Corea: The Hermit Nation

by William Elliot Griffis

The history of the peninsular states from the time in which it is first known until the tenth century, is that of almost continuous civil war or border fighting. The boundaries of the rival kingdoms changed from time to time as raid and reprisal, victory or defeat, turned the scale of war. A series of maps of the peninsula expressing the political situation during each century or half-century would show many variations of boundaries, and resemble those of Great Britain when the various native and continental tribes were struggling for its mastery. Something like an attempt to depict these changes in the political geography of the peninsula has been made by the Japanese historian, Otsuki Tōyō, in his work entitled “Historical Periods and Changes of the Japanese Empire.”

Yet though our narrative, through excessive brevity, seems to be only a picture of war, we must not forget that Hiaksai, once lowest in civilization, rapidly became, and for a while continued, the leading state in the peninsula. It held the lead in literary culture until crushed by China. The classics of Confucius and Mencius, with letters, writing, and their whole train of literary blessings, were introduced first to the peninsula in Hiaksai. In 374 A.D. Ko-ken was appointed a teacher or master of Chinese literature, and enthusiastic scholars gathered at the court. Buddhism followed with its educational influences, becoming a focus of light and culture. As early as 372 A.D. an apostle of northern Buddhism had penetrated into Liao Tung, and perhaps across the Yalu. In 384 A.D. the missionary Marananda, a Thibetan, formally established temples and monasteries in Hiaksai, in which women as well as men became scholastics. Long before this new element of civilization was rooted in Shinra or Korai, the faith of India was established and flourishing in the little kingdom of Hiaksai, so that its influences were felt as far as Japan. The first [[36]]teacher of Chinese letters and ethics in Nippon was a Corean named Wani, as was also the first missionary who carried the images and sutras of northern Buddhism across the Sea of Japan. To Hiaksai more than to any other Corean state Japan owes her first impulse toward the civilization of the west.

Hiaksai came into collision with Kokorai as early as 345 A.D., at which time also Shinra suffered the loss of several cities. In the fifth century a Chinese army, sent by one of the emperors of the Wei dynasty to enforce the payment of tribute, was defeated by Hiaksai. Such unexpected military results raised the reputation of “the eastern savages” so high in the imperial mind, that the emperor offered the King of Hiaksai the title of “Great Protector of the Eastern Frontier.” By this act the independence of the little kingdom was virtually recognized. In the sixth century, having given and received Chinese aid and comfort in alliance with Shinra against Korai, Hiaksai was ravaged in her borders by the troops of her irate neighbor on the north. Later on we find these two states in peace with each other and allied against Shinra, which had become a vassal of the Tang emperors of China.

From this line of China’s rulers the kingdoms of Korai and Hiaksai were to receive crushing blows. In answer to Shinra’s prayer for aid, the Chinese emperor, in 660, despatched from Shantung a fleet of several hundred sail with 100,000 men on board. Against this host from the west the Hiaksai army could make little resistance, though they bravely attacked the invaders, but only to be beaten. After a victory near the mouth of the Rin-yin River, the Chinese marched at once to the capital of Hiaksai and again defeated, with terrible slaughter, the provincial army. The king fled to the north, and the city being nearly empty of defenders, the feeble garrison opened the gates. The Tang banners fluttered on all the walls, and another state was absorbed in the Chinese empire. For a time Hiaksai, like a fly snapped up by an angry dog, is lost in China.

Not long, however, did the little kingdom disappear from sight. In 670 a Buddhist priest, fired with patriotism, raised an army of monks and priests, and joining Fuku-shin (Fu-sin), a brave general, they laid siege to a city held by a large Chinese garrison. At the same time they sent word to the emperor of Japan praying for succor against the “robber kingdom.” They also begged that Hōsho (Fung), the youthful son of the late king, then a hostage and pupil at the mikado’s court, might be invested [[37]]with the royal title and sent home. The mikado despatched a fleet of 400 junks and a large body of soldiers to escort the royal heir homeward. On his arrival Hōsho was proclaimed king.

