The Imjin War (82 page)

[128]
Bacon, “Chingbirok,” 16.

[129]
Ibid., 16-17; Etsuko Hae-jin Kang, 92-93; Hur, 705-6.

[130]
Sonjo sillok
, vol. 5, 196-197 (24/10/Sonjo 24; Dec. 9, 1591), and 197 (2/11/Sonjo 24; Dec. 17, 1591);
Sonjo sujong sillok
, vol. 3, 224-225 (10/Sonjo 24; Nov.~Dec. 1591). The subsequent official embassy to Beijing, led by Han Ung-in, left Seoul on December 9, 1591.

[131]
William E. Henthorn, “Some Notes of Koryo Military Units,”
Transactions of the Korea Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society
35 (1959): 67.

[132]
Samuel Dukhae Kim, “The Korean Monk-Soldiers in the Imjin Wars: An Analysis of Buddhist Resistance to the Hideyoshi Invasion, 1592-1598” (Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, 1978), 20.

[133]
The designations “Left” and “Right” army and navy are somewhat confusing as they were applied to the southern provinces of Kyongsang-do and Cholla-do, for when viewed on a map the “Left” regions in fact lay to the east and the “Right” regions to the west. This was due to the fact that the designations were assigned from the perspective of the capital of Seoul. Looking south from there, the eastern halves of Kyongsang and Cholla Provinces are indeed on the left and the western halves on the right.

[134]
See the chapter on “Military Command of the Choson Dynasty” in Yi Sun-sin,
Nanjung Ilgi. War Diary of Admiral Yi Sun-sin
, trans. Ha Tae-hung and ed. Sohn Pow-key (Seoul: Yonsei University Press, 1977), xiii-xv.

[135]
Yu Song-nyong, 18.

[136]
Wagner, 18.

[137]
Park Yune-hee,
Admiral Yi Sun-shin and his Turtleboat Armada
(Seoul: Hanjin Publishing Company, 1978), 67; Samuel Dukhae Kim, 21.

[138]
Sonjo sujong sillok
, vol. 3, 223-224 (7/Sonjo 24; Aug. 9, 1591); Yu Song-nyong, 17-18; Samuel Dukhae Kim, 18.

[139]
Jho Sung-do,
Yi Sun-Shin. A National Hero of Korea
(Ch’ungmu-kong Society, Naval Academy, Korea, 1970), 54.

[140]
John Boots, “Korean Weapons and Armor,”
Transactions of the Korea Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society
23, part 2 (Dec. 1934): 3-18.

[141]
Boots, 20 gives this interesting translation from an old Korean source of how to make gunpowder: “Take one pound of saltpeter, one
yang
of sulphur and 5
yang
of the ash of the willow; grind it together into flour, making it into one mixture. Put it into a big wooden bowl with one rice bowl of water, and with a wooden tamper strike it ten thousand times…. When it becomes about half dry, take it out and dry it in the sun. Then pound it some more until it becomes like a small bean…. After that, take it out and with good water take out the strength of the saltpeter. Dip it into water about 20 times, then weigh out one
tone
of it and, placing it in the palm of a man’s hand, set fire to it. When it burns, if it is not necessary to pull the hand away, it can be used in a gun.” (1
tone
= 3.8 grams; 1
yang
= 10
tone
)

[142]
Yang Jae-sook,
Dashi ssunun imjin daejonchaeng
, vol. 1 (Seoul: Koryo-won, 1994), 178-184; Park Yune-hee, 75-76.

[143]
Yang Jae-suk,
Dashi ssunun
, vol. 1, 187-197; Boots, 22-23.

[144]
Yang Tai-zin, “On the System of Beacons in Korea,”
Korea Journal
11, no. 7 (July 1971): 34-35. The problems plaguing Korea’s beacon fire system were not overcome until the military took it over in the mid-18th century and began handing out the task of beacon tending to retired soldiers, who “were often glad to get the post, which carried with it land enough to support a family, rights to woods or sometimes to fisheries.” The system remained in effect until 1894, when the establishment of the telegraph rendered it obsolete.

[145]
Yu Song-nyong, 19-20.

[146]
Ibid., 49;
Sonjo sujong sillok
, vol. 3, 227-228 (11/Sonjo 24; Dec. 1591) and 231 (3/Sonjo 25; April 1592).

