Imjin War
The Imjin War was a series of two Japanese invasions of Korea: an initial invasion in 1592 also individually called the "Imjin War", a brief truce in 1596, and a second invasion in 1597 called the Chŏngyu War. The conflict ended in 1598 with the withdrawal of Japanese forces from the Korean Peninsula after a military stalemate in Korea's southern provinces.
Japanese forces were heavily armed with new technology: the tanegashima, a matchlock musket. These were fired in a devastating volley system developed during the Sengoku period, and a quarter of the soldiers were equipped with them.
The invasions were launched by Toyotomi Hideyoshi with the intent of conquering Joseon and Ming China. Japan quickly occupied large portions of the Korean Peninsula. However, reinforcements from Ming China as well as the disruption of Japanese supply fleets along the western and southern coasts by the Joseon Navy, forced the Japanese forces to withdraw from the capital of Pyongyang and the northern provinces.
Afterwards, with righteous armies engaged in guerrilla warfare against the occupying Japanese forces, and supply difficulties hampering both sides, neither force was able to mount a successful offensive or gain any additional territory, resulting in a military stalemate. The first phase of the invasion ended in 1596, and was followed afterwards by ultimately unsuccessful peace negotiations between Japan and the Ming.
In 1597, Japan renewed its offensive by invading Korea a second time. The pattern of the second invasion largely mirrored that of the first. The Japanese had initial successes on land, capturing several cities and fortresses, only to be halted and forced to withdraw to the peninsula's southern coastal regions. However, the pursuing Ming and Joseon forces were unable to dislodge the Japanese from these positions, where both sides again became locked in a ten-month-long military stalemate. The continued disruption of supply lines by the Joseon Navy, setbacks in land and sea battles, and their armies having been driven back to their network of wajō/waesong on the southern coastline, the Japanese forces in Korea were ordered to withdraw to Japan by the new governing Council of Five Elders. The Ming and Joseon forces enacted a blockade of Sunchon, one of the largest wajō. The Japanese navy then attempted to relieve the blockaded troops, which resulted in the devastating Battle of Noryang, the last and largest battle of the war, in which a combined fleet of mostly Chinese ships inflicted a crushing defeat on the Japanese, who lost about half of their navy in this battle, which including the death of Toyotomi Hideyoshi effectively ended the war.
Final peace negotiations between the parties followed, and continued for several years, ultimately resulting in the normalization of relations.
Names
In Korean, the first invasion is called the, where 1592 is an imjin year in the sexagenary cycle. The second invasion is called the. Collectively, the invasions are referred to as the "Imjin War".In Chinese, the wars are referred to as the "Wanli Korean Campaign", after the reigning Chinese emperor.
In Japanese, the war is called. Bunroku referring to the Japanese era name spanning the period from 1592 to 1596. The second invasion is called. During the Edo period, the war was also called, "entry into Tang", the dynasty whose name is synonymous with China.
Background
Japan and Korea before the war
In 1392, General Yi Sŏnggye led a successful coup to take political power in Korea from U of Goryeo. Seonggye's followers compelled him to take the throne as Taejo of Joseon, establishing a new dynasty. In search of justification for its rule, the new regime received recognition from and integration into the tributary system of China within the context of the Mandate of Heaven.Within this tributary system, China assumed the role of a "big brother", with Korea maintaining the highest position among the tributary states, which also included countries such as the Ryukyu Kingdom, Lan Xang, Đại Việt, and the Ayutthaya Kingdom, in return for accepting the subservient tributary role of a "younger brother".
Ming China and Joseon Korea had much in common. Both emerged during the 14th century after the end of the Yuan dynasty, embraced Confucian ideals in society, and faced similar threats, Both had competing internal political factions, which would influence decisions made before and during the war. Because of close trade and common enemies, Joseon and Ming China had a friendly alliance.
In 1402, the Ashikaga shogun, Ashikaga Yoshimitsu, was conferred the title of "King of Japan" by the Yongle Emperor of China. In 1404, he had Japan enter the Chinese tributary system. His successor, Ashikaga Yoshimochi, immediately left this system in 1408. Membership in the tributary system was a prerequisite for any economic exchange with China; by exiting, Japan relinquished its trade relationship with China.
Hideyoshi's preparations
By the last decade of the 16th century, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, the most preeminent daimyo, had unified all of Japan, bringing about a period of peace. Since he came to hold power in the absence of a legitimate successor of the Minamoto lineage necessary for the imperial shogun commission, he sought military power to legitimize his rule and to decrease his dependence on the imperial family. It is also suggested that Hideyoshi planned an invasion of China to fulfill the dreams of his late lord, Oda Nobunaga, and to keep his newly formed state united against a common enemy, mitigating the possible threat of civil disorder or rebellion posed by the large number of now-idle samurai and soldiers, and by ambitious daimyos who might have sought to usurp him.For thousands of years, China had been the intellectual, economic, military, and political center of East Asia, and traditionally, the states of East Asia had acknowledged the emperors of China as their overlords and paid tribute in exchange for being allowed to trade with China. By seeking to invade China, Hideyoshi was in effect attempting to claim for Japan the role traditionally played by China as the center of the East Asian international order. He rallied support in Japan as a man of relatively humble origins who owed his position to his military might.
