Chapter 3 Chapter 2 Hideyoshi's troubles

Every war has a motive. In the reports of Xu Baoyi, Chen Shen, Su Ba and others, there are many descriptions of the fact that Japan is about to go to war, but there is little mention of why Toyotomi Hideyoshi launched this war.Due to the restrictions of the times and their identities, they can only vaguely summarize Hideyoshi's plan to conquer Korea as the natural ambition of the Japanese pirates. They obviously don't know Hideyoshi well enough. There are many reasons for Hideyoshi to launch the war. These reasons are political, economic, and personal, but in the final analysis, they can be summed up in two words: trouble.

Toyotomi Hideyoshi's troubles are quite a lot. Decades have passed since Hideyoshi first served in the Oda family. In the past, those daimyos and ministers who were famous and above the top, bowed down at his feet one by one, asking for whatever they wanted.The Toyotomi family has become the "people of the world" in the Japanese archipelago, and they say the same thing throughout Japan, and their power is greater than that of the Muromachi shogunate.A guy with a mud-legged background has actually climbed to the top of the world, which has never happened in Japan. It stands to reason that he has already achieved success and fame, and he can take care of himself for the rest of his life.According to the law of American superhero comics: the greater the ability, the greater the responsibility; and the greater the responsibility, the greater the trouble.

Half of his world is won by fighting, and the other half is won by talking.It's easy to talk about the places that are settled, and I will be the master of my territory; if the talks are settled, I have to sell other people's face, such as the Tokugawa family, the Uesugi family, and the Mori family. Although they have surrendered to Hideyoshi, they have respected status and strong strength. Hideyoshi had to be polite when he saw them. For these people's territories, they must not be moved, even if they are moved, they will have to pay a corresponding price.For example, Tokugawa Ieyasu, Hideyoshi tried his best to drive him away from the old base of Mikawa, but he had to give him the richer Kanto region. The territory of the entire Tokugawa family was wider than that of the Toyotomi family itself.

Therefore, Hideyoshi's so-called "unification of the world" is the result of a compromise between various forces, which is similar to Chiang Kai-shek's situation after "changing flags in the northeast". It is only a formal national unification.There is not much territory he can directly control, and many big names simply listen to the tune and don't listen to the announcement. And the group of civil servants and military generals who followed Hideyoshi on the horse, such as Ishida Mitsunari, Konishi Yukyo, Kato Kiyomasa, etc., gradually emerged as emerging forces.Hideyoshi allocated the areas under his direct control to them, one by one, in terms of merit and deeds.But this little land is not enough to satisfy the appetite of these people.

This time can be troublesome.The newcomers want to take the lead actively, but the old people are not willing to let the virtuous—the sixty-six countries in Japan are no longer enough for these old and new forces to carve up.If things go on like this, something will happen sooner or later, which will endanger the harmonious rule of the Toyotomi family. You can't ignore the little brother, but you can't ignore the old stuff.To make everyone happy, the only way out for the Toyotomi regime is to go out and seize land overseas. For Japan, there was only one path: invade Korea, and even beyond, Ming.

Many scholars believe that the reason why Hideyoshi launched the Korean War was to open up the trade routes cut off by China, Japan, and China and North Korea due to the Ningbo Rebellion and the Miura Rebellion. But I personally feel that this is only a secondary reason, or a side benefit.From the perspective of the national structure, in the Hideyoshi era, although the townspeople already had greater political influence, many wealthy business groups emerged.They actively fostered their political spokesmen and eagerly sought foreign trade.After all, Japan is not yet a mature commercial society. The main commercial areas are only concentrated in a few ports such as Hakata, Kai, and Nagasaki. The economic structure of the entire country has not undergone fundamental changes.The scenario where business empires like the United Kingdom go to war for trade in later generations does not yet have the conditions in Japan.To give a small example, Japan at that time could not even manufacture currency perfectly. The quality of Japanese copper coins was so poor that no one liked to use them.No one wants the money they earn to be broken into copper slag by accident, right?At that time, gold, silver, and copper coins from the Ming Dynasty were the hard currency in the Japanese market.Therefore, before the Longqing Dynasty of the Ming Dynasty, one of the routine trade items of the Asian sea smugglers was to transport the copper coins of the Ming Dynasty to Japan, and exchange them for silver taels that were much higher than the Ming Dynasty's parity.

