The Revenge of Revenge of the Ninja

Last month I reviewed the movie Ninja Assassin, and was thus compelled to go back and watch the 1983 Ninja classic Revenge of the Ninja. I hadn't seen Revenge of the Ninja since 1984 or 1985, at a friend's birthday party, but my memory of it was that it was violent, realistic, and that the short time spent in Japan was a realistic depiction of what Japan was like. Well, right off the top the movie opened with a view of the Kinkakuji temple in Kyoto, which was listed as "Tokyo, Japan", and I knew I was in for a strange and disturbing ride. Suffice it to say, my memory and reality really didn't match up on this one.

The first scene opens with an attack on the home of the Osaki Ninja clan by a group of black and red clad ninja, which upon close inspection seems to consist of a mix of slightly overweight Asians and Caucasians strategically hidden behind black ninja gear with red bandanas. The location of this attack, ostensibly "Tokyo, Japan", looks more like an isolated Japanese-style house dreamed up by an American, in the middle of a forest, rather than the middle of a city of 8 million people. Where, it should also be mentioned, apparently everyone wears kimonos.

Ridiculous as the whole scene appears now, I'm sure in the pre-internet days of 1983 this strange movie version of Japan not only seemed reasonable to American audiences, but probably expected. In this battle the Osaki clan is, for the most part, wiped out, (Therefore probably not a very good Ninja clan...) until Cho Osaki, played by Sho Kosugi, gets home with his American buddy, Braden, and terminates all of the Ninja. Braden talks Osaki into fleeing the incessant Ninja attacks that are apparently commonplace in Japan, to America, where he can start a new life as a Japanese doll dealer... Or can he?

It turns out that Osaki's buddy Braden is actually a heroin dealer, who has been using Osaki's Japanese dolls as a medium for drug trafficking. It also turns out that - major spoiler - Braden is a NINJA! And probably orchestrated the original Ninja attack on the Osakis in Tokyo. When Braden's goomba Mafia connection - a 1983 version of Joe Pesci - refuses to pay for the heroin, he goes on a killing spree, Eventually Osaki is drawn into the intrigue, and is forced to go after Braden, because, as Osaki so eloquently puts it - "Only a Ninja can Kill a Ninja".

Production values are, of course, horrible - bad hair, bad corduroy (This was 1983 after all), editing screw ups like Osaki's son Kane walking around a corner bareheaded and then suddenly wearing a baseball cap as he comes around the corner, and terribly overdramatic deaths, where people cut with swords throw both hands up, yell "AAAaaaaahhhggghh", and slowly slide down the wall until they flop to a standstill. "Revenge of the Ninja" is entertaining for those times when you just feel you need to get a dose of a bad martial arts movie... and it is not a good movie by any means - but it IS a window into the 1980's Ninja Craze that taught Westerners all of the things about Japan that actually were completely wrong and ridiculous, but at the time, completely believable. Sho Kosugi's "Ninja Trillogy" (Enter the Ninja, Revenge of the Ninja, and Ninja III: The Domination) were the ill conceived grandparents of Ninja Assassin, and kicked off the Ninja Craze that spawned the likes of Gymkata, The Master, and Stephen Hayes, and extended Michael Dudikoff's movie career by about five movies. Thanks for that, Revenge of the Ninja. Really.

Space Aliens To Mongols: Bugger Off!

Those wacky folks at the History Channel are at it again. Not content with merely turning Musashi into a god, one of their plethora of UFO programs is retrofitting flying saucers into Japanese history. I only caught the last fifteen minutes of the 'Dragon's Triangle' (obviously being compared to the Bermuda Triangle) but it was enough. In short, any time there's a maritime disaster in Japanese history or some kind of portent in the sky, it's attributed to flying saucers and an undersea UFO base. It's also sad to say that Japan seems to be as full of nuts as the USA, as most of the 'experts' were Japanese.

Highlights of the fifteen minutes that will live in infamy:

-the fabled 'Dragon King's palace' of legend is said to be a UFO base that has been controlling the Dragon's Triangle for centuries.

-Commodore Perry's sighting of a comet/meteor in 1853 was really a sighting of a flying saucer. No, rly, it was.

-a shipwreck survivor of 1803 was an alien being and her ship, the Utsuro Bune (Hollow Ship), was a spaceship. Since this story takes place in different locales with different details at different times in different books during the Edo period, it couldn't possibly be simple folklore. Nah!


-sightings of various meteorological phenomenon taken as omens throughout history (dating back to the Kamakura Period) are also flying saucers.

-It's strongly hinted that Japan was closed to the outside world for all those years in the Edo period because the authorities were under the sway of aliens that wanted to keep their operation under wraps.

-best of all, the Mongol Invasions of both 1274 and 1281 were destroyed by storms created by the 'sekrit' alien base. The timing couldn't have been a coincidence, ya know. Never mind that the Mongols were stupid enough to invade during typhoon season in an area that regularly saw the storms blow through and in the case of the second invasion hung around long enough to make sure encountering one was a statistical probability. The clueless nature of the production is further reinforced by using the long outdated troop numbers for the Mongols and stating that the Japanese had absolutely no hope of stopping the Mongols...even though that's what actually happened BEFORE the typhoon hit.

While it was at least probably more accurate than the Musashi special, it was another in a long line of howlers that makes one wonder why there's a History Channel if it's not going to bother with history.

Five Films For Five Rings-Animeigo’s ‘Miyamoto Musashi’ Boxed Set

It’s no secret that a lot of us here at the SA don’t think much of Miyamoto Musashi’s popular image as ‘The Ultimate Samurai’, feeling instead he’s the ‘Most Overrated Samurai’. There’s a lot of misinformation in the English language world bandied about concerning Musashi, much of which you can read about in a prior post that dissected the godawful History Channel/Mark Dacascos Musashi love fest, ‘Samurai’. However, this criticism doesn’t extend to films-as works of fiction, we rate them solely on their artistic merit and entertainment value. Since many Japanese films dealing with famous historical figures are based on novels, it’s really the only way to go-one can hardly fault a film that’s based on a work of fiction for being inaccurate. Rather, one can look at them as taking place in a fantasy/different timeline version of Japan-much like the Last Samurai, Shogun, or even Taiga Dramas that play fast and loose with the facts. With that in mind, let’s take a look at Animeigo’s newest boxed DVD set, Toei’s five film Uchida Tomu/Nakamura Kinnosuke ‘Miyamoto Musashi’ series. For those who like their symmetry, there’s a film here for each of the rings in Musashi’s autobiography/sword training manual “The Book of Five Rings”. Animeigo’s set is a sword slash above any other multi film or TV series dealing with Musashi, and only the 2003 film ‘Ganryujima’ keeps it from being the best cinematic treatment of the man (well, unless you count the zombie Musashi in ‘Samurai Resurrection/Makai Tenshou’-jidaigeki doesn’t get any better than that).

The series is based on Yoshikawa Eiji’s novel ‘Musashi’ (which was originally serialized in a Japanese newspaper in the 1930’s). Yoshikawa’s novel is almost wholly responsible for the deification of Musashi and his popularity today and has formed the basis for most films portraying him. One of these that many viewers will already be familiar with is the well known Inagaki ‘Samurai Trilogy’ starring Mifune Toshiro. While the Inagaki series has a good reputation in the west (thanks in no small part to Mifune and its inclusion in the ‘Criterion Collection’), we’ve always found it rather pedestrian and lacking. One might say it’s as overrated as Musashi. Mifune turns in a one note performance as Musashi and the other performances come up flat. The Nakamura series also contains a better sampling of celebrated incidents from the Yoshikawa book, with one notable exception. Musashi’s battle with the kusarigama (sickle and chain) master made it into the Inagaki films but not Uchida’s. Interestingly enough, Uchida and Nakamura reunited years later to produce a film based around this omitted incident. Uchida died before the film was completed but it was eventually released. Some consider this to be a ‘sixth film’ connected to the 1961-65 series, but we don’t. It obviously isn’t part of the original cycle’s concept and overview, and is better considered a separate treatment of the character using the same director and star. In any case, the Uchida/Nakamura ‘Musashi’ series outshines the Inagaki version in acting, presentation, emotional impact, and depth.

