of the battle between the Ming army and the Japanese army, Hideyoshi died in September 1598. The Council of Five Elders ordered the remaining Japanese forces in Korea to retreat. After the war, Japan then initiated a series of policies called Sakoku to isolate itself from world affairs. It forbade Japanese to go abroad in ships, and initiated the death penalty for Japanese people returning to Japan from abroad. This ended Japanese piracy definitively. During the Japanese invasion, much of Korea's cultural heritage was destroyed and looted by the invading Japanese armies. Among the atrocities of Japanese soldiers was the practice of cutting off noses and ears of slain enemy soldiers, which evolved into cutting off those of the living and the civilians in order to fulfill the "kill quota" assigned to the troops. Hence the origin of the Korean saying to misbehaving children, "Ear and nose cutting devils are coming!". At the end of the 16th century, the Bunroku-Keicho War broke off the relationship between Korea and Japan. Many Korean experts cite the Imjin War (as well as the Mongol Invasions) as the origins for nascent pre-modern Korean nationalism. Korean Historian Kim Haboush cites the widespread mobilization of the civilian volunteer Righteous armies as well as the pre-modern nationalistic rallying cries of the Korean scholar-gentry as indications that a sense of collective consciousness that had formed during the Goryeo Dynasty began to fully soldify, cemented by anti-Japanese sentiment amongst Koreans from all societal levels. It was not until the Tokugawa shogunate started trading again with Korea by concluding the Treaty of Giyu with the Sō clan of Tsushima Island in 1609, establishing a relationship of near equality through mutual visits of Korean messengers. Tsushinshi were sent from Korea to pay homage to a new shogun or to celebrate the birth of an heir to a shogun. Korean envoys were used for showing the prestige of the Tokugawa shogunate and vice versa. After the wars, Korean missions were dispatched 11 times to the Tokugawa shogunate of Japan between 1607 and 1811. 19th century 1873 rejected proposal to seize Korea: the Seikanron From the late 18th to late 19th centuries, Western governments sought to intercede in and influence the political and economic fortunes of Asian countries through the use of new approaches described by such terms as "protectorate", "sphere of influence", and "concession", which minimized the need for direct military conflict