Toyotomi Hideyoshi—The Third Pirate King of Japan (0-1)

     Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1536-1598) was the third pirate king of Japan after the first, Fujiwara Sumitomo (?-941), and the second, Taira Kiyomori (1118-1181).  Hideyoshi succeeded Oda Nobunaga (1534-1582), who had forced Ashikaga Yoshiaki (1537-1597), the 15th and last shogun of the Muromachi Shogunate, to leave Kyoto.  Hideyoshi’s son, Hideyori (1593-1615), was killed by Tokugawa Ieyasu (1542-1616), who started the Edo Shogunate.  Nobunaga, Hideyoshi, and Ieyasu, half working together and half conflicting one another, brought the end to the Warring States Period, which had started in the middle of the 15th century.  In the process of the national unification, Hideyoshi also unified pirates and sea forces, and even sent them to Korea.  That is to say, he became the biggest Wokou.  However, Ieyasu’s grandson, Iemitsu (1604-1651), drastically changed the national foreign policy, and adopted national isolation.  We are going to see how Hideyoshi’s unified sea forces were organized, and how they were dissolved.