A Dragon’s Head and a Serpent’s Tail

As the regular reader of the blog might have worked out after all this time, I do like to do the research as well as as I can. As you might also have noticed, if you have cared to look, it is rather hard to find much in English on the Japanese invasion of Korea in 1592. That said, there is quite a lot more than there used to be, which was practically nothing when I first stated looking.

What there was was a few scraps in some of Turnbull’s books on the Samurai and the odd mention in some of the books of wider scope, such as Parker’s The Military Revolution. But, really, there was very little indeed. Not that that stopped your correspondent, of course, but it did slow him down a little.

Still, things have improved rather for those interested. There are a number of Ospreys which deal with the subject – one, a Campaign series is specifically about the invasion, while there are also titles about the later Chinese Empire, including the Ming, and, of course, lots about the Samurai. I have not seen anything much about the Koreans, admittedly, except what is in the campaign Osprey. Still, it is an awful lot more than there used to be.

So far as I can see, the final word on the subject in English is this book, which I have just read:

Swope, K. M., A Dragon’s Head and a Serpent's Tail: Ming China and the First Great Asian War 1592-1598, (2009, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman).

Swope, it would seem, is a scholar of Ming China and the book is something of a reworking of his research work as a graduate student on the three campaigns of the Ming in the 1590s. Two were against internal rebels, and the third campaign was the rescue of Korea from the barbarian pirates (such is how they were viewed by the Ming, anyway). The campaigns were all successful and Swope uses this fact to argue that the later Ming Empire was not so decadent and weak as previous historiography had suggested. After all, it did not really start to suffer until 1619.

Being modern military history we do not get a great deal about the actual battles and armies, certainly not blow-by-blow accounts of the actions or the weapons and deployment of the armies. There is considerable consideration of the strategies adopted by the sides and also of the logistical nightmare fighting in Korea turned into.

I suppose that the overall trajectory of the war is known to many if not most, wargamers. The Japanese landed near Pusan and ran through Korea like a hot knife through butter. Pusan fell on 14 April, Seoul on 5^th May and Pyongyang on 15 June. The defence was, sadly, marred by incompetence and cowardice by some commanders and huge bravery, death and defeat by others. But by their arrival at Pyongyang in June, the Japanese commanders were actually rather worried as they were already overstretched and their supply lines were tenuous.

The situation was made worse by the Korean navy which attacked the Japanese fleet, sinking loads of ships and winning victories, to which the Japanese did not have too much of an answer. The other problem was that the Korean navy also denied the Japanese access to the western coast of Korea, which they could have used to supply and reinforce their forces. The Japanese had to hold their ships back to keep supply lines to Japan open.

Korea was under the hegemony of China, and it was to the Ming court that they appealed for aid. It was a bit slow in getting going, because of the other campaigns mentioned above, and the Ming initially underestimated the problem. However, when they did get moving it was in large numbers and with a decent logistical provision, and rolled the Japanese quite quickly back to the environs of Pusan.

There then followed a period of negotiations. To be honest, this was a bit confusing as everyone in the negotiating teams, on all sides, seemed to have their own agendas. Various agreements were put forward and all were rejected by someone along the line. Eventually, the Ming offered to recognise Hideyoshi as king of Japan, which did not go down at all well and caused the war to resume. The Japanese tried to be a bit more careful this time but had not quite reached Seoul when the Ming hit back and pushed them back towards Pusan. The Japanese seem to have decided and begun to evacuate when Hideyoshi died, and that was pretty well the end of the matter, militarily at least.

The Japanese also had to deal with a mass revolt of the Koreans, led mainly by Buddhist monks, which caused no end of problems to their lines of communication, and I should mention that both sides carried out rather hideous atrocities against the civilian population, although the Japanese generally get the blame (probably correctly) for a good number of them.

It is a good book, a nice summary of the war and probably as good as we are going to get in English. If you read Japanese, Chinese or Korean the bibliography suggests that there is a feast of both primary and secondary literature to enjoy, however.

Swope finishes with a consideration of the impact of the war on relations in the Far East, observing that the Japanese occupied Korea between 1910 and 1945, which was regarded by some as the extension, or final victory, in the war. It still is an issue in the diplomacy of the region, as are, of course, more recent catastrophic wars.

The wargaming possibilities are rife, I feel. A Japanese army got as far as the Manchu lands north-west of Korea and skirmished with Jurchen tribes. Some captured or surrendered Japanese units served the Ming in south-west China. Hideyoshi, of course, aimed not just at capturing Korea, but invading China, overthrowing the Ming, becoming emperor and, it was reported, aiming at capturing India as well. Now that would be some campaign. I am considering it, but China had, apparently, 400 provinces, so he may have slightly underestimated the task.