Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1537-1598) was a Japanese daimyo and samurai during the latter half of the Sengoku Jidai. Despite being born to two peasants, he began rising to immense power at a young age thanks to the help of Oda Nobunaga and Tokugawa Ieyasu. He was a genius in terms of strategizing for warfare and was arguably the most intelligent of the three great unifiers. He spent majority of his younger years assisting Oda Nobunaga to unify Japan, and his older years building on the work that Nobunaga had failed to complete.
Biography
Toyotomi Hideyoshi (Hiyoshimaru) was born on 17 March 1537 as the son of two peasants, Kinoshita Yaemon and Omandokoro. Living in the small province of Owari under immense poverty, Hideyoshi ultimately lived a rather uninteresting early life. This all came to an end in 1558, however, as Hideyoshi began working as an ashiguru foot soldier under the service of Oda Nobunaga, a samurai warlord and head of the Oda clan. Two years after obtaining this job position in 1580, the Oda clan had war declared on them by the significantly more powerful Imagawa Yoshimoto, who boasted an army of over 20,000 men. Oda Nobunaga, along with his 2,000 men, generously accepted and the two clans met on the battlefield of Okehazama. Despite being outnumbered ten to one, Nobunaga led his army to an easy victory, leading to a spike in fame on Nobunaga’s behalf. Hideyoshi informed Nobunaga that remaining remnants of the Imagawa, alongside a number of their allies, would likely attack again, therefore the Oda Clan was informed to stay on high alert for a period of time. This advice turned out to be true, as several Imagawa allies planned to get their revenge on the Oda.
As a result, of this, Nobunaga brought Hideyoshi along to the next few battles, including the famous Mino Campaign. During this battle, Hideyoshi proved to be an amazing strategist, offering a significant amount of helpful advice, as well as showing good use of his “silver tongue,” convincing several spies from the Saito clan to join the Oda instead. As a result of this, Nobunaga promoted Hideyoshi to a lord, incredibly impressed by his skill. However, it was reported that Hideyoshi’s best talent was castle building. In 1566 during the later years of the battle with the Saito clan, Hideyoshi was tasked with constructing a castle to use as a base, at the edge of Saito territory – a job which he is reported to have completed overnight. This castle received the two names of “Sunamota” and “Ichiya,” which roughly translates to “one night” castle. Hideyoshi also heavily assisted Nobunaga in the famous Siege of Inabayama, blowing up the gunpowder room and throwing open the castle’s doors.
From this point onwards, Hideyoshi assisted Nobunaga to reach Kyoto, either bribing off or destroying any enemy clans which happened to get in the way. Upon arriving at Kyoto, Hideyoshi continued assisting Nobunaga, both in terms of fighting enemy clans, as well as covering up several of Nobunaga’s embarrassing mistakes and failures. On-top of that, he also invaded the provinces that Nobunaga was unable to get to which included Echigo and sections of Northern Kyushu. Fast forward over a decade later, Nobunaga, Hideyoshi and Ieyasu were extremely close to unifying the nation once and for all, the only obstacles in the way being the Takeda and Mori. Whilst Nobunaga and Ieyasu went East to destroy the Takeda, Hideyoshi headed directly South to take on the Mori in what was called the Siege of Takamatsu. Using his genius tactic of diverting rivers, he was easily able to flood the castle, killing off a significant amount of Mori forces. Although the plan was going successfully, he requested help from Tokugawa Ieyasu and Oda Nobunaga upon learning that they had completed their task of destroying the Takeda. The pare obliged and began heading down South to assist Hideyoshi, also bringing along another fellow daimyo by the name of Akechi Mitsuhide. Whilst waiting for the trio to arrive, Hideyoshi received the horrendous news that this would in fact not be happening, as Nobunaga was brutally murdered on his way by Mituhide. Furious, Hideyoshi ceased fighting with the Mori and headed back up North, arriving at Kyoto only thirteen days later. Alongside Ieyasu, the Toyotomi and Tokugawa clans both tracked down Mitsuhide and brutally murdered him at the Battle of Yamazaki.
Upon doing so, Hideyoshi replaced Nobunaga’s position of the nation’s most powerful man, as a result, being know as the second great unifier from this point onwards. Upon receiving this newfound power, Hideyoshi began implementing several new laws, which included the banning of weapons by anyone other than samurai, as well as strengthening the feudalism system – if you were born a peasant, you stayed a peasant.
Soon after in the year 1590, Hideyoshi went to war against the Hojo, doing so because they were the last clan to resist his authority. He ended up defeating the extremely powerful clan not too long after in the Siege of Odawara, in which he obtained the eight provinces that they governed, further expanding the Toyotomi clan territory. One year later in 1591, Hideyoshi was forced to retire due to his rapidly declining mental and physical health, as well as to mourn the death of his three-year-old son, who also happened to be his only child, Toyotomi Tsumatsu. Because of this, Hideyoshi was forced to put his nephew, Toyotomi Hidetsugu, in charge of the clan instead for the foreseeable future. For a small amount of time in 1592, however, Hideyoshi briefly came out of retirement to invade China to further expand his legacy, though barely made it past Pyongyang before being brutally defeated. In 1594, one of Hideyoshi’s concubines gave birth to a new son. This as a result, caused Hideyoshi to brutally murder Hidetsugu, along with his whole family so that his young son could obtain power, rather than his “foolish nephew.” In 1597, Hideyoshi once again sent more forces to Korea and China, doing far worse this time around. Amid the invasion, however, Hideyoshi passed away of natural causes.
