Chapter XI: Introduction (9)

Penmanship is laid great stress upon, and there are many different styles in use. The blackboard is used in all schools now, and the artistic tendencies of the people are often well displayed on it. The Arabic numerals are fast displacing the old Chinese system. A great many of the methods of European and American teaching have been introduced into Japan, and their use is constantly on the increase.

Universities and academies supported by the government have been chiefly under the direction of American and European professors, and the western languages are taught everywhere. In addition to this educational element introduced into the country, there is that brought in by the large number of Japanese young men who have been sent to the universities of the United States, Germany, France, and England to complete their education. In our own colleges these young men have ranked with the highest as linguists, scientists, and orators. The influence that they have exerted in Japan, where they have invariably taken a high position, either officially or educationally, has been most beneficial to the advance of learning in the island empire.

The excessive cleanliness of the Japanese, the simplicity of their apparel, which allows their bodies to be so much exposed to the open air, added to the salubrity of their country, might reasonably lead one to imagine that they enjoy excellent health. Such however is not the case. Diseases of the skin, and chronic and incurable complaints are very prevalent. The hot baths are the great remedies for everything, but in certain cases the aid of the physicians is enlisted. These form a class of society which has existed from a very early date, and enjoy certain privileges. They are divided into three classes, the court physicians, who are not permitted to practice elsewhere, the army physicians, and lastly the common physicians, not employed by the government, who attend all classes of the community. As no formalities used to be required for the practice of medicine, each member entered on the career at his pleasure and practiced according to his own theories on the subject. It is a profession often handed down from father to son, but it is not a lucrative one, and is looked upon as an office of little importance or consideration.

Medical men nevertheless abound in Japan, and in addition to recognized practitioners, there is a class of quacks exactly answering to those of our own country. Their science principally partakes of the nature of sorcery. Where hot baths fail to produce the desired effect, they have recourse to acupuncture and cauterisation. Acupuncture consists in pricking with a needle the part affected, a mode of healing which has been practiced from time immemorial in the east. After the skin has been stretched sufficiently tight, the needle is thrust in perpendicularly either by rolling between the fingers or by a direct gentle pressure, or else by striking it lightly with a small hammer made for the purpose.

Cauterisation is performed with little cones called moxas, formed of dried wormwood leaves, and prepared in such a manner as to consume slowly. One or more of these is applied to the diseased part and set alight. The mode of cauterising wounds has frequently the effect of strongly exciting the nervous system, but does not seem to improve the general health of the patient materially. The national university of Tokio has a medical department in connection with it, which teaches medical science according to our own western methods. Hospitals exist in the large cities of Japan which are similarly equipped to those of our own country, and are under the direction of physicians and surgeons, most of whom are either Europeans and Americans, or Japanese who have been educated in medical colleges abroad. Many young women of Japan have come to America to take courses in nursing in our great hospitals and training schools, and on their return to Japan are spreading the knowledge they have thus gained.

Music is one of the most cultivated of the fine arts of Japan, and Japanese tradition accords it a divine origin. The Japanese have many stringed, wind, and percussion instruments, but the general favorite is the sam-sin or guitar with three strings. There are also the lutes, several kinds of drums and tambourines, fifes, clarionets, and flageolets. The Japanese have no idea of harmony. A number of them will often perform together, but they are never in tune. They are not more advanced in melody; their airs recall neither the savage strains of the forest nor the scientific music of the west. In spite of this their music has the power of charming them for hours together, and it is only among the utterly uneducated classes that a young girl is to be found unable to accompany herself in a song on the sam-sin.

In the department of jurisprudence great progress has been made. Scarcely any nation on earth can show a more revolting list of horrible methods of punishment and torture in the past, and none can show greater improvement in so short a time. The cruel and blood-thirsty code was mostly borrowed from China. Since the restoration, revised statutes and regulations have greatly decreased the list of capital punishments, reformed the condition of prisons, and made legal processes more in harmony with mercy and justice. The use of torture to obtain testimony is now entirely abolished. Law schools have also been established and lawyers are allowed to plead, thus giving the accused the assistance of counsel for his defense.

The Japanese tongue has for a long time been regarded merely as an offshoot of the Chinese language, or at any rate as being very nearly connected with it. Study however, and the comparison of the two languages has rectified this error. Japanese understand Chinese writing because the Chinese characters form part of the numerous kinds in use in Japan. This is easily understood when it is remembered that Chinese characters represent neither letters nor meaningless sounds, which are only the constituent parts of a word, but are words themselves, or rather the ideas that these words express; consequently the same ideas can be communicated although expressed by different words to any one who is acquainted with the signification of the characters. The Japanese language is very soft and agreeable to the ear, but travelers declare that no one born out of the country could possibly pronounce some of the words. They have a system of forty-eight syllabic signs, which can be doubled by means of signs added to the consonants, which modify the sound, and render it harder or softer. This system, it is said, dates from the eighth century and can be written in four different series of characters.

