The Absurdity of Imposing Modern Borders on Ancient History—Which Was Superior, Japan or South Korea?

The other day, I heard something interesting while watching a history program.

Keyhole-shaped burial mounds, long regarded as distinctive to Japan, have been discovered in the southern part of the Korean Peninsula.

Keyhole-shaped tombs are a defining feature of ancient Japan’s era of monumental burial-mound construction. Viewed from above, they resemble a keyhole and are associated with the ruling elite of the Yamato polity, an early Japanese state.

Yet examples of them also exist across the sea on the Korean Peninsula.

According to a historian appearing on the program, they may have been commissioned by powerful figures who crossed over from ancient Japan or by people from Japan who were active in the region.

So the Japanese archipelago and the Korean Peninsula were already deeply connected at the time.

The moment we bring the perspective of modern nation-states into the story, however, it becomes much more complicated.

Which Was Superior, Japan or South Korea?

On the South Korean side, for example, some argue that Japan’s imperial family may be descended from people who came from the Korean Peninsula.

On the Japanese side, meanwhile, there was once a theory that ancient Japan ruled the southern part of the Korean Peninsula. This is the debate over the so-called Mimana Nihon-fu, often translated as the “Japanese Headquarters in Mimana,” an idea that strongly influenced prewar views of history.

Both sides are looking at the same ancient remains. One says, “Japan originated on the Korean Peninsula,” while the other says, “The Korean Peninsula was under Japanese rule.”

In the end, the discussion turns into an argument over which side was above and which was below.

But this raises a fundamental question.

Did the countries we now call Japan and South Korea even exist in that era?

Could People at the Time See Our National Borders?

Today, Japan and South Korea are separate countries divided by the sea.

It is hard to imagine, however, that people living in the era when these monumental burial mounds were built saw the world in the same way.

The Japanese archipelago was home to the Yamato polity, while several ancient Korean kingdoms existed on the Korean Peninsula.

In other words, it was not a confrontation between the two countries we now call Japan and South Korea.

Moreover, the sea was not necessarily a wall separating people.

People traveled by boat, traded, passed on technology, and settled in new places. It would not be surprising if regions separated by the sea were more closely connected than distant regions on the same landmass.

Seen in that light, the presence of keyhole-shaped burial mounds in the southern Korean Peninsula is not particularly strange.

If we temporarily forget today’s national borders, we can instead imagine people who shared a culture and relationships of power living on both sides of the sea.

If someone had asked them, “Are you Japanese or Korean?” they probably would not even have understood the question.

Imposing Modern Nationalities on Ancient People

What I found interesting was not just the burial mounds themselves, but the way modern people interpret them.

The archaeological remains do not change, yet their meaning shifts according to the national consciousness of the person looking at them.

Claim that they were Japanese, and they become evidence that Japanese influence extended that far.

Emphasize influence from the Korean Peninsula, and they become part of an argument that Japanese culture originated there.

Both interpretations project the modern nation-state onto the ancient world.

What we should be asking is who built the tombs, what kinds of people interacted, and what political relationships existed among them.

Instead, once the question “Which was greater, Japan or South Korea?” enters the discussion, historical research immediately becomes a contest in national one-upmanship.

It is particularly strange that modern people should derive a sense of superiority from the actions of people who lived more than a thousand years ago.

Thinking We Are Looking at History When We Are Really Looking at the Present

I believe the fascination of studying history lies in discovering a world different from our own.

But when we carry today’s borders and national identities directly into the past, we end up interpreting old events through present-day values.

The relationship between the ancient Japanese archipelago and the Korean Peninsula was entirely different from the relationship between Japan and South Korea today.

Understanding that difference may be the very point of studying history.

Even so, modern people discover a grave from more than a thousand years ago and begin arguing, “Our ancestors were greater than yours.”

The people inside those graves surely never imagined that, 1,500 years after their deaths, modern strangers would assign them nationalities and enlist them in a contest of one-upmanship with a neighboring country.