This translation of Kang Hang's Kanyangnok, or The Record of a Shepard, composed between 1597 and 1618 and compiled after his death, narrates Kang's experience as a war prisoner in Japan during and immediately after the Imjin War (1591–98), Japan's massive and destructive invasion of Korea. Spurring Ming Chinese intervention to aid Korea, the invasion was a major land and sea war that witnessed “by far the largest number of [soldiers] fighting in the sixteenth century anywhere in the world” (p. x). Kang was a scholar official during the Chosŏn dynasty (1392–1910). Captured in 1597, he was taken back to Japan with several family members but escaped and returned to Korea in 1600.

Artfully translated and informatively annotated by Kenneth Robinson and JaHyun Kim Haboush, who passed away before its publication, A Korean War Captive in Japan, 1597–1600 contains an introduction, five chapters of translations (the last two including several appendixes), and a section of extensive notes. The lengthy introduction explicates the main text, the appendices, and a section on the information Kang collected on Japan, as well as a description of the map of the Japanese islands he smuggled back with him.

Chapter 1, “Encounters with the Adversities of War,” narrates his capture and escape. It opens with several large-scale battles between Chinese, Korean, and Japanese forces in 1597. As refugees fleeing the fighting, Kang and his family attempt to reach safer areas, traversing by boat because land routes were blocked. Along the way, he describes situations where countless civilians suffer. The Japanese kill many while others drowned at sea trying to escape. Having been captured and identified as a scholar, he is transported, along with thousands of others, to Japan, which he considered “a different world” (p. 6). Kang narrates his day-to-day encounters with the Japanese over the next three years. In his words, there were some “good Japanese” who treated him with kindness, such as random villagers or Buddhist monks, but many “had the faces of human beings, but hearts of beasts” (p. 7). After several failed attempts to escape, amid the changing political situation in Japan with the death of Hideyoshi and the rise of Tokugawa, he and his family leave Fushimi, where they were being held. With the assistance of Japanese guards and others, they return to Chosŏn.

The remaining chapters of the book expand upon his story of captivity. Chapter 2, “An Exhortation to Koreans Still Held Prisoner in Japan,” was written for the sake of the thousands of Koreans remaining in Japan, exhorting them to resist the barbarian Japanese and remain loyal to the civilized world. Chapter 3, “A Report to the Royal Secretariat on Japanese Social Practices,” reads like a travel narrative in its description of Japanese history, social life, and customs. Chapter 4, “A Memorial Sent from Captivity,” retells some of the story from chapter 1, but the appendices in this chapter analyze the war situation and make suggestions for improving Chosŏn defenses. Chapter 5, written by Kang's student, extols his “unswerving faithfulness” (p. 100) to Korea. Appendix 1, “The Eight Circuits and Sixty-Six Provinces of Japan,” summarizes the geography and productivity of the land, information that was otherwise unavailable in Korea.

Haboush and Robinson provide important context in the opening section to help readers understand the significance of this work. They interpret Kang's collection not merely as an informative record of warfare, captivity, and escape. To them, it depicts the emergence of a distinctly Korean identity. “Negative encounters” with the outsiders, they argue, drive the “discovery of the other, the reconsideration of self, and the emergence of a concept of home” (pp. x–xi). This self is defined through civilization (as opposed to ethnicity or nation) with geographical and cultural connotations, but it is also a notion “shared and sustained by all civilized persons, transcending regional and ethnic barriers” (p. xiii). They demonstrate this contradiction by pointing out that as a Confucian in a non-Confucian land, Kang considered Japan a barbarian world. However much he disdained his hosts, he nevertheless befriended many Japanese, some of whom helped his family return to Korea. Rather than simply a record by a POW who disdained the enemy and remained loyal to the king and the Confucian civilized world, the work celebrates a Korean who, during a destructive war in Northeast Asia, transcended the “inclusive idea of civilization” (p. xiv). “Today, Kang's importance is understood to lie in the intellectual connections he made with Japan at a time of suspicion and distrust between Chosŏn and Japan” (p. xiv). This framing proves productive, and the translators could have provided more background of the Imjin War, beyond one long paragraph. A longer narrative of the war from the Chosŏn perspective would have filled in many details for students about the war, something many textbooks lack.

A Korean War Captive in Japan, 1597–1600 should be a requirement for courses on Korean history and premodern East Asia. It provides an important primary source for students and scholars working in East Asian studies. Also, it will be of interest to students of conflict and migration. While taking place in premodern Korea, Kang's war narrative of hardship, refugees, and family separation will be familiar to twenty-first-century readers.