Toyotomi Hideyoshi

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Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1536-98) was born in humble origins at Nakamura near Nagoya, but rose to be the first of the daimyō (warlords) to rule the whole of Japan, and is often referred to as ‘the Napoleon of Japan’. He first served Oda Nobunaga, joining his army originally as a foot soldier and fighting beside his master at all of Nobunaga's battles. He distinguished himself at Nagashino and at the taking of Gifu (1564). The opportunity for Hideyoshi came with Nobunaga's death. At the time he was conducting the siege of Takamatsu castle when the news of Nobunaga's murder was brought to him. He avenged the assassination by marching rapidly to Kyoto and defeating the army of Akechi Mitsuhide at the decisive battle of Yamazaki (1582). Taking control, he proclaimed Nobunaga's infant son as heir, which brought him into conflict with the old Oda supporters, whom he defeated one by one, culminating in the battle of Shizugatake in 1583. Only Tokugawa Ieyasu now opposed him in central Japan. A battle between the two, at Nagakute (1584), was indecisive, and a truce was called. Toyotomi Hideyoshi then proceeded to make himself master of Japan. He pacified Shikoku island in 1585, and Kyushu island in 1587, where he defeated the Shimazu family. Hideyoshi was a consummate general with superb strategic and tactical skills, and was particularly successful in siegework. He won the castles of Takamatsu (1582) and Ota (1585) by flooding them through ingenious dyke systems which diverted rivers. Other fortresses were overcome by mining (Kameyama 1582) or starvation (Tottori 1581). In 1590 a long siege brought about the surrender of the Hōjō's Odawara castle, and the remainder of the northern daimyō soon submitted to him. Hideyoshi overreached himself only with the invasions of Korea which ended in failure.

— Stephen Turnbull

(b ?1537; d Fushimi [now in Kyoto], 18 Sept 1598). Japanese military leader and patron. He helped to unify Japan, ending the turmoil of the last century of the Muromachi period (1333-1568). Hideyoshi sought to mythologize his obscure but plebeian origins; of the five family names he used, none was his own, and Toyotomi was the name of an 'aristocratic' house created at his behest by the imperial court in 1585. In the service of ODA NOBUNAGA, the prime mover of Japan's unification, Hideyoshi rose from a minor attendant to a general entrusted with the pursuit of major campaigns. When Nobunaga was murdered in 1582, Hideyoshi thrust himself forward as leader of the 'realm' established by Nobunaga in central Japan. In the next few years he consolidated and extended his primacy, and by 1591, as a result of his conquests and appropriations, all of traditional Japan was subjected to his regime, which laid down the foundations of Japan's early modern social order. To legitimize this regime, Hideyoshi resurrected patrician forms of government: in 1585, he had himself appointed kanpaku (imperial regent), and in 1587 he was additionally named Daijo Daijin (Grand Chancellor). In the same year he confiscated the settlement of Nagasaki and instituted the first ban on Catholicism in Japan. He made conscious efforts to dress his supreme authority with a veneer of culture and avidly pursued the aristocratic pastimes of the day, including waka (31-syllable classical) poetry, no drama and the tea ceremony. He was also an enthusiastic art patron.

See the Abbreviations for further details.

The Japanese warrior commander Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1536-1598) completed the military unification of the country in the late 16th century and undertook two invasions of Korea in the 1590s.

The period of the late 15th century and the first half of the 16th is known in Japanese history as the age of provincial wars. During this time neither the ancient imperial court nor the shogunate (military government) of the Ashikaga family, both of which were located in Kyoto in the central provinces of the island of Honshu, exercised any significant control over the country, and fighting among warrior bands raged everywhere. Gradually, however, a group of daimyos (barons) began to impose their rule over extensive territorial domains, and by the mid-16th century much of the land was in their hands. From about the 1550s the greatest of these daimyos, having organized powerful armies composed of infantry as well as cavalry units, began to assert themselves more vigorously than before beyond their own domains, and soon they were engaged in what was clearly a competition to establish a new national hegemony.

The initial victor in this competition was Oda Nobunaga, a daimyo whose domain was located in the region of modern Nagoya. Judicious alliances with certain daimyos and successful attacks on others led to Nobunaga's triumphant entry into Kyoto in 1568. There he received imperial approval of his military exploits and, after abolishing the Ashikaga shogunate in 1573, removed all doubt that he alone was now the holder of real power in the central provinces.

Nobunaga assigned two of his leading generals, Akechi Mitsuhide and Toyotomi Hideyoshi, to carry out the invasion of the western provinces of Honshu, where several powerful and especially recalcitrant daimyos had their domains. But in 1582 Mitsuhide, who had temporarily returned to Kyoto, suddenly attacked and killed Nobunaga. Mitsuhide, however, was unable to take advantage of the situation; for Toyotomi Hideyoshi, by far his superior as a commander, rushed back to the central provinces and destroyed him. With great suddenness Toyotomi Hideyoshi emerged both as the avenger of Nobunaga and as potentially the new hegemon of the country.

