The Imjin War Read Online Free Page A

Mount Hiei, countless monks were slain and the entire monastery complex, including shrines, was burnt to the ground. After his campaign in Echizen Province he wrote, “There are so many corpses in Fuchu that there is no room for more.” [9] It would be wrong to depict Nobunaga’s brutality as differing in kind from that of rival daimyo. He was just better at it.
    Oda Nobunaga’s ultimate goal was to bring all of Japan under his power. This was the case from at least 1567, when he began using a personal seal bearing the maxim tenka fuchu , “the realm subjected to military power.” His method of national unification, however, was slow and painful, for it ensured resistance at almost every step. For most of Nobunaga’s enemies, to capitulate without a fight meant losing everything, except perhaps their lives. Most chose to fight. Had Nobunaga lived, therefore, it was by no means certain that he would have succeeded in unifying the country, for a number of very formidable daimyo still stood in his way. Even if he had gone on to win ultimate hegemony over all Japan, it would likely have taken him many more years. That the task was accomplished in only nine years was due to the very different unification strategy pursued by his successor, Toyotomi Hideyoshi.
    The rise of Hideyoshi exemplifies a fundamental aspect of this “nation at war” period called gekokuji : “the subjugation of the high by the low.” He was the son of a farmer who rose to become the most powerful man in Japan, the unifier of the nation, and the commander of the mightiest army in Asia.
    Hideyoshi was born in the village of Nakamura in the Owari domain of the Oda family in 1536 or 1537. He was named after the god Hiyoshi-maru, to whom his mother prayed prior to his birth. According to one account, he came into the world with all his teeth, and with such a wizened little simian face that he was nicknamed Sarunosuke, “Little Monkey.” [10] Little is known of his family background and early life. Biog raphies penned during his lifetime, even under his own guidance, are sketchy and often wildly fanciful; Hideyoshi in his later years was clearly more interested in acquiring noble antecedents than in preserving the facts of his humble origins. What is known with some degree of certainty is this: his father was a peasant with the single name of Yaemon—being a member of the lowest stratum of society, he did not possess a family name. Yaemon may have served for a time in Oda Nobuhide’s small army, until a battle injury forced him back to the fields. He then married and had two children: Hideyoshi and a daughter named Tomo. He died soon after, in 1543, and Hideyoshi’s mother, whose name is unknown, married a man called Chikuami who, like Yaemon, was affiliated in some minor way with the Oda house, probably as an occasional foot solider in the small Oda army. By this second marriage Hideyoshi’s mother had two more children, a daughter and a son. This son, Hidenaga, would figure prominently in Hideyoshi’s life in years to come, as would one of his sister Tomo’s sons, Hidetsugu.
    In 1558 Hideyoshi, like his father and his stepfather before him, entered the service of the Oda house, then under the control of Oda Nobunaga. The young Hideyoshi could not have cut a very impressive figure. He was probably not much more than five feet tall and 110 pounds, [11] a scrawny version, perhaps, of his diminutive European counter part, five-foot-one-inch-tall Napoleon. He would have had the wiry strength typical of a peasant in a pre-industrial society or of a laborer in the third world today. And he was most definitely homely; two nicknames Nobunaga liked to use for the farmer’s son were “Monkey” and “Bald Rat.” [12] Still, there must have been something re markable about him, a useful cunning, a surprising intelligence, an unshakeable valor, a talent for organization and leadership, for within twelve years he had risen from the lowest menial position