Therefore, for the Japanese of that era, the most important thing was always the land.With land, there are people, money, and capital that can be passed on for generations.One of Hideyoshi's old subordinates, Kato Koyasu, once complained to Hideyoshi that his fief in Kofu was too small to support the family.Hideyoshi was furious, saying that there is only so little land in Japan now, and if you want to take land, you just want to rebel.It won't be too late to solve it for you after we take down Daming. Take a closer look at the list of commanders of the first nine Japanese armies: Yuki Konishi, Kato Kiyomasa, Kuroda Nagamasa, Shimadzu Yoshihiro, Fukushima Masanori, Kobayakawa Takakage, Mori Terumoto, Ukita Hideka, Toyotomi Hidekatsu.In this list, there are either Hideyoshi’s cronies, such as Konishi, Kato, Kuroda, Fukushima, etc.; or Hideyoshi’s relatives, such as Hideya and Hidekatsu; One is actually a family) Shimadzu et al.

The intention to expand overseas territories and reward meritorious officials is clearly revealed. Sure enough, when Hideyoshi announced the solution to the invasion of North Korea and Ming Dynasty, a large group of people were very happy.A group of his cronies responded one after another, discussing the bright future in one go.Kato Kiyoshi was shy, and said that after the Ming Dynasty was conquered, at least 20 counties would be given to him; Kamei Toku was born as a pirate and had always yearned for Taizhou, Zhejiang, saying that he would be content to be a Taizhou guard; Naoshima Mao is more direct, saying that as long as it is sealed in mainland China, it will be good anywhere.

In the future on the Korean battlefield, all of these people will be like wolves and tigers, and they are all stimulated by this wonderful prospect. Hideyoshi looked at this group of monkey cubs happily and was relieved. What these people don't know is that he chose to go to war against North Korea and Ming Dynasty. Apart from expanding the territory, there is another reason that is hard to explain. This is his deepest motivation for war. He is too inferior. The concept of family status of the Japanese is better than that of the Chinese Wei and Jin Dynasties.Despite experiencing the Warring States Period of "down to overcome", the old order tends to collapse.But some traditions are so deeply ingrained that it is impossible to completely eradicate them even with extraordinary force.A farmer with mud legs like Hideyoshi, he can spread his powers all over the world, but he can't do what he wants in some things-such as mixing with the noble class.In Japanese history, this is also called the contradiction between the public and the samurai, that is, the contradiction between the traditional nobles and the samurai group.

There are four major surnames in Japan: Minamoto, Hira, Tachibana, and Fujiwara, and guardian daimyos from all over the world are more or less descendants of these four lines.For example, Oda Nobunaga is the descendant of the Heira clan; Takeda Shingen and Tokugawa Ieyasu are descendants of the Minamoto clan; Uesugi Kenshin is the descendant of the Fujiwara clan.When the two sides come and go, they must first check the family tree and compare the scenery of the ancestors. For some important positions, such as the general who conquered Yi, which symbolizes the highest authority of the samurai family, Genji can only hold it, no matter how capable other families are.This is a tradition that has been imperceptible for many years. It is deeply rooted and no one can shake it.

