6.29 The far east: a.d. 1501 to 1600  (Page 3/4)

His place as head of the army was taken immediately by the most talented of his staff, Hideyoshi, son of a peasant foot soldier. He gave the emperor allegiance and completed the unification of Japan. He was the one man in Japanese history, up until 1945, who really ruled Japan and yet was outside the pool of imperial blood. Small arms and cannon made the older forms of fighting and fortification partially obsolete and facilitated the establishment of a single, central authority. (Ref. 279 , 12 )

In 1592 Hideyoshi set out to conquer China, dispatching 205,000 men to Pusan, but Korea was loyal at that time to China and many men were lost to Korean ships during the crossing. Still, the main army was at the Yalu River on China's border within 6 months, there to meet counter-attacks by more than a million Chinese troops. After a 3 year stalemate, Hideyoshi sent a second force and China sent another 2 million reinforcements. The war ended when the Koreans demolished the Japanese supply fleet, as will be detailed under KOREA, this chapter. Hideyoshi died in 1598 during peace negotiations, but for sheer carnage Europe would see nothing like this until Napoleon's campaign more than two centuries later. That Japanese general was given the name "Taiko", meaning "Great Sovereign" a word which has entered our own language as "tycoon". His invasion of Korea cost the lives of 260,000 men and ruined the Japanese peasantry, because their crops had been commandeered to feed the troops. (Ref. 12 , 222 ) We should note here, parenthetically, that carriages in Japan were normally pulled by Korean oxen and horses were primarily reserved for nobles. (Ref. 260 )

Korea

After the cruel ruler Yonsangun was overthrown by rebels, Chunjong came to the throne in 1507 and attempted to control the great families through the use of Confucian scholars as ministers. This led to the development of many bitterly antagonistic factions. With the decline of the Ming Dynasty in China, near the end of the century, there was a similar political and cultural decline in Korea. The Japanese invasions of 1592 to 1598 (See above) completed the devastation and made Korea the "hermit kingdom" isolated from the rest of the world. (Ref. 19 , 113 , 222 )

The Japanese crossed most of Korea and reached the Yalu River on their way to conquer China. They were held there by millions of Chinese troops, but it was a canny Korean Admiral Yi, who destroyed the Japanese wooden supply line ships by ramming them with the world's first iron clad ship, which was painted to look like a fierce turtle. This was 250 years before the Monitor and the Merrimac. The vessel was propelled by oar power and was a most effective weapon against the frail Japanese boats. (Ref. 162 ) Admiral Yi Sun-shin eventually made an entire fleet of "turtle boats", each armor-plated with what was probably 3/8 inch wrought iron, cut in hexagonal shapes and riveted together. Knives, spearheads and spikes were attached to the plating to deter enemy boarding. In separate actions in 1592 and again later in 1597, Yi destroyed or captured nearly 500 Japanese ships, with no Korean losses. (Ref. 11 )