Page 36 - JAPAN THE SHAPING OFDAIMYO CULTURE 1185-1868

men on horseback, yet converses quite familiarly with the lowest and most miserable
servant. His father was merely the lord of Owari, but by his immense energy over
the past four years Nobunaga has seized control of seventeen to eighteen provinces,
including the eight principal provinces of Gokinai [the region around the capital]
and its neighbor fiefs, overcoming them in a very short time (Cooper 1965, 93).

Before Nobunaga could consolidate his conquest of the realm he
was assassinated in the summer of 1582 by a disgruntled vassal, the dai-
myo Akechi Mitsuhide ^.1582). Mitsuhide was promptly hunted
down by another of Nobunaga's generals, Toyotomi Hideyoshi. Like
many self-made daimyo of the medieval period, Hideyoshi began life in
lowly circumstances as the son of a peasant farmer in Owari. Taking
service under Oda Nobunaga, he quickly won Nobunaga's respect as a
precocious strategist and rose to become one of his favored lieutenants.
In 1578, for example, Nobunaga granted Hideyoshi the rare privilege of
holding formal tea ceremonies.
After seizing the succession, Hideyoshi continued to extend No-
bunaga's conquests. At his death Nobunaga had conquered one-third of
the country, twenty-nine of sixty-six provinces. But since this area in-
cluded the major cities of Kyoto, Osaka, and Sakai, it would be more
accurate to say that he controlled practically half the country, including
its heartland. Hideyoshi proceeded to capture the western provinces of
Japan and by 1587 had forced the Chosokabe daimyo family of Shikoku
and the Shimazu of Kyushu to yield to his vastly superior forces. Accord-
ing to one record Hideyoshi enlisted seventy-seven daimyo to lead a total
of 250,000 samurai in the Kyushu campaign (Berry 1982, 89). Having
subdued Kyushu, Hideyoshi announced a plan to invade the Korean
peninsula, and turned to the conquest of eastern Japan. In 1590 Hide-
yoshi turned east, subdued the Hôjô of Odawara, and confiscated their
domain. He then arranged a truce with the Date and other northern
daimyo. As a reward for his help in the campaign against the Hôjô,
Hideyoshi awarded Tokugawa leyasu, potentially his most dangerous
opponent, lands yielding 2,500,000 koku of rice (a koku equals about five
bushels) and ordered him to move his base farther east to Edo. All of
Japan now belonged to Hideyoshi or to his sworn vassals.
With Japan now wholly pacified, Hideyoshi returned to his
dreams of foreign conquest and imperial grandeur. In 1592 he declared
war on China and launched an invading army into the Korean peninsula.
Again the daimyo, especially the western daimyo, were ordered to raise
huge troop levies. Thirty-two daimyo led more than 150,000 samurai in
the main force. Under other daimyo 100,000 samurai brought up the
reserves, and they were supported by a navy of 9,000 sailors raised by
four daimyo. By the summer of 1593 it was clear that the invasion was
failing and Hideyoshi was forced to find some way to extricate his armies
without loss of face. In 1597, angered by the Chinese emperor's rejection
of his peace terms, Hideyoshi launched a second invasion but with no
greater success. The ill-fated and bloody campaigns cost thousands of
Korean, Chinese, and Japanese lives and helped poison future relations
between Japanese and Koreans. Out of the misery, however, came one
cultural benefit for the Japanese. Daimyo fighting in Korea captured
many Korean craftspeople and shipped them back to Japan. Among
them were groups of Korean potters who built kilns in northern and
southern Kyushu and raised the aesthetic and technical level of Japanese
pottery.
While Hideyoshi was extending his military control he was also
pushing through a social transformation that affected the daimyo and
every other group in Japanese society. Enlarging on the example set by
Nobunaga and some of the sengoku daimyo, Hideyoshi (beginning in
1584) ordered his officers to conduct land surveys of the provinces using

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