Toyotomi Hideyoshi: From Nobunaga's Sandal Bearer to the Sword Hunt

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Born in Owari province in 1537 as Hiyoshimaru, a boy with no surname whose foot soldier father died when he was seven, Toyotomi Hideyoshi begged in the streets before joining the Oda clan in 1558 and becoming Oda Nobunaga's sandal bearer. He married Nene in 1561, reportedly raised Sunomata Castle overnight with timber cut and shaped upriver, and in 1564 dismantled the Saito clan by bribing its disgruntled commanders. When Akechi Mitsuhide killed Nobunaga at Honnoji in 1582, Hideyoshi hid the news from the Mori, made peace, marched back and destroyed the assassin at Yamazaki eleven days later.

At the Kiyosu conference he backed Nobunaga's infant grandson and became the power behind him. After a stalemate with Tokugawa Ieyasu at Komaki and Nagakute in 1584 and the Tensho earthquake, he sent his mother and sister as hostages to bring Ieyasu to submit. He took Shikoku, Kyushu and, in 1590, Odawara, unified Japan, and as a commoner barred from the shogunate became imperial regent through adoption into the Fujiwara and took the name Toyotomi. His sword hunt of 1588, land surveys and travel limits froze the social order. He purged his nephew Hidetsugu, invaded Korea, and died at Fushimi in 1598; Ieyasu won Sekigahara in 1600 and destroyed his line at Osaka in 1615.

• He built the surname Hashiba from characters in the names of two of Nobunaga's top generals.
• At the siege of Odawara he staged a festival of acrobats, musicians and tea masters, then revealed a castle built secretly in the forest above the Hojo.
• Peasants were told their surrendered swords would be melted down for a great Buddha statue in Kyoto.
• His 1587 edict expelled Christian missionaries amid reports of armed southern warlords and Portuguese merchants selling Japanese people abroad as slaves.
• In 1595 he forced Hidetsugu's suicide and had 31 members of the nephew's household executed in Kyoto.