Region · as at first light, 1 January 1200

Korea and Japan

On the morning of 1 January 1200 the Atlas records 8 realms and principalities in Korea and Japan, with 102 lords and officers, 162 towns, ports and sites, 82 church lands and religious houses and 105 provinces, peoples and free lands.

The realms

  1. Silla

    In the eleventh century Silla was a kingdom in its own right: a twin town astride the Senegal, Muslim since the time of War Jabi of Takrur, whose king fought the unbelievers of Qalanbu and whose realm, al-Bakri says, almost rivalled Ghana's.

  2. Goryeo under King Sinjong and the Choe houseSinjong

    On the morning of 1 January 1200 Goryeo is a Buddhist kingdom of rice, hemp, paper, ginseng and celadon, with its trade running through the river port of Byeokrando.

  3. The court at Kyoto and its provincesTsuchimikadoImperial court with a cloistered emperor

    The court is a government of two layers.

  4. The temple and shrine corporationsTemple and shrine corporations that hold ground

    In the west the great temples and shrines are lords of land, of men and of the road.

  5. The chiefs of the Ryukyu islandsIsland chiefs, no king named

    No writing survives from Okinawa, Miyako or Yaeyama for 1200; the only records are Japanese notices of the Amami island Kikai and archaeology.

  6. Self-governing peoples of Korea and JapanSelf-governing peoples

    The coast of north-west Hizen and its islands (Hirado, the Gotō chain, the Kashima shore, the Karatsu bay) is held by a crowd of small warrior families who fight, trade and carry freight by sea and who go by the name of the district, Matsura.

  7. The Kamakura house and its housemenMinamoto no YoriieWarrior house of the east, no shogun yet

    On 1 January 1200 the Kamakura regime is not a state with borders but a lordship over men.

  8. Ezo and the northern islandsPeoples of the north, no kings

    North of the Tsugaru strait lie lands that no realm of 1200 governs.

Primary sources for Korea and Japan

  • An Account of My Hut, Kamo no Chomei (鴨長明) (1212). A short essay on impermanence by a Kyoto poet and shrine official who had failed to win his family's post at the Kamo shrine.
  • Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country (Yi Gyu-bo), Yi Gyu-bo (李奎報) (poems and prose from the 1190s to 1241; collected and printed by his son in 1241, with a supplement in 1242). The collected poems, letters, memorials and essays of a Goryeo scholar who was thirty-two and still seeking office in 1200.
  • Collection to Break Up Idleness, Yi Illo (李仁老) (completed 1214, printed 1260). The earlier of the two Goryeo books of literary anecdote, by a scholar who survived the military coup of 1170 by taking refuge in a monastery and later served under the Choe regime.
  • Diary of the Inokuma Regent: the diary of Konoe Iezane, Konoe Iezane (近衛家実) (1197 to 1218, as a daily diary). The diary of the regent's heir, aged twenty-one in 1200 and already a senior courtier under his father Konoe Motomichi, who was regent (sessho) for the child emperor Tsuchimikado.
  • Essentials of the History of Goryeo, Kim Jong-seo (金宗瑞) and the Joseon history office (1452). The chronological companion to the Goryeosa, finished a year after it and drawing on the same lost records, sometimes with entries the Goryeosa omits.
  • History of Goryeo, Jeong Inji (鄭麟趾), Kim Jong-seo (金宗瑞) and the Joseon history office (completed 1451, from the Goryeo veritable records and earlier drafts). The official history of Goryeo, compiled by the Joseon state from the lost Goryeo veritable records.
  • Hundred Times Refined Extracts: court annals (late thirteenth century, from court diaries). Short dated annals of the imperial court excerpted from courtiers' diaries, among them the Gyokuyo and the Meigetsuki.
  • Jottings of a Fool: an interpretative history of Japan, Jien (慈円) (about 1219 to 1220, revised to about 1223). A history by Kujo Kanezane's brother, head of the Tendai school and the leading churchman of the court, written to explain the fall of the Kujo and the rise of the warriors as the working of principle (dori).
  • Leaves of Jade: the diary of Kujo Kanezane, Kujo (Fujiwara) Kanezane (九條兼實) (1164 to 1200, as a daily diary). The diary of the former regent, Yoritomo's ally at court, who had been driven from power in the Kenkyu purge of 1196 and lived in retirement in 1200.
  • Mirror of the East, Anonymous; compiled by officials of the Kamakura shogunate (compiled about 1300 from the shogunate's records, diaries and family documents). The Kamakura house's own chronicle, in daily entries.
  • Record of the Bright Moon: the diary of Fujiwara no Teika, Fujiwara no Teika (藤原定家) (1180 to 1235, as a daily diary, with gaps). The diary of the poet and courtier, then thirty-eight and a middle-ranking official of the Kujo house.
  • Supplement to the Collection to Break Up Idleness, Choe Ja (崔滋) (1254). A sequel to the Pahan jip written at the request of the Choe house, by a man born in 1188 who knew the generation of 1200 as a boy and young official.
  • Surviving Documents of the Kamakura Period, Various; collected by Takeuchi Rizo (竹内理三) (documents of 1185 to 1333, collected and printed 1971 to 1997). The collected charters, deeds, court orders, shogunal directives, temple records and land registers of the Kamakura age, printed in date order.
  • The Tale of the Heike, Anonymous; traditionally attributed to Shinano no Zenji Yukinaga, performed and reshaped by blind reciters (early thirteenth century in its first form; the standard Kakuichi text was fixed in 1371). The epic of the Genpei war, in the form the reciters gave it over the century after 1200.
  • History of the Jin, Toqto'a (脫脫) and the Yuan history office, with Ouyang Xuan among the chief compilers (1343 to 1344, from the Jin veritable records and the Jin national history). The official history of the Jurchen empire that ruled north China and Manchuria in 1200.
  • Description of the Foreign Peoples (Chau Ju-kua), Zhao Rukuo (趙汝适) (about 1225, while superintendent of maritime trade at Quanzhou). The Song customs officer's survey of the overseas world, compiled from merchants and from Zhou Qufei, a generation after 1200 but describing trade routes that were the same in 1200.
  • Draft Compilation of the Collected Statutes of the Song, Various; the Song huiyao were compiled by the Song state, the surviving draft reassembled by Xu Song from the Yongle dadian in the nineteenth century (the original Song compilations date from the eleventh to the thirteenth century; the surviving extracts were recovered in 1809 to 1820 and printed in 1936). Dated extracts from the Song government's own statute collections, arranged by office.
  • History of the Song, the chapters on Xia and on foreign states, Toqto'a (脫脫) and the Yuan history office (1343 to 1345). The Song court's accounts of its neighbours, each arranged as an annal of embassies and wars.

The whole sources library

How these entries are made

Every entry describes one morning, 1 January 1200, and keeps later events in a dated "what the year holds" list with the conditions each depended on. Each entry names its sources, rates its confidence and says where the sources disagree. Published 4 November 2026. Corrections are welcome.