Toyotomi Hideyoshi

• 1. Introduction

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  Toyotomi Hideyoshi was born in 1537 in Nakamura, Owari Province, to a father who was not a samurai but a foot soldier for hire, an ashigaru. His childhood name was unremarkable, his family had no traceable samurai lineage, and at some point he had to beg on the street to survive. Yet within fifty years, this same man would hold the title of kampaku, Imperial Regent of Japan, a rank no one born outside the nobility had ever achieved. He would command armies of two hundred thousand, build the largest castle in the country, and attempt to conquer China. How does a peasant become the most powerful man in Japan? And what happens when that power outlives its architect? Those are the questions Hideyoshi's story forces us to answer.

• 2. The Peasant Who Charmed a Warlord

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  In 1558, Hideyoshi attached himself to the Oda clan, the rulers of his home province of Owari, and quickly became sandal-bearer to their ambitious lord, Oda Nobunaga. The position sounds humble, but it placed Hideyoshi at Nobunaga's side every day. By 1564, he was being trusted not just with soldiering but with diplomacy, convincing several Mino warlords to abandon the Saitō clan, largely by distributing generous bribes. He even brought over the Saitō clan's own strategist, Takenaka Shigeharu.

  His military record became equally hard to ignore. He was credited with Nobunaga's easy victory at the siege of Inabayama Castle in 1567. He protected Nobunaga's retreat from Azai-Asakura forces at Kanegasaki in 1570. He turned a captured firearms factory in Kunitomo into a dramatically more productive operation. By 1573, Nobunaga rewarded him with the governance of three districts in northern Ōmi Province. Hideyoshi renamed one town Nagahama as a tribute to his lord.

  Japanese historian Watanabe Daimon has noted that Hideyoshi carried a deep inferiority complex throughout his life. He was not permitted to ride alongside the samurai-born generals during Nobunaga's campaigns and had to dismount before bowing. Being described as a hitotarashi, someone with a natural gift for winning people over, may have been both a personality trait and a survival strategy for a man who could not rely on inherited prestige.

• 3. The Thirteen-Day Reversal

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  On the 21st of June 1582, during the ongoing siege of Takamatsu, Oda Nobunaga and his eldest son Nobutada were both killed in the Honnō-ji incident by the general Akechi Mitsuhide. The assassination closed the chapter on Nobunaga's project of centralised power. Thirteen days later, Hideyoshi had made peace with the Mōri clan, marched his army, and defeated Mitsuhide at the Battle of Yamazaki.

  The speed was strategic genius, but what followed showed Hideyoshi's political instincts were equally sharp. At Kiyosu Castle, he summoned Nobunaga's powerful daimyō to determine an heir. When two of Nobunaga's sons quarreled, Hideyoshi maneuvered past both of them and backed Nobunaga's infant grandson Oda Hidenobu instead. When the general Shibata Katsuie switched sides and backed the third son Nobutaka, Hideyoshi destroyed Katsuie's forces at the Battle of Shizugatake the following year. By then, Hideyoshi controlled roughly thirty provinces.

  The rivalry with Tokugawa Ieyasu proved harder to resolve. The two sides fought to an inconclusive result at the Battle of Komaki and Nagakute in 1584, and Ieyasu refused to become Hideyoshi's vassal even after peace was made. The 1586 Tenshō earthquake damaged Osaka so badly that it forced Hideyoshi to abandon his campaign against Ieyasu. He eventually sent his own younger sister, Asahi no kata, and his mother, Ōmandokoro, to Ieyasu as hostages. Only then did Ieyasu travel to Osaka and signal his submission.

• 4. Regent Without a Noble Birth

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  Because Hideyoshi could not claim samurai lineage, he could not become shōgun. He found another path. He arranged to be adopted by Konoe Sakihisa, one of the most distinguished members of the Fujiwara clan, and through that connection accumulated a succession of high court titles. In 1585, he became kampaku, Imperial Regent, the most prestigious position in the nobility. He was the first person in the history of the office to hold it without having been born noble.

  Also in 1585, the Imperial Court formally granted him a new clan name: Toyotomi. He built the Jurakudai, a lavish palace, in 1587 and entertained the reigning Emperor Go-Yōzei there the following year. Construction on Osaka Castle had begun in 1582 on the site of a temple destroyed by Nobunaga, and it was completed in 1597. In 1590, it was described as the largest and most formidable castle in all Japan.

  When his only son Tsurumatsu died in September 1591 at three years old, succession became urgent. Hideyoshi adopted his nephew Hidetsugu in January 1592 and passed the kampaku title to him, taking the position of taikō, retired regent, for himself. The dual structure would not hold. Hidetsugu controlled the court while Hideyoshi retained military power, and the two factions that formed around them clashed over political and military decisions until Hideyoshi ordered Hidetsugu exiled to Mount Kōya and then forced to commit suicide in August 1595. Thirty-one women and several children from Hidetsugu's household who did not follow his example were beheaded in Kyoto.

