The Chosŏn Court and Japanese Impostor Muromachi Bakufu Officials,
1450s-1592
Kenneth R. Robinson
International Christian University
Tokyo, Japan
Over its first eight decades the Chosŏn government introduced numerous
regulations aimed at controlling arrival and trade by Japanese. As the number of
maritime contacts permitted regular, sanctioned trade increased from the 1450s,
understanding among Japanese of those regulations grew increasingly sophisticated.
Energized by trade routes that brought Southeast Asian goods such as pepper,
medicines, and dyes northward through Ryukyu into Japan and by the Korean
government’s willingness to accept such goods in exchange for cotton, silk, foodstuffs,
and other items, Japanese devised strategies in the late 1460s and early 1470s to
enhance their opportunities for trade in Chosŏn.
This paper will discuss an attempt by Japanese to establish sanctioned trade
through an impostor identity that did not live but existed on the official documents
presented to the Chosŏn government and through guest ritual. This impostor
identity’s first trade mission sailed in 1466. However, that trade mission grew into
one impostor shogunal embassy, two impostor Muromachi Bakufu officials, and
thirteen more first-time impostor identities through 1470. These two impostor bakufu
officials were among more than one dozen such impostor identities active in the
second half of the fifteenth century. The Korean court’s 1474 policy to prevent
further contact and trade through impostor bakufu officials became in the second half
of the sixteenth century the policy through which Japanese successfully traded again
under the names of impostor bakufu officials.
The impostor bakufu official missions touch upon several themes in KoreanJapanese relations in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. In addition to impostor
trade, these include Buddhism, state-issued forms of identification, the Ming Chinese
government’s model for state-level interactions, management of Japanese departure
for trade in Chosŏn, and the Ōnin War in Japan from 1467 to 1477. The ability of
impostor bakufu officials to trade in Chosŏn in the mid-fifteenth century and in the
second half of the sixteenth century exposes what Korean government officials did
not know about Japan.
Impostor Bakufu Officials, 1455-1509
Japanese crafted their impostor identities to move through access control
procedures and receive the royal bestowal of tributary relations. The envoys that
represented these people carried the documentation and forms of identification required of
the (impostor) contact, including a travel permit issued by the Governor of Tsushima. In
terms of the documentation assembled for presentation to the Korean government, the
contact was legitimate. The bestowal of trade privileges reconstituted the impostor
identity as a tribute trade contact, holding the political, religious, and/or social positions
stated in the letter. With the Governor of Tsushima a party to the ploy at the very least by
having not issued the travel permit and halting the trade mission, exposure of the impostor
identity fell to Korean officials.
All of the more than one dozen bakufu officials under whose names and
government posts more than thirty missions sailed between 1455 and 1474 were impostors.
The families appropriated included the Hatakeyama, Hosokawa, Shiba, Ise, Yamana,
Kyōgoku, Inō, and Kai. This list includes several of the most powerful families in the
central government. The impostor bakufu official became even more valuable as a trade
vehicle after the Ōnin War erupted in 1467 and spread into much of Japan. Japanese
sought cloths, grains, and other items for armies said to be supporting the shogun through
some of these identities. In these instances, planners sought to utilize the kyorin
relationship for impostor trade promoted as royal support of the shogun and his allies.
Tribute system regulations compounded Japanese interest in impostor trade at the second
reception grade. The Chosŏn court permitted a bakufu official to send two ships at each
mission and to transport an unlimited amount of items to Hansŏng, the capital.
The first impostor bakufu official greeted the King of Chosŏn in 1455. The
sponsors deployed the Hatakeyama family and assigned their constructed identity
Hatakeyama Yoshitada to the post of Deputy Shogun. They probably chose the
Hatakeyama and this office because Korean officials knew that a family member had held
that post in 1443, when the most recent royal embassy had visited Kyoto. Over the next
two decades, nearly one-half of these impostor missions sailed under the family name
Hatakeyama.
