--with an important exception
which will be given below--when peace reigned in all the territories of
Japan, and when Hideyoshi devoted himself wisely and patiently to the
settlement of the feudal condition of the country. It was at this time he
began building his great castle at Osaka which occupied about two years.
Workmen were drawn from almost all parts of Japan, and a portion of it is
said to have been finer and more massive than had ever been seen in Japan.
This magnificent work(164) survived its capture by Ieyasu in 1614 and
remained undisturbed down to the wars of the restoration in 1868, when it
was burned by the Tokugawa troops at the time they were about to evacuate
it.

The exception to which reference is made above was the important campaign
which Hideyoshi was called upon to conduct in the island of Kyushu against
the Satsuma clan.(165) The distance at which Kyushu lay from the centre of
imperial operations, the mountainous and inaccessible character of a great
part of the territory, made it no easy matter to deal with the refractory
inhabitants of this island. The Satsuma clan even at that early day had a
reputation for bravery and dash which made them feared by all their
neighbors. The prince of Satsuma at this time was Shimazu Yoshihisa, a
member of the same family who held the daimiate until the abolition of the
feudal system. It is a tradition that the first of this family was a son
of Yoritomo, who in the year A.D. 1193 was appointed governor of Satsuma.
Like all the feudal princes of the period, the prince of Satsuma was
ambitious to extend his dominion as far as possible. Hyuga, Bungo, Higo,
and Hizen were either wholly or in part subject to his authority, so that
by the year A.D. 1585 it was the boast of the prince that eight provinces
acknowledged him as lord.(166)

It was in this critical period that Hideyoshi was appealed to for help by
the threatened provinces. He first sent a special envoy to Kagoshima, who
was directed to summon the prince to Kyoto to submit himself to the
emperor and seek investiture from him for the territories which he held.
Shimazu received this message with scorn, tore up the letter and trampled
it under his feet, and declared that to a man of mean extraction like
Hideyoshi he would never yield allegiance. Both parties recognized the
necessity of deciding this question by the arbitrament of war.

Hideyoshi called upon thirty-seven provinces to furnish troops for this