Toyotomi Hideyoshi: The Making of a Modern Hero

Oda Nobunaga, Toyotomi Hideyoshi. and Tokugawa leyasu were the three most powerful warlords of the sixteenth and early seventeenth century who successfully created a unified Japanese state by bringing to an end the civil wars. For this, they would go down in history as The Unifiers. Although the unification was achieved through the accumulated efforts of the three, Hideyoshi has emerged as the most popular among contemporary representations. Perhaps because of his brilliance in 'making himself' or, perhaps, because he was the democratic ideal for sixteenth-century societal Japan. Consequently. he managed to bring to completion the unification of the warring-states of feudal Japan. and this holds a special place in the hearts of modern Japanese. Hideyoshi promoted himself and rose from a humble monkey-faced boy of peasant origins to that of a magnificent general and skilled unifier. As a result of this. he became heroised and is represented as such in the modern world. Hideyoshi's importance in today's Japan is evident by what remains of his legacy and why ultimately this sixteenth-century warlord is exalted in modem social memory.