The first film in the series, “Miyamoto Musashi (1961)”, follows the early years of Musashi beginning with the aftermath of the battle of Sekigahara. Musashi (here still known as Takezo) and his friend Matahachi find themselves on the run after having joined the losing side. The two end up hiding out at the home of Oko and her daughter Akemi. Matahachi falls for the older woman and when the home is threatened by bandits, Takezo stays to fight while Matahachi leaves with the women. Takezo returns to his hometown to inform Matahachi’s mother Osugi and fiancée Otsu what has happened, but finds himself the object of Osugi’s anger and hunted by pro-Tokugawa samurai. Zen monk Takuan manages to lure him out of hiding without further bloodshed, but the sputtering Takezo finds himself hanging from the branches of a thousand year old tree and left to die. The monk’s ultimate plan plays itself out, but will it be too late for Takezo?

“Duel At Hannya Hill (Hannyazaka No Ketto, 1962)” opens with Takezo studying the ways of the samurai while restricted to the haunted tower of Himeji Castle. Upon ending his three years of isolation, he forgoes an offer of employment from Lord Ikeda, changes his name to Musashi, and embarks on a musha shugyo (a pilgrimage taken by a samurai to gain experience, see the world and hone their sword skills). He also abandons Otsu, who has fallen in love with him and waited three years for his release. Musashi seeks outs challenges from warriors and martial arts schools of all types, from the sword skills of the Yoshioka dojo to the Hozoin monks and their distinctive spear style. Along the way he picks up a child apprentice, is pursued by Osugi (seeking revenge for her son Matahachi, who she believes to be dead) and manages to make enemies of a large group of local ronin. The final showdown at Hannya Hill sees him pitted against the full might of the Hozoin monks and the lawless ronin.

Musashi’s feud with the Yoshioka School comes to a head in “Birth Of The Nito-Ryu Style (Nitoryu Kaigan, 1963)”. Before battling Yoshioka Seijuro in the penultimate duel, Musashi attempts to extort a lesson in swordsmanship from the venerable Yagyu Sekishuusai. This film is also the first in the series to feature an appearance by his ultimate nemesis, Sasaki Kojiro. Kojiro is played by Takakura Ken and presents a more physically intimidating Kojiro than most of the actors who have essayed the part. We also find out more about what has happened to Osugi, Oko, Akemi, and Matahachi as they make their own way through life-but still have fates that are intertwined with Musashi’s.

The Yoshioka School plans their revenge on Musashi in “Duel at Ichijyo-ji Temple (Ichijoji No Ketto, 1964)”. While trying to hide his fears early in the film, Musashi is ridiculed by a famous geisha whose company he has been gifted with. She sees beyond his surface calm to the fears and frailty within him-this after he has just returned from killing the younger of the Yoshioka brothers. After hiding out in the geisha’s teahouse, Musashi emerges and is confronted by the assembled Yoshioka. He agrees to fight one final battle against them-one which uses a child as his ostensible opponent with 73 members of the dojo acting as his seconds. In my opinion, this is the best of the five films, not so much because of the wild duel near the end but because of the moral dilemmas Musashi faces.

Finally, “Duel At Ganryu Island (Ganryu-jima No Ketto, 1965)” has as its centerpiece the famous duel between Musashi and Kojiro. It ties up several loose ends from the earlier films (such as the fate of Akemi and Matahachi, along with the resolution of Osugi’s vendetta against Musashi). Musashi, in an effort to redeem himself for having slaughtered a child, takes up farming with a boy whose father has just died. He is called back to the way of the sword when Kojiro issues a challenge to him-one which Musashi may not survive even if he wins. Takakura Ken is especially effective in this film, as he presents both a Kojiro who is full of confidence-and yet also one with a subliminal realization that he might have taken on more than he can handle.

Unlike most movies dealing with Musashi, the films don’t over glorify his every action-many times he’s portrayed as a shallow and hard headed jackass. Despite the fact that he spends three years locked up in Himeji Castle reading, studying, and supposedly making himself a more worthy person, it becomes apparent throughout the series that Musashi has just acquired a somewhat more civilized veneer-his core remains the same. His actions are continually questioned by other characters throughout the series. Otsu tells him that continued dueling will not result in any self improvement, but just more blood on his hands. Musashi deliberately provokes a fight with Yagyu swordsmen who have invited him to a blossom-viewing party. Buddhist monks eject him from their retreat on Mt. Hiei for the crime of killing a child-a deed which Musashi petulantly denies culpability for, trying to lay the blame on his foes and equating striking down the child with destroying a flag. Musashi angrily reacts to a Buddhist priest who states strategy should be used for the betterment of society and not for one’s own aggrandizement. Even Sasaki Kojiro wryly observes that Musashi is following the ‘Path of the Loser’. Musashi only realizes the truth after he has achieved what should have been his greatest victory-he disgustedly throws down his weapon and cries out to the heavens that following the way of the sword has left him empty inside, spiritually bereft and unfulfilled. It’s a moment unmatched in any other Musashi film.

Nakamura Kinnosuke still manages to make Musashi a sympathetic character with an outstanding performance. Nakamura, who is just beginning to have his films commercially released in the west, shows the emotional range he displayed in another recent Animeigo release (Bushido: The Cruel Code of the Samurai). His Musashi not only presents the fierceness and primitive rage of Takezo, but of a more understanding and educated Musashi later on. Throughout the series he allows the dark side of Takezo to emerge, usually at moments of high stress, to crack the facade of the cool, capable swordsman Musashi wishes to be seen as. Many of the films end with Musashi ranting in denial at a particularly tough lesson he has just learned. Nakamura allows us to see a man who is truly trying to conquer his evil side, taking two steps forward and one step back. This Musashi is allowed to show kindness and consideration for those around him and develop somewhat deeper relations with other characters than one usually sees in Musashi films-certainly moreso than Inagaki’s trilogy, where Mifune is basically in ‘master swordsman’ mode 24/7. This results in the ‘Uchida’ Musashi being a more complex, subtle, and layered character than the simple martial arts superman he’s usually seen as.

While there isn’t as much emphasis on the second tier actors as in some Musashi adaptations, they all turn in believable performances. Oka Satomi as Akemi is particularly good-while many actresses have portrayed her as a bitch, Oka gives her a sweet and vulnerable side that makes her a likeable character (having said that, Uchiyama Rina from the NHK Musashi Taiga Drama still ranks as the best Akemi). Irie Wakaba as Otsu also manages to infuse her character with dignity and conscience, making her more than the hysterical obsessed Musashiphile she usually is portrayed as. Naniwa Chieko’s Osugi is the perfect crotchety old Japanese grandmother-she’s way over the top, but it works given her character’s personality. While the actors portraying Musashi’s friend Matahachi (the role changed hands after the first film) and Takuan (Musashi’s spiritual guide) come off a bit flat, overall the supporting cast does an excellent job.

Director Uchida Tomu always keeps his focus on the story and characters-it’s a workmanlike job but effective. There’s not much in the way of obvious ‘art house’ shots, but Uchida subtly stages settings and lighting to underscore the action on the screen without drawing attention to it. And occasionally an ‘art house’ shot does turn up, as when Musashi is seen lying amongst a sea of blood red ferns after having carved his way through the Yoshioka School (scenes which were shot in hues of green and blue). The symbolism is stark and effective-Musashi has immersed himself in bloodshed. There’s also a striking sequence in the first film where Musashi is confronted by the ghosts of his ancestors in Himeji Castle while blood pours forth from the walls and floor.