Toyotomi Hideyoshi and the Foreigners

Toyotomi Hideyoshi's rise to power was one of the most striking examples of upward social mobility in premodern Japanese history. Born into a peasant family of the Oda domain, Toyotomi Hideyoshi had joined Nobunaga's army as a common soldier and had risen by sheer martial prowess to a position of command and territorial enfeoffment. Even before Nobunaga's death, Toyotomi Hideyoshi had distinguished himself as probably the outstanding military tactician of the day.

Another important historical factor that contributed both directly and indirectly to unification was the arrival of Europeans in Japan. The Portuguese, who came in the early 1540s, were (so far as we know) the first non-Asians ever to set foot on Japanese soil, and they were followed within a few decades by the Spanish sailing out of the Philippines.

The Portuguese and the Spanish helped to spur a great expansion of maritime trade in East Asian waters during the 16th and early 17th centuries. Apart from missions dispatched infrequently to China, neither the imperial court nor (from the 12th century) the successive warrior governments of Japan had ever pursued overseas commerce with vigor. Private traders and pirate bands, working chiefly out of the harbors of Kyushu and the Inland Sea, had been intermittently active; but it was not until the time of Nobunaga and Toyotomi Hideyoshi that, spurred on by the Europeans, the Japanese officially sponsored a policy of competitive foreign trade.

Introduction of Christianity

Toyotomi Hideyoshi probably had the strongest interest of any Japanese leader of this age in foreign trade. During his period of ascendancy, Japanese commercial vessels sailed as far afield as Malaya and Siam. Yet, interestingly, it was his desire for the profits from foreign trade that presented Toyotomi Hideyoshi with one of his most vexing problems; for the Europeans, with whom the Japanese exchanged on the largest scale, insisted upon combining business with Christian missionary activity, and Toyotomi Hideyoshi increasingly came to view such activity as dangerous and subversive both to his own rule and to Japanese society in general.

Nobunaga had actually encouraged the foreign missionaries, owing probably to his desire to check the militant Buddhist sects that opposed him, and Toyotomi Hideyoshi does not seem at first to have been particularly concerned about their presence in Japan. But in 1587, when he marched into Kyushu to bring that westernmost Japanese island under his sway, Toyotomi Hideyoshi appears to have become alarmed upon seeing at firsthand the territorial acquisitions of the Catholic Church in ports such as Nagasaki. In any case, he suddenly issued a decree ordering the missionaries to leave the country. Although Toyotomi Hideyoshi did not actually enforce this decree, and the missionaries before long openly resumed their activities, his act foreshadowed a growing animosity on the part of Japan's leaders toward Christianity that led ultimately to its proscription in the country in the early 17th century.

In 1590, three years after his campaign to Kyushu, Toyotomi Hideyoshi completed the unification of Japan by destroying the Go-Hojo of the eastern provinces of Honshu, who were the last great independent daimyo family that had not submitted to him. From this time on Toyotomi Hideyoshi was the undisputed military dictator of the land.

Toyotomi Hideyoshi as Dictator

One of Nobunaga's most trusted allies was Tokugawa leyasu, a daimyo whose domain was also in the region near modern Nagoya. Ieyasu had performed invaluable service in protecting Nobunaga's rear when the latter had advanced to Kyoto, and he might well have been the one to succeed as national hegemon if Toyotomi Hideyoshi had not acted as quickly as he did to take control in the central provinces after Nobunaga's assassination. Toyotomi Hideyoshi never made an all-out effort to force leyasu to submit absolutely to him. Eventually he persuaded the Tokugawa chieftain to move to a domain in the eastern provinces, apparently to place him at a greater distance from the region of Kyoto and Osaka, where Toyotomi Hideyoshi maintained his own base. Yet this must be viewed as historical short-sightedness on the part of Toyotomi Hideyoshi, because the eastern provinces contained the most extensive agricultural lands in Japan, and they provided the wealth and power that ultimately enabled leyasu to take control of the country after Toyotomi Hideyoshi's death.

Toyotomi Hideyoshi, because of his lowly origins, sought to improve his personal prestige in Japan's status-conscious premodern society by taking several high titles in the imperial court. These titles, however, had nothing to do with his real power, which was based entirely on his military achievements.

Among Toyotomi Hideyoshi's most important measures as central ruler of Japan were the implementation of a national land survey and the issuance of decrees that defined the social status and duties of the peasant and samurai classes. Many daimyos had already undertaken land surveys in their domains, but Toyotomi Hideyoshi was the first one in a position to order such a survey on the national level. The information thus acquired proved administratively invaluable to the governments of both Toyotomi Hideyoshi and the Tokugawa shogunate (1603-1867).

In the earlier centuries of the medieval age there had been no clear distinction between peasants and warriors. Many of the participants in civil conflicts returned to their fields as soon as peace was restored and had to be mustered again whenever fighting was resumed. With the acceleration of warfare during the 16th century, the various daimyos tended increasingly to gather their retainers in their castle towns in order to have them available at all times for service. But it was Toyotomi Hideyoshi who, in a series of decrees issued in the late 1580s, finally made into national law the formal division of peasant and samurai classes.