• 5. Unifying Japan by Force

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  The arithmetic of Hideyoshi's military campaigns across the 1580s was overwhelming. In the 1585 invasion of Shikoku, his forces arrived numbering 113,000 against Chōsokabe Motochika's 40,000 men. The following year, his campaign to take Kyūshū from the Shimazu clan deployed 200,000 soldiers against a defending force of 30,000. The Shimazu surrendered after their home base at Kagoshima Castle was besieged.

  The siege of Odawara in 1590, aimed at the Later Hōjō clan in the Kantō region, was described by historian Stephen Turnbull as producing the most unconventional siege lines in samurai history. Hideyoshi had entertainers, concubines, and acrobats brought to keep his samurai occupied. He secretly had Ishigakiyama Ichiya Castle built in a nearby forest. In exchange for Ieyasu's five provinces, Hideyoshi offered him the eight Hōjō-ruled provinces of the Kantō region, an offer Ieyasu accepted.

  The final battle came in 1591 with the Kunohe rebellion in Mutsu Province, which ran from March 13 to September 4 of that year. Kunohe Masazane had launched an uprising against his rival Nanbu Nobunao, who was backed by Hideyoshi. Hideyoshi's army reached Kunohe Castle in early September, and Masazane, outnumbered, surrendered and was executed along with the castle's defenders. The Kunohe rebellion ended the Sengoku period.

• 6. The Korean Campaigns

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  Hideyoshi's stated war goal for Korea was for Japan to replace China at the top of the international order. He wrote to his adopted son Hidetsugu that not only Ming China was destined to be subjugated, but India, the Philippines, and many islands in the South Sea would share the same fate. In April 1592, with Ukita Hideie appointed field marshal, his forces crossed to the Korean Peninsula. Konishi Yukinaga occupied Seoul, the Joseon capital, on June 19. Within four months, Japanese forces had occupied much of Korea and had a route into Manchuria.

  The Korean king Seonjo of Joseon fled to Uiju and appealed to Ming China. In January 1593, the Wanli Emperor sent a relief army under general Li Rusong. The Ming forces recaptured Pyongyang and surrounded Seoul, but Kobayakawa Takakage, Ukita Hideie, Tachibana Muneshige, and Kikkawa Hiroie won the Battle of Byeokjegwan north of Seoul. The war ultimately stalled after Admiral Yi Sun-sin of Korea destroyed Japan's entire navy from a base the Japanese forces could not reach, ending their ability to resupply troops in Seoul.

  After failed negotiations, in which envoys from both sides falsely reported that the other had surrendered, a second invasion was launched. Japanese troops were pinned down in Gyeongsang Province. Although the battle at Sacheon, led by Shimazu Yoshihiro, was a Japanese victory, all three parties to the war were exhausted. Hideyoshi sent word to his commander in Korea: "Don't let my soldiers become spirits in a foreign land." He died at Fushimi Castle on the 18th of September 1598, before the campaigns were resolved. His death was kept secret by the Council of Five Elders to preserve morale, and the Korean forces were ordered home.

• 7. Laws That Outlasted the Man

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  In 1588, Hideyoshi launched a sword hunt, ordering peasants to surrender all weapons. The confiscated metal was melted down as building material for the Hall of the Great Buddha at the Hōkō temple in Kyoto. The practical result was the end of peasant revolts as a political force. He also ordered all samurai to leave agricultural land and live in castle towns, severing the mixing of classes that had become common during the Sengoku period. Comprehensive land surveys and a national census locked citizens to their respective han unless they held official permission to travel.

  He banned unfree labour and slavery in Japan in 1590, though contract and indentured labour persisted. During the Korean campaigns, prized Korean ceramic ware was confiscated in large quantities, and Korean artisans were forcibly relocated to Japan, driving demand for fine ceramic implements as interest in the tea ceremony spread among Japan's ruling class. Hideyoshi himself collected tea-ceremony implements, sponsored lavish social events around them, and commissioned the Golden Tea Room, covered in gold leaf and lined inside with red gossamer, modeled on Kyoto's Golden Pavilion. It could be transported and deployed wherever he traveled.

  In January 1597, Hideyoshi had twenty-six Christians arrested as a warning against conversion. They included five European Franciscan missionaries, one Mexican Franciscan missionary, three Japanese Jesuits, and seventeen Japanese laypeople including three young boys. After being tortured, mutilated, and paraded through towns, they were publicly crucified in Nagasaki on February 5. They are now known as the Twenty-six Martyrs of Japan.

  Tokugawa Ieyasu, who established the Tokugawa shogunate in 1603 and then besieged Osaka Castle twice in 1614 and 1615, left most of Hideyoshi's decrees in place and built his system upon them. Hideyoshi's last words to his daimyō and generals had been: "I depend upon you for everything. I have no other thoughts to leave behind. It is sad to part from you." The class system he imposed, the restriction of weapons to the samurai class, and the temples he built and restored, including structures still visible in Kyoto, carried his imprint forward long after the Toyotomi clan was destroyed.