Hideyoshi spoke not only of his desire to "slash his way" into Korea to invade China, but also the Philippines, and India. However, it's possible that Hideyoshi might have set a more realistic goal of only subjugating smaller neighbouring states and of treating larger or more distant countries as trading partners, as throughout the invasion of Korea, Hideyoshi sought legal tally trade with China. Japan's legal tribute missions to China, and hence their right to trade with China, had ceased by the mid-16th century and was replaced by Sino-Japanese smuggler-pirates known as the wokou.
Hideyoshi planned for a possible war with Korea long before he had completed the unification of Japan. As early as 1578, Hideyoshi, then fighting under Oda Nobunaga against Mōri Terumoto for control of the Chūgoku region, informed Terumoto of Nobunaga's plan to invade China. In 1585, Hideyoshi told the Portuguese Jesuit Father Gaspar Coelho of his wish to conquer all of East Asia. Hideyoshi asked Coelho to send a message to King Philip II of Spain, who was also King Philip I of Portugal, asking that he make his navy available to help Japan. However, Philip refused Hideyoshi, preferring not to upset China.
Beginning in March 1591, the Kyushu daimyos and their labor forces constructed Nagoya Castle in modern-day Karatsu, Saga, as the center for the mobilization of the invasion forces. In 1592, Hideyoshi sent a letter to the Philippines demanding tribute from the Spanish governor general and stating that Japan had already received tribute from Korea and the Ryukyus.
As for the military preparations, the construction of as many as 2,000 ships may have begun as early as 1586. To estimate the strength of the Korean military, Hideyoshi sent an assault force of 26 ships to the southern coast of Korea in 1587. On the diplomatic front, Hideyoshi began to establish friendly relations with China long before he had completed the unification of Japan. He also helped to police trade routes against the wokou.
Diplomatic dealings between Japan and Korea
In 1587, Hideyoshi sent his first envoy, Yutani Yasuhiro, to Korea, which was during the rule of King Seonjo, to re-establish diplomatic relations between Korea and Japan. Hideyoshi hoped to use this as a foundation to induce the Korean court to join Japan in a war against China. Yasuhiro, with his warrior background and an attitude disdainful of the Korean officials and their customs, failed to receive the promise of future ambassadorial missions from Korea.Around May 1589, Hideyoshi's second embassy, consisting of Sō Yoshitoshi, Yanagawa Shigenobu, and Buddhist monk Genso, reached Korea and secured the promise of a Korean embassy to Japan in exchange for a group of Korean rebels which had taken refuge in Japan.
In 1587, Hideyoshi had ordered the adopted father of Yoshitoshi and the daimyo of Tsushima Island, Sō Yoshishige, to offer the Joseon Dynasty an ultimatum of submitting to Japan and participating in the conquest of China, or facing the prospect of open war with Japan. However, as Tsushima Island enjoyed a special trading position as the single checkpoint to Korea for all Japanese ships and had permission from Korea to trade with as many as 50 of its own vessels, the Sō family had a vested interest in preventing conflict with Korea, and delayed the talks for nearly two years. Even when Hideyoshi renewed his order, Sō Yoshitoshi reduced the visit to the Korean court to a campaign to better relations between the two countries. Near the end of the ambassadorial mission, Yoshitoshi presented King Seonjo a brace of peafowl and matchlock guns—the first advanced firearms to come to Korea. Yu Sŏngnyong, a high-ranking scholar official, suggested that the military put the arquebus into production and use, but the Korean court failed to appreciate its merits. This lack of interest and underestimation of the power of the arquebus greatly contributed to the failures of the Korean army early in the war.
In April 1590, the Korean ambassadors, including Hwang Yun-gil and Kim Sŏngil, left for Kyoto, where they waited for two months while Hideyoshi was finishing his campaign against the Hojo clan. Upon his return, they exchanged ceremonial gifts and delivered King Seonjo's letter to Hideyoshi. Hideyoshi mistakenly assumed that the Koreans had come to pay a tributary homage to Japan. For this reason, the ambassadors were not given the formal treatment that was due to diplomatic representatives. In the end, the Korean ambassadors asked for Hideyoshi to write a reply to the Korean king, for which they waited 20 days at the port of Sakai. The letter, redrafted as requested by the ambassadors on the ground that it was too discourteous, invited Korea to submit to Japan and join in a war against China.
Upon the ambassadors' return, the Joseon court held serious discussions concerning Japan's invitation, while Hwang Yun-gil reported conflicting estimates of Japanese military strength and intentions. They nonetheless pressed that a war was imminent. Kim Sŏngil claimed that Hideyoshi's letter was nothing but a bluff. Moreover, the court, aware only that Japan was in turmoil with various clan armies fighting each other, substantially underrated the combined strength and abilities of many Japanese armies at the time. Some, including King Seonjo, argued that Ming should be informed about the dealings with Japan, as failure to do so could make Ming suspect Korea's allegiance, but the court finally concluded to wait further until the appropriate course of action became definite.
In the end, Hideyoshi's diplomatic negotiations did not produce the desired result with Korea. The Joseon court approached Japan as a country inferior to Korea, and saw itself as superior according to its favored position within the Chinese tributary system. It mistakenly evaluated Hideyoshi's threats of invasions to be no better than the common wokou Japanese pirate raids. The Korean court handed to Shigenobu and Genso, Hideyoshi's third embassy, King Seonjo's letter rebuking Hideyoshi for challenging the Chinese tributary system. Hideyoshi replied with another letter, but since it was not presented by a diplomat in person as expected by custom, the court ignored it. After this denial of his second request, Hideyoshi proceeded to launch his armies against Korea in 1592.