Toyotomi Hideyoshi swept through thousands of armies with a thunderous momentum, reunified Japan in 1590 AD, and established the Sekibai regime as a "man of the world". Unfortunately, the Toyotomi regime collapsed shortly after Hideyoshi's death in 1598. Although his youngest son, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, seized Osaka Castle, it was already the end of the crossbow and was eventually destroyed by the shogunate army.
Toyotomi Hideyoshi completed the great cause of Japan's reunification, and brought the war-torn Japan to peace, which is not to be described as strong. Just as the so-called rise and fall of the Toyotomi regime was also abrupt, then why did the Toyotomi regime eventually collapse? The editor believes that the main responsibility is still Toyotomi Hideyoshi himself. It is precisely because Toyotomi Hideyoshi has so many mistakes and loopholes that Tokugawa Ieyasu has the opportunity to take advantage. So what exactly did Hideyoshi make? Today Xiaobian will try to interpret it for everyone.
Toyotomi Hideyoshi
<h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" > the first mistake - choosing the wrong successor</h1>
Perhaps because he was too focused on his career and neglected family life in his early years, Toyotomi Hideyoshi never became a father (two sons died in succession). Therefore, when Hideyoshi's career gradually got on the right track, the question of succession had to be put on the table. However, he did not expect this, Hideyoshi was extremely headache, and in desperation, he had to adopt his nephew Miyoshi Nobuyoshi as an adopted son, named Toyotomi Hideji, and trained as his successor.
Later, Toyotomi Hideyoshi took the throne of Taikaku and ceded the position of Sekibai to Shuji. This move is clear to everyone in the world - Hideyoshi is ready to let his adopted son Hideji inherit his career.
Unfortunately, it was not long before Toyotomi Hideyoshi's side chamber gave birth to his third son, Toyotomi Hideyoshi. Toyotomi Hideyoshi was overjoyed and never paid much attention to Hideji. Toyotomi Hideji fell out of favor, and naturally lost the opportunity to be the heir of Toyotomi Hideyoshi, and his status plummeted.
Toyotomi Shuji
Xiuji was very distressed by this, and even lost his mind and did a lot of absurd things. However, it was not the appeasement of his adoptive father, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, but in turn, was used by Hideyoshi as an excuse to get rid of him. Toyotomi Hideji was first exiled to Mt. Koya, and then he was killed by Hideyoshi, and his wives and concubines and children were beheaded together, which was tragic.
The main reason why Toyotomi Hideyoshi had to get rid of his adopted son Hideji was that he was afraid that in the future, Hideji would threaten the position of his youngest son, Xiu Lai, which was the same as Liu Bei's death of Liu Feng.
But from the moment Hideyoshi made up his mind to get rid of Hideji, he himself lost a loyal and capable warrior. The toyotomi family, which was already thin and thin, was even worse. When Hideyoshi died, the youngest son, Hideyoshi, was only five years old, and how a small child controlled the world. This set the stage for the fall of the Toyotomi clan.
Imagine if Hideyoshi had considered the overall situation, with Toyotomi Hideji as his successor, the kuniyoshi Nagarjun, and the assistance of Ryotoshi, Tokugawa Ieyasu would have dared to act rashly.
Even if Hideyoshi does not intend to make Hideji an heir, if he can comfort Hideji with kind words when Heyuzen is frustrated, he will be given an important position. If handled properly, Hideji would have been a strong reinforcement to the Toyotomi family in the future, and would not have allowed Tokugawa Ieyasu to take over the world so easily.
<h1 class = "pgc-h-arrow-right" > second mistake – hopeless family power</h1>
Some people may say that the toyotomi clan's family power is not mentioned. There is some truth to this statement, but it is not entirely true.
Toyotomi Hideyoshi himself came from a humble background, and his father was just an insignificant foot of the Oda family, let alone family power? After the rise of Toyotomi Hideyoshi, he also realized this problem, so he also deliberately supported some of his relatives to become generals and daimyōs, such as the aforementioned Toyotomi Hideji.
