in a difficult spot. He had been able so far to drop most of Hideyoshi’s demands on his own, without the taiko’s knowledge. To satisfy the Chinese on the point of submission, however, would require a document from Hideyoshi himself, something he clearly would never consent to write. There was only one thing Konishi could do to keep the game alive: forge a letter of submission himself. He did so with the connivance of the ever-resourceful Shen Weijing, who evidently knew how to word such things. The resulting document put some remarkably un-taiko-esque words into Hideyoshi’s mouth, and stands today as a testament to the amazing latitude for deception that existed in international diplomacy four hundred years ago.
In Konishi’s and Shen’s forged letter, dated February 10, 1594, Hideyoshi stated that Japan was “a small and humble country” and “a child of China.” He himself stood in “fear and awe” of the Celestial Throne, and earnestly beseeches the Wanli emperor to accept him as a vassal. This had indeed been his sole desire all along. He had sent his army to Korea merely because he wished to seek tributary relations with Beijing. The unreasonable Koreans had refused to grant him right of way and had drawn him into a war that had unfortunately come to involve the Ming. But now, Hideyoshi concluded, “I prostrate myself and I beg Your Majesty to let that light of the sun and moon shine forth with which He irradiates the world, to extend that nourishing capacity of heaven and earth with which He overspreads and sustains all things that there are...and to bestow on me the title of an imperially invested vassal king.”[526]
The Koreans expressed a good degree of skepticism when they learned of the contents of this spurious document. It did not sound at all like the Hideyoshi they knew, but was clearly a forgery, probably from the pen of the shady Shen Weijing.[527] The Chinese, however, had fewer reservations, for the letter said exactly what they wanted to hear. The impasse in Liaodong would soon be broken.
* * *
The negotiations between China and Japan were causing the Koreans a great deal of concern. Was their bitter enemy Hideyoshi going to be appeased instead of punished for his unwarranted aggression? For that would be the upshot if even a single one of his demands was accepted in Beijing. And even worse, was he going to be appeased at Korea’s expense? The fact that the Koreans were being cut out of the negotiation process only served to heighten their fears on this score, and led some to voice their dissatisfaction loudly enough for the Ming Chinese to hear.
It was at about this time that Song Yingchang, the Ming official in charge of overseeing affairs in Liaodong and Korea, was forced to resign and return to China, the victim of the factional wrangling that affected the government in Beijing nearly as strongly as its counterpart in Seoul. A growing bone of contention in the Chinese capital was the Korean war itself, a prowar faction on one side urging its aggressive prosecution, an antiwar faction on the other, led by Minister of War Shi Xing, demanding its hasty conclusion so as to spare the treasury any further expense. Song Yingchang’s dismissal marked a victory for the doves. His replacement, Ku Yangqian, moved east into Liaodong to take up his new post with a determination to restore peace in Korea through negotiation and thus solve the “Japan problem,” and so was anxious to quiet the grumbling emanating from Seoul that the war should be continued in order to punish Hideyoshi. Toward this end he sent an envoy, Hu Ze, south to talk the Koreans into supporting the negotiation process. Upon his arrival in Seoul, Hu lectured Korean government officials at length on what he consider
ed the central issues of gratitude and common sense:
The Wan-li emperor was angered when the Japanese dwarfs invaded your country, and thus he sent soldiers to drive them back. Now the Japanese have fled back toward the south, your captured princes have been returned, and two thousand li of your kingdom have been restored. China spent a great deal of money to accomplish this for you, and sacrificed the lives of many horses and men. Our emperor and our government have treated you well.