[147]
Park Yune-hee, 125-140; Jho Sung-do, 17-48; Yi Pun, “Biography of Yi Sun-sin,” in,
Imjin changch’o: Admiral Yi Sun-sin’s Memorials to Court
, trans. Ha Tae-hung and ed. Lee Chong-young (Seoul: Yonsei University Press, 1981), 199-210. (Yi Pun was the nephew of Yi Sun-sin, and served under him during the later years of the Imjin War.)

[148]
Yu Song-nyong, 18-19;
Sonjo sillok
, vol. 5, 178 (13/2/Sonjo 24; Mar. 8, 1591);
Sonjo sujong
sillok
, vol. 3, 228 (11/Sonjo 24; Dec. 1591).

[149]
Diary entry for 5/3/Imjin (April 16, 1592), Yi Sun-sin,
Imjin changch’o: Admiral Yi Sun-sin’s Memorials to Court
, trans. Ha Tae-hung and ed. Lee Chong-young (Seoul: Yonsei University Press, 1981), 11. (The Korean title of Yu Song-nyong’s military treatise is
Chungson chonsu bangryak
.)

[150]
“The Book of Lord Shang,” in
The Art of War in World History
, ed. Gerard Chaliand (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 244.

Chapter 7: The Final Days

[151]
The Jesuit Luis Frois of Portugal witnessed the occasion. Elison, “Hideyoshi,” 332, n. 16.

[152]
Park Yune-hee, 95-6.

[153]
H. Paul Varley and George Elison, “The Culture of Tea: From Its Origins to Sen no Rikyu,” in
Warlords, Artists, and Commoners
, ed. George Elison and Bardwell Smith (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1981), 217–219. Hideyoshi’s flashy Kigane stood in glaring contradiction to the “way of tea” as practiced by his own tea master, Sen no Rikyu, who for obscure reasons Hideyoshi ordered to commit suicide in 1591, which he soon came to regret. The rustic Yamazato, on the other hand, was the epitome of Rikyu’s style, and in turn of chado as it is practiced in Japan today. For a concise overview of chado, see Sen Soshitsu XV, “Chado: The Way of Tea,”
Japan Quarterly
30, no. 4 (Oct.-Dec. 1983): 388-394. (Sen Soshitsu is a descendent of Sen no Rikyu.)

[154]
Yu Song-nyong, 21.

[155]
Diary entries for 16/1/Imjin and 25/2/Imjin (Feb. 27 and April 7, 1592), Yi Sun-sin,
Imjin changch’o
, 4 and 10.

[156]
Diary entry for 12/4/Imjin (May 22, 1592),
ibid
.,
16.

[157]
Katano, 97-98.

[158]
“The Precepts of Kato Kiyomasa,” in
Ideals of the Samurai: Writings of Japanese Warriors
, trans. William Scott Wilson (Burbank, Calif.: Ohara Publications, 1982), 127-132.

[159]
Several older English-language accounts of Hideyoshi’s invasion of Korea, for example in Hulbert, vol. 1, 351, and Jones, 119, describe Kato as an “old warrior” who resented “the boy” Konishi. This is not correct. Konishi was in fact the older of the two, having been born around 1556, and Kato in 1562.

[160]
Kuroda Nagamasa, “Notes on Regulations,” in Wilson, 133-141.

PART 3: IMJIN

[161]
Lionel Giles, trans.,
Sun Tzu on the Art of War
(Taipei: Ch’eng Wen Publishing Company, 1971), 32.

Chapter 8: North to Seoul

[162]
The ten heavenly stems were hard wood, soft wood, sun fire, kitchen fire, mountain earth, sand earth, rough metal, refined metal, seawater, and rainwater.

[163]
Yu Song-nyong, 50;
Sonjo sillok
, vol. 5, 201-202 (13/4/Sonjo 25; May 23, 1592); dispatch of 15/4/Wanli 20 (May 25, 1592), Yi Sun-sin,
Imjin Changch’o
, 19-20.

[164]
Sansom, 355.

[165]
Ibid., 354.

