#148
            148.HIDEYOSHI'S DEMAND OF HOSTAGES, 1592

                      (A copy in SK, 2nd series, XIV.)
EARLY in 1584, Kyu-shu had become an arena for struggle for supremacy between the three great
combatants, Shimadzu, Otomo, and Ryuzozhi, such lesser warriors in northern and central Kyu-shu
as had survived the earlier stages of the civil war being tossed about like leaves before variable
winds. The Otomo had been severely defeated in Hiuga more than five years before (No. 146), but
were still powerful in Bungo, and awaited opportunities for expansion. The Ryuzozhi, more recent
in influence than the others, were yet formidable in Hizen, and carried their conquest into Chikugo,
and then into Higo, and so came into occasional collision with the outposts of the Shimadzu.
Fortune again favored the arms of the latter. On 4 May, the 3,000 men under Shimadzu Yoshihisa
overcame the fortress of Shimabara, Hizen, defended by Ryuzozhi Takanobu with a considerably
larger army, killing Takanobu,1 and forcing his son Masa-ie to surrender his territories in Higo.
Barons of Chikuzen and Chikugo followed Masa-ie's example and allied themselves with Yoshihisa.
Now a renewed conflict between the Shimadzu and the Otomo became imminent, for the former
were as aggressive as the latter were revengeful; the difference from the war of 1578 was, however,
that the positions of invader and defender had now been reversed. The Shimadzu began from 1585
to make great preparations for a conquest of Bungo, not dreaming that a terrible disaster impended
against which they were as helpless as would be an opposition against themselves by the reduced
and isolated lord of Iriki. The Otomo had appealed for succor to Toyotomi Hideyoshi.
  Upon Hideyoshi had fallen the great task of again unifying the feudal Japan torn and wearied
by a prolonged civil war. Having risen from a low rank, and avenged the murder of his late lord
Oda Nobunaga, Hideyoshi had already reduced to subjection the whole of central and western Japan
and gained the alliance of a large part of the east, and had recently been appointed the Grand
Councillor(Kwan-paku) of the empire. On 12 November 1585, he wrote in the name of the emperor
to Shimadzu Yoshihisa, commanding him to cease hostilities with the Otomo pending the settlement
of the boundaries in Kyu-shu which he was considering, and threatening a personal punitory ex-
pedition, should Yoshihisa fail to obey.2 Flushed with local successes, and hardly realizing that they
were dealing with a consummate political master and military genius, Yoshihisa's councillors had
the temerity to answer that the contemplated war against Bungo was on their part purelv defensive
in character.2 Next year Hideyoshi offered Yoshihisa a half of Chikugo and Higo in addition to the
latter's proper sphere in south Kyu-shu.3 The Shimadzu had, however, allowed themselves to be
carried away too far by pride and ambition to listen even to this singularly generous proposal. In
November 1586, Shimadzu Yoshihisa, Yoshihiro, and Iehisa led three great armies by way of Higo
and Hiuga into Bungo; their vanguard won a decisive victory at Toshimitsu on 20 January 1587,
and four days later entered Funai, the historic seat of the Otomo family, replacing the latter.
Fortresses in the kuni surrendered one after another.4
  Already Hideyoshi's first lines had landed in Kyu-shu. He had embarked on his expedition with
warriors levied from thirty-seven kuni in central and west Japan, numbering, it is said, a quarter
of a million.5 The greater part of this vast army followed Hidenaga, the younger brother of Hide-
yoshi, into the plain lying between Takarabe and Taka-zho, in Hiuga near the old battlefield where
recently the issue was decided between the Shimadzu and the Otomo (No. 146), and encamped there
on 13 May;6 eleven days later, he repulsed a night attack by southerners after a stiff encounter.
Hideyoshi himself came from Higo by sea, and, ascending the river Sen-dai, took his quarters at
the Buddhist church Tai-hei zhi,7 on 1 June. The spirited opposition offered by Katsura Tada-akira
at the fortress of Hirasa, which had once been held by the Iriki-in and of which now their de-
scendants were among the defenders,8 was practically the only example of determined resistance
made by the vaunted valor of the Satsuma warriors. The invasion into Bungo had been hastily re-
called, and all the Shimadzu lords surrendered and personally paid homage to either Hideyoshi or
Hidenaga, receiving considerate treatment at their hands.9 Hideyoshi carved the entire Kyu-shu
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among local chieftains and his own vassals, giving to the Shimadzu lords, as new grants in fief,
the whole of Satsuma, nearly all Osumi, and Murakata kori and Sadowara, in Hiuga.
  Iriki-in Shigetoyo had died in 1583, his spirit having since been deified by his descendants as
Hirose myo-zhin10 established at Kiyoshiki. Since he was without heir, Shigetoki (1573-1600), the
second son of Shimadzu Yukihisa, nephew of the late shu-go Takahisa, was adopted as the fifteenth
Iriki-in lord. Shigetoyo's window was an elder sister of Yukihisa, and Shigetoki himself married a
daughter born between her and Shigetoyo. When Shigetoki subsequently divorced her, he next
married the eldest daughter of Shimadzu Toshihisa;11 and it will be remembered that both Toshi-
hisa and the successive shu-go Yoshihisa and Yoshihiro were issue of an Iriki-in lady. Thus was the
relation of the two families closely cemented. Shigetoki as a matter of course served faithfully in
war under his lord, and, when Hideyoshi demanded hostages of the Shimadzu, Shigetoki was among
the number upon whom the latter imposed this form of obligation.
  The custom of rendering hostages in one form or another as proof of faith dated early in Japa-
nese history. In ancient times, Korean princes sent hostages to Japan. The practice obtained
throughout the feudal ages, becoming specially frequent and attended by pathetic consequences in
the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, when the whole of Japan was plunged in sectional wars and
the mere plighted word of men was hardly dependable; Hideyoshi himself had committed the care
of his mother to Tokugawa Ieyasu. The residence in Edo of the wives and children of the barons
(dai-myo) which ws enforced during the Tokugawa period was a survival in a polite form of the
same historic custom.12 The following document shows one stage in the changing arrangement of
the hostages to be rendered by the Shimadzu to Hideyoshi. Yoshihisa's little granddaughter Kame-
zhu was among those offered at first; later after the battle of Seki-ga-hara, in 1600, the wives of
Yoshihiro and Iehisa, who had been serving in the same capacity, were rescued from the castle of
Osaka.13

