Joseon embassies to Tokugawa Japan were infrequent, expensive state projects. The mission of 1711 marked a new shogunal succession, yet each side approached it with inherited formulas that encoded its own political order. Tsushima supplied the permanent working relationship that made an episodic embassy possible.
The Korean court sent a large embassy after Tokugawa Ienobu became shogun. Its route through Tsushima and western Japan to Edo depended on interpreters, domain officials, lodgings, gifts and carefully matched documents. Surviving gift inventories show diplomacy as a material practice as well as a negotiation over words.
Amenomori Hōshū came from Amenomori village in Ōmi, now in Nagahama, Shiga. Modern references give his birth year as 1668; the official collection description qualifies the received account. His father was a physician, and Hōshū initially pursued medical learning. He later entered Kinoshita Jun’an’s circle in Edo, now Tokyo, where learned training could also lead to service with a lord.
Jun’an taught Confucian writings on personal conduct and government. His pupils included Arai Hakuseki, who would later advise the Tokugawa ruler. In 1689 Jun’an recommended Hōshū to the Tsushima house. The connection provided employment as a scholar within the lord’s household. Hōshū’s knowledge would be used within the household’s educational and administrative work. Learning and recommendation together furnished a route from a physician’s village to service with an island government.
Hōshū initially lived at the Tsushima residence in Edo and went to the island in 1693. Tsushima occupied a position between Japan and Korea and served as a channel for relations with Korea. Its scholar therefore worked in a household whose responsibilities reached beyond its own territory. He would spend the rest of his long life based there, serving successive lords while traveling for assignments. The move established the setting in which his classical learning, language work and practical dealings with foreign participants became closely connected.
Arai Hakuseki was born in Edo, now Tokyo, in 1657. His father Masanari served the Tsuchiya house, whose territory centered on Kururi in Kazusa, now part of Chiba. A retainer’s employment provided the family’s recognized place and livelihood. In 1677 an internal dispute brought expulsion for both father and son, together with a prohibition on entering another lord’s service. Their difficulty therefore extended beyond the loss of one job. They could not simply transfer the same standing to a new employer.
The Tsuchiya house ended in 1679 and the prohibition was lifted. Hakuseki subsequently served Hotta Masatoshi, entering his household in 1682. Masatoshi’s murder in 1684 again changed the conditions of service. Hakuseki remained connected to the Hotta family for several more years before leaving in 1691. These household ruptures repeatedly altered the conditions under which he could pursue employment and learning.
Hakuseki attempted to change the shogun's diplomatic designation and the reception's economy and ceremony. The request moved through translators and documents rather than by direct conversation between rulers. Hōshū's position made him attentive to how a change acceptable in Edo could create resistance in Korea or damage Tsushima's credibility.
Arai Hakuseki, advising Ienobu, objected to formulas that he believed placed the shogun too low in the regional order. He promoted a revised title and altered parts of the reception. Tsushima, whose livelihood and authority rested on managing Korean relations, had to translate these demands into forms the Korean side could accept. Amenomori Hōshū's work belonged to this mediating structure.
The embassy completed its mission, but the controversy revealed the costs of symbolic revision. A single title carried assumptions about kingship, hierarchy and precedent in both countries. Later embassies adjusted the wording again. The episode is best understood as institutional diplomacy conducted through contested documents, not as a personal duel between two scholars.
The mission reached Edo, exchanged gifts and completed its ceremonial work. The title dispute did not destroy relations, but neither did it establish a permanent settlement. Subsequent practice revised the formula again, demonstrating that diplomatic language remained negotiated and reversible.
Tsushima’s dealings with Korea made language competence a practical requirement. Hōshū studied Chinese and Korean after entering service, including study in Nagasaki and Busan. The Choryang Waegwan at Busan was a Japanese trading compound under Korean controls, where he undertook repeated assignments. Residence and contact occurred through an authorized institution. Korean authorities regulated entry and movement, while Korean interpreters also instructed visitors about customs and supplied information. The setting made conversation, documents and trading business available for study while defining how exchange could take place.
Zen’ichi Dōjin, dated 1729, drew on Chinese moral stories and paired Korean with Japanese rendering. Its Korean is written in katakana, the Japanese syllabic script, rather than in the Korean alphabet. Kim Mun-hŭi’s bibliographical account explains why the transcription matters to later study of eighteenth-century pronunciation. For the original learning task, it gave readers a way to connect written signs familiar to them with another language’s sounds and expressions. The material joined language practice to stories about conduct.
Historical disagreement · Who compiled Kōrin Shuchi?
Kōrin Shuchi assembled vocabulary and conversational examples with Korean and Japanese text. It is traditionally associated with Hōshū. The researcher Pyŏn Mu-jin also notes a view that interpreters compiled the material with his assistance. Numerous manuscripts and later revisions complicate the recovery of its earliest form.
The book’s importance rests in sustained teaching and use as well as an author’s name. Copies that continued to change cannot all be treated as one intact text written by Hōshū in a single year.
In 1693 Jun’an recommended Hakuseki to Tokugawa Tsunatoyo, lord of Kōfu. Instruction in Chinese classics and history became a continuing responsibility. When Tsunatoyo became heir to the shogun, head of Japan’s warrior government, in 1704 and took the name Ienobu, the lecturer’s relationship with his patron carried into the central government. Ienobu became sixth shogun in 1709. Repeated instruction over many years gave Hakuseki familiarity and access before he became associated with the policies of that reign.
Hankampu was drafted in 1701 and presented in 1702, with corrections continuing later. It covered 337 warrior houses, including families whose fortunes had ended. Genealogies, marriages, service and political conduct explained how households obtained or lost their place. Its ordering began with Tokugawa-related families and proceeded through other categories of lords. The book supplied a historical account of the ruling society as well as examples from which a lord might judge conduct and obligation.
Hakuseki consulted a large range of historical records and narrative material. Selection and arrangement nevertheless shaped the result. The National Archives illustrates this through his retelling of Shimazu Yoshihiro’s withdrawal from Korea: rewards are presented with Tokugawa Ieyasu in the leading role. The exhibition reads that arrangement as part of a Tokugawa-centered account. Genealogical errors and composed narrative also limit use of Hankampu as an exact register. Its importance includes the documentary labor and the political perspective through which the material became meaningful.
Because the embassy left objects, inventories, poems and official papers, the episode can be reconstructed as more than an argument over etiquette. It shows a functioning interstate relationship whose stability depended on interpreters, domain officials and the willingness of two governments to manage disagreement without ending exchange.
The 1711 mission exposes the political labor hidden inside ceremonial exchange. Shogunal prestige, Korean diplomatic precedent and Tsushima's intermediary position had to coexist in one set of titles, gifts and audiences.
Hakuseki and Hōshū represent different offices within that system: one redesigned policy at the shogun's center, while the other translated and managed relations at the maritime boundary. Their disagreement shows why expertise in language and precedent mattered to foreign relations even during a period often described as closed.
Hōshū accompanied the Korean embassies of 1711 and 1719 to Edo as a Tsushima document official. The missions linked the Korean government, the island domain and the Tokugawa shogun, the head of Japan’s warrior government. Travel brought participants into ceremonial encounters and exchanges with Japanese scholars. Hōshū’s responsibility was located within Tsushima’s continuing work, including documents and the conduct of communications. Official duties accompanied the opportunities for learned exchange.
