Corea: The Hermit Nation

It is as nearly impossible to write the history of Corea and exclude Japan, as to tell the story of mediæval England and leave out France. Not alone does the finger of sober history point directly westward as the immediate source of much of what has been hitherto deemed of pure Japanese origin, but the fountain-head of Japanese mythology is found in the Sungari valley, or under the shadows of the Ever-White Mountains. The first settler of Japan, like him of Fuyu, crosses the water upright upon the back of a fish, and brings the rudiments of literature and civilization with him. The remarkable crocodiles and sea-monsters, from which the gods and goddesses are born and into which they change, the dragons and tide-jewels and the various mystic symbols which they employ to work their spells, the methods of divination and system of prognostics, the human sacrifices and the manner of their rescue, seem to be common to the nations on both sides of the Sea of Japan, and point to a common heritage from the same ancestors. Language comes at last with her revelations to furnish proofs of identity.

The mischievous Susanoō, so famous in the pre-historic legends, told in the Kojiki, half scamp, half benefactor, who planted all Japan with trees, brought the seeds from which they grew from Corea. His rescue of the maiden doomed to be devoured by the eight-headed dragon (emblem of water, and symbolical of the sea and rivers) reads like a gallant fellow saving one of the human beings who for centuries, until the now ruling dynasty abolished the custom, were sacrificed to the sea on the Corean coast fronting Japan. In Kiōto, on Gi-on Street, there is a temple which tradition declares was “founded in 656 A.D. by a Corean envoy in honor of Susanoō, to whom the name of Go-dzu Tenno (Heavenly King of Go-dzu) was given, because he was originally worshipped in Go-dzu Mountain in Corea.” [52]

Dogs are not held in any honor in Japan, as they were anciently in Kokorai. Except the silk-haired, pug-nosed, and large-eyed chin, which the average native does not conceive as canine, the dogs run at large, ownerless, as in the Levant; and share the work of street scavenging with the venerated crows. Yet there are two places of honor in which the golden and stone effigies of this animal—highly idealized indeed, but still inu—are enthroned.

The ama-inu, or heavenly dogs, in fanciful sculpture of stone or gilt wood, represent guardian dogs. They are found in pairs guarding the entrances to miya or temples. As all miya (the name also of the mikado’s residence) were originally intended to serve as a model or copy of the palace of the mikado and a reminder of the divinity of his person and throne, it is possible that the ama-inu imitated the golden Corean dogs which support and guard the throne of Japan. Access to the shrine was had only by passing these two heavenly dogs. These creatures are quite distinct from the “dogs of Fo,” or the “lions” that flank the gateways of the magistrate’s office in China. Those who have had audience of the mikado in the imperial throne-room, as the writer had in January, 1873, have noticed at the foot of the throne, serving as legs or supports to the golden chair, on which His Majesty sits, two dogs sitting on their haunches, and upright on their forelegs. These fearful-looking creatures, with wide-open mouths, hair curled in tufts, especially around the front neck, and with tails bifurcated at their upright ends, are called “Corean dogs.” For what reason placed there we know not. It may be in witness of the conquest of Shinra by the empress Jingu, who called the king of Shinra “the dog of Japan,” or it may point to some forgotten symbolism in the past, or typify the vassalage of Corea—so long a fundamental dogma in Japanese politics. It is certainly strange to see this creature, so highly honored in Fuyu and dishonored among the vulgar in Japan, placed beneath the mikado’s throne.

The Japanese laid claim to Corea from the second century until the 27th of February, 1876. On that day the mikado’s minister plenipotentiary signed the treaty, recognizing Chō-sen as an independent nation. Through all the seventeen centuries which, according to their annals, elapsed since their armies first compelled the vassalage of their neighbor, the Japanese regarded the states of Corea as tributary. Time and again they enforced their [53]claim with bloody invasion, and when through a more enlightened policy the rulers voluntarily acknowledged their former enemy as an equal, the decision cost Japan almost immediately afterward seven months of civil war, 20,000 lives, and fifty millions of dollars in treasure. The mainspring of the “Satsuma rebellion” of 1877 was the official act of friendship by treaty, and the refusal of the Tōkiō Government to make war on Corea.

