Paper short abstract

This paper explores representations of Korean animals in classical Japanese literature, showing how such imagery—especially in the legend of Empress Jingū—shaped Japan’s perception of Korea through symbols of conquest and cultural imagination.

Paper long abstract

Classical Japanese literature contains various references to exchanges with Korea that have taken place since ancient times. In these stories, animals associated with Korea appear in various forms, including animals that Japanese people encountered when they went to the Korean peninsula, as well as animals that symbolized Korea in the Japanese archipelago. For example, the 13th century collection of Japanese stories, Uji Shūi Monogatari (A Collection of Tales from Uji) includes two stories about a powerful tiger that a merchant from Yamato encountered when he went to Silla, and suggests that tigers were a symbol of Korea in premodern Japan.

A similar pattern may be observed in the legend of Empress Jingū, who is said to have conquered Silla. In paintings depicting the empress, she is shown standing on a tiger rug, representing the subjugation of Silla. This legend resurfaced time and again in the context of Japan's wars of aggression against Korea, such as the Imjin War, and the nineteenth century “Chastisement of Korea debates” (Chōsen seibatsu ron). We may also observe other animal symbolism in the legends about Empress Jingū. Hachiman gudōkun (Teachings on Hachiman for Foolish Children, c.13th or 14th century), for example, ends with the phrase "The great king of Silla was a Japanese dog," which has had a significant influence on the Japanese view of Korea in later generations.

These examples speak to the way literature is used in war, and how people use images of animals to project onto foreigners when interacting with them. This presentation will analyze how animals associated with Korea were depicted in Japanese classical literature, focusing on the legend of Empress Jingū, and what role these animal symbols played in the historical Japanese perception of Korea.

Paper short abstract

This paper examines the actual and metaphorical aspects of Japanese imperial hunting policies and practices in colonial Korea, and how they impacted both human and non-human animal life.

Paper long abstract

Japan’s thirty-five-year period of imperial rule in Korea was of epochal significance to more than just homo sapiens. Japan’s “imperial hunting regime” succeeded in eradicating animal species deemed “harmful” to the colonial state but also failed to protect animals the state tried to preserve.

This paper focuses on Japan’s colonial hunting regulations that reshaped Korea’s nonhuman and human landscape. Japanese colonizers created systematic laws that inextricably altered pre-existing animal-human relationships. The hunting regime entailed not only the issuance of hunting licenses, the marginalization of Korean hunters, and temporal restraints on hunters in the form of hunting seasons. It also redefined hunters’ relationships to their animal quarry by defining what they could or could not kill. While some animal species were deemed off-limits to hunters, others were labelled “vermin” that could be pursued and killed at any time.

These policies had immense ecological consequences. Classification as “harmful animals” accelerated the eradication of Korea’s tigers, leopards, bears, and wolves. But even animals the regime tried to protect, such as the crane or gamebirds like pheasants, saw their numbers rapidly depleted because of poaching, habitat loss, and overhunting.

This paper will also examine the social dynamics and cultural expressions of this hunting regime. The shooting of wild animals became an expression of colonial masculinity by both hunters from the metropole and Japanese residents on the peninsula. Over a fifth of Japanese residents of Korea had hunting licenses. Few Koreans did. The Ryōyū (Hunting friend), the monthly magazine of the Greater Japan Hunters Association, portrayed Korea as a hunting paradise. Early on it may have been. But as hunting and habitat destruction decimated wildlife, photographs in the Ryōyū increasingly featured target shooting competitions rather than hunters displaying the profuse number of animals they had killed. Both scenes, though, conveyed colonial control.

Paper short abstract

This paper examines the significance of hunting (especially falconry) by Japanese troops in Korea during the Imjin War (1592-1598). Bushi attempted to assert their authority over captured territory through hunting but ultimately this did not culturally translate well into the Chosŏn Korean context.

Paper long abstract

Hunting featured prominently in Toyotomi Hideyoshi´s preparations for his invasions of Korea. He held a large hunt parade on the eve of his first invasion and took hundreds of falconers with him to his war headquarters in Hizen Nagoya. During the Imjin War (1592-1598) itself, Hideyoshi´s generals in Korea hunted tigers and wildfowl, sending captured prey back to Hideyoshi who remained in Japan. What was the meaning and function of hunting by Japanese troops in Chosŏn? Did Japanese warriors in Korea attempt to assert their authority over captured territory in the same way that they had traditionally done in Japan? What role did hunting play in this process, if any? Is it possible to assess how symbolic statements of authority might have been received and understood by the Korean population at the time? I use Japanese and Korean records to answer these questions.

My research reveals that – in contrast to the Japanese sources – Korean sources during the Imjin War devoted little attention to the hunting activities of the Japanese other than to express occasional disgust – a finding which is consistent with the work of recent researchers, who argue that hunting as an elite activity had lost prestige in Chosŏn Korea by the sixteenth century. Despite their efforts to articulate Japanese authority in Korea, Hideyoshi and his daimyo did not fully appreciate the differences between Korean and Japanese society. Hunting did serve to reinforce the hierarchies of the Japanese military itself, but the semiotic vocabulary of Japanese warrior authority they used to present themselves as rightful and benevolent overlords to the Korean populace did not culturally translate well into the Korean context.