Where’s Toyotomi Hideyoshi?

[ronin]

Where is he? He’s suppose to be like the Archfiend sort of except he didn’t care about the peasants the way Archfiend and his sworn brother Brue did. He was from a peasant background like Yi Ui Min and his father was an Ashigaru (peasant soldier). He was a lieutenant of the greatest Diamyo of all time in Japan, Oda Nobunaga. He did not become Shogun because the Japanese Emperor was bigoted towards his peasant background. It was Tokugawa Ieyasu, a former hostage child of the Imagawa clan, who would become Shogun.

[velvet inkbrush of YiSoonShin]

he's dead at this point...

[Maalii]

Hideyoshi did not physically participate in the Korean invasions--he stayed in Japan the whole time. With regard to the Archfiend, there really is no parallel. The "cause" of the most powerful daimyo at the time was not improving the lot of the commoner it was "unification of the country to bring peace". Hideyoshi was not a warrior of great physical strength as the Archfiend was, rather he was arguably the finest strategist in the medieval history of Japan. He was also a decent administator (unlike the Archfiend), although not nearly as effective in that regard as his successor, Tokugawa Ieyasu. Curiously, Hideyoshi was much more of a diplomat than Nobunaga, who was just outright brutal. Hideyoshi, however, appeared to drift progressively further from both a sensible and a compassionate course in his later years. Whether he was actually mentally ill, as has been speculated by some, or simply became full of himself and his power as many leaders have (like CCH, Napoleon, etc.), the bottom line is that his later years showed little evidence of the genius that enabled him to rise to power. It goes without saying that the Korean invasions were his greatest blunder and crime, both from a military and humanitarian standpoint because countless numbers of Koreans, Chinese, and Japanese lost their lives as a result. Hideyoshi ordered the campaign from Osaka Castle, where he remained. It was his generals such as Konishi Yukinaga, Kato Kiyomasa, and others who carried out his campaign. I think of Yukinaga as sort of the equivalent of Rommel--a fine general fighting for a horrid cause and a maniacal leader (he is eventually beheaded on orders by Ieyasu after the defeat of Toyotomi loyalists at Sekigahara 2 years after Hideyoshi's death). By the way, by the time Hideyoshi had ordered the Korean campaign, Ieyasu had risen to a level of power such that he was practically the equal of Hideyoshi. Thus, Ieyasu was strong enough to refuse Hideyoshi's request to send lots of his troops to Korea.

[seven stars]

Are you folks history teachers?

[Hachiman Taro aka Maalii]

seven said:

Are you folks history teachers?

Nope. History is just one of many hobbies.

[ronin]

Relax, dude. I know all about the Sengoku Jidai in Japan as well as Chinese, Mongol, and Medieval European and Muslim warfare. I know about how the Ashikaga shogunate became weakened and all the other powerful Daimyo clans were fighting for power to be the next shoganate like the Oda clan, the Shimazu clan (whose featured on this show-Manjok), Hojo clan, the Takeda clan, etc. I was just saying that Yi Ui Min and Toyotomi Hideyoshi were similar in that they were of peasant background which caused problems for their clan. I don’t know much on the Imjin Wars though. I have books by Stephen Turnball, Mitsuo Kure, and Anthony Bryant experts on the Samurai history, weaponry and armor. I also play Shogun Total War by Creative Assembly better than Rome Total War where you play as one of the Daimyos fighting to become Shogun (Foreign Barbarian Quelling Generalisimo). I also visit this website and their forum about Samurai history: www.samurai-archives.com/ and have the PBS DVD show on Japan: Secrets of an Empire.

[ronin]

BTW, did you know that the Oda clan is still around? They’re suppose to be large restaurant owners in Japan and I think one of them is an Olympic gold medalists. I also had a childhood friend when we were in grade school who might have been from the Shimazu clan from southern Japan because he has the same last name as the Shimazu. He’s half Japanese and half white. I don’t know if he know about it or not. Haven’t seen him in a decade to ask. I also saw on TV awhile ago, some Japanese American Chef with long hippie hair has the same last name as the Mori clan.

[Hachiman Taro]

ronin said:

BTW, did you know that the Oda clan is still around? They’re suppose to be large restaurant owners in Japan and I think one of them is an Olympic gold medalists. I also had a childhood friend when we were in grade school who might have been from the Shimazu clan from southern Japan because he has the same last name as the Shimazu. He’s half Japanese and half white. I don’t know if he know about it or not. Haven’t seen him in a decade to ask. I also saw on TV awhile ago, some Japanese American Chef with long hippie hair has the same last name as the Mori clan.

Actually there are many bearing the names of the great samurai families. Some ancestors of these folks may have actually adopted these names or purchased them at some time, whereas others are true blood descendants of the original warrior clans. For example, I recall that Kimiko Date who was once a ranked women's professional tennis player was indeed a descendant of the same clan as Date Masamune. I believe the founder of Honda Motors was in fact a descendant of Honda Takatsugu, one of Ieyasu's top generals. In fact my father had a good friend who was of that family (and a direct descendant of Takatsugu) and was a professor at the University of Sendai. My dad said he was one of the most impressive (culturally and intellectually) people he had ever met. My dad's uncle had in his household a suit of armor worn by none other than Taira Kiyomori (this was later donated to a museum). How that family came to possess that armor is anyone's guess--whether it came by ancestors actually being directly associated with the warrior class, buying it, stealing it--who knows. I have friends and acquaintances with names such as Taira, Maeda, Minamoto, etc., but I don't know if they are actually connected with those clans. My mother's side is related to the Yanagisawa clan--the Yanagisawas were for generations the stewards of the Tokugawa house.

[velvet inkbrush of YiSoonShin]

any relations to the soccer players?

my ex was half japanese and his family used to be part of the takeda warrior clan, but his family changed their name during rough times to tokita which i guess is a farmer name

i thought that was pretty funny

[Eowyn]

Just an aside -
One of my favorite movies is Heaven And Earth about samurais Kagetora and Takeda. I never tire of watching that movie!

[Hachiman Taro]

Eowyn said:

Just an aside -
One of my favorite movies is Heaven And Earth about samurais Kagetora and Takeda. I never tire of watching that movie!

Yes, one of my favorite movies, Kagemusha, also centers on the Takeda, or, rather the fall of the Takeda after Takeda Shingen's death. Just before his death Shingen and his forces had nearly wiped out Ieyasu. All of that action would have taken place in the 1570's, a couple of decades before YSS. The Takeda were destroyed by Nobunaga and Ieyasu at Nagashino in 1575 (two years after Shingen died), the first battle in Japan in which firearms played the decisive role (they had been used before but not with such devastating massed effect). The wipe out of Takeda Katsuyori's forces (mowed down by rifles while advancing)at Nagashino is very dramatically and poignantly portrayed in Kagemusha.

[Eowyn]

Thanks for the Kagemusha movie mention, Hachiman Taro Maalii.
I'm gonna look out for that one.