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

by Samuel Hawley

  Since the beginning of the siege the other garrisons in the Japanese fortress chain had in fact been attempting to come to the aid of the defenders at Tosan. The most aggressive approaches were made from seaward by squadrons of Japanese ships that ventured up the Taehwa River to the south side of the fort. The forays were small at first, just twenty or so ships from nearby Sosaengpo that Li Rumei and his Left Army were able to drive off with cannon fire. As the days passed, however, more ships began to arrive from other Japanese strongholds further along the coast, notably a fleet with two thousand fighting men aboard sent by Konishi Yukinaga all the way from Sunchon. They advanced up the Taehwa River daily with the tide, putting increasing strain on Li Rumei and his men and raising concerns that an amphibious counterattack might not be far off. Army units from other strongholds in the Japanese fortress belt, meanwhile, were marching north to apply pressure from inland. Kuroda Nagamasa sent a force up from his fortress at Yangsan. So did Hachizuka Iemasa, Ukita Hideie, and Mori Hidemoto from their own respective camps. These gathering reinforce-ments did not attack the numerically superior Chinese-Korean army surrounding Tosan, but instead made a great show of their presence by planting banners and flags on nearby hilltops in the hope that the allies would grow nervous and lift their siege.

  This application of pressure eventually had its intended effect. Yang Hao began to fear that if the Japanese forces advancing on Ulsan launched a coordinated counterattack from both the land and the sea, his own forces would at the very least suffer heavy losses before fighting them off, and might even be defeated. Yang had not come to Ulsan for that. He had come expecting to win a relatively easy victory with minimal loss, after which they would move on down the enemy’s fortress belt to claim a second prize. The prospects for maintaining the siege, moreover, were now looking grim. To begin with, his own men were suffering from the bitter cold almost as badly as were the Japanese. Feeding the fifty thousand Chinese and Korean soldiers camped outside the fortress was also proving difficult, particularly in the depths of winter with nothing growing in the fields. Obtaining fodder for his horses was yet another concern. During just the first week of the siege a thousand of the animals collapsed and died.

  With the threat of a Japanese counterattack now looming large, and with it becoming increasingly difficult to maintain his own army in the field, Yang Hao decided that action rather than waiting was the most prudent course. He either had to take Tosan at once or lift his seige and fall back to Kyongju. He accordingly launched one final, all-out assault on February 19, beginning at dawn. Inside the fortress most of the defenders who were not yet dead huddled together in a collective stupor, too weakened by starvation and thirst and disease to pick up their arms and move to the walls. The one exception was the corps of musketeers. At the start of the siege Kato Kiyomasa had ordered that these crucially important soldiers be allotted most of the available food and water, a brutal but prescient decision that would now save the garrison from annihilation. When the Ming soldiers outside began their charge these musketeers still had the energy to put up a strong defense, driving back wave after wave with a withering hail of lead. Yang kept up the attack for three hours, until five hundred of his men lay dead or dying in heaps at the base of the wall.

  By midmorning the desire to fight had drained out of Yang Hao. Discouraged by his inability to take the fort and increasingly worried by the Japanese reinforcements approaching up the Taehwa River to the front and massing in the hills behind, the Ming commander ordered his men to lift the siege and pull back. The withdrawal did not go well. As the Ming troops began breaking camp, word spread that Japanese troops were storming ashore from ships at the south of the fort. Fears of a Japanese counterattack sent men running north toward Kyongju in an undisciplined retreat.

  The Korean troops at Tosan had been told nothing of Yang’s order to withdraw. They were left to deduce the state of affairs from the commotion they could observe in the Chinese camps, the cavalry units riding off, the smoke rising from piles of burning supplies, the cries of the wounded being left behind. The Japanese units camped on the nearby hills saw what was happening as well. Sensing that the advantage was turning their way, they charged after the retreating allied troops, cutting down large numbers of stragglers, particularly among the Koreans, and sending the rest into flight.[741]