Peasants were obliged to relinquish all the weapons they possessed and were directed henceforth to remain in the countryside; samurai, on the other hand, were ordered to maintain permanent residence in the towns. Theoretically, there was to be no social intercourse whatsoever between the two classes, although in fact absolute division was never achieved. In some parts of the country samurai stayed on their farming lands, and the migration of peasants from the countryside to the towns was never completely checked. Nonetheless, the fundamental policy of separation of peasants and samurai and thus of rural and urban populations provided the basis for an extraordinary social equilibrium in Japan for nearly 3 centuries.

Korean Invasions

Shortly after completing unification of the country, Toyotomi Hideyoshi attempted to establish diplomatic relations with Korea and China. The former refused on the grounds that it was already bound by a subordinate, tributary relationship to China, and China simply rejected outright the proposal of an international relationship based on the concept (which was indeed utterly alien to the traditional Chinese world view) of "equality" with Japan or any other country. Thus rebuffed, Toyotomi Hideyoshi organized an invasion force of some 160, 000 men and dispatched it to Korea in 1592.

Yet it is most unlikely that Toyotomi Hideyoshi decided to invade Korea solely because of his failure to establish diplomatic ties with either it or China. There is, in fact, good reason to believe that he was driven by the megalomaniacal desire to conquer new lands and that he used the rejection of his overture for such ties (which he fully expected to be rejected) simply as an excuse. He also no doubt saw the advantages to be gained in directing the fighting energies of an exceptionally large warrior class toward overseas aggression. Finally, Toyotomi Hideyoshi's great interest in the expansion of Japanese maritime trade may very likely have prompted him to seek by force from his continental neighbors what they were unwilling to allow him to acquire through peaceful trade.

Whatever the precise reasons for its dispatch, the Japanese invasion force (which Toyotomi Hideyoshi did not personally accompany) advanced rapidly up the Korean Peninsula. At the Yalu River on Korea's northern border, however, it was met by Chinese armies and, having over-extended its supply lines, was forced to pull back southward. Eventually the campaign had to be abandoned altogether.

Toyotomi Hideyoshi sent another force, in 1597, but this achieved little and was withdrawn upon Toyotomi Hideyoshi's death the following year. Thus the Korean invasions were utter failures and indeed constituted virtually the only major setbacks in Toyotomi Hideyoshi's otherwise brilliant military career.

Toyotomi Hideyoshi's Grandeur

Toyotomi Hideyoshi did everything on a grand scale. He built several great castles in the central provinces, including a mammoth structure in Osaka that is still an imposing sight in that city today, and had them lavishly outfitted and decorated. Even his entertainments, especially his famous "tea party" in Kyoto in 1587, were open to hundreds and even thousands of people.

In sharp contrast to the esthetics of the preceding age, which were based chiefly on Zen Buddhist principles of restraint and simplicity, the tastes of Toyotomi Hideyoshi and many of his contemporaries ran to the grandiose and the spectacular. This was no doubt in part a reflection of the new vigor and heroic spirit of the age of unification; but it was also a prelude to the new bourgeois culture that was to flourish in the urban centers of Japan in the next century.

Final Years

Toyotomi Hideyoshi's final years were darkened not only by the failure of the Korean campaigns but also by his growing concern over succession to the leadership of the Toyotomi. Toyotomi Hideyoshi wished to bequeath his position as family head and national hegemon to his infant son, Hideyori (who was a mere 5 years old when Toyotomi Hideyoshi died in 1598). Near the end, Toyotomi Hideyoshi made almost frantic efforts to extract pledges of loyalty to Hideyori from the various leading daimyos. He also appointed a board of five regents from among the leading daimyos to handle the affairs of government during Hideyori's minority.

Of the five regents, by far the most powerful was Tokugawa leyasu, who had established firm control over his new domain in the Kanto region, which was even more extensive than Toyotomi Hideyoshi's own. Upon Toyotomi Hideyoshi's death leyasu emerged as the unquestionably logical successor to the national hegemony, despite the arrangements made for Hideyori; and indeed the events of the next 2 years centered on the formation of two great daimyo leagues, the pro-leyasu and the anti-leyasu. In 1600 these two leagues met in a decisive battle at Sekigahara between Nagoya and Lake Biwa. Ieyasu's resounding victory in this encounter enabled him to found a shogunate that provided Japan with more than 2½ centuries of almost uninterrupted peace.

Position in History

None of the great unifiers - Nobunaga, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, or leyasu - was a political innovator. Although, owing mainly to the coming of Europeans, they undoubtedly knew more of the outside world than any previous Japanese rulers, they still had no direct exposure to governing practices other than their own. Hence we should probably not be surprised that they put their respective hegemonies together almost exclusively on the basis of the time-honored procedures they knew as daimyos and did not attempt to establish a more centralized government in Japan.

