Abstract

The primary purpose of this article is to examine and analyze Kang Hang’s Ganyangnok, one of the few existing eye-witness accounts of Japan during the Imjin War. Kang, a nobleman who was abducted to Japan during the second and final phase of Japan’s invasion of Korea from 1596–1598, wrote Ganyangnok to not only record what he heard and saw in Japan during the late 16th century, but to remind the Korean government of the importance of ensuring adequate preparations before the advent of a war and maintaining a wary eye on the possibility of Japan launching a similar invasion in the future. Ganyangnok is nevertheless important for understanding the origins of Korea’s distrust and alarm towards Japan’s attempt at territorial expansion and is a unique document that took the form of a travelogue and yet functioned as a policy report, informing Koreans about the nature of Japanese feudalism before the Imjin War. Rather than divorcing the form of the text from its function, as much of the existing scholarship has done by either focusing on Ganyangnok as a travelogue or a war captive’s diary, the work ought to be understood holistically since the observations Kang recorded became the basis of his policy reports, which comprise the second part of Ganyangnok.