But now we can provide nothing more. The campaign is finished. The Japanese dwarfs have been made afraid of our might, and have asked to surrender and send us tribute. We think it would be appropriate now to accept them as vassals. We are doing this to save your country. Choson now has no food. Your people are killing and eating one other in order to survive. With this being so, how can you ask us to continue the fighting? How can you ask for further aid? If we do not accept Japan as a vassal, they might attack your kingdom again, and this time they might destroy you. Is that what you want?[528]
Hu Ze was particularly anxious while in Seoul to talk King Sonjo into sending a message to Beijing requesting that Hideyoshi be accepted as a vassal. Although Hu did not spell out his reasons for wanting this done, it was clearly to add weight to the arguments of Minister of War Shi Xing’s antiwar faction. It was an appeal for help from the Korean king, after all, that had drawn the Chinese into the war in the first place. To get him now to support a peace initiative was thus a perfect way to undermine the prowar camp. King Sonjo, however, refused to comply. “How could I ask such a thing of China,” he told Hu Ze, “after requesting military assistance to fight the Japanese at the beginning of the war?” Hu conceded that it might not be judicious to dispatch such a request at the present moment. But it could be done early in the coming year. In your next report to the emperor on the Japanese situation, he suggested, you could discreetly broach the idea that Hideyoshi should be appeased with an offer of tributary relations. Surely that would do no harm to your country. Sonjo again refused. Hu Ze then tried a more aggressive tack. Ku Yangqian, he said, had no more troops to send to Korea, so it would not be possible any time soon to launch a counter-offensive. The only way to get the Japanese out of Korea in the short term was therefore through negotiation. Otherwise they would remain on the peninsula for another ten or twenty years. Sonjo listened politely, but still would not agree.[529]
Hu Ze remained in Seoul for three months, alternately cajoling and haranguing the Koreans to accept negotiations with Japan and the terms of peace that would ensue. By the time he finally returned north, the man who had sent him, Ku Yangqian, had, like Song Yingchang before him, been dismissed as a result of factional strife. Ku’s removal and the subsequent appointment of Sun Kuang as civilian overseer of eastern affairs marked a small victory for the hawks in Beijing. No move was made to halt negotiations with Japan, however, and the tug of war between the pro- and antiwar factions continued unabated.[530]
In the south, meanwhile, Konishi Yukinaga was doing some cajoling of his own. In late 1594 he sent an agent named Yojiro to the camp of Kim Ung-so, the Korean army commander of Kyongsang Province, bearing gifts and an invitation to parlay. Kim reported this to his superiors in Seoul and was given permission to go and see what the enemy general had to say. The meeting took place in December, Kim and his officers on one side, Konishi, So Yoshitoshi, and the monk Genso on the other.
Konishi began with the now tired refrain that the war had been entirely the Koreans’ fault; their refusal to allow the Japanese to pass through their country on a mission of peace to China had left Hideyoshi no alternative but to attack. Kim Ung-so would have none of it. All your talk of desiring only peace, he said, is nothing but a smokescreen. We know it, and the Ming Chinese know it as well. That is why the emperor sent his great army to stop you. Besides, Kim added, if all you want is peace, then why did you attack Chinju last summer? And why did you plunder Kyongju last fall?
That had nothing to do with me, replied Konishi. Those two acts were entirely the doing of Kato Kiyomasa; they did not reflect the wishes of Toyotomi Hideyoshi at all. All the taiko wanted, he assured Kim, was to become a vassal of the Ming. And all he now asked of the Koreans was that they intercede with Beijing on his behalf.[531]
The Koreans did not trust Konishi. It was obvious to them that the so-called letter of surrender from Hideyoshi was a forgery and that there was thus no real basis for a true and lasting peace. Korean prime minister Yu Song-nyong, who was ill at the time and convalescing outside of the capital, wrote to King Sonjo urging him to communicate directly with Beijing so that the Chinese government would understand that “the Japanese will never be satisfied with becoming a vassal state and paying tribute to China.” In the end, however, pressure from the antiwar faction in the Ming capital had its intended effect. Toward the end of 1594 King Sonjo finally caved in and dispatched a letter to the Wanli emperor supporting the idea of negotiating with Hideyoshi, and requesting that toward this end Japanese envoy Naito Joan be allowed to continue his mission to Beijing. It was clearly a letter the king did not want to write. As a vassal of China, however, he found it difficult to ignore the prodding of the representative officials of that great land. Sonjo’s letter was to prove an important document, for it undermined the hard-liners within the Ming government who opposed negotiation. If the Koreans themselves, the most aggrieved party in the entire affair, were in favor of treating with the Japanese for terms of peace, then there was little reason not to at least receive Naito and see how little he could be persuaded to accept.