From about the beginning of the Christian era until the fifteenth century the relations between the two nations were very close and active. Alternate peace and war, mutual assistance given, and embassies sent to and fro are recorded with lively frequency in the early Japanese annals, especially the Nihongi and Kojiki. A more or less continual stream of commerce and emigration seems to have set in from the peninsula. Some writers of high authority, who are also comparative students of the languages of the two countries, see in these events the origin of the modern Japanese. They interpret them to mean nothing less than the peopling of the archipelago by continental tribes passing through the peninsula, and landing in Japan at various points along the coast from Kiushiu to Kaga. Some of them think that Japan was settled wholly and only by Tungusic races of Northeastern Asia coming from or through Corea. They base their belief not only on the general stream and tendency of Japanese tradition, but also and more on the proofs of language.

The first mention of Corea in the Japanese annals occurs in the fifth volume of the Nihongi, and is the perhaps half-fabulous narrative of ancient tradition. In the 65th year of the reign of the tenth mikado, Sujin (97–30 B.C.), a boat filled with people from the west appeared off the southern point of Chō-shiu, near the modern town of Shimonoséki. They would not land there, but steered their course from cape to cape along the coast until they reached the Bay of Keji no Wara in Echizen, near the modern city of Tsuruga. Here they disembarked and announced themselves from Amana Sankan (Amana of the Three Han or Kingdoms) in Southern Corea. They unpacked their treasures of finely wrought goods, and their leader made offerings to the mikado Sujin. These immigrants remained five years in Echizen, not far from the city of Fukui, till 28 B.C. Before leaving Japan, they presented themselves in the capital for a farewell audience. The mikado Mimaki, having died three years before, the visitors were requested on their return to call their country Mimana, [54]after their patron, as a memorial of their stay in Japan. To this they assented, and on their return named their district Mimana.

Some traditions state that the first Corean envoy had a horn growing out of his forehead, and that since his time, and on account of it, the bay near which he dwelt was named Tsunaga (Horn Bay) now corrupted into Tsuruga.

It may be added that nearly all mythical characters or heroes in Japanese and Chinese history are represented as having one or more very short horns growing out of their heads, and are so delineated in native art.

Six years later an envoy from Shinra arrived, also bringing presents to the mikado. These consisted of mirrors, jade stone, swords, and other precious articles, then common in Corea but doubtless new in Japan.

According to the tradition of the Kojiki (Book of Ancient Legends) the fourteenth mikado, Chiu-ai (A.D. 192–200) was holding his court at Tsuruga in Echizen, in A.D. 194, when a rebellion broke out in Kiushiu. He marched at once into Kiushiu, against the rebels, and there fell by disease or arrow. His consort, Jingu Kōgō, had a presentiment that he ought not to go into Kiushiu, as he would surely fail if he did, but that he should strike at the root of the trouble and sail at once to the west.

After his death she headed the Japanese army and, leading the troops in person, quelled the revolt. She then ordered all the available forces of her realm to assemble for an invasion of Shinra. Japanese modern writers have laid great stress upon the fact that Shinra began the aggressions which brought on war, and in this fact justify Jingu’s action and Japan’s right to hold Corea as an honestly acquired possession.

All being ready, the doughty queen regent set sail from the coast of Hizen, in Japan, in the tenth month A.D. 202, and beached the fleet safely on the coast of Shinra. The King of Shinra, accustomed to meet only with men from the rude tribes of Kiushiu, was surprised to see so well-appointed an army and so large a fleet from a land to the eastward. Struck with terror he resolved at once to submit. Tying his hands in token of submission and in presence of the queen Jingu, he declared himself the slave of Japan. Jingu caused her bow to be suspended over the gate of the palace of the king in sign of his submission. It is even said that she wrote on the gate “The King of Shinra is the dog of Japan.” Perhaps [55]these are historic words, which find their meaning to-day in the two golden dogs forming part of the mikado’s throne, like the Scotch “stone of Scone,” under the coronation chair in Westminster Abbey.

The followers of Jingu evidently expected a rich booty, but after so peaceful a conquest the empress ordered that no looting should be allowed, and no spoil taken except the treasures constituting tribute. She restored the king to the throne as her vassal, and the tribute was then collected and laden on eighty boats with hostages for future annual tribute. The offerings comprised pictures, works of elegance and art, mirrors, jade, gold, silver, and silk fabrics.

