Long before Oda Nobunaga was killed in the Honnō-ji Rebellion, Nobunaga himself had ambitions to launch an attack on the Ming Dynasty after the unification of Japan, and the first step in achieving this ambition was to adopt Korea as his vassal state as a springboard Chinese mainland attack. Toyotomi Hideyoshi inherited this ambition after establishing his own rule over Japan, and he also hoped to break the Ming Dynasty's closed policy on foreign trade. This prompted Hideyoshi to send a group of close generals, including Kato Kiyomasa and Governor Konishi, to Kyushu after he dispatched a large army to defeat the Shimazu family in 1587 in preparation for the overseas invasion. Since the Yamato regime sent troops to support the Baekje state in southwestern Korea against the Tang Dynasty in the 7th century, the Japanese army has not left the country except for the Wokou pirates, and its last large-scale war with foreign countries dates back to the yuan army in the 13th century.
On the North Korean issue, Hideyoshi did not actually want war, but hoped to reach a diplomatic settlement. But the basis of reconciliation must be the condition he wants, that is, Korea unconditionally becoming a vassal state of Japan and supporting the Japanese army's plan to enter China from Korea. After the Kabu clan had just quelled the peasant revolts of Mutsu and Izuha, Hideyoshi ordered the daimyōs to prepare for crossing the sea, and he himself built Nagoya Castle as his base camp in northern Kyushu.
Although Toyotomi Hideyoshi was ready to invade Korea by force, his ultimate goal was the Ming Kingdom, and Toyotomi Hideyoshi was full of confidence in this battle, he had always had the idea of "entering the Tang Dynasty" and had never recognized The absolute dominance of Daming in East Asia, so in Toyotomi Hideyoshi's plan, the invasion of Korea was only the first step, and after conquering the entire Korean Peninsula, he used this as a springboard to further invade the Ming Dynasty, and finally reached the unrealistic and ridiculous blueprint of Tianzhu. And Korea, sandwiched between China and Japan, has always been a vassal state of China, and its king accepted the canonization of the central government of the Ming Dynasty and had a dominant position, so as the "agent" of Daming on the peninsula, the loyalty of the Korean king to Daming was naturally beyond doubt.
After pacifying Kyushu, Hideyoshi ordered the newly subjugated Tsushima Daimyō Yoshitsune to act as an intermediary to demand that Korea pay tribute to him. In 1588, Zong Yi ordered his concubine Yi Zhi, the monk Jing Ru Xuan Su, and Hakata Hao Shang Shima Izumi to go to Korea. However, due to the historical tension between North Korea and the clan of Tsushima, the negotiations were delayed and fruitless. It was not until March 1590, when Munayoshi, who was sandwiched between Hideyoshi and Joseon, died of excessive anxiety and depression, and Yoshitomo, who had temporarily returned to China, succeeded to the throne of his father that Korea finally sent a messenger to Japan.
Although the delegation of more than 300 people arrived in Kyoto in July, Hideyoshi did not receive them until November, and the Korean envoys congratulated hideyoshi on his unification of Japan without any answer to the question of his accession to The Ming Dynasty. At the meeting, Toyotomi Hideyoshi wrote a letter demanding that "the false path be cut down" and asked the King of Korea to attack the Ming Kingdom through the road, so the unreasonable request of the Korean side naturally could not agree, the key is that the interpretation of this letter broke out in the court of the Korean king, and the party dispute in the Lee Korean king's court at that time was very serious, "What the Fanxi people's party is, the Dong people's party must not be." He believed that this letter was a concrete manifestation of Hideyoshi's imminent invasion of Korea, while Kim Sung-il, a deputy envoy from the Dongren Party, believed that Hideyoshi was just a frog at the bottom of the well, and that the so-called idea of "entering the DPRK and entering the Tang Dynasty" was nothing more than a bluff and need not be ignored. The two sides quarreled over the court. As for how to deal with a possible invasion by the Japanese side, no one cares about this issue.
The following year, Hideyoshi continued his diplomatic efforts, but in the end he still could not get the results he wanted, and Korea even paid tribute to the Ming Dynasty as a vassal state of the latter to seek military protection, and Japan's first invasion of the Asian continent in history was inevitable. And this huge action will surely exhaust the blood of the Toyotomi regime.