And as everyone has come to expect, Animeigo’s translation and subtitling are the best in the business. Different levels of subtitling can be selected to match the viewer’s proficiency in spoken/written Japanese. Extras for the set include an audio commentary by film historian Stuart Galbraith IV, trailers for each of the films, program notes, and image galleries. As with many of Animeigo’s boxed sets, the program notes are spread out across five films and seem a bit sparse when compared with their single disc releases. There’s surprisingly little information given on the historical Musashi, with most of the content devoted to cultural issues. Disc one does contain bios for Musashi and Kojiro, but leaves out large chunks of Musashi’s career. The image galleries are well done, and a particularly nice touch is that the film’s posters are reproduced-both in full screen and in individual close up shots of sections of the poster that allow viewers to read the text. The real gem of the extras is Stuart Galbraith IV’s commentary on disc one. Galbraith (who also provided the excellent commentary for Animeigo’s Tora-san set) packs an incredible amount of film history into 110 minutes. Ranging from cultural observations to cast and crew information as well as commenting on the film itself, he keeps his presentation lively and engaging. Particularly interesting is the discussion of how Inagaki’s ‘Samurai Trilogy’ became famous in the west while it was considered inferior to the Uchida version in Japan (it was largely due to a famous Hollywood actor’s response to the popularity of ‘Seven Samurai’ in the USA). Also brought on board is Charles Ziarko (first assistant director from the classic miniseries Shogun) to discuss how Japanese filmmaking differs from Hollywood. Going the extra mile, Galbraith gives an extended overview of the historical Musashi that doesn’t omit the ‘embarrassing’ parts (such as his participation in putting down the Shimabara Rebellion).

So it is that we find ourselves in the unusual position of writing words of praise for Musashi-or at least the Nakamura version in this five film set. The series will be of interest to both fans of Musashi and for those looking for a somewhat different presentation of the man. Depending on your point of view, ‘Miyamoto Musashi’ can be seen as a glorification of martial adeptness-or a condemnation of placing objects and technical skill before one’s soul. Nakamura breathes life into the Musashi legend and gives the character real humanity and depth. You can order the Miyamoto Musashi DVD boxed set directly from Animeigo or from Amazon through the SA Store.

Gamers Guide to Feudal Japan: "Daimyo of 1867"

Every year the Samurai Archives runs its Samurai Fiction contest and every year we get a few entries that are woefully lacking in terms of realistic historical background. Names that couldn’t exist in Japanese are bandied about along with unrealistic depictions of government and culture at any given time. The SA Citadel message board also sees a steady stream of gamers of all varieties looking for available sources to help them out in building more realistic and believable environments and situations for their gaming scenarios. Up to now, there hasn’t been much in the way of resources tailored specifically to this market. There have been RPG’s such as Sengoku, Bushido, or Land of the Rising Sun that have given some background but being tied to a specific rules system sometimes makes them difficult to adapt to other efforts, and information is often abstracted to make it work within the system. Finding what they need in regular history books is possible for gamers and authors, but can be frustrating and time consuming. Filling this void is Different World's recently published gamer’s guide to feudal Japan, “Daimyo of 1867: Samurai Warlords of Shogun Japan”.

Author Tadashi Ehara was born in Sapporo, Japan and is well known in the gaming community. Tadashi was a publisher for Chaosium (and a contributor to its landmark Call of Cthulhu series) and the editor for Different Worlds magazine. In the 1980’s Tadashi received a copy of E. Papinot’s Historical and Geographical Dictionary of Japan. Papinot’s book, despite at times containing outdated information, remains an invaluable reference work. For example, most of the biographical sketches in Steven Turnbull’s Samurai Sourcebook were copied from Papinot (although Turnbull unfortunately did not credit the book or mention it in his sources). Combined with his love for chanbara films and Japanese history, Tadashi decided to make Papinot’s long unavailable book the foundation of a guide meant “for creating more realistic backgrounds for role-playing games, boardgames, miniatures games, and computer games. It is also useful for those writing historical novels, screenplays, graphic novels, comic books, anime, and other creative works”. While it certainly does that, as we’ll see it’s also a useful guide for the Japanese historical community in general.

One of the first things we do when reviewing a book is to check out the types of sources it uses. “Daimyo of 1867” uses many of the better sources available in English. Besides the aforementioned Papinot, it has listings for works by George Sansom, A. L. Sadler, Hiroaki Sato, Marius Jansen, John Whitney Hall, Engelbert Kaempfer, Helen McCullough, Jeffrey Mass, Ivan Morris, Paul Varley, the ubiquitous Stephen Turnbull, and many other authors that will be instantly recognizable to SA members. Even casual sources tend to be reliable, such as A. J. Bryant’s Sengoku Daimyo website and of course the Samurai Archives itself. Absent for the most part are the questionable histories written by martial artists (although the notorious ‘Secrets of the Samurai’ does rear its ugly head), so the book is built upon a solid foundation. Author Ehara further establishes credibility in his introduction by addressing the differences between the Japanese lunar calendar and the western Gregorian calendar, establishing Japanese naming conventions, and providing a pronunciation guide to Japanese. The book features hundreds of black and white photos, maps, woodcuts, paintings, mon, and other visual aids-rare is the page that isn’t enhanced by some sort of illustration.

The book proper begins with a look at the geography, climate, and topography of Japan and quickly moves on to a general summary of Japanese history from 660 BC to 1192 (the period where the Emperors of Japan or the representatives of their court held real power) and 1192 to 1868 (the period that saw warrior rule come to the forefront). This is followed by an excellent 17 page chronology that covers the years 660 BC (when the first Japanese Emperor, the presumably fictitious Jimmu, came to the throne) to 1877 (the Satsuma Rebellion led by ‘Last Samurai’ Saigo Takamori). These 17 pages provide an excellent framework upon which those new to the study of Japanese history could build on. The major roads and thoroughfares of Edo period Japan are examined, with a focus on the Gokaido (the five main routes leading to and from Edo). However, there are more than a dozen other more obscure routes examined that should provide ideas for authors and gamers alike. Ehara then proceeds to address the culture of Japan. Mainly centering on the class structures of the Edo period, other topics include population centers and their numbers, short sections on religion and the monetary system (both koku and coinage), a history of the different Shogunates, and an introduction to the structure and offices of the Tokugawa’s Bakufu.

A gamer’s guide addresses how to use the book’s information to enhance one’s game system of choice, even in how to lend ahistorical campaigns a solid grounding in reality. Many of the more storied legends of Japanese history are presented as examples, such as the vengeance of the Soga brothers and the 47 Ronin. The account of the 47 Ronin’s famous ‘drive-by’ at Lord Kira's estate follows the ‘Chushingura’ version rather than actual history-for example, it has the Ronin fighting dozens of Kira’s guards rather than the three to five they encountered in real life. While this would be unacceptable for a regular history book, it’s fine for a work intended to be used for real, imagined, or legendary situations. Topics such as martial arts training, sankin kotai (the alternate attendance system used by the Tokugawa to both have direct control over the daimyo and deplete their coffers), heirs, marriage, concubines, the role of women, ronin, sanctioned and unsanctioned vendettas, and yes, even shudo (the practice of an older, powerful samurai taking on a young page as a sexual partner) are examined. The gamer's guide section on ninja walks the middle ground between fantasy and reality, making it useful for either type of campaign. A daimyo name generator is given to help provide gamers and authors with authentic names, along with a short section detailing naming conventions, the coming-of-age ceremony, and how to go about choosing an 'auspicious' name.

Several pages of “Daimyo of 1867” are devoted to a listing of samurai themed games, their year of release, and manufacturer. These extend across the entire gamut of gaming-there are boardgames, RPG’s, wargames, miniatures rules systems and figures, card games, computer games, and video games. Many of them are obscure little treasures that even we hadn’t heard of. Ranging from commercial releases such as ‘Legend of the Samurai’ to the quirky and varied home brewed efforts from Warp Spawn Games, we spent the better part of a morning downloading them off the web. Many of the listings can be downloaded for free or at low cost, making this a feature that will be highly appreciated by any gamer. One disappointing aspect of the book was that there was no listing or discussion of chanbara and jidaigeki films, usually a standard component of books of this type.