Because of his early death Nobunaga was unable to complete the task that he had begun, and the greatest glory in the course of unification went to Toyotomi Hideyoshi. So spectacular were Toyotomi Hideyoshi's achievements in completing unification, in fact, that he has impressed many later historians as the greatest leader in premodern Japanese history. Although he failed to sustain the rule of his family as leyasu was subsequently to do for Tokugawa rule, it also seems likely that leyasu, on the other hand, lacked the military genius to have first accomplished military unification in the manner of Toyotomi Hideyoshi.

Further Reading

A biography of Toyotomi Hideyoshi in English by Walter Dening, A New Life of Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1904), is dated. Good accounts of the period of unification, however, can be found in George Sansom, A History of Japan (3 vols., 1958-1963), and in John W. Hall, Government and Local Power in Japan, 500 to 1700 (1966). Highly recommended for general information about the age, although they are more specifically concerned with the Western impact on Japan during the late 16th and early 17th centuries, are Charles R. Boxer, The Christian Century in Japan, 1549-1650 (1951; corrected 1967), and Michael Cooper, ed., They Came to Japan (1965).

Additional Sources

Berry, Mary Elizabeth, Hideyoshi, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1982.

"Hideyoshi" redirects here. For other uses, see Hideyoshi (disambiguation).

In this Japanese name, the family name is Toyotomi.

Toyotomi Hideyoshi
Portrait of Toyotomi Hideyoshi drawn in 1601
Imperial Regent of Japan
In office 1585 – 1591
Monarch	Ōgimachi Go-Yōzei
Preceded by	Konoe Sakihisa
Succeeded by	Toyotomi Hidetsugu
Chancellor of the Realm
In office 1587 – 1598
Monarch	Go-Yōzei
Preceded by	Fujiwara no Sakihisa
Succeeded by	Tokugawa Ieyasu
Born	February 2, 1536(1536-02-02) or March 26, 1537 Nakamura-ku, Nagoya
Died	September 18, 1598 Fushimi Castle
Nationality	Japanese
Spouse(s)	Nene, Yodo-Dono

Toyotomi Hideyoshi (豊臣 秀吉^?, February 2, 1536 – September 18, 1598) was a daimyo in the Sengoku period who unified Japan. He succeeded his former liege lord, Oda Nobunaga, and brought an end to the Sengoku period. The period of his rule is often called the Momoyama period, named after Hideyoshi's castle. He is noted for a number of cultural legacies, including the restriction that only members of the samurai class could bear arms. Hideyoshi is regarded as Japan's second "great unifier."^[1]

Contents 1 Early life 2 Rise to power 3 Pinnacle of power 4 Decline and death 5 Cultural legacy 6 Names 7 Notes 8 References 9 External links

Early life

Very little is known for certain about Hideyoshi before 1570, when he begins to appear in surviving documents and letters. His autobiography starts in 1577 but in it Hideyoshi spoke very little about his past. By tradition, he was born in what is now Nakamura-ku, Nagoya (situated in modern-day Aichi District, Owari Province), the home of the Oda clan. He was born of no traceable samurai lineage, being the son of a peasant-warrior named Yaemon.^[2]　He had no surname, and his childhood given name was Hiyoshi-maru (日吉丸^?) ("Bounty of the Sun") although variations exist.

Toyotomi Hideyoshi had been given the nickname Kozaru, meaning "little monkey", from his lord Oda Nobunaga because his facial features and skinny body resembled that of a monkey .

Many legends describe Hideyoshi being sent to study at a temple as a young man, but that he rejected temple life and went in search of adventure. Under the name Kinoshita Tōkichirō (木下 藤吉郎^?), he first joined the Imagawa clan as a servant to a local ruler named Matsushita Yukitsuna. He traveled all the way to the lands of Imagawa Yoshimoto, daimyo of Suruga Province, and served there for a time, only to abscond with a sum of money entrusted to him by Matsushita Yukitsuna.

Rise to power

Around 1547 he returned to Owari Province and joined the Oda clan, now headed by Oda Nobunaga, as a lowly servant. He became one of Nobunaga's sandal-bearers and was present at the Battle of Okehazama in 1560 when Nobunaga defeated Imagawa Yoshimoto to become one of the most powerful warlords in the Sengoku period. According to his biographers, he supervised the repair of Kiyosu Castle, a claim described as "apocryphal"^[3], and managed the kitchen. In 1561, Hideyoshi married Nene who is Asano Nagamasa's adopted daughter. He carried out repairs on Sunomata Castle with his younger brother Toyotomi Hidenaga and the bandits Hachisuka Masakatsu and Maeno Nagayasu. Hideyoshi's efforts were well received because Sunomata was in enemy territory. He constructed a fort in Sunomata^[4], according to legend overnight, and discovered a secret route into Mount Inaba after which much of the garrison surrendered.

Hideyoshi was very successful as a negotiator. In 1564 he managed to convince, mostly with liberal bribes, a number of Mino warlords to desert the Saitō clan. Hideyoshi approached many Saitō clan samurai and convinced them to submit to Nobunaga, including the Saitō clan's strategist Takenaka Hanbei.

