Naeshirogawa

The main hall of Tamayama Shrine in Naeshirogawa

• Japanese: 苗代川 (Naeshirogawa)

Naeshirogawa (today, Miyama) is a village in Higashi-ichiki, Hioki City, Kagoshima prefecture, which in the Edo period was home to a community of potters descended from some 70 to 100 Korean ceramics experts forcibly taken from Korea to Japan during Toyotomi Hideyoshi's invasions of Korea c. 1598/12. The community is particularly notable for having been forced to retain a distinct identity as "Koreans" throughout the Edo period. Even today, the village is home to an honorary consulate of the Republic of Korea.

While these potters and others are typically said to have been "kidnapped," "taken prisoner," "taken as slaves," or by other such phrases, more recent research as well as the narratives put forth by the Chinjukan Museum (the chief museum of this history, run by one of the potter families) itself use much more neutral phrases such as torai ("crossed over to [Japan]") and tomonatte kita ("accompanied [the Shimazu] and came [to Japan]").

The community soon established a shrine to Tan'gun, the mythical founder of Korea. Though Tamayama Shrine, as it is known, resembles a typical Shinto shrine today, in the Edo period it served as a key site where Korean-style worship and rituals could take place.

Edo Period

Satsuma han maintained records of the official status (mibun) of nearly everyone within the domain, and regulated their movement and intermarriage. Members of the Naeshirogawa "Korean" community were forbidden from marrying out of the community, though others could marry in. They were considered "Naeshirogawa-mono" (or, "Naeshirogawa people"), a distinct status from hyakushô ("peasants"). A few elite households in the community were granted gôshi (rural samurai) status, vassals of the Shimazu clan. Beginning in 1695, they were obliged to use Korean personal names, and forbidden from using Japanese ones. Some sources suggest they may have also been obliged to wear Korean-style clothing and to use Korean language rather than Japanese in everyday life. These and other regulations helped the village retain this special character, or a Japanese perception of it, well into the 19th century. Notable figures who visited the village include Tachibana Nankei in 1782, Furukawa Koshôken in 1783, Takayama Hikokurô in 1792, Inô Tadataka in 1812, and Rai San'yô in 1818; many of them described the distinctive local culture in their diaries.

In truth, the culture of the village did see some considerable change over time. While members of a few families made sure to pass along Korean language proficiency from one generation to the next in order to maintain honored positions as interpreters for the domain, by the third or fourth generation after arriving in Japan, most residents of the village had significantly less fluency.

Lords of Satsuma regularly visited the village on ceremonial occasions, including (beginning in 1676) while on their way to or from Edo on sankin kôtai, viewing performances and displays of Korean culture and exchanging gifts with local officials. These visits resembled formal visits to other communities and locations within the domain, where gift exchanges and other ceremonial acts ritually reaffirmed loyalty to the relationship between the locality and the lord; in the case of Naeshirogawa, however, the foreignness (Koreanness) of the local community added an additional layer to framings of Shimazu clan power and legitimacy, as a clan to whom not only Japanese but also foreigners paid tribute or fealty. Representatives of the community may also have been obliged to appear at Kagoshima castle on particular occasions, and to participate in audience ceremonies or other rituals of fealty alongside samurai vassals and Ryukyuan officials. On at least one occasion, in 1691, the Shimazu lord had three "Korean" boys from Naeshirogawa, dressed in Korean costume, accompany him to Edo as pages.

Satsuma wares produced in Naeshirogawa were frequently gifted by the Shimazu daimyô to figures such as the shogun. However, despite the village's imposed character as a center for "Korean" culture and ceramic production, its products never gained significant popularity as alternatives to wares imported from Korea. Though the Shimazu clan at times did much to finance and otherwise support the village's ceramic production, at other times, they withdrew support, leaving the tradition of Naeshirogawa wares to decline very nearly to extinction at one point in the 18th century.

Meiji Period

Once the abolition of the han in 1871 brought an end to Satsuma's cultural policies, the villagers quickly began to adopt Japanese names and lifestyles. They assimilated so quickly that British diplomat Ernest Satow, who visited the village in 1877, wrote that it was unremarkable, with the architecture, spoken language, clothing, and culture otherwise resembling those of any other Japanese village of the area.

The place-name Naeshirogawa was soon replaced by Miyama, and individuals moving out of the village often hid their distinctive ancestry or geographical origins. Tôgô Shigenori (1882-1950), who served several terms as Minister of Foreign Affairs and Minister of Colonial Affairs in the 1940s, was in fact from Naeshirogawa, and originally held the surname Park (J: Boku) as a child.

References

• Kurushima Hiroshi, et al., Satsuma Chôsen tôkô　mura no yonhyaku nen, Iwanami Shoten (2014), v.
• Herbert Plutschow, A Reader in Edo Period Travel. Global Oriental, 2006. pp75-88.