S. Gay
for trade. Its residents included true border zone people, who resist facile labeling as either
Japanese or Korean. In the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, moreover, Tsushima was
a haven for raiders who plagued the Korean coast, kidnapping people and selling them into ser-
vitude in Kyushu and the Ryukyus. Two Tsushima inhabitants involved in the resolution of
these activities had the linguistic and cultural fluency necessary to represent all sides across the
border zone between Korea, Kyushu, and the Ryukyus.
In 1407 Hei Dōzen, a native of Tsushima, visited the Korean court as envoy of the Tsushima
military governor, Sō Sadashige, in order to return hostages kidnapped by Tsushima- based
marauders from Korean coastal areas.^25 He also conveyed from Sadashige a request to be allowed
to move onto and garrison troops at Ulleungdo (Utsuryō Island, in Japanese), north of Tsushima
and just off the Korean coast. The request was rebuffed but Dōzen himself was granted permis-
sion to live in Korea where the court bestowed on him an official appointment. Thus he served
both the Sō and the Korean king in a diplomatic capacity. In 1411 he was sent to Tsushima as
envoy of the Korean king, requesting harmonious relations and a stop to incursions. Persistent
marauding also took Dōzen as far afield as the Ryukyus. In 1416 the Korean government depu-
tized him to negotiate the return of Korean hostages kidnapped by Japanese marauders and then
sold in the Ryukyus.
Dōzen’s activities extended beyond diplomacy. Records of a 1413 test near present- day Seoul
comparing the speed of a Korean military ship to that of a Tsushima- based boat refer to the latter
as built by Dōzen. And in 1415 he led a group of Buddhist priests from Japan where they per-
formed supplication rituals for rain in western Korea. The first activity seems to indicate military
tension between Tsushima and Korea, with Dōzen’s shipbuilding skills possibly pivotal. The
second activity suggests cultural affinity between Japan and Korea, at the very least.
Dōzen’s propensity to play both sides of the border zone caught up with him in 1419, when
he participated in a Korean military invasion of Tsushima, the marauders’ longtime haven.
Accused by Korean authorities of misconduct during the invasion, Dōzen and his wife and chil-
dren were seized and taken to Pyongyang where they were imprisoned. From the invasion itself
it appears that Korea, now under King Sejong’s rule, could challenge more effectively this border
zone’s ambivalence.
Another Tsushima border player was Kim Woncin.^26 He first appears in Korean court records
in 1419 as an envoy of the Hirado lord, in Kyushu. Several years later he asked the Korean
authorities to allow him to travel through southern Kyushu to search for Korean hostages. His
request was granted and he was dispatched to provinces ruled by Shimazu Hisatoyo, carrying
diplomatic papers designating him as originally from Korea but having been in service to the
Hirado lord. Thus we can label him as ethnically Korean yet his name comes up in another
Korean source of 1423 as a “waein” (Jpn: “wajin”), a term usually understood to indicate a Jap-
anese, but here a broader category including anyone serving as envoy of authorities in Tsushima
or northern Kyushu. In later years Kim continued to work in negotiations among Korea, Hirado,
and the Ryukyus for return of hostages and to otherwise facilitate the movement of people
across this border zone.
The city of Hakata in northwestern Kyushu has been characterized as part of Japan yet of a
fundamentally different character; labels attached to it include “international,” “representing
Japan to East Asia,” or “the face of Japan” to the outside.^27 These apply equally well to the classi-
cal and medieval city as to modern Hakata. A city of commerce and trade, its population included
Chinese and Korean merchants who preserved their ethnic identity whether transient or perma-
nent residents. In commerce medieval Hakata typifies a border zone particularly well, a city
whose trade with the continent was part of its character from earliest times and whose residents,
regardless of origin, participated in that trade.