Samurai Swordsman - Stephen Turnbull

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Japanese invasions of Korea, with as many as three thousand wakō penetrating far from the coast, ravaging Kaesong, the Koryo dynasty’s capital, and even pillaging as far north as P’yongyang. Ships carrying tax rice (taxes paid in rice) were seized, and when the Koreans decided to transport the rice by land, the wakō followed them inland and sacked the granaries. In addition to looting property, the wakō became slave traders, taking the well-established Korean tradition of slave owning to its logical conclusion by shipping their captives back to Japan. In 1429, Pak So-saeng, sent on a diplomatic mission to Japan, was to report on how conditions had improved since the “bad old days”:

      Images of the Japanese, from the Ming dynasty Xuefu quanbian. The picture on the lower right shows a wako with a drawn sword.

      Previously, the Wa pirates would invade our country, seize people, and make slaves of them.... Wherever we went and whenever our ships put into port in Japan, slaves would struggle against each other in their efforts to flee to us, but they were unable to do so because of the chains that their masters had put on them.32

      Matters improved for Korea under the guidance of Yi Song-gye, who was later to found the Yi, or Choson, dynasty. He believed in hitting back at the wakō. In 1380, over five hundred Japanese ships were set ablaze at the mouth of the Kum river after being blasted by Korean cannon; three years later, Admiral Chong Chi, in command of forty-seven ships, chased away more than one hundred Japanese ships with gunfire. In 1389, a successful raid was carried out against the pirates based on the Japanese island of Tsushima. Three hundred Japanese ships were burned and more than one hundred Korean prisoners were repatriated.

      But the most important influence against the wakō was political, because in 1392, the same year in which the Choson dynasty was founded, Japan acquired a new shogun. His name was Ashikaga Yoshimitsu, and in addition to the achievements for which he is best known—the reconciliation between the rival Southern and Northern Courts and the building of the Kinkakuji, or Golden Pavilion, in Kyoto—Yoshimitsu accepted from the Ming emperor the nominal title of “King of Japan.” Ashikaga Yoshimitsu thereby formally assumed the status of subject of the Ming, and restored a situation that the Chinese considered to have existed from the Han dynasty until it was grievously sundered by acts of piracy and war. The benefit to Yoshimitsu and to Japan was trade. Henceforth, trade would be carried on under the tally system, which legitimated voyages that—in the eyes of the Ming, at any rate—brought “tribute” to the court of the Son of Heaven.33

      The newly licensed trade agreements with the Ming provided the stability that both governments needed to deal with piracy. That the Japanese did take measures to control the pirates is evident from 1405, when an envoy to China from the shogun Ashikaga Yoshimitsu arrived with twenty captive pirates from Iki and Tsushima. The Ming emperor was delighted, and handed the pirates back to the envoy to be disposed of as he thought fit. Their fate was to be taken to Ningbo and boiled to death in a cauldron.34

      Following this dramatic demonstration of goodwill, trade flourished legitimately, and Japanese daimyō (feudal lords) returned captives for profitable gifts. The Koreans conducted business through the Sō family of Tsushima, whom they held personally responsible for the good behavior of the Japanese. Raids declined greatly, but when there were new incursions in 1419, the Korean government quickly took drastic measures in retaliation. Seven hundred and thirty-seven lawful Japanese traders were executed as a reprisal, and another punitive expedition was launched against Tsushima at a time when it was known that a wakō fleet from Tsushima was out at sea. Under the orders of King T’aejong, two hundred ships and seventeen thousand Korean soldiers set out to destroy the pirates’ bases before they had time to return.35 Sō Sadamori (1385–1452) bore the brunt of the attack, which is celebrated in the annals of Tsushima as the Oei Invasion. Sadamori appears to have been as successful at diplomacy as he was at fighting, because he entered into successful negotiations with the Koreans. He promised to quell the wakō, but it was his warning of the approaching typhoon season, which would have stirred some very acute folk memories among the invaders, that finally persuaded them to withdraw.36

      Onchi Sakon, a follower of the great loyalist Kusunoki Masashige, fights bravely. His helmet crest is in the form of a tengu.

      In that same year of 1419, the Chinese also hit back against pirate raiding. A large wakō fleet was ambushed off the Liaodong Peninsula, and perhaps a thousand Japanese pirates were relieved of their heads. At the same time, diplomatic discussions took place between the Choson court and the Ashikaga shogun on ways to curb the wakō by more peaceful means. One result was a report from the Korean ambassador Pak So-saeng in 1429, recommending a direct approach to the particular Japanese daimyō who controlled the territories where the pirates lurked. After all, as another ambassador reported in 1444, these people lived in a barren land that constantly threatened them with starvation, so piracy was only natural to them. It was a generous memorandum, but one that merely echoed comments that had been made earlier.

      Swords in Action

      Perhaps because of tales taken home by the survivors of the Mongol invasions, or more likely because of the destructive effects of Japanese pirates, the inhabitants of continental Asia had acquired a healthy respect for the qualities of the Japanese sword by the beginning of the fifteenth century. Thus, when, under the influence of the shogun Ashikaga Yoshimitsu, Japan began to trade with Ming China, swords were among the objects most in demand. Initially, they were needed for use against the pirates, but as Yoshimitsu had taken pains to demonstrate his determination to curtail this aspect of his countrymen’s activity by boiling a few of them alive, this need disappeared. The largest quantity of swords shipped in one consignment totalled thirty thousand, which led to a major disagreement over the price.37

      What is interesting from the point of view of samurai fighting arts is that, although the Japanese sword is commonly regarded as a very precious and symbolic individual weapon, here we have evidence of mass production. We also read of blades breaking or becoming stuck in the bodies of victims. The Japanese sword was sometimes not all that its reputation would have led one to expect.38

      Nor was it always used for the noble purposes of honorable combat. One menial task for which the short katana sword was very frequently used was the decapitation of defeated enemies. This practice, known as buntori (literally, “taking one’s share”), was no mere finishing stroke to make sure that the man was dead. The head was taken as a trophy, the best evidence of duty done, because it proved the samurai’s competence in combat. Nothing was more acceptable or more certain to win recognition from a samurai’s lord than the presentation of the enemy’s head. A major victory would always end with the piling up of dozens, even hundreds, of severed heads in the commander’s headquarters.

      An intense ritual attended this bizarre but critical practice, which went from mere proof of a job well done, to a practice that developed its own mystique. Although its origins are obscure, the persistence of the tradition of head collection spans the entire period of samurai warfare and dates back at least to the system of assessing battlefield merit for the ancient conscript armies.39 As early as 1062, we read of Minamoto Yoshiie riding into Kyoto carrying the head of the rebel Abe Sadato as proof that he had fulfilled the government’s commission. A few years later, he was to throw the heads of vanquished rebels into a ditch when the government refused to reward the quelling of a rebellion undertaken without the correct requisition. Two centuries on, the chronicle Azuma Kagami records that the insurrection of Wada Yoshimori in 1213 yielded 234 heads of defeated warriors, which were duly displayed along the banks of the Katasegawa River.

      Head collection was never a casual practice. There was a hierarchy of value based on the rank or prestige of the victim and the circumstances under which the victor had killed him. Great rivalry attended the choice of a potential victim, and there are records of heads being stolen before presentation. Someone who had taken a particularly eminent head would want it to be noted immediately. Brandishing a fresh head on the point of a spear or a sword was not unknown, and the effects on morale could be profound. The Azuma Kagami tells us how

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