With Nobunaga dead, we turn our attention to one of his generals: Hashiba Hideyoshi, who would take up leadership of the former Oda lands and within the course of a decade complete Japan’s reunification. What do we know about the man and motives behind Japan’s greatest rags to riches story?
Sources
Berry, Mary Elizabeth. Hideyoshi.
Jansen, Marius. The Making of Modern Japan. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001.
Asao, Naohiro. “The Sixteenth-century Unification” in The Cambridge History of Japan, Vol IV: Early Modern Japan.
Images
Transcript
I think it is fair to say that after Oda Nobunaga’s assassination in June, 1582, the balance of power in Japan was balanced on a knife’s edge.
On the one hand, the sprawling territories controlled by Nobunaga still represented a powerful base of power for whoever came after him. On the other, more than a few clans in similarly powerful positions had imploded in the aftermath of the assassination of their daimyo–look at what happened to the Hosokawa clan after Hosokawa Masamoto was assassinated and his adoptive children sent the clan tumbling into civil war.
But as it turned out, that wasn’t what happened, thanks primarily to one of Nobunaga’s generals stepping swiftly into the void his master’s death left: Hashiba Hideyoshi.
Now, as we mentioned last week, Hideyoshi’s life before about 1570 is more or less unknown. There is a common way of telling his story: that his home village of Nakamura was along the delta of the Kiso river in Owari province, within the territories of Oda Nobuhide and then Nobunaga–Hideyoshi’s father, Yaemon, was a farmer who moonlighted as a soldier like many men of the age, because the constant warfare meant there was always a demand for conscripts who could be called up when needed but who had another vocation to keep them occupied in times of peace.
Yaemon, in turn–who might have had a surname, Kinoshita, but possibly didn’t–died in battle in 1543, when young Hideyoshi was supposedly only 7.
The story is just humble enough to be believable, but it is a later invention–after his rise to power, many historians and entertainers would write similar (but slightly different) versions of the rise of Hideyoshi, and it’s unclear to what extent the common story of his early life they constructed was based on any actual evidence or recollections, or whether it was invented from whole cloth because you do need something.
Nor did Hideyoshi himself write much about his origins, except much later in his life–and by that point he had started to develop what I think it’s fair to call delusions of grandeur, to the point that one of his letters to a foreign king described a literal divine conception where the light of the sun impregnated his mother.
So I think we can safely choose to discard that particular narrative in our considerations.
Some time in the 1550s, Hideyoshi appears to have decided to follow his father’s career (or at least, one telling of his father’s career) and took up a job as a soldier. He did not, however, follow the Oda, despite being born within Owari province–instead, he took up a job as a retainer of Matsushita Yukitsuna, a samurai from neighboring Totomi province loyal to Imagawa Yoshimoto.
It’s not clear why he chose to do this, or why some time later in the decade (probably around 1558; certainly before 1560) he decided to leave the service of Matsushita and move over to Oda Nobunaga. Maybe he heard tell of Nobunaga’s exploits and thought the guy seemed like the right horse to bet on. Maybe Nobunaga simply offered him better pay. We don’t know.
We do know that Hideyoshi was on Nobunaga’s side by the time that the young daimyo of Owari crushed Imagawa Yoshimoto in 1560, but it’s unclear in what capacity–the famous story often told of Hideyoshi is that he started off as Nobunaga’s sandal bearer, but once again that might be a later invention designed to lend luster to his rise.
Hideyoshi himself does not appear in any of Nobunaga’s correspondence or records until 1570, by which point he was a part of the daimyo’s “inner circle” of trusted commanders who Nobunaga trusted to get the job done.
When Nobunaga eventually captured Omi province, right in the heart of the Kanto and directly next to Kyoto, it was Hideyoshi he chose to rule it–one imagines because Hideyoshi was the one entrusted with crushing the previous occupant, Azai Nagamasa, Nobunaga’s brother in law. Hideyoshi was also the one charged with executing Nagamasa’s sons, who were also thanks to a now defunct marriage alliance between the Asai and Oda Nobunaga’s nephews. He did not, importantly, take issue with this.
