Korean influence on Japanese culture refers to the impact of continental Asian influences transmitted through or originating in the Korean Peninsula on Japanese institutions, culture, language and society. Since the Korean Peninsula was the cultural bridge between Japan and China throughout much of East Asian history, these influences have been detected in a variety of aspects of Japanese culture, including technology, philosophy, art, and artistic techniques.
Notable examples of Korean influence on Japanese culture include the prehistoric migration of Korean peninsular peoples to Japan near the end of Japan's Jōmon period and the introduction of Buddhism to Japan via the Kingdom of Baekje in 538 AD. From the mid-fifth to the late-seventh centuries, Japan benefited from the immigration of people from Baekje and Gaya who brought with them their knowledge of iron metallurgy, stoneware pottery, law, and Chinese writing. These people were known as Toraijin. The modulation of continental styles of art in Korea has also been discerned in Japanese painting and architecture, ranging from the design of Buddhist temples to smaller objects such as statues, textiles and ceramics. Late in the sixteenth century, the Japanese invasions of Korea produced considerable cross-cultural contact. Korean craftsmen who came to Japan at this time were responsible for a revolution in Japanese pottery making.
Many Korean influences on Japan originated in China, but were adapted and modified in Korea before reaching Japan. The role of ancient Korean states in the transmission of continental civilization has long been neglected, and is increasingly the object of academic study. However, Korean and Japanese nationalisms have complicated the interpretation of these influences.
Prehistoric Korean peninsular influences on the Japanese archipelago Between 800 and 600 BC, new technology and cultural objects began appearing in Japan, starting in Kyushu.Barnes (2015), pp. 271–273. Gradually the Jōmon culture was supplanted across Japan by the Yayoi culture that practiced wet-rice farming. According to the historians Gina Barnes and Satoru Nakazono, this represented a cultural flow from southern Korea to Kyushu. By contrast, Charles T. Keally argues that wet-rice farming, which was originally practiced in China, could also have come to Kyushu directly from China.
The result was rapid growth in the Japanese population during the Yayoi period and subsequent Kofun period.Rhee, Aikens, Choi, and Ro, pp. 420–422. Japanese people also began to use metal tools, arrowheads, new forms of pottery, moats, burial mounds, and styles of housing which were of peninsular origin.Habu, p. 258. A significant cause of these dramatic changes in Japanese society was likely an influx of immigrants from southern Korea.Totman, p. 59. Historian Hiroshi Tsude estimated that as many as 1.8 million Koreans immigrated to Japan during the Yayoi period. According to Satoru Nakazono, this period was "characterized by the systematic introduction of Korean peninsula culture".Nakazono, p. 59.
According to Japanese historian Tadashi Nishitani, the Yoshinogari site, an archeological site in Kyushu dating from the late Yayoi period, appears virtually identical to villages in the Korean peninsula of the same period.Rhee, Aikens, Choi, and Ro, pp. 430–432. By contrast, the burial mounds at Yoshinogari show signs of influence from the Chinese Lelang Commandery.Barnes (2007), p. 105. During this period Japan imported great numbers of peninsular mirrors and daggers, which were the symbols of power in Korea. Combined with the curved jewel known as the magatama, Korea's "three treasures" soon became as prized by Japan's elites as Korea's, and in Japan they later became the Imperial Regalia.
Korean influences on ancient and classical Japan With the beginning of the Kofun period around 250 CE, the building of gigantic tomb called kofun indicates the emergence of powerful warrior elites, fueled by more intensive agriculture and the introduction of iron technologies. Contact with the continental mainland increased, as Japan undertook intensive contacts with the southern Korean littoral ruling groups, in pursuit of securing supplies of iron and other material goods, while sending emissaries to China (in 238, 243 and 247). A pattern developed of intense military and political dealings with peninsular Korean powers that continued for four centuries.Totman, pp.62–63. For Hyung Il Pai, there was no clear Korean and Japanese national distinction for the period around the 4th century CE.Pai, pp. 234–235.
Cultural contact with Korea, which at the time was divided into several independent states, played a decisive role in the development of Japanese government and society both during the Kofun period and the subsequent Classical period. Most innovations flowed from Korea into Japan, and not vice versa, primarily due to Korea's closer proximity to China.Ch'on, p. 11. Though many of the ideas and technologies which filtered into Japan from Korea were originally Chinese, historian William Wayne Farris notes that Korean peninsular peoples put "their distinctive stamp on" them before passing them on to Japan. Some such innovations were imported to Japan through trade, but in more cases they were brought to Japan by peninsular immigrants. The Yamato state that eventually unified Japan accomplished this partly due to its success at gaining a monopoly on the importation of Korean peninsular culture and technology into Japan. According to Farris, Japanese cultural borrowing from Korea "hit peaks in the mid-fifth, mid-sixth, and late seventh centuries" and "helped to define a material culture that lasted as long as a thousand years".
Immigration from ancient Korea to Japan
During this period a significant factor behind the transfer of peninsular Korean culture to Japan was immigration from Korea. Most peninsular immigrants, generically known as kikajin in Japanese, came during a period of intense regional warfare which racked the Korean peninsula between the late fourth and late seventh centuries. Japanese traditions held that the Yamato kingdom has sent military expeditions to assist Baekje as early as 369 CE, military aid that is said to have enabled the latter to secure control of Naktong against its enemies, Silla and Goguryeo.Pai, p.234.