100 Aspects of the Moon #7, by Tsukioka Yoshitoshi: "Mount Inaba Moon." The young Toyotomi Hideyoshi (then named Kinoshita Tōkichirō) leads a small group assaulting the castle on Mount Inaba; 1885, 12th month

Nobunaga's easy victory at Inabayama Castle in 1567 was largely due to Hideyoshi's efforts, and despite his peasant origins, Hideyoshi became one of Nobunaga's most distinguished generals, eventually taking the name Hashiba Hideyoshi (羽柴 秀吉). The new surname included two characters, one from one of Oda's two other right-hand men, Niwa Nagahide and Shibata Katsuie.

Hideyoshi led troops in the Battle of Anegawa in 1570 in which Oda Nobunaga allied with future rival Tokugawa Ieyasu (who would eventually displace Hideyoshi's son and rule Japan) to lay siege to two fortresses of the Azai and Asakura clans.^[5] In 1573, after victorious campaigns against the Azai and Asakura, Nobunaga appointed Hideyoshi daimyo of three districts in the northern part of Ōmi Province. Initially based at the former Azai headquarters in Odani, Hideyoshi moved to Kunitomo, and renamed the city Nagahama in tribute to Nobunaga. Hideyoshi later moved to the port at Imahama on Lake Biwa. From there he began work on Imahama Castle and took control of the nearby Kunitomo firearms factory that had been established some years previously by the Azai and Asakura. Under Hideyoshi's administration the factory's output of firearms increased dramatically.^[6] Nobunaga sent Hideyoshi to Himeji Castle to conquer Chūgoku region in 1576.

After the assassinations at Honnō-ji of Oda Nobunaga and his eldest son Nobutada in 1582 at the hands of Akechi Mitsuhide, Hideyoshi defeated Akechi at the Battle of Yamazaki.

At a meeting at Kiyosu to decide on a successor to Nobunaga, Hideyoshi cast aside the apparent candidate, Oda Nobutaka and his advocate, Oda clan's chief general, Shibata Katsuie, by supporting Nobutada's young son, Oda Hidenobu.^[7] Having won the support of the other two Oda elders, Niwa Nagahide and Ikeda Tsuneoki, Hideyoshi established Hidenobu's position, as well as his own influence in the Oda clan. Tension quickly escalated between Hideyoshi and Katsuie, and at the Battle of Shizugatake in the following year, Hideyoshi destroyed Katsuie's forces^[8] and thus consolidated his own power, absorbing most of the Oda clan into his control.

In 1583, Hideyoshi began construction of Osaka Castle. Built on the site of the temple Ishiyama Honganji destroyed by Nobunaga,^[9] the castle would become the last stronghold of the Toyotomi clan after Hideyoshi's death.

Nobunaga's other son, Oda Nobukatsu, remained hostile to Hideyoshi. He allied himself with Tokugawa Ieyasu, and the two sides fought at the inconclusive Battle of Komaki and Nagakute. It ultimately resulted in a stalemate, although Hideyoshi's forces were delivered a heavy blow.^[4] Finally, Hideyoshi made peace with Nobukatsu, ending the pretext for war between the Tokugawa and Hashiba clans. Hideyoshi sent Tokugawa Ieyasu his younger sister and mother as hostages. Ieyasu eventually agreed to become a vassal of Hideyoshi.

Pinnacle of power

Kaō of Hideyoshi

Like Nobunaga before him, Hideyoshi never achieved the title of shogun. Instead, he arranged to have himself adopted into the Fujiwara Regents House, and secured a succession of high imperial court titles including, in 1585 the prestigious position of regent (kampaku)^[4]. In 1586, Hideyoshi was formally given the name Toyotomi by the imperial court.^[4] He built a lavish palace, the Jurakudai, in 1587 and entertained the reigning Emperor Go-Yozei the following year.^[10]

Afterwards, Hideyoshi subjugated Kii Province^[11] and conquered Shikoku under the Chōsokabe clan.^[12] He also took control of Etchū Province^[13] and conquered Kyūshū.^[14] In 1587, Hideyoshi banished Christian missionaries from Kyūshū to exert greater control over the Kirishitan daimyo.^[15] However, since he made much of trade with Europeans, individual Christians were overlooked unofficially. In 1588, Hideyoshi forbade ordinary peasants from owning weapons and started a sword hunt to confiscate arms.^[16] The swords were melted down to create a statue of the Buddha. This measure effectively stopped peasant revolts and ensured greater stability at the expense of freedom of the individual daimyo. The 1590 Siege of Odawara against the Late Hōjō clan in Kantō^[17] eliminated the last resistance to Hideyoshi's authority. His victory signified the end of the Sengoku period. During this siege, Hideyoshi proposed that Ieyasu currently controlled five provinces were submitted, and Ieyasu receive the eight Kantō provinces that Kitajo ruled. Ieyasu accepted this proposal. and Date Masamune pledged loyalty to the Hideyoshi.

