The poetry of Joseon delegates dispatched to Japan in the 17th century had a similar pattern to those of the envoys from the Ming Dynasty dispatched to Joseon. The poetry was written to commemorate the journey to Japan, describing the exotic and forei...
The poetry of Joseon delegates dispatched to Japan in the 17th century had a similar pattern to those of the envoys from the Ming Dynasty dispatched to Joseon. The poetry was written to commemorate the journey to Japan, describing the exotic and foreign scenery of the country and the appreciation of the delegates. The two places visited by the delegates during the trip, Mount Fuji and Nikko, became the source of a travelogue, and these two places had different meanings to Japanese people. The Japanese people thought of Mount Fuji as a mountain they take pride in, and Nikko was an artificial space that the Shogunate tried to make divine. Accordingly, the reaction to the poetry of the delegates was clearly divided into extremes. For example, the poetry on Mount Fuji of Kim Se-ryeom in 1636 became so popular that it was copied throughout the country, whereas the poetry on Nikko was harshly criticized by a Shogunate official named Hayashi Rajan. But as the trip to Mount Nikko became a regular course of the travel itinerary, more new scenery features of Nikko were discovered and described in poetry which was developed to have certain characteristics of travel poetry. Since 1643, the travel poetry of Tongsinsa delegates about Nikko described the place, not just in a conventional way, but in the image of a fairy land they actually experienced and felt. In the 18th century, the poetry on Mount Fuji caused controversy about whether the beauty of it exceeds that of Korea`s mountains and streams, and it aroused the interest of the people of Japan in the nature of Korea and became a catalyst to spread the interest throughout the country. On the other hand, the poetry on Nikko written by the delegates was evaluated as pioneering in describing the beauty of Nikko. As a result, the poetry on Mount Fuji and Nikko mainly written by the Korean delegates during their trip to Japan had the inherent quality of travel poetry which discovered the beauty of Japan that even the Japanese did not realize and revealed it in their writing.