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PART ONE: THE THREE KINGDOMS

[1]
William Henthorn,
A History of Korea
(New York: The Free Press, 1971), 148.

Chapter 1: Japan: From Civil War to World Power

[2]
From Nampo Bunshi’s early 17th century account in
Teppo-ki
(Story of the Gun) in
Sources of Japanese Tradition
, vol. 1, ed. Ryusaku Tsunoda, William Theodore de Bary, and Donald Keene (New York: Columbia University Press, 1964), 308-312; C. R. Boxer,
The Christian Century in Japan, 1549-1650
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1951), chapter 1.

[3]
Stephen Turnbull,
The Samurai Sourcebook
(London: Cassell & Co., 1998), 128-134.

[4]
Delmer Brown, “The Impact of Firearms on Japanese Warfare, 1543-98,”
Far Eastern Quarterly
7, no. 3 (May 1948): 238.

[5]
The weight of the bullet fired by these early Japanese guns varied from 10 to 110 grams (ibid., 238, n. 9.).

[6]
Stephen Turnbull,
Samurai Warfare
(London: Arms and Armour Press, 1996), 74-75.

[7]
Gwynne Dyer,
War
(Toronto: Stoddart, 1985), 30.

[8]
Ibid., 73-76; Peter Newark,
Firefight! The History of Personal Firepower
(Devon: David & Charles, 1989), 15-17.

[9]
Asao Naohiro, “The Sixteenth-Century Unification,” in
The Cambridge History of Japan,
vol. 4,
Early Modern Japan,
ed. John Whitney Hall (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 43-44.

[10]
This account from the
Ehon Taikoki
(1797-1802) appears in George Elison, “Hideyoshi, the Bountiful Minister,” in
Warlords, Artists, and Commoners: Japan in the Sixteenth Century
, ed. George Elison and Bardwell Smith (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1981), 223. Some sources give more precise birth dates for Hideyoshi. In his
Life of Toyotomi Hideyoshi
, for example, Walter Dening specifies January 1, 1536. Such dates are now believed to have been invented by contemporary and Edo period biographers. No one knows for certain when Hideyoshi was born. It is possible he did not know himself.

[11]
That Hideyoshi was regarded as small even by his countrymen, who were themselves considered small by the first European visitors to Japan, would suggest that by modern standards he was very small indeed.

[12]
Elison, “Hideyoshi,” 224; Mary Elizabeth Berry,
Hideyoshi
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1982), 9 and 57.

[13]
Walter Dening,
The Life of Toyotomi Hideyoshi
, 3rd ed. (Kobe: J.L. Thompson & Co., 1930), 176.

[14]
Hideyoshi to Date Masamune, circa 1590, in C. Meriwether, “A Sketch of the Life of Date Masamune and an Account of His Embassy to Rome,”
Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan
21 (1893): 17.

[15]
A koku was equal to five bushels, or 40 gallons, or 182 liters. In 1598 small fiefdoms in Hideyoshi’s Japan consisted of 10,000-30,000 koku. Tokugawa Ieyasu, Hideyoshi’s richest vassal, controlled a domain valued at 2,557,000 koku. George Sansom,
A History of Japan, 1334-1615
(Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1961), 413-414.

[16]
Hideyoshi to Gosa, 13/4/Tensho 18 (May 16, 1590), in
101 Letters of Hideyoshi
, trans. and ed. Adriana Boscaro (Tokyo: Sophia University, 1975), 37-38.

[17]
Elison, “Hideyoshi”; H. Paul Varley and George Elison, “The Culture of Tea”; Donald Keene, “Joha, a Sixteenth-Century Poet of Linked Verse”; all in Elison and Smith,
Warlords
.

[18]
Nam-lin Hur, “The International Context of Toyotomi Hideyoshi’s Invasion of Korea in 1592,”
Korea Observer
28, no. 4 (Winter 1997): 691.

[19]
James Murdoch,
A History of Japan during the Century of Early Foreign Intercourse (1542-1651
) (Kobe: Printed at the office of the “Chronicle”, 1903), 305; Berry, 207-208.

[20]
Jurgis Elisonas, “The Inseparable Trinity: Japan’s Relations With China and Korea,” in
The Cambridge History of Japan,
vol. 4,
Early Modern Japan
, ed. John Whitney Hall (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 267.

[21]
Berry, 91.

[22]
“Wu-tzu,” in
The Seven Military Classics of Ancient China
, trans. Ralph Sawyer (Boulder, Colo.: Woodview Press, 1993), 208.

[23]
Hideyoshi to the King of Korea, Tensho 17 (1589), in Homer Hulbert,
Hulbert’s History of Korea
, vol. 1 (New York: Hillary House, 1962), 347.

[24]
“The first modern army that could not have been defeated by the army of Alexander the Great [330 B.C.] was probably the army of Gustavus Adolphus [A.D. 1620].” Col. T. N. Dupuy, U.S. Army, ret’d., quoted in Dyer, 29. It was King Adolphus of Sweden, driven by a need to raise an effective army from a population of less than a million and a half, who first made firearms the dominant weapon in his army. The devastating impact of his rapid volley fire prompted other nations to quickly follow suit (Dyer, 61-62).

[25]
Bert Hall,
Weapons and Warfare in Renaissance Europe
(Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1997), 207 and 209. Spain had the largest army in Europe at this time. Throughout the latter part of the sixteenth century it averaged 60,000-65,000 men, briefly peaking at 86,000 men in March of 1574. The largest army the French could muster in the late sixteenth century was about 50,000 men; the English army in Elizabethan times hovered around 20,000-30,000, while the Dutch had some 20,000 men under arms.