Unlike other impostor bakufu officials, the Hatakeyama and Yamana effected
successions to family headships, offices, and contact. Under the Hatakeyama family name
planners opened trade in two lines that traced back to a man crafted to resemble
Hatakeyama Mochikuni, the Deputy Shogun whom the Korean embassy had met in 1443.
The impostor Yoshitada and his son Yoshikatsu composed the first impostor line to be
introduced to the King of Chosŏn. This Yoshitada would have surprised the Yoshitada
who had led the real family’s Noto branch since 1432. The family head of the Noto
branch retired in 1455, the year the fraudulent namesake sent his first mission. The
impostor Yoshitada also would have surprised Hosokawa Katsumoto, who in 1455 was in
the third year of an appointment as Deputy Shogun that continued until 1464.9.
Katsumoto served as Deputy Shogun throughout the impostor Yoshitada’s career as
Deputy Shogun. The breathing Yoshitada died in 1463, the impostor Yoshitada in 1465.
It would seem that the impostor Yoshitada died after planners had learned of the real
man’s passing.
Planners borrowed another Hatakeyama family member’s full name for a new
Deputy Shogun in 1460. Their Yoshinari was a nephew of the impostor Yoshitada and the
founder of the second line within the impostor branch of the Hatakeyama. This genealogy
doubled the streams of contact and trade in this family. In 1470, the impostor deputy
shogunship returned to the Yoshitada line. From that year, missions sailed under the name
Yoshikatsu four times through 1480. The sitting Deputy Shogun in Kyoto while
Yoshikatsu’s first envoy visited Chosŏn was Hosokawa Katsumoto.
The interaction patterns of the impostor branch of the Hatakeyama and their
success seem to have provided inspiration for deployment of the Yamana family. In
Kyoto, Yamana Mochitoyo, who was also known by his religious name of Sōzen was one
of the most powerful men in Japan. He held more governorships than anyone else of his
time and was deeply implicated in the outbreak of the Ōnin War. When he took the
tonsure in 1450, his son Noritoyo succeeded as family head. But Sōzen did not relinquish
control of family matters or retire from participation in bakufu affairs. Noritoyo died in
1467.9, almost six years before Sōzen.
The impostor Yamana traded infrequently but not without mysteries. The
impostor Noritoyo, who was a composite of Mochitoyo and his son, appeared in 1459. He
retired as (impostor) family head and governor and assumed the religious name Sōzen
prior to the next Yamana mission, in 1469. That next mission originated in the impostor
Yoshiyasu, the second son and heir of the impostor Noritoyo. The heir identified himself
as the governor of eight provinces, and Sōzen, that is, the impostor Noritoyo, confirmed
that portfolio in a letter also presented to the Korean government. The next year, in
1470.9, Noritoyo requested substantial amounts of cloth. Yoshiyasu sent no further
missions, and died soon after his father. The third impostor generation lived in the family
mansion in Kyoto. Although his grandson never sent a mission, Noritoyo contacted the
court yet again in 1473. Death, relatives, Korean regulations, previous interaction,
Japanese cultural practices, and other features of contact enlivened trade through the
impostor branches of the Hatakeyama and the Yamana.
Impostor bakufu officials were productive and easily replicable vehicles for trade.
Impostor bakufu officials also became tools by which Japanese tried to initiate changes in
tribute system regulations. Three gambits met court officials during this period of
intensive efforts to manipulate the tribute system. These were dividing bakufu officials
into diplomatic statuses within the second reception grade, appropriating a seal issued by
the King of Chosŏn for authenticating impostor identities and other contacts, and
broadening the court’s definition of “bakufu official.”
The first gambit involved Ise Masachika and Hosokawa Katsuuji, the two contacts
that the retired shogun Ashikaga Yoshimasa would expose in 1474.10. Masachika and
Katsuuji were modeled after men holding powerful government posts. They bore the
same family names and posts as the living models, but their adult given names each
differed by one character from the adult given names of the two living men. Ise
Masachika came from Ise Sadachika, and Hosokawa Katsuuji from Hosokawa Katsumoto.
