James B. Lewis - "Trade, Sex, and Diplomacy: A Few Illustrations of Images of Japan in Chosŏn Korea and Images of Korea in Tokugawa Japan"

James B. Lewis, University Lecturer in Korean History and Fellow of Wolfson College, University of Oxford

The purpose of the lecture is to raise questions about boundaries and the images they created between Korea and Japan prior to the nineteenth century. The lecture opens with a broad survey of Korean-Japanese relations from the time of the Waegu/Wakō pirates, through the Imjin Waeran/Bunroku-Keichō no eki, to focus on the period from the seventeenth to the mid-nineteenth centuries. The Imjin Waeran broke down Korean internal social hierarchies, confirmed a civilised-vs-barbarian view of the world, and established a Korean mentality that held clear images of we-Koreans and they-Japanese. Did it leave some kind of proto-nationalism? As we move into the post-Imjin period, the lecture looks at sexual incidents connected with the Waegwan (Japan House) in Pusan to consider sexual and security boundaries between Koreans and Japanese and what sorts of images that created. Were the strict punishments meted out to Korean women indicative of concerns that went beyond state security and viewed Japanese as morally dangerous? Trade issues introduce a third, economic boundary and raise questions about self-image: did the Japan trade threaten treasured notions of economic autarky? Finally, the Korean Communication Embassy to Japan is discussed to introduce a fourth boundary that was cultural: did the Korean disdain for the Japanese as uncultured and the Japanese disdain for the Koreans as cultured but effete have repercussions in later periods?