[KS] Fwd: Re: Rejected [non-member submission] Korean embassies'

Tue Feb 16 23:03:43 EST 1999

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<blockquote type=3Dcite cite>I am submitting this for a colleague who I
thought was particularly well-suited to answer i query I found here.
Thanks, Nancy Abelmann</blockquote><br>
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<blockquote type=3Dcite cite>X-Sender: rptoby at staff.uiuc.edu <br>
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Date: Tue, 16 Feb 1999 09:36:31 -0600 <br>
X-PH: V4.4a at staff1.cso.uiuc.edu <br>
To: Nancy Abelmann <nabelman at uiuc.edu> <br>
From: "Ronald P. Toby" <rptoby at uiuc.edu> <br>
Subject: Re: Rejected [non-member submission] Korean embassies' <br>
  Ch'ongdo  banners <br>
<br>
Nancy, <br>
<br>
Since I wrote it, we might as well post it: <br>
<br>
Ronald P. Toby writes:  <br>
<br>
Ch'ongdo pennants were the standard vanguard regalia of late Choson
Korean embassies to Japan, and (I believe) of Korean royal processions
more generally, and derived from Chinese imperial parade practices. 
The term ch'ongdo means just what it seems to, "to purify the
road," particularly to purify the path for the Son of Heaven before
he passed (Hanshu, "Bing Ji juan"--see Morohashi, <u>Dai Kanwa
jiten</u> for more).  Because the t'ongsinsa procession carried a
state letter (kukso from the Korean king to the Japanese shogun, the
procession was, in a sense, an embodiment of the king.  In order to
"purify the way" for the letter, the procession, including the
letter and the three ambassadors, were led by large numbers of ch'ongdo
pennants (usually six), which formed the vanguard of the
procession.  Thus, the Hanegawa T=F4ei painting included in the
National Gallery exhibition-and several variant versions, both paintings
and prints-has it "wrong" when he depicts the dragon pennant
(called the "pennant that gives shape to the name" of the
King:  K., hyongmyong-gi).  The hyongmyong-gi, that is, like
the kukso, an embodiment of the Korean king himself.  <br>
<br>
There are several other errors in the explanatory text of the National
Gallery catalog.  First and foremost, it is important to remember
that the first goal of the artist is not necessarily to
"record," but to paint an interesting painting.  (There
are other paintings of t'ongsinsa processions whose purpose was to record
as accurately as possible; more about those in a moment.)  The
documentary "error" of having the ch'ongdo pennants follow,
rather than precede, the hyongmyong-gi, for which they were to
"purify the way," contradicts those pennants' purpose. 
For an excellent "documentary" version of a t'ongsinsa
procession, see Sin Kisu, et al., ed., Ch=F4sen ts=FBshinshi ezu sh=FBsei
(K=F4dansha, 1985), pp.21-40, which reproduces a complete three-scroll
painting of the 1711 t'ongsinsa (though the editors misidentify it as
from 1719).  After the vanguard of the Japanese escort, the very
first Koreans in the procession are six men on horseback, each with a
ch'ongdo pennant.  The hyongmyong-gi follows, on a path now properly
purified.  Another scroll, said-on dubious grounds-to date from
1624, in the National Library in Seoul, confirms the sequence: 
ch'ongdo-gi,  hyongmyong-gi, then the kukso, as does another scroll,
equally dubiously dated to 1636, in the National Museum, Seoul. Both are
reproduced in the catalog of the 1986 National Museum show, <u>Choson
sidae t'ongsinsa</u>.  <br>
<br>
A glance at any of the three scrolls noted here will alert the viewer to
other "documentary" errors in Hanegawa's painting.  First
and foremost, Korean embassies-and any other foreign visitors, such as
Ryukyuan embassies or Dutch missions-to Edo, never traveled without an
escort of Japanese guards and porters, who outnumbered the foreign
visitors.  Each of the mounted ch'ongdo-gi and hyongmyong-gi bearers
in the 1711 scroll, for example, is literally "wrapped" in an
escort of samurai.  I have written about this in "Gaik=F4 no
gy=F4retsu/gy=F4retsu: ijin no ot=F4ri to Edoki no shomin" (Parades &am=
p;
spectators diplomatic: the passage of the alien and the Edo-period folk),
a chapter in R. Toby & Kuroda Hideo, Gy=F4retsu to misemono (Asahi
Shinbunsha, 1994), pp. 37-52.  Similarly, there are enough serious
"errors"-if the artist's intention was to get it
"right," which I seriously doubt-in Hanegawa's depiction of the
"Koreans," that one might wonder whether the object was not
parody, and an purposeful confusion of the "actual" embassy
with its reenactment in Japanese festivals.  Kuroda and I entertain
this possibility in another chapter, "Iwayuru Ch=F4senjin raich=F4-zu o
yomu" (Reading "The Koreans Pay Tribute"), pp. 52-53.