Ise Sadachika served the shogun Yoshimasa as the Chief Officer of the Administration
Office. From the Kamakura period, the Administration Office had managed the shogunal
household and educated the shogun’s children. By the start of the Ōnin War, it had
absorbed the Board of Retainers’ duties in personnel and other administrative matters and
become perhaps the most powerful bureau in the bakufu. Sadachika, who had educated
Yoshimasa, was close to the shogun and an influential voice.
Sŏngjong received Masachika’s envoy the day before he greeted the Envoy of the
impostor shogun. Two points in the letter bothered Korean officials. First, the court was
not familiar with the post by which Masachika identified himself, Chief Officer of the
Administration Office. Second, the letter was addressed to the State Council, which was
the highest office at court, rather than to the Minister or the Second Minister of the Board
of Rites, as the court required. Sin Sukchu and Yi Sǔngso, who was the Second Minister
of the Board of Rites, asked the Envoy about the duties that Masachika performed as
Chief Officer and learned that this official distributed documents issued by the Shogun.
At Sŏngjong’s court, the State Council performed a similar duty.
The sponsors of Masachika were attempting to introduce a new type of status
equality for communications between bakufu officials and the Chosŏn court, one to be
based upon duties rather than upon the court’s earlier determination of diplomatic status.
They sought, in other words, to revise the diplomatic status hierarchy which the Korean
government had composed. As the State Council ranked above the Six Boards, this status
equality between the Chief Officer of the Administration Office and one or more members
of the State Council would place this Japanese official above the Deputy Shogun. That
differentiation among bakufu officials might have led to new reception procedures and
greater trade benefits for the Chief Officer than for the Deputy Shogun or other bakufu
officials. These Japanese were attempting to separate the Chief Officer from all other
bakufu officials, to revise the hierarchical ordering of contacts, and to create another
diplomatic status.
The sponsors underlined Masachika’s proximity to the shogun in other ways. The
Chief Officer stated that in sending the mission he was following shogunal orders. He
relayed news of the fighting in the Kyoto area and requested immense amounts of silk,
cotton cloth, and linen. Further, the sponsors boldly asked for military supplies.
Sŏngjong’s court demurred, choosing not to become involved in the Japanese civil war.
The second ploy followed soon upon the communication addressed to the State
Council. Masachika’s envoy left Hansŏng a few days after the royal audience for the
impostor shogunal embassy. The planners embedded Hosokawa Katsuuji deeply in the
impostor shogunal embassy, and even attached a trade mission under the Katsuuji name.
One purpose of this impostor shogunal dispatch was to introduce an access control
measure that would be managed by the impostor shogun. If successful, planners of this
embassy would oversee departure for the trade ports. To the extent that competing groups
were preparing trade missions under impostor identities, the group possessing this royally
issued patent of identification conceivably could control departure for Chosŏn. Should
they succeed, the participation of the governors of Tsushima, who would issue the travel
permit necessary for continued transit to an open port, would be necessary, suggesting that
the Sō may have been involved in the impostor shogunal embassy’s planning.
This shogun informed the King of Chosŏn that the “Korean gold seal” had been
lost amid the destruction of war in Kyoto. He then asked the Korean king to issue another
gold seal and entrust it with Jurin, a Japanese monk whom Sejo had asked in 1466 to
deliver a letter to the shogun Yoshimasa and who had returned to Hansŏng with this
embassy. The letter to Sŏngjong stated, “If friendly relations can be cultivated long into
the future, nothing would be greater than this.” This statement reads as boilerplate
diplomatic language, but it assumes more specific meaning when attributed to an impostor
shogun posed as the King of Japan with whom Korean kings maintained diplomatic
relations. A principal goal of the planners was kyorin relations with their shogun. That is,
they sought the relocation of kyorin relations from the King of Japan residing in Kyoto to
their King of Japan, an impostor King of Japan.