Hideyoshi would not stay there permanently; Nobunaga rotated him to a new fief in Harima province near modern Himeji a few years later. This wasn’t unusual, though; Nobunaga did this constantly with his retainers, likely because that constant rotation kept any one of them from establishing too strong a base of power in their province (and thus potentially challenging his rule).
By 1580, Hideyoshi was among the seniormost Oda commanders, and in 1582 he was in charge of an all-important campaign in Western Japan against the Mori clan–the very same one we talked about back in episode 519. And he was smack in the middle of that campaign, laying siege to a major Mori clan fortress in Takamatsu castle, when a messenger fell into his hands, captured by his advance guard.
That messenger was from Akechi Mitsuhide, who had just completed his strike against Oda Nobunaga and was now reaching out to the Mori–asking for an alliance against any Oda loyalists and promising an end to the war and future cooperation in exchange.
Mitsuhide had chosen his timing carefully–most of Nobunaga’s other generals were, like Hideyoshi, in the midst of summertime campaigns on the fringes of Oda territory, and could not immediately disengage and march to Kyoto without risking an attack from behind. Using the opening allowed to him, Mitsuhide allowed his forces to plunder Nobunaga’s new fortress at Azuchi (completed just three years earlier) and tried to seize control of Omi province, making overtures to the locals by promising tax breaks.
The intimidated imperial court of Emperor Ogimachi immediately offered congratulations to Mitsuhide on his victory–clearly they, like pretty much everyone else, expected Mitsuhide to try and carve out the area for himself, or maybe take initiative to seize control of the Oda clan altogether.
Hideyoshi, however, was swift to respond. He knew that, thanks to the capture of the Akechi messenger, the Mori clan defenders of Takamatsu castle had no idea what had happened. So he took advantage and swiftly asked for a parlay with the Mori retainer leading the defense of the castle, Ankokuji Ekei.
Ankokuji’s defenders were already flailing, thanks to a clever strategem–Hideyoshi had diverted a nearby river using engineers to flood the castle defenses and ruin much of its food stores. When Hideyoshi offered him a frankly pretty good truce–accept Oda clan control of three Mori provinces in exchange for an end to hostilities–Ankokuji, thinking there was no chance of taking on a clan unified by Nobunaga’s leadership, agreed.
Hideyoshi took control of Takamatsu castle just four days after Nobunaga’s death; the very next day he was on the march back to Kyoto, and within a week he had an army–assembled mostly from what he could whip up as he raced back to the capital–ready to face Mitsuhide.
In the ensuing battle of Yamazaki, Mitsuhide’s forces were routed–the man himself fled the scene, only to be captured and killed by peasants in a village looking to loot his body and turn him in for a reward.
Hideyoshi, boasting about how he’d “avenged his lord” and “shown his loyalty to Nobunaga”, offered up Mitsuhide’s severed head to the ashes of Honnoji just a few days later.
In reality, one imagines Hideyoshi didn’t feel too strongly one way or the other about Nobunaga except as an opportunity. Certainly his former master had not been terribly great to Hideyoshi, at one point writing a letter to Hideyoshi’s own wife calling him a “bald rat” and describing him as ungrateful to her (while also, at least to my eye, flirting with her) and closing the letter by instructing her to show it to him.
To be fair, that sort of thing was also par for the course for Nobunaga; the Jesuit Louis Frois, who served as the order’s envoy to Nobunaga’s court, described him as imperious to the other “kings of Japan” and treating them like his servants.
Mitsuhide honestly get much more sympathy as a historical figure–as the decades wore on, he was often portrayed as a decent man who stood up to a tyrannical monster. By the 1700s, playwrights producing historical dramas about this period were giving him speeches like this: “Heedless of remonstrations, Nobunaga destroyed shrines and temples, daily piling up atrocity upon atrocity. It was my calling to slay him for the sake of the Warrior’s Way, for the sake of the realm. King Wu [of Zhou] slew King Zhou of the Shang; Hōjō Yoshitoki exiled the emperor. Both in our country and in China, the murder of a lord who does not know the Way has been the task of great men who thus give relief to the people.”
Frankly, Nobunaga was not really mourned by many–which is not shocking, given how he treated his own followers. Similarly, Hideyoshi’s claim that he was “avenging his lord” rings pretty hollow given how he moved to secure his own power in the aftermath.