Japanese literature comprises books on science, biography, geography, travels, philosophy, and natural history, as well as poetry, dramatic works, romances, and encyclopedias. The latter seem to be little more than picture books, with explanatory notes, arranged like other Japanese dictionaries, sometimes alphabetically, but more often quite fancifully and without any attempt at scientific classification. The poets of Japan strive to express the most comprehensive ideas in the fewest possible words, and to employ words with double meanings for the sake of typical allusions. They also delight in descriptions or similes furnished by the scenery, or the rich variety of natural productions with which they are surrounded.

Of their older books on science none are of any value but those which treat of astronomy. The proof of their progress in this science is afforded by the fact that almanacs, which were at first brought from China, have now become very general and are composed in Japan. The Japanese, until western education began to have its influence over them, had only a slight knowledge of mathematics, trigonometry, mechanics, or engineering. History and geography are very fairly cultivated. Reading is the favorite recreation of both sexes in Japan. The women confine themselves to the perusal of romances, and those works on etiquette and kindred subjects prepared for them. Every young girl who can afford it has her subscription to a library, which for the sum of a few copper coins per month furnishes her with as many books, ancient and modern, as she can devour. Except for their titles, these productions seem all formed on one pattern. In the choice of their characters and their subjects the authors seem by no means desirous of breaking through the narrow limits within which prejudice and custom have confined them.

The ancient religion of the Japanese is called “Kami no michi,” way, or doctrine of the gods. The Chinese form of the same is Shinto, and from this foreigners have called it Shintoism. In its purity the chief characteristic of this religion is the worship of ancestors and the deification of emperors, heroes, and scholars. The adoration of the personified forces of nature enters largely into it. It employs no idols, images, or effigies in its worship, and teaches no doctrine of the immortality of the soul. Shinto has no moral code, and no accurately defined system of ethics or belief. The leading principle of its adherents is imitation of the illustrious deeds of their ancestors, and they are to prove themselves worthy of their descent by the purity of their lives. The priests of Shinto are designated according to their rank. Sometimes they receive titles from the emperor, and the higher ranks of the priesthood are court nobles. Ordinarily they dress like other people, but are robed in white when officiating, or in court dress when in court. They marry, rear families, and do not shave their heads. The office is usually hereditary.

After all the research of foreign scholars, many hesitate to decide whether Shinto is a native Japanese product or whether it is not closely allied with the ancient religion of China which existed before the period of Confucius. The weight of opinion inclines to the latter belief. The Kojiki is the Bible of Shintoism. It is full of narrations, but it lays down no precepts, teaches no morals or doctrines, prescribes no ritual. Shinto has very few of the characteristics of a religion as understood by us. The most learned native commentators and exponents of the faith expressly maintain the view that Shinto has no moral code. Motoori, the great modern revivalist of Shinto, teaches with emphasis that morals were invented by the Chinese because they were an immoral people, but in Japan there was no necessity for any system of morals, as every Japanese acted aright if he only consulted his own heart. The duty of a good Japanese, he says, consists in obeying the commands of the mikado without questioning whether these commands are right or wrong. It was only immoral people like the Chinese who presumed to discuss the character of their sovereign. The opinion of most scholars from America and Europe, studying Shinto on its own soil, has been that the faith was little more than an influence for reducing the people to a condition of mental slavery. Its influence is weakening every year.

The outlines of Buddhism in its Chinese forms have been indicated in a foregoing chapter. It is well, however, to take another glance at it here in connection with its Japanese significance. This religion reached the Japanese empire about the middle of the sixth century after Christ, twelve centuries after its establishment. Buddhism originated as a pure atheistic humanitarianism, with a lofty philosophy and a code of morals higher perhaps than any heathen religion had reached before or has since attained. First preached in India, a land accursed by secular and spiritual oppression, it acknowledged no caste and declared all men equally sinful and miserable, and all equally capable of being freed from sin and misery through knowledge. It taught that the souls of all men had lived in a previous state of existence and that all the sorrows of this life are punishments for sins committed in a previous state. After death the soul must migrate for ages through stages of life inferior or superior, until perchance it arrived at last in Nirvana or absorption in Buddha. The true estate of the human soul, according to the Buddhist, was blissful annihilation.

The morals of Buddhism are superior to its metaphysics. Its commandments are the dictates of the most refined morality. Such was Buddhism in its early purity. Beside its moral code and philosophical doctrines it had almost nothing. But in the twelve centuries which passed while it swept through India, Birmah, Siam, China, Thibet, Manchooria, Corea, and Siberia, it acquired the apparel with which Asiatic imagination and priestly necessity had clothed and adorned the original doctrines of Buddha. The ideas of Buddha had been expanded into a complete theological system, with all the appurtenances of a stock religion. Japan was ready for the introduction of any religion as attractive as Buddhism, for prior to that time nothing existed except Shinto, of which there was little but the dogma of the divinity of the mikado, the duty of all Japanese to obey him implicitly, and some Confucian morals.