The planners wanted the King of Chosŏn to entrust their shogun with a seal for
diplomatic documents. A royal patent would place authority to manage the dispatch of
trade missions in their shogun, legitimate their impostor identities, and possibly result in
reception and contact privileges for all such contacts. The royal permission of reception
expressed by the seal’s imprint on a letter would channel the King of Japan’s embassies
and other missions through the holder of the seal. This was daring. Ironically, not
needing the sitting Shogun’s approval to send tribute trade missions to Chosŏn made
possible this attempt to funnel missions through an impostor shogun.
However, the King of Chosŏn had never presented a gold seal or any other seal to
a shogun, sitting or retired. Sin Sukchu and Yi Sǔngso sought to confuse the Envoy and
asked him why a new seal had not been produced immediately after the fire. The Envoy’s
answer was unsatisfactory. Sŏngjong, now thirteen years old, agreed that the story behind
the request was difficult to believe. Court officials were not misled by this unsteady
comprehension of how the King of Chosŏn conducted kyorin relations with the King of
Japan.
After the failure to replace the “Korean gold seal,” practitioners of impostor trade
designed a third attempt at garnering additional trade through bakufu officials. This time,
they tried to broaden the definition of “bakufu official” and expand the qualifications for
trade at the second reception grade. In 1471, two men claimed to be the elder uterine
brother and the younger uterine brother, respectively, of Kyōgoku Mochikiyo, the Director
of the Board of Retainers and an impostor identity that traded frequently. Sŏngjong
received the elder uterine brother Taga Takatada in 1471.1, five months after the living
Mochikiyo’s death. Takatada introduced himself as the Deputy Director of the Board of
Retainers. The living Taga Takatada held this position at one time, but he was not a
brother of the living Mochikiyo.
Later that year the court received a mission sent by Hidehiro, who claimed to be
Mochikiyo’s younger uterine brother and the Deputy Governor of Oki Province. The
diplomatic status assigned Takatada is not known, but Hidehiro’s envoy demanded that
Hidehiro be received as a bakufu official. Reluctant to admit this first-time contact into
the tribute system, but also reluctant to risk violence, the court eventually assigned the
contact to the third reception grade status of Special Envoy of the Governor of Tsushima.
Reception at a lower diplomatic status expressed the court’s rejection of this play for
recognition at the second reception grade.
These two approaches through Takatada and Hidehiro were attempts to initiate
new trade privileges at the reception grade for bakufu officials. It would seem that the
court had received Takatada at that status and that Hidehiro’s sponsors sought the same
treatment. Even if that was not the case, by not associating Hidehiro with a bakufu office,
sponsors sought to expand “bakufu official” to encompass uterine siblings. Success meant
precedent, thus the Envoy’s obstinate refusal to leave the port of arrival. Precedent would
require the court to receive future uterine siblings at the diplomatic status for bakufu
officials. More impostor uterine siblings almost certainly would have followed.
Korean officials fell for none of these ploys. In Japan, the Masachika and Katsuuji
missions resulted ultimately in the opposite outcome, the blockage of contact by impostor
bakufu officials. Further, the reduced trade volume from late 1474 could not but have
impacted the groups and individuals involved.
Korean officials did not overlook the growing range of bakufu identities in 1470.
Even before 1474.10, the Chosŏn court had already seen through several of these contacts.
In a letter of reply prepared in 1470.9 and addressed to Ise Masachika, the court noted that
officials did not know where at least six bakufu officials were based or what their
purposes were, and wondered if incorrect reception procedures had been followed.
Korean officials must have been confident that this letter would be delivered to someone
other than Masachika, that is, to someone directly involved in this mission. As the Board
of Rites commented in 1471.4 to the Governor of Tsushima, in the past only the Deputy
Shogun had sent missions, but suddenly over the past year more than ten missions from
contacts “calling themselves ministers in the capital” had arrived. The number may have
been exaggerated, but the implication of impropriety was not.
