Rebekah Clements will present a paper on the panel “Hunting, Authority and Animal Symbolism in Korea” at the Association for Asian Studies Conference in Vancouver on 14th March 2026. Her paper “Hunting by Japanese Warrior Elites in Korea During the Imjin War” will take place at 14:00-15:30.
Abstract:
As the warrior class (bushi) rose to power in twelfth-century Japan, warrior elites adopted falconry in imitation of the court, as a means of demonstrating their military strength, control over land, and to reinforce social bonds between male bushi. Several centuries later, hunting featured prominently in Toyotomi Hideyoshi’s preparations for invasion of Chosŏn Korea in 1592, and during the war that followed, his daimyo hunted Korean tigers and wildfowl, sending them back to Japan – clear statements of authority for a domestic Japanese audience. In this presentation, I consider what hunting by Japanese troops may have meant in Korea itself, within the daily workings of the Japanese military apparatus and as an assertion of authority performed for the Korean population.
I introduce a largely unstudied but highly informative Imjin War account written by a member of the Omodaka family, who served as a retainer of the Shimazu clan, lords of Satsuma domain. Omodaka’s daily record spans a four-month period at the end of 1597, when Japanese forces were attempting to consolidate their control over the southern half of Korea. Rich in details about activities that served to assert control, the Omodaka diary devotes scant attention to battles, instead recording socio-cultural practices like the hunting of animals, collecting of ears and noses from the Korean populace, and the exchange of these human and animal trophies, offering a granular insight into how such activities functioned within the Japanese camp during the Imjin War.
