CHAPTER VIII.
JAPAN AND COREA.
It is as nearly impossible to write the history of Corea and exclude Japan, as to tell the story of mediæval England and leave out France. Not alone does the finger of sober history point directly westward as the immediate source of much of what has been hitherto deemed of pure Japanese origin, but the fountain-head of Japanese mythology is found in the Sungari valley, or under the shadows of the Ever-White Mountains. The first settler of Japan, like him of Fuyu, crosses the water upright upon the back of a fish, and brings the rudiments of literature and civilization with him. The remarkable crocodiles and sea-monsters, from which the gods and goddesses are born and into which they change, the dragons and tide-jewels and the various mystic symbols which they employ to work their spells, the methods of divination and system of prognostics, the human sacrifices and the manner of their rescue, seem to be common to the nations on both sides of the Sea of Japan, and point to a common heritage from the same ancestors. Language comes at last with her revelations to furnish proofs of identity.
The mischievous Susanoō, so famous in the pre-historic legends, told in the Kojiki, half scamp, half benefactor, who planted all Japan with trees, brought the seeds from which they grew from Corea. His rescue of the maiden doomed to be devoured by the eight-headed dragon (emblem of water, and symbolical of the sea and rivers) reads like a gallant fellow saving one of the human beings who for centuries, until the now ruling dynasty abolished the custom, were sacrificed to the sea on the Corean coast fronting Japan. In Kiōto, on Gi-on Street, there is a temple which tradition declares was “founded in 656 A.D. by a Corean envoy in honor of Susanoō, to whom the name of Go-dzu Tenno (Heavenly King of Go-dzu) was given, because he was originally worshipped in Go-dzu Mountain in Corea.” [[52]]
Dogs are not held in any honor in Japan, as they were anciently in Kokorai. Except the silk-haired, pug-nosed, and large-eyed chin, which the average native does not conceive as canine, the dogs run at large, ownerless, as in the Levant; and share the work of street scavenging with the venerated crows. Yet there are two places of honor in which the golden and stone effigies of this animal—highly idealized indeed, but still inu—are enthroned.
The ama-inu, or heavenly dogs, in fanciful sculpture of stone or gilt wood, represent guardian dogs. They are found in pairs guarding the entrances to miya or temples. As all miya (the name also of the mikado’s residence) were originally intended to serve as a model or copy of the palace of the mikado and a reminder of the divinity of his person and throne, it is possible that the ama-inu imitated the golden Corean dogs which support and guard the throne of Japan. Access to the shrine was had only by passing these two heavenly dogs. These creatures are quite distinct from the “dogs of Fo,” or the “lions” that flank the gateways of the magistrate’s office in China. Those who have had audience of the mikado in the imperial throne-room, as the writer had in January, 1873, have noticed at the foot of the throne, serving as legs or supports to the golden chair, on which His Majesty sits, two dogs sitting on their haunches, and upright on their forelegs. These fearful-looking creatures, with wide-open mouths, hair curled in tufts, especially around the front neck, and with tails bifurcated at their upright ends, are called “Corean dogs.” For what reason placed there we know not. It may be in witness of the conquest of Shinra by the empress Jingu, who called the king of Shinra “the dog of Japan,” or it may point to some forgotten symbolism in the past, or typify the vassalage of Corea—so long a fundamental dogma in Japanese politics. It is certainly strange to see this creature, so highly honored in Fuyu and dishonored among the vulgar in Japan, placed beneath the mikado’s throne.
The Japanese laid claim to Corea from the second century until the 27th of February, 1876. On that day the mikado’s minister plenipotentiary signed the treaty, recognizing Chō-sen as an independent nation. Through all the seventeen centuries which, according to their annals, elapsed since their armies first compelled the vassalage of their neighbor, the Japanese regarded the states of Corea as tributary. Time and again they enforced their [[53]]claim with bloody invasion, and when through a more enlightened policy the rulers voluntarily acknowledged their former enemy as an equal, the decision cost Japan almost immediately afterward seven months of civil war, 20,000 lives, and fifty millions of dollars in treasure. The mainspring of the “Satsuma rebellion” of 1877 was the official act of friendship by treaty, and the refusal of the Tōkiō Government to make war on Corea.
From about the beginning of the Christian era until the fifteenth century the relations between the two nations were very close and active. Alternate peace and war, mutual assistance given, and embassies sent to and fro are recorded with lively frequency in the early Japanese annals, especially the Nihongi and Kojiki. A more or less continual stream of commerce and emigration seems to have set in from the peninsula. Some writers of high authority, who are also comparative students of the languages of the two countries, see in these events the origin of the modern Japanese. They interpret them to mean nothing less than the peopling of the archipelago by continental tribes passing through the peninsula, and landing in Japan at various points along the coast from Kiushiu to Kaga. Some of them think that Japan was settled wholly and only by Tungusic races of Northeastern Asia coming from or through Corea. They base their belief not only on the general stream and tendency of Japanese tradition, but also and more on the proofs of language.
The first mention of Corea in the Japanese annals occurs in the fifth volume of the Nihongi, and is the perhaps half-fabulous narrative of ancient tradition. In the 65th year of the reign of the tenth mikado, Sujin (97–30 B.C.), a boat filled with people from the west appeared off the southern point of Chō-shiu, near the modern town of Shimonoséki. They would not land there, but steered their course from cape to cape along the coast until they reached the Bay of Keji no Wara in Echizen, near the modern city of Tsuruga. Here they disembarked and announced themselves from Amana Sankan (Amana of the Three Han or Kingdoms) in Southern Corea. They unpacked their treasures of finely wrought goods, and their leader made offerings to the mikado Sujin. These immigrants remained five years in Echizen, not far from the city of Fukui, till 28 B.C. Before leaving Japan, they presented themselves in the capital for a farewell audience. The mikado Mimaki, having died three years before, the visitors were requested on their return to call their country Mimana, [[54]]after their patron, as a memorial of their stay in Japan. To this they assented, and on their return named their district Mimana.