Let's talk about the relatives of the Toyotomi family in isolation. The Kinoshita clan of the Toyotomi clan is thin, and Toyotomi Hideyoshi's paternal relatives have only one younger brother, one older sister, and one younger sister. Toyotomi Hideyoshi's younger brother Toyotomi Hidenaga had only one son, Toyotomi Hideho, who died prematurely and had no children. The younger sister also did not have children. The sister gave birth to three sons, but only one of them grew to adulthood, which was Xiuji. From this point of view, Toyotomi Hideji is the closest person to Hideyoshi besides Toyotomi Hideyoshi. Toyotomi Hideji had four sons, but they were all executed by Hideyoshi.
Hideyoshi Toyotomi (stills)
Since the paternal family was basically wiped out by Hideyoshi himself, there was no one to use. Hideyoshi had no choice but to use his wife's relatives, which is what we often call a foreign relative. Notable among them are Kinoshita Ietoshi and his son Hideaki Hayakawa. Ieke is the younger brother of Hideyoshi's main chamber, Takadai-in (i.e., "Ning Ning"), and is highly regarded by Hideyoshi. First he was given the surname "Kinoshita" (family name Sugihara clan) as a sign of grace, and later the surname Toyotomi. Iehito's fifth son, Tatsunosuke (later Hideaki Kohayakawa), was officially adopted by Hideyoshi as an adopted son at the age of three and was renamed Hidetoshi Hashiba (Hashiba was also a surname used by Toyotomi Hideyoshi).
In this way, Toyotomi Hideyoshi gathered a group of people by giving their surnames and marriages, and this group of people can barely be considered to be the family power of Toyotomi Hideyoshi. But in fact, Toyotomi Hideyoshi did not fully trust them, and he relied on the old courtiers who followed him from birth to death.
Hideaki Hayakawa (stills)
Until Toyotomi Hideyoshi's death, his family support plan did not pay off. Therefore, before dying, I had to come up with a strange model of five elders and five pursuing auxiliary government.
Judging from the performance of these "relatives" after Hideyoshi's death, it is actually not difficult to see that this group of people is also good at seeing the wind and turning the rudder, but it is just a group of mercenary villains. During the Battle of Sekigahara, the Kinoshita family, on the pretext of protecting the Takadai-in Temple, stood still and watched the rout of the Western Army. Hideaki Hayakawa, who originally belonged to the Western Army's camp, first stood still, wasted a good fighter, and finally turned against the enemy at a critical moment, resulting in a comprehensive rout of the Western Army. Hideaki Hayakawa also earned the ironic nickname Ichigahara God of War.
<h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" > the third mistake - poor soldiers and silent weapons, bent on conquest</h1>
In his later years, Toyotomi Hideyoshi also did one thing that should not be done - to launch a war of aggression against Korea. As for his motives for launching the war, there are still debates in the historical circles, some people say that he wants to obtain more land to be given to the daimyo loyal to him, and some people say that it is completely his personal ambition and insatiable greed. Xiaobian is more in agreement with the latter.
With a mere 150,000 troops, Toyotomi Hideyoshi wanted to occupy Korea or even invade Daming, which was a pipe dream. In the Korean War, Toyotomi Hideyoshi lost more than one-third of his elite troops in the unification war. He himself died of depression due to unfavorable conditions in the war, which was really not worth the loss.
Painting depicting the Battle of Wenlu Qingchang
The invasion of Korea also indirectly led to the intensification of contradictions within the toyotomi Hideyoshi family team, resulting in the split between the Bunchen faction and the Warlord faction. This also indirectly set the stage for the collapse of the Toyotomi regime after Hideyoshi's death.
Looking at Tokugawa Ieyasu and looking at the history of the Battle of Bunroku Keicho (the Japanese name for this war), it is almost impossible to see any record of Tokugawa Ieyasu involved in this war. During this time, Ieyasu was given an errand at the guard of The Castle of Goya Castle. It was also during this time that he accumulated for himself the capital to win the Battle of Sekigahara.
<h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" > fourth mistake – a team of conflicted courtiers</h1>
The contradictions within Toyotomi Hideyoshi's team have a long history. When Toyotomi Hideyoshi conquered the world, he relied heavily on military generals, and when the war was calmed, he began to reuse the civilian subjects. There was nothing wrong with this, but the fault was that Hideyoshi was not good at reconciling the contradictions between the civilian and the military generals. This eventually led to a split in the family's team.