Preparations were now made to conquer Hiaksai also, when Jingu was surprised to receive the voluntary submission and offers of tribute of this country.

The Japanese army remained in Corea only two months, but this brief expedition led to great and lasting results. It gave the Japanese a keener thirst for martial glory, it opened their eyes to a higher state of arts and civilization. From this time forth there flowed into the islands a constant stream of Corean emigrants, who gave a great impulse to the spirit of improvement in Japan. The Japanese accept the story of Jingu and her conquest as sound history, and adorn their greenback paper money with pictures of her foreign exploits. Critics reject many elements in the tradition, such as her controlling the waves and drowning the Shinra army by the jewels of the ebbing and the flowing tide,1 and the delay of her accouchement by a magic stone carried in her girdle. The Japanese ascribe the glory of victory to her then unborn babe, afterward deified as Ojin, god of war, and worshipped by Buddhists as Hachiman or the Eight-bannered Buddha. Yet many temples are dedicated to Jingu, one especially famous is near Hiōgo, and Koraiji (Corean village) near Oiso, a few miles from Yokohama, has another which was at first built in her honor. Evidently the core of the narrative of conquest is fact.

At the time when the faint, dim light of trustworthy tradition dawns, we find the people inhabiting the Japanese archipelago to be roughly divided, as to their political status, into four classes.

In the central province around Kiōto ruled a kingly house—[56]the mikado and his family—with tributary nobles or feudal chiefs holding their lands on military tenure. This is the ancient classic land and realm of Yamato. Four other provinces adjoining it have always formed the core of the empire, and are called the Go-Kinai, or five home provinces, suggesting the five clans of Kokorai.

To the north and east stretched the little known and less civilized region, peopled by tribes of kindred blood and speech, who spoke nearly the same language as the Yamato tribes, and who had probably come at some past time from the same ancestral seats in Manchuria, and called the Kuan-tō, or region east (tō) of the barrier (kuan) at Ozaka; or poetically Adzuma.

Still further north, on the main island and in Yezo, lived the Ainos or Ebisŭ, probably the aborigines of the soil—the straight-eyed men whose descendants still live in Yezo and the Kuriles. [57]The northern and eastern tribes were first conquered and thoroughly subdued by the Yamato tribes, after which all the far north was overrun and the Ainos subjugated.

In the extreme south of the main island of Japan and in Kiushiu, then called Kumaso by the Yamato people, lived a number of tribes of perhaps the same ethnic stock as the Yamato Japanese, but further removed. Their progenitors had probably descended from Manchuria through Corea to Japan. Their blood and speech, however, were more mixed by infusions from Malay and southern elements. Into Kiushiu—it being nearest to the continent—the peninsulars were constantly coming and mingling with the islanders.

The allegiance of the Kiushiu tribes to the royal house of Yamato was of a very loose kind. The history of these early centuries, as shown in the annals of Nihon, is but a series of revolts against the distant warrior mikado, whose life was chiefly one of war. He had often to leave his seat in the central island to march at the head of his followers to put down rebellions or to conquer new tribes. Over these, when subdued, a prince chosen by the conqueror was set to rule, who became a feudatory of the mikado.

The attempts of the Yamato sovereign to wholly reduce the Kiushiu tribes to submission, were greatly frustrated by their stout resistance, fomented by emissaries from Shinra, who instigated them to “revolt,” while adventurers from the Corean mainland came over in large numbers and joined the “rebels,” who were, in one sense, their own compatriots.

From the time of Jingu, if the early dates in Japanese history are to be trusted, may be said to date that belief, so firmly fixed in the Japanese mind, that Corea is, and always was since Jingu’s time, a tributary and dependency of Japan. This idea, akin to that of the claim of the English kings on France, led to frequent expeditions from the third to the sixteenth century, and which, even as late as 1874, 1875, and 1877, lay at the root of three civil wars.

All these expeditions, sometimes national, sometimes filibustering, served to drain the resources of Japan, though many impulses to development and higher civilization were thus gained, especially in the earlier centuries. It seemed, until 1877, almost impossible to eradicate from the military mind of Japan the conviction that to surrender Corea was cowardice and a stain on the national honor. But time will show, as it showed centuries ago [58]in England, that the glory and prosperity of the conqueror were increased, not diminished, when Japan relinquished all claim on her continental neighbor and treated her as an equal.

