Читать книгу A History of the Japanese People - Kikuchi Dairoku - Страница 105

By some learned historiographers the whole of the above account is pronounced a fiction. There was no such invasion of Korea, they say, nor does the narrative deserve more credit than the legend of the Argonauts or the tale of Troy. But that is probably too drastic a view. There can indeed be little doubt that the compilers of the Nihongi embellished the bald tradition with imaginary details; used names which did not exist until centuries after the epoch referred to; drew upon the resources of Chinese history for the utterances they ascribe to the Empress and for the weapons they assign to her soldiers, and were guilty of at least two serious anachronisms.

But none of these faults disfigures the story as told in the pages of the Kojiki, which was written before the Nihongi. It has always to be remembered that the compilers of the latter essayed the impossible task of adjusting a new chronology to events extending over many centuries, and that the resulting discrepancies of dates does not necessarily discredit the events themselves. It has also to be remembered that the same compilers were required to robe their facts in Chinese costume and that the consequent ill-fits and artificialities do not of necessity vitiate the facts. In the particular case under consideration did the Kojiki stand alone, little doubt would ever have been entertained about the reality of an armed expedition to Korea, under the Empress Jingo. The sober and unexaggerated narrative of that history would have been accepted, less only the miraculous portents which accompany it.

As to the date of the invasion, however, it must have remained obscure: the Kojiki's narrative furnishes one clue. According to Korean history, an apparently unimportant descent upon Sinra (Shiragi) took place in A.D. 219; a more serious one in 233, when the Japanese ships were burned and their crews massacred, and a still more formidable one in 249, when a Sinra statesman who had brought on the invasion by using insulting language towards the sovereign of Japan in presence of a Japanese ambassador, gave himself up to the Japanese in the hope of appeasing their anger. They burnt him, and proceeded to besiege Keumsyong, the Sinra capital, but were ultimately beaten off. "No less than twenty-five descents by Japanese on the Sinra coast are mentioned in Korean history in the first five centuries of the Christian era, but it is impossible to identify any one of them with Jingo's expedition." [Aston.] Nevertheless, modern Japanese historians are disposed to assign the Jingo invasion to the year 364, when Nai-mul ruled Shiragi, from which monarch's era tribute seems to have been regularly sent to Yamato. Indeed the pages of the Nihongi which deal with the last sixty years of Jingo's reign are devoted almost entirely to descriptions of incidents connected with the receipt of tribute and the advent or despatch of envoys. The chronology is certainly erroneous. In no less than four several cases events obviously the same are attributed by the Korean annals to dates differing from those of the Nihongi by exactly two cycles; and in one important instance the Japanese work assigns to A.D. 205 an occurrence which the Tongkan* puts in the year 418.

*Korean history. Its full title is Tong-kuk-lhong-kan.

Whichever annals be correct—and the balance sways in favour of the Korean so far as those protohistoric eras are concerned—"there can be no doubt that Japan, at an early period, formed an alliance with Paikche" (spoken of in Japan as "Kudara," namely, the regions surrounding the modern Seoul), "and laid the foundation of a controlling power over the territory known as Imna (or Mimana), which lasted for several centuries." [Aston.] One evidence of this control is furnished in the establishment of an office called uchi-tsu-miyake in addition to the chinju-fu already spoken of. From early times it had been customary in Japan that whenever any lands were acquired, a portion of them was included in the Imperial domain, the produce being thenceforth stored and the affairs of the estate managed at a miyake presided over by a mikoto-mochi. Thus, on the inclusion of certain Korean districts in Japan's dominions, this usage was observed, and the new miyake had the syllables uchi-tsu ("of the interior") prefixed to distinguish it as a part of Japan. It is on record that a mikoto-mochi was stationed in Shiragi, and in the days of Jingo's son (Ojin) the great statesman, Takenouchi-no-Sukune, took up his residence for a time in Tsukushi to assist this mikoto-mochi and the chinju-fu, should occasion arise. Modern Japanese historians describe this era as the first period of Japanese national development, for an almost immediate result of the oversea relations thus established was that silk and cotton fabrics of greatly improved quality, gold, silver, iron, implements, arts, and literature were imported in increasing quantities to the great benefit of civilization.