Buddhism came to touch the heart, to fire the imagination, to feed the intellect, to offer a code of lofty morals, to point out a pure life through self-denial, to awe the ignorant, and to terrify the doubting. With this explanation of the field which Buddhism found and what it offered, it is sufficient to say that the faith spread with marvelous rapidity until the Japanese empire was a Buddhist land. This did not necessarily exclude Shinto from the minds of the same people, and the two faiths have existed side by side in harmony. Of late years, however, the Japanese have not only been losing faith in their own religions but in all others, and to-day they are said by many to form a nation of atheists. This does not apply to the common people so truly as to the educated ones, and of course is not nearly as general a truth as has been often assumed. In no country of Asia has Christianity made such rapid and permanent advance as in Japan. It is the only oriental country having a government of its own in which there is absolute freedom in religious belief and practice, and in which there is no state religion and no state support.

It has been for years the prophetic declaration of missionaries in the east that the first nation to extend full liberty of conscience in religion would be the dominant power of Asia. That Japan has fulfilled this condition is not more remarkable than are her rapid strides to political power since that country opened its doors to Christianity. That Japan is sincere in its treatment of an alien religion is attested by the fact that native Christian chaplains accompany her armies in their marches against China, and these are representative men of the Methodist, Congregational, and Presbyterian churches in Japan. There is no doubt that the whole Christian element in Japan, foreign and native, has been loyal to the country and in thorough sympathy with the aggressive movement made by Japan. The sympathy between Corea and Japan has been greatly strengthened by the active support rendered Presbyterian missionaries in Corea by the whole Christian body in Japan. The work of Mr. Johnson, a Presbyterian missionary in Corea, made him an adviser of the king, and this assisted in leading the latter rather towards Japan than towards China. The corner stone of Japan’s position to-day is religious toleration. All that the Christian missionaries have asked in Asia is equal privilege with other religions, and these they have had in Japan. History is only repeating itself, and the results of religious toleration in Europe centuries ago are being duplicated in Asia in 1895.

The student of Asiatic life, on coming to Japan, is cheered and pleased on contrasting the position of women in Japan with that in other countries. He sees them treated with respect and consideration far above that observed in other quarters of the Orient. They are allowed greater freedom, and hence have more dignity and self-confidence. The daughters are better educated and the national annals will show probably as large a number of illustrious women as those of any other country in Asia. In these last days of enlightenment public and private schools for girls are being opened and attended. Furthermore, some of the leaders of new Japan, braving public scandal, and learning to bestow that measure of honor upon their wives which they see is enthusiastically awarded by foreigners to theirs, and are not ashamed to be seen in public with them. No women excel the Japanese in that innate love of beauty, order, neatness, household adornment and management, and the amenities of dress and etiquette as prescribed by their own standard. In maternal affection, tenderness, anxiety, patience, and long suffering, the Japanese mothers need fear no comparison with those in other climes. As educators of their children, the Japanese women are peers to the mothers of any civilization in the care and minuteness of their training, and their affectionate tenderness and self-sacrificing devotion within the limits of their knowledge. The Japanese maiden is bright, intelligent, interesting, modest, ladylike, and self-reliant. What the American girl is in Europe the Japanese maiden is among Asiatics.

So far our attention has been devoted exclusively to the Japanese proper, that is, to those people inhabiting Hondo and the other islands to the south of it. But a few words remain to be said about a people, who, while forming part of the empire of Japan, yet differ essentially from the great majority of the population. They are the Ainos, or the original inhabitants of the Japanese archipelago, now only to be found in the island of Yesso. These people are decreasing in numbers year by year, and will soon be named with those extinct races of whom it is only known that they have once existed. The Ainos, however, have had their day of glory. In olden times, several centuries before our era, they were masters of all the north part of the island of Hondo, and their power equalled that of the Japanese; but little by little their influence diminished, and they were driven before the Japanese, and finally confined to the island of Yesso. There the Japanese pursued them and a long war ensued, but finally reduced them to complete submission about the fourteenth century. Since then the state of servitude in which their conquerors have held them has been such as to stifle even the instinct of progress within them, so that in the nineteenth century they offer the image of a people hardly past its first infancy.

The origin of the Ainos is unknown. They themselves are perfectly ignorant of their own history, and they have no written documents existing which could throw light upon their past. It is most probable that they originally came from the far interior of the Asiatic continent, for they bear not the slightest resemblance to any of their neighbors in the tribes scattered along the eastern coasts of the north of Asia. The Ainos are generally small, thick-set, and awkwardly formed; they have wide foreheads and black eyes, not sloping; their skin is fair but sunburnt. Their distinguishing feature is their hairiness, and they never dress their heads or trim their beards. The little children have a bright, intelligent look, which, however, gradually wears away as they grow older. The dwellings are of the simplest construction, and only contain a few implements for hunting and fishing, and some cooking utensils. They are built in small groups or hamlets, never containing more than a hundred individuals. They are a gentle, kindly, hospitable, and even timid people. Fishing is their chief occupation, and hunting is another profitable pursuit. There is no sign of agriculture, nor is any breed of cattle to be found among these people. Dogs are utilized to draw their sledges in winter. Their organization is quite patriarchal. They have neither king, princes nor lords, but in every hamlet the affairs of the community are vested in the hands of the oldest and most influential member. Although the intelligence of the Ainos is very little developed, they evince great aptitude for knowledge and eagerly seize every opportunity for acquainting themselves with Japanese laws and customs.