Another identity that the Korean court doubted in 1470 was a relative of Hosokawa
Katsuuji. The letter of reply entrusted to Masachika’s envoy related information about
Hosokawa Mochikata that had been gleaned from Japanese guests. In this relating of
Mochikata’s background, Mochikata was the son of the late Katsumoto and married to a
daughter of Yamana. (Katsuuji was the elder cousin of Katsumoto.) After Katsumoto’s
passing, Mochikata became Deputy Shogun and in mid-1470 was leading the Eastern
Army against the Yamana. Korean officials knew, however, that Mochikata was the
younger brother of Mochiyuki, who was the father of Katsumoto. This second genealogy
matched that of the Mochikata who had lived in Kyoto. The living Mochikata took the
tonsure in 1443 and died in 1468, or two years before the trade mission borrowing his
name arrived at court. There were no further missions under the name of Mochikata.
The second genealogy of the Hosokawa family, that to which court officials
referred in the letter of reply to Masachika, almost certainly was among those in court files.
Sin Sukchu had served as the Scribe in the 1443 embassy to Japan. After returning to
Chosŏn, he submitted records of the Japanese administrative system, Japanese customs,
genealogies of bakufu officials, and genealogies of other Japanese elites in which they
were graded in terms of power and weakness. If the genealogies included those for the
Hosokawa family, which, as noted, was one of the three families eligible for the Deputy
Shogun, and/or the Ise family, Korean officials could have known that Katsuuji and/or
Masachika were not family members. On the other hand, the adult given names of
(impostor) Hatakeyama contacts and (impostor) Yamana contacts could likely have been
confirmed in those respective genealogies. To speculate, the success of these earlier
missions may have been due in part to the appropriation of the adult given names.
Sin Sukchu and his colleagues placed Katsuuji and Masachika in the stream of
fraudulent missions that had arrived since 1467. Yet neither of the hints made in 1470 and
1471 stopped wartime dispatches at the second reception grade, but sponsors apparently
understood. Korean records cite only five missions under the names of bakufu officials
between 1471.5 and the introduction of the ivory tally system in 1474.12.
The Ivory Tally System and
the Usage of Shogun Tallies
The Chosŏn court’s awareness that recent bakufu officials were not what they
claimed informed the acceptance and reconfiguration of Yoshimasa’s proposal for halting
the dispatch of impostor bakufu officials. Yoshimasa somehow learned of the Masachika
and Katsuuji identities and their missions, the appropriation of shogunal authority, and the
claims of shogunal authorization. As the retired shogun in late 1474, Yoshimasa
accomplished what the impostor shogun did not in 1470, the channeling of bakufu
officials’ missions through the shogun/retired shogun, or the King of Japan in the context
of Korean foreign relations. Conversely, those efforts in 1470 resulted in one of the worst
possible outcomes for managers of impostor bakufu official identities.
The King of Chosŏn entrusted Yoshimasa in 1474.12 with the right halves of ten
ivory tallies. Sŏngjong required the envoys of the King of Japan and of bakufu officials to
present one ivory tally in addition to the letter and the travel permit. The tallies were
approximately 4.5 inches in circumference and 1.5 inches in diameter. They were divided
in half and numbered one through ten. Engraved in seal-style characters on one face of
the tally was “Chosŏn t’ongsin,” or “The Dispatch to Chosŏn.” On the other face was
engraved “Sŏnghwa simnyŏn Kabo.” This was the Chinese reign year and the cyclical year
equivalent to 1474. The left halves remained at court, where officials would match the
right half of the tally presented by the envoy to the appropriate left half.
The ivory tally system proved immediately successful. Missions for impostor
bakufu officials stopped sailing and shogunal envoys presented a numbered patent from
the next embassy, in 1482. As with other of the court’s responses to impostor identities,
the elimination of impostor bakufu officials prompted Japanese to search for ways to
create new doors into the Korean tribute system.
The institution and the enforcement of the ivory tally system in Chosŏn furnished
Yoshimasa and his successors as King of Japan with a power unusual for shoguns and
retired shoguns, oversight of departures for Chosŏn. The road to Chosŏn now passed
through the King of Japan and through Kyoto. Of course, this was a limited power
anchored in authority supported by the King of Chosŏn and did not extend to lower
reception grades. Still, for the planners of impostor bakufu officials, those two stops were
inconvenient.
