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Glimpses of the Sino-Japanese War in Korea, 1894-5
From: The British Library
| By:
Beth McKillopHamish Todd |
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION |
The 1894-5 war in Korea between China and Japan was a key event in defining the politics of south Asia at the end of the nineteenth century. Beth McKillop and Hamish Todd, curators in the Oriental and India Office Collections at The British Library, outline the course of the war and discuss a collection of spectacular woodcut images of the conflict from both Japan and China. |
 hange came slowly to Korea in the second half of the nineteenth century. It was only in the 1880s that treaties were concluded with America and the other Western powers,  allowing limited trade and diplomatic representation. In the face of rapid shifts in the international order, the court and bureaucracy in Seoul alternated between reluctant acquiescence to requests to open the country to trade with other countries, and refuge in the traditional values of the Confucian state which viewed trade as an undesirable activity. |
Korea's view of its place in the world had traditionally been determined by its relationship to China. Even the name Tongguk, 'Eastern Country', described Korea with reference to China. In the late nineteenth century, Western ideas of national sovereignty and treaty relations between powers were eagerly embraced by Japan in a conscious drive to build a new world order. For Koreans, however, the concept of autonomy in foreign policy conflicted with the country's tributary position in relation to China, summed up in the term sadae, 'serving the great'. |
Successive Korean kings had, throughout the Choson dynasty (1392-1910),  sent regular tribute missions to the Chinese court, and the Chinese had in turn sent envoys, usually several times a year, on highly formalised visits that followed a set route and a fixed pattern of activities. For centuries, Korea was a tributary state of China, neither seeking nor permitting contact with the outside world. During the 1860s and 1870s, successive attempts by Western powers to engage Korea in discussions about trade were followed by military attacks, but to little avail. |
Contact with Japan
Apart from tightly controlled trading relations limited to the city of Pusan, between about 1600 and the Meiji restoration of 1868 Korea had little direct contact with Japan, her close neighbour to the east. Then, with the onset of modernisation, pressure grew in Japan for relations with Korea to be reformed. Gradually Japan achieved greater diplomatic and trading presence in Korea, until by the 1890s its influence on Korean political life was considerable. Throughout this period, conservative Korean political opinion denounced all departures from established patterns of seclusion from the outside world, questioned the need for foreign goods, and warned of the dangers in altering the country's traditional self-sufficient agrarian economy. |
Koreans viewed the Japanese enthusiasm for Westernisation as morally indefensible, because it involved turning away from Confucian policies and values. By adopting Western institutions and customs, Meiji Japan confirmed the view of Korean scholar officials that the Japanese national character was insincere and arrogant. Relations with Japan had long been tainted by Korean memories of the excesses of the invasions led by Toyotomi Hideyoshi in the 1590s. By contrast, the memory of Ming China's support in the same military campaign remained for Koreans a potent symbol of the close relationship with that country. |
Japan's military intervention in Korea was certainly not a sudden decision: it represented the culmination of more than a decade of pressure by advocates of foreign expansion to mount a military campaign in Korea. Pro-war sentiment in Japan was fuelled by a desire to secure Japan's strategic borders, which were defined in relation to the expansionist aims of Russia and the Western powers. Depending on the sympathies of the historian, Japan's Korean policy of the 1880s and 1890s has been variously interpreted as a classic example of aggressive imperialist expansion, or as a sincere but misguided attempt to extend to the Koreans the benefits of reform and economic development that Japan had enjoyed since the Meiji restoration of 1868 opened the country to the outside world. |
The progress of the war
The immediate pretext for the outbreak of war was a dispute between China and Japan over a peasant uprising in southern Korea earlier that year. The Korean Court asked China to send in troops to suppress the revolt by a proscribed group known as Tonghaks.  Under the Treaty of Tientsin, signed in 1885, China and Japan had undertaken to notify each other if they sent forces to Korea. When informed that the Chinese had agreed to dispatch an army to Korea, the Japanese Cabinet of Prime Minister Ito Hirobumi followed suit. The first Chinese troops landed in Korea at Asan on 8 June. Five days later the first Japanese forces reached the Korean capital of Seoul. The Japanese government pressed its Korean counterpart to implement wide-ranging reforms, but the Korean Court, backed by China, refused. On 20 July the Japanese Minister Otori Keisuke issued an ultimatum threatening to carry out the reforms by force if no satisfactory response was forthcoming within three days. When the Koreans did not comply, Japanese troops attacked the royal palace under the pretext of rescuing the king from his misguided advisers, and thus gained control of the capital and the government. |
On 25 July the Japanese cruiser Naniwa sank the British steamer Kowshing, which was carrying Chinese reinforcements to Korea, near P'ung Island in Asan Bay. Japanese land forces followed this naval success with a victory at Asan over the forces of China's General Nie Shicheng. War was formally declared on 1 August. Chinese forces retreated northwards, and the next major engagement was on 15 September. The ancient city of Pyongyang on the Taedong River fell to Japanese forces under Major-General Oshima Yoshimasa, and the Chinese forces again retreated northwards, towards the Yalu river which forms a natural border between Korea and China. The Chinese fleet of Admiral Ding Ruchang then engaged the enemy in a battle which resulted in the destruction of eight of twelve Chinese warships, and signalled to the watching world the emergence of Japan as a vigorous naval power. |
