Articles
Hunting and Samurai Authority in Korea during the Imjin War of 1592–1598
Abstract
In 1591, as Toyotomi Hideyoshi prepared to invade Korea, he spent several weeks hunting in Mino and Owari provinces before returning to Kyoto with a spectacular parade displaying thousands of captured birds and other animals. The hunting of animals was a prominent feature of the Imjin War that followed as Hideyoshi’s generals killed tigers and wildfowl on the peninsula. The links between hunting and samurai identity in Japanese history are well known and have been explored by a number of scholars in rich detail. In this article, I turn to the question of what hunting by Japanese troops may have meant in Joseon Korea during the war. I argue that bushi attempted to assert their authority over captured Korean territory in the same way that they had traditionally done in Japan, and that hunting, and in particular falconry, played a role in this process. Hunting also served to reinforce the hierarchies of the Japanese military apparatus. However, these symbolic statements of authority did not translate well into the Korean context due to differences in the semiotic vocabulary of legitimate rulership between the two states. My analysis centers on a close reading of an Imjin War diary written by a retainer from Satsuma, supplemented by the official Korean government record Joseon wangjo sillok and a digitized collection of premodern Korean diaries.