Nobunaga, you see, had several potential heirs. Most notably two of his sons, Nobukatsu and Nobutaka, were still alive and positioned to lead.
After Nobunaga’s death, his retainers met at Kiyosu Castle–the original headquarters of Nobunaga before his moves first to Gifu and then to a massive palace complex at Azuchi–to hash out who should lead the Oda next. Nobukatsu was the 2nd son of Nobunaga and thus the natural choice by age; however, his younger brother Nobutaka had been a part of the army that killed Mitsuhide, and thus was elevated by virtue of his involvement in the battle that had avenged his father’s death. Both had also been adopted out into other families because it had been assumed neither would ever take over the Oda. Thus, the Kiyosu conference was deadlocked–Nobunaga’s remaining followers were divided between the two potential candidates both out of genuine confusion on who the better choice was and (one imagines) by questions of who they thought they could get more out of.
Hideyoshi broke the stalemate between the two by putting forward another candidate; Nobunaga’s grandson Hidenobu, son of his original heir Nobutada who had been killed at the same time he was. And it was true that Hidenobu provided a way to break the deadlock; however, he was also literally two years old, and thus easy for Nobunaga’s retainers to control.
One has to imagine this factored into the decision.
Hideyoshi was able to convince a critical mass to follow his plan–and assuaged the others by overseeing a division of Oda lands that kept them all more or less as equals.
Hideyoshi, in recognition of his leadership in defeating Akechi Mitsuhide, was rewarded with the man’s former fiefs in Yamashiro, Tanba, and Kawachi provinces, but the balance of power among Nobunaga’s former followers was largely carefully maintained (for example, Hideyoshi agreed to give up his holdings in Omi province in exchange).
Four of the leading Oda generals–Hideyoshi, as well as Niwa Nagahide, Ikeda Tsuneoki, and Shibata Katsuie–agreed to jointly govern the imperial capital at Kyoto.
And then everyone present took a blood oath to support Hidenobu as the new overlord of the Oda. But practically speaking, as Mary Elizabeth Berry puts it in her excellent biography of Hideyoshi, the decision on succession had simply been punted down the line. Nobunaga’s generals had agreed on a candidate who by virtue of being a child was no threat to the status quo, and on a balance of power between their lands designed to make sure no one of them could overthrow all the others. But the issue of succession–and the long term future of the Oda– was practically not resolved.
Berry–whose book, by the way, is excellent, and I recommend it highly to anyone interested in the period–also notes in her writing that even at this early juncture, Hideyoshi had plans in place to take over. In a letter to a mistress, he wrote, “When there is time, I shall recover Osaka and station my men there. I shall order them to level the castles of the whole land to prevent further rebellions and to preserve the nation in peace for fifty years.” He was already thinking, in other words, of what he would do when he succeeded in overcoming the other Oda leaders and assuming control of the clan–and then the whole country.
Still, there was a ways to go before that was possible. In particular, Hideyoshi had to overcome challenges from two of Nobunaga’s leading generals–both of whom, despite the oaths they had taken at Kiyosu, were clearly angling to align themselves with one of the other potential heirs to challenge Hideyoshi (whom they correctly perceived was using Hidenobu as a prop for his own ends).
The first of these men was Shibata Katsuie, a longstanding Oda general whose lands were in Echizen on the northern side of Oda territory along the Japan Sea Coast. Shibata, a longstanding Oda retainer, had joined with Nobunaga in the mid-1550s after the branch of the Oda he served was defeated by Nobunaga. Ever since, he had served Nobunaga loyally and resented Hideyoshi’s growing influence.
As a result, before the year was out he’d begun to align himself to Oda Nobutaka, the second of Nobunaga’s surviving sons who resented being passed over for leadership. Nobutaka, ambitious in the extreme, wed his aunt (Nobunaga’s sister) to Shibata to solidify a partnership and legitimate Shibata as the first among Nobunaga’s surviving generals. Nobutaka had also been made the guardian of young Hidenobu as a nod to his role as the eldest living member of the leading branch of the Oda–but rather than moving Hidenobu into Nobunaga’s old fortress at Azuchi as he’d promised to do at Kiyosu, Nobutaka took the boy to Mino, where he’d inherited lands from his father including the old fortress of Gifu castle.