  It was a beaten and demoralized allied army that straggled north into Kyongju. Subsequent estimates of the number of Chinese and Korean soldiers killed during the three-week siege would range from eighteen hundred to ten thousand, the lower figure being suggested by those officials eager to support Yang Hao, the higher by those just as eager to bring him down. The truth probably lies somewhere between, in the range of several thousand killed and at least as many injured.[742] Whatever the number, the setback left Yang Hao thinking only of retreat. He had lost too many men; maintaining his army in the field in winter was too difficult; the Japanese were too tenacious; and—a favorite excuse among the Chinese—the Korean troops were too unreliable. After holding discussions with his generals, the supreme Ming commander decided to return to Seoul for the time being and resume the offensive some time later in the year. He set out for the capital toward the end of February, leaving behind a garrison of Ming troops under Ma Gui and Koreans under Kwon Yul at Kyongju to ensure that the Japanese remained on the coast. He would not return.

  * * *

  Back at Tosan the Japanese were emerging from the shock of their terrible ordeal. Their losses had been horrific. According to one estimate, fewer than a thousand men survived from the original garrison of ten thousand. Many had been killed in the fighting; still more had been carried away by hunger, thirst, exposure, and disease. Still, the siege for them had been a triumph. The fact that Tosan’s half-starved defenders could fight off an army many times its size demonstrated once again, and this time in a most unequivocal manner, the fighting spirit of the Japanese warrior and the superiority of the Japanese musket.

  Just days after the battle, Asano Yukinaga sent a letter to his father in Japan saying, “When troops come [to Korea] from the province of Kai, have them bring as many guns as possible, for no other equipment is needed. Give strict orders that all men, even the samurai, carry guns.”[743] This was a remarkable suggestion, that samurai warriors carry guns. Since the introduction of the musket into Japanese warfare fifty years before, its use had been relegated to the ranks of the ashigaru, the foot soldiers. The higher-ranking samurai class, while not questioning for a moment the value of the weapon, rarely condescended to use it personally, preferring instead the sword and lance and bow. Any country bumpkin, after all, could be taught to fire a musket in just a few days, whereas it took years to master the more traditional weapons of war. A samurai’s skill in the use of these weapons was a great point of pride, which is why in normal circumstances he declined to wield a gun. But of course the siege of Tosan had been anything but normal. It was the most desperate struggle the Japanese had endured in Korea since the start of the war. That Asano, writing just days after the battle, was urging that samurai now be armed with muskets is an indication of the key role that weapon had played in the victory—and in turn of what a very close thing the siege had been.

  The victory at Tosan had in fact been such a close thing for the Japanese that it came to be regarded by some as a miracle. In his account of the battle, Commander Okochi Hidemoto wrote that the ability of himself and his comrades to hold out against such appalling odds “certainly was not something achieved by mere humans.” Rather it was a “divine mystery” aided by “Japan’s ninety-eight thousand gods of war,” and in turn a sign that what they were doing in Korea was part of a “sacred destiny” that Hideyoshi was leading them toward.[744]

  But of course the survival of the garrison at Tosan was no divine mystery. It was an example of what desperate men could do when adequately armed and fighting for their lives. For the average foot soldier the engagement had been nothing more than a horrifying time in hell, a journey through w
hat the priest Keinen described as a “Buddha-less world.”[745] As they watched the besieging army retreat, then welcomed their own comrades into the fortress and accepted their offers of food, many of the defenders who were still ambulatory suddenly found themselves unable to stand. With the weeks of unremitting strain and privation finally at an end, the remaining wisps of strength holding them together gave way entirely and they collapsed to the ground. Many of these traumatized survivors would eventually be restored to health and return to Japan. The memory of Tosan, however, would remain with them always. For years afterward veterans of the siege would be plagued by nightmares of what they had endured, fighting for their lives again and again whenever they lay down to sleep.[746]

  CHAPTER 28

  “Even Osaka Castle is only a dream”

  Supreme Ming commander Yang Hao was not unduly discouraged by the rout of his army at Tosan. Although he had failed to take the fortress, the Japanese inside had been made to suffer terribly, and by all accounts had lost a lot of men. The prospects for ultimate victory, moreover, seemed almost certain, for Yang’s own forces were steadily increasing while the strength of the Japanese was slowly being whittled away. Fresh Ming forces were at that very moment moving across China’s eastern frontier to the Yalu River, which marked the border between the Middle Kingdom and Korea. Among them was a contingent of Sichuan troops under “Big Sword” Liu Ting and reinforcements from China’s northeastern province of Liaodong under General Dong Yiyuan. Naval units under Admirals Chen Lin and Deng Zilong, mean-while, were making their way along the Chinese coast from the southern province of Guangdong and the eastern province Zhejiang. They would cross the Yellow Sea and reach Korea in early May.[747]

