Hello, the episode you're about to listen to is part of a multi-part series introducing an overview

of Japanese history.

This is a repeat of one of the original projects the History of Japan podcast was built on,

and is intended to serve as an update and supplement to these original works.

After 10 years, my hope is to return to this approach and to do it a little bit better,

given the skills that I have improved in the intervening years.

If you haven't been doing so already, you should listen to these episodes sequentially,

starting with episode 501.

Without any further ado, enjoy the episode.

Hello and welcome to the history of Japan podcast, episode 522, Reunification Part 2.

I think it's fair to say that after Oda Nobunas assassination in June 1882, the balance of power in Japan was on a knife's edge.

On the one hand, the sprawling territories controlled by Nobunaga still represented a powerful base for whoever

came after him. On the other hand, more than a few clans in similarly powerful positions had imploded in the aftermath of the assassination of their daimyo.

Look at what happened to the Hoso Kawa clan after Hoso Kawa Masamoto was assassinated by his adopted children.

The clan tumbled into a civil war.

But as it turned out, this was not what happened with the Oda lands, thanks primarily

to one of Nobunaga's generals stepping in swiftly to the void his master's death left, Hashiba Hideyoshi.

Now, as we mentioned last week, Hideyoshi's life before about 1570 is more or less an unknown.

There is a common telling of his origin story, that his home village of Nakamura was along

the delta of the Kiso River in Awari province, within the territories of Odonobu Hide and then

Odonobunaga. In these tellings, Hideyoshi's father, Jaemon, was a farmer who moonlighted as a soldier,

like many men of his day, because the constant warfare meant there was always a demand for

...