Toyotomi Hideyoshi

Toyotomi Hideyoshi was a Japanese warrior and ruler who completed most of the political unification begun by Oda Nobunaga. Rising from comparatively humble origins in Nobunaga’s service, he defeated rival lords after 1582 and brought the major domains of Japan under his authority.

Hideyoshi ordered nationwide land surveys, separated warriors from peasants through weapons controls and built a powerful castle-centred administration. His later invasions of Korea in 1592 and 1597 caused enormous destruction but failed to conquer the peninsula; his death in 1598 left a succession crisis eventually won by Tokugawa Ieyasu.

In John Man’s Ninja, the unification campaigns of Oda Nobunaga, Toyotomi Hideyoshi and Tokugawa Ieyasu reduced the independent military role of ninja communities, but their reputation continued to evolve in manuals, theatre, fiction and film. Man follows that reinvention into the modern age and closes with Hiroo Onoda, whose decades-long survival in the Philippines became a very different expression of secrecy, endurance and absolute commitment. In Eiji Yoshikawa’s Taiko, born into poverty as Hiyoshi, the future Toyotomi Hideyoshi uses energy, intelligence and an instinct for people to rise through the armies of Oda Nobunaga.