is a monkey to human eyes, while he looks like a human to monkeys.

• He was a Japanese strong man who unified Japan toward the end of the 16th Century. He had an inflated opinion of himself. Japan was too small for him, and he regarded himself as the emperor of the world.

• In order to inaugurate himself as the emperor, he had to go to Beijing which was regarded as the capital city of world. To go there, he had to through the Korean peninsula. He initially asked Koreans to provie a safe passage for him, but Koreans refused.

  He sent 150,000 Japanese troops to Korea. His troops had to struggle there for seven years until he died in 1598. Korea was totally ruined. It took more than 100 year for Koreans to reconstruct their country.

This monkey joke is a product of Japanese inclination to Kantian way of thinking. Things look differently depending observer's position or state of mind.