Title：Corea: The Hermit Nation
Author： Griffis, William Elliot, 1843-1928.
FORMERLY OF THE IMPERIAL UNIVERSITY OF TOKIO, JAPAN.
AUTHOR OF “THE MIKADO’S EMPIRE”
Original Publication：United States: Charles Scribner's Sons,1911.
Contents：I. Ancient and mediæval history -- II. Political and social Corea -- III. Modern and recent history.
Language：English
Copyright Status：Public domain in the USA.
Release date: January 10, 2022 [eBook #67141]
Most recently updated: October 18, 2024
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/67141
(pp.53-55)
Six years later an envoy from Shinra(or Shiragi) 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(or Shiragi). 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 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 (or Kudara) 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, [2] 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—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. 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.
(pp.150-151)
The possession of Fusan by the Japanese was, until 1876, a perpetual witness of the humiliating defeat of the Coreans in the war of 1592–1597, and a constant irritation to their national pride. Their popular historians, passing over the facts of the case, substitute pleasing fiction to gratify the popular taste. The subjoined note of explanation, given by Dallet, attached to a map of Corea of home manufacture, thus accounts for the presence of the foreigners. The substance of the note is as follows: During the sixteenth century many of the barbarous inhabitants of Tsushima left that island, and, coming over to Corea, established themselves on the coast of Corea, in three little ports, called Fusan, Yum, and Chisi, and rapidly increased in numbers. About five years after Chung-chong ascended the throne, the barbarians of Fusan and Yum made trouble. They destroyed the walls of the city of Fusan, and killed also the city governor, named Ni Utsa.
Being subdued by the royal troops, they could no longer live in these ports, but were driven into the interior. A short time afterward, having asked pardon for their crimes, they obtained it and came and established themselves again at the ports. This was only for a short time, for a few years afterward, a little before the year 1592, they all returned to their country, Tsushima. In the year 1599 the king, Syen-cho, held communication with the Tsushima barbarians. It happened that he invited them to the places which they had quitted on the coast of Corea, built houses for them, treated them with great kindness,established for their benefit a market during five days in each month, beginning on the third day of the month, and when they had a great quantity of merchandise on hand to dispose of he even permitted them to hold it still oftener.
This is a good specimen of Corean varnish-work carried into history.
The rough facts are smoothed over by that well-applied native lacquer, which is said to resemble gold to the eye. The official gloss has been smeared over more modern events with equal success, and even defeat is turned into golden victory.
(pp.234-235)
The vocabulary of torture is sufficiently copious to stamp Chō-sen as still a semi-civilized nation. The inventory of the court and prison comprises iron chains, bamboos for beating the back, a paddle-shaped implement for inflicting blows upon the buttocks, switches for whipping the calves till the flesh is ravelled, ropes for sawing the flesh and bodily organs, manacles, stocks, and boards to strike against the knees and shin-bones. Other punishments are suspension by the arms, tying the hands in front of the knees, between which and the elbows is inserted a stick, while the human ball is rolled about. An ancient but now obsolete mode of torture was to tie the four limbs of a man to the horns of as many oxen, and then to madden the beasts by fire, so that they tore the victim to fragments. The punishment of beating with paddles often leaves scars for life, and causes ulcers not easily healed. One hundred strokes cause death in most cases, and many die under forty or fifty blows. For some crimes the knees and shin-bones are battered. A woman is allowed to have on one garment, which is wetted to make it cling to the skin and increase the pain. The chief of the lictors, or public spanker, is called siu-kiō. With the long, flexible handle swung over his head, he plies the resounding blows, planting them on the bare skin just above the knee-joint, the victim being held down by four gaolers. The method of correction is quite characteristic of paternal government, and is often inflicted upon the people openly and in public, at the whim of the magistrate. The bastinado was formerly, like hundreds of other customs common to both countries, in vogue in Japan. As in many other instances, this has survived in the less civilized nation.
(pp.245-246)
In the higher classes of society, etiquette demands that the children of the two sexes be separated after the age of eight or ten years.
After that time the boys dwell entirely in the men’s apartments, to study and even to eat and drink. The girls remain secluded in the women’s quarters. The boys are taught that it is a shameful thing even to set foot in the female part of the house. The girls are told that it is disgraceful even to be seen by males, so that gradually they seek to hide themselves whenever any of the male sex appear. These customs, continued from childhood to old age, result in destroying the family life. A Corean of good taste only occasionally holds conversation with his wife, whom he regards as being far beneath him. He rarely consults her on anything serious, and though living under the same roof, one may say that husband and wife are widely separated. The female apartments among the higher classes resemble, in most respects, the zenanas of India. The men chat, smoke, and enjoy themselves in the outer rooms, and the women receive their parents and friends in the interior apartments. The same custom, based upon the same prejudice, hinders the common people in their moments of leisure from remaining in their own houses. The men seek the society of their male neighbors, and the women, on their part, unite together for local gossip. In the higher classes, when a young woman has arrived at marriageable age, none even of her own relatives, except those nearest of kin, is allowed to see or speak to her. Those who are excepted from this rule must address her with the most ceremonious reserve.
After their marriage, the women are inaccessible. They are nearly always confined to their apartments, nor can they even look out in the streets without permission of theirlords. So strict is this rule that fathers have on occasions killed their daughters, husbands their wives, and wives have committed suicide when strangers have touched them even with their fingers.
(p.262)
CHAPTER XXX.
HOUSEKEEPING, DIET, AND COSTUME.
Corean architecture is in a very primitive condition. The castles, fortifications, temples, monasteries and public buildings cannot approach in magnificence those of Japan or China. The country, though boasting hoary antiquity, has few ruins in stone. The dwellings are tiled or thatched houses, almost invariably one story high. In the smaller towns these are not arranged in regular streets, but scattered here and there. Even in the cities and capital the streets are narrow and tortuous.
(p. 450)
The problem of bringing Corea into harmony with her modern environment is only in some features like that of Japan, for there have been wanting in the peninsula what was so effective in Japan’s case. In the island empire, the long previous preparation by means of the infiltration of Western ideas during two centuries of communication with Europe through the Dutch merchants, the researches of her own scholars furnishing inspiration from their national history, the exercise during many generations of true patriotism and self-sacrifice for the public good prepared the island nation to cope with new conditions and situations.
In the clash with the West, Japan came out victor. Corea has no samurai. She lacks what Japan has always had cultured body of men, superbly trained in both mind and body, the soldier and scholar in one, who held to a high ideal of loyalty, patriotism, and sacrifice for country. The island samurai enjoying the same prerogative and privilege as the Corean yangban (civil and military) not only abolished feudalism, but after giving up their hereditary pensions and privileges, joined the productive classes, while at the same time the Japanese merchants and mechanics were raised in the social scale, the pariahs given citizenship, and then all lines of promotion opened to all in the army, navy, schools, courts, and civil service. The fertilizing streams of foreign commerce, the inspiration that comes from brotherhood with other nations, and above all, the power brought to Nippon through the noble labors and object lessons of the Christian missionaries, enabled the Japanese to take equal place in the world with the nations of the West. Corea, on the contrary, by still allowing the existence of predatory classes—nobles, officials, and great landowners—by denying her people education, by being given to superstition from palace to hut and from sovereign to serf, remains still in weakness and poverty. What Corea above all needs, is that the lazy yangban cut their long finger-nails and get to work.