The London Times, in 1859, predicted that “The Chinaman would still be navigating the canals of his country in the crazy old junks of his ancestors when the Japanese was skimming along his rivers in high pressure steamers, or flying across the country behind a locomotive.” The railway is now in fact stretching its iron tracks in every direction over the islands; the telegraph spreads its web all over the country; street car lines are in every city; the printing press rattles merrily in every moderate sized country town; and the Japanese who have always read much, now read ten times more than they ever did before. Technical education of the higher kind is telling upon the people, and many works are now undertaken from which the authorities would have shrunk a few years ago as being impossible for them to grapple with. Original investigation in many lines has been pursued, and particularly in the study of earthquake phenomena has Japan given to the world results of extreme value. The influence of the modern scientific spirit is immense and ever growing. Western influence in its better nature is constantly on the increase. It appears to-day as if Japan were to be the civilizing influence in the east of Asia.

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_COREA_

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HISTORICAL SKETCH OF COREA, THE HERMIT NATION.

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Aboriginal Inhabitants of the Land—Founding the Kingdom of Cho-sen—The Era of the Three Kingdoms—Dependence on China and Japan—Period of Peace and Prosperity—Invasion of Corea by the Japanese in the Sixteenth Century—Introduction of Christianity—The Modern History of Corea—Breaking down the Walls of Isolation—The French Expedition—American Relations with Corea—Ports Opened to Japanese Commerce—The Year of the Treaties—A Hermit Nation no Longer.

Until recent years our knowledge of the remarkable country of Corea, known indeed to the general public by little more than its name, has been limited to the meagre and scanty information imparted to us by Chinese and Japanese sources. After having been for several thousands of years the scene of sanguinary and murderous feuds between the various races and tribes who peopled the peninsula, and of the intrigues and wars of conquest of its rapacious neighbors, Corea succeeded after its final union under the sway of one ruler, but with considerable loss of territory, in driving back the invaders behind its present frontiers, enforcing since that time with an iron rule, that policy of exclusion which effectually separated it from the whole outer world. Corea, though unknown even by name in Europe until the sixteenth century, was the subject of description by Arab geographers of the middle ages. The Arab merchants trading to Chinese ports crossed the Yellow Sea, visited the peninsula, and even settled there. The youths of Shinra, one the Corean states, sent by their sovereign to study the arts of war and peace at Nanking, the mediæval capital of China, may often have seen and talked with the merchants of Bagdad and Damascus.

As has been said, nearly all that the western world was able to learn about Corea until recent years, has been collected from Chinese and Japanese sources, which confine themselves mainly to the historical and political connection with these countries. The meagre early accounts owed to Europeans on this interesting subject, originate either from shipwrecked mariners who have been cast upon the inhospitable shores of Corea and there been kept imprisoned for some time, or from navigators who have extended their voyages of discovery to these distant seas and who have touched a few prominent points of the coast.

Like almost every country on earth, Corea is inhabited by a race that is not aboriginal. The present occupiers of the land drove out or conquered the people whom they found upon it. They are the descendants of a stock who came from beyond the northern frontier. It may not be a wrong conjecture, which is corroborated by many outward signs, to look for the origin of the people in Mongolia, in a tribe which finally settled down in Corea after roaming about and fighting its way through China. We may also take those who bear the unmistakable stamp of the Caucasian race to have come from Western Asia whence they had been driven by feuds and revolutions. At the conclusion of the long wars which have at last led to the union of the different states founded by various tribes, a partial fusion had taken place, which, though it has not succeeded in eradicating the outer signs of a different descent, at least caused the adoption of one language and of the same manners and customs.

Most of the Coreans claim to be in complete darkness and ignorance of their own origin; some declare quite seriously that their ancestors have sprung from a black cow on the shores of the Japan sea, while others ascribe their origin to a mysterious and supernatural cause.

The first mention of the inhabitants of Corea we find in old Chinese chronicles about 2350 B.C., at which period some of the northern tribes are reported to have entered into a tributary connection with China. The first really reliable accounts, however, commence only with the twelfth century B.C., at which time the north-westerly part of the peninsula first stands out from the dark.

The last Chinese emperor of the Shang dynasty was Chow Sin, who died B.C. 1122. He was an unscrupulous tyrant, and one of his nobles, Ki Tsze, rebuked and remonstrated with his sovereign. His efforts were hopeless, and the nobles who joined him in protest were executed. Ki Tsze was cast into prison. A revolt immediately ensued against the tyrant; he was defeated and killed, and the conqueror Wu Wang released the prisoner and appointed him prime minister. Ki Tsze however refused to serve one whom he believed to be an usurper and exiled himself to the regions lying to the north-east. With him went several thousand Chinese immigrants, most the remnant of the defeated army, who made him their king. Ki Tsze reigned many years and left the newly founded state in peace and prosperity to his successors. He policed the borders, gave laws to his subjects, and gradually introduced the principles and practices of Chinese etiquette and polity throughout his domain. Previous to his time the people lived in caves and holes in the ground, dressed in leaves, and were destitute of manners, morals, agriculture and cooking. The Japanese pronounce the founder’s name Kishi, and the Coreans Kei-tsa or Kysse. The name conferred by the civilizer upon his new domain was that now in use by the modern Coreans, “Cho-sen,” or “Morning Calm.”

