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Joseon Tongsinsa refers to diplomatic missions the king of the Korean kingdom Joseon officially sent to the chief ruler of Japan. How did Tongsinsa begin and what role did it perform as relations between the two countries went through change? The year of 2019 will mark the 590th year since the first Tongsinsa mission was sent in 1429, so this series called Tongsinsa Stories will review Joseon Tongsinsa as a cultural delegation representative of the Korean dynasty's diplomatic history with Japan.

The trip Tongsinsa missions would make back and forth to Japan would typically take nearly eight months, heading south from Joseon's capital Hanyang down to Busan, then traveling by ship to Tsushima Island and the port cities of Shimonoseki, Tomoura, Ushimado, and Osaka, and continuing across land from thereon through Kyoto, Nagoya, and Shizuoka to reach Edo where the shogun of the Edo bakufu resided.

Tongsinsa missions are commonly portrayed as cultural missions. And such a portrayal has been justified by how Joseon people described through travelogues that for those in Japan who were interested, interaction with members of the mission served as an opportunity to experience Joseon's culture.

Tongsinsa missions tended to include a diversity of members. In addition to the three envoys heading the mission, there would be interpreters, a drafter of diplomatic papers called Jesulgwan, a doctor well-trained in oriental medicine, scribes with excellent handwriting, painters, horseback acrobats with skilled horsemanship, musicians, and sailors. Wherever a Tongsinsa mission went, Japanese scholars and literati as well as merchants would flock to the accommodations where its members were staying to exchange poems with them. And the poems and travelogues the mission left behind at each destination in Japan are still being handed down to this day.

Tongsinsa Processions as an Exotic Parade

Tongsinsa missions were a fine spectacle to commoners in Japan. Edo Japan exercised a closed-door policy that officially banned commoners from traveling overseas. Chinese and Dutch ships would sometimes come for trading purposes, but they were only allowed to enter the ports of Kyushu and Nagasaki and stay at designated spots until they left.

This left practically no chance for commoners of Edo Japan to come across foreigners, which made Tongsinsa processions a limited opportunity to personally witness foreigners and gain a sense of countries overseas. Once they arrived near Kyoto, the missions would travel via land toward Edo. A mission would typically include around five hundred members and by adding the Tsushima warriors escorting them from the front and rear, their procession would have entailed well over five hundred people.

Playing traditional Korean music alongside Tsushima warriors, it would take about two hours to watch a Tongsinsa procession from head to tail. And since Tongsinsa missions did not visit regularly and took many years before the next visit, a Tongsinsa procession of hundreds counted as an abnormal, rare event to Japanese commoners. Simply watching people dressed in completely different attire marching in a Tongsinsa procession would have been a highly exotic two-hour parade and entertainment for them. Naturally, the Japanese came to express their impression of the mission members' appearance and actions through paintings, crafts, and other forms of art.

Inspiration Behind Tojin odori

One such instance was the "Tojin ordori dance" (唐人踊り). The intangible form of art performed in several different areas in Japan is presumed to have inspired from the Joseon Tongsinsa and is still being performed through local Japanese festivals referred to as "matsuri."

Passed down in the town of Ushima at Okayama prefecture, the "Karako odori dance" (唐子踊り) is done by two boys. It is said to have originated from a dance by Joseon boys who did errands for the three envoys heading each Tongsinsa mission. A record a mission member left describes that "to relieve the boredom, we had musicians among our mission play and had the boys dance to the music." Locals in Japan began to imitate the exotic dance moves by the boys from Joseon and as time went by, it developed into a formal dance to be passed down. In 1960, Okayama prefecture designated the Karako odori dance from Ushima as an intangible cultural asset.

In Shimonoseki, Yasuoka, and Wakiura, dance rituals for rain called Tojin odori were passed down and performed until the Meiji period, and the Karako odori contredanse from Okayama prefecture's Ushima seems to have been danced in a similar format. There are many other areas known to have once performed the Tojin odori, but now the cultural heritage the Joseon Tongsinsa left in Japan only survives in the cities of Suzuka and Tsu of Mie prefecture.

How then did this form of traditional art that originated from the Joseon Tongsinsa come to be called by the name "Tojin odori" (唐人踊り)? The characters "唐人" may easily give the impression that the dance may have something to do with the Tang Chinese, but during the pre-modern period beyond the sixteenth century in Japan, Tojin referred to both the Tang Chinese and Joseon people. To Japanese commoners with no access to information about foreign countries due to the closed-door policy, Tojin meant foreigners of countries on a remote continent. This is perhaps why photos of people in different areas of Japan dancing Tojin odori or Karako odori are wearing costumes that make it difficult to regard them as exact representations of Joseon attire. Moreover, the costumes of Tojin odori dancers in each area share little similarities with one another. Tojin odori is therefore an exotic art form that started out from an impression gained by observing the Joseon Tongsinsa, then developed into variations inspired by remote memories that became passed down as a local tradition in Japan.