Challenges to the Royal Military Kangmu Hunt

This chapter examines the rising challenges and obstacles to the royal military Kangmu hunts in the fifteenth century. Some of these obstacles were climate related, but others were a backlash to the successes of the Kangmu hunts. As demonstrated in the previous chapter, these royal military Kangmu hunts fostered the power of masculinity where hunting acumen and physical strength dominated the enemy and animals. Here too were moments when the royal family tapped into a Chinggisid legacy (connected to the family of Chinggis Khan, the founder of the Mongol Empire), and legitimised their rulership in the present over domestic control and foreign relations. However, such ideals clashed with the ideological rhetoric of officials around the king who began negotiating the boundaries of royal authority. A rising number of voices inside the government believed that the proximity to animals, domestic and wild, was incompatible with rulership. Neo-Confucian officials did not understand animals, nor were they privy to the training necessary to kill them. This lack of authority over the hunt and wildlife bothered them and, as this chapter argue, they wished to limit royal access to wildlife.