By the way, the marriage to Shibata Katsuie was the second for Nobunaga’s sister, known as Oichi. She’d previously been married to Asai Nagamasa as part of a marriage alliance between the Oda and Asai. That alliance had ended, of course, with Asai siding with Nobunaga’s enemies–and being brutally massacred by Nobunaga, with Hideyoshi leading the campaign and following an order from his lord to kill both of Oichi’s children at the end of it.
Hideyoshi, for his part, was well aware of the Shibata-Nobutaka alliance; by the 10th lunar month of 1582 (so just four months after Nobunaga’s death) he was writing two of Nobutaka’s retainers who had offered to mediate the dispute between Shibata and Hideyoshi, proclaiming that, “since the agreement made which was sealed in blood [at Kiyosu] has been violated, there is no need for you to enter into this matter.”
In other words, Hideyoshi was saying that he was going to make a fight of this. All along the way, he proclaimed that he was an Oda loyalist–he was doing this because of the violation of the Kiyosu deal, and in defense of Hidenobu’s rule in memory of his lord Nobunaga. Later biographers, like the authors of the Taikouki and Tenshouki, would thus portray Hideyoshi exactly as I imagine the man himself would have wished–a loyal Oda vassal. Of course, what he actually believed is…a bit more complicated to establish.
Fighting between Shibata Katsuie and his backers and Hideyoshi broke out at the start of the very next year–and this, arguably, was the most decisive moment of his military career. Hideyoshi was still vulnerable, still but one of the group of Oda vassals jockeying for position after Nobunaga’s death.
But the military campaign that resulted proved decisive in tipping that balance to Hideyoshi. Early on in the fighting, Hideyoshi planned to take the bulk of his forces to Mino, where Oda Nobutaka himself had set up shop. He’d left behind a small band of retainers in Omi to defend the province from Shibata Katsuie (whose lands bordered the province). However, he swiftly got word that Shibata had crushed the defenders of Omi–and rapidly turned his armies around to strike back.
According to the later chronicle Tenshouki, Hideyoshi’s vanguard covered the 52 kilometers (or 32 miles) separating his armies in Mino from Shibata Katsuie’s new camp in Omi in an implausible 5 hours, catching Shibata totally unprepared at Shizugatake and routing his entire force. Hideyoshi himself then followed up with an advance into Echizen, and on the 24th day of the 4th lunar month a defeated Shibata killed wife and sons and then himself–a sad end to the sad life of Nobunaga’s sister Oichi. Oda Nobutaka, in whose name Shibata fought, was left trapped in Mino–his own brother Nobukatsu eventually laid siege to the fortress, and a despondent Nobutaka killed himself to avoid capture.
The only survivors were Oichi’s daughters by her previous marriage, who were spared by virtue of their lack of blood relationship to Shibata.
This was not the last challenge Hideyoshi had to fend off, however. The very next year he would be at war again–this time, with a face more familiar to us.
Last week, we introduced Matsudaira Motoyasu, a young boy who had come as a hostage to the Oda court, and eventually fought for Imagawa Yoshimoto–jumping ship to the Oda cause after his defeat. Matsudaira had stayed loyal to Nobunaga ever since, and been rewarded handsomely with land and titles–and even an illustrious new name. In 1567, he’d been allowed to change his family name to the more regal Tokugawa, and his personal one to Ieyasu.
Tokugawa Ieyasu was, by the time Nobunaga died, one of the most trusted Oda lieutenants, with lands sprawling five different provinces (Mikawa, Totomi, Suruga, Kai, and Shinano). He also had the backing of Nobunaga’s other surviving son, Nobukatsu–who decided that he wanted to make a go of it himself at seizing leadership of the Oda family from his nephew Hidenobu.
And he was a deeply able general–Hideyoshi’s nephew Hidetsugu led an initial battle against Ieyasu at Nagakute in the third month of 1584 and got beaten quite badly.
But here too, Hideyoshi prevailed, and I think you have to credit that to his other great talent–diplomacy.
Hideyoshi spent much of 1584 ensuring that powerful clans neighboring Oda territory like the Uesugi, Hojo and Mori would not take advantage of the fighting to try and strike against the Oda and destroy them. After all, these years of division after Nobunaga’s death represented pretty much the last chance for these daimyo at preventing reunification at someone else’s hands.