Undaunted, Japanese devised several schemes over the next thirty years and again
from 1548 for achieving reception and trade without and with ivory tallies. In the earlier
period they sought to circumvent or find a loophole in the ivory tally system. Over the
second half of the sixteenth century, planners also sought to release individual impostor
bakufu officials from the ivory tally.
The first test of the Chosŏn court’s willingness to enforce delivery of an ivory tally
came in 1479.12. It failed. Japanese also tried in 1487. This time they attempted to
create a loophole in the ivory tally system. Somehow, somewhere, someone attached an
impostor bakufu official’s envoy to an embassy from Yoshimasa. This mission tested
whether the court would accept such an envoy accompanying a shogunal embassy but
lacking an ivory tally. Sŏngjong greeted the King of Japan’s envoy, but denied reception
to the (impostor) bakufu official because the envoy did not present a tally. The court
forbade the precedent of reception, which would allow subsequent inclusions of impostor
bakufu officials under the single tally carried by the King of Japan’s envoy.
These efforts demonstrate the value of this diplomatic status for elites in western
Japan and a steady unwillingness among Sŏngjong and officials to acquiesce. Without an
ivory tally to hand, Japanese could not resume trade at the second reception grade.
Ivory Tallies in the Sixteenth Century
At the behest of handlers sensitive to the fragility of shogunal power, in 1504 the
sitting Shogun Ashikaga Yoshizumi asked the King of Chosŏn (posthumously called the
Yŏnsangun) for a new set of ivory tallies. He explained that a fire had destroyed the
storehouse where the tallies were kept and only two or three remained. That request
followed upon a shogunal embassy to Chosŏn in 1501, an embassy that most likely was
prepared in western Japan by supporters of the exiled Shogun, Ashikaga Yoshitane. A fire
may indeed have damaged the 1474 set, but a more likely reason for Yoshizumi’s request
may be found in Japanese politics, which was over the horizon of what the Korean
government could observe in the islands.
Yŏnsangun entrusted the left halves of the new tallies with Yoshizumi. The court
expected that the next embassy would return the remaining 1474 tallies. Usage of the
second set can be confirmed in 1550, when officials noted that the envoys of (impostor)
shoguns and (impostor) bakufu officials had presented the left halves.
In Kyoto in 1508, the previous shogun Ashikaga Yoshitane pushed Yoshizumi out
of the capital in 1508 and returned to power. In 1509, the impostor bakufu official Ise
Masachika contacted the new Korean monarch, Chungjong. The envoy carried not only a
letter from the Shogun, but also an ivory tally, presumably a 1504 issue because
Chungjong did not deny reception. Yoshitane may have bestowed this new tally upon his
supporter, the Ōuchi family. Or, the Ōtomo family, who supported Yoshizumi, may have
prepared Masachika with a tally received earlier from that shogun.
Yoshizumi’s request for new tallies was the second instance in which controlling
departure for Chosŏn became a topic in the Muromachi bakufu’s dealings with the Korean
government. At issue was the dispatch of shogunal embassies, or the shogunal authority
to conduct diplomatic relations with the King of Chosŏn, more so than trade missions by
bakufu officials. Domestic politics and relations with the Korean government informed
the embassy and the petition in 1504. What began as an attempt by the backers of
Yoshizumi to undercut their rivals and monopolize this authority and power deriving from
the Korean government transformed into impostor shogunal embassies and impostor
bakufu officials, projects conducted beyond the observation or the control of the sitting
Shogun. But impostor bakufu officials slipped from the control of even those holding
ivory tallies the second half of the sixteenth century, or during the reigns of King Injong
(1544.11-1545.7), King Myŏngjong (1545.7-1567.6), and King Sŏnjo (1567.6-1607.2).
Impostor Bakufu Officials
from 1512
The Chosŏn court expected the Shogun to hold the second set of ivory tallies.
