Published on December 8, 2019.
This is a republication of a chapter originally posted on March 12, 2019.
Introducing an essay by Yojiro Sato, it examines the relationship between ancient Korea and Japan through Mimana, Silla, Baekje, Wa, keyhole-shaped burial mounds, the Gwanggaeto Stele, Chinese historical records, and the writings of Isabella Bird and Charles Dallet, while criticizing Korean historical alteration, fabrication, and distortion.

December 8, 2019.
The fact that something is not found in Korean historical materials is no basis for saying that it did not exist.
Groundless objections by those who rewrote or erased history only degrade history itself.
The Korean Peninsula has many barren lands.
I have been to Jeonju in China and to South Korea more than twenty times, but after all, Japan has a richer national land than South Korea.
The chapter I posted on March 12, 2019, under that title is also, like the other chapters, a truly genuine essay.
The fact that what I have continued to state ever since I appeared in this way, and what genuine scholars such as the author of this essay have stated, was completely correct, has been 100 percent proven by Anti-Japanese Tribalism, edited and written by Lee Young-hoon, former professor of economics at Seoul National University and economic historian, which is now a bestseller in both Japan and South Korea.
It Was the Japanese Who Ruled the Ancient Korean Peninsula.
Yojiro Sato, writer and professor at Nihon University College of Art.
Although many Japanese are fed up with the Korean habit of falsehood, there are still not a few Japanese who believe that much culture came to the Japanese archipelago through ancient Korea.
Do not be misled in a dream by a newly coined term such as “people who came from across the sea.”
The blood of the Wa people flowing in the Silla royal house—this is a continuation from Rekishi Tsū, a separate April issue of the monthly magazine WiLL, a book that every Japanese citizen must read.
“Quick-tempered and full of vengeance.”
At that time, transportation used sea routes.
The Korean Peninsula has many barren lands.
I have been to Jeonju in China and to South Korea more than twenty times, but after all, Japan has a richer national land than South Korea.
The climate is also warmer in Japan.
The British woman travel writer Isabella Bird, born in 1831, who wrote Korea and Her Neighbours, said that “Korea is unmistakably a mountainous country,” and that there are no plains that can properly be called plains.
If a country is rich, its population increases, and naturally its national power also increases.
Japan continued to attack the Korean Peninsula because it had such overwhelming national power.
Or perhaps because Wa and “Mimana” actually existed on the peninsula, Japan was able to attack it many times.
Is it not natural to think so?
To say from the beginning that it did not exist is not scholarship or research.
It cannot be helped if such an attitude is thought to have abandoned scholarship from the start.
Is it not the proper role of historians to investigate and research whether it existed or not?
“Mimana” appears many times in the Nihon Shoki, and also appears in the Hizen Fudoki and the Shinsen Shōjiroku.
Its existence is also recorded in the Records of the Three Kingdoms, the Book of Song, and the Book of Liang.
Korea alone has no materials.
The fact that something is not found in Korean historical materials is no basis for saying that it did not exist.
Groundless objections by those who rewrote or erased history only degrade history itself.
As I wrote at the beginning, “history” can be traced back through written texts that have been left behind.
There is also much physical evidence in the form of Japan’s unique keyhole-shaped burial mounds.
There is also the Gwanggaeto Stele.
When written records and physical evidence correspond, on what grounds can everything be denied?
Unless they themselves present words and physical evidence and argue in response, it will not become constructive research.
Is it not Koreans who are falsifying history by destroying keyhole-shaped burial mounds, erasing words unfavorable to their own country, and giving distorted interpretations?
In China’s Book of Sui, similar descriptions appear many times, such as “the King of Wa, General Who Maintains the Staff of Authority, Commander-in-Chief of the Military Affairs of the Six Countries of Silla, Imna, Gara, Jinhan, and Mahan, Great General Who Pacifies the East,” recognizing the Wa king’s ruling authority over the Korean Peninsula.