Hideyoshi's family background is too low, the family background is not good, and he has been despised many times.For this reason, he sharpened his head and tried his best to squeeze into the genealogy of these four surnames.He had to rack his brains to make up a whole set of sayings, dressing himself up as a descendant of the Ping family. In the history books of China and Korea, when Hideyoshi was mentioned, he would call him "Ping Xiuji". In fact, he fell in love with this vain farmer. Dadang—unfortunately, in Japan, no one would believe his words. So Hideyoshi recognized Konoe Maeku, who belonged to the Fujiwara family, as his godfather, and barely squeezed into the Fujiwara family, so he was eligible to be awarded the position of Guanbai. But this was not enough. Hideyoshi also said that his mother had been blessed by the emperor and had extraordinary blood, so he wanted to create a new surname in addition to the four major surnames. This is the origin of the "Toyotomi" surname. All these behaviors all show Hideyoshi's inner inferiority complex and envy. He longs for others' sincere approval. Unfortunately, things backfired.Hideyoshi painstakingly paid so much money for himself, no one dared to publicly object, but no one applauded.Everyone doesn't take this seriously at all.On the surface, those nobles were very respectful to this countryman, but when they turned around, they would twitch their noses in disgust and curse a monkey in a low voice.Tea masters and ministers would also secretly laugh at his vulgarity in their diaries, saying that he is arty—in fact, this Taiko lord is indeed a little unrefined, such as the current national treasure of Japan, a handful of nanmu Goro who entered Taoism. The forged Taidao was because after it fell into his hands, he felt that it did not fit his short stature, so he shortened the stem of the sword and "sharpened it", so that the originally very elegant ancient Taidao looked very nondescript . Hideyoshi has always been quite troubled by this question. We can also apply the same analysis method to Hideyoshi.Whether it is trade or territorial enfeoffment, these are all external causes of the origin of war.These objective factors can affect Hideyoshi, but they will not influence him.What can really make Hideyoshi decide to go to war is his low self-esteem due to his humble background, and his almost paranoid desire for success in order to make up for his low self-esteem.Such extreme psychology is not uncommon in history, and the disputes between many countries, in the final analysis, are nothing more than such small thoughts. For example, he once wrote a letter of credence to the king of North Korea, in which Hideyoshi mentioned that the purpose of launching the war was to "make a name for the Three Kingdoms." It can be seen that this war in his mind, in the final analysis, is to realize his personal The "good name" in other people's minds is more important than real benefits.According to Maslow's pyramid theory of needs, Hideyoshi is just in the transition period from the needs of being respected to the needs of self-actualization. Hideyoshi's intention to invade North Korea and Ming Dynasty had sprouted as early as the fifth year of Tianzheng.At that time, he was still a general under Oda Nobunaga. In a letter to Nobunaga, he said: "If you want to reward your ministers, you are willing to use North Korea as your request. I will use North Korea's soldiers to enter the Ming dynasty." , relying on the majesty of the emperor, sweeping the Ming Kingdom, and uniting the three kingdoms into one, is the long-standing ambition of the minister." It can be seen that at that time, he already had a very clear strategic conception. At this time, Hideyoshi was only working for others, so in this letter, he appeared very sober, and his tone was very flat, as if he was reporting a work plan. But in the thirteenth year of Tianzheng, the situation was different.At this time, Hideyoshi had already become Guan Bai, and his status was noble, which changed his psychology.In Hideyoshi's letter to Yiliu Moan, when talking about North Korea and Ming Dynasty, the tone has become superior, "It goes without saying about the affairs of Japan, and I still want to order the Tang Dynasty." In the fifteenth year of Tianzheng, the monk Tamonin Hidetoshi of Kofuku Temple wrote a strange thing in his diary. He heard that after Toyotomi Hideyoshi unified Japan, he was going to attack Korea, Ming Dynasty, and Nanman ( Southeast Asia) and Tianzhu, Hideyoshi will make his capital in Beijing and become the emperor himself.This concept is already close to the scale of the later Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, which shows that Hideyoshi's ambitions have expanded to the point where it cannot be further expanded. At this time, he has already regarded himself as a "man of the world"-this world is not just Japan, but covers half of Asia. The self-proclaimed "people of the world" overlooking the four directions means that Hideyoshi's ambition has