Until now, most of the material in the book appears in one form or another (although with the exception of Sengoku usually not as accurately as here) in most RPG games and sourcebooks dealing with samurai. 'Daimyo of 1867' sets itself apart from the crowd in the section that takes up most of the book (a little over 200 of its 346 pages). Here you'll find an overview of each daimyo in existence at the end of the Edo period-all 270 + of them. As you can see by the sample page, there's a lot given in each listing. While the listings sometimes vary slightly due to the availability of information, a typical entry will have a province broken down into han, each of which will have it's daimyo's name, mon, domain name, revenue, class (both tozama and fudai daimyo are given the numerical rankings used by the Tokugawa), headquarters castle, succession, biographies of notable ancestors, and related branch families with their locations. Ehara has taken the information found in Papinot's book and presented it in a fashion that not only gathers scattered data into one spot, but also draws attention to things that wouldn't be noticeable in Papinot's text. For example, who would have thought that at the end of the Edo period there would still be four members of the Oda family who were daimyo? That the Go-Hojo, who most thought dispossessed and eliminated by Hideyoshi after the siege of Odawara, would still be tending a domain? That an entire province (Noto) contained no han and did not have a daimyo? Or that the Naito had fully six branches that held daimyo status? This is a real treasure trove of information, and not just for gamers or authors-it would be extremely useful as a reference for would be historians as well. Ehara has also taken the trouble to index these pages using not just one, but four different methods. You can look up entries by han, clans, province, or daimyo name, meaning that you can go straight to what you need without having to dig it out. Want to know what han comprised Echigo province? Where a certain han was found? Where the Yagyu daimyo were located? It can be frustrating trying to look it up elsewhere, but it's easy here. The only shortcoming I can see is that many famous samurai whose clans did not survive into the late Edo period (like the Takeda) or that never regained daimyo status (like the Chiba) have no biographical entries (while of course both the Oda and Uesugi daimyo have listings for Nobunaga and Kenshin). However, the book IS focused on the Edo period and its daimyo, so their lack of inclusion is understandable.

As with any survey of this scope, generalizations are sometimes made and certain topics simplified but make no mistake-there is a cornucopia of detail in the book. Authors can use the information herein to set up scenarios and backgrounds that are historically and culturally accurate. Gamers, especially those of the RPG and LARP persuasion, will be able to do so as well. The emphasis on the relatively peaceful Edo period means miniature enthusiasts and wargamers might find it a bit disappointing due to the lack of detailed information on armor, tactics, and weaponry. However, these concerns are addressed in detail in any number of rules systems readily available-the book can still be used as a complement to these to set up campaigns and battles that reflect real history, particularly in the turbulent Bakumatsu era. Apart from its value to the gaming community and writers, the ‘han’ section of “Daimyo of 1867” along with many of its details on other aspects of Japanese history makes it a useful and handy reference work for amateur scholars. Despite author Ehara’s statement that “This is not a scholarly piece of work”, there was a lot of research, hard work, and care put into the production of this sourcebook. “Daimyo of 1867” is available directly through Different Worlds Publications. You can learn more about the book, check out sample pages, and order a copy HERE-or order through Amazon at the Samurai Archives Bookstore.

Interview with Samuel Hawley, Author of The Imjin War --Part Two

This is the conclusion of our two-part interview with author Samuel Hawley

SA: The rivalry between the two Japanese generals Konishi Yukinaga and Katō Kiyomasa is perhaps one of the more interesting sub-plots in the overall Imjin War saga. You refer to the disharmony between the two leaders quite a bit in your book. Do you think that this rivalry hindered or helped the Japanese cause?
SH: Hindered or helped? Some of both, I suppose, but I’d tend more toward “helped,” considering how the rivalry spurred each commander on to greater efforts. For pros like Kato and Konishi, it was almost like a game, seeing who could outdo the other in beating the hell out of the Koreans. Rivalries like this are often the stuff of great military campaigns.

SA: Were there any other persona from the Japanese side that you found interesting? Who and why?
SH: I definitely found Hideyoshi the most interesting character. I even flirted for a short time with writing a book about him, something that would appeal more to general readers than Berry’s biography. There’s the rags-to-riches story of his life, his later quest for gentility, his fretting about his heir...it amounts to a grand story. I’ve long since given up the idea of a book on him, though. Now that I know a bit more about the publishing business, I realize it would be a dead loss for me to write such a book.

It’s funny, but shortly after The Imjin War came out, I was interviewed by KBS (Korean Broadcasting System) Radio. The tone of the interview, as you can imagine, had a pretty anti-Japanese slant. A lot of it seemed to be, “How can we use the Imjin War to smear the Japan of today?” Anyway, when the interviewer asked me about who I found most interesting in the story, I didn’t give the expected answer, “Yi Sun-sin” or “Yu Song-nyong” or whoever. I said “Hideyoshi,” and went to express admiration for his chutzpah. Boy, the interviewer didn’t like that!

SA: I wouldn’t sell yourself short about your ability to write a story about Hideyoshi—you could definitely pull this off. Tuttle just recently re-released A.L. Sadler’s bio of Ieyasu and a new 96 pager book about Hideyoshi is coming out very shortly from Turnbull (published by Osprey). Hideyoshi sells specifically because he does capture the imagination of many people and his life story is interesting enough to transcend borders. And the same can be said of Admiral Yi Sun-sin, who stands out as the hero from the Korean side. However, the myth of his character and prowess has grown beyond reality, much like what has happened with the “cult” of Sakamoto Ryoma worship in Japan. Yi is certainly worthy of the title of hero, but do you think he maybe gets too much credit? What about the contribution of the Korean warrior monks and their role in bringing about the defeat of the Japanese? Is their contribution wrongfully overshadowed by Yi?
SH: In writing The Imjin War, I wanted to tell the story as Koreans know it, as imperfect as that might be, so that Western readers who know nothing about the subject could learn about the war and in turn something about Koreans. In other words, I wasn’t trying to be revisionist about anything (except, perhaps, my ideas on the turtle ship, which is a relatively small thing). In writing about Yi Sun-sin, for example, I presented him as Koreans tend to see him (but without the messianic touches of the two English-language biographies, which to Western readers come across as way over the top). Same with Hideyoshi, Konishi, Kato, etc. I did as much research as I could and then presented them in a way that I thought reflected the Japanese viewpoint. I wasn’t trying to put any sort of revisionist stamp on anything because I saw myself as a chronicler and storyteller (heck, it’s an interesting story and deserves to be told well), not as an academic trying to come up with some new interpretation.

Let me add here that, as sympathetic as I might appear to Koreans in The Imjin War, I actually took some flak from Koreans after the book came out for being too critical of their ancestors. For example, I received a letter from the foundation devoted to preserving the memory of Imjin War government official Kim Song-il, asking me to change some things in the book that they felt didn’t reflect well on their ancestor. I even got a blast from a descendent of Yi Sun-sin, who felt I had blackened Yi’s name. I think this had to do with the part where I describe Yi ordering the execution of a Japanese prisoner on the false charge of having killed his son (it’s right there in Yi’s diary). I liked this because it showed the humanity, the fallibility, of Yi. It shows that he was a real person, capable of doing the wrong thing, and not a messianic figure as he has been previously depicted. I guess some Koreans don’t see it that way.

About the warrior monks, I’ll just say this: If I had written a dissertation on them, I bet I would have concluded that they had played a bigger role too. And if I had written a dissertation on the role of the Ming army in beating back the Japanese, hey, I bet I would have concluded that they had played the crucial role too. And if someone comes out with a book on the role of women in the Imjin War, I can tell you right now that the thesis will be that they played a darn big role. That’s the way it works when you set out to prove some sort of core thesis. My own book is not a dissertation; I didn’t have any core thesis to push, for example that the Koreans could have won the war on their own or something like that. I speculate on things along the way and express opinions, of course, but my ultimate purpose was just to tell the story.

