Korean influence on Japanese culture
From the mid-fifth to the late-seventh centuries, Japan benefited from the immigration of people from Baekje and Gaya who brought with them their knowledge of iron metallurgy, stoneware pottery, law, and Chinese writing.
[2][3] The modulation of continental styles of art in Korea has also been discerned in Japanese painting and architecture, ranging from the design of Buddhist temples to smaller objects such as statues, textiles and ceramics.
[7] Japanese people also began to use metal tools, arrowheads, new forms of pottery, moats, burial mounds, and styles of housing which were of peninsular origin.
One historian, Koichi Mori, theorizes that Emperor Keitai's close friendships with Baekje horsemen played an important role in helping him to assume the throne.
[36] According to Farris, during the Kofun period, Korea was the source for most of Japan's iron tools, including chisels, saws, sickles, axes, spades, hoes, and plows.
The work of these Gayan refugees eventually permitted Japan to escape from its dependency on importing iron tools, armor, and weapons from Korea.
Extensive works uncovered in the Furuichi site near Osaka display developments far in advance of Yayoi period, and the suggestion is that both the technology and pond construction techniques were introduced by peninsular peoples from southern Korea.
In 535 the Japanese government established military garrisons called "miyake" throughout Japan to control regional powers and in many cases staffed them with Korean immigrants.
[43] Likewise Prince Shōtoku's Twelve Level Cap and Rank System of 603, a form a meritocracy implemented for Japanese government positions, was influenced by that of Baekje.
[55] Frellesvig states, "However, writing extensive text passages entirely or mostly phonographically, reflected in the widespread use of man'yōgana, is a practice not attested in Korean sources which therefore seems to be an independent development which took place in Japan.
"[53] Japanese katakana share many symbols with Korean Gugyeol, for example, suggesting the former arose in part at least from scribal practices in Korea, though the historical connections between the two systems are obscure.
[57] The Baekje Buddhist priest and physician Gwalleuk came to Japan in 602, and, settling in the Genkōji temple(現光寺) where he played a notable role in establishing the Sanron school,[58] instructed several court students in the Chinese mathematics of astronomy and calendrical science.
[59] He introduced the Chinese Yuán Jiā Lì (元嘉暦) calendrical system (developed by Hé Chéng Tiān (何承天) in 443 C.E.)
[73] In 526, a Baekje Korean monk Gyeomik traveled to India via the southern sea route and mastered Sanskrit, specializing in Vinaya studies.
[78][79] The monk Ennin’s crossing to China on Japanese vessels and the whole catastrophic maritime record of the mission contrast sharply with the speed and efficiency with which Sillan ships quickly brought him back home to Japan.
In 587 the monk P'ungguk arrived from Baekje to serve as a tutor to Emperor Yōmei's younger brother and later settled down as the first abbot of Japan's Shitennō-ji Temple.
[86] According to the scholar Insoo Cho, Korean artwork has had a "huge impact" on Japan throughout history, though until recently the subject was often neglected within academia.
[90] Beatrix von Ragué has noted that in particular, "one can hardly underestimate the role which, from the fifth to the seventh centuries, Korean artists and craftsmen played in the early art ... of Japan.
Korean art and artists frequently arrived on Japan's shores, influencing both the style and theme of Japanese ink painting.
The two most important Japanese ink painters of the period were Shūbun, whose art displays many of the characteristic features of Korean painting, and Sumon, who was himself an immigrant from Korea.
It was the Korean brush and ink techniques in particular which are known to have had a significant impact on such Japanese painters as Ike no Taiga, Gion Nankai, and Sakaki Hyakusen.
According to Taeko Kusano, each of the Joseon missions to Japan included about fifty Korean musicians and left their mark on Japanese folk music.
[102] According to William Wayne Farris, citing a leading Japanese expert on ancient cloth, the production of high-quality silk twill took off in Japan from the fifth century onward as a result of new technology brought from Korea.
[108] One of the most notable examples of Korean influence on Japanese sculpture is the Buddha statue in the Koryu-ji Temple, sometimes referred to as the "Crown-Coiffed Maitreya".
It has been noted that the Korean genre of hyangga (郷歌), of which only 25[56] examples survive from the Silla kingdom's Samdaemok (三代目), compiled in 888 CE, differ greatly in both form and theme from the Man'yōshū poems, with the single exception of some of Yamanoue no Okura's poetry which shares their Buddhist-philosophical thematics.
According to the historian Jonathan W. Best "virtually all of the numerous complete temples built in Japan between the last decade of the sixth and the middle of the seventh centuries" were designed off Korean models.
[89] In addition to temples, starting from the sixth century advanced stonecutting technology entered Japan from Korea and as a result Japanese tomb construction also began to change in favor of Korean models.
[135] Historian Jurgis Elisonas stated the following about the controversy: "A similar great transformation in Japanese intellectual history has also been traced to Korean sources, for it has been asserted that the vogue for neo-Confucianism, a school of thought that would remain prominent throughout the Edo period (1600–1868), arose in Japan as a result of the Korean war, whether on account of the putative influence that the captive scholar-official Kang Hang exerted on Fujiwara Seika (1561–1619), the soi-disant discoverer of the true Confucian tradition for Japan, or because Korean books from looted libraries provided the new pattern and much new matter for a redefinition of Confucianism.
[143] By contrast, the admission by Emperor Akihito that the Imperial Family of Japan included Korean ancestors helped to improve bilateral Korea-Japan relations.
For example, historians note that, during Japan's Kofun period, Japanese-style bronze weapons and keyhole-shaped burial mounds spread to Korea.