The Coreans taught the Japanese the arts of peace, while the Coreans profited from their neighbors to improve in the business of war. We read that, in 316 A.D., a Corean ambassador, bringing the usual tribute, presented to the mikado a shield of iron which he believed to be invulnerable to Japanese arrows. The mikado called on one of his favorite marksmen to practice in the presence of the envoy. The shield was suspended, and the archer, drawing bow, sent a shaft through the iron skin of the buckler to the astonishment of the visitor. In all their battles the Coreans were rarely able to stand in open field before the archers from over the sea, who sent true cloth-yard shafts from their oak and bamboo bows.

The paying of tribute to a foreign country is never a pleasant duty to perform, though in times of prosperity and good harvests it is not difficult. In periods of scarcity from bad crops it is well nigh impossible. To insist upon its payment is to provoke rebellion. Instances are indeed given in Japanese history where the conquerors not only remitted the tribute but even sent ship loads of rice and barley to the starving Coreans. When, however, for reasons not deemed sufficient, or out of sheer defiance, their vassals refused to discharge their dues, they again felt the iron hand of Japan in war. During the reign of Yuriaki, the twenty-second mikado (A.D. 457–477), the three states failed to pay tribute. A Japanese army landed in Corea, and conquering Hiaksai, compelled her to return to her duty. The campaign was less successful in Shinra and Korai, for after the Japanese had left the Corean shores the “tribute” was sent only at intervals, and the temper of the half-conquered people was such that other expeditions had to be despatched to inflict chastisement and compel payment.

The gallant but vain succor given by the Japanese to Hiaksai during the war with the Chinese, in the sixth century, which resulted in the destruction of the little kingdom, has already been detailed. Among the names, forever famous in Japanese art and tradition, of those who took part in this expedition are Saté-hiko and Kasi-wadé. The former sailed away from Hizen in the year 536, as one of the mikado’s body-guard to assist their allies the men of Hiaksai. A poetical legend recounts that his wife, Sayohimé, [59]climbed the hills of Matsura to catch the last glimpse of his receding sails. Thus intently gazing, with straining eyes, she turned to stone. The peasants of the neighborhood still discern in the weather-worn rocks, high up on the cliffs, the figure of a lady in long trailing court dress with face and figure eagerly bent over the western waves. Not only is the name Matsura Sayohimé the symbol of devoted love, but from this incident the famous author Bakin constructed his romance of “The Great Stone Spirit of Matsura.”

Kasiwadé, who crossed over to do “frontier service” in the peninsula a few years later, was driven ashore by a snow squall at an unknown part of the coast. While in this defenceless condition his camp was invaded by a tiger, which carried off and devoured his son, a lad of tender age. Kasiwadé at once gave chase and followed the beast to the mountains and into a cave. The tiger leaping out upon him, the wary warrior bearded him with his left hand, and buried his dirk in his throat. Then finishing him with his sabre, he skinned the brute and sent home the trophy. From olden times Chō-sen is known to Japanese children only as a land of tigers, while to the soldier the “marshal’s baton carried in his knapsack” is a tiger-skin scabbard, the emblem and possession of rank.

As the imperial court of Japan looked upon Shinra and Hiaksai as outlying vassal states, the frequent military movements across the sea were reckoned under “frontier service,” like that beyond the latitude of Sado in the north of the main island, or in Kiushiu in the south. “The three countries” of Corea were far nearer and more familiar to the Japanese soldiers than were Yezo or the Riu Kiu Islands, which were not part of the empire till several centuries afterward. Kara Kuni, the country of Kara (a corruption of Korai?), as they now call China, was then applied to Corea. Not a little of classic poetry and legend in the Yamato language refers to this western frontier beyond the sea. The elegy on Ihémaro, the soldier-prince, who died at Iki Island on the voyage over, and that on the death of the Corean nun Riguwan, have been put into English verse by Mr. Chamberlain (named after the English explorer and writer on Corea, Basil Hall), in his “Classical Poetry of the Japanese.” This Corean lady left her home in 714, and for twenty-one years found a home with the mikado’s Prime Minister, Otomo, and his wife, at Nara. She died in 735, while her hosts were away at the mineral [60]springs of Arima, near Kobé; and the elegy was written by their daughter. One stanza describes her life in the new country.