SA: It’s disturbing but not surprising that you took some flak from certain corners in Korea. History sometimes tends to get shoe-horned to fit whatever the wearer wants in order to pursue an agenda or to support a certain “interpretation” of the truth. I should add that sadly, this can still be a problem in Japan as well. But let’s stay on the topic of the Korean warrior monks. Their units tended to be the strongest land forces the Koreans were able to deploy. What were some of the factors that made them such formidable fighters? Why were they so willing to die for a government that had persecuted their religion for many years?
SH: For the warrior monks, it wasn’t just about being loyal Koreans. Why should they be, after the way they had been treated during the Choson dynasty’s drive to establish Neo-Confucianism as the primary ideology? There was something of more personal benefit to gain: By proving their allegiance and worth to the Korean government—by doing the country a service—the monks hoped to win back some of the things that had been taken away from them over the years. For the individual monk, this was first and foremost the right to be officially ordained and recognized as a monk. (The government had previously done away with the law allowing for the ordination of monks.)

So why were the monks-soldiers such an effective force? Well, first of all, they operated as guerrilla fighters. In so doing they played to their strengths and took advantage of Korea’s mountainous terrain. Second, the monk community had a pre-existing organizational structure, complete with leaders that the monks highly respected and were predisposed to follow. Third, the monks as a body of men were conditioned to obedience and to seeing themselves as part of a cohesive group. It was religious obedience, and the cohesive group was monastic, but it translated well into the military sphere. When it came to fighting, they were therefore already conditioned to operating as a group, and to obeying the head monk or the abbot serving as their commander.

Finally, we should bear in mind that when we say that the monk-soldiers were an effective fighting force, we’re comparing them to the highly ineffective Korean government army. The army hadn’t been much of a cohesive group prior to the war, what with all the exemptions from service, the generals being kept in Seoul, etc. So you had the situation at the start of the war of a bunch of disparate, disorganized men being pulled together to form an army and a strange commander racing down from the capital to lead them. The result is that there was no sense of cohesion in the group, no shared sense of discipline, and no deeply ingrained respect and unquestioning loyalty for the commander.

SA: Who else from the Korean side did you find yourself drawn to during your research?
SH: Those few who stand out do so mainly because they left us some sort of personal record that gives us a glimpse of what sort of people they were (i.e. Yi Sun-sin’s diary; Yu Song-nyong’s Chingbirok; King Sonjo’s travails as revealed in Sonjo sillok). But that’s all they are—very small glimpses. The thing about writing about something that happened so far in the past is that it’s hard to get much of a feel for individual characters. People back then—and especially people in East Asia—didn’t lavishly reveal their personal feelings the way that we would come to do in the West in our private letters and our diaries and journals, which can sometimes be almost stream-of-consciousness stuff. In the diary George Foulk kept while traveling in Korea in 1884, for example, he rages against Koreans when their staring makes it impossible for him to take a crap in private. It’s this sort of intimacy that draws you to a historical figure; that makes you feel close to him. You just can’t say the same thing about anyone involved in the Imjin War. No one is “know-able” to such an extent. Even such a central figure as Hideyoshi. The little glimpses of him as a man that emerge in his private letters, his concern for his aged mother, his doting on his son—these are gems to seize upon precisely because they are so rare.

SA: While the famous “Turtle Ship” of the Korean Navy has often been described as the “First Ironclad”, this appears to have not been the case. Your book has an interesting anecdote about how a Western journalist might have been responsible for this misconception. Could you tell us more about that?
SH: Putting iron plates on the roof of the turtle ship would have been very unusual—something definitely worth noting. And yet Yi Sun-sin makes no mention of it in the ship description in his diary and reports. Neither does his nephew in his biography of Yi, which contains another description of the ship. Neither do the Annals of King Sonjo, which contain yet another description. They mention iron spikes, but not iron plating. This is what led me initially to question the notion of the use of iron plating. I became more convinced after realizing that iron plating would have been superfluous, a waste of metal, considering that these ships were already so heavily built that they were impervious to Japanese firepower. One thing that did confuse me was the record of the Koreans piling straw on the roofs of these ships to hide the spikes. My first thought was: “Well, in that case the roofs had to be iron-plated, for the straw would have caught fire once the fire arrows started flying and an exposed wooden roof would have burned.” But then I realized that the Koreans would have doused the straw with seawater, a logical response to fire arrows. Fire arrow striking the roof therefore would have been extinguished.

My account of how the iron plating story may have come about is pure conjecture. To the best of my knowledge—and new evidence may have been unearthed since I wrote the book; I haven’t kept up on the subject—the idea that the turtle ship had been iron clad didn’t surface until the early 1880s. It started in part thanks to US Navy ensign George Clayton Foulk, who was in Korea from 1884 to 1887 and served as charge d’affaires, effectively Washington’s ambassador in Seoul. Foulk traveled extensively throughout the country in 1884, one of the first Westerners to do so, and was one of the first Westerners to master Korean. (I’ve done two books on him, America’s Man in Korea and Inside the Hermit Kingdom, both Lexington Books, 2007.) Anyway, in his reports, Foulk mentioned hearing stories about the Koreans having once possessed an armored ship, and reportedly saw the remains of such of a ship at the port of Kosong in southern Korea. This snippet found its way into newspapers in the States. Now here’s where I’m conjecturing, but it seems likely that Westerners would have related this notion of an armored ship to the famed ironclads that had recently been used in the Civil War. And it seems equally likely that the Koreans, emerging from their long isolation and finding themselves weak and vulnerable and far behind the West, would have latched onto this notion as a matter of pride, a shining example of, “Hey, here’s something we thought of first.”

As a sidebar that may interest your readers, here’s a passage from Foulk’s 1884 travel diary in which he relates a story told to him by his Korea attendant, evidently some sort of oral tradition. I believe it’s a convoluted account of Yi Sun-sin:

“Today Suil spoke long on Korean officers. He says for many years past it has been the custom of this government to get rid of strong men physically and mentally among the common people, fearing the use of their power against it. Thus such men are made to live in fear and silence. If by chance discovered, a charge, no matter how slight, is brought against them and off goes the head. The hero of Tongyang, after killing so many Japanese for his country (a man of the people), knew that this display of his power would cost him his life, and standing on top of his junk in plain sight of the Japanese fleet, shot himself with a Japanese pistol or gun, thus to avoid dying like a criminal! Thus it was that while at times of war with Japan and China strong good men would not serve the government, knowing that whether they lost or won, death was the result.” (Samuel Hawley, ed., Inside the Hermit Kingdom: The 1884 Korea Travel Diary of George Clayton Foulk, pp. 93-94.)

SA: Much of Japan's failure can be traced to their inability to keep their forces supplied, and in particular their inability to protect their shipping from the Korean navy. Well protected and armed Korean ships regularly pounded the Japanese fleet. In your opinion, why didn't the Japanese show a greater interest in upgrading the capabilities of their ships in order to address this gross imbalance? This has struck me and others as being incomprehensible, considering how flexible the Japanese in general, and Hideyoshi in particular, had shown themselves to be in the past when integrating new technology into warfare and tactics.
SH: First of all, the Japanese did greatly improve their naval ability for the second invasion, as evidenced by their almost complete annihilation of the Korean fleet under Won Kyun. One can’t blame this Japanese victory solely on Won’s poor leadership. The Japanese had definitely upped their game. The argument could perhaps be made that this represented the greatest naval improvement one could reasonably expect from the Japanese, considering that they had started the war with a fairly primitive notion of naval warfare (i.e. ships as floating platforms for soldiers).

Here’s something else to consider: the Japanese military machine that was sent to Korea was the result of a process of evolution that took place during the country’s long civil war. It was the result, in other words, of a period of intense Darwinian adaptation. This suggests that flexibility was key—and it was. But even the Japanese had limits. For example, the samurai refused to use muskets themselves, considering it beneath their dignity. So there still existed certain constraints on the Japanese notion of warfare. One of these constraints was that Hideyoshi and his daimyo had spent their whole lives mastering the art of warfare on land. They have taken land warfare to the heights of effectiveness. They have made themselves arguably the best land warriors in the world. So how willing would such a man have been to say, “Well okay, I’ll shift my focus to the water, even though I don’t know much about it,” and leave all the glory to be had on land to rival daimyo? It would be like a top NASCAR driver foregoing the Daytona 500 in order to take up horseback riding to compete in the Kentucky Derby. Sure, it could happen. But there would definitely be a tendency toward resistance.

