extending over the whole of eastern Asia and India. This contrast was accentuated two years later (1907) when France and Russia concluded ententes with Japan, recognizing the independence and integrity of the Chinese Empire, as well as the principle of equal opportunity for all nations in that country, and engaging to support each other for assuring peace and security there. Japan thus became a world power in the most unequivocal sense.
Japan’s Foreign Wars and Complications.—The earliest foreign war conducted by Japan is said to have taken place at the beginning of the 3rd century, when the empress Jingō led an army to the conquest of Korea. But as the War with Korea. event is supposed to have happened more than 500 years before the first Japanese record was written, its traditional details cannot be seriously discussed. There is, however, no room to doubt that from time to time in early ages Japanese troops were seen in Korea, though they made no permanent impression on the country. It was reserved for Hideyoshi, the taikō, to make the Korean peninsula the scene of a great over-sea campaign. Hideyoshi, the Napoleon of Japan, having brought the whole empire under his sway as the sequel of many years of incomparable generalship and statecraft, conceived the project of subjugating China. By some historians his motive has been described as a desire to find employment for the immense mob of armed men whom four centuries of almost continuous fighting had called into existence in Japan: he felt that domestic peace could not be permanently restored unless these restless spirits were occupied abroad. But although that object may have reinforced his purpose, his ambition aimed at nothing less than the conquest of China, and he regarded Korea merely as a stepping-stone to that aim. Had Korea consented to be put to such a use, she need not have fought or suffered. The Koreans, however, counted China invincible. They considered that Japan would be shattered by the first contact with the great empire, and therefore although, in the 13th century, they had given the use of their harbours to the Mongol invaders of Japan, they flatly refused in the 16th to allow their territory to be used for a Japanese invasion of China. On the 24th of May 1592 the wave of invasion rolled against Korea’s southern coast. Hideyoshi had chosen Nagoya in the province of Hizen as the home-base of his operations. There the sea separating Japan from the Korean peninsula narrows to a strait divided into two channels of almost equal width by the island of Tsushima. To reach this island from the Japanese side was an easy and safe task, but in the 56-mile channel that separated Tsushima from the peninsula an invading flotilla had to run the risk of attack by Korean war-ships. At Nagoya Hideyoshi assembled an army of over 300,000 men, of whom some 70,000 constituted the first fighting line, 87,000 the second, and the remainder formed a reserve to be subsequently drawn on as occasion demanded. The question of transport presented some difficulty, but it was solved by the simple expedient of ordering every feudatory to furnish two ships for each 100,000 koku of his fief’s revenue. These were not fighting vessels but mere transports. As for the plan of campaign, it was precisely in accord with modern principles of strategy, and bore witness to the daring genius of Hideyoshi. The van, consisting of three army corps and mustering in all 51,000 men, was to cross rapidly to Fusan, on the south coast of the peninsula, and immediately commence a movement northward towards the capital, Seoul, one corps moving by the eastern coast-road, one by the central route, and one by the western coast-line. Thereafter the other four corps, which formed the first fighting line, together with the corps under the direct orders of the commander-in-chief, Ukida Hideiye, were to cross, for the purpose of effectually subduing the regions through which the van had passed; and, finally, the two remaining corps of the second line were to be transported by sea up the west coast of the peninsula, to form a junction with the van which, by that time, should be preparing to pass into China over the northern boundary of Korea, namely, the Yalu River. For the landing place of these reinforcements the town of Phyong-yang was adopted, being easily accessible by the Taidong River from the coast. In later ages Japanese armies were destined to move twice over these same regions, once to the invasion of China, once to the attack of Russia, and they adopted almost the same strategical plan as that mapped out by Hideyoshi in the year 1592. The forecast was that the Koreans would offer their chief resistance, first, at the capital, Seoul; next at Phyong-yang, and finally at the Yalu, as the approaches to all these places offered positions capable of being utilized to great advantage for defensive purposes.
On the 24th of May 1592 the first army corps, under the command of Konishi Yukinaga, crossed unmolested to the peninsula; next day the castle of Fusan was carried by storm, which same fate befell, on the 27th, Landing In Korea and Advance of the Invaders. another and stronger fortress lying 3 miles inland and garrisoned by 20,000 picked soldiers. The invaders were irresistible. From the landing-place at Fusan to the gates of Seoul the distance is 267 miles. Konishi’s corps covered that interval in 19 days, storming two forts, carrying two positions and fighting one pitched battle en route. On the 12th of June the Korean capital was in Japanese hands, and by the 16th four army corps had assembled there, while four others had effected a landing at Fusan. After a rest of 15 days the northward advance was resumed, and July 15th saw Phyong-yang in Japanese possession. The distance of 130 miles from Seoul to the Taidong had been traversed in 18 days, 10 having been occupied in forcing the passage of a river which, if held with moderate resolution and skill, should have stopped the Japanese altogether. At this point, however, the invasion suffered a check owing to a cause which in modern times has received much attention, though in Hideyoshi’s days it had been little considered; the Japanese lost the command of the sea.
The Japanese idea of sea-fighting in those times was to use open boats propelled chiefly by oars. They closed as quickly as possible with the enemy, and then fell on with the trenchant swords which they used so skilfully. Fighting at Sea. Now during the 15th century and part of the 16th the Chinese had been so harassed by Japanese piratical raids that their inventive genius, quickened by suffering, suggested a device for coping with these formidable adversaries. Once allow the Japanese swordsman to come to close quarters and he carried all before him. To keep him at a distance, then, was the great desideratum, and the Chinese compassed this in maritime warfare by completely covering their boats with roofs of solid timber, so that those within were protected against missiles, while loop-holes and ports enabled them to pour bullets and arrows on a foe. The Koreans learned this device from the Chinese and were the first to employ it in actual warfare. Their own history alleges that they improved upon the Chinese model by nailing sheet iron over the roofs and sides of the “turtle-shell” craft and studding the whole surface with chevaux de frise, but Japanese annals indicate that in the great majority of cases solid timber alone was used. It seems strange that the Japanese should have been without any clear perception of the immense fighting superiority possessed by such protected war-vessels over small open boats. But certainly they were either ignorant or indifferent. The fleet which they provided to hold the command of Korean waters did not include one vessel of any magnitude; it consisted simply of some hundreds of row-boats manned by 7000 men. Hideyoshi himself was perhaps not without misgivings. Six years previously he had endeavoured to obtain two war-galleons from the Portuguese, and had he succeeded, the history of the Far East might have been radically different. Evidently, however, he committed a blunder which his countrymen in modern times have conspicuously avoided; he drew the sword without having fully investigated his adversary’s resources. Just about the time when the van of the Japanese army was entering Seoul, the Korean admiral, Yi Sun-sin, at the head of a fleet of 80 vessels, attacked the Japanese squadron which lay at anchor near the entrance to Fusan harbour, set 26 of the vessels on fire and dispersed the rest. Four other engagements ensued in rapid succession. The last and most important took place shortly after the Japanese troops had seized Phyong-yang. It
