{"id":1083546,"date":"2026-09-28T10:01:21","date_gmt":"2026-09-28T01:01:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thekoreantoday.com\/mapo\/2026\/09\/28\/history-lives-on-baekje-series-episode-15-mimaji\/"},"modified":"2026-09-28T10:01:28","modified_gmt":"2026-09-28T01:01:28","slug":"history-lives-on-baekje-series-episode-15-mimaji","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thekoreantoday.com\/mapo\/2026\/09\/28\/history-lives-on-baekje-series-episode-15-mimaji\/","title":{"rendered":"[History Lives On – Baekje Series] Episode 15: Mimaji"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\u767e<\/span> <\/div>\n
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THE KOREAN TODAY<\/p>\n

History Lives On<\/h1>\n
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The Baekje Chronicle<\/h2>\n

Episode 15: Mimaji’s Masked Dance That Crossed the Sea<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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A masked man stood on a field in Sakurai, Japan. Behind him, faintly, still lingered the sunset over Baekje’s capital, Sabi. <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

Today, the world fills stadiums for K-pop’s precision choreography and spectacle. Fourteen centuries earlier, a dance and music tradition that crossed the sea from the Korean peninsula transformed a neighboring nation’s performing arts just as decisively. In 612 CE, a Baekje performer named Mimaji settled in Sakurai, Japan, and taught local boys a masked dance-drama called gigaku (\u4f0e\u6a02). <\/p>\n

What makes this story remarkable is that Baekje’s own chronicles never recorded it. The only surviving account comes from Japan’s Nihon Shoki. The culture that gave was forgotten by its own records; the culture that received remembered even the teacher’s name. That asymmetry is itself the story worth telling. <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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\ud83c\udf0d Western Historical Parallel <\/h4>\n

While Mimaji taught masked dance in Sakurai in 612 CE, Byzantine Emperor Heraclius was fighting for the empire’s survival against Persia, and in Mecca, the first revelations of Islam were beginning \u2014 much as itinerant monks and minstrels of Charlemagne’s later Carolingian court would carry Frankish liturgical music and legend across Western Europe two centuries afterward. <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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\u25c6<\/span> The Ancient Landscape <\/h3>\n
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In the early 7th century, Baekje was ruled by King Mu (r. 600\u2013641 CE), who built grand temple complexes such as Wangheungsa and Mireuksa to anchor royal authority in Buddhist patronage. Baekje maintained active exchange with Southern Chinese dynasties and with Wa (early Japan), functioning as a cultural relay point across the East Asian maritime world \u2014 a role not unlike Venice’s later position between Byzantium and Western Europe. <\/p>\n

In the 13th year of King Mu’s reign (612 CE), a Baekje man named Mimaji traveled to Japan. He had earlier studied gigaku, a masked dance-drama, in the “Wu” region \u2014 the Jiangnan area along the lower Yangtze, a heartland of Southern Chinese court culture. Upon arriving in Japan, he settled in Sakurai and gathered local boys to teach them the dance, laying the foundation for a performance tradition that would become central to court and temple ritual for generations. <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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“A man of Baekje named Mimaji came and settled [in Japan]. He said he had studied gigaku dance in Wu. He was made to live in Sakurai, and boys were gathered to be taught the gigaku dance.” <\/p>\n