The Imperial Japanese Army General Staff Office, which learned about the stele and obtained a rubbed copy from its member Kagenobu Sakōo in 1884, became intrigued over a passage describing the king's military campaigns for the sinmyo 辛卯 year of 391 (sinmyo being a year designator in the sexagenary cycle that characterizes the traditional Sino-oriented East Asian calendar).[1] Some officers in the Japanese army and navy conducted research during the 1880s and the rubbed copy was later published in 1889. Most Japanese scholars, notably Masatomo Suga, interpreted the passage as follows (brackets designating a "reading into" the text where the character is not legible):
"And in the sinmyo year the Wa (Japanese) came and crossed the sea and defeated Baekje, [unknown], and [Sil]la and made them subjects."
They presumed that Wa referred to a centralized Japanese government at the time that controlled the entire western part of Japan.
In the 1910s and 20s, Ryūzō Torii and other Japanese scholars traveled to Ji'an and observed the stele close hand. They found that the inscription had been repaired by clay and lime, and therefore questioned the credibility of the rubbed copy.[1]
The first Korean scholarly study was that of Chang in 1955.[2] He supposed that the subjects of the sentence 渡海破 and 以爲臣民 were respectively Goguryeo and Baekje. By Chang's interpretation the entire passage read as follows:
"And in the sinmyo year Goguryeo came and crossed the sea and defeated Wa. Baekje made [unknown] and [Sil]la its subjects."
In 1959 the Japanese scholar Teijiro Mizutani published another important study.[3] He had acquired rubbed copies made before the repair of the stele and concluded that Sakō's copy had not been made by the rubbing method but rather had been traced, a method known in China as 双鉤塡墨.
The North Korean scholar Kim reported his conclusions in a 1963 article.[4] He had studied the Japanese chronicles Kojiki and Nihonshoki, and concluded that Wa referred to colonies of Samhan in Japan. He claimed that these colonies were established by Korean immigrants and centered around Kyūshū, Kinai, Izumo. Later, according to Kim, the colonies were absorbed by Yamato polity, which was also founded by Koreans. He also posited that the subject of 來渡海破百殘 was Goguryeo, and 百殘 was not the Baekje kingdom but Baekje's colony in Japan. Other North Korean scholar also argued for Goguryeo's invasion of Japan.[5]
Many Korean scholars reject the interpretation that Japan conquered Baekje and Silla on the basis of evidence that cites the contrary. It is difficult to tell when sentences begin or end because of the absence of punctuation and the necessity of reading into the text via context.[6] Furthermore, the subjects Baekje and Silla are not recognizably mentioned in the passage; only the first character for "Baekje" (百) is noted, and even the supposed first character of Silla is not complete (only 斤 as opposed to 新). Furthermore, the character "jan" (殘) was a character used derogatively by Goguryeo in place of the character "jae" (濟) in Baekje's official name (this may have denoted wishful thinking on the part of Goguryeo that another nation came and conquered Baekje). Thus, when taking into consideration the major absence of characters and lack of punctuation, the passage reads:
And in the sinmyo year the Wa (Japanese) crossed the sea. (Abbreviation of someone's title) made (?) subjects of (?) However, further analysis of the passage is that Goguryeo, not Japan, crossed the sea and defeated Baekje or Wa.
In the case of this interpretation, and the abbreviation of King Gwanggaeto's title in the passage, the passage states:
And in the sinmyo year the Wa crossed the sea. King Gwanggaeto (abbreviation) made Silla and Baekje subjects of (?). Some point out several facts that put in doubt the traditional Japanese interpretation of the sinmyo passage. Firstly, the term Wa at the time the stele was made did not solely refer to people from Japan but could also refer to the people from southern Korean, particularly from the Gaya Confederacy.
Originally Posted by Maciamo
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