Hunting Human and Animal Trophies in the East Asian War of 1592–1598

During the devastating Imjin War (1592-1598) between Japan, Korea, and China, the troops of the Japanese ruler, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, severed tens of thousands of body parts from Korean and Chinese combatants and civilians -- men, women, and children, alike. Their severed heads, ears and noses were sent from Korea to Japan for ritual curation alongside the body parts of Korean tigers and birds that the Japanese troops had hunted on the Korean peninsula. In the long and tragic history of warfare, the hunting of animals has often been used as a metaphor for killing enemy soldiers; the enemy is dehumanized and their body parts hunted as trophies. This pattern, known as "expeditionary trophy taking," has been identified among indigenous Amazonian, South-East Asian and Melanesian societies, where it is associated with head hunting, but has also been found in the military histories of Britain, France, Germany and English-speaking colonies from the 1700s to the late 20th century. Some of the best-known modern examples include the collecting of Japanese skulls by US army personnel during World War Two. However, in contrast to the other examples of human trophy-taking studied in world history thus far, which were practised against outsiders on territory far from home, in 16th century Japan hunting and anatomical trophy-taking already had a long history of being carried out against domestic as well as foreign victims. In Japan, hunting and human trophy taking were a sign of a ruler's authority, a way to identify the living beings who he had the right to hunt, exploit and punish. What would now be considered atrocities were, at the time, actually intended to assert Hideyoshi’s civilized righteousness and fitness to rule. Thus, human and non-human animals were entangled in the same regime of violence that legitimized late 16th century warrior rule in Japan, and Hideyoshi used hunting and human trophy taking to validate his attempted annexation of Korea.