Japanese forces meanwhile crossed over into north-east China, then known as Manchuria, and a series of victories gave them control of Jiuliancheng and Fenghuangcheng. Next they headed down into the Liaodong Peninsula towards the important harbour and dockyards at Port Arthur (modern Lushun).  In early November they took Jinzhou and the Dalian forts, and advanced on Port Arthur. Despite the concentration of Chinese forces in the area, the Japanese eventually gained control of the port on 21 November. The theatre of war then moved back to Manchuria but severe weather conditions hampered the Japanese advance. Meanwhile, the Japanese commanders turned their attention to Weihaiwei in Shandong province where the remains of the Chinese fleet lay. Weihaiwei fell on 2 February 1895 rendering Chinese naval resistance impossible. In the north-east, improved weather allowed the fighting to resume, and a series of strategic towns were taken by the Japanese. |
Now it was impossible for China to pretend that the war was going in its favour. The distorted view perpetuated in prints like 'Fighting back on the Yalu river' could not disguise China's humiliation by the efficient and ably led Japanese. Grand Secretary Li Hongzhang was dispatched to Japan to lead the Chinese delegation at the peace talks which began on 20 March 1895, and led to the Treaty of Shimonoseki, signed on 17 April. Under the terms of the treaty, China was forced to pay an indemnity of 200 million taels and to recognise 'the full and complete independence and autonomy of Korea', thus ending its traditional role as suzerain over its eastern tributary state. China was also obliged to cede to Japan the Liaodong Peninsula and the islands of Formosa and the Pescadores, although subsequent pressure from the Western powers compelled Japan to retrocede Liaodong. The internal politics of Korea in the following decade were in reality played out in a context of constant Japanese interference. Japan's ambitions in Korea grew to embrace the aim of annexation of the entire Korean Peninsula, and this came to pass in 1910. |
The Japanese prints
The Japanese and Chinese prints illustrated here form a part of the collection of 233, purchased by the British Museum during 1895 from Dulau & Co., booksellers of Soho Square, London. The first of the series of purchases was made as early as April 1895, indicating the intense interest which the Sino-Japanese War aroused in Europe. The prints are now in the Oriental and India Office Collections of The British Library. |
The prints produced in Japan during the Sino-Japanese War represent a late flowering of the Japanese coloured woodblock tradition. During the Edo Period (1600-1867), ukiyo-e or 'Pictures of the Floating World' had enjoyed great popularity and attained superlative levels of artistic and technical refinement. By the 1890s, however, Japan had changed a great deal, and these images of the bygone world of courtesans and actors were no longer in vogue. |
The outbreak of the war in 1894 gave a much needed fillip to the careers of many woodblock artists, and the medium experienced a resurgence in popularity and in vigour.  The exciting events and heroic deeds made splendid subjects, and such was public demand that during the nine months of the war over 3,000 different prints were produced, with print-runs of scores of thousands. Often the prints were published within days of the events depicted, and this had an affect on their quality. Nevertheless, a number of the artists, notably Kobayashi Kiyochika (1847-1915), Ogata Gekko (1859-1920) and Mizuno Toshikata (1866-1908), were able to apply their talents and expertise in the medium to the full. There was a well-established tradition of war prints in ukiyo-e where medieval civil wars were a popular theme as were the images of celebrated warriors known as musha-e. More recent conflicts during the 1868 Meiji Restoration and the 1877 Satsuma Rebellion had also formed the subject of woodblock prints. |
For the Japanese artists, military and topographical accuracy were subordinate to achieving a striking visual impact. The purpose of the prints was to foster national pride in the armed forces and, through their romantic and dramatic depiction of events, the prints echoed the patriotic idealism of the time. Although to modern eyes the images frequently seem jingoistic, the prints constitute a valuable historical source since they reflect attitudes and feelings that were prevalent among those Japanese who bought them. They shed light on Japan's self-image and aspirations at a time when the nation was emerging as a major player on the international stage. |
The Chinese prints
Woodcuts had enjoyed enduring popularity in China during the Ming and Qing dynasties (1368-1911), with subjects such as deities, fertility symbols, scenes from fiction and drama, and imperial processions predominating. Drawing on imaginative representations of famous battles, the artists of the Sino-Japanese War prints were continuing a tradition of colourful dramatic battle images designed to captivate the viewer. A realistic record of actual events was not the aim. It is this strain of fantasy which distinguishes the Chinese prints. Stereotypes from Chinese military tales, including brave generals, dashing footsoldiers and cowardly enemies, populate the images. Although the course of the Sino-Japanese War did not fit this pattern, the print makers, who were usually anonymous, continued to produce scenes that appealed to their audiences and made no attempt to break with the usual conventions of composition. By the 1890s, the quality of most Chinese popular prints had declined from the fine standards of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Indistinct outlining and carelessly applied blocks of colour are common features of the Chinese prints in the Sino-Japanese War series. |
Lithography was an innovation in the production of popular prints in late nineteenth-century China. Instead of laboriously carving new designs on to hardwood blocks, the artists of the war prints chose to exploit the advantages of drawing on stone slabs to produce their design outlines. Colour was applied as a separate process. Despite this change, the stylistic conventions of the woodcut persisted so strongly that it would be difficult to distinguish the two media were it not for printers' details found on some prints. |
In some ways, the sharp contrast between the technical and artistic standards of the Japanese and Chinese prints in the exhibition mirrors the differences between the two sides in the war. The Japanese prints depict actual events of battles which were followed with intense interest by the Japanese and international communities. For the Chinese artists, the shock of defeat by Japan was too great to absorb, and auspicious images of victory were transmitted to the court and people of China, perpetuating the myth of China's invincibility. |
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