Mimizuka - Hideyoshi's "Hill of Ears" (Kyoto)

 monument, historic landmark, war memorial

Mimizuka (literally Hill of Ears or Ear Mound) is the memorial Toyotomi Hideyoshi constructed to hold the ears and noses of some 38,000 Koreans* that had been slain in the 7 year war** fought between Japan and Korea. Dedicated in 1597, the reasons for the memorial are not entirely known. Some say Hideyoshi wanted to honour the slain Korean soldiers, others say he meant it as a warning for Japan's enemies not to resist conquest. At the time it was unheard of for fallen enemies to be interred in a Buddhist shrine, suggesting that Hideyoshi was more lenient than he could have been and did indeed intend the mound as a memorial.

It was tradition for Japanese warriors to return with the heads of their slain enemies, but the distances involved between Korea and Japan made this impractical. Thus they cut off the ears and noses to confirm their deeds and receive rewards. The facial parts were put in barrels of brine and returned to the Imperial capital. Because many barrels were discarded, it will never be known how many Koreans perished in Hideyoshi's invasions. Historians have estimated anywhere between 40,000 and a million on the Korean side alone.

Eventually Hideyoshi's war came to nothing and Korea was abandoned following his death. In the 1970s the Korean government called for the levelling of the mound as - to them - it represented nothing more than Japanese cruelty and brutality. Mimizuka is conspicuously missing from history books and maps of Kyoto, a deliberate attempt to quell antagonism between Japan and its Asian neighbour.

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*There are unlikely to be 38,000 sets of ears and noses in the mound, as many were simply discarded prior to 1597.
**The first invasion (1592/1593) is called Bunroku no eki in Japanese (Bunroku referring to the Japanese era under the Emperor Go-Yōzei, spanning the period from 1592 to 1596). The second invasion (1597/1598) is called the Keichō no eki.