Cundao Li

In the late sixteenth century, Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1537-1598) had the ambition to conquer Korea and China after he unified Japan. In 1592, Japanese troops invaded Korea. At first, the Japanese army was very successful and occupied Hanseong (modern Seoul), the capital of the Joseon dynasty (1392-1897). However, the Ming dynasty (1368-1644) intervened in this war because Hideyoshi’s offense was a threat to the tributary system led by Ming China. The army of Ming and Joseon recovered much territory in the northern part of the peninsula, which the Japanese army had occupied in 1592. In 1596, both sides negotiated a truce. However, the negotiation did not go well, leading to the second invasion in 1597. Finally, Toyotomi Hideyoshi died in 1598, and the Japanese army withdrew from the Korean peninsula.^[1]

There is an interesting phenomenon about the study of the war. The three countries involved, Korea, Japan, and China, used different names to refer to this war. In Korea, the war was named Imjin Waeran (Japanese Disturbance of the Imjin year). In Japan, the war was officially referred as Bunroku keicho no eki (the War of Bunroku and Keicho). In China, the war was called Wanli Chaoxian zhi yi (Wanli’s Joseon Campaign). In addition to these official names, historians also use other names to refer to these wars.

Korea

In Korea, the official name was Imjin Waeran. Imjin was the year of 1592 in the sexagenary cycle, which is often used in China, Korea, and Japan to refer to important events. Waeran means Japanese Disturbance, showing that the Japanese invasion was considered tyrannical and illegal. Joseon and Ming were fighting an honorably defensive war.  What’s more, the names also indicate that the Joseon dynasty was legitimate and Hideyoshi’s regime was a disturbance of the legitimate dynasty. To the Joseon dynasty, Imjin Waeran was a disaster. Although historians had different opinions about the number of casualties on Korean side, most of them agree that about 150,000 to 200,000 Korean people, which was about one-sixth of the total population of the Korean population, died in this war.^[2] Moreover, the royal mausoleums were destroyed by the Japanese army. Moreover, there was a long tradition that Japanese pirates raided Korean coasts.^[3] Therefore, the Joseon dynasty considered Japan as their major enemy in the seventeenth century. The word “Waeran” showed the violence of the Japanese army and Joseon’s hostile attitude towards Japan.

The name of Imjin Waeran was always used in the previous 400 years. The Japanese occupation of Korea in the early twentieth century exacerbated the hostility between Korea and Japan. Many Korean patriots in the occupation period considered the Imjin Waeran as their country’s glorious history against the Japanese. The name Imjin Waeran showed they despised the Japanese and also enhanced the claim of the legitimacy of the Joseon dynasty.^[4] Therefore, the name Imjin Waeran was always used in Korean historiography.

Japan

The Japanese have different names to refer to this war in different periods. Toyotomi Hideyoshi considered this war as Kara-iri (entry to Tang). He believed that the invasion of Korea was preparation to invade China.^[5] The nineteenth-century Japanese used Hideyoshi’s claim and precedent to justify their own occupation of Korea. Therefore, the name Kara-iri was used in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century to refer to Hideyoshi’s war. Some historians used Hideyoshi’s expedition (or invasion) to name this war, using the claim from Hideyoshi to justify the Japanese occupation of Korea.

After the failure of the Korean invasion and the death of Hideyoshi, Tokugawa Ieyasu finally unified Japan and founded the Tokugawa bakufu (military government). In the early Edo period (1603-1868), historians still considered this war as a glorious war, because they were influenced by Daiymo who participated in Hideyoshi’s invasion.^[6] They referred to this war as conquering Korea or the conquest of Joseon. These names showed the honors of the invasion of Korea. These names thus showed the value of Bushido before the reform in the Edo period. These names were also used in the twentieth century to promote jingoism in Japan.

