Brian A. Heise
· 2017
Abstract
From a foreign policy perspective, Japan's Meiji period (1868-1912) invites comparison with the regime of Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1537-98), the warlord who united Japan at the end of a 150 year period of civil war: in both times, the state leadership of the archipelago sought to expand its authority onto mainland Asia through both war and negotiation. These two period stand out in Japanese history as examples of only a very few instances when Japanese states had taken such an interest in continental affairs. Writers who recounted the story of Hideyoshi and his continental ambitions at the close the the Meiji period, after witnessing decades of Meiji foreign policy, had the chance to rethink Hideyoshi in light of these new events. The present essay examines four such writers to examine how they narrate specifically the events leading up to to Hideyoshi's invasion of the continent and suggests how the context of the Meiji period may have effected the construction of these narratives.