broken through the reasonable limit and has become a kind of fantasy.He was immersed in this kind of madness, and he couldn't extricate himself. In the eighteenth year of Tianzheng, Hideyoshi wrote a letter of credence to the King of Korea.In this letter of credence, he kept bragging about how noble he was when he was born, how great the contributions he made in Japan, and how noble his ideal of attacking Ming Dynasty was, like a man who feared that others would not know how rich he was. upstart. From the analysis of the text of this letter of credence, it can be seen that Hideyoshi kept using a lot of gorgeous rhetoric to praise himself, trying to dress himself up as a saint, positioning himself as a savior of "politicization of the imperial capital and hundreds of millions of years", and even He said such crazy words as "whatever the sun shines on is under my rule", it can be seen between the lines that his mental state is already very worrying. In addition to North Korea, Hideyoshi also randomly distributed letters of credence to neighbors everywhere.Ryukyu, the Philippines and other countries were urged by Hideyoshi to pay tribute.The small country of Ryukyu didn't dare to offend Japan, so they wrote a reply letter with a few words, and prepared some gifts.The Philippines was a colony of the Spaniards, and Hideyoshi's crazy words were simply ignored. By the time the Conquest of Korea was issued the following year, Hideyoshi's ambitions were far ahead of Japan's war preparations.He announced that his adopted son Toyotomi Hideji would guard Kyoto, Japan, and that he was going to invade Ming Dynasty and establish himself as emperor. He has struggled for so long and has reached unprecedented heights, but everyone is afraid of him, but no one respects him.Inferiority has been tormenting this old man, he must continue to prove his worth and give all Japanese a reason to respect him. So, he thought of North Korea. The Japanese archipelago hangs alone overseas and does not border any country.If someone wants to seek outward expansion and spread out the map, they will find that the Korean Peninsula is their only choice. The closest point between the two countries, Tsushima Island is only 50 kilometers away from Busan Port, and they can almost face each other across the sea.Its value in geopolitics cannot be overestimated. The Korean peninsula is like a sharp knife between Japan and Eurasia. Whoever gets this sharp knife can pierce the opponent's soft belly.The status of North Korea in the hearts of the Japanese is like a sword stuck in a stone.Whoever can pull it out will be the Lord of Destiny in Japan. Therefore, conquering North Korea has become the path that every ambitious Japanese regime must choose, just like the sword in the stone of King Arthur.Only by obtaining it can he prove that he is an orthodox and noble heir. As early as 200 A.D., a Empress Empress Wu Zetian appeared in Japan. She was the empress of the 14th Emperor Zhongai.The queen's most famous deed is to go to North Korea three times to expand overseas territories for Japan.What's interesting is that the cultural quality of this queen is really not high. It is said that when she returned in triumph, she took a bow handle and wrote the words "King of Silla, Dog of Japan" on the boulder, and forced them to pay tribute. It is stated in the book: "Become a dog of Japan, prepare for the annual tribute", and the style is similar to that of Chinese elementary school students. After the Empress Shengong, all Japan took her as a model.From the early Yamato Kingdom's repeated scramble for the Renna area of ​​​​Korea to the deliberate annexation of the Li Dynasty in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895.Japan's ambitions for the Korean peninsula have lasted for more than a thousand years. Every time it uses troops, it seems heartbreaking and irresistible.The coveting heart for North Korea can be said to have penetrated into the bones of the Japanese from the very beginning, and it has never weakened. Therefore, the conquest of Korea will greatly enhance the prestige of the Toyotomi family in Japan.The prestige of this conqueror is enough to make up for the shame of Hideyoshi's humble background, allowing Japan to truly recognize him and the greatness of the surname Toyotomi. I have always felt that when studying history, one should study real people.Human society as a whole follows the laws of history, but as a specific person, each historical figure has his own emotions, willful, and makes mistakes, has a unique personality, and is different from the depths of his heart. Little known secret.The impact of this psychological factor on a specific individual is greater than that of external forces and stronger than the pressure of historical laws. Sometimes, when objective analysis cannot explain his behavior in response to the weird choices of a historical figure, trying to probe the psychological state can instead open up a new path.For example, Wang Mang, there is no reason for his restoration