The Imjin War (5 page)

But what would happen when there were no more daimyo to subdue and no more territory left to be carved up and disbursed to reward allegiance? What would happen when reunification was achieved and Japan was once more at peace with itself? Would peace and unity remain? Or would the now idle daimyo begin to plot, forge secret alliances, and then struggle anew for a greater share of power? If such concerns were in Hideyoshi’s mind—and it is hard to believe they were not—then to extend his conquests overseas might have been seen as a logical response. By replacing the goal of national unification with Asian domination, Hideyoshi could keep his daimyo busy serving his will rather than their own (with the promise, of course, of huge new territories to be divided up) and the people and resources in their domains working hard to achieve his new national purpose. In this way internal stability could be maintained and time purchased for Hideyoshi and his heirs to solidify their grip on the country.

There was more behind Hideyoshi’s invasion of the mainland, how
ever, than a clear-eyed desire to forestall internal disorder. It is evident from the diplomatic correspondence he dispatched to various Asian nations before the war that he viewed himself as destined to conquer the world. “After my birth,” he wrote to the Koreans in 1589, “a fortune-teller said that all the lands the sun shone on would be mine when I became a man, and that my fame would spread beyond the four seas.... Man cannot outlive his hundred years, so why should I sit chafing on this island? I will make a leap and land in China and lay my laws upon her.”
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As Master Wu put it in the fourth century
B.C.
, then, Hideyoshi’s second motivation was “to contend for fame.”

If Hideyoshi was intent on building an empire, why did he set his sights on such a lofty prize as
China rather than on the more realistic goal of neighboring Korea alone? Hideyoshi’s boundless confidence and ambition certainly had a good deal to do with the decision. But there was also a measure of strategic reasoning involved. To seize Korea was merely to chip a piece off the periphery of the Chinese empire, a piece that would likely cost him a good deal in men and wealth. After the task was complete, he would then have to rebuild his army before setting out to chip off another piece elsewhere. On the other hand, if he sent his forces in a rapid thrust through Korea to take Beijing, the entire world that the Ming Chinese presided over would fall to him. By seizing the center, in other words, the periphery would follow.

Hideyoshi’s plan to “slash his way” to
China, while ambitious in the extreme, was not as misguided as might at first appear. When he referred to the Chinese as “long sleeves,” a reference to effeminate court officials in flowing robes unsuitable for combat, his disparaging imagery contained a kernel of truth: in the late sixteenth century China
was
weak; it
was
in a sense waiting to be toppled by a conqueror possessing superior force. Its standing armies were huge only on paper. In reality it would be hard pressed to scrape together an army of a hundred thousand often poorly armed and poorly led men. In the Battle of Sarhu in 1619, which marked the beginning of the final decline of the Ming, it took only sixty thousand Jurchen warriors to defeat the largest army Beijing could put in the field. This did not come close to what Hideyoshi possessed. He could muster a quarter million men. He could arm them with well-made muskets in the tens of thousands. He could place at their head generals who were battle hardened and highly skilled.

In 1591 Hideyoshi in fact possessed the most powerful military machine the world had ever seen. In
Europe at that time even the best armies would probably not have been a match for the disciplined forces of Alexander the Great (356–323
B.C.
); that degree of military power would not be acquired for another twenty or thirty years.
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Against Hideyoshi, however, neither Alexander’s hoplites nor any sixteenth-century “push of pike” European army would have stood a chance. When the taiko was sending 250,000 men armed with many thousands of muskets to Kyushu in 1587, and 158,800 men to
Korea in 1592, the largest single-state armies in Europe rarely topped 50,000.
[25]

Hideyoshi could not have known anything of the details of
China’s weakness, such as the number of soldiers Beijing could actually muster. The Ming emperor and his court scarcely knew such things themselves. Telling circumstantial evidence nevertheless did exist, evidence that Hideyoshi clearly knew about. Foremost was Ming China’s longstanding inability to protect its coastline from wako pirates. From the late fifteenth century onward these pirates, a mix of Chinese and Japanese outlaws operating from bases in southern Japan and offshore Chinese islands, combined smuggling operations with smash-and-grab marauding along the rich coastal regions of southern and central China, operating with such impunity as to make it obvious that China had nowhere near the military might it customarily claimed. Until the 1550s and 1560s, when effective solutions were finally devised and the wako ceased to be a major problem, the best response Beijing could come up with was to move people and resources inland, away from the threatened coasts.

