FOR centuries the wako, dastardly Japanese pirates, skulked in the countless coves of Tsushima island, roughly halfway between the Japanese archipelago and the Korean peninsula, frequently raiding the coast of Korea. In 1592 General Toyotomi Hideyoshi and his 200,000 men launched the seven-year Imjin invasion from the island, landing in Busan, on Korea’s southern coast. Centuries earlier sueki ceramics, a new form of pottery, had been transmitted from Korea to Japan via Tsushima.
Today it is mainly leisure-seekers who take the hour-long ferry ride from Busan to Tsushima: fishermen, hikers and day-tripping teens. Once a year, however, a delegation of South Koreans dressed in the colourful garb of 17th-century envoys makes the crossing. They are re-enacting the Joseon tongsinsa missions, or “sharing of good faith from Joseon” (an ancient name for Korea), which began in the aftermath of the Imjin war to reaffirm friendly ties between the Korean king and the Japanese shogun.
The envoys travelled along a 2,000km route, from Hanyang, as Seoul was then known, to Edo,...Continue reading
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