Friday, Jan.20, 4:30 to 6:30pm, CWAC156
Art, War, and Hideyoshi: The 1596 Ming Investiture of a King of Japan and an East Asian Diplomatic Disaster
Elizabeth Lillehoj
Professor of the Department of History of Art & Architecture at DePaul University
The largest war anywhere in the world in the sixteenth century was the Sino-Japanese-Korean War. It began in 1592 when Japanese forces serving under Toyotomi Hideyoshi invaded Korea, where they were met by allied Joseon and Ming armies. The war resulted in horrific destruction to Joseon culture. Libraries were looted, religious centers razed, treasured heritage destroyed. Tens of thousands of Koreans were abducted and many more died. Not only were Koreans victimized, but Chinese defenders also paid a terrible price for intervening to save their neighbor and vassal state. Recent research reveals that Japan suffered a great loss, as well, a fact that few Edo-period sources acknowledged.
Many important documents on the Sino-Japanese-Korean War have been overlooked because they are images not texts. Yet, paintings, printed books, garments, and other works of visual culture tell us a great deal about the war and the diplomacy meant to end it. Several particularly meaningful works reveal the perspectives of the combatants—perspectives so disparate that rulers were deceived and diplomacy completely failed. Among these works are two portrait paintings with potent ideological messages, one capturing the Japanese warlord Hideyoshi and the other depicting Ming Emperor Wanli. Another significant but lost painting documents diplomatic efforts: Soga Chokuan’s Goshawk, which bears an inscription dated 1596 by Yang Fangheng, the deputy Ming investiture envoy. Yang had arrived in Japan during a truce to secure peace, and it is said that he nearly lost his life when Hideyoshi realized that the Ming investiture did not confer upon him the spoils of war he expected.
Also central to the story of Ming diplomacy are investiture robes and handscrolls with appointments from Wanli presented to Hideyoshi to install him as King of Japan and thus signifying his status below the Ming emperor. Hideyoshi was duped; he thought the envoys had arrived to concede a Ming loss in the war. Soon he learned that the envoys had just pronounced his vassalage to the Ming emperor. The diplomats who arranged the truce had lied to both Hideyoshi and Wanli in their attempt to settle the costly military engagement. Although the Ming envoys escaped with their heads, Hideyoshi immediately ordered a resumption of hostilities and Korea was plunged into carnage once again. The war only ended in 1598 with Hideyoshi’s death and Japan’s withdrawal from Korea.
After the demise of Hideyoshi, the purpose and nature of his campaign was obscured—whitewashed, really—but in the late eighteenth century scenes of the war were published in printed pages of the Taikōki (Chronicles of the Regent Hideyoshi), with a romanticized focus on the heroism of Hideyoshi’s generals. About the same time, a number of shrine tablets was painted with scenes of ancient Empress Jingū launching her legendary invasion of Korea, a theme Hideyoshi had employed as a call to arms in the 1590s. One such tablet, from the early nineteenth century, retells for late Edo-period audiences the tale of Jingū’s aggression, glorifying the samurai ethic associated with Hideyoshi and pairing it with a notion of sacred imperial authority.
Artworks can tell us things that written documents do not in visually representing the state of East Asian relations in the sixteenth century, along with constructed memory of the Sino-Japanese-Korean War. More than mere reflections of the war, artworks helped to build the conceptual platform based on which the seven-year war was fought.
Friday, Jan.20, 4:30 to 6:30pm, CWAC156
Persons with concerns regarding accessibility please contact Zhiyan Yang (zhiyan@uchicago.edu)