After a journey of nearly a year and a half, most of it spent waiting in Liaodong, the Japanese envoy thus was granted permission to proceed to Beijing.[532]
* * *
Although King Sonjo had now given his support to the reception of the envoy Naito Joan, he and his government ministers remained deeply distrustful of the Japanese and of any talk of peace. They had good reason to be. Beginning in the spring of 1595 Kato Kiyomasa, angered by Konishi Yukinaga’s twisting of the taiko’s demands, embarked on some diplomacy of his own, laying before first the Chinese and then the Koreans the original list of seven conditions for peace that Hideyoshi expected to be met, and in so doing contradicting everything that had been said and promised by Konishi and Shen Weijing.
The first of these meetings took place between Kato and a group of Ming officials in April, at the former’s Sosaengpo camp near Ulsan, a day’s journey north along the coast from Pusan. Kato began by saying that Konishi and Shen Weijing were conducting negotiations under false pretenses. “What they are doing is all a vicious trick.” He then proceeded to outline the actual conditions for peace that Hideyoshi had drawn up back in 1593, from the demand for a Ming princess in marriage and four of Korea’s eight provinces to the requirement that a Korean prince be sent as a hostage to Japan. Finally, to make things crystal clear, Kato took up a brush and wrote some of his assertions on a piece of paper that he handed to the Chinese. His characters were poorly written and difficult to read, the Korean chroniclers were careful to note, but the gist was this: “The things Konishi has asked for were not ordered by Hideyoshi. How could anyone presume to think that he would want to become a mere vassal of the Ming? Envoys should be sent again from China to Japan, to hear the truth directly from the taiko himself.”[533]
Kato’s blunt talk did nothing to sway the Ming Chinese. The officials came away from the meeting suspecting that he wanted to discredit Konishi’s and Shen’s efforts at diplomacy so that he himself could take the lead in the negotiation process. Undeterred, Kato tried again to make Hideyoshi’s true demands known, this time to the Koreans. In May of 1595, and then again in August, he met with a group of officials and the battle-hardened monk commander Yujong, who had succeeded his aged master Hyujong the year before as supreme commander of Korea’s monk-soldiers. On both occasions Kato carefully conveyed Hideyoshi’s original demands so that nothing would be misunderstood, and Yujong just as carefully explained why each demand was utterly
unacceptable, both to the Koreans and to the Chinese. In the end nothing came of the talks; the two sides were too far apart, and neither was willing to give an inch. Kato’s efforts at diplomacy in fact were entirely counterproductive, for in confirming for the Koreans their suspicions that Hideyoshi wanted much more than to become a mere vassal of the Wanli emperor, he firmed their resolve not to negotiate, but to resist the Japanese at every turn.[534]
By this time, however, peace negotiations had advanced too far to be stopped. Naito Joan had reached Beijing.
* * *
Kato Kiyomasa was right of course: Toyotomi Hideyoshi entertained no thoughts whatsoever of becoming a vassal of China. Had he known that his representative Konishi Yukinaga had forged a letter stating that this was what he desired, the taiko would probably have ordered him to commit suicide, a common response to acts of disloyalty and deceit. Fortunately for Konishi he never found out.
Just how unrepresentative the forged letter was of Hideyoshi’s wishes becomes evident by contrasting it with the orders he dispatched to his army in Korea in early 1594:
Although it would be very desirable to renew military activities immediately, yet, acting upon the suggestions of the military leaders in Korea, we have decided to suspend our military activities in that country throughout this year [1594].
In the coming year [1595], if the pending international problem has not reached a solution, Kampaku Hidetsugu [Hideyoshi’s adopted son and heir] shall be requested to cross the water to Korea at the head of a large army. Therefore, all the strongholds in Korea must be well equipped....
As to provisions for the troops, in addition to what we have already sent, we are now sending about 30,000 koku of rice....
The Imjin War: Japan's Sixteenth-Century Invasion of Korea and Attempt to Conquer China Page 45