After World War I, the official name of Hideyoshi’s invasion was Bunroku Keicho no eki.^[7] Bunroku (1592-1596) and Keicho (1596-1615) were two era names of Emperor Go-Yozei (1571-1617). Historians who focused on Japanese history were likely to use this name to discuss the impact of Hideyoshi’s invasion. In recent years, more Japanese historians not only looked at the impact on the Japanese side but also tried to explore the impact on Korea or even China. Moreover, many Japanese historians had some research programs with Korean or Chinese scholars.^[8] Therefore, modern Japanese historians use the Imjin War or Imjin Invasion, which is close to the Korean name, to refer to this war.

China

In the Ming dynasty, the war was called Joseon (Chaoxian) Campaign because Joseon was the main battlefield for the Chinese expedition.^[9] Since it happened in the Reign of the Wanli Emperor (1563-1620), historians usually called it Wanli’s Joseon Campaign, which was included in Wanli’s Three Great Campaigns. When historians talked about the Wanli Korean Campaign, they usually focused on the impact of the war on the Ming dynasty, which was a factor of the Manchu Invasion (1644), which led to the end of the Ming dynasty. Like Japanese historians, Chinese historians often used the name Imjin Waeran or Imjin War when they did research about the war itself.

An alternative Chinese name of the war was “Aiding Korea” or “Resisting Japan and Aiding Korea”. It is originally used in the Ming dynasty but was most widely used in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The name was similar to Chinese name to the Korea War, “War to Resist America and Aid Korea”. It highlighted Chinese responsibility to aid its tributary states.^[10] Even after the collapse of the tributary system, this idea was still popular in China. The idea of the tributary system was also a factor of the Sino-Japanese War in 1895 and Chinese intervention of the Korean War.

Conclusion

Through different names of the Imjin War in 1592, we could find that history was often related to politics. In pre-modern China and Korean, many historians held high positions in the central government. They were sponsored by the crown to compose veritable records, which became the primary sources to later historians.^[11] In Japan, privileged classes like Daimyo and Samurai were very influential in the creation of history texts. Therefore, there would be inevitable biases when historians compose or edit their texts. In the case of the Imjin War, historians in  all three countries had different attitudes towards this war because they considered the impact of the war on their own countries or states. Thus, there were different names of the Imjin War.

Philosophies and ideologies also played important roles in the historiography of the Imjin War. The Korean name Imjin Waeran was influenced by the ideas of alignment and rituals in Confucianism. Similarly, bushido and the Mandate of Heaven were influential in Japanese and Chinese names respectively. We can find the differences of philosophies in three countries through examining the names.

Recently, we can notice that the names of the Imjin War had a trend of unification. Chinese and Japanese historians were more likely to use the name Imjin War or Imjin Waeran when they refer to this war. It showed that three East Asian states shared similar cultures because all three states use the sexagenary cycle.

Western historians also had different names of this war. The most common two names are the Imjin War and the Japanese Invasion of Korea in 1592. I prefer the first one because the second name neglected China, which also played an important role in this war. Moreover, the name Imjin War could be shared by Eastern and Western historians, and eventually become the regular name of this war.

Bibliography

Choi Yeongchang. 韓国から見た壬辰倭乱 Korean View of Imjin Waeran. Translated to Japanese by Miwa Hanai. National Junju Museum.

Hall, John Whitney. The Cambridge History of Japan. Vol. 4, Early Modern Japan. Cambridge University Press, 1991.

McMullen, David. State and Scholars in Tang China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988.

Swope, Kenneth M. “Deceit, Disguise, and Dependence: China, Japan, and the Future of the Tributary System, 1592-1596.” The International History Review 24, no. 4 (2002): 757-82.

The Chief of the General Staff. 日本戦史. 朝鮮役 The History of Japanese warfare: the Campaign of Joseon. Tokyo: Kaikosha, 1935.

Turnbull, Steven. Samurai Invasion: Japan’s Korean War 1592–98. Cassell & Co, 2002.

Wu Fengpei (ed.), 壬辰之役史料汇辑 Compilation of Historical Resources of Imjin Campaign, Beijing: National Library, 1990.

Zhang Tingyu (ed.) Ming shi 明史 (The History of Ming). Chapter 20, 21, 208, 210. www.ctext.org.