Also, in the early 600s, the Envoys to Silla states, “Silla and Baekje both regard Wa as a great country, present tribute, revere it, and constantly exchange envoys.”
Silla and Baekje recognized Wa as a great country.
And yet, they say that they “came from across the sea” bringing culture and technology to a country they revered.
In addition, Japan appears many times in China’s Book of Northern Dynasties and Book of Wei.
Japan had been recognized from early on.
On what basis, then, do they assert superiority over a country that received hostages and tribute and had the power to rule the whole Korean Peninsula?
When one examines the history of the Korean Peninsula, it immediately becomes clear that their tragedy and suffering lay in being caught between two strong countries, China and Japan.
Throughout recorded history, this continued, and it did not change even into modern times.
The French priest Charles Dallet, 1829–1878, wrote in The History of the Church in Korea, compiled from materials collected by Daveluy and others who were executed in Seoul, that “if the Japanese army had not abandoned its conquered territories and withdrawn because of Toyotomi Hideyoshi’s death, Japan would probably have subjugated all of Korea.”
Isabella Bird also wrote, “There are only two classes in Korea.
Those who steal, and those from whom things are stolen.
The bureaucratic class recruited from the yangban are officially recognized vampires, and the commoners, who easily make up four-fifths of the population, are literally lower human beings whose reason for existence is to provide blood to the vampires.”
She also wrote, “In Korea, everything is on a low, poor, and shabby level.
Class privileges, exploitation by nobles and bureaucrats, the complete absence of justice, the instability of income that bears no relation whatsoever to labor, a government that has repeated the worst customs on which the governments of unreformed Eastern countries rely, scheming thieving officials, and a government weakened by being confined to the royal palace and a small harem” (Korea and Her Neighbours).
It had rotted from within and collapsed as a state.
In Dallet’s The History of the Church in Korea, it says, “They are quick-tempered, and to the same degree, full of vengeance.
For example, of fifty conspiracies, as many as forty-nine are revealed beforehand by some of the conspirators.
These are almost always either for the purpose of satisfying personal grudges, or for revenge for some slightly harsh word in the past.
If they can bring punishment down upon the heads of their enemies, it is nothing to them that they themselves may be punished.”
It also says, “Koreans are generally stubborn, difficult, quick-tempered, and vindictive,” and it sounds as if it were speaking about modern South Korea.
Park Geun-hye said that “even after a thousand years, resentment will not disappear,” but if the supreme leader of a state has such a consciousness, it is obvious what the future will be.
A country that imitated Japan under great influence repeatedly alters, fabricates, and distorts history, ignores written and physical evidence, and complains with resentment.
In the 1996 edition of South Korea’s high-school textbook National History, Volume I, it is written, “The reason we were able to win the Wa invasion was that the potential power of our people was superior.
In other words, at the level of the government army’s national defense capability, we lagged behind Japan, but at the level of the whole people, we surpassed Japan.”
That is not true.
The historical fact is that they fought by relying on reinforcements from Ming.
Reliance on China did not change even in modern times, and Isabella Bird observed that “Korea had been a tributary state of China for centuries and had no relations with other countries, so China’s influence on Korea in religion, civilization, thought, and customs was very great.”
The people of Korea at that time studied Chinese culture and education diligently.
They themselves desired assimilation.
She further writes, “They make matchlocks that appear to be fairly sturdy.
Although this country has copper of very good quality, everything they use has been brought from Japan.”
She continues, “But strangely enough, despite this, the army is generally very weak, and if they see even a serious danger, they think only of abandoning their weapons and fleeing in all directions.”
There is far too great a gap between the testimony of missionaries and their historical understanding.
They had no technological capability.
Because of exploitation and oppression of the people, loyalty to the rulers had weakened.
On top of that, the yangban, or nobles, fled first.
Was it not because Hideyoshi’s army knew this that it was able to occupy the country in the blink of an eye?
This essay continues.