However, Yoshizumi’s dispersal of tallies to the Ōtomo family made trade through
impostor bakufu officials possible again. The dissemination of tallies to elites in western
Japan enabled the dispatch of missions within the very access control regulations that had
been designed to eradicate them. No longer did they have to follow the single route to
Chosŏn that passed geographically through Kyoto and administratively through the King
of Japan. Working within the ivory tally system now managed in western Japan, in the
second half of the century Japanese endeavored to distance impostor bakufu officials from
the ivory tally.
The Masachika mission of 1509 was the first to travel the new route. After the
resumption of trade in 1512, no missions by impostor bakufu officials are known until
1548. (In 1547 the Korean court had restored relations following the closure of Chosŏn to
Japanese in 1544.) Perhaps it was coincidence, perhaps it was intentional, but the first
impostor bakufu official after 1547 was a Hatakeyama. The envoy arrived in 1548 with
a(n impostor) shogunal envoy, but the court denied reception to Hatakeyama Yoshitada
because the envoy arrived without an ivory tally. The mission probed whether the ivory
tally remained necessary under the new regulations, whether there was a route to Chosŏn
that need not pass through the holder of an ivory tally, and whether fifteenth-century
impostor bakufu officials remained viable contacts. Shogunal escort, this time by the
envoy of an impostor shogun, again proved insufficient for bypassing the ivory tally
requirement and establishing precedent.
Two years later, in 1550.7, another Hatakeyama envoy presented four forms of
identification: an ivory tally; a shogunal letter of introduction; a letter from
“Hatakeyama”; and a travel permit. The tally requirement met, Myŏngjong bestowed
reception. This Hatakeyama also asked the King of Chosŏn for a “small tally.” If the
court had met the request, this patent of identification would have been used either in
conjunction with the ivory tally or independent of the ivory tally system. In the latter case,
by holding a new, small tally issued by the King of Chosŏn, planners could send trade
ships under this name at their convenience and no longer have to share the proceeds with
the holder of the ivory tally. Taking this analysis one step further, had the court approved
this request, Myŏngjong and his officials would have liberated an impostor bakufu official
from the ivory tally regulation and established precedent.
Japanese soon exposed at least one of their impostor bakufu officials. After the
reception of an impostor Shiba mission, in 1552.6 officials in the Censor-General began a
memorial to the king with this observation: “The true character of the Japanese is deceitful.
They know only profit-seeking by deception and do not understand integrity.” The
appraisal of intentions continued.
… Recently, the Envoy and the Vice-Envoy of
the King of Japan became the Envoy of Ōuchi
and the Envoy of Hatakeyama and came [to
Chosŏn]. At each mission, we have strongly
doubted [their authenticity]. We believe the
envoys to have been Japanese from Tsushima who
secretly obtained a tally and came [to Chosŏn].
They deceived our country and sought only profits.
And yet the Chosŏn court did not bar further arrivals by (impostor) bakufu officials.
Sponsors tried a second time to free a Hatakeyama from the ivory tally system. In
1560 Hatakeyama Yoshiaki, the first confirmed post-1548 Hatakeyama impostor identity
not to have traded in the fifteenth century, wanted to use a court-issued seal instead of the
ivory tally. The Japanese sponsors justified Yoshiaki’s request in this way: “Every time I
send an envoy, I must receive an ivory tally from the Shogun and then (the envoy may)
come. I am concerned that the tally could be lost. I request to receive a copper seal.” The
sponsors also sought to open a second line of access and trade for Yoshiaki’s family.
Yoshiaki asked the court to reward his “younger brother Haruhide” with a personal seal
for returning a Chosŏn government seal stolen by pirates, an act that added to the merit
Haruhide had earned a few years earlier when he warned of approaching pirates. That is,
the sponsors placed the return of the government seal in an identity with a record of
cooperation. Situating this additional petition for a personal seal within the same family,
the Japanese behind Yoshiaki presented two seal requests through one identity and one
mission. But Myŏngjong and his officials refused the Yoshiaki petition for a unique,
personal patent that would open a separate means of access for him and possibly be
invoked later as a precedent.
