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THE WANLI EMPEROR AND MING CHINA'S DEFENCE OF KOREA AGAINST JAPAN

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 January 2011

James B. Lewis
James B. Lewis
Affiliation:
University of Oxford. E-mail [email protected]
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Extract

As recently as 2001, there were few lengthy discussions in English on the Imjin Waeran (Hideyoshi's invasion of Korea) aside from William George Aston's contribution to the Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan (‘Hideyoshi's invasion of Korea’) from the 1870s and 1880s and a clutch of articles. The last nine years, though, have seen an extraordinary production of published works and the appearance of translations of primary sources, some full, some partial, some finished, and some on the way. Stephen Turnbull's Samurai Invasion appeared in 2002. Just three years later, in 2005, Samuel Hawley published The Imjin War, and now we have Kenneth M. Swope's A Dragon's Head and a Serpent's Tail. The three books are each written from the perspective of the three main belligerents: Turnbull working from Japanese sources, Hawley from a Korean perspective, and Swope from Ming sources. These three offer detailed narratives on the war and allow English-language scholarship to set aside general narrative in favour of specific research agendas.

Keywords

Hideyoshimilitary technologyWanli EmperorImjin Waeran
Type
Review Articles
Information
International Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 8 , Issue 1 , January 2011 , pp. 73 - 80
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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References

1 Aston, William George, “Hideyoshi's Invasion of Korea,” Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan 6 (1878), pp. 227–45Google Scholar, 9 (1881), pp. 87–93, 213–22, 11 (1883), pp. 117–25. Broader studies have also treated the invasion. For example, there is Kuno's, Yoshi S.Japan's Expansion on the Asiatic Continent (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1940)Google Scholar and Berry, Mary Elizabeth, Hideyoshi (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1982)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. There are book chapters and articles: Ledyard, Gari, “Confucianism and War: The Korean Security Crisis of 1598,” The Journal of Korean Studies 6 (1988–89), pp. 81–119CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Elisonas, Jurgis, “The Inseparable Trinity: Japan's Relations with China and Korea,” in the Cambridge History of Japan, Vol. 4, Early Modern Japan, ed. Hall, John Whitney (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 235–300Google Scholar; and Clark, Donald, “Sino-Korean Tributary Relations under the Ming,” in the Cambridge History of China, Vol. 4, The Ming Dynasty, 1368–1644, Part 2, eds. Twitchett, Denis and Mote, Frederick W. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 272–300Google Scholar.

2 Haboush has introduced literary views on the war: Haboush, Jahyun Kim, “Dead Bodies in the Postwar Discourse of Identity in Seventeenth-Century Korea: Subversion and Literary Production in the Private Sector,” The Journal of Asian Studies 62:2 (May 2003), pp. 415–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Multinational projects also exist, although results have not been published in English. In 2007, a large collection of conference papers from Korean, Japanese, European, and American scholars was published in Korean and Japanese. Chŏng Tu-hŭi, 鄭杜熙 and Yi Kyŏng-sun, 李璟珣, eds., Imjin Waeran tong Asia samguk chŏnjaeng 임진왜란 동아시아 삼국전쟁 (“A Transnational History of the ‘Imjin Waeran’ 1592–1598: the East Asian dimension”) (Seoul: Hyumŏnisŭt'ŭ, 2007)Google Scholar, and Chŏng Tu-hŭi, 鄭杜熙 and Yi Kyŏng-sun, 李璟珣, eds., Kim Mun-ja, 金文子 and Obata Michihiro, 小幡倫裕, trans., Jinshin sensō: 16 seiki Nit-Chō-Chū no Kokusai sensō 壬辰戦争: 16世紀日 朝 中の国際戦争 (Tokyo: Meiseki shoten 明石書店, 2008)Google Scholar.

3 In 2001, Jurgis S. A. Elisonas included a translation of Hideyoshi's letter to King Sŏnjo (1590) and a few translated passages from Keinen's Chōsen hinikki (朝鮮日々記) in the second edition of the Sources of Japanese Tradition, comps. Wm Theodore de Bary, et al. , Volume One, Sources of Japanese Tradition from Earliest Times to 1600, 2nd edition (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001), pp. 465–69Google Scholar. A translation of Yu Sŏngnyong's Chingbinok 懲毖錄 appeared in 2002. Sŏngnyong, Yu, translated by Byonghyon, Choi, The Book of Corrections: Reflections on the National Crisis during the Japanese Invasion of Korea, 1592–1598 (Berkeley, Calif: Institute of East Asian Studies, 2002)Google Scholar. A translation of one of the more popular versions of the Imjinnok 壬辰錄 appeared in 2000. Lee, Peter H., The Record of the Black Dragon Year (Seoul: Institute of Korean Culture, Korea University, 2000)Google Scholar.

4 Turnbull, Stephen, Samurai Invasion: Japan's Korean War, 1592–98 (London: Cassell & Co., 2002)Google Scholar.

5 Hawley, Samuel, The Imjin War: Japan's Sixteenth-century Invasion of Korea and Attempt to Conquer China (Seoul: Royal Asiatic Society, Korea Branch; Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, 2005)Google Scholar.

6 Han Myŏng-gi, 한명기, Imjin Waeran kwa Han-Chung kwangye 임진왜란과 한중관계 (“The Imjin Waeran and Korean-Chinese Relations”), Seoul: Yŏksa pip'yŏngsa, 1999Google Scholar.