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King Kwang-Gae-To's Stele

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King Kwang-Gae-To's Stele EAST ASIAN HISTORY: A KOREAN PERSPECTIVE Vol. 2. No. 6. 2005. 5. 14. 1 IC-7.S-A.-0514 King Kwang-gae-to’s Stele YAMATO SOLIDEIRS IN THE KOREAN PENINSULA Wontack Hong Professor, Seoul University THE SEVEN-BRANCHED SWORD The Seven-branched Sword, that is preserved at the Isono-kami Shrine, is believed to be the sword that is spoken of in Nihongi as having been sent by the Paekche court to the Jingū’s court in 372.1 Nihongi portrays Prince Homuda as a son of Jingū Regent and the heir apparent to the throne at that time. According to the Nihongi record for the year 366, the Paekche court had dispatched scouts to a Kaya state in 364 to gather information about the passages to the Japanese islands. The movement of the Paekche people to the Japanese islands 奈良縣 天理市 石上神宮 七支刀 must have occurred not long after 366. According to the Nihongi record on the extensive pen/insular military activities in 399-70 involving the Yamato soldiers, Paekche generals, King Keun Chogo and the Crown Prince Keun Kusu, Prince Homuda [the founder of the Yamato kingdom] and his followers seem to have departed the Korean peninsula sometime during 369-70. The sword seems to have been bestowed upon Homuda who was undertaking the conquest of the Japanese islands, apparently as a symbolic gesture of well-wishing for his 1 神功皇后 攝政五十二年 秋九 endeavor and solidarity with his new kingdom. The inscription on the Seven-branched Sword says that the sword was 月 丁卯朔丙子 久氐等...則獻 manufactured in May 369, and the Nihongi record says that the 七枝刀一口 (NI: 359) sword was delivered to Homuda on September 10th, 372, most 2 THE SEVEN-BRANCHED SWORD Vol. 2. No. 6. 2005. 5. 14. likely soon after he had landed on the Japanese islands. Taking 2 石上神宮七支刀銘文 account of the fact that so many people from the Korean 泰□四年□月十六日丙午正陽造 peninsula had already gone across the sea to settle down in the 百練鐵七支刀 生辟百兵 宜供供 Japanese islands, an official evidence to testify visually the 侯王 □□□□作 先世以來未有 mandate of the Paekche court bestowed upon Homuda as the 此刀 百慈王世□奇生聖音 故 ruler of the new kingdom was presumably expected to enhance 爲倭王旨造 傳示後世 the cooperation of the old settlers and facilitate the conquest. See Hong (1994: 251-4). King Keun Cho-go died in 375. The full translation of the inscription on the sword 3 Ueda Masaaki (quoted by Saeki, th th may be read as follow: “On May 16 , the 4 year of Tae-hwa 1977) is rather an exception [369], the day of Byung-O at noon, this seven-branched sword among Japanese historians was manufactured with hundred-times-wrought iron. As this because he “has maintained that sword has a magical power to rout the enemy, it is sent the Seven-branched Sword was [bestowed] to the king of a vassal state. Manufactured by ‘bestowed’ on the Wa ruler by the □□□□ . Never has there been such a sword. The Crown king of Paekche.” Ueda “based his Prince of Paekche, who owes his life to the august King, had interpretation on the argument this sword made for the king of Yamato [or the king of vassal that the term ‘koo’ [howang] 2 state]. Hope that it be transmitted and shown to posterity.” appearing in the inscription is Naturally, most Japanese scholars have tried to turn written in the commanding tone the inscription around and cast Paekche as the “vassal state” by of a superior addressing an reading the inscription “respectively presenting the sword to inferior, exemplified by the the Emperor by the Paekche King.” 3 sentence reading ‘Hand down [this The Paekche court at first seems to have treated Homuda as the king of a vassal state, as was inscribed on the sword] to [your] posterity.’” Seven-branched Sword. King Chinsa (385-392), a son of Keun 4 應神 三年 是歲 百濟辰斯王 Kusu, in particular, seems to have treated Homuda as inferior 立之失禮於貴國 天皇故遣...嘖 to himself. According to Nihongi, Homuda dispatched four 讓其无禮狀 由是 百濟國殺辰斯 generals to Paekche and severely reprimanded Chinsa in 392 王以謝之 for such unwarranted treatment, which perhaps came to be (NI: 365) inscribed in the Kwang-gae-to’s epitaph as “Wa coming in the 5 應神 八年 百濟人來朝… year 391.”4 Homuda also reproved severely the new king Asin 百濟記云 阿花王立无禮於貴國 (392-405), a grandson of Keun Kusu, in 397 (or in 396) for 故奪我…侵…東韓之地 (NI: 367) such an attitude. 5 I speculate that Homuda, the founder of the Yamato kingdom, and Keun Kusu, the Crown Prince and later Nihongi quotes the Paekche King of Paekche, belonged to the same generation, possibly Shinsen which states that King with some age difference, and hence Homuda could not stand Kaero sent his younger brother such unwarranted attitude of young Paekche kings of the later Konji to the Yamato court to wait generation. upon the Heavenly King Paekche had managed to maintain the upper hand [Yūryaku] and “to confirm the THE SIN-MYO RECORD OF KING KWANG-GAE-TO’S STELE Vol. 2. No. 6. 