The investment of imagination paid off for Haruhide, however. Myŏngjong
bestowed a personal seal upon the “younger brother.” Tsushima elites thus added at least
one ship to those that could be sent each year. But to which reception grade the court
assigned Haruhide, the second for bakufu officials or the fourth for personal seal
recipients, is not known. The issuance of a seal suggests the fourth reception grade.
In 1563, the court began to dismantle the ivory tally system’s coverage of bakufu
officials. Thanks in part to the good offices of the (impostor) shogun the Korean monarch
bestowed a personal seal upon Yoshiaki. The planners had elevated the request from the
contact himself to the (impostor) shogun, shifting the petition from a hierarchical
relationship to one between diplomatic status equals. With the seal’s delivery, the
managers of Yoshiaki secured institutional isolation from the ivory tally system and
distance from the holders of ivory tallies.
Knowledge in Japan of the history of impostor bakufu officials, almost certainly
based upon records at hand, brought other families back into contact with the Chosŏn
court. The Hosokawa were added by 1573, the Kyōgoku by 1581, and the Kai by 1585.
There are no extant records of renewed trade through the Yamana, the Ise, or the Inō after
1548, though.
Sponsors also acquired privileges for the Kyōgoku through the shogun. Not
surprisingly, Kyōgoku Haruhiro is absent from Kyōgoku genealogies. Elites in Tsushima
prepared the travel permit for Haruhiro on 1581.6.19. The Kyōgoku envoy also carried a
letter from the impostor King of Japan asking the King of Chosŏn to issue Haruhiro a
personal seal. The impostor King of Japan was again asking the monarch to weaken the
ivory tally system that the monarch expected the King of Japan to enforce. Of course, the
Muromachi bakufu and the office of Shogun had been destroyed in 1573. Sŏnjo
mentioned the bestowal in his reply to the King of Japan and the Minister of the Board of
Rites informed Haruhiro officially in a separate letter.
After nearly one century of refusals, the Chosŏn court began revising the ivory
tally system in the 1560s. Korean kings did not eliminate the ivory tally system, but they
did institutionalize impostor trade through bakufu officials holding an individual patent of
identification. The tactics devised for the Kyōgoku identity added another method by
which bakufu families could be decoupled from this access control procedure. Attaching
the shogunal letter to the would-be recipient’s envoy allowed the sponsors to send a first-
time mission by an impostor bakufu official without appending it to an impostor embassy.
But the shogunal letter carried by Haruhiro’s envoy required the imprint of the shogun’s
seal for state documents addressed to the King of Chosŏn. Japanese experimented
variously to alter Korean regulations after 1548, but their successes also were dependent
upon the Chosŏn court’s calculations of what would benefit government policies as piracy
churned Korean waters and darkened Korean shores from the 1540s.
Conclusion
Ashikaga Yoshimasa’s proposal in 1474.10 to eliminate impostor bakufu
officials handed court officials the opportunity to halt what hints to Japanese elites in
1470 had not. The Chosŏn court inserted two intermediate steps, the King of Japan,
and an additional patent of identification, the ivory tally, before the envoys of the
shogun or of bakufu officials reached the Governor of Tsushima for the travel permit.
Once a site for the appropriation and the placement of identities, Kyoto became the
capital through which bakufu officials created in western Japan could not pass.
In the second half of the fifteenth century and in the second half of the
sixteenth century Japanese deeply involved in trade with the Chosŏn government took
advantage of their thorough understanding of the Korean court’s trade regulations and
of their awareness of the Korean court’s inadequate knowledge of Japanese politics.
In the sixteenth century, shoguns made possible the revival of impostor bakufu
officials by presenting the ivory tally to trusted associates in western Japan, in just the
areas where impostor identities had been constructed several decades earlier. The
management of departure for Chosŏn became possible through those tallies now
possessed by families in western Japan. The Chosŏn government uncovered
deceptions not through knowledge of events and families in Japan, but through errors
and repetitions by Japanese participants in the impostor trade missions.