Nagai Michiko and Ariyoshi Sawako Rewrite the Taikō

Abstract

Of the three men who helped unify Japan at the end of the sixteenth century—Oda Nobunaga (1534–82), Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1537–98), and Tokugawa Ieyasu (1543– 1616)—Hideyoshi has been the most widely reimagined in popular literature.1 As Hideyoshi rose through the ranks and took control of the realm, he put into practice many innovative policies that would become the framework for the Tokugawa government (1603–1867) and have long-lasting impact on Japan. At the same time, however, during the final decade of his life and political career, Hideyoshi made a series of choices that tarnished his legacy. Among these were two unsuccessful invasions of the Korean peninsula in 1592 and 1597, and the forced suicides of his adviser Sen no Rikyu in 1591 and of his nephew and heir Hidetsugu in 1595. Hideyoshi died in 1598, having failed to conquer Korea or establish a government stable enough to ensure his young son Hideyori’s rise to power. Yet these failures do not seem to have dampened interest in Hideyoshi’s legacy. During the first half of the twentieth century, this last decade of Hideyoshi’s life and career was all but absent from popular narratives about him. Early postwar fictionalized renderings of him—by authors such as Yoshikawa Eiji, Shiba Ryōtarō, and Kasahara