Hello historians of Reddit!
I was wondering if there is a basis for drawing comparisons between the Japanese Invasion of Korea in 1592 and the Spanish colonization of the New World. I don't have a very good understanding of Japanese politics before the Meiji Era, so please be kind to this question. I know Japan did eventually transform Korea into a colony, but I have no conception of this eventual colonization had the same objectives as the original expansion in 1592. On the surface it seems like these two different conquest have nothing in common, but hence my question.
Would Japan have treated Koreans in a similar fashion to how Spain ruled over Native Americans? Would they have imposed Shinto on Koreans? Would they have enslaved or otherwise forced Koreans into coercive labor systems? Would they have used their Korean colony as a springboard for future expansion into China or Siberia?
I guess I am wondering if the Japanese attempt to conquer Korea can be viewed as a chapter of a larger age of political expansion?
Thank you
The tl;dr version of the background was that Toyotomi Hideyoshi recently unified Japan for the first time since the beginning of the Sengoku period. But they were originally a small house and had to rely on political alliances; many Daimyos were not conquered by them and simply pledged submission, there were still small scale rebellions going on. He was reluctant to ask the Emperor to proclaim himself Shogun before fully settling the conflicts, so he was technically ruling Japan without official justification. This left behind many subversive and independent Daimyos who held the majority of the armies; they were promised territories and power but these could not all be fulfilled. This left possibilities for the Toyotomi regime to be overthrown.
The goal of the Toyotomi regime was to conquer Korea as a bridgehead in their eventual invasion of Ming China; the invasion was to redistribute land in Korea and China to Hideyoshi's allies to settle their ambitions, and to cement the Toyotomi House's claim to Shogun. The plan was based on their assumption that the perpetual state of warfare in Sengoku Japan gave Japanese Daimyos a great number of experienced soldiers, as well as superior tactics and weaponry. Do note that while there were warplans on how the military invasion would have proceeded, there were no records on the issue of governance of the population afterwards - all accounts in that regard would be speculation.
We would never see the actual outcomes of the invasion as the Korean monarchy never capitulated, nor did Japanese armies manage to settle down for extended periods of time. Like other feudal warfares, the interaction between the armies and the civilian population was limited to the pillaging for supplies; this leaves few useful accounts on how the relation between Japanese invaders and Korean civilians under occupation could change.
Ultimately the dynastic East Asia plays down to the relations of domination and submission; we are talking about a socially constructed mindset that is fundamentally different from that of the colonial Europeans, and a more proper analogy would be medieval European conquests such as the Norman conquest of England where changes to cultures were not strictly imposed upon, and took place in the span of centuries. Prior to the introduction of nationalism and industrialization, all conquests within East Asia would prove be endogenous conflicts within a closed system, that otherwise do not fundamentally disturb the overarching pillars of culture or greater institutions of society.