2025.09
SELECTED RESEARCH · 2025
Information Circulation between Manchuria, Korea, and Japan before the Qing Conquest of China
Ling-Wei Kung
Bulletin of the Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica 96, no. 3 (2025): 499–566.
DOI not listed in the supplied full text.
Research summary
Before the Qing conquest of China, Jurchen and Manchu rulers already gathered information about Japan through Korea and Ming China. This article traces how reports of warfare, maritime trade, weapons, and political institutions travelled across Northeast Asia from the late sixteenth to the early seventeenth century. Drawing on multilingual historical sources, it reconstructs Korea’s role as an intermediary, Manchu translations of Japanese affairs, and the Qing court’s attempts to communicate with the Tsushima domain. The study connects Inner Asian expansion with maritime networks and shows that political power developed together with knowledge of neighbouring societies.
This summary is prepared from the full article; consult the PDF for the original abstract and complete argument.
Main contributions
- Reconstructs pre-1644 routes through which information about Japan reached Manchuria.
- Uses multilingual evidence to connect intermediaries, translation, diplomacy, and trade.
- Brings Inner Asian and maritime histories into the same analytical frame.
Citation
Kung, Ling-Wei. “Information Circulation between Manchuria, Korea, and Japan before the Qing Conquest of China.” Bulletin of the Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica 96, no. 3 (2025): 499–566.
How did the early Qing learn about Japan?
