was met with throughout, but an indecisive victory near
Chiksan, in the north of the metropolitan province, rendered it
impossible for the Japanese to establish themselves in Seoul before
the advent of winter, and they therefore judged it advisable to
retire to their seaboard chain of entrenched camps. Early in 1598, a
fresh army of forty thousand men reached Seoul from China, and for a
moment the situation seemed to threaten disaster for the Japanese.
Their strategy and desperate valour proved invincible, however, and
the Kagoshima samurai won, on October 30, 1598, a victory so signal
that the ears and noses of thirty-seven thousand Chinese heads were
sent to Japan and buried under a tumulus near the temple of Daibutsu
in Kyoto, where this terrible record, called Mimizuka (Mound of
Ears), may be seen to-day.

Just about this time, intelligence of the death of Hideyoshi reached
the Japanese commanders in Korea, and immediately an armistice was
arranged. The withdrawal of the invading forces followed, not without
some serious difficulties, and thus the six years' campaign
terminated without any direct results except an immense loss of life
and treasure and the reduction of the Korean peninsula to a state of
desolation. It has been repeatedly pleaded for the wholly
unprogressive state into which Korea thenceforth fell. But to
conclude that a nation could be reduced by a six-years' war to three
centuries of hopelessness and helplessness is to credit that nation
with a very small measure of resilient capacity.

INDIRECT RESULTS

The war was not altogether without indirect results of some value to
Japan. Among these may be cited the fact that, a few decades later,
when the Tsing dynasty destroyed the Ming in China, subjugated Korea,
and assumed a position analogous to that previously held by the Yuan,
no attempt was made to defy Japan. The memory of her soldiers'
achievements on the Korean battle-fields sufficed to protect her
against foreign aggression. Another material result was that, in
compliance with Hideyoshi's orders, the returning Japanese generals
brought back many Korean art-artisans who contributed largely to the
development of the ceramic industry. On no less than seven different
kinds of now well-known porcelain and pottery in Japan did these
experts exercise marked influence, and their efforts were specially
timely in view of the great vogue then enjoyed by all utensils used
in connexion with the tea cere