Note 59 — Chapter XVI

Yet Taikō-Sama was not in general cruel. A curious letter of Father Organtino Brixiano, written in 1594, enumerates, among the reasons of Taikō’s great success, his clemency to the conquered princes, whom he never put to death after having once promised them their lives, and to whom he granted a revenue, small, but sufficient to maintain them, and which served to keep them quiet. Another reason was his having established for his soldiers during war a commissariat, of which he paid the expense, by which they were rendered much more efficient. He also kept them employed, for, besides the army maintained in Corea, he set them to work in building or repairing palaces and fortresses, or in other public works. At this time he had thirty thousand men at work upon one castle near Miyako, one hundred thousand at Fushimi. He also broke the power of the princes by transferring them to distant parts, while he inspired general respect by his strict justice, from which he was swerved by no considerations of relationship, family, or influence, secular or religious. Another reason mentioned by the missionary does not correspond so well with Taikō’s letter to the viceroy of Goa. He is said not only to have disarmed the country people, by whose strength and wealth the petty kingdoms had been sustained, but also to have reduced them to extreme poverty; but this, perhaps, applies rather to the petty lords than to the actual cultivators. This letter is in Hay’s collection, and a part of it, in English, may be found in Hackluyt’s fourth volume.

[Dening’s “New Life of Toyotomi Hideyoshi” is the best work dealing with the career of “the Napoleon of Japan.”—Edr.]