Hideyoshi saw this too–but saw one additional aspect of the new political shape of things. As the decades had worn on, clear “favorites” had begun to emerge between the competing clans of Japan, with the Oda of course first among them given the sprawling nature of their territories. But there were plenty of others as well. Yet while those families had grown increasingly powerful, that fact meant that they also had more to lose.
And so Hideyoshi began to offer these families a deal. If they worked with him rather than against him, he would be happy to confirm them in their lands. And that’s a fairly tempting deal, you have to admit–sure, you could try to take Hideyoshi down and move into the top spot yourself, but I mean really, if your family already owns 2-3 provinces (or even more than that), it’s not like you’re hurting financially. Why risk all that wealth, all that power, instead of simply securing what you had?
Which meant that daimyo who might have been tempted to join Ieyasu’s challenge, particular after his initial victory, demured instead. The neighboring Hojo clan (unrelated to the Hojo of old), for example, literally had a marriage alliance with Ieyasu and still refused to help him against Hideyoshi when asked.
And so Ieyasu was forced, by the end of 1584, to agree to a ceasefire with Hideyoshi and give up any attempt to challenge him despite beating him on the field of battle.
Hideyoshi’s talents as a ruler were hard to deny by this point. His future biographers, like the author of the Tenshoki, put it well: “There were three talents associated with (the first shogun) Minamoto no Yoritomo’s pacification of Japan. Yoshitsune (his brother) excelled in battle skill; Kajiwara Kagetoki (one of Yoritomo’s advisors) concentrated upon worldly affairs; Hōjō Tokimasa (his father in law) pursued the way of government… But now Hideyoshi, with a single heart, advanced his plans laid in provisions, and then fought his wars. Truly he is a great leader unknown to previous ages.”
Hideyoshi himself put it more simply in a letter written at the end of 1584: “the government of Japan will be superior to anything known since Yoritomo.”
From this point on, Hideyoshi’s road to the top was pretty much a straight line. Oda Hidenobu was kept around, shuttled first to his grandad’s old fortress at Azuchi and then to the guardianship of one of Hideyoshi’s trusted followers. But he was increasingly marginalized (well, more marginalized–he was only four when Ieyasu submitted to Hideyoshi), and Hideyoshi accumulated more power and land to himself from the former Oda territories.
By 1584, Hideyoshi was more or less dispensing with the pretense of ruling “on Hidenobu’s behalf”–he was directly handing out lands and titles to vassals in his own name, rather than doing so in the name of his erstwhile master. Indeed, before long Hideyoshi was granting lands in his own name to Hidenobu –solidifying his hold on power by flipping the relationship that was supposed to exist between the two of them. Hidenobu, still a child, offered no objections, and would actually grow to be a believer in and supporter of Hideyoshi.
Meanwhile, surrounding daimyo were given a choice–submit or be crushed. Most submitted, and those that did not, well…you can guess.
For example, the Chosokabe clan–who had over the last few decades conquered the entire island of Shikoku for themselves–attempted to make a fight of things when Hideyoshi’s forces landed on the island in 1585. They were resoundlingly crushed, and only a timely decision to surrender spared them from being wiped out altogether–an act of mercy for which they were made to pay with three quarters of their lands.
Given the obvious cost-benefit analysis of resisting his rule, Hideyoshi’s conquests were naturally quite swift. He defeated Ieyasu and secured his hold over the Oda at the end of 1584–by 1590, the final holdouts against him were being defeated. Hideyoshi had done it–the county was reunified.
All along the way, Hideyoshi worked to establish a political structure that would prove remarkably durable going forward. You see, he was well aware of the self-serving motives of many of the daimyo who had decided to side with him. Families like the Chosokabe or Mori did not side with Hideyoshi because they believed in him as a leader, but simply because of that risk-reward calculation we talked about earlier.
And so Hideyoshi labeled those families tozama–outside lords, whose dubious loyalties barred them from any sort of trusted position in his new administration.
By comparison, those who could be trusted–longstanding vassals, like say the seven commanders who had led the great victory at Shizugatake over Shibata Katsuie back in 1583, when Hideyoshi’s ascendancy was not guaranteed–were labeled fudai, the inner lords.