Chapter 2: China: The Ming Dynasty in Decline

[26]
Chu Hsi and Lu Tsu-ch’ien,
Reflections of Things at Hand
, trans. Wing-tsit Chan (New York: Columbia University Press, 1967), 69.

[27]
Confucius,
The Analects (Lun yu)
, trans. D. C. Lau (London: Penguin Books, 1979), 155 (book 19:13).

[28]
John Fairbank,
China. A New History
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992), 130.

[29]
Louise Levathes,
When China Ruled the Seas: The Treasure Fleet of the Dragon Throne, 1405-1433
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994).

[30]
Ray Huang,
1587. A Year of No Significance: The Ming Dynasty in Decline
(New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1981), 89-90.

[31]
Edward L. Dreyer,
Early Ming China. A Political History, 1355-1435
(Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1982), 76-79. By 1393 at least 326 wei had been formed. (Ibid., 79.)

[32]
From 1480 until approximately 1590 the annual cost of maintaining China’s border garrisons increased by almost nine times, from 559,000 ounces of silver to 4.94 million ounces. (Albert Chan,
The Glory and Fall of the Ming Dynasty
(Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 1982), 197-98.)

[33]
Huang,
1587
, 160.

[34]
Chan, 51.

[35]
Minister of War Chang Shih-ch’e in 1562, in Elisonas, “Trinity,” 252-253.

[36]
Chan, 201.

[37]
Ibid., 205-207.

[38]
Ming Shih
, chpt. 322, quoted in Kwan-wai So,
Japanese Piracy in Ming China During the 16th Century
(East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1975), 181.

[39]
Charles Hucker, “Hu Tsung-hsien’s Campaign Against Hsu Hai, 1556,” in
Chinese Ways in Warfare
, ed. Frank Kierman Jr. and John Fairbank (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1974), 274-282; So, 144-156.

[40]
Ray Huang, “The Lung-ch’ing and Wan-li Reigns, 1567-1620,” in
The Cambridge History of China,
vol 7,
The Ming Dynasty, 1368-1644, Part 1
, ed. Denis Twitchett and John Fairbank (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 557.

[41]
Francisco de Sande, Governor of the Philippines, “Relation of the Filipinas Islands,” June 7, 1576, in
The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898
, vol. 4, trans. and ed. Emma Blair and James Robertson (Cleveland: A. H. Clark, 1903), 58-59.

[42]
“Memorandum of the Various Points Presented by the General Junta of Manila,” in Blair and Robertson, vol. 6, 197-229. (The meeting was held on April 20, 1586; the memorandum was prepared and signed on July 26.)

[43]
Huang,
1587,
42.

[44]
Qi Jiguang,
Lien-ping Shih-chi
(1571), ibid., 172-173.

[45]
Ibid., 156-188; L. Carrington Goodrich, ed.,
Dictionary of Ming Biography
, vol. 1 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1976), 220-224.

[46]
General Qi was even dragged into the picture and accused of procuring a young plaything for Chang at great personal expense. (Huang,
1587,
184-185.)

[47]
Charles Hucker,
The Censorial System in Ming China
(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1966), 43.

[48]
Wang Yi-t’ung,
Official Relations Between China and Japan, 1368-1549
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1953).

Chapter 3: A Son Called
Sute
: “Thrown Away”

[49]
Hideyoshi to Koya, no date (1589), in Boscaro,
Letters,
34. Although Hideyoshi addressed this letter to Koya, one of his wife O-Ne’s ladies-in-waiting, he undoubtedly intended it to be read to O-Ne herself.

[50]
Hideyoshi to Lady O-Mandokoro, 1/5/Tensho 18 (June 2, 1590), ibid., 39.

[51]
Hideyoshi to Koya, no date (1589), ibid., 34.

[52]
Hideyoshi to Chunagon, 24/10/no year (1585-91?), ibid., 25. (Chunagon was one of O-Ne’s ladies-in-waiting.)

[53]
Hideyoshi to Lady Gomoji (Go-Hime), undated, ibid., 9.

[54]
Hideyoshi to Tomoji, 4/9/no year (1585-91?), ibid., 22.

[55]
Hideyoshi to O-Chacha (Yodogimi), no date (1590), ibid., 43. “Denka” was Hideyoshi’s title as kampaku.

Chapter 4: Korea: Highway to the Prize

[56]
This view of the origins of the name Nippon was first suggested by William Aston in his translation of the
Nihongi
(
Chronicles of Japan
), and is reiterated in Bruce Cumings,
Korea’s Place in the Sun
(New York: W.W. Norton, 1997), 38.

[57]
Ilyon,
Samguk yusa
, trans. Tae-hung Ha and Grafton Mintz (Seoul: Yonsei University Press, 1972), 32-33.

[58]
Masuid,
Meadows of Gold and Mines of Precious Stone
, quoted in Cumings, 37.

[59]
David Pollack,
The Fracture of Meaning
(Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1986), 12, 15-23, and chpts. 1 and 2 passim.

[60]
Wang, 17-18.

[61]
J. S. Gale, “The Influence of China Upon Korea,”
Transactions of the Korea Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society
1 (1900): 24.

[62]
At the start of the Choson dynasty in 1392, this “grading” of foreign nations was made quite clear by the government ranking accorded to visiting envoys to the court in Seoul. On a scale from the lowest rank of 9B to the highest of 1A, the Jurchen envoy, for example, was pegged at 4B – more to appease these troublesome people than out of any high regard the Koreans had for them—while the Ryukyu Islands faired more poorly at 5B. Etsuko Hae-jin Kang,
Diplomacy and Ideology in Japanese-Korean Relations
(New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997), 50-51.