Joseon Scholars and Japanese Samurai, by Yuji Hosaka

Yuji Hosaka graduated from the University of Tokyo and earned graduate degrees at Korea University. He became a South Korean citizen in 2003 and is known for his work on Korea–Japan relations at Sejong University.

His public work on issues between the two countries has made him familiar to many readers in South Korea.

Joseon Scholars and Japanese Samurai

Hosaka knows both countries well enough to bring together two figures that may seem unlikely to belong in the same book: the Joseon seonbi, or Confucian scholar, and the Japanese samurai.

How Hosaka came to study Korea

Hosaka had been interested in ethnic Koreans active in sports and entertainment in Japan. Learning about the assassination of Empress Myeongseong led him to take up the history of relations between the two countries.

He moved to Seoul to pursue his studies and earned a master’s degree and doctorate in political science and diplomacy at Korea University.

The scholar and the warrior

The comparison begins with two influential groups and the duties they were expected to live up to.

What did it mean to be a seonbi?

Hosaka quotes the scholar Gwon Geun on what a seonbi could do in different circumstances. In public office, he could put his principles into practice. Away from office, he could earn his living honorably by farming. The later scholar Yi I, known as Yulgok, considered the question in Dongho Mundap.

• Yi I argued that personal cultivation was meant to benefit others through public service. Retirement to the countryside was a defensible choice if there was no opportunity to serve or no way to act on one’s convictions in office.

What did it mean to be a samurai?

The samurai developed out of Japan’s warrior class. The book introduces Taira no Masakado, a military figure of the mid-Heian period, as an early example.

Hosaka compares the moral ideals associated with the warriors to those of the seonbi. The images of a brush and a sword capture the different forms their duties took.

Warriors in the age of civil conflict could change allegiance. Hosaka connects later changes in their ideals in part to the spread of Joseon Neo-Confucian learning after the Japanese invasions of Korea in the 1590s.

He argues that some ideals associated with the warrior class subsequently came to resemble those of the Joseon scholar.

Duty to family and loyalty to one’s lord

One distinction Hosaka draws is a difference in emphasis. He sees filial duty as particularly important in the ideal of the seonbi, and loyalty to one’s lord as particularly important in the ideal of the samurai.

Where did the seonbi come from?

The figure of the learned man predates Joseon. Hosaka traces a turning point to An Hyang, the Goryeo scholar who helped introduce Neo-Confucian learning from China. The tradition sought to understand the order of the world and what that order meant for human conduct.

Where did Japan’s warriors come from?

The book traces the warrior class to several sources. Among them were people who took up arms to protect land and property in the Heian period. The later rise of Toyotomi Hideyoshi, who led the invasions of Korea, provides another example of a military career that began outside the highest ranks.

A second route ran through provincial government. Some officials of middling court rank stayed in the provinces instead of returning to Kyoto, building local ties and becoming leaders in their own right.

The influence of Yi Hwang and Seong Hon in Japan

The invasions of the 1590s provide a particularly difficult setting for the movement of ideas. Among the learning that reached Japan at the time were works of Joseon Neo-Confucianism.

Hosaka emphasizes the influence of Yi Hwang’s writing on the relationship between principle and material force. Some of the books taken from Korea found readers among Japanese scholars.

It is unsettling to consider those books’ reception alongside the suffering and plunder that brought them there.

Joseon’s diplomatic missions to Japan

Joseon sent diplomatic delegations to Japan at the request of the Japanese side. The missions renewed diplomatic ties and also created opportunities for cultural exchange.

The envoys sometimes drew crowds, a reception that calls to mind the following that Korean performers have in Japan today.

Some Japanese admirers showed the envoys verses in literary Chinese and asked for corrections. Others wanted to hear them recite a poem. Those encounters explain why the comparison with the Korean Wave came to mind.

How should we judge Joseon’s strength?

When I first learned Korean history, the accounts of war and pressure from outside could leave the impression that Joseon seldom acted on its own terms.

The Japanese invasions of the 1590s and the Qing invasion of the 1630s were especially painful episodes.

The closer I look, the harder it is to sum up the dynasty by those defeats alone.

The state endured both conflicts, in part through the efforts of ordinary people who had to keep their communities going. Their capacity to recover deserves a place in the account.

Surviving a disaster is one measure of strength, even if it rarely makes for a triumphant story.

Neo-Confucianism as philosophy

When I first studied history, Neo-Confucianism struck me as a pursuit rather removed from practical life, a subject for men who could afford to devote themselves to it.

I have come to see more in it. Joseon was home to a sustained philosophical debate about the relation between how the world works and how a person ought to live.

A way into Japanese history

The comparison also introduces a considerable amount of Japanese history. The argument is easier to follow if you already know something about the political changes on both sides of the sea.

The scholar and the warrior offer two ways into the history of societies that had much to do with one another and developed different ideals of public life.

Book details

Joseon Scholars and Japanese Samurai

Author

Yuji Hosaka

Published

June 22, 2007

ISBN13

9788934925774

View the book on YES24

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