humble farmer named Kinoshita
Yaemon, who lived in the Aichi district of Owari province, and who
preferred the life of a foot-soldier (ashigaru) to the pursuit of
agriculture. Yaemon served the Oda family, and died when Hideyoshi
was still a youth. In Owari province, at a homestead called Icho-mura
from the name of the tree (maiden-hair tree) that flourishes there in
abundance, there stands a temple built in the year 1616 on the site
of the house where Hideyoshi was born. This temple is known as
Taiko-zan--"Taiko" having been the title of Hideyoshi in the latter
years of his life--and in the grounds of the temple may be seen the
well from which water was drawn to wash the newly born baby. The
child grew up to be a youth of dimunitive stature, monkey-like face,
extraordinary precocity, and boundless ambition. Everything was
against him--personal appearance, obscurity of lineage, and absence
of scholarship. Yet he never seems to have doubted that a great
future lay before him.

Many curious legends are grouped about his childhood. They are for
the most part clumsily constructed and unconvincing, though probably
we shall be justified in accepting the evidence they bear of a mind
singularly well ordered and resourceful. At the age of sixteen he was
employed by a Buddhist priest to assist in distributing amulets, and
by the agency of this priest he obtained an introduction to
Matsushita Yukitsuna, commandant of the castle of Kuno at Hamamatsu,
in Totomi province. This Matsushita was a vassal of Imagawa
Yoshimoto. He controlled the provinces of Mikawa, Totomi, and Suruga,
which lie along the coast eastward of Owari, and he represented one
of the most powerful families in the country. Hideyoshi served in the
castle of Kuno for a period variously reckoned at from one year to
five. Tradition says that he abused the trust placed in him by his
employer, and absconded with the sum of six ryo wherewith he had been
commissioned to purchase a new kind of armour which had recently come
into vogue in Owari province. But though this alleged theft becomes
in certain annals the basis of a picturesque story as to Hideyoshi
repaying Matsushita a thousandfold in later years, the unadorned
truth seems to be that Hideyoshi was obliged to leave Kuno on account
of the jealousy of his fellow retainers, who slandered him to
Yukitsuna and procured his dismissal.

Returning to Owari, he obtained admission to the ranks of Oda
Nobunaga in the humbl