             "ORDER of rotation of hostages.
         "Besides these,
         the hostage of Hongo Sanuki no kami,-his son by birth,
         the hostage of Izhuin Ko-Gan, and
         the hostage of Niiro Musashi no kami,-
           these three shall be constant attendants.
  "First:
Shimadzu Saemon nyu-do14 dono shall present a grandchild;
Kimotsuki chu-zho [shall present] 2 sons of relatives or elders;
Niiro Musashi nyu-do shall [present] Zhiro-shiro and Sa-kyo alternately.
  "Second:
Shimadzu Mata-shiro15 dono shall present his son by birth;
Tanegashima Sakon no dai-bu [shall present] 2 sons of relatives or elders;
Iriki-in Mata-roku16 [shall present] 2 sons of relatives or elders.
  "Third:
Shimadzu To-sho no kami17 dono shall present a son by birth;
Nezhime Shichiro [shall present] 2 sons of relatives or elders;
Kiire Shiki-bu tai-yu shall present a son by birth
         "Thus.
      "To the three groups shall be added the three men, Honda Shimotsuke nyu-do,
Machida Dewa no kami, and Hirada Sa-kon sho-gen, each [shift thus] consisting of
four men. However, these names have been separately written, since you have earnestly
pleaded that, these three men being your officials, one at a time of the needed men be
kept at Kyoto [during your visits there]. Though they attend upon you, they shall
be hostages as in the three groups. When Yoshihisa, Yoshihiro, and Hisayasu18 are in
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the kuni, one men each should, as at first, be added to the three groups and stay in
Kyoto. Since the term of rotation has been decided as seven months. changes by
private agreement shall henceforth cease.
       "Thus.
  "Ten-sho 19 y. 10 m. 2 d. [17 November 1591].
                                       Ishida Ji-bu sho-yu Mitsunari, monogram.
    "To Yoshihisa sama,19
    Yoshihiro sama,
    and their attendants."




  1Shimadzu koku-shi, xix, 10.         2Uwai Akikane nitcho.
  3Shimadzu koku-shi, xix, 23.         4Ibid., xix, 28-29.
  5SK, 2nd series, XII, contains the order of the armies of Hideyoshi's expedition to Kyu-shu.
  6Shimadzu koku-shi, xx, 4.           7See No. 25, n. 18.
  8The Iriki-in genealogy.
  9Shimadzu koku-shi, xx, 4-7. A detailed account of Hideyoshi's campaign against the Shimadzu,
with documents relative to the period, is found in the Ni-hon sen-shi: Kyu-shu eki, compiled by
the general staff of the Army Department. Latterly Tokutomi Iichiro has treated the expedition in
detail in his Kin-sei Ni-hon koku-min shi, age of Toyotomi, part 3, (1921).
  10San-goku mei-sho dzu-ye, xii, 5.     11The Iriki-in genealogy.
  12Ko-zhi rui-en: Hei-zhi bu, xviii; Koku-shi dai zhi-ten, 2064.
  13Sappan shi-dan shu, 408-410.         14Yoshihisa.
  15Yoshihiro.
  16Shigetoki. One of the hostages he presented was Shigetaka, the heir of the Terao branch.
  17Iehisa.                                     18Yoshihiro's son.
  19Sama is a less formal honorific of personal address than dono, applicable to men and women;
its use began later than dono.