[166]
In response to a list of questions regarding the Japanese invasion that Beijing subsequently submitted to the government of Korea, it was reported that four hundred Japanese ships anchored at Pusan in the initial invasion, and that this number then rose to between seven and eight hundred.
Sonjo sillok
, vol. 6, 253 (11/11/Sonjo 25; Dec. 14, 1592).

[167]
Giuliana Stramigioli, “Hideyoshi’s Expansionist Policy on the Asiatic Mainland,”
Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan,
third Series , 3 (Dec. 1954): 94.

[168]
Katano, 102-103.

[169]
Konishi here was following Hideyoshi’s lead in eschewing the traditional brocade banner in favor of something more prosaic. Early in his career Hideyoshi had stuck a gourd on the end of a pole and made it his banner. He then added an additional gourd for each of his subsequent victories, until his “gourd-banner” was heavy with evidence of his success. William Griffis,
Corea. The Hermit Nation
(New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1894), 97.

[170]
Ibid., 96.

[171]
Katano, 100-102.

[172]
Min Jong-jung, “Nobong-chip,” in
Saryoro bonun imjin waeran. Ssawo chuggi-nun swiwo-do kil-ul bilryo jugi-nun oryop-da,
compiled by Chinju National Museum
(Seoul: Hye-an, 1999), 39-40; Hulbert, vol. 1, 351-352.

[173]
Yoshino Jingozaemon oboegaki
, quoted in Stephen Turnbull,
Samurai Invasion
(London: Cassell, 2002), 51.

[174]
Sonjo sujong sillok
, vol. 3, 233 (4/Sonjo 25; May 1592).

[175]
Min Jong-jung, “Nobong-chip,” in
Saryoro bonun
, 41-44;
Sonjo sujong sillok
, vol. 3, 232 (4/Sonjo 25; May 1592).

[176]
Yu Song-nyong, 72;
Sonjo sujong sillok
, vol. 3, 252 (5/Sonjo 25; June 1592); Jho Sung-do, 70. This traditional account of how Won Kyun lost his fleet has been challenged by Yi Jae-bom in
Won Kyun-ul wihan byonmyong
(Seoul: Hakmin-sa, 1994), 34. Yi hypothesizes that the Japanese navy did not venture much west of Pusan until twenty days after the start of their invasion because Won was putting up an effective defense from his base on Koje Island. I disagree. For the first two weeks of the invasion the Japanese navy was busy ferrying troops to Pusan from Nagoya and Tsushima, and thus was not free to begin probing west along the Korean coast. It was only after this job was done, some time in early June, well after Won’s fleet had disappeared, that Japanese ships began advancing toward the Yellow Sea.

[177]
This third alternative is suggested by Turnbull,
Samurai Invasion
, 54.

[178]
Lee Hyoun-jong, “Military Aid of the Ryukyus and Other Southern Asian Nations to Korea During the Hideyoshi Invasion,”
Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities
46 (Dec. 1977): 17.

[179]
Report by Yun Kwan on military setbacks suffered against the Jurchen, in Henthorn,
History,
118.

[180]
Diary entries for 15-18/4/Imjin (May 25-28, 1592), Yi Sun-sin,
Imjin changch’o
, 16-17.

[181]
“Ssu-ma Fa” (“The Marshal’s Art of War”), in Sawyer, 139.

[182]
Diary entries for 18-22/4/Imjin (May 28-June 1, 1592), Yi Sun-sin,
Imjin changch’o
, 17-18, and for 1-3/5/Imjin (June 10-12, 1592), Yi Sun-sin,
Nanjung ilgi
, 3-4; dispatch of 30/4/Wanli 20 (June 9, 1592), Yi Sun-sin,
Imjin changch’o
, 28; Park Yune-hee, 144-45; Roger Tennant,
A History of Korea
(London: Kegan Paul, 1996), 166-167.

[183]
Choi Byong-hyon, trans.,
The Book of Corrections
(Berkeley, Calif.: Institute of East Asian Studies, 2002), 55-56 and 27, footnote 11.

[184]
Sonjo sujong sillok
, vol. 3, 233 (4/Sonjo 25; May 1592).

[185]
James Palais,
Confucian Statecraft and Korean Institutions. Yu Hyongwon and the Late Choson Dynasty
(Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1996), 79.