SA: Despite the fact that the future of their country was hanging in the balance, Korea was excluded from the peace talks that followed the Japanese retreat to the south coast after the Chinese offensive of 1593. What led to this situation, and how did it affect the eventual failure of the peace talks that led to the second Japanese invasion?
SH: The Koreans were aware right from the start that once they asked Ming China for help to repel the Japanese invasion, they themselves would be pushed aside to one degree or another and Beijing’s heavy-handed representatives would take the lead. That was the way things worked between China and its vassal states. It was why this was such a big deal for the Koreans, asking the Chinese for assistance. They knew it would mean losing some of their autonomy; that the Ming would start calling the shots. So while it certainly caused the Koreans anguish to be left out of the peace negotiations, it was perhaps not entirely unexpected.

I don’t recall if I describe this in my book as a contributing factor to the failure of peace talks leading to the second invasion. The Ming definitely would have benefited by listening more to the Koreans in order to get a clearer understanding of the true situation. Listening to them, however, might not have made any difference, for the negotiations seemed destined to fail. The whole thing was a farce of purposeful miscommunication between the Ming and Japanese envoys, miscommunication necessitated by the intransigence of both sides. They were just too far apart to reach common ground. Failure was the way it had to play out.

SA: And speaking of the Chinese, you, as well as Turnbull in his first book on the Imjin War, make it fairly clear that the Japanese would have lost in Korea with or without Chinese intervention. The participation of the Ming was just a mere catalyst that helped speed up an inevitable outcome. If this is the case, then what do you think of Kenneth Swope’s theory that Japan’s defeat in Korea had more to do with China’s involvement and more importantly, the military technology they deployed?
SH: The arrival of the Ming army certainly hastened the withdrawal of Japanese forces and in turn the end of the war. The Japanese were already bogged down in northern Korean, however, before the first Ming forces arrived. In the absence of the Ming, I believe the Japanese would have eventually exhausted themselves and pulled back into the south. Hideyoshi’s death in 1598 would have spelled the end of the adventure.

I in fact corresponded with Swope back in December 1999, when I was just starting to write The Imjin War and when he was a graduate student at the University of Michigan. I still have the e-mails. His ideas of the central role of the Ming army were fixed even then—based, as he said, on his reading of Chinese sources. Maybe I’m biased, but I put a lot of stock in Korean sources like the Annals of King Sonjo (Sonjo sillok). I say this because the Koreans readily accepted their subsidiary role in a Chinese universe and thus tended to be more self-critical in their official histories. The Annals of King Sonjo, for example, contain a lot of self-deprecating history. You have Korean generals running away, the king fleeing in a completely ignominious fashion, Koreans looking incompetent in the face of the Japanese threat. To me, this smacks of truth. The Chinese, on the other hand, were more heavily invested in preserving the idea that they were pre-eminent. They were, after all, the Center of the World. It therefore gave me pause when Swope wrote to me in Dec. 1999, for example: “The amazing thing about the Chinese sources is that Admiral Yi is not that much of a factor. Some sources scarcely mention him at all!...Yi Sun-sin is often named simply as Chen Lin’s brave second-in-command.” So the Chinese admiral is placed at the forefront and gets the lion’s share of the credit in Chinese accounts. That’s surprising....

SA: Have you read Swope’s book, A Dragon’s Head and a Serpent’s Tail? If so, what do you think of it?
SH: No, I haven’t read it.

SA: Swope took some shots at both you and Turnbull. I am not the biggest Turnbull fan, but think that Samurai Invasion is one of his better efforts and is worthy of praise. But with you, Swope seemed to go out of his way to post a very mean-spirited review of your book on Amazon.com as well as in one of his published articles. I for one, think your book is by far the best balanced work in English on the topic and found Swope to be completely out of line. The SA’s affiliated blog, the Shogun-ki, even addressed this issue in a post titled “Fear and Loathing in the Imjin War”. How do you feel about the negative campaign that Swope waged against you and Turnbull? Do you have any idea what motivated him to act so unprofessionally?
SH: What Swope wrote about my book on Amazon.com was ungentlemanly, to say the least. I assumed he was jealous, and I was surprised that he would reveal himself so clearly and make himself look so small. His comment about how readers should “look elsewhere” was of course self-serving. Back in December 1999 Swope himself wrote to me about his own dissertation: “So when I finish, something will exist in English [on the Imjin War], but right now there’s not much at all.” In writing The Imjin War, I was trying to fill the very void that Swope himself acknowledged needed filling. I guess he thinks he owns the topic. There is a lot of arrogance like that in academia. Swope is by no unique on that score. He’s just clumsier than most.

In hindsight, the whole thing has become kind of funny, what with the heat Swope has taken. It’s been a real-life example of the saying, “You reap what you sow.” I wonder if he’s learned anything from this self-generated teaching moment.

By the way, as I mentioned before, I finished writing The Imjin War in 2003, the year that Turnbull’s Samurai Invasion came out. It was a pretty big disappointment to realize that I wouldn’t be the first to come out with a book on the topic (I was already shopping mine around to publishers as “the first book-length account in English,” etc.). But that’s life. I swallowed my disappointment—it never occurred to me to “Swope” Turnbull—and I ordered a copy of his book and found it to be a valuable work. I think he did a good job. In the two years it subsequently took me to get my own book published, I ended up incorporating some things from Turnbull’s Samurai Invasion, and I thank him for it.

SA: Can you tell us about what you are currently working on?
SH: Since giving up teaching in 2007 and moving back to Canada with my wife, I’ve been working full time writing more popular books for a wider audience. My first effort in this new vein is Speed Duel: The Inside Story of the Land Speed Record in the Sixties (forthcoming from Firefly Books, Aug. 2010). It’s about the rivalry between Craig Breedlove and Art Arfons, who pushed the LSR up through 400, 500, and 600 mph between 1963 and 1965. My next book, which I’ve already finished but haven’t yet signed a deal for, is about Canadian Olympic sprinter Percy Williams. It’s entitled I Just Ran: The Life and Times of Percy Williams, World’s Fastest Human. I’m now starting work on my third book since leaving Korea, Bad Elephant, about a circus elephant named Topsy that was electrocuted in 1903.

SA: Any plans to return to writing about East Asian history?
SH: My only involvement in East Asian history today is my link with the Royal Asiatic Society. Last year they asked me to return as general editor of their annual journal Transactions. So I’m doing that. Here’s the link to our Call for Papers:
http://hompi.sogang.ac.kr/anthony/Transactions.htm

As for writing another book on East Asian history—no, I’ve done that and now I’ve moved on. I enjoy researching new topics in different fields, whatever I stumble on that strikes my fancy, and then crafting what I learn into a book. So the “bestial Swope” need have no fear on that score. It’s unlikely I’ll stray onto his quarter-acre again.

SA: It’s been a real pleasure and treat to interview you. Like your book The Imjin War, this has been a most informative and delightful experience. On behalf of the Samurai Archives, thank you very much and wish you the best with your new books!
SH: My pleasure. All the best to you and the folks at SA.

Interview with Samuel Hawley, Author of The Imjin War --Part One

On behalf of the Samurai Archives, I’m pleased to be interviewing Samuel Hawley, author of The Imjin War: Japan’s Sixteenth Century Invasion of Korea and Attempt to Conquer China . Samuel Hawley spent 20 years living in Japan and then Korea, where he was an instructor at Yonsei University and a member of the governing council of the Korean branch of the Royal Asiatic Society. Like most of the membership of the Samurai Archives, Samuel Hawley is an amateur historian—which is what makes his The Imjin War and the amount of research that went into preparing the book that much more inspirational and endearing. Hawley is now residing in Canada and has devoted himself to writing full-time. His other works include America’s Man in Korea: The Private Letters of George C. Foulk, 1884–1887, Inside the Hermit Kingdom: The 1884 Korea Travel Diary of George Clayton Foulk, Help Wanted: Korea and the forthcoming Speed Duel: The Inside Story of the Land Speed Record in the Sixties .