  Yang Hao thus returned north to Seoul in late February 1598 in an upbeat mood. The retreat from Tosan had been only a temporary setback. He had every intention, after resting his men and incorporating the newly arrived reinforcements into his command, of launching a second, more powerful offensive, probably sometime in June when the weather would be warmer and supplies easier to obtain. Yang’s civilian superior, Xing Jie, agreed with his assessment, and sent a report to Beijing highly supportive of Yang’s prosecution of the war. The Korean government also supported Yang. It had been thanks to his leadership, after all, that the second Japanese invasion had been blunted and the “bandits” confined to their forts in the south. Unlike his predecessor Li Rusong, moreover, Yang now seemed intent on finishing the job of driving Hideyoshi’s army entirely out of Korea. Despite their disappointment over the retreat from Tosan and the reservations they had over some of the decisions he had made, the Koreans therefore continued to think highly of Yang Hao and continued to regard him as the best man for the job. All that he needed was a little more time.

  Unfortunately for Yang, Xing, and the Koreans, the setback at Tosan was not so quickly forgotten in Beijing. Too many men had been killed to overlook. A relatively low-ranking official from the Board of War named Ding Yingtai was accordingly dispatched to Seoul to investigate the situation and draw up a report.

  Yang Hao sensed danger. Ding was known to belong to the faction that opposed China’s military involvement in Korea, and so it was certain that he would use his report to attack Yang and in turn those officials who were supportive of the war. To protect himself from this anticipated assault, Yang sent a letter of resignation to Beijing citing the usual excuse of poor health. Xing Jie came to his support, dispatching a second report to the emperor praising Yang for his hard work and courage. After reading Xing’s assessment of China’s supreme commander in Korea, the Wanli emperor reaffirmed his confidence in Yang and refused to accept his resignation.[748]

  Ding Yingtai in the meantime had finished his investigation in Seoul and was on his way home to Beijing. The report he carried with him would soon cause a storm.

  * * *

  The Japanese in their chain of forts along the south coast of Korea were not feeling overly confident in the wake of the siege of Tosan. While it was heartening that the fortress had held out and the massive Chinese and Korean army been driven back, the victory had been costly, and the entire engagement a very close thing that could easily have turned into disaster. Judging from reports of additional Ming reinforcements massing in the north, it also seemed only a matter of time before a second, even larger offensive was launched against them. On March 3, 1598, three weeks after the fight for Tosan, a number of Hideyoshi’s daimyo commanders thus sent a letter back to Japan requesting permission to abandon some of their more vulnerable fortresses so that they could consolidate their forces at a few key points.[749]

  Hideyoshi initially refused. He had launched his second invasion of Korea to punish the Koreans for not acceding to his demands, and to show the Chinese that he was a force to be reckoned with, a force fully equal to the Wanli emperor on his Celestial Throne. Hideyoshi’s purpose, in short, was to demonstrate his power. That is why he denied the request from his commanders to close some of their forts and consolidate their troops, for this would send his enemies entirely the wrong message: that he was vulnerable and weak rather than indomitable and strong.

  On the other hand, the taiko had already achieved the basic objective of his second invasion. The very act of sending his armies back to Korea had shown Beijing that he remained as strong and as determined as ever and could march through their tributary state any time he wished. As for punishing the Koreans, the gruesome Mound of Noses in Kyoto was ample proof of this. So what was the point of prolonging the campaign?

  In fact there was none. With his demonstration of power already made, it was now mainly a question of how best to bring the affair to a close in a suitably face-saving way. Hideyoshi clearly felt that the closure of fortresses so soon after the end of the Ming winter offensive would undermine his message of strength and resolve, and so he would not approve it. Leaving his troops as they were in Korea, however, was proving increasingly untenable. First, there was the problem of supplies. With Korea’s southern regions now devastated and depopulated after two invasions and six years of war, it was impossible for the Japanese forces stationed there to adhere to the taiko’s directive to live off the land. Much of the food they needed had to be shipped from Japan, a tremendous logistical burden considering the number of men to be fed. Hideyoshi also was undoubtedly sensitive to the risk he was running in keeping his army in Korea. Even if his troops managed to beat off a second Ming offensive, they would probably suffer heavy casualties and add little to the demonstration of power that had already been made. If they were defeated, conversely, untold damage would be done to Hideyoshi’s and in turn Japan’s reputation.

