Published on April 17, 2019.
Prompted by a book by Sankei Shimbun reporter Sasaki Rui, this essay deepens a conviction about ancient Japan and the Korean Peninsula through the inscriptions on the Gwanggaeto Stele, the issues of Mimana and keyhole-shaped tombs, and the discovery of Saicho’s lineage in Sakamoto on Mount Hiei.
Facts that had disappeared from view during the years of reading the Asahi Shimbun are reconnected through firsthand experiences in Kyoto and Shiga, offering an important perspective on the relationship between Wa and the southern Korean Peninsula.

2019-04-17
There is a small temple along this road whose appearance makes one want to step inside….
I entered, and was astonished.
It was because this was the place where Saicho was born….
And because Saicho was a descendant of the royal family of the Later Han….
As I reread the previous chapter, I came to hold a certain conviction.
The trigger was something I was taught the other day on page 25 of the following book by Sankei Shimbun reporter Sasaki Rui, who lives as one of Japan’s treasures….
If one speaks of a psychology of revenge, then it is still more persuasive to argue, as the Gwanggaeto Stele in Jilin Province, China, states in writing that Wa made Silla and Baekje its subjects and that there was a Japanese office in Mimana, that part of southern Korea had once been Japanese territory.
I would also like them to explain why Koreans began destroying the keyhole-shaped tombs unique to Japan that exist in the southern Korean Peninsula.
Is it not because the existence of these things is inconvenient for them….
The fact that the Gwanggaeto Stele, which still stands today in Jilin Province, China, contains characters that can be read as stating that in 391 Wa crossed the sea and made Baekje, Silla, and others its subjects, and that it records battles between Wa forces and Goguryeo forces….
And that this had disappeared from my mind while I was subscribing to the Asahi Shimbun until August five years ago….
That was what triggered the conviction I reached.
In 398, Goguryeo conquered Birye in the coastal region, that is, the Okjeo region, and in 400 it dispatched a great army of fifty thousand to Silla, which had been occupied by Wa, rescued it, and then, pursuing the Wa forces, advanced on Mimana and Gaya.
However, it was counterattacked by Anra and others and returned north.
Seeing Goguryeo’s army move south, Yan invaded the Liaodong region, but achieved little.
In 404, Goguryeo checked the Wa counterattack in the Daifang region, that is, Hwanghae Province, and thereafter the fighting centered on the lower basin of the Han River.
In 410, it subjugated Eastern Buyeo in the north.
Thus, while Gwanggaeto the Great stood in severe opposition to Baekje and Wa in the south and to Yan in the northwest, he secured the region extending from central Korea to the Liao River.
The person who posted this laborious work onto the internet, the greatest library in human history, wrote in the section headed “Summary, impressions, and so forth”….
This theory of alteration makes one doubt whether Korean and pro-Korean scholars possess the qualities proper to scholars.
It was, so to speak, an attempt to mislead history intentionally because they did not want to acknowledge the fact that they had once been conquered by Wa.
It is rather Mr. Sakō, who is said to have altered it, who is intolerably troublesome.
Scholarship stands only upon facts.
*The process by which I came to hold an unquestionable conviction is that more than ten years ago I made my third rediscovery of Kyoto, and since then I have visited Kyoto and Shiga whenever the weekend comes, and now I go there regularly on days of clear weather and in seasons such as the cherry blossoms.
Needless to say, when one is in Kyoto, Mount Hiei is always visible….
Even if one feels like going there, entering Mount Hiei from Kyoto is troublesome because of repeated transfers and because it takes time….
There is no need, while being in Kyoto, to go out of one’s way to do something time-consuming….
When I met young people in Kyoto….
and found that quite a number of them had never been anywhere outside Kyoto….
I thought that was perfectly natural.
It is rather natural that a person living in the greatest city in the world would not feel like going anywhere else.
But then one day I realized that by taking the JR Special Rapid directly I could go to Sakamoto, the gateway to Mount Hiei….
And furthermore, I learned that the Sakamoto cable railway of Mount Hiei was historic….
I headed for Mount Hiei at once….
though I regretted that I had not come much sooner.
Since then I have gone frequently to Mount Hiei….
I learned that Lake Biwa had long been the finest scenic place in Japan….
That Ki no Tsurayuki loved the view of Lake Biwa….
And that his grave is at Motateyama Station along the Mount Hiei cable line….
Prompted by this….
I promoted Ki no Tsurayuki to the rank of one of the most important figures in Japanese history.
As I traveled back and forth many times, I also came to love Hiyoshi Taisha, the head shrine of the approximately 2,000 Hiyoshi, Hie, and Sanno shrines throughout Japan, and the atmosphere on both sides of the road leading to Sakamoto Station.
Then one day there was a shocking event.
Along this road there is a small temple whose appearance makes one want to step inside….
I entered, and was astonished.
It was because this was the place where Saicho was born….
And because Saicho was a descendant of the royal family of the Later Han….
Put extremely, China is a country in which the ruling power changes about every hundred years, a country of dynastic revolution, where rise and fall are constant….
That is why even private enterprises generally last only about three generations….
The royal family of the Later Han, after being overthrown, fled to Japan….
Japan settled them here.
This surprise, or rather this fact that I learned only because I happened to stop there by chance, is what has led to my present conviction.
This article will continue.