Toyotomi Hideyoshi

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The Honnō-ji Incident: Why Did Akechi Mitsuhide Betray Nobunaga?

On a single dawn in June 1582, Akechi Mitsuhide turned his army around and burned his lord alive. Four centuries of historians still cannot agree why.

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Strategy as Theater: Why Hideyoshi Kept His Best Strategist Far from the Capital

Kuroda Kanbei could read battles before they happened. Hideyoshi was so afraid of him that he reduced him to a small Kyūshū domain, well below his merit. The decision shaped the career of one of the strangest figures of the Sengoku.

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Yamazaki: The Thirteen-Day Empire That Hideyoshi Stole Back

Eleven days after burning Nobunaga at Honnō-ji, Akechi Mitsuhide stood at the Yamazaki ridges facing an army that should not have arrived for weeks. Toyotomi Hideyoshi had marched 230 kilometres in nine days. By sunset Mitsuhide was finished.

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The Adoption Chain: How a Boy Born Kinoshita Almost Became a Hashiba

Born to the Kinoshita house in Ōmi in 1582, one boy in ten years changed names and clans twice — first adopted as Toyotomi Hideyoshi's heir at three, then re-adopted into the Kobayakawa house at twelve. The remote cause of the Sekigahara defection lay in that chain of adoptions.

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As Hideyoshi's Consort: Kaihime Exchanged for the Preservation of the Narita House

In 1590, after the fall of Oshi Castle, Kaihime was taken by Hideyoshi as consort. Tracing the course of her entry as consort, in exchange for the sparing of her father Ujinaga and the Narita house.

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Attendant to Hideyori: Kaihime's Later Life and the Ōsaka Campaigns

In 1593, Toyotomi Hideyori was born. The Taikōki transmits that Kaihime served as his attendant guardian. After the destruction of the Toyotomi at the Ōsaka Summer Campaign of 1615, Kaihime's whereabouts pass out of record.

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Kitanoshō: The Night Shizugatake Was Decided as a Loss, Oichi Chose Suicide

On the night of April 24, 1583, at Kitanoshō Castle in Echizen Province. Shibata Katsuie, defeated by Hashiba Hideyoshi at the Battle of Shizugatake, and his wife Oichi took their own lives together as the castle burned. The three sisters were spared by Hideyoshi. The end of Oichi at around thirty-seven.

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The Seven Spears of Shizugatake: In 1583, the Twenty-Two-Year-Old Masanori Made His Name

On April 21, 1583, at Shizugatake. The young Fukushima Masanori, together with Katō Kiyomasa, Wakisaka Yasuharu, and five others, achieved the feat of first-spear and established his position as a Hideyoshi-raised warrior. Tracing the birth of the 'Seven Spears.'

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The Eastern Army Vanguard at Sekigahara: Why Masanori, a Toyotomi-Loyal Warrior, Sided with Ieyasu

On October 21, 1600, at Sekigahara. The Toyotomi-loyal warrior Fukushima Masanori, as the vanguard of the Eastern Army under Tokugawa Ieyasu, attacked the Toyotomi's senior retainer Ishida Mitsunari first of all. Within this structure, the end of the Toyotomi regime was already embedded.

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The Withdrawal at Shizugatake: In 1583, Toshiie Chose Between Old Lord and Sworn Friend

In 1583, at Shizugatake. Deployed as part of Shibata Katsuie's force, Maeda Toshiie withdrew his soldiers in the midst of battle. This withdrawal decided Katsuie's defeat. Katsuie, whom he had long served, or Hideyoshi, his old acquaintance. Toshiie made the heaviest choice of his life in the very midst of the battlefield.

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The Counterweight of Million-Koku Kaga: In 1599, Toshiie's Death Broke the Balance

In 1599, on his sickbed, Maeda Toshiie was entrusted with the guardianship of Toyotomi Hideyori and departed the world. He was sixty-two. The death of Toshiie, the one great figure who could restrain Ieyasu's arrogation, broke that balance. The day after his death, the gears toward a great war began to turn.

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The Unification of Shikoku: In 1585, the Dream the Ichiryō-Gusoku Built, and Its End

Leading the half-farmer, half-soldier ichiryō-gusoku, Chōsokabe Motochika took most of Shikoku from Tosa. But on the eve of unification, the great army of the realm's ruler Hideyoshi crossed the sea. The Shikoku dream built in a single generation was shrunk, before the power of the center, to the single province of Tosa.

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The Hetsugi River: In 1586, Motochika Lost His Beloved Son and Was Changed Beyond Recognition

In 1586, at the Hetsugi River in Kyushu, Chōsokabe Motochika lost his eldest son Nobuchika in the fighting against the Shimazu army. The death of his beloved son at twenty-two changed the hero of Shikoku into a man of suspicion. The disorder over the succession within his house became a remote cause of the fall of the Chōsokabe house.

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Hideyori's Mother: In 1593, Yodo-dono Bore the Heir of the Toyotomi

Chacha, who had become the concubine of Hideyoshi, the enemy of her father and mother, bore Hideyori in 1593. As the mother of the heir the ruler of the realm had longed for, Yodo-dono gained a position without peer at Ōsaka Castle. But that very child was fated to bear the destiny of the Toyotomi.