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[1] to 100[2] 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]").[3]
The community soon established their own shrine, called Tamayama Shrine, where Korean-style worship and rituals could take place.[4]
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. This prohibition, along with other regulations, helped the village retain this special character as late as the 1780s, if not well into the 19th century. Kyoto-based scholar Tachibana Nankei visited the village in the 1780s and described various aspects of its distinctive character in his diaries.
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.
- ↑ Ono Masako, Tomita Chinatsu, Kanna Keiko, Taguchi Megumi, "Shiryô shôkai Kishi Akimasa bunko Satsuyû kikô," Shiryôhenshûshitsu kiyô 31 (2006), 227.
- ↑ Rebekah Clements, "'Koreans' in Satsuma Domain," Global Japanese History and Culture: De-Isolating Japan from Past to Present, White, Screech, Kataoka (eds.), Routledge (2026), 7.
- ↑ Gallery labels, Chinjukan Museum, Miyama (Naeshirogawa), Kagoshima pref.; Rebekah Clements, "Captured Korean Potters and Alternate Attendance in Japan’s Satsuma Domain, 17th -18th Centuries," Aftermath of the East Asian War of 1592-1598 webinar, 13 Oct 2021. At the Yonhyakunen gama 400年窯, another kiln within the village, explanatory plaques use the phrase tsure kaerimashita, indicating that the Shimazu "brought [the potters] along with them when they returned." Explanatory plaques on-site, 400-nen gama kiln, Miyama.
- ↑ Gallery labels, Shôkoshûseikan, Kagoshima.