of the old system, and its inevitability cannot be analyzed from the political and economic conditions at the end of the Western Han Dynasty. However, he insisted on doing this, almost fighting against the whole society alone.His motives, we can only discover a fanatical retroist soul hidden behind humility only from a psychological point of view. From a psychological point of view, the more inferior a person is, the more arrogant and arrogant the external performance is.Hideyoshi is a fairly typical case.Hideyoshi’s mental state, on the one hand, will desperately boast about himself, creating a false sense of security or satisfaction; on the other hand, he will try his best to belittle others in order to enhance his sense of superiority.The two complement each other, and the focus is never separated from Meng, and Meng is not separated from Jiao. Therefore, as the paranoia became more and more serious, Hideyoshi's evaluation of China and North Korea gradually decreased. In the fifteenth year of Tianzheng, when Hideyoshi wrote a letter to his wife, he talked about strategy and said: "During my lifetime, try to include the territory of Ming Dynasty in the territory." Between the words, he still maintained a rational attitude. By the nineteenth year of Tianzheng, Hideyoshi's attitude towards Daming had changed to "Tang people are as fearful of the Japanese as a tiger." He said complacently: "With the combat power of our army, to deal with Mingjun is like a big flood, a sharp knife and a bamboo. .” As for North Korea, that is even less worth mentioning.Hideyoshi is accompanied by a Korean slave named Han Yi who was exiled in Japan.Han Yi used to be an official in North Korea, and he revealed Li Dynasty's deployment of troops, generals' equipment, and the truth of the court.This made Hideyoshi even more arrogant.According to the records of "Kyushu Yudongzaji", in Hideyoshi's strategic conception, North Korea is not even worthy of being a vassal state of Japan, and can only exist as a subordinate administrative unit of Tsushima Island. Before the start of the Imjin War, Hideyoshi led his army to Nagoya, the base camp.Someone suggested that he bring more interpreters who understand Chinese and Korean. Hideyoshi smiled disdainfully: "Learn what you want, just let them use our characters." At this time, he had already secured the victory in his fantasy. Come on, Ming and North Korea only need to push lightly, and they will fall down with a crash. It can be seen how much Hideyoshi's contempt for his opponent has reached. From the beginning of calmly conceiving the strategy, to the unrestrained expansion of ambition, and then to the unlimited self-aggrandizement and belittling of the opponent, Hideyoshi has gone further and further on the crazy road.Throughout the war, his emotions spiraled out of control several times as the situation ebbed and flowed.The end of this fragile state of mind is self-destructive.In a sense, the war of aggression against Korea happened to be the process of Toyotomi's self-destruction. The vigorous Imchen War was actually launched by a person who was addicted to fantasies. This is really an indescribably absurd thing, but it is so real. A fanatic is not dangerous, just ignore him, but when a fanatic holds great power, the impact it will have will be extremely terrifying. "People of the world" Hideyoshi is just such a person.Accompanied by Hideyoshi's restless mental state, the whole of Japan, North Korea and even half of China had to follow his dance steps, performing a series of sparks flying tragedies and comedies. In the fifteenth year of Tianzheng, when Hideyoshi attacked Kyushu, he secretly told Mori Terumoto to plant a foreshadowing and build a castle in Hizen, named Nagoya.The castle was officially built in the 19th year of Tensho, and the builder was Kato Kiyomasa, a famous general who is proficient in architecture.In future wars, Hideyoshi will be stationed here and command the Korean battlefield remotely. From then on, a steady stream of luggage, weapons, grain, grass, and firearms began to be hoarded in Kyushu, which aroused the suspicion of Xu Baoyi and others.When Hideyoshi finally subdued Hojo, the last resistance force in Japan, and redistributed the sixty-six countries in Japan, he finally focused on North Korea. The nineteenth year of Tianzheng was an unfortunate year for Hideyoshi.In the first month and August, his younger brother Toyotomi Hidecho and his three-year-old Aiko Tsurumatsu died.The departure of the old and the young was two extremely heavy blows to Hideyoshi's spirit.Xiuchang is his right arm, and Tsurumong is his orthodox heir.The blow of losing two close relatives in a row put Hideyoshi's spirit in a frenzied state, and he had to find a channel to vent it out. So, one month after poor Tsurumatsu passed away, in September of this year, Hideyoshi formally issued the conquest order.All the preparations for the war suddenly accelerated.Only the victory in North Korea can offset Hideyoshi's pain of losing his younger