In February 1591, Hideyoshi ordered Sen no Rikyū to commit suicide.^[18] Rikyū had been a trusted retainer and master of the tea ceremony under both Hideyoshi and Nobunaga. Under Hideyoshi's patronage, Rikyū made significant changes to the aesthetics of the tea ceremony that had lasting influence over many aspects of Japanese culture. Even after he ordered Rikyū's suicide, Hideyoshi is said to have built his many construction projects based upon principles of beauty promoted by Rikyū.

Following Rikyū's death, Hideyoshi turned his attentions from tea ceremony to Noh, which he had been studying in the Komparu style since becoming kampaku. During his brief stay in Nagoya Castle in what is today Saga prefecture, on Kyushu, Hideyoshi memorized the shite (lead roles) parts of ten Noh plays, which he then performed, forcing various daimyō to accompany him onstage as the waki (secondary, accompanying role). He even performed before the Emperor^[19].

The stability of the Toyotomi dynasty after Hideyoshi's death was put in doubt with the death of his only son Tsurumatsu in September 1591. The three-year-old was his only child. When his half-brother Hidenaga died shortly after his son, Hideyoshi named his nephew Hidetsugu his heir, adopting him in January 1592. Hideyoshi resigned as kampaku to take the title of taikō (retired regent). Hidetsugu succeeded him as kampaku.

Decline and death

His health beginning to falter, but still yearning for some accomplishment to solidify his legacy, Hideyoshi adopted the dream of a Japanese conquest of China that Oda Nobunaga had contemplated, and launched two ill-fated invasions of Korea. Though he actually intended to conquer Ming China,^[20] Hideyoshi had been communicating with the Koreans since 1587 requesting unmolested passage into China. As allies of Ming China, the Koreans at first refused talks entirely, and in April and July 1591 refused demands that Japanese troops be allowed to march through Korea. In August, Hideyoshi ordered preparations for invasion.

In the first campaign, Hideyoshi appointed Ukita Hideie to the field marshal, and had them go to a Korean peninsula in April, 1592. Konishi Yukinaga occupied Seoul, the capital of the Joseon Dynasty on May 10, and in only four months, Hideyoshi's forces had a route into Manchuria and occupied much of Korea. Korean king Seonjo of Joseon escaped to Pyongyang, and requested military intervention from China. In 1593, Ming Chinese Emperor Wanli sent an army under general Li Rusong to block the planned invasion of China and recapture the Korean peninsula. Li recaptured Pyongyang, and surrounded Seoul. Ishida Mitsunari massed Japanese forces in Seoul and haltedLi Rusong and his forces with a serious counterattack. Korean navy too strong to fight for japanese. Admiral Yi sun-shin fought against japanese navy and made unbelievable fact! He fought 23 battles and never lost. Japanese army's supply cut down by Korean navy. The war reached a deadlock, and after the conclusion of a cease-fire agreement, Japanese troops retreated to Japan.

The birth of Hideyoshi's second son, Hideyori, in 1593 created a potential succession problem. To avoid it, Hideyoshi exiled his nephew and heir Hidetsugu to Mount Kōya and then ordered him to commit suicide in August 1595. Hidetsugu's family members who did not follow his example were then murdered in Kyoto, including 31 women and several children.^[21]

After several years of negotiations (broken off because envoys of both sides falsely reported to their masters that the opposition surrendered), Hideyoshi appointed Kobayakawa Hideaki to lead the invasion forces, but their efforts on the Korean peninsula met with less success than the first invasion. Japanese troops remained pinned in Gyeongsang province. By June 1598, The Japanese forces fought with desperation, turning back several Chinese offensives in Suncheon and Sacheon as the Ming army prepared for a final assault. The Koreans' unexpected talent for guerrilla warfare, aided by the fact that they were fighting on their homeland, continually harassed Japanese forces. While Hideyoshi's last battle at So-chon, was a major Japanese victory, all three parties to the war were exhausted. and Hideyoshi himself now accepted that the war could not be won. He told his commander in Korea: "Don't let my soldiers become spirits in a foreign land."^[1], Toyotomi Hideyoshi died in August 18, 1598. His death was kept secret by the Council of Five Elders to preserve morale, and Japanese troops were withdrawn from the Korean peninsula.

Because of his failure to capture Korea, Hideyoshi's forces were unable to invade China. Rather than strengthen his position, the military expeditions left his clan's coffers and fighting strength depleted, his vassals at odds over responsibility for the failure, and the clans that were loyal to the Toyotomi name weakened. The dream of a Japanese empire encompassing Asia ended with Hideyoshi. The Tokugawa government not only prohibited any military expeditions to the mainland, but closed Japan to nearly all foreigners during the years of the Tokugawa Shogunate. It was not until the late 19th century that Japan would again fight a war against China through Korea, using much the same route that Hideyoshi's invasion force had used.

