In 1567, in inpayama Castle, Mino Kuni, Oda Nobunaga finally defeated Saito Ryuhei and captured the castle and renamed it "Gifu Castle", this landmark victory made Oda Nobunaga's confidence greatly increased, while capturing Gifu Castle, Nobunaga also did one thing - began to use the seal of "Tenjin Bubu", on the one hand, this marked Oda Nobunaga's own determination and way to unify the world, on the other hand, it also conveyed a traditional concept of the Japanese at that time, and the use of force to seize benefits was the basic principle of survival in the Sengoku Period. Nobunaga himself proposed a plan to cross the sea to attack Korea and the Ming Dynasty on the verge of reunification. Naturally, this is inseparable from Japan's pirate and water forces.
As an island nation, Japan has not lacked pirate groups collectively known as the "water army" since ancient times. With the intensification of the Warring States competition for dominance, the naval forces in various parts of Japan that have no belonging have been absorbed by the Warring States daimyo with a certain strength, and have become the regular maritime combat forces of the daimyo, and on the stage of the Warring States, these pirate groups such as the carp crossing the river have their own territories and ships.
In 1576, with the support of the Oda family, the Lord of the Kishu Naval Army, Kugi Karon, who was subordinate to Oda Nobunaga, built a new wooden warship about 12 meters wide and 21 meters long, the upper part of which was covered with two layers of iron armor and contained many artillery pieces.
In 1578, It was with six Daian otaku ships that broke through more than 600 wooden warships, including murakami's combined naval forces, which had dominated the Seto Inland Sea for more than 30 years. This great victory, known as the Second Battle of Kizukawaguchi, directly raised the warring states era of maritime supremacy to a new level and level.
Hideyoshi Hashiba, the heir to Oda Nobunaga's estate, spent more effort on the construction of the water army. As early as the "Chinese Raiders" period, Haba Hideyoshi had heard about the Murakami water army in the Mori clan territory, and in order to crush the Maori army as soon as possible and blockade the Seto Inland Sea at the same time, Haba Hideyoshi used his best tactics to approach the Murakami water army near the Seto Inland Sea, which caused a sensation in the Murakami family, and its internal undercurrents surged. The first to defect to Hideyoshi Ishiba was the later famous "One Piece", Tsutomu Raishima and his brother Tetsuyuki.
As an important member of murakami's water army, Tokuzu Tonyuki and Raishima Tōsō both belong to the Murakami clan. In 1567, when their father, Murakami Toruyasu, died, Tokuju Tonyuki was ostracized by his younger brother Raishima Tonyo, who lost the right to inherit and changed his surname to "Tokuju".
In 1582, the 21-year-old Tsuneyoshi Raishima announced that he had turned his back on his mother's Shiraku domain, the Kono clan, and defected to Hideyoshi Hashiba. As soon as this incident came out, Raishima Tsuneyoshi was immediately besieged by Kono, Mori and Murakami's water army, and Raishima Tsuneyoshi, who had suffered a great loss, fled to the Hashiba Hideyoshi military camp for refuge. Although most of Raishima-dori's forces were destroyed, Hideyoshi Haba reused him, not only regaining Raishima-Tsuneyoshi's base from Maori and Murakami's water army, but also helping him regain his strength, and as the Hashima-shitsu army gradually gained the upper hand in the "Chinese Raiders", Murakami's water army was gradually annexed by Raishima-no-no-no-so.
In 1585, Hideyoshi Hashiba, who had already served as Sekibai and was given the surname "Toyotomi", joined forces with the Maori clan to invade Shikoku. Tokuzu Tsuneyuki and Raishima Tsutomu led their men and warships to participate in the battle to pacify the Four Kingdoms.
Soon, the four hegemons of the Nagamasa Ibu clan announced their surrender, deju Tsutsuyuki and Raishima Tōsō were given 3,000 stones and 13,000 stones respectively due to their considerable contributions, and the reason why Toyotomi Hideyoshi was willing to give such generous treatment to these brothers was, on the one hand, to consider that the upcoming "Kyushu Conquest" would require a large number of water troops, and on the other hand, when planning the unification of Kyushu, they needed to train a huge water army to cross the sea between Korea and the Ming Kingdom, and these two people had been in and out of the Seto Inland Sea for many years and had a relatively good understanding of Kyushu At the same time, relying on the fame of Murakami's naval forces, in terms of combat experience and sailing level, Raishima Tōnori and Tokuya Tokugawa Yukiyuki are perfectly in line with the image of "One Piece" in Toyotomi Hideyoshi's mind.
