h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

If these were trophies of combat, then possibly a war is involved.

More than likely well before other types of record were accepted..

mmmmmmm

I will go for 1500s. Japan would be most unlikely to be attacking China at the height of the Mongols power, and I believe that V-Nam was part of the Chinese empire at that time.....

Korea????

Is this the site of a pile of ears from a war?????


GT

Ooh he's good.

> a war is involved.

DGI +1

>I will go for 1500s.

1597 to be precise. DGI +1

>Korea?

Correct! +3

>Is this the site of a pile of ears from a war?

Correct! +3

GT

And there was me thinking it was a commemoration of database technology

>> raised you an olive his loverly wife <<



Been quite a few years since I saw one of those.


~jwf~

This has all tweaked a memory ...

Didn't the Japanese also bring back noses as well as ears to prove how many they had killed?

I vaguely remember a story of body parts preserved in barrels of alcohol ...

I believe that there was a bounty on offer.

Yes - that's true. I was just about to start writing this one up so you've snuck in under the wire.

Have a DGI +1

So, they got paid per body part?

Did you have to bring back two ears for a bounty, or did you get half a bounty per ear? *is curious*

Vip can't help you there - I thought the same thing and then put it into the "too hard" basket ... now that this is done and dusted why not google it. You're allowed now

I think these things usually involved only left or only right ears; that way, you can't collect double bounties.

Aaaaaaaaaaah. That makes sense. Cheers, Mala.

Is that why Van Gogh cut his ear off; to keep himself safe from Samurai attacks? He wasn't as daft as some people think!

He was you know. He was being bothered by Ninjas, not Samurai. They dont usually bother with keepsakes, unless it's cash.

The Mimizuka, literally "Ear Mound" is a monument in Kyoto, Japan, dedicated to the sliced ears and noses of killed Korean soldiers and civilians taken as a war trophy during the Japanese invasions of Korea from 1592 to 1598. The monument enshrines the mutilated body parts of at least 38,000 Koreans.

The dismembered parts were kept in brine to preserve them and brought back on mass as trophies normally a head would suffice but the scale of the slaughter was so massive, something more portable was required.

A plaque to moral relativism used to sit in front but it's now since been removed. It used to read:"One cannot say that cutting off ears or noses was so atrocious by the standard of the time". To Koreans the Mimizuka is a symbol of cruelty. Most Japanese don't know about it it, and it's not included in any guide or tourist books.

A tomb was discovered in 1983 in Okayama near Osaka which contained the severed and pickled noses of approximately 20,000, Korean. These were eventually returned to Korea in 1992 and cremated.

The man responsible was a Japanese general called Hideyoshi. in 1592 he ordered the invasion of Korea, and arrived in May on a fleet of 15,000 boats, marched up the Korean peninsula, beseiged Seoul for 20 days before capturing it. they then continued North to the Yalu River, burning villages and townships, and executing the inhabitants on their way.

At the Yalu River they met resistence from Chinese soldiers who drove them back down the peninsula. Japan's armies retreated, and the Korean navy blockaded Japan, cutting off supplies, Korean farmers set light to their crop rather than let the Japanse eat.

With this reversal of fortunes, toward the end of 1593 Hideyoshi conceded to peace talks and the armies retreated though he held onto a small corner of south Korea.

This was so he could launch a second invasion four years later but it was a disaster.


Hideyoshi was a complex personality, he took acting and dance lesson and played the lead in 11 plays performed for the emperor. But he did have a bit of a temper, when Spanish Franciscan preachers ignored his order to cease preaching and leave,he had them rounded up, mutilated, dragged from city to city, before being crucified upside down in Nagaski.

His least favourite thing was to be dised by *anyone*

Once he - Hideyoshoi - was walking beneath the Temple gate when he was informed he had walked beneath a statue of the great tea-master Sen-no Rikyu
This meant he had walked beneath his feet!
Hideyoshi was outraged, he organised it so Sen-no Rikyu committed ritual suicide as penitence.

He is reported to have said to have considered converting to Christianity, "were it not for the insistence on monogamy."

It's just possible that he was completely insane.

But of course, no-one would tell HIM that!

QI - Listen! An Oracle.
------------------------




Correct (+3)
------------------------
Gandalf's Twin (37) - "Something to do with ears"
Gandalf's Twin (61) - "Korea"
Gandalf's Twin (61) - "severed ears from the war"


QI Bonus (+6)
------------------------
Taff (4) - "self mummification"
Pedro - "The Destruction of Kublai Khan's Fleet"


DGI Bonus (+1)
------------------------
Gandalf's Twin (37) - "commemorating a battle."
VIP (51) - "Several shrines exist"
Gandalf's Twin (61) - "a war in the 1500s"
VIP (68) - "paid per body part"
Feisor (69) - "and noses too."

Klaxon (-5)
------------------------
Taff (13) - "The Destruction of Hiroshima"
Taff (13) - "The Destruction of Nagasaki"
Taff (13) - "The Bridge over the River Kawi / Burma Rail"
Taff (17) - "Kamikaze"
Taff (27) - "The Kyoto Protocol"


Elf Bonus (+2)
------------------------
Clive




Total to be added or subtracted.
------------------------
Gandalf'sTwin +11
Pedro +6
VIP +2
Clive +2
Feisor +1
Taff -19

So that's tea with the Buddhists for GT; Tea with the Franscisan's for Pedro, o tea for Vip but a broom and a chance to sweep the dojo - it builds character.
But Taff has tried my patience for the last time, he is to be ritually disembowled in the public square, dragged after a cart horse and nailed upside down to a tree.

Sentence to be carried out - IMMEDIATELY! MWU-HAHA
HA HA HA!!

Opps. Copy not cut.

The clue was this: the lobey bit of your ear is also called an "auricle" which is a homophone with "oracle", hence the pun/clue to "listen."