brother and beloved son. On the first month of the 19th year of Tianzheng, Hideyoshi issued an order to recruit the navy.All daimyo whose territory is near the sea must build large ships according to the ratio of stone to height, and then gather at the ports of Settsu, Harima, and Izumi in the spring of the following year.In March, Hideyoshi issued a call-up order for the army, requiring daimyo from all over the country to send troops in accordance with Shi Gao's ratio to gather in Kyushu.Shikoku and Kyushu are the closest to the battlefield, and each daimyo will send 60 troops for every ten thousand shi; for every ten thousand shi in China, fifty troops will be dispatched.In some relatively remote areas, such as the Kanto and Northeast regions, as long as there are 20 people per thousand stones, just a symbolic meaning will do. When historians of later generations talked about Japan's war preparations in this period of history, they most often cited the figures of the Goto Jungen family, a retainer of Konishi Governor.Goto Jungen's territory is located in Nagasaki, and the prefectural record is 140,000 shi. The combat troops he mobilized in the territory are 187 people; 200 sailors; 318 civilian husbands, a total of seven One hundred and five people.The combat service ratio is about 27:73. Before the start of the war, the Japanese army had formally assembled nine advance corps, with a total of 158,000 people; in addition, there were seven corps reserves, two extra-fan corps, a navy army, and a direct guard of Hideyoshi. Legion, the total strength reached 281,840. According to rough statistics based on this ratio, there are about 80,000 main combat troops on the front line.But it should be noted that Japan implements the separation of soldiers and peasants. These 80,000 soldiers are professional soldiers, and a considerable part of them are samurai.And the support personnel such as Xiaozhe, Huangzi (referring to the person in charge of cleaning up the battlefield), civilian husbands and other logistics personnel accompanying the team can also be transferred to ashigaru at any time and go into battle. to 150,000. This number has almost taken out all the young and middle-aged laborers in Japan, and the farmland left behind can only be handed over to others for farming.The government had no choice but to issue an order requiring the farmers not to let the farming land go to waste, otherwise they would be severely punished.The severe shortage of labor forces will cause a sharp drop in food production throughout Japan in the next few years. The negative impact of this crisis will become more and more serious as the war progresses. On December 28, the 19th year of Tensho, Hideyoshi formally resigned from Guanbai, and was succeeded by his adopted son Hideji.He assumed the post of Taiko, moved to Nagoya, and devoted himself to his great cause of conquering Asia.The daimyos from all over the world have also begun to collectively move westward. The feudal lords of Kyushu moved towards the front-line bases such as Nagoya, Tsushima and Iki Island, the feudal lords of West Honshu moved towards Kyushu, and the feudal lords of Eastern Honshu moved towards In the middle of Honshu, one floor connects to another, forming a magnificent scene. After several years of expansion, the Japanese Navy already has more than 700 warships and more than 2,000 auxiliary ships. They will provide the Army with the transportation work of the Nagoya-Tsushima Island-Busan route, and will shoulder the responsibility of the Japanese army in North Korea in the future. The top commander of the peninsula's supply chain is the senior pirate Kuki Yoshitaka, and his deputies are all veteran pirate families from all over Japan, with a total force of 9,000.In addition, there is a reserve team of nearly 8,000 people in the hands of Ukita Hideka and Wu Fengxing. As for the strategy of attacking North Korea, the Japanese army already had a plan.It was Tokugawa Ieyasu, the founder of the future Tokugawa shogunate, who proposed the battle plan.Regarding the geographical environment and national strength of the Korean peninsula, he put forward three opinions: "Land and sea advance side by side, use the strong to bully the weak, and make quick decisions." Tokugawa Ieyasu is worthy of being a veteran. These three strategic principles are sharp and clear, and each of them has been cut at the key points.North Korea is mountainous, and land supply is not easy. It must rely on the navy to transport food, fodder and supplies; use the strong to bully the weak, show the courage of a lion fighting a rabbit, and Mount Tai overwhelming, in order to make a quick victory and preserve the combat effectiveness of the Japanese army to the maximum extent, in anticipation of the future battle with Ming Dynasty. On this side, soldiers are preparing horses and horses, sharpening their knives; then across the Tsushima Strait, what is North Korea's Li Chao doing on the other side? Author: Ma Boyong_ History Submission date: 2011-02-1921:03