Mimizuka, the "Hill of Ears"
posted March 23, 2004
Look how far we haven’t come. This hillock near Gojo-Kawabata entombs the severed ears and noses of Koreans that were brought back as proof of conquest and presented to Hideyoshi by his soldiers in the late 16th century in exchange for rewards.
OUCH!
They didn’t sneak up behind people and snip off their ears. These were taken from the battlefield corpses. Ouch isn’t the word.
I had… er… heard (pardon) of the ear mound in Kyoto, but assumed it was down in the southern portion of the city. Knowing that I shared the same street (Gojo) with it is sorta creepy.
actually they did cut the ears and noses off of live Korean civilians to bolster their “body counts,” and there are accounts of many nose- or earless civilians in the early seventeenth century. so, ouch.
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