The Japanese army was reinforced, it is said, with 130,000 fresh troops. Supplies, however, were difficult to obtain, and the movements were much hindered. A small Chinese army of 5,000 men arrived at the end of the year A.D. 1597 to aid the Koreans. An attack on the Japanese ships at Fusan was made by the Korean navy, but it was without difficulty repelled and most of the attacking ships destroyed. After some material advantages, which, however, were not decisive, the Japanese troops were forced to return to Fusan for the winter. The principal engagement was at Yöl-san, a strong position, accessible both by sea and land. It was garrisoned by troops of Katō’s division, who were brave and determined. The army composed of Chinese and Koreans, under the Chinese commander-in-chief Hsing-chieh, laid siege to this fortress, and succeeded in cutting off all its communications. But Kuroda and Hachisuka came to Katō’s assistance, and compelled the Chinese general to raise the siege and retreat to Söul, the Korean capital. It was in one of the battles fought during the summer of A.D. 1598, that 38,700 heads of Chinese and Korean soldiers are said to have been taken. The heads were buried in a mound after the ears and noses had been cut off. These grewsome relics of savage warfare were pickled in tubs and sent home to Kyōto, where they were deposited in a mound in the grounds of the temple of Daibutsu, and over them a monument erected which is marked _mimi-zuka_ or ear-mound. There the mound and monument can be seen to this day.(185) The death of Taikō Sama occurred on the day equivalent to the 18th of September, A.D. 1598, and on his death-bed he seems to have been troubled with the thought of the veteran warriors who were uselessly wearing out their lives in Korea. In his last moments he opened his eyes and exclaimed earnestly: “Let not the spirits of the hundred thousand troops I have sent to Korea become disembodied in a foreign land.”(186) Ieyasu, on whom devolved the military responsibility after the Taikō’s death, and who had never sympathized with his wishes and aims regarding Korea, did not delay the complete withdrawal of the troops which still remained in Korea.