The descendants of Ki Tsze are said to have ruled the country until the fourth century before the Christian era. Their names and deeds are alike unknown, but it is stated that there were forty-one generations, making a blood line of eleven hundred and thirty-one years. The line came to an end in 9 A.D., though they had lost power long before that time.

This early portion of Cho-sen did not contain all of the territory of the modern Corea, but only the north-western portion of it. While the petty kingdoms of China were warring among one another, the nearest to Cho-sen encroached upon it and finally seized the colony. This was not to be permanent however, and there ensued a series of wars, each force becoming alternately successful. The territory of Cho-sen grew in area and the kingdom increased in wealth, power and intelligence under the rule of King Wie-man, who assumed the authority 194 B.C. Thousands of Chinese gentry fleeing before the conquering arms of the Han usurpers settled within the limits of the new kingdom, adding greatly to its prosperity. In 107 B.C., after a war that had lasted one year, a Chinese invading army finally conquered the kingdom of Cho-sen and annexed it to the Chinese empire. The conquered territory included the north half of the present kingdom of Corea.

Things remained in this condition until about 30 B.C., at which time a part of Cho-sen taking advantage of the disorders which had broken out afresh in China, separated itself from the empire and again formed a state by itself, but still remained tributary; while the other portions of the old kingdom for some time longer remained under Chinese rule, until they also joined the portion that had been freed. Up to this period Cho-sen forming the north-west of the present Corea, had been the only part of that country that had become more closely connected with China. The tracts to the north-east, south-west and south were occupied by different independent tribes, and little more is known of them than that they were ruled by chiefs of their own clan. In course of time three kingdoms, Korai, Hiaksai, and Shinra, were formed out of these various elements, subsisting by the side of Cho-sen, at a later date fighting either beside or against China, and almost incessantly at feud with each other, until Shinra gained the predominance about the middle of the eighth century A.D. and kept the same up to the sixteenth century. It was then supplanted in the leading position by Korai, which united under its supremacy all those parts of Corea which had hitherto been separate, and constituted the whole into a single state. Like the three kingdoms of England, Scotland and Wales, these Corean states were distinct in origin, were conquered by a race from without, received a rich infusion of alien blood, struggled in rivalry for centuries, and were finally united under one nation with one flag and one sovereign.

Hiaksai was for a while the leading state in the peninsula. Buddhism was introduced from Thibet in 384 A.D. And to this state more than any other part of Corea, Japan owes her first impulses towards the civilization of the west. The kingdom prospered until the decade from 660 to 670, when it was overrun and practically annihilated by an army of Chinese, despite the aid of four hundred junks and a large body of soldiers sent from Japan to the aid of Corea.

Korai of course took its turn in struggling with the Dragon of China. Early in the seventh century China had been defeated, and for a generation peace prevailed. But the Chinese coveted Koraian territory and again an invading fleet attacked the country. It took years to complete the conquest, but finally all Korai with its five provinces, its one and seventy-six cities and its four or five millions of people, was annexed to the Chinese empire.

Shinra, in the south-west of the peninsula, was probably the most advanced of all of the states. It was from this kingdom that the tradition reached Japan which tempted the Amazonian queen of Japan, Jingo, to her invasion and conquest. The king of Shinra submitted and became a declared vassal of Japan, but in all probability Shinra was far superior to the Japan of that early day in everything except strength. From this kingdom came a stream of immigrants which passed into Japan carrying all sorts of knowledge and an improved civilization. It is well to remember from this point that the Japanese always laid claim to the Corean peninsula and to Shinra especially as a tributary nation. They supported that claim not only whenever embassies from the two nations met at the court of China, but they made it a more or less active part of their national policy.

During this period Buddhism was being steadily propagated, learning and literary progress increased, while art, science, architecture were all favored and improved. Kion-chiu, the capital of Shinra, was looked upon as a holy city, even after the decay of Shinra’s power. Her noble temples, halls and towers stood in honor and repair, enshrining the treasures of India, Persia, and China, until the ruthless Japanese torch laid them in ashes in 1596.

From the year 755 A.D. up to the beginning of the tenth century, Shinra maintained its undisputed rule over the other countries of the peninsula, but about this time successive revolts occurred, Shinra was conquered, and the three kingdoms now united were called Korai, a name which was retained to the end of the fourteenth century. The kingdoms now thoroughly subdued, never recovered their old position and independence, and composed from that time forward the undivided kingdom of Corea, such as it has been maintained until the present day. In 1218 A.D. the king of Corea promised allegiance to the Chinese emperor Taitsou who was the Mongol Genghis Khan.