A second piece of evidence that might have added to Hideyoshi’s perception of Ming China as weak was
Beijing’s seeming inability to control its vassal states. In the national tumult of the sengoku era, Japan had forgotten its tributary relationship to China, reestablished at the beginning of the fifteenth century by the third Ashikaga shogun, who had duly received investiture as the king of Japan, and had ceased sending tribute missions to the Chinese court. China subsequently did not issue a reprimand or make a response of any kind. In reality it did not care that much about its relationship with Japan and scarcely gave it a second thought after its tribute missions ceased. Hideyoshi, however, would not have seen it that way. As a military dictator used to controlling his vassals with a firm hand, he would have seen China’s lack of response as a sign of weakness, an indication that it lacked the power to keep its tributary states in line.

Evidence such as this, when viewed from the perspective of late sixteenth-century
Japan, led Hideyoshi to believe that the Ming dynasty was ready to fall to the power he possessed. He therefore set out, as conquerors have done since the beginning of recorded history, to extend his control into neighboring lands. He would take China because he believed he had the power to take it. Korea would come with the bargain, for it was the highway to the prize. The adventure would serve to aggrandize Hideyoshi’s name and in turn the house of Toyotomi. It would prevent internal disorder by keeping potential rivals busy on the mainland, conquering territory to enrich themselves. And it would provide the country with a new, unifying national purpose: the quest for empire.

In the late sixteenth century China was by most outward appearances the mightiest nation on the face of the earth. Its territory was vast, stretching from the Pacific Ocean in the east to the edge of the Tibetan plateau in the west; from Burma and Vietnam in the south all the way north to Manchuria and the Mongolian steppes. It commanded the allegiance and received tribute from kingdoms as far-flung as Korea, Vietnam, Thailand, Java, Sumatra, the Philippines, Borneo, and, until the middle of the century, Japan. Its population was immense, somewhere in the vicinity of one hundred and fifty million, a staggering figure at that time. Its economy was huge, producing ever-increasing quantities of grain, cotton, silk, porcelain, tobacco, paper, peanuts, lacquer, ink, and indigo. It was the birthplace of history, the font of religious wisdom, the inspiration for philosophical insights, the source of technological innovation. It was the Middle Kingdom. The Celestial Empire. The Center of the World.

So much for outward appearances. In the late sixteenth century the Ming dynasty, which had ruled
China for over two hundred years, was in fact beginning to totter.

There were a number of reasons for this, all with roots extending back to the very beginning of the dynasty and its first emperor, Zhu Yuanzhang. Zhu was born to the lowest peasant stock in 1328, during the middle years of the Yuan dynasty, when the formerly nomadic Mongols of the north dominated
China. As the Mongols’ grip on the country loosened, uncoordinated peasant uprisings began to flare up, eventually coalescing into a groundswell that pushed the former nomads back onto the steppes. Zhu, a fiercely ugly man with great spots on his face, rose from obscurity in one of these fighting peasant bands to command the newly liberated country. The dynasty he went on to establish in 1368 returned the empire to native Chinese rule after a century of foreign domination and led to the restoration of many of the traditions of the former “real” Chinese dynasties of Tang (618–907) and Song (960–1279) that the Yuan had eclipsed. The renaissance spirit of the times would be reflected in the name selected for the new state: Great Ming, or “Bright.” Zhu Yuanzhang himself would henceforth be known by his reign name Hongwu, “Vast Military Power.”