At the time of the publication of this interview, The Imjin War is not available directly from Amazon.com, but can be ordered new from Han Books for US$72.17 by clicking on the following link.
http://www.hanbooks.com/imwajasiinof.html


SA: Sam, it’s a pleasure to have you here with us for this interview.
SH: Thanks for your interest in The Imjin War. It’s a pleasant surprise that there are still people out there who want to talk about it.

SA: To start things off, when you were living in Japan, were you drawn to samurai and Japanese history?
SH: During the time I lived in Japan (1988-1994), I was interested more generally in the culture than specifically in Japanese history. I loved things like sumo (especially hanging around heya), yakatabune (those pleasure boats that you dine on), tsuribori (urban fishing ponds) and spent many happy afternoons out taking photos and doing research for magazine articles. In Tokyo there are neat and quirky things to discover in just about every corner.

I moved on to Seoul in 1995 and lived there until 2007. That’s where I wrote The Imjin War. It was actually a bit of a homecoming for me, for I’d grown up in Korea. I was born in Pusan in 1960 (my parents were missionaries), we moved to Seoul when I was about 2 and stayed there until I was 14. So my awareness of the Imjin War goes back a long way, back to when I was a kid in the ‘60s. I can remember my parents even had a model of Yi Sun-sin’s turtle ship in a glass case.

SA: Prior to the publication of your book, not a whole lot about the Imjin War, better known as the Bunroku to Keichō no Eki in Japanese, was available in English. There were some writings by Geo. H. Jones at the turn of the 20th century, Stephen Turnbull’s Samurai Invasion and a couple of other publications about Admiral Yi and his turtle boats. In essence, this conflict is probably the true “forgotten Korean war” when it comes to exposure in the West. Why do you suppose that until Turnbull, you and Swope came onto the scene in the past 8 years or so, there hasn’t been much written about the Imjin War in the West?
The first problem was the language barrier. When I was writing The Imjin War (I started in 1999), Turnbull’s Samurai Invasion wasn’t out (I already finished my book when I stumbled on it on Amazon.com) and neither was Choi Byonghyon’s Chingbirok translation. There was in fact very little material on the subject available in English. I ended up studying Korean to attain some basic reading skills, then went through umpteen volumes of Sonjo sillok and other Korean-language works with the help of a native Korean translator. I did that for two years—spending my own money on the translation help, by the way. It entailed a heck of a lot of work, more than most people would be willing to do for a payout of little more than personal satisfaction.

I speaking of course of amateur historians such as myself, taking on a project like this on the side for personal enjoyment. It’s different for academics. For them, penning a scholarly tome can be the route to tenure and a pretty good living as a professor, so there’s an incentive. So why didn’t some history professor with much better language skills than me write a book on the Imjin War first? The reason, I think, is that the topic is too big, too wide-ranging for an academic to tackle. Academics tend to choose very narrow topics to specialize in (i.e. “The Impact of the Imjin War on Rice Production in Cholla Province”), then spend the rest of their careers protecting this little quarter-acre of ground. It’s the safe approach. I mean, once you become the foremost expert on Cholla rice production in the 1590s as it relates to the war, no one is going to be able to criticize your work, right? No one can “Swope” you. But if you try to write a book about the whole Imjin War, you’re going to be writing about rice in Cholla and a thousand other things. And since a single person can’t be the foremost authority on such a wide range of topics (Korean history, Japanese history, Chinese history, battle tactics, Korean/Chinese/Japanese court intrigues, East Asian diplomacy, battleship construction, etc., etc.) it means taking a big creative risk and courting criticism and maybe even falling flat on your face.

SA: But in my eyes and the eyes of others, it was worth the risk. I thought the book was fantastic and many of us here at the SA learned a tremendous amount from it. But what made you want to write about this conflict?
SH: My first idea actually had been to do a biography of Yi Sun-sin, for I thought I could improve on the two English-language works then in existence. That was in early 1999. When I realized there was no book in English on the Imjin War as a whole, I broadened my focus. It ended up being a far, far bigger job than I ever imagined.

So why did I set out to write the book? Well, I wasn’t an academic trying to carve out a niche as a scholar, so the above concerns about taking risks didn’t mean anything to me. I did it because I wanted something intellectually challenging to do, and I wanted the satisfaction of writing a book. It was as simple as that.

I’d like to point out here that I didn’t set out to write a scholarly book on the Imjin War, because I didn’t—and I still don’t—consider myself an expert on anything. My objective was just to tell the amazing story of this war, which hadn’t been fully told before in English and which scarcely anyone in the West knew about. (Again, I finished writing the book in 2003, the year Turnbull’s Samurai Invasion came out, and long before Swope.) The book, you’ll note, is narrative history, not a dissertation. In other words, its purpose is to “tell the story,” not to advance any particular core thesis. That it ended up in the scholarly realm, which I hadn’t intended, was entirely due to the fact that it was the only way I could get it published.

SA: You had mentioned in other correspondence that you had trouble finding a publisher for The Imjin War. Why do think this was the case? Was it because this topic is still considered controversial considering the sometimes cankerous triangular relationship that exists between China, Korea and Japan?
SH: My difficulty in finding a publisher had nothing to do with the controversy surrounding the subject. Here’s the story:

Since I had written The Imjin War as a narrative history for general readers, I wanted to get an agent who could place it with a mainstream publisher. I failed. The consensus was that a book of this nature wouldn’t sell. (“Korean history? Who the hell wants to read about that?”) I was also told it was too long. The only agent to actually look at the manuscript (all the others turned me down at the query letter stage) concluded that he might be interested...if I rewrote the book to beef up the Japanese side of the story and cut back on the Korean. My emphasis on the Korean perspective, he figured, would not be popular with potential publishers. (By the way, I initially entitled the book “The First Korean War.”)

After banging my head against that wall for a while, I started contacting university presses. That earned me a whole bunch of rejections. Nobody—nobody—would even look at the manuscript. The problem here was obvious: I wasn’t a history professor, but just an English teacher. And I didn’t have a PhD, just an MA. (In history from Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, by the way.) It was very much a case of judging a book by the author’s CV.

The fact that The Imjin War was published at all was due to a series of lucky breaks combined with my own hustling. The only outfit to express any interest in the book had been the Royal Asiatic Society of Korea. They couldn’t publish it, though, because they didn’t have the money. What they did do was invite me to speak before the Society on the topic (in Nov. 2003, I think it was). In the audience was Yoo Kang-ha, secretary of the So-ae Memorial Foundation, a part of Poongsan Corporation. (So-ae was the nom de plume of Yu Song-nyong, Korean prime minister during the Imjin War. The chairman of Poongsan Corp. is a direct descendent of So-ae.) Anyway, I ended up receiving a publishing grant from Poongsan for The Imjin War. (Note: this financial backing did not color how I wrote the book. It was already written by this point.) This grant was enough to cover roughly half the cost of publication. By this time the RAS had invited me to join their governing council and elected me publications chairman. The first book I shepherded through the press for them was Elizabeth Underwood’s Challenged Identities, which the RAS fully funded. I then showed them how we could publish my book, The Imjin War, without it costing the RAS a penny, funding it with the Poongsan grant and money out of my own pocket. The council liked the idea. I then approached the Institute of East Asian Studies Press at UC Berkeley, which had previously turned the book down, and offered them a co-publication deal that would similarly not cost them a cent. They liked the idea and signed on and took editorial oversight of the project. I then did all the grunt work myself: I did the camera-ready copy, I made the maps, I designed the cover, I made the index, I liaised with the printer, and I provided all the money, the Poongsan grant plus my own dough, a total of around $11,000. After all this, I declined to use the RAS’s standard publishing contract, as I felt this would be grossly unfair to me. I instead drafted a contract myself whereby I received the lion’s share of the profits and retained full rights to the book. This was okay with the RAS because they ended up making a tidy sum of money without having to invest anything or take any risk.