Here we find explanation for some features of the war now in progress between China and Japan. Corea has at various times acknowledged its dependence upon both of these countries. 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 Cho-sen as an independent nation. Through all the seventeen centuries, which according to their annals elapsed since their armies first completed the vassalage of their neighbor, the Japanese regarded the states of Corea as tributaries. Time and again they enforced their 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, twenty thousand lives, and $50,000,000 in treasury. The mainspring of the “Satsuma rebellion” of 1877 was the official act of friendship by treaty, and the refusal of the Tokio government to make war on Corea. It seemed until 1877 almost impossible to eradicate from the military mind of Japan the conviction that to surrender Corea was cowardice and a stain upon the national honor.

From the ninth century onward to the sixteenth century, the relations of the two countries seem to be unimportant. Japan was engaged in conquering northward her own barbarians. Her intercourse, both political and religious, grew to be so direct with the court of China, that Corea in the Japanese annals sinks out of sight except at rare intervals. Nihon increased in wealth and civilization, while Cho-sen remained stationary or retrograded. In the nineteenth century the awakened “Sunrise Kingdom” has seen her former self in the “Land of Morning Calm,” and has stretched forth willing hands to do for her neighbor now what Corea did for Japan in centuries long gone by. It must never be forgotten that Corea was the bridge on which civilization crossed from China to the archipelago.

About 1368 the reigning King of Corea refused vassalage to China. His troops refused to repel the invasion that threatened, and under their General Ni Taijo, deposed the king. Taijo himself was nominated king. He paid homage to the Chinese emperor and revived the ancient name of Cho-sen. The dynasty thus established is still the reigning family in Corea, though the direct line came to an end in 1864. The Coreans in their treaty with Japan in 1876, dated the document according to the four hundred and eighty-fourth year of Cho-sen, reckoning from the accession of Ni Taijo to the throne. One of the first acts of the new dynasty was to change the location of the national capital to the city of Han Yang, situated on the Han river about fifty miles from its mouth. The king enlarged the fortifications, enclosed the city with a wall of masonry, and built bridges, renaming the city Seoul or “capital.” He also redivided the kingdom into eight provinces which still remain. An era of peace and flourishing prosperity ensued, and in everything the influence of the Chinese emperors is most manifest. Buddhism, which had penetrated into every part of the country, and had become in a measure at least the religion of the state, was now set aside and disestablished. The Confucian ethics were diligently studied and were incorporated into the religion of the state. From the early part of the fifteenth century, Confucianism flourished, until it reached the point of bigotry and intolerance, so that when Christianity was discovered to be existing among the people, it was put under the ban of extirpation, and its followers thought worthy of death.

At first the new dynasty sent tribute regularly to the shogun of Japan, but as intestinal war troubled the Island Empire and the shoguns became effeminate, the Coreans stopped their tribute and it was almost forgotten. The last embassy from Seoul was sent in 1460. After that they were never summoned, so they never came. Under the idea that peace was to last forever, the nation relaxed all vigilance; the army was disorganized and the castles were fallen into ruin. It was while the country was in such a condition that the summons of Japan’s great conqueror came to them, and the Coreans learned for the first time of the fall of Ashikaga and the temper of their new master.

As the Mongol conquerors issuing from China had used Corea as their point of departure to invade Japan, so Hideyoshi resolved to make the peninsula the road for his armies into China. He sent an envoy to Seoul to demand tribute, and then, angered at the utter failure of his mission, commanded the envoy and all his family to be put to death. A second ambassador was sent with more success, and presents and envoys were exchanged. Hideyoshi, however, became enraged at the indifference of the Coreans to assist him in his dealings with China, and resolved to humble the peninsular kingdom, and China, her overlord.

The invasion of Corea was made as related in the earlier chapters on Japan. The Coreans were poorly prepared for war, both as to leaders, soldiers, equipments and fortifications. The Japanese swept everything like a whirlwind before them, and entered the capital within eighteen days after their landing at Fusan. The accounts of the war are preserved in detail, and are exceedingly interesting, but the limits of this volume compel their omission to provide space for the war of 1894-5. At first Chinese armies coming to reinforce the Coreans were defeated and turned back, but another effort of the allies was more effective and the Japanese troops found advance turned to retreat. The Japanese armies concentrated at Seoul to receive the advance of the allies numbering some two hundred thousand. The capital was burned by the Japanese, nearly every house being destroyed, and hundreds of men, women, and children, sick and well, living quietly there, were massacred. The allied troops were beaten back in a ferocious battle, but hunger reached both armies, pestilence entered the Japanese camp, and both sides were utterly tired of war and ready to consider terms of peace.