2005. 5.14. 3 friendship of big brother King.” militarily against Koguryeo until September 390 (when King Chinsa let General Jin Kamo capture a Koguryeo castle and 雄略 五年夏四月 百濟加須利君 200 prisoners), but the appearance of King Kwang-gae-to the 蓋鹵王也 百濟新撰云 辛丑年 Great (391-413) in Koguryeo completely reversed Paekche’s 蓋鹵王遣弟昆支君 向大倭 侍天王 fortunes in the battlefield.6 King Asin belatedly recognized the 以脩兄王之好也 (NI: 471) urgent necessity, for the very survival of Paekche, of the help from the new Yamato kingdom still fresh in its conqueror’s 6 三國史記 百濟本紀 第三 辰斯 vigor. King Asin decided to send his crown prince Chonji to 王 六年九月 王命達率 眞嘉謨 the Yamato court in 397 in order to transform the 伐高句麗 拔都坤城 虜得二百人 unnecessarily created ill will between the two courts into an active alliance.7 The inscription of Kwang-gae-to’s stele 7 應神 八年 是以遣王子直支 suggests that the efforts by Asin and Chonji were apparently 于天朝 以脩先王之好也(NI: 367) successful. The Koguryeo army led by King Kwang-gae-to devastated Paekche in 392 and 396, but later saw as valiant 8 廣開土王碑文 百殘 新羅 舊 warriors the Yamato soldiers fighting alongside of the Paekche 是屬民 由來朝貢 而倭以辛卯年 soldiers in 400 and also in 404. 來 渡海破百殘 任 羅 加 羅 以 爲臣民 以六年丙申 王躬率水 KING KWANG-GAE-TO’S EPITAPH: CORRECT TRANSLATION 軍 討伐殘國… 而殘主困逼獻出 The story that Japan had a unified and powerful state 男女生口一千人 細布千匹 跪王 as early as the third or fourth century, possessed a colony called 自誓 從今以後 永爲奴客 太王 Mima-na on the southern peninsula, and controlled Paekche 恩赦始 迷之愆 錄其後順之誠 and Silla used to be based on the anachronistic and incoherent 於是得五十八城 村七百 將殘 bits and pieces of episodes and fantasies recorded in Kojiki 主弟幷大臣十人 旋師還都 and Nihongi. There are, of course, no records which suggest any such possibility in any Korean or Chinese chronicles. The King Kwang-gae-to’s stele Nonetheless, the Japanese made a discovery in 1882 which was erected by his son, King could be viewed as an objective support for their claim. It is a Chang-su (413-91), in 414 in single line in the inscription on the epitaph of King Kwang- commemoration of his gae-to, a copy of which was brought to Japan by Sakao predecessor. Kagenobu, an army officer and intelligence agent of the Japanese General Staff Office. This is the famous Sin-myo (391) 9 In Sin-myo record, there are Record. Japanese historians interpret the line of inscription in three missing letters between the the following fashion: “Since the year of Sin-myo, Wa came and word “Paekche” and the letter crossed over the sea, and conquered Paekche, Imna and Silla, “ra(la).” Indeed it is a real curiosity and thereby made them [Wa’s] subject.” This translation that most Japanese scholars could constitutes the so-called unshakable “evidence” in support of simply fill up the missing three the dogma of almost every Japanese historian working on this letters following Paekche to make period that the Yamato kingdom had already existed in the them read “Imna, Silla.” First of fourth century as a unified and powerful state, and furthermore all, no one can ever deny that the had militarily controlled (or even colonized) South Korea. 8 4 PAEKCHE USING THE YAMATO SOLDIERS Vol. 2. No. 6. 2005. 5. 14. According to Hatada (1979): “Prewar [Japanese] Sin-myo Record (391) was inserted history textbooks were based on the records of the Nihon to justify the invasion of Paekche, shoki and said that Japan had controlled ancient Korea, not Silla, by King Kwang-gaw-to whereas postwar texts were based on the King Kwang-gae-to in 396. The following inscriptions stele inscription, but still accepted Japan’s control of Korea. clearly state that Koguryeo and Thus the basis for the view that Japan had controlled Korea Silla maintained a friendly moved from an unreliable ancient chronicle to the reliable stele relationship, that Koguryeo never inscription. Though the history texts written after the surrender invaded Silla but rather helped it were vastly different from their prewar counterparts, in this one to repulse Wa troops, and hence respect there was no change, and King Kwang-gae-to’s stele Silla did not have to be implicated was the basis of the argument.” in the official excuse for the According to Ledyard (1975), Paekche “came under invasion carried out in 396. heavy and continuous battering from their Koguryeo cousins in Indeed, a later line of the the north, and were quite severely in trouble during the 390’s inscription for the year 400 and 400’s.
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