Bunkin was headed by Ishida San, and the military general was headed by Kato Fukushima. The warlords were very dissatisfied with Hideyoshi's alienation, and while Hideyoshi was still alive, they gathered around Hideyoshi's main chamber in the high-rise temple to fan the flames. At this time, Hideyoshi was already on the verge of death, and he did not have much energy to take care of these "idle things". But it was these "idle things" that led to the internal disintegration of the Toyotomi regime.
Upon Hideyoshi's death, Tokugawa Ieyasu began to use his influence to stir up discord between the two factions. The contradictions between the two factions have been thoroughly made public. During the Battle of Sekigahara, most of the powerful warlords fell to Tokugawa Ieyasu's Eastern Army, turning their guns to their former colleagues, which was a tragedy.
The Battle of Sekigahara, in which Tokugawa Ieyasu seized the world, was not so much a duel between the Tokugawa family and the Toyotomi family, but rather a fight between the Toyotomi family's bunker faction and the samurai faction. Tokugawa Ieyasu, on the other hand, just pushed the boat along the water and picked up the bargain.
<h1 class = "pgc-h-arrow-right" > fifth mistake – the tofia man before death</h1>
With little family power to rely on, Hideyoshi temporarily had to risk his five-year-old son, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, to the five elders and the five auxiliary government teams headed by Tokugawa Ieyasu.
If Hideyoshi didn't know Tokugawa Ieyasu, probably no one would believe it. Hideyoshi had already taken precautions against Tokugawa Ieyasu during his lifetime. However, he still used his political opponent as the assistant minister of the young son, and tried to bind Tokugawa Ieyasu morally in the form of an oath. I have to say that Toyotomi Hideyoshi was very naïve in politics.
It is no wonder that, after all, Hideyoshi came from a humble background, read few books, and did not have a deep enough understanding of the risks of usurpation of the throne by powerful ministers. But he still had a hand left after all. Hideyoshi temporarily arranged for the five elders and the five Bongxing (Ishida Sansei was one of the five Bongxing) to jointly assist the government, in fact, so that they could check and balance each other and contain each other. But he did everything he could, but he forgot one thing—Tokugawa Ieyasu was the most powerful faction besides the Toyotomi family at the time—he had the largest fief, the strongest force, and who could balance him. After the death of one of the five elders, Maeda Toshiya, the fragile balance was broken, and no one in the world could restrain Ieyasu anymore.
Tokugawa Ieyasu
In the face of the rise of Tokugawa Ieyasu, the loyal faction led by Ishida Sansei did try to save the Toyotomi family by force (the Battle of Sekigahara). But how could he be the opponent of the old fox Tokugawa Ieyasu?
On the other hand, Tokugawa Ieyasu, who escaped from a Sima Yi, was not only particularly good at "lurking", but also had a rather superb political skill. Before Toyotomi Hideyoshi's bones were cold, the German army Ieyasu took advantage of the internal contradictions between the Toyotomi family (divided into the civilian and arbitrary factions) to divide and disintegrate, and bought off many of the toyotomi family's old ministers (this move indirectly led to the failure of Ishida Sansei's battle of Sekigahara); then he hooked up with the imperial family in Kyoto and began to pave the way for his own seizure of power.
Tokugawa Ieyasu didn't care about the vows he had made before Toyotomi Hideyoshi's sickbed, and he really wanted to use his hands to kill him even if Toyotomi Hideyoshi had only one Osaka castle left and there was no longer any threat to him. Ieyasu was bent on ending the troubles for the Tokugawa shogunate and his descendants, and even Hideyoshi's eight-year-old son was brutally killed. The Toyotomi clan was completely destroyed.
The family cemetery of the Toyotomi clan
The above five mistakes directly led to the collapse of the Toyotomi regime after Hideyoshi's death. The editor believes that even if Toyotomi Hideyoshi did one of them well, Tokugawa Ieyasu would never have been able to succeed so easily.
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