<br>
<br>
The explanatory text in the Edo catalog also errs on some other points:
<br>
<br>
For one thing, embassies were not "sent to Korea or Japan whenever a
new Korean king or Japanese shogun assumed office."  Full-blown
embassies were only sent from Korea to Japan (never the reverse); and
after the mid-1600s, only on the accession of a new shogun in Edo, never
on the enthronement of a new king in Seoul.  There were several
different reasons for the earlier embassies, from 1607 through 1643, on
which the best discussion is that of Miyake Hidetoshi, Kinsei Nitch=F4
kankei-shi no kenky=FB (Bunken Shuppan, 1986), which has been ably
translated into Korean by Son Sungch'ol.  After Imjin, only one
Japanese embassy ever passed beyond Pusan (in 1629), and it was not a
full-blown embassy.  There has been some debate over the
significance of this imbalance-Korean embassies visiting Japan, but no
Japanese embassies to Korea-with much posturing to the effect that it
demonstrates that one or the other was in a superior position.  I
prefer simply to think that Korean embassies to Japan served the purposes
of both states, while embassies in the reverse served no-one's
purpose.  Etsuko Hae-jin Kang (see below for reference) has an
excellent, highly suggestive discussion of the ideological purposes for
which both sides enlisted the fact of the <u>t'ongsinsa</u>, as does Son
Sungch'ol. <br>
<br>
The text also errs in saying that "the first surviving depiction of
such a mission dates to shortly after Tokugawa Tsunayoshi's accession in
1680, and was executed by the ukiyoe artist Hishikawa
Moronobu."  Although the dating of the two works in Korea, in
the National Library and the National Museum, to 1624 and 1636, is
questionable, there are paintings that date from ca. 1640 and 1655, as
well as one that likely dates from ca. 1634-35.  Kan=F4 Tan'y=FB, court
painter to shoguns, did a Korean embassy procession as part of the
illustrated life of Tokugawa Ieyasu, T=F4sh=F4sha engi (held in the treasury
of the Nikk=F4 T=F4sh=F4g=FB shrine) on which, see my State and Diplomacy in
Early Modern Japan (Princeton, 1984; 2nd ed., Stanford, 1991). 
There are several variants of this representation in other T=F4sh=F4g=FB
shrines, in Nagoya and Wakayama, also from the 1640s.  A screen
painting showing the Korean embassy of 1655 parading into Edo Castle, and
then being received by the shogun, was executed by Kan=F4 Masunobu. 
And, perhaps the earliest surviving depiction of a t'ongsinsa is the
abbreviated parade entering Edo Castle in the Edo-zu by=F4bu (collection,
National Historical Museum of Japan, Sakura), which recent historical
scholarship dates to 1634-35-though there is still some dispute about the
dating. <br>
<br>
Twenty-five years ago, there was little bibliography on t'ongsinsa, today
there's a large and growing one-though not much discussion of their
regalia.  Most recently, we have  Etsuko Hae-jin Kang's
stimulating Diplomacy and Ideology in Japanese-Korean Relations: 
>From the Fifteenth to the Eighteenth Century (St. Martin's Press,
1997).  A couple of introductory works in Korean are Kim Uihwan,
Choson t'ongsinsa ui palcha ch'ui (Chong'um Munhwa-sa, 1985) and Miyake
Hidetoshi, Choson t'ongsinsa wa Ilbon (Jisunguisaem, 1996); for more
scholarly treatments, see Miyake's Kunse Ilcho kwankyesa ui yon'gu (tr.
Son Sungch'ol), or Min Tokki, Zenkindai higashi Ajia no naka no Kannichi
kankei (Waseda Daigaku Shuppanbu, 1994).  For excellent collections
of visual representations of the t'ongsinsa, see the Sin Kisu volume and
the Tokyo and Seoul National Museum catalogs referred to above, or the
extremely expensive 8-volume Taikei Ch=F4sen ts=FBshinshi, also edited by Si=
n
Kisu (Akashi Shoten, 1995-1997), which runs something like Y70,000 to
Y80,000 per volume.  See also my chapter in Volume 1 of the Taikei,
"Ch=F4senjin gy=F4retsu-zu no hatsumei:  Edozu by=F4bu, shinshutsu
Rakuch=FB rakugai-zu by=F4bu to kinsei shoki no kaiga ni okeru 'Ch=F4senjin-=
z=F4'
e" (Inventing the Korean parade:  the Edo Screen, the
newly-discovered Kyoto screen, and the search for an image of 
"Koreans"in early-Edo painting), in Shin Kisu & Nakao
Hiroshi, eds., Taikei Ch=F4sen ts=FBshinshi (Korean missions, an anthology),
Akashi Shoten, vol. 1: 120-129 & plates, pp. 42-45; 51-53.  Jay
Lewis at Oxford has also written in English on Korean embassies to Japan,
particularly in his Hawaii MA thesis, and an article in Korea
Journal.   For the Chinese antecedents, there's a Palace Museum
(Taipei) volume, <u>The Emperor's Procession</u>, which reproduces a
scroll painting of a mid-Qing (Qianlong, as I recall) imperial parade,
with all the regalia shown. <br>
<br>
This has turned into a very long answer to a quite short and
straightforward question.  Apologies if I've strained your patience.
<br>
<br>
<br>
Ronald P. Toby <br>
Head, Department of East Asian Languages & Cultures <br>
Professor of History & East Asian Studies <br>
608 South Mathews <br>
Urbana, IL 61801 <br>
Tel. (217) 244-1432/FAX (217) 244-4010 <br>
<br>
</blockquote><br>
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