Many of these immigrants, who were welcomed by the Japanese government, were from Baekje and Gaya. These refugees brought their culture to Japan with them, and once there they often became leading officials, artists, and craftsmen.Kim, p. 74. Korean peninsular immigrants and their descendants played a significant role in Japan's cultural missions to Sui China,Nakamura, pp. 96–97. and some peninsular families are even said to have married into the Imperial Family.Kim, p. 75. By 700, it has been conjectured, perhaps one third of all Japanese aristocrats may have been of relatively recent peninsular origin, including the Aya clan. Although peninsular immigrants settled throughout Japan, they were especially concentrated in Nara, the region where the Japanese capital was located. According to one estimate, from 80 to 90 percent of people in Takaichi District of NaraShoku Nihongi続日本紀 宝亀三年（七七二）四月庚午【二十】"凡高市郡内者。檜前忌寸及十七県人夫満地而居。他姓者十而一二焉。" had Baekje ancestry by the year 773, and recent anatomical analyses indicate that modern-day Japanese people living in this area continue to be more closely related to ethnic Koreans than any other in Japan.Rhee, Aikens, Choi, and Ro, pp. 441–442.
The Soga clan, a clan with close ties to the Baekje elite, may also have been of Baekje ancestry.McCallum (2009), p. 19. Scholars who have argued in favor of the theory that the Soga had peninsular ancestry include Teiji Kadowaki and William Wayne Farris.Farris (2009), p. 25.
Arms and armament During most of the Kofun period Japan relied on Korea as its sole source of iron swords, spears, armor, and helmets. Cuirasses and later Japan's first lamellar armor, as well as subsequent innovations in producing them, arrived in Japan from Korea, particularly from Silla and Gaya. Japan's first crossbow was delivered by Goguryeo in 618.
At a time in history when horses were a key military weapon, Baekje immigrants also established Japan's first horse-raising farms in what would become Japan's Kawachi Province. One historian, Koichi Mori, theorizes that Emperor Keitai's close friendships with Baekje horsemen played an important role in helping him to assume the throne.Mori Koichi, pp. 130–133. Japan's first trappings, such as bits, stirrups, saddles, and bridles were also imported from the peninsula by the early fifth century.
In 660, following the fall of its ally, Baekje, the Japanese Emperor Tenji utilized Baekje's skilled technicians to construct at least seven fortresses to protect Japan's coastline from invasion.Comoe, p. 26. Japan's mountain fortifications in particular were based on peninsular models.Batten, pp. 27–28.
Pottery In the early fifth century high-fired stoneware pottery began to be imported from Kaya and Silla to Japan, and soon after stoneware technologies such as the tunnel kiln and potter's wheel also made their way from Korea to Japan. This allowed the Japanese to produce their own stoneware, which came to be called sue ware, and was eventually produced on a large scale throughout Japan. This new pottery came to Japan alongside immigrants from Korea, possibly southern Korea which was under attack from Goguryeo.
Ovens The stove known as the kamado was of continental origin, having been invented in China but was modified in by the peninsular peoples before it was introduced to Japan. According to the historian William Wayne Farris, the introduction of the kamado "had a profound effect on daily life in ancient Japan" and "represented a major advance for residents of Japan's pit dwellings". The hearth ovens (ro:炉/maiyōro:埋甕炉) previously used to cook meals and heat homes were less safe, more difficult to use, and less heat efficient, and by the seventh century the kamado was in widespread use in Japan. According to Farris, Japanese people referred to the kamado as kara kamado, which can be translated into English as "Korean ovens". However, in some parts of northeastern Japan, open-hearth ovens continued to be preferred.Totman, pp.64–65.
Sewing According to the Nihon Shoki, all the seamstresses of the village of Kume (來目) in Yamato province hailed from a sewing woman, Maketsu (眞毛津) who was given as tribute by the king of Baekje to the Yamato court.Tokyo National Museum, p.3.
Iron tools and iron metallurgy According to Farris, during the Kofun period, Korea was the source for most of Japan's iron tools, including chisels, saws, sickles, axes, spades, hoes, and plows. Historically, the source of iron ingots in Korea was cut off when Yamato forces suffered defeats with their peninsular allies in 405, and again, later in 475, and, immigrant smelters developed furnaces to reuse the available iron. Later, after 450 CE, the Kinai elite found substitutes in local sands available by Placer mining to make up the shortfall.Totman, pp.67–68. Korean iron farming tools in particular contributed to a rise in Japan's population by possibly 250 to 300 percent.
However, it was the refugees who came after 400 from Gaya, a Korean state famous for its iron production, who established some of Japan's first native iron foundries. The work of these Gayan refugees eventually permitted Japan to escape from its dependency on importing iron tools, armor, and weapons from Korea.Rhee, Aikens, Choi, and Ro, pp. 437–438, 446. The techniques of iron production which they brought to Japan are uniquely Korean and distinct from those used in China.
Dams and irrigation