ABSTRACT
Keinen was a Buddhist monk who joined the Japanese invasion of Chosŏn Korea in 1597 as a field chaplain and doctor. In his diary, Keinen describes the violence around him from an entirely different perspective than that of other Japanese accounts: he is disgusted and horrified by what he sees, and highly critical of the samurai. He likens the scenes he witnesses to visions of Buddhist hells. Through his sympathy for those conscripted into the Japanese army, Keinen offers a more complex picture of the invading force than other contemporary sources. His metaphysical view of human conflict seems to transcend the ideas of ‘Japan’, ‘Korea’, and ‘China’. Yet the crucible of battle brings Keinen back to a hardened sense of us and them, and he ultimately draws on the same narrative of Japan as ‘land of the gods’ 神國 as do samurai chroniclers. Keinen’s experience points to the power of the war of 1592–1598 in shaping ideas about Japan’s place in the world.