Konishi, the general of the Japanese army, had been converted to Christianity by the Portuguese Jesuits. During this period of tiresome waiting he sent to the superior of the missions in Japan asking for a priest. In response to this request came Father Gregorio de Cespedes and a Japanese convert. These two holy men began their labors among the Japanese armies, preaching from camp to camp, and administering the right of baptism to thousands of converts, but their work was stopped by the jealousy of the Buddhist power. The Jesuits in Japan were then being expelled for their political machinations, and the chaplains in Corea were brought under the same ban. Konishi was called back to Japan with the priest and was unable to convince the shogun of his innocence. A few Corean converts were made during this time, and one of them a lad of rank, was afterward educated in the Jesuit seminary at Kioto. He endeavored to return to Corea as a missionary, but the condition of affairs in Japan interrupted his intentions and in 1625 he was martyred during the prosecutions of the Christians. Of the large number of Corean prisoners sent over to Japan, many became Christians. Hundreds of others were sold as slaves to the Portuguese. Others rose to positions of honor under the government or in the households of the daimios. Many Corean lads were adopted by the returned soldiers or kept as servants. When the bloody persecution broke out, by which many thousand Japanese found death, the Corean converts remained steadfast to their Christian faith, and suffered martyrdom with fortitude equal to that of their Japanese brethren. But by the army in Corea, or by the Christian chaplain Cespedes, no trace of Christianity was left in the land of Morning Calm, and it was two centuries later before that faith was really introduced.

The fortunes of the war alternated, and finally, after deeds of heroism on both sides, a period of inaction ensued, the result of exhaustion. At this time Hideyoshi fell sick and died, September 9, 1598, at the age of sixty-three years. Almost his last words were, “Recall all my troops from Cho-sen.” The orders to embark for home were everywhere gladly heard. It is probable that the loss of life in the campaigns of this war was nearly a third of a million. Thus ended one of the most needless, unprovoked, cruel, and desolating wars that ever cursed Corea. More than two hundred thousand human bodies were decapitated to furnish the ghastly material for the “ear-tomb” mound in Kioto. More than one hundred and eighty-five thousand Corean heads were gathered for mutilation, and thirty thousand Chinese, all of which were despoiled of ears and noses. It is probable that fifty thousand Japanese left their bones in Corea.

Since the invasion the town of Fusan, as before, had been held and garrisoned by the retainers of the Daimio of Tsushima. At this port all the commerce between the two nations took place. From an American point of view, there was little trade done between the two countries, but on the strength of even this small amount Earl Russell in 1862 tried to get Great Britain included as a co-trader between Japan and Corea. He was not, however, successful. A house was built at Nagasaki by the Japanese government which was intended as a refuge for Coreans who might be wrecked on Japanese shores. Wherever the waifs were picked up, they were sent to Nagasaki and sheltered until a junk could be dispatched to Fusan.

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. Yet with all the miseries inflicted on her, the humble nation learned rich lessons, and gained many an advantage even from her enemy. The embassies which were yearly dispatched to yield homage to their late invaders were at the expense of the latter. The Japanese pride purchased the empty bubble of homage by paying all the bills.

The home of the Manchoos was on the north side of the Ever-white mountains. From beyond these mountains was to roll upon China and Corea another avalanche of invasion. By the sixteenth century the Manchoos had become so strong that they openly defied the Chinese. Formidable expeditions previous to the Japanese invasion of Corea kept them at bay for a time, but the immense expenditure of life and treasure required to fight the Japanese drained the resources of the Ming emperors, while their attention being drawn away from the north, the Manchoo hordes massed their forces and grew daily in strength. To repress the rising power in the north, and to smother the life of the young nation, the Peking government resorted to barbarous cruelties and stern coercion. Unable to protect the eastern border of Liao Tung the entire population of three hundred thousand souls, dwelling in four cities and many villages, were removed westward and resettled on new lands. Fortresses were planned in the deserted land to keep back the restless cavalry raiders from the north. Thus the foundation of the neutral strip of fifty miles was unconsciously laid, and ten thousand square miles of fair and fertile land west of the Yalu were abandoned to the wolf and tiger. What it soon became it remained until yesterday—a howling wilderness.

In 1615 the king of the Manchoo tribes was assassinated as the result of a plot by the Ming emperor. This exasperated the tribes to vengeance and they began hostilities. China now had to face another great invasion. Calling on her vassal, Corea, to send an army of twenty thousand men, she ordered them to join the imperial army about seventy miles west of the Yalu River. In the battle which ensued the Coreans were the first to face the Manchoos. The imperial legions were beaten, and the Coreans seeing which way the victory would turn, deserted from the Chinese side to that of their enemy. This was in 1619. Enraged by alternate treachery to both sides from the Coreans, the Manchoos invaded Corea in 1627, to which time the war had been prolonged. They crossed the frozen Yalu in February, and at once attacked and defeated the Chinese army. They then began the march to Seoul. Town after town was taken as they pressed onward to the capital, the Coreans everywhere flying before them. Thousands of dwellings and stores of provisions were given to the flames and their trail was one of blood and ashes. After the siege of Seoul began, the king sent tribute offerings to the invaders, and concluded a treaty of peace, by which Corea again exchanged masters, this time confessing subjection to the Manchoo sovereign. As soon as the invading army had withdrawn, the Corean king, confident that the Chinese would be ultimately successful over the Manchoos, annulled the treaty. No sooner were the Manchoos able to spare their forces for the purpose than they again marched into Corea and overran the peninsula.