  Considering these two factors—the difficulties of maintaining an army in Korea and the balance of risk and reward—it was only a matter of time before the taiko accepted his commanders’ advice that a change had to be made in the deployment of his troops. On June 26, four months after the end of the Ming offensive and so ostensibly not precipitated by it, Hideyoshi dispatched orders to Korea recalling roughly half his troops to Japan, including the contingents led by Ukita Hideie, Mori Hidemoto, and Hachizuka Iemasa. Supreme Commander Kobayakawa Hideaki was also withdrawn. Forces remaining in Korea were encamped at Ulsan (10,000 men under Kato Kiyomasa); Sosaengpo (5,000 under Kuroda Nagamasa); Pusan (5,000 under Mori Yoshinari); Kimhae and Changwon (12,000 under Nabeshima Naoshige and Nabeshima Katsushige); Koje Island (1,000 under Yanagawa Tsunanobu); Kosong (7,000 under Tachibana Munetora); Sachon (10,000 under Shimazu Yoshihiro); Namhae Island (1,000 under So Yoshitoshi); and Sunchon (13,700 under Konishi Yukinaga)—a total of 64,700 men.[750]

  Japan’s war in Korea still had half a year to go. These troop withdrawals in June, however, marked the beginning of the end. From this point on Hideyoshi’s main concern would be extracting himself from the peninsula with his dignity intact.

  * * *

  Eight months had now passed since Yi Sun-sin and the remnants of the Korean navy had stopped the Japanese fleet in the Battle of Myongnyang. It ha
d been an important victory, for not only had Yi’s thirteen vessels prevailed over an enemy squadron of two hundred ships and more, they discouraged the Japanese from making any further attempt to advance westward along the coast. Upon receiving word of the Myongnyang engagement at his headquarters in Seoul, supreme Ming commander Yang Hao observed that “There has never been such a great victory in recent years,” and ordered that a roll of red brocade and some silver be presented to Yi Sun-sin as a reward for his service. The Korean government meanwhile started mulling over the possibility of promoting Yi to junior first rank, the second-highest court rank in the land and normally reserved for the loftiest civil officials. Yi’s supporters pushed for the promotion, and rumors drifted south into Yi’s camp that the reward would soon be his. Not everyone, however, was eager to see him promoted. Certain government ministers claimed that Yi’s rank was already high enough, and that to raise him any higher would leave the government with nothing to confer on him when the war was finally won. Although they did not say so, these ministers may also have been reticent to see Yi placed on too high a pedestal, as this would further highlight their own mistake in throwing him in prison in early 1597 and dooming the Korean navy by turning it over to Won Kyun. Whatever the reason, Yi’s promotion was ultimately blocked. When the reward list was delivered to his base on December 24, most of Yi’s officers were on it, including An Wui, one of the captains who had lagged behind in the Battle of Myongnyang. Yi’s own name was not there. All he received was a commendation from the king and the presents from Yang Hao. Yi gives no hint of disappointment in his diary, but surely he must have felt slighted.[751]

  After the Battle of Myongnyang, Yi Sun-sin led his diminutive naval forces thirty kilometers north from the scene of the engagement to establish a temporary base on the island of Pohwa, off what is today the city of Mokpo. An Wui, now promoted to command of the Cholla Right Navy, was sent forward to his new station off the southern coast of Cholla to guard against a possible second Japanese advance toward the Yellow Sea. Not long after this, An for some reason abandoned his assigned position and fell back with his few ships to Yi’s base on Pohwa-do. Yi Sun-sin was annoyed by this, for An Wui “has left the sea lanes entirely open to the Japanese.” In his report to Seoul Yi clearly tied his decision to move his own base forward to this failure on the part of An to hold his assigned position in the front.[752]