Discourses of Nation: Tensions in Early Modern Korea-Japan Relations The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citation Cho, Ilsoo David. 2017. Discourses of Nation: Tensions in Early Modern Korea-Japan Relations. Doctoral dissertation, Harvard University, Graduate School of Arts & Sciences. Citable link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:41142069 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA Discourses of Nation: Tensions in Early Modern Korea-Japan Relations A dissertation presented by Ilsoo David Cho to The Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the subject of History and East Asian Languages Harvard University Cambridge, Massachusetts May 2017 © 2017 Ilsoo David Cho All rights reserved. Dissertation Advisor: Carter J. Eckert Ilsoo David Cho Discourses of Nation: Tensions in Early Modern Korea-Japan Relations Abstract This dissertation reframes the patterns of interaction between Korean and Japanese officials and scholars of the early modern period as a clash and conflict driven by what historian Eric Hobsbawm (1917–2012) referred to as “proto-nationalism,” pre-modern forms of political bonds and identities that may have contributed to the swift rise of modern nationalism as a powerful political force in the modern era. Working primarily through the prism of intellectual history, this dissertation shows that contentious Korea-Japan debates over civilization, mountains, military power, and ancient history, including both direct interactions as well as behind-the- scenes transmissions of ideas through books, not only highlighted the profound differences between the two countries’ proto-national identities, but also worked to strengthen them in response. In conclusion, this dissertation also argue that this long history of proto-nationalist contentions in the early modern period, defined here as the period between the early seventeenth century and mid-nineteenth century, also provides a broad historical context in the rise of Japanese interventionism in Korea during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. iii Table of Contents Abstract...........................................................................................................................................iii Table of Contents............................................................................................................................iv Acknowledgments............................................................................................................................v Introduction......................................................................................................................................1 Proto-nationalism in Korea and Japan.................................................................................1 Historiography of Korea-Japan Relations..........................................................................26 Sources and outline............................................................................................................34 Chapter 1: Debating Civilization: Korea and Japan’s Places in the World...................................38 Civilizing the Japanese......................................................................................................48 In Defense of Japanese Civilization...................................................................................67 The Empire of Japan, the Kingdom of Korea....................................................................78 Chapter 2: Paektusan and Fujisan.................................................................................................98 Mountains in Korea and Japan.........................................................................................103 Fujisan versus Paektusan................................................................................................114 The Korean Origins of Japan, the Japanese Domination of Korea..................................119 Chapter 3: Equestrian Riders and Toyotomi Hideyoshi..............................................................125 Korean Equestrian Riders in Japan..................................................................................128 Toyotomi Hideyoshi Revisted.........................................................................................135 Chapter 4: Your Myth, My History: The Silla Invasion of Japan...............................................155 Hy!kk!se and Empress Jing"..........................................................................................157 Making of a Legend: The Silla Invasion of Japan...........................................................170 Chapter 5: Reaffirmation of the Nihon shoki: Motoori Norinaga’s Exegesis..............................182 Dissension of Worldview.................................................................................................184 Reaffirmation of the Nihon shoki.....................................................................................207 Concluding Remarks....................................................................................................................246 Bibliography................................................................................................................................266 Primary Sources...............................................................................................................266 Secondary Sources...........................................................................................................274 iv Acknowledgements Graduate school has been a decade-long haul, and I have many people to thank for. I first and foremost thank my dissertation committee, in alphabetical order, Professors Carter Eckert, Mark Elliott, David Howell, and Sun Joo Kim. I have learned a great deal from each of them. They have inspired me through their work and by being models of first-rate scholars. I thank them for their time and effort spent in working with a student whose abilities lag behind students they typically get at Harvard. I particularly thank my advisor, Professor Carter J. Eckert, who I not only got to know as an exceptional academic but even better person. I will forever cherish the conversations we have had over the past decade and hope to apply some of the things I learned from him down the road. Professor Sun Joo Kim was practically a co-advisor in every way. A mother-like figure for many of the students studying Korea in our department, she was a forgiving-yet-incisive mentor who continuously guided me through my meandering journey through graduate school. I also thank the librarians. I have been most fortunate to had the opportunity to do my graduate work at Harvard, and my access to its unparalleled library system was one of its main perks. I thank in particular librarians Mikyung Kang and Kuniko McVey of the Harvard-Yenching Library for their help over the years. I have sent them a lot of emails searching for books and journals not on the catalog, and they have been unbelievable in their help. I also spent a lot of time working with materials gleaned from various libraries in the United States, Korea, and Japan. I thank all the librarians there for their assistance. I am grateful for the institutional and financial support I received over the years. I thank the Harvard Korea Institute for its generous institutional and financial support over the past decade. I have received much-appreciated summer grants from the Reischauer Institute and Fairbank Center for intensive summer language study in 2009 and 2010. The Korea Foundation was munificent in supporting me during the dissertation research phase. In addition to my teachers at Harvard, I have been intellectually stimulated by a number of tremendous scholars, and looking back, my dissertation would not exist without having read them. Their names are listed in the alphabetical order: Joseph A. Adler, Peter K. Bol, Martina Deuchler, John Duncan, Fukaya Katsumi , Caspar Hirschi, Katsurajima Nobuhiro , Kim Ch!nghak , Kim P!m , Kim Sid!k , K#noshi Takamitsu , Bruce Lincoln, David Lurie, Mark McNally, Maruyama Masao , No My!ngho !, Herman Ooms, James B. Palais, Pak H$iby!ng , Sat! Hiroo , Andre Schmid, Jaeyoon Song ", Ronald Toby, Edward Wagner, Watanabe Hiroshi , Yasumaru Yoshio , and Yun Insuk . I have not had the chance to meet most of them, but they have truly changed me as an aspiring scholar through their works. I thank them all. v I thank the friends who I got to know living in Ann Arbor, Boston, and New York. I thank my family. I particularly thank my parents and parents-in-law for their unwavering faith in me. I give the most important thanks to my loving wife, Jungmin Han. I could not have finished this without her. Lastly, I dedicate this dissertation to my maternal grandmother and her fight against the Alzheimer’s disease. Until recently, I was able to visit her and talk to her on every trip to Korea. Almost nothing breaks my heart more than the realization that I may not be able to do that anymore. vi -Motoori Norinaga vii Introduction This dissertation aims to reframe the patterns of interaction between