On May 23, 1592, the first elements of a Japanese invasion force consisting of roughly 160,000 men began landing at Pusan on the southeast Korean coast. The Japanese warlord Hideyoshi, having reunified the home islands following a period of profound internal fragmentation, boasted that he would next conquer China. If the Koreans refused to provide assistance, his attack would start with Korea. By June 11, the Japanese had entered Seoul, and, as the Korean king evacuated his capital, the city's few remaining residents hurled garbage and insults at his retreating figure. Yet Korean guerrilla forces soon rallied, Ming China sent military assistance, and by 1598, the Japanese had been forced to withdraw.
Kenneth M. Swope labels these events the “First Great East Asian War”—a label that Swope assumes readers will recognize as a reference to the wartime Japanese term for World War II in the Pacific. Swope identifies Hideyoshi's invasion as “the single largest military conflict in the world during the sixteenth century,” and notes that “one would be hard pressed to find another four-hundred-year-old conflict anywhere in the world with as much contemporary visibility” (pp. 4–5). Despite its significance, I would still quibble with designating it the “first.” The seventh-century wars on the Korean peninsula also involved all of the major East Asian powers of the day, and were not only chronologically earlier but arguably of greater long-term consequence, as they resulted in the first unification of Korea, ended Japanese ambitions on the continent for a millennium, and probably helped stimulate the early development of the Japanese imperial state. If the dynastic histories are to be believed, they also involved more troops. By contrast, the outcome of Hideyoshi's failed sixteenth-century invasion does not appear to have done more than freeze the status quo, and perhaps encourage subsequent Korean and Japanese isolationism. Yet, in foreshadowing World War II and planting attitudes that endure to the present day, Hideyoshi's 1592 invasion does merit attention.
Hideyoshi's plan to conquer China, relocate the Japanese emperor to Beijing, and establish himself as retired regent in Ningbo (p. 67) is not as farfetched as it may initially sound, although we may wonder how serious Hideyoshi really was about it. Just a few years later, in 1644, another non-Chinese group from beyond the Great Wall, the Manchus, actually did strike south, relocate their emperors to Beijing, and successfully rule China for centuries. This was not yet the age of nation-states, and the traditional Chinese Mandate of Heaven was awarded by an impartial Heaven, without any permanent favorites. Swope may go too far, however, in suggesting that this is somehow confirmation of subconscious Japanese participation in a China-centered tributary system, in which “status and legitimation … could only be conferred by the Chinese” (p. 184). The Japanese, at times, might fancy themselves at the summit of a Chinese-style tributary system, and trade and diplomacy with China might need to be couched, on the Chinese side, in the rhetoric of tribute, but the legitimation of authority within Japan had not been derived from China since the dawn of Japanese history, and Hideyoshi's ambition to conquer China does not imply otherwise.
Without being overtly partisan, Swope's approach comes mainly from a Chinese perspective, and it is the Chinese participants who come most fully alive. Much of the book also, perhaps inevitably, consists of narrative battle accounts. These are often quite interesting, though. In particular, it is notable that the Chinese and Koreans ultimately prevailed primarily thanks to heavier Ming artillery, and to control over the sea lanes. The fore-and-aft arrangement of Korean and Chinese sails made their boats more maneuverable than the square-rigged Japanese (p. 119), and the pioneering Korean ironclad “turtle boats” are, of course, justly famous. Swope also notes, ironically, that both the Ming and Chosŏn Korea had built up their navies in the late sixteenth century precisely in reaction to earlier Japanese piracy (pp. 275–76).
In the end, the Sino-Korean forces also attained numerical advantage. By early 1598, the allies had perhaps 140,000 men in the field against a Japanese troop strength that by then had declined to 75,000 (pp. 264, 266). The threat of almost limitless Chinese manpower resources may have finally proved decisive, too. When a Chinese commander ordered the mobilization of a 700,000-man armada and “leaked” the news to the Japanese, it encouraged the Japanese to end offensive operations—even though the Ming dynasty actually was incapable of dispatching such a huge force! (p. 249). The popular legend that it was only Hideyoshi's death that saved Korea is untrue: Hideyoshi himself made the final decision to withdraw (p. 266).
Perhaps the most valuable contribution of this excellent new book is its “revisionist study of the Wanli Emperor and his important role in overseeing the Ming military revival of the late sixteenth century” (p. xi). For readers familiar with Ray Huang's portrait of a Kafkaesque late Ming officialdom and a hapless Wanli emperor “who actually carried on a strike against his own bureaucrats over a long period of time” (1587, a Year of No Significance: The Ming Dynasty in Decline [New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1981], 75), it will come as some surprise to find the Wanli emperor here vigorously and effectively responding to the Japanese challenge in Korea, and playing a “pivotal” role in the “remarkable” reinvigoration of the Ming military between the years 1570 and 1610 (pp. 22, 125). This is a persuasive and healthy corrective voice. Swope's book is recommended reading.