In 1586, during the first Kyushu Expedition, the two brothers of Raishima-Tsunori took on the task of withdrawing the Nagamasa Ibu army, which had been defeated by the Shimazu army at the Battle of Tojigawa, and the first Kyushu expedition ended in the defeat of the Toyotomi army. In 1587, Toyotomi Hideyoshi launched the Second Kyushu Expedition, and he used the imperial court to declare the Shimazu clan an "enemy of Japan" and mobilized 220,000 troops to kill Kyushu, and in the face of great pressure, the Shimazu clan soon announced its surrender.
Two years later, Toyotomi Hideyoshi expeditioned to Hojo, and the brothers of Raishima-Tsunori led an army, but unlike the Shikoku Raiders, this time the Shima brothers were no longer the vanguard of the sea, and Toyotomi Hideyoshi had a lot of mobilizable water forces, and Nine Ghosts Kalong, Kato Yoshiaki, Yasuji Wakisaka and others were stronger than the Raishima water army in terms of fame and strength.
In the entire "Odawara Assessment", the achievements of the Laishima Water Army were limited, but the huge victory won by Toyotomi Hideyoshi not only made Japan basically unified in form, but also made Toyotomi Hideyoshi realize that the Japanese archipelago had formed a very efficient and powerful military mobilization system after a hundred years of war and chaos, and through the "inspection" Toyotomi Hideyoshi confirmed his ideas from the data, thus redistributing the territories of the major names, so that hundreds of thousands of troops could be mobilized quickly and efficiently in the upcoming battle to cross the sea and march to Ming.
This unique ability to mobilize, combined with Toyotomi Hideyoshi's own superstitious primitive "total war" model, led the Japanese to blindly believe that the war with Daimyo and Korea would end as quickly as Kyushu Shimazu and Kanto Go Hojo. Although the Japanese army initially maintained high morale and sufficient reserve strength in the subsequent Battle of Bunroku Keicho, the huge gap in national strength and resources was soon gradually reflected through the deepening of the war, and although Toyotomi Hideyoshi won a victory over the japanese daimyo on land, this theory of large army warfare was moved to the sea and put the Japanese army at a disadvantage. At Toyotomi Hideyoshi with 2 large ships per 100,000 stone tall, 10 sailors per 100 households in each harbor, 3 large ships and 5 medium ships per 100,000 stone tall daimyōs of various countries, Toyotomi Hideyoshi assembled 700 warships of various types before the war.
On paper, the Japanese army did have a certain degree of sea power, but for the armament of warships, Toyotomi Hideyoshi did not add a standard, although Japan has long used iron cannons for war, but large-caliber artillery almost all rely on Portugal, Spain, the Netherlands and other countries to import. That is to say, the expeditionary force had more than 700 warships but its weapons were extremely backward, and the number of artillery was even fewer.
In addition, sailors recruited from all over the world can meet the normal navigation needs of warships, but in the event of a naval war, the vast majority of these sailors are not specially trained in naval warfare and have low loyalty.
The first Japanese army to enter Korea had 158,000 samurai and foot light soldiers who fought on the ground, but the water army was only 9,200 people, which was not even as good as the Murakami water army in its heyday.
Due to the "Pirate Cessation Order" issued by Toyotomi Hideyoshi in 1588, the pirates in various places stopped looting, in fact, these pirates, more time, served as the task of the sea toll station and the transport team, Toyotomi Hideyoshi forcibly suppressed the maritime forces by administrative means, which greatly affected the logistics and transportation of Japan, especially the inland sea, and the pirate forces gradually withdrew from the historical stage. Many people secretly joined the sailors of Takaho Fujido, Kato Yoshiaki, Yasuji Wakosaka and others to participate in the expedition, but more people chose to live a peaceful life of fishing and business along the coast.
Although the "Pirate Cessation Order" aims to end the hostilities of the pirate forces at sea, which is beneficial to Japan in the long run, in the wartime era, the "Pirate Cessation Order" forced the experienced pirates to give up their pirate status in order to make a living, which was unfavorable to Toyotomi Hideyoshi, who was in urgent need of employment, and in the expeditionary force, except for the Nine Ghosts Kataka, the only one who participated in the battle into Korea was laijima Tsuyoshi's raishima navy, which was then organized into the 5th team composed of the daimyōs of Shikoku.