The Imjin War eventually sold out its first print run of 2,000 copies, and is now on its second printing. Pretty paltry sales, but not too bad considering that the book received absolutely no marketing or publicity. I still retain full rights to the book, and I am free to republish it in any way I see fit.

SA: Well, we hope to see it back in print and marketed properly so it can reach a larger audience. But let’s get into some questions regarding the origin of the conflict itself. You touched upon some of the theories in your book, but why do you think Hideyoshi ordered the invasion of Korea?
SH: With something as big as the invasion of Korea, there had to have been multiple factors at work. In my book I discuss, I think, five of them. I don’t think it was a case of, “One of these five factors might have motivated Hideyoshi.” I suspect several driving factors were at work. Hideyoshi, after all, was a supreme strategist; he would have been thinking on several levels, weighing advantages and disadvantages. To say “Hideyoshi invaded Korea for this reason” is to frame the thing too simply. Hideyoshi wasn’t playing checkers. He was playing chess.

Let me just insert here that The Imjin War is the distillation of my understanding of the topic as of 2003, when I finished writing it. I’m answering these questions now without referring to the book, as I don’t want to just rehash what I’ve already written and what I was thinking back then. Because of the passage of time, and because I’ve moved on to other topics, what I answer here may vary from what I wrote in the book. I may even contradict myself. But hey, so what? As we go on we learn new things and adjust our previous conceptions. So be warned that I’m just throwing musings out there; that these musings might stray from what I wrote in The Imjin War—and that anything I wrote then and say now could be dead wrong.

SA: Kenneth Swope, in his new book A Dragon’s Head and a Serpent’s Tail, refers to a theory that appeared in Samuel Dukhae Kim’s PhD dissertation that Hideyoshi initiated the war in order to weaken the power of the Kyushu-based Christian daimyo as Hideyoshi wanted to eradicate Christianity in Japan. How much stock do you put in Kim’s theory? Do you think it is plausible?
SH: I guess it’s plausible, another possible motivating factor to add to the mix. But I wouldn’t give it too much weight, and I certainly wouldn’t say it was the reason. To begin with, using Kyushu-based forces for the invasion made perfect sense because these forces were the closest to Korea. It was also in line with the pattern of conquest that Hideyoshi had already established in his unification of Japan: using the forces nearest the target to spearhead the conquest of that target.

Again, Hideyoshi in his strategizing and long-term planning would have been considering several factors. Weakening the Kyushu-based Christian daimyo may have been one of the things he placed on the scales. Or maybe it was just an unplanned benefit of the expediency of using Kyushu-based forces.

SA: What was the ultimate reason, in your opinion, for Korea’s utter lack of preparation for the invasion? Did they really think that Japanese talk of invading China via Korea was mere bluster?
SH: Even if the Koreans had managed to make better preparations, the Japanese likely would still have swept up the peninsula regardless. In other words, the Koreans were perhaps inherently incapable of resisting the power of Hideyoshi’s invasion force because of the way the country was set up. First, there was the fact that generals were kept separate from their armies except in times of crisis. This was considered necessary to prevent them from becoming too independently strong and possibly attempting a coup. The founder of the Choson dynasty, Yi Songgye, had been a general himself and had seized power, and he didn’t want another general doing the same to his new dynasty. Hence the expedient of separating generals from armies. It was definitely a stupid idea in terms of military preparedness in the face of an external threat. The fact remains, however, that the Choson dynasty lasted from 1392 on into the 20th century—so clearly it made sense in terms of internal stability. It was a case, in short, of sacrificing the ability to repel an external threat in order to guard against threats from within. It was a good trade-off most of the time—but a disaster in the face of the extraordinary threat posed by Hideyoshi.

About the Koreans mistakenly regarding Hideyoshi’s threats as bluster: It’s hard to overstate the enormity of what Hideyoshi was proposing to do, at least in the eyes of the Koreans. It wasn’t just a case of one country threatening to conquer another. Hideyoshi was threatening to conquer, as the Koreans saw it, the center of the world. To put it in modern terms, it might have been like Chavez in Venezuela threatening to conquer the USA. Well, maybe not quite like that. But you see what I’m saying. The threat seems obvious to us now. But if we put ourselves back in that Korean court and try to look at things like a late-16th century Korean, it becomes easier to see how Hideyoshi’s threats could have been discounted as bluster.

Another thing to consider is the innate inability of Korea’s Confucian scholar-led system to deal with the ruthless military efficiency of Japan. In Japan, the military had evolved for maximum effectiveness thanks to a century of civil war. There were no soft-palmed scholars getting in the way, no trappings or niceties to trip over. In Japan it was all about military efficiency. The same could not be said about Korea. As noted above, the Koreans in effect hobbled their military (separating generals from their armies) to guard against internal threats. Still more hobbling was effected by the Korean—and in turn Chinese—notion of the supremacy of a scholar class; the notion that mastery of the Confucian classics, as evidenced by passing the government exam, equipped a man to do just about anything—including things he knew little about, like overseeing armies. So you had this situation in Korea where military professionals were often being second-guessed by scholars who sometimes didn’t know what they were doing, but who assumed that they did because they knew the classics.

(We can’t be too critical of the Koreans here, for the same situation exists in Washington DC and just about every any other Western capital today: governments growing bigger and bigger, with officials thinking they know better than the professionals how to run things. There is actually the notion that government officials are somehow more virtuous than professionals in the private sector. It’s a mindset that would have been quite at home in King Sonjo’s Confucian-scholar government in 1592.)

SA: But based on Korea’s experience with previous devastating Japanese-led pirate (wako) raids, was the Korean court really naïve in thinking that the “robber-dwarves” posed no serious threat?
SH: Naïve? I don’t know. In hindsight, they were certainly mistaken. But again, we should try to look at it from the Koreans’ perspective, considering their time, their mindset, and the information available to them. What Hideyoshi said he was going to do, march through Korea and conquer China, was really huge. It would have been easy, being a Korean and without the benefit of hindsight, to have discounted this as just a lot of hot air, an attempt to intimidate Korea. To put it in perspective, let’s draw a parallel to Iran today. President Dinner-Jacket threatens, “Do such-and-such or we will destroy Israel!” Or North Korea’s Dear Leader: “Cave in to my demands or you will feel my wrath!” Don’t we tend to brush aside such threats? And then something like 9-11 happens and everyone says, “Why were we so blind? Who dropped the ball? Who can we blame?” The moral: everything is clear in hindsight.

SA: Considering it was the ineptitude of the royal court and partisan politics that led to Korea’s ill-preparedness for the invasion, why do you suppose that the Korean people stuck with King Sonjo and the Choson Dynasty after the cessation of hostilities? One would think that there would have been enough popular discontent and anger with the government and the sovereign’s failure to protect his people would have led to a serious revolt. Yes?
SH: Sonjo was acutely aware of the discontent among his subjects. It was Koreans, after all, not the Japanese, who burned a lot of Seoul in May 1592. So Sonjo knew he was balancing on the edge of a razor. When things were at their worst he even flirted with the idea of crossing the Yalu River and leaving Korea, which would have amounted to abdication.

One very important service the Ming Chinese did in sending armed forces to Korea was to put some heart back into Sonjo, who was in despair. Another important service was that they propped up his throne and in turn the Choson dynasty. I don’t know how close the dynasty came to falling during and immediately after the war, but it was obviously teetering. Even if the Japanese had eventually worn themselves out in northern Korean and withdrawn without Ming interference, the lack of a Ming presence in Korea might very well have ensured the dynasty’s collapse.

To be continued. The second part of this interview will be posted on April 28.