Meanwhile the priest-army and the forces under Fuku-shin had reconquered nearly all their territory, when they suffered a severe defeat near the sea-coast from the large Chinese force hastily despatched to put down the rebellion. The invaders marched eastward and effected a junction with the forces of Shinra. The prospects of Hiaksai were now deplorable.

For even among the men of Hiaksai there was no unity of purpose. Fuku-shin had put the priest-leader to death, which arbitrary act so excited the suspicions of the king that he in turn ordered his general to be beheaded. He then sent to Japan, appealing for reinforcements. The mikado, willing to help an old ally, and fearing that the Chinese, if victorious, might invade his own dominions, quickly responded. The Japanese contingent arrived and encamped near the mouth of the Han River, preparatory to a descent by sea upon Shinra. Unsuspecting the near presence of an enemy, the allies neglected their usual vigilance. A fleet of war-junks, flying the Tang streamers, suddenly appeared off the camp, and while the Japanese were engaging these, the Chinese land forces struck them in flank. Taken by surprise, the mikado’s warriors were driven like flocks of sheep into the water and drowned or shot by the Chinese archers. The Japanese vessels were burned as they lay at anchor in the bloody stream, and the remnants of the beaten army got back to their islands in pitiable fragments. Hōsho, after witnessing the destruction of his host, fled to Korai, and the country was given over to the waste and pillage of the infuriated Chinese. The royal line, after thirty generations and nearly seven centuries of rule, became extinct. The sites of cities became the habitations of tigers, and once fertile fields were soon overgrown. Large portions of Hiaksai became a wilderness.

Though the Chinese Government ordered the bodies of those killed in war and the white bones of the victims of famine to be buried, yet many thousands of Hiaksai families fled elsewhere to find an asylum and to found new industries. The people who remained on their fertile lands, as well as all Southern Corea, fell under the sway of Shinra.

The fragments of the beaten Japanese army gradually returned to their native country or settled in Southern Corea. Thousands [[38]]of the people of Hiaksai, detesting the idea of living as slaves of China, accompanied or followed their allies to Japan. On their arrival, by order of the mikado, 400 emigrants of both sexes were located in the province of Omi, and over 2,000 were distributed in the Kuantō, or Eastern Japan. These colonies of Coreans founded potteries, and their descendants, mingled by blood with the Japanese, follow the trade of their ancestors.

In 710 another body of Hiaksai people, dissatisfied with the poverty of the country and tempted by the offers of the Japanese, formed a colony numbering 1,800 persons and emigrated to Japan. They were settled in Musashi, the province in which Tōkiō, the modern capital, is situated. Various other emigrations of Coreans to Japan of later date are referred to in the annals of the latter country, and it is fair to presume that tens of thousands of emigrants from the peninsula fled from the Tang invasion and mingled with the islanders, producing the composite race that inhabit the islands ruled by the mikado. Among the refugees were many priests and nuns, who brought their books and learning to the court at Nara, and thus diffused about them a literary atmosphere. The establishment of schools, the awakening of the Japanese intellect, and the first beginnings of the literature of Japan, the composition of their oldest historical books, the Kojiki and the Nihongi—all the fruits of the latter half of the seventh and early part of the eighth century—are directly traceable to this influx of the scholars of Hiaksai, which being destroyed by China, lived again in Japan. Even the pronunciation of the Chinese characters as taught by the Hiaksai teachers remains to this day. One of them, the nun Hōmiō, a learned lady, made her system so popular among the scholars that even an imperial proclamation against it could not banish it. She established her school in Tsushima, A.D. 655, and there taught that system of [Chinese] pronunciation [Go-on] which still holds sway in Japan, among the ecclesiastical literati, in opposition to the Kan-on of the secular scholars. The Go-on, the older of the two pronunciations, is that of ancient North China, the Kan-on is that of mediæval Southern China (Nanking). Corea and Japan having phonetic alphabets have preserved and stereotyped the ancient Chinese pronunciation better than the Chinese language itself, since the Chinese have no phonetic writing, but only ideographic characters, the pronunciation of which varies during the progress of centuries.