These were men who had hitched their proverbial wagon to Hideyoshi back when doing so was still a gamble, and who as a result could be trusted with positions of power and influence.
This approach had two important effects down the line. First, it allowed the old domains of the daimyo to survive–anyone who was willing to conciliate themselves to Hideyoshi was allowed to endure, and Hideyoshi made it very clear that he was not looking to rule the entire country personally.
As a result, though the country was reunified by 1590, it was reunified in a decentralized way. Admittedly, not as decentralized as had been the case under the Ashikaga, for example–Hideyoshi was careful to maintain a substantial powerbase all his own, which alongside the lands of his trusted fudai retainers gave him a strong base from which to fend off any challenges. His military and economic position, simply put, was far better than that of Ashikaga Takauji or his successors.
To put it simply: under the Ashikaga, the power of the various provincial shugo families was such that it was hard for the Ashikaga shoguns to restrain any one of them.
Hideyoshi, by contrast, could restrain any one daimyo who stood against him–but he couldn’t take them all on, and that knowledge was an important part of why so many daimyo felt comfortable taking Hideyoshi’s bargain and becoming tozama.
Hideyoshi’s government–and I guess, spoilers here for things that happened 400 years ago–would not endure, but this basic structure would: a testament to Hideyoshi’s command of politics.
Second, Hideyoshi abandoned many of Nobunaga’s former policies, most notably the approach of holding many of his lieutenants and subordinates in terror. I think the easiest way to approach this is to consider Ieyasu’s abortive campaign against Hideyoshi in 1584, which ended diplomatically. Now, take a moment and paint yourself a mental picutre; based on what you know about Oda Nobunaga, what I’ve told you, how do you think he would have ended that particular spat?
Because while you never know with a hypothetical, I feel pretty safe guessing that “burn it all to the ground” is the most likely answer.
Hideyoshi chose to approach rule from a process of conciliation. Which is not to say he wasn’t capable of force–Shibata Katsuie’s death is a good example of that. But crushing his enemies on the field was not his first choice: not out of a sense of propriety or humanity, but simply because that sort of thing is always a gamble and outside of at ruly ridiculous power imbalance you never know for a fact you’re going to win.
The government that emerged over the course of the 1580s and by the time of Hideyoshi’s final victories in 1590 was thus a sort of coalition of the willing (and the unwilling-but-not-foolish). He ruled over a collection of daimyo who ranged from longtime loyalists to calculating followers to those who had been humbled by force.
And for that last group, sure, they’d lost a few provinces along the way or been transferred from their original territories to the other end of Japan–a favorite tactic of Hideyoshi’s, because it still offered something to the defeated but also forced them to start over in a place where they were totally dependant on Hideyoshi’s authority to stay in power–but hey: it was better than ending up dead, right?
As for Hideyoshi himself: by the late 1580s he was riding high. He was the unquestioned master of the country, a feat marked by a growing list of honors attached to his name.
In 1586, he received a new surname from the imperial court to mark his accomplishments, changing the family name from the peasanty Hashiba to the more regal Toyotomi–abundant minister.
And he definitely was an abundant minister, because the court showered him in honors. Most importantly, in 1585 he was made both the kanpaku, or regent to the emperor, and the daijo daijin–the prime minister of the old imperial civilian bureaucracy.
He ostensibly retired from these jobs in 1591, but in time honored tradition by this point continued to exercise his authority behind the scenes with a new title: Taiko, the retired regent.
This is also how he’s commonly referred to in history; one of the most famous chronicles of his reign is the Taikoki, or Chronicles of the Regent, and the most famous modern dramatization of his life is Yoshikawa Eiji’s epic novel Taiko.
One title he pointedly did not claim was that of shogun; Hideyoshi did not attempt to set up a new Toyotomi bakufu in name (though in practice, the government he set up functionally filled the same role).