One of the traditions restored under the Hongwu emperor was a return to government based on the philosophy originating with the sage Kong Fu Zi (551–479
B.C.
), “Master Kong,” known in the West as Confucius. In the centuries after Confucius’s death, his ideas of virtuous conduct and the perfectibility of man through learning came to have a great influence on China before being eclipsed by Buddhism as the nation’s dominant intellectual force. Then, in the eleventh century
A.D.
, a group of scholars known as the Five Masters reinterpreted and revitalized the ancient wisdom of Confucius and his successors and brought it again to the fore, giving it a more rational theoretical base and identifying specific “principles” to which the “superior person” should adhere. This reinterpretation—what is today call Neo-Confucianism—would be most succinctly stated by Chu Xi in his 1175 work
Reflections on Things at Hand
. According to Chu Xi, every person should strive to advance as far along the road to sage-hood as his ability and destiny would allow. This could be done by cultivating oneself intellectually through study of the Confucian classics, by “reflecting on things at hand” in one’s own life, and by practicing the virtues of filial piety, loyalty, sincerity, frugality, and “humaneness.” “Study extensively, inquire accurately, think carefully, sift clearly, and practice earnestly,” Chu wrote, quoting from the ancient
Doctrine of the Mean
. “Learning which neglects one of these is not learning.”
[26]

With the start of the Ming dynasty, all government officials were recruited from among the sons of
China whose families could afford to have them raised up and educated as Confucian gentlemen. There was no shortage of applicants, for according to Confucius it was only when private self-cultivation was combined with the holding of public office that one could achieve one’s full potential. As is written in the
Analects
, “When a man in office finds that he can more than cope with his duties, then he studies; when a student finds that he can more than cope with his studies, then he takes office.”
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With the number of aspirants to office far exceeding the number of government posts, Ming China revived the civil service examination—a Tang-dynasty innovation refined in the Song—to winnow out those candidates with the greatest literary ability, the deepest knowledge of the classics, and the firmest grasp of the essential virtues. Those who passed and received a post in government usually possessed a profound understanding of what they were supposed to know. Many, for example, had committed the Confucian classics entirely to memory in their years of quiet study, together with reams of other texts, and could quote from them at length off the tops of their heads. They generally were not so well equipped with technical knowledge, leadership ability, and organizational skills, but that did not matter, as the civil service examination did not test such things. Being an accomplished Confucian scholar and gentleman was what counted. That was what prepared a man for the great work of leading the state.

Figure
2: East Asia in the Sixteenth Century

While the Hongwu emperor found Neo-Confucianism useful for ordering his new Ming empire, he does not seem to have taken much personal interest in its doctrines and striving to become like a sage. Like the founders of most dynasties, he was despotic, temperamental, violent, suspicious to the point of paranoia, and had no compunction about putting to death officials who crossed him. This antipathy reached its zenith in 1380, when he found his prime minister to be plotting against him. The Hongwu emperor had the man beheaded, then had his family killed, then slaughtered his friends and relations, then moved on to his casual acquaintances, until the death toll reached forty thousand. He abolished the office of prime minister after that, along with the entire central secretariat, in effect cutting off the head of the bureaucracy, and conducted much of the nation’s day-to-day business himself or through his inner circle of court eunuchs. His ability to plow through the resulting mounds of paperwork that accumulated before the throne was at times astounding: in one eight-day period he is said to have worked his way through 1,600 dispatches dealing with a total of 3,391 issues.
[28]
Future emperors would be energetic in this regard, but the bottleneck at the top would always remain.

In addition to placing China under strictly centralized control, the Hongwu emperor also insisted upon frugality—no more bloated governments living well and squandering resources on the backs of suffering peasants. This was in line with the Neo-Confucian principles of his bureaucracy, but an equally important factor may have been the Hongwu emperor’s own peasant background, in particular his personal experience of hunger and even starvation. Land and income taxes under the Ming were therefore kept low, and the watchword throughout the land became self-sufficiency. Local communities were to police themselves, collect their own taxes, and deliver them to whatever destination the government specified. Government officials were paid only nominal salaries, almost nothing at all, in the expectation that they would provide for themselves. Military garrisons were ordered to support themselves through agriculture, thereby saving the nation the financial burden of paying for a standing army. Labor and tools for much-needed public works projects were supplied by local communities rather than from the public purse.

