This passage speaks of the author’s growing conviction regarding ancient Japanese history by combining discussion of the Gwanggaeto Stele and Mimana with personal experience gained through repeated visits to Mount Hiei, Sakamoto, and the area around Hiyoshi Taisha.
Prompted by a work by Sankei Shimbun journalist Rui Sasaki, the author deepened his awareness of the possibility that Wa held influence in the southern Korean Peninsula, and says that his certainty was strengthened still further when he personally visited a site associated with Saichō and learned, to his astonishment, that Saichō was descended from the royal house of the Later Han.
It suggests that the very fact that Japan accepted even the royal house of a fallen dynasty and fostered a continuous civilization is itself an important clue for thinking about ancient history.

2019-03-03
I entered and was astonished.
That this was the place where Saichō was born.
That the royal house of the Later Han, after being overthrown, fled to Japan, and Japan allowed them to settle here.

As I reread the previous chapter, I came to hold a certain conviction.
The trigger was what Rui Sasaki, a Sankei Shimbun journalist living as one of Japan’s treasures, taught me on page 25 of the following book.
If one wishes to speak of a psychology of retaliation, then it is still more persuasive to argue, exactly as written on the Gwanggaeto Stele in Jilin Province, China, that some part of the southern Korean Peninsula had been Japanese territory, beginning with Mimana where the Japanese government office had existed, and that Wa had made Silla and Baekje its subjects.
I would also like an explanation of why Koreans began destroying the keyhole-shaped kofun tumuli, uniquely Japanese, located in the southern Korean Peninsula.
Is it not because their existence becomes inconvenient.

The fact that the Gwanggaeto Stele, which still stands today in Jilin Province, China, contained characters that can be read to mean that in 391 Wa, Japan, crossed the sea and made Baekje, Silla, and others its subjects, and also contained records of battles between Wa forces and Goguryeo forces, had vanished from my mind while I was subscribing to the Asahi Shimbun until August five years ago.
Being reminded of that was the trigger that led me to my conviction.
In 398, Goguryeo conquered Pirye in the Maritime Province, that is, the Okjeo region, and in 400, when Silla, occupied by Wa forces, was rescued by dispatching a great army of fifty thousand men, Goguryeo pursued the Wa army and advanced toward Mimana and Kara.
However, it was counterattacked by Anra and others and withdrew northward.
Seeing the Goguryeo army moving southward, Yan invaded the Liaodong region, but gained little success.
In 404, Goguryeo stopped the Wa counterattack in the Daifang region, that is, Hwanghae Province, and after that the struggle centered on the lower Han River basin.
In 410, it subjugated Eastern Buyeo in the north.
Thus Gwanggaeto the Great, while standing in severe opposition to Baekje and Wa in the south and Yan in the northwest, secured the region stretching from central Korea to the Liao River.

The person who placed this laborious work in the internet, the greatest library in human history, wrote in a section titled “Summary, impressions, and so on,”
This alteration theory makes one doubt whether Korean and pro-Korean scholars possess the qualifications of scholars at all.
It must be said to be an attempt to mislead history arbitrarily, because they do not want to acknowledge the fact that the state of Wa had once conquered them.
It is rather Mr. Sakō, who is said to have altered it, who is extremely troublesome.
Scholarship is something that stands only upon facts.
That is what was written there.

*Part of the process by which I came to possess an unquestionable conviction is that more than ten years ago, in my third rediscovery of Kyoto, I began visiting Kyoto and Shiga on weekends, and now I go there on clear days and in each season such as cherry blossom time.
Needless to say, when one is in Kyoto, Mount Hiei is always visible.
Even if one wishes to go, entering Mount Hiei from Kyoto involves repeated transfers, is troublesome, and takes time, so there is no need, while already in Kyoto, to do something that takes so much time.
I was fully convinced that it was entirely natural that among the young Kyoto people I met, quite a few said they had never gone anywhere outside Kyoto.
For people who live in the greatest city in the world, it is rather natural not to feel any desire to go anywhere else.

And yet one day, I realized that I could go directly by JR Special Rapid Service to Sakamoto, the gateway to Mount Hiei.
On top of that, I learned that the Mount Hiei cable car from Sakamoto was something historic.
I set out for Mount Hiei at once.
And regretted that I had not come much earlier.

Since then I have gone frequently to Mount Hiei.
That Lake Biwa had long been the finest place of scenery in Japan.
That Ki no Tsurayuki loved the view of Lake Biwa.
That his grave is located at Motateyama Station on the way up the Mount Hiei cable line.
This became the occasion on which I promoted Ki no Tsurayuki to one of the most important figures in Japanese history.
And after going back and forth many times, I also came to love Hiyoshi Shrine very much.
I also came to love the atmosphere on both sides of the road there and along the road to Hieizan-Sakamoto Station.

Then one day, something astonishing happened.
Along that road there is a small temple with a presence that makes one want to step inside.
I entered, and was astonished.
That this was the place where Saichō was born, and that Saichō.
China, put extremely, is a country where the ruling state changes roughly every hundred years, a country of dynastic revolution, where rise and decline are constant.
That is why even private enterprises generally last no more than three generations.
The royal house of the Later Han, after being overthrown, fled to Japan, and Japan allowed them to settle here.
That surprise, or rather that fact I first learned by happening to stop there, is what has connected to the conviction I hold this time.*

To be continued.