After his death, the other members of the Council of Five Regents were unable to keep the ambitions of Tokugawa Ieyasu in check. Two of Hideyoshi's top generals Katō Kiyomasa and Fukushima Masanori had fought bravely during the war, but returned to find the Toyotomi clan castellan Ishida Mitsunari in power. He held the generals in low esteem, and they sided with Tokugawa Ieyasu. Hideyoshi's underaged son and designated successor Hideyori lost the power his father once held, and Tokugawa Ieyasu was declared Shogun following the Battle of Sekigahara.

Cultural legacy

Toyotomi Hideyoshi changed Japanese society in many ways. These include imposition of a rigid class structure, restriction on travel, and surveys of land and production.

Class reforms affected commoners and warriors. During the Sengoku period, it had become common for peasants to become warriors, or for samurai to farm due to the constant uncertainty caused by the lack of centralized government and always tentative peace. Upon taking control, Hideyoshi decreed that all peasants be disarmed completely.^[22] Conversely, he required samurai to leave the land and take up residence in the castle towns.^[23] This solidified the social class system for the next 300 years.

Furthermore, he ordered comprehensive surveys and a complete census of Japan. Once this was done and all citizens were registered, he required all Japanese to stay in their respective han (fiefs) unless they obtained official permission to go elsewhere. This ensured order in a period when bandits still roamed the countryside and peace was still new. The land surveys formed the basis for systematic taxation.^[24]

A replicated Osaka Castle has been created on the site of the Hideyoshi's great donjon. The iconic castle has become a symbol of Osaka's re-emergence as a great city after its devastation in World War II.

In 1590, Hideyoshi completed construction of the Osaka Castle, the largest and most formidable in all Japan, to guard the western approaches to Kyoto. In that same year, Hideyoshi banned "unfree labor" or slavery;^[25] but forms of contract and indentured labor persisted alongside the period penal codes' forced labor.^[26]

Hideyoshi also influenced the material culture of Japan. He lavished time and money on the tea ceremony, collecting implements, sponsoring lavish social events, and patronizing acclaimed masters. As interest in the tea ceremony rose among the ruling class, so too did demand for fine ceramic implements, and during the course of the Korean campaigns, not only were large quantities of prized ceramic ware confiscated, many Korean artisans were forcibly relocated to Japan.^[27]

Inspired by the dazzling Golden Pavilion in Kyoto, he also constructed a fabulous portable tea room, covered with gold leaf and lined inside with red gossamer. Using this mobile innovation, he was able to practice the tea ceremony wherever he went, powerfully projecting his unrivaled power and status upon his arrival.

Politically, he set up a governmental system that balanced out the most powerful Japanese warlords (or daimyo). A council was created to include the most influential lords. At the same time, a regent was designated to be in command.

Just prior to his death, Hideyoshi hoped to set up a system stable enough to survive until his son grew old enough to become the next leader. A Council of Five Elders (五大老, go-tairō^?) was formed, consisting of the five most powerful daimyo. Following the death of Maeda Toshiie, however, Tokugawa Ieyasu began to secure alliances, including political marriages (which had been forbidden by Hideyoshi). Eventually, the pro-Toyotomi forces fought against the Tokugawa in the Battle of Sekigahara. Ieyasu won and received the title of Seii-tai Shogun two years later.

Hideyoshi is commemorated at several Toyokuni Shrines scattered over Japan.

Ieyasu left in place the majority of Hideyoshi's decrees and built his shogunate upon them. This ensured that Hideyoshi's cultural legacy remained. In a letter to his wife, Hideyoshi wrote:

“

I mean to do glorious deeds and I am ready for a long siege, with provisions and gold and silver in plenty, so as to return in triumph and leave a great name behind me. I desire you to understand this and to tell it to everybody."[28]

”

Names

Because of his low birth and high nobility, Toyotomi Hideyoshi had quite a few names throughout his life. At birth, he was given the name Hiyoshi-maru 日吉丸. At genpuku he took the name Kinoshita Tōkichirō (木下 藤吉郎^?). Later, he was given the surname Hashiba, and the honorary court office Chikuzen no Kami; as a result he was styled Hashiba Chikuzen no Kami Hideyoshi (羽柴筑前守秀吉^?). His surname remained Hashiba even as he was granted the new uji or sei (氏 or 姓, clan name) Toyotomi by the emperor. His name is correctly Toyotomi no Hideyoshi. Using the writing system of his time, his name is written as 豐臣 秀吉.

The Toyotomi uji was simultaneously granted to a number of Hideyoshi's chosen allies, who adopted the new uji "豊臣朝臣" (Toyotomi no asomi, courtier of Toyotomi).

The Catholic sources of the time referred to him as "emperor Taicosama" (from taikō, a retired kampaku (see Sesshō and Kampaku), and the honorific sama).

His nickname was "Monkey" (Saru), allegedly given by Oda Nobunaga because of his facial resemblance to a monkey. This recognition directly contributed to the popular image of Toyotomi Hideyoshi being a monkey styled person, both in appearance and mode of behaviour.