The common explanation for this, advanced in later centuries by commentators during the Tokugawa shogunate, was that the title was an issue of pedigree–you had to be from the right sort of family, which is to say from a lineage that could trace itself back to the early imperial court and to the imperial family. Minamoto no Yoritomo and Ashikaga Takauji actually could do this, thanks to their Seiwa Minamoto ancestry. Someone like Oda Nobunaga or–spoilers–Tokugawa Ieyasu could plausibly fake it as members of the warrior class, bribing someone to draw up an appropriately illustrious genealogy (not that any Tokugawa scholars admitted Ieyasu’s own pedigree was likely fake; doing so was a great way to draw the eye of a government censor your way).
But everyone knew where Hideyoshi had come from; claiming he was secretly descended from thus and such emperor would have been a bit much. And for Tokugawa commentators, the whole thing was secret proof that the government that succeeded Hideyoshi was superior by virtue of good breeding.
This is still the common reason given for Hideyoshi never claiming the title, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t note it’s not universally accepted today. In her biography of Hideyoshi, Mary Elizabeth Berry advances a very different theory–that Hideyoshi’s view of the title of shogun was such that he saw it as a demotion for himself. After all, the shogunate he’d grown up knowing, that of the Muromachi bakufu, was a weak, powerless regime. Who would willingly associate their new age of rule with that? And the previous Kamakura shogunate wasn’t exactly an edifying example either; it had never succeeded in fully controlling the country and always split power with the civilian court in Kyoto.
Thus, she argues, Hideyoshi saw the title of shogun as less than what he could otherwise achieve–it was Tokugawa Ieyasu, instead, who would see the potential in re-energizing the old title and returning it to use in grander fashion than before.
There are some potential holes with this theory; if Hideyoshi saw the shogunate as a demotion, why not feel the same about the by this point totally defanged imperial court?
Here, Berry offers another suggestion–that Hideyoshi saw the court’s function as complimentary and therefore useful.
After all, he already had all the military legitimacy he needed from the best source there is: winning. What he needed was legitimacy as a peacetime governor, and there he could tap into the long history of the court and its various titles.
And indeed, this is exactly what Hideyoshi did. He made use of the old titles, but also worked to lift the imperial court up in return–after all, its prestige now reflected on him.
During the civil wars, the court had become deeply impoverished, to the point that some emperors had been reduced to hawking calligraphy to make their ends meet, that the Ooku, the imperial harem, had been sharply reduced–and that after the death of Emperor Go-Tsuchimikado in 1500 his body had to be kept in a closet for over a month while the funds to pay for an imperial funeral were scraped together.
Hideyoshi rebuilt Kyoto and showered gifts and wealth on to the court–in exchange for their help burnishing his reputation. He distinctly asserted his power over the emperor, calling the then reigning emperor Go-Yozei and his retired father Tsuchimikado to attend to him at his mansion in Kyoto, called the Jurakutei, in 1588.
And that’s a big deal–after all, this is the emperor going to visit someone else, not them going to call upon the emperor.
But when the imperial procession arrived–a clear sign of subordination to Hideyoshi–he responded by again showering them in praise and acting extremely deferential. For example, the two men exchanged poems when they met. Go Yozei’s: “Today is the day/we achieve what we awaited/ in the branches of the pine/ I see the promise of our relations/extending for ages.” Hideyoshi’s: “As my lord of myriad ages/ has proceeded here in state/ we may henceforth come close together/ like the green pine/standing tall beneath the eves.”
By the way, this was the start of a 100 round linked verse poem between all the attendees, and they’re all pretty much on this theme–a lot of polishing each other’s egos and self-congratulation.
By the 1590s, Hideyoshi’s position was completely secure…or, at least, almost completely. He was still missing the one thing you really do need: an heir. He had a wife he was deeply devoted to, known as Nenehime, and of course many concubines as well–but only ever had one son, Tsurumatsu, who died in infancy in 1591.
Hideyoshi had of course already made provisions for this; he had a nephew, Hidetsugu, whom he had adopted and begun to raise up as an heir. For example, after abdicating as imperial regent/kanpaku, he handed the gig off to Hidetsugu, a clear marker of where things were going.
Or at least…where they were going until 1593, when one of Hideyoshi’s concubines, Yodo-dono, gave birth to a son.
But hey, we’ve all been here before with a planned succession that gets upset by the birth of a young son. I’m sure we’ve all learned from the experience, and this time it’ll go great.
Next time: it (and a separate decision to invade Korea for some reason) doesn’t go great.