The king now came to terms, and in February, 1637, utterly renounced his allegiance to the Ming emperor, gave his two sons as hostages, and promised to send an annual embassy with tribute to the Manchoo court. After the evacuation of Corea the victors marched into China, where bloody civil war was raging. The imperial army of China had been beaten by the rebels. The Manchoos joined their forces with the imperialists and defeated the rebels, and then demanded the price of their victory. Entering Peking they proclaimed the downfall of the house of Ming. The son of the late king was set upon the dragon throne, and as we have seen in a foregoing chapter the royal house of China came to be a Manchoo family.

When, as it happened the very next year, the shogun of Japan demanded an increase of tribute to be paid in Yeddo, the court of Seoul plead in excuse their wasted resources, consequent upon the war with the Manchoos, and their heavy burdens newly laid upon them in the way of tribute to their conqueror. Their excuse was accepted. Twice within a single generation had the little peninsula been devastated by mighty invasion that laid waste the country.

In 1650 a captive Corean maid, taken prisoner in their first invasion, became sixth lady in rank in the imperial Manchoo household. Through her influence her father, the ambassador, obtained a considerable reduction of the annual tribute that had been fixed by treaty. Other portions of the tribute had been remitted before, so that by this time the tax upon Corean loyalty became very slight, and the embassy became one of ceremony rather than a tribute bringing.

In the seventeenth century some information about Corea began to reach Europe, first from the Jesuits in Peking, who sent home a map of the peninsula. There is also a map of Corea in a work by the Jesuit Martini, published in 1649 in Amsterdam. The Cossacks who overran northern Asia brought reports of Corea to Russia, and it was from Russian sources that Sir John Campbell obtained the substance of his history of Corea. In 1645 a party of Japanese crossed the peninsula, and one of them on his return wrote a book descriptive of their journey. In 1707 the Jesuits in Peking began their great geographical enterprise, the survey of the Chinese empire, including the outlying vassal kingdoms. A map of Corea was obtained from the king’s palace at Seoul and sent to Europe to be engraved and printed. From this original most of the maps and supposed Corean names in books published since that time have been copied.

The first known entrance of any number of Europeans into Corea was that of Hollanders belonging to the crew of the Dutch ship Hollandra which was driven ashore in 1627. Coasting along the Corean shores, John Wetterree and some companions went ashore to get water, and were captured by the natives. The magnates of Seoul probably desired to have a barbarian from the west, as useful to them as was the Englishman Will Adams to the Japanese in Yeddo, where the Corean ambassadors had often seen him. This explains why Wetterree was treated with kindness and comparative honor, though kept as a prisoner. When the Manchoos invaded Corea in 1635, his two companions were killed in the war, and Wetterree was left alone. Having no one with whom he could converse he had almost forgotten his native speech, when after twenty-seven years of exile, in the fifty-ninth year of his age, he met some of his fellow Hollanders, and acted as interpreter to the Coreans.

In the summer of 1653 the Dutch ship Sparwehr was cast on shore on Quelpaert island, off the southwest coast of Corea. The local magistrate did what he could for the thirty-six members of the crew who reached the shore alive, out of the sixty-four on board. On October 29th the survivors were brought by the officials to be examined by the interpreter Wetterree. The latter was very rusty in his native language, but regained it in a month. Of course the first and last idea of the captives was how to escape. They made one effort to reach the sea shore, but were caught and severely punished, after which they were ordered to proceed to the capital. Wherever they went the Dutchmen were like wild beasts on exhibition. When they once reached the palace they were well treated, and were assigned to the body guard of the king as petty officers. Each time that the Manchoo envoy made his visit to the capital the captives endeavored to enlist his sympathy and begged to be taken to Peking, but all such efforts resulted in failure and punishment. The suspicions of the government were aroused by the studies which the Dutchmen pursued, of the climate, the topography, and the products of the country, and by their attempts to escape, and in 1663 they were separated and put into three different towns. By this time fourteen of the number were dead and twenty-two remained.

Finally, early in September 1667, as their fourteenth year of captivity was drawing to a close, the Dutchmen escaped to the seacoast, bribed a Corean to give them his fishing craft, and steered out into the open water. A few days later, they reached the northwestern islands in the vicinity of Kiushiu, Japan, and landed. The Japanese treated them kindly and sent them to Nagasaki, where they met their countrymen at Desima. The annual ship from Batavia was then just about to return, and in the nick of time the waifs got on board, reached Batavia, sailed for Holland, and in July, 1668, stepped ashore at home. Hendrik Hamel, the supercargo of the ship, wrote a book on his return recounting his adventures in a simple and straightforward style. It has been translated into English and is a model work of its sort.

The modern introduction of Christianity in Corea dates little more than a hundred years ago. Some Corean students studying with the famous Confucian professor Kwem, during the winter of 1777, entered into discussion of some tracts on philosophy, mathematics, and religion just brought from Peking. These were translations of the writings of the Jesuits in the imperial capital. Surprised and delighted, they resolved to attain if possible to a full understanding of the new doctrines. They sought all the information that they could from Peking. The leader in this movement was a student named Stonewall. As his information accumulated, he gave himself up to fresh reading and meditation, and then began to preach. Some of his friends in the capital, both nobles and commoners, embraced the new doctrines with cheering promptness and were baptized. Thus from small beginnings, but rapidly, were the Christian ideas spread.