The many reforms and innovations that the Hongwu emperor forced upon
China got the Ming dynasty off to an impressive start. In the coming decades agricultural production increased. Trade flourished. Government treasuries filled. The silted-up Grand Canal was dredged and put back into service. The Great Wall was repaired and strengthened. Four-hundred-foot-long “treasure ships” were sent out to the farthest reaches of the known world and came back laden with the riches of Java, Sumatra, Ceylon, India, Arabia, and even Africa. Indeed, in the early fifteenth century China was the preeminent naval power in the world.
[29]

But then things changed. Following the autocratic reigns of the Hongwu emperor and his immediate successors,
China’s Neo-Confucian bureaucracy began to assert itself. Subsequent monarchs were gradually isolated within the Forbidden City in Beijing, confined to the role of tradition-bound figureheads, kept eternally busy with tedious court rituals and audiences and lectures. Trade, which had been given relatively free reign under the Yuan and early Ming emperors, was discouraged, for the quest for profit was regarded with distrust by Confucianists; in the Neo-Confucian world order, agriculture was the only real source of prosperity. The great treasure-ship expeditions were consequently halted, records of the journeys destroyed, and the very technology for building the massive vessels purposefully forgotten. In future, shipbuilding would be limited to small, coastal vessels, and all officially sanctioned international trade confined to tribute missions from vassal states. China, like the contemplative scholar-officials who controlled its destiny, turned inward and grew conservative. Stability, not development, became the national goal.

During the middle years of the Ming dynasty
China did enjoy a prolonged period of stability. But it did not last. There were inherent weaknesses in the system, as established by the Hongwu emperor and altered by subsequent generations of bureaucrats, that made the empire increasingly difficult to govern and increasingly vulnerable to external threats.

First there was the problem of money, or more precisely the lack of it. The Hongwu emperor’s insistence on frugality, low taxes, and self-sufficiency had worked well enough during his own reign, for he kept his palace expenses low and ensured that his nascent empire was managed with minimum expense by taking a personal—and if necessary heavy-handed—interest in the affairs of government. Unfor
tunately, the notion of imperial frugality did not long outlive him. Palace expenditure steadily increased with each subsequent monarch and became a serious drain on the national purse. The collection of taxes also became a haphazard affair. Tax quotas became hopelessly out of date; units of measure varied from region to region, causing endless confusion; most taxpayers were illiterate and did not fully understand what was expected of them; others simply did not pay, their debts eventually being written off for want of a means to collect them. The taxes actually received by the government, therefore, never came close to even the modest levels established by the Hongwu emperor.

The Hongwu emperor’s vision of a self-sufficient government bureaucracy also proved problematic. He pegged government salaries so low that officials could scarcely afford to feed themselves and their families, let alone run government offices and regional administrations. Most had no recourse but to charge “fees” for the services they provided, a practice that further ate into government revenues and inevitably led to abuses.

Lack of money was not the only of the Ming dynasty’s troubles. Equally serious were the inefficiency and at times incompetence of its leaders. Since a man’s ability to enter government service depended entirely on his command of the classics, and his success in rising to power depended entirely upon his personal virtue, government officials not surprisingly possessed little of what would be regarded today as administrative ability or technical expertise. To China’s sixteenth-century Neo-Confucian elite, personal virtue
was
administrative ability, for a man so equipped could accomplish anything. This sense of confidence not infrequently moved public-spirited officials to take on tasks for which they were singularly unsuited, including the planning of military campaigns and even the direct command of armies, secure in the belief that their lack of practical experience was more than made up for by their knowledge of the classics. In many situations it was a recipe for mismanagement, even disaster.

This emphasis on personal virtue not only left China’s leadership ill-equipped to deal with situations requiring technical solutions or specialized knowledge, it also led it into all sorts of divisive wranglings that rendered it all the more ineffective. The fundamental reason for this was that there was no one standard for what constituted “personal virtue.” A case in point is the collection of “fees” that most government bureaucrats had to engage in to survive. Strictly speaking this was corruption, but it was such a necessary part of the system that most preferred not to examine the issue too closely. A few rare officials were scrupulous in refusing any sort of additional payment for their services, and lived in abject poverty; others took full advantage of their positions, and amassed incredible fortunes, while the vast majority fell somewhere in between. So where should the line be drawn? As Ray Huang has aptly described it, “Should a county magistrate, who by official order was entitled to an annual compensation of less than thirty ounces of silver, still be considered honest if he helped himself to 300 ounces, but not if he took 3,000? If he appropriated 5 percent of the district’s gross tax proceeds, or 10 percent? At what point was honesty defined?”
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