An interesting field of research is still open to the scholar who will point out all the monuments of Corean origin or influence in the mikado’s empire, in the arts and sciences, household customs, diet and dress, or architecture; in short, what by nature or the hand of man has been brought to the land of Sunrise from that of Morning Calm. One of the Corean princes, who settled in Japan early in the seventh century, founded a family which afterward ruled the famous province of Nagatō or Chōshiu. One of his descendants welcomed Francis Xavier, and aided his work by gifts of ground and the privilege of preaching. Many of the temples in Kiōto still contain images, paintings, and altar furniture brought from Corea. The “Pheasant Bridge” still keeps its name from bygone centuries; in a garden near by pheasants were kept for the supply of the tables of the Corean embassies. The Arab and Persian treasures of art and fine workmanship, in the imperial archives and museums of Nara, which have excited the wonder of foreign visitors, are most probably among the gifts or purchases from Shinra, where these imports were less rare. A Buddhist monk named Shiuho has gathered up the traditions and learning of the subject, so far as it illustrated his faith, and in “Precious Jewels from a Neighboring Country,” published in 1586, has written a narrative of the introduction of Buddhism from Corea and its literary and missionary influences upon Japan.

Under the chapters on Art and Religion we shall resume this topic. As earnestly as the Japanese are now availing themselves of the science and progress of Christendom in this nineteenth century, so earnestly did they borrow the culture of the west, that is of Corea and China, a thousand years ago.

The many thousands of Coreans, who, during the first ten centuries of the Christian era, but especially in the seventh, eighth, and ninth, settled in Japan, lived peaceably with the people of their adopted country, and loyally obeyed the mikado’s rule. An exception to this course occurred in 820, when seven hundred men who some time before had come from Shinra to Tōtōmi and Suruga revolted, [61]killed many of the Japanese, seized the rice in the store-houses, and put to sea to escape. The people of Musashi and Sagami pursued and attacked them, putting many of them to death.

The general history of the Coreans in Japan divides itself into two parts. Those who came as voluntary immigrants in time of peace were in most cases skilled workmen or farmers, who settled in lands or in villages granted them, and were put on political and social equality with the mikado’s subjects. They founded industries, intermarried with the natives, and their identity has been lost in the general body of the Japanese people.

With the prisoners taken in war, and with the laborers impressed into their service and carried off by force, the case was far different. These latter were set apart in villages by themselves—an outcast race on no social equality with the people. At first they were employed to feed the imperial falcons, or do such menial work, but under the ban of Buddhism, which forbids the destruction of life and the handling of flesh, they became an accursed race, the “Etas” or pariahs of the nation. They were the butchers, skinners, leather-makers, and those whose business it was to handle corpses of criminals and all other defiling things. They exist to-day, not greatly changed in blood, though in costume, language, and general appearance, it is not possible to distinguish them from Japanese of purest blood. By the humane edict of the mikado, in 1868, granting them all the rights of citizenship, their social condition has greatly improved.

From the ninth century onward to the sixteenth, the relations of the two countries seem to be unimportant. Japan was engaged in conquering northward the barbarians of her main island and Yezo. Her intercourse, both political and religious, grew to be so direct with the court of China, that Corea, in the Japanese annals, sinks out of sight except at rare intervals. Nihon increased in wealth and civilization while Chō-sen remained stationary or retrograded. In the nineteenth century the awakened Sunrise Kingdom has seen her former self in the hermit nation, and has stretched forth willing hands to do for her neighbor now, what Corea did for Japan in centuries long gone by.

Still, it must never be forgotten that Corea was not only the bridge on which civilization crossed from China to the archipelago, but was most probably the pathway of migration by which the rulers of the race now inhabiting Nihon reached it from their ancestral seats around the Sungari and the Ever-White Mountains. [62]True, it is not absolutely certain whether the homeland of the mikado’s ancestors lay southward in the sea, or westward among the mountains, but that the mass of the Corean and Japanese people are more closely allied in blood than either are with the Chinese, Manchius, or Malays, seems to be proved, not only by language and physical traits, but by the whole course of the history of both nations, and by the testimony of the Chinese records. Both Coreans and Japanese have inherited the peculiar institutions of their Fuyu ancestors—that race which alone of all the peoples sprung from Manchuria migrated toward the rising, instead of toward the setting, sun. [63]