Notes

1. ^ ^{a b} Richard Holmes, The World Atlas of Warfare: Military Innovations that Changed the Course of History, Viking Press 1988. p. 68.
2. ^ Berry, Mary. (1982). Hideyoshi, p. 8.
3. ^ Berry, p. 38.
4. ^ ^{a b c d} [see above]
5. ^ Berry, p. 45.
6. ^ Berry, p. 54.
7. ^ Berry, p. 74.
8. ^ Berry, p. 78.
9. ^ Berry, p. 64.
10. ^ Berry, p. 184-186.
11. ^ Berry, p. 85-86.
12. ^ Berry, p. 83.
13. ^ Berry, p. 84.
14. ^ Berry, p. 87-93.
15. ^ Berry, p. 91-93.
16. ^ Berry, p. 102-106.
17. ^ Berry, p. 93-96.
18. ^ Berry, p. 223-225.
19. ^ Ichikawa, Danjūrō XII. Danjūrō no kabuki annai (團十郎の歌舞伎案内, "Danjūrō's Guide to Kabuki"). Tokyo: PHP Shinsho, 2008. pp. 139-140.
20. ^ Berry, p. 208.
21. ^ Berry, p. 217-223.
22. ^ Jansen, Marius. (2000). The Making of Modern Japan, p. 23.
23. ^ Berry, p. 106-107; Jansen, p. 21-22.
24. ^ Berry, p. 111-118.
25. ^ Lewis, James Bryant. (2003). Frontier Contact Between Choson Korea and Tokugawa Japan, p. 31-32.
26. ^ "Bateren-tsuiho-rei" (the Purge Directive Order to the Jesuits) Article 10
27. ^ Takeuchi, Rizō. (1985). Nihonshi shōjiten, p. 274–275; Jansen, p. 27.
28. ^ Sansom, George. (1943). Japan. A Short Cultural History, p. 410.

References

• Berry, Mary Elizabeth. (1982). Hideyoshi. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-39026-1 (cloth, 1982), ISBN 0-674-39026-1 (paper, 1989) (scholarly biography)
• Sansom, George. (1952) Japan, A Short Cultural History. Stanford: Stanford University Press. ISBN 0-8047-0952-1 (cloth) ISBN 0-8047-0954-8 (paper)
• Lewis, James Bryant. (2003). Frontier Contact Between Choson Korea and Tokugawa Japan. London: Routledge. 10-ISBN 0-700-71301-8
• Takeuchi, Rizō. (1985). Nihonshi shōjiten (A Concise Dictionary of Japanese History). Tokyo: Kadokawa shoten.
• Yoshikawa, Eiji. (2001). Taiko. Tokyo: Kodansha. ISBN 4-7700-2609-9 (historical fiction)

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Toyotomi Hideyoshi

• Hideyoshi (1996) TV-Series at the Internet Movie Database

Preceded by Konoe Sakihisa	Kampaku 1585–1591	Succeeded by Toyotomi Hidetsugu
Preceded by Fujiwara no Sakihisa	Daijō Daijin 1585–1591	Succeeded by Tokugawa Ieyasu

Campaigns of Toyotomi Hideyoshi Kōzuki Castle – Itami – Miki – Tottori – Takamatsu – Yamazaki – Uchidehama – Shizugatake – Komaki and Nagakute – Kaganoi – Takehana – Kanie – Toyama – Negoro-ji – Ōta Castle – Shikoku & Ichinomiya – Takajō – Ganjaku – Akizuki – Sendaigawa – Kagoshima – Hachigata – Odawara – Shimoda – Korea

v • d • e Prominent people of the Sengoku period Three major daimyo Oda Nobunaga · Toyotomi Hideyoshi · Tokugawa Ieyasu Other daimyo Azai Nagamasa · Chōsokabe Motochika · Date Masamune · Hōjō Sōun · Hōjō Ujimasa · Imagawa Yoshimoto · Maeda Toshiie · Matsunaga Hisahide · Mōri Motonari · Ōtomo Sōrin · Saitō Dōsan · Sanada Masayuki · Shimazu Yoshihiro · Tachibana Ginchiyo · Takeda Shingen · Uesugi Kenshin · Uesugi Kagekatsu · Ukita Hideie Other notable military individuals Akechi Mitsuhide · Fukushima Masanori · Fūma Kotarō · Hattori Hanzō · Honda Tadakatsu · Honganji Kennyo · Ii Naomasa · Ishida Mitsunari · Ishikawa Goemon · Katō Kiyomasa · Maeda Keiji · Miyamoto Musashi · Mori Ranmaru · Naoe Kanetsugu · Oda Nobutada · Ōtani Yoshitsugu · Saika Magoichi · Sanada Nobuyuki · Sanada Yukimura · Sasaki Kojirō · Shibata Katsuie · Shima Sakon · Takeda Katsuyori · Takenaka Shigeharu · Toyotomi Hideyori · Yamamoto Kansuke Others Emperor Ōgimachi · Hosokawa Gracia · Komatsuhime · Izumo no Okuni · Kaihime · Nene · Nōhime · Oichi

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