In order to control the surface warfare forces in Japan, Toyotomi Hideyoshi issued the Pirate Cessation Order in the 16th year of Tenshō (1588). The pirates stopped all plundering in Japan and in the nearby waters, disbanded the low-fighting half-fishermen and half-pirates among the pirates on the spot, and incorporated professional sailors into the Toyotomi clan. Second, Toyotomi Hideyoshi ordered the unified management of ships throughout the country, especially for medium- and long-range operations, and at the same time a large number of "Wokou" troops were incorporated and used in the next larger cross-sea offensive operations. Therefore, under the instructions of Toyotomi Hideyoshi, in the mid-to-late 16th century, Japan had an unprecedentedly powerful Wokou clique, and the commander of the naval army responsible for the invasion of Korea was composed of Three people, Yasuharu Wakasa, Yoshiaki Kato, and Kataka Kuchi. The Nine Ghosts Kalong himself was a pirate born in Shima Kingdom. In the 13th year of Tenshō (1585), Yasuji Wakasa was enfeoffed as the lord of Awaji Kunisō Hon domain and became the lord of Sumoto Castle. Kato Yoshiaki was also enthroned as Awaji Kunishichi Castle in 1586. During the Sengoku period, the Awaji Nation was one of the centers of Japanese pirate activities, such as Anzai Tomoyasu, who made the Azuya ship, and the pirates led by him were the future Awaji Water Army.
All of this is enough to show that toyotomi Hideyoshi's invasion of Korea was imperative, and that the so-called water army units of the Japanese army were nothing more than a ragtag bunch of pirates who acted as home robbers during the Sengoku period. These pirates were unified into the "water army" directly controlled by Toyotomi Hideyoshi.
In addition, there were also the naval forces incorporated by the coastal daimyōs, and in the First Battle of Bunroku Keicho, the initial Japanese naval army was composed of 1500 Kokugi Karyū, 2000 Fujido Takaho, 1500 Yasuharu Wakosaka, 750 Katsuaki Kato, 700 Raishima-Tsunori/Raishima-no 250, 250 Sugata-naga, 1,000 Kuwayama Kazuharu, 850 Tanuchi Clan Zan, and 650 Sugi wakasa clan, for a total of 9,200 men. Among these were pirates, daimyōs loyal to the Toyotomi regime, and toyotomi Hideyoshi's direct subordinates. They shared a common mission: to compete with the Korean naval forces for sea supremacy, to ensure the normal transportation of supplies and other combat tasks for the Japanese army between the Japanese archipelago and the Korean Peninsula.
On January 5, 1592, Toyotomi Hideyoshi officially issued a war mobilization order to all the daimyōs in the country, mobilizing an unprecedented 300,000 troops. On March 13, the daimyōs of each region were assembled, and Toyotomi Hideyoshi promised that after the victory of the war, the lands of the Ming Dynasty and Korea would be distributed to the daimyōs according to their merits.
According to Hideyoshi's plan, about 160,000 troops in the hands of the daimyo in the western part of Japan would be used in the attack on Korea, while the Eastern forces would be concentrated near Nagoya, occupying all of Korea and then crossing the Tsushima Strait into the war against the Ming Dynasty. In the process, due to the huge difference in the number of troops of the various daimyōs, from the smallest few hundred to the largest number of Maori troops of 30,000, it was difficult to coordinate operations overseas. For this reason, Hideyoshi for the first time organized the 160,000 Nishikuni Daimyo troops into 9 corps. Its number ranged from 10,000 to 30,000, each army could fight in a single theater of operations, and since each army had a large number of servants, it could also be regarded as having its own independent logistical support unit.
Fatally, however, this army did not have a supreme front-line commander, and the heads of the armies did not actually have the ability to command more than one army like Hideyoshi. In Japan at the time, only toyotomi Hideyoshi and Tokugawa Ieyasu were left with this command ability, the former unable to find suitable agents in the country and unable to go to the battlefield, and the latter because Hideyoshi was afraid to send him to Korea for fear of his prestige and achievements on the battlefield. But this no longer mattered, because with the huge force in toyotomi Hideyoshi's hands, a big war was inevitable. Soon, the first troops of about 80,000 Japanese troops to fight in Korea set out first and crossed the Tsushima Strait in a mighty way, unaware of the tragic outcome that awaited them.
Foreign History | | Minami Shobo
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