Published on September 20, 2019.
Based on an essay by Sato Yojiro, this chapter examines the existence of Wa and Mimana on the ancient Korean Peninsula through sources such as the Nihon Shoki, Hizen Fudoki, Shinsen Shojiroku, Chinese historical texts, the Gwanggaeto Stele, and keyhole-shaped burial mounds, while criticizing Korean historical views that deny their existence merely because they do not appear in Korean records.

September 20, 2019.
The only country that lacks documents is Korea.
The fact that something is not found in Korean historical materials is not grounds for saying that it did not exist.
Baseless objections from those who rewrote or erased such materials only degrade history.
Or perhaps because Wa and “Mimana” actually existed on the peninsula, Japan was able to attack it again and again.
Is that not the natural way to think?
This is a chapter I published on March 12, 2019, under that title.
It Was Japanese Who Ruled the Ancient Korean Peninsula.
Sato Yojiro.
Writer and professor at Nihon University College of Art.
Although many Japanese people are fed up with the Korean habit of falsehood, not a few still believe that much culture came to the Japanese archipelago via ancient Korea.
Do not be deceived by a newly coined term such as “toraijin,” immigrants from the continent.
The blood of the Wa people flowing in the Silla royal family.
This is the continuation of Rekishi Tsū, the special April issue of the monthly magazine WiLL, a book that every Japanese citizen must read.
“Quick-tempered and filled with vengefulness.”
Transportation at that time used sea routes.
There is much poor land on the Korean Peninsula.
I have been throughout China, and to Korea more than twenty times, but Japan is still richer in land than Korea.
The climate is also warmer in Japan.
Isabella Bird, the British woman travel writer born in 1831 who wrote Korea and Her Neighbours, said that “Korea is unmistakably a mountainous country” and that there are “no plains worthy of the name.”
If a country is rich, its population increases, and naturally its national strength also increases.
Japan continued attacking the Korean Peninsula because it had such overwhelming national strength.
Or perhaps because Wa and “Mimana” actually existed on the peninsula, Japan was able to attack it again and again.
Is that not the natural way to think?
To say from the beginning that it never existed cannot be called scholarship or research.
It cannot be helped if people think that one has abandoned the matter from the outset.
Is it not the proper attitude of historians to investigate and research whether it existed or not?
“Mimana” appears many times in the Nihon Shoki, and it also appears in the Hizen Fudoki and the Shinsen Shojiroku.
Its existence is also recorded in works such as the Records of the Three Kingdoms, the Book of Song, and the Book of Liang.
The only country that lacks documents is Korea.
The fact that something is not found in Korean historical materials is not grounds for saying that it did not exist.
Baseless objections from those who rewrote or erased such materials only degrade history.
As I wrote at the beginning, “history” can be traced back through written documents that remain.
There is also abundant physical evidence in the form of keyhole-shaped burial mounds, which are unique to Japan.
There is also the Gwanggaeto Stele.
When written records and physical evidence coincide, what is the basis for denying everything?
Unless they present their own words and physical evidence in rebuttal, it will not become constructive research.
Is it not the Koreans who are mistaken about history by destroying keyhole-shaped burial mounds, erasing characters disadvantageous to their own country, and offering distorted interpretations?
In China’s Book of Sui as well, similar descriptions appear several times, such as “King of Wa, Grand General Who Pacifies the East, holding imperial credentials and commanding the military affairs of the six countries of Silla, Mimana, Gaya, Qinhan, and Mahan,” which recognized the Wa king’s authority over the Korean Peninsula.
Also, in the early 600s, in the Record of the Envoy to Silla, it says, “Silla and Baekje both regarded Wa as a great country, offered tribute, revered it, and constantly exchanged envoys.”
Silla and Baekje recognized Wa as a great country.
Nevertheless, they say that people came as “toraijin” bringing culture and technology to the very country they revered.
In addition, China’s History of the Northern Dynasties and Book of Wei also contain many references to Japan.
Japan had been recognized from early times.
Moreover, Japan had the power to receive hostages and tribute and to rule the entire Korean Peninsula.
On what basis, then, do they claim superiority over such a country?
When one investigates the history of the Korean Peninsula, it immediately becomes clear that their tragedy and suffering lay in being sandwiched between the two strong countries of China and Japan.
Throughout recorded history, this continued, and it did not change until modern times.
The French priest Charles Dallet, 1829–1878, wrote in The History of the Church in Korea, which compiled materials gathered by Daveluy and others executed in Seoul, “Had the Japanese army not abandoned its conquered lands and withdrawn because of the death of Toyotomi Hideyoshi, Japan probably would have taken control of all Korea.”
Isabella Bird also wrote, “There are only two classes in Korea.
Those who rob and those who are robbed.
The bureaucratic class drawn from the yangban is a recognized vampire, and the common people, who easily make up four-fifths of the population, are literally lower people whose reason for existence is to provide blood to the vampires.”
She also wrote, “Everything in Korea is at a low, poor, and miserable level.
Privileges by class, exploitation by nobles and bureaucrats, the complete absence of justice, the instability of income not proportional in the least to labor, a government that has repeated the worst conventions on which governments of unreformed Oriental countries rely, scheming thieving officials, and a government weakened by seclusion in the royal palace and its small inner quarters.”
Korea and Her Neighbours.
It was rotten from within and had collapsed as a state.
Dallet’s The History of the Church in Korea says, “They are quick-tempered, and to the same degree, filled with vengefulness.
For example, forty-nine out of fifty conspiracies are exposed in advance by some of the conspirators.
These are almost always for the sake of satisfying personal grudges, or for revenge against some slightly harsh words in the past.
If they can bring punishment down upon the heads of their enemies, being punished themselves is nothing to them.”
It also says, “Koreans are generally stubborn, difficult, quick-tempered, and tenaciously vengeful,” but it sounds as if it is speaking about Korea today.
Park Geun-hye said that “even after a thousand years, resentment will not disappear,” but when the highest responsible person of the state has such a consciousness, it is obvious what the future will be.
A country that had imitated Japan under tremendous influence repeatedly carries out alteration, fabrication, and distortion, ignores written and physical evidence, and speaks only grievances.
In the 1996 edition of Korea’s high school textbook National History, Volume One, it is written, “The reason we were able to achieve victory in the Wa invasion was that the potential power of our people was superior.
That is to say, at the level of official military defense capability, we were behind Japan, but at the level of the entire people, we surpassed Japan.”
That is not so.
The historical fact is that they fought by relying on reinforcements from Ming China.
Their reliance on China did not change even in modern times, and Isabella Bird observed, “Korea had for several centuries been a dependency of China and had no relations with other countries, so the influence China exerted on Korea in religion, civilization, thought, and customs was very great.”
The people of Korea at that time studied Chinese culture and education earnestly.
They themselves desired assimilation.
Furthermore, Dallet continues, “They make matchlock guns that seem fairly sturdy.
Although this country has copper of very good quality, everything they use is brought from Japan.”
“Yet, strangely enough, despite this, the army is generally very weak, and if they so much as see 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 power.
Because of exploitation and oppression of the people, loyalty toward the rulers had become weak.
On top of that, the yangban, or nobles, fled before anyone else.
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.