nable me to make still further conquests; for with
Korean troops, aided by your illustrious influence, I intend to bring the
whole of China under my sway. When that is effected, the three countries
[China, Korea, and Japan] will be one. I shall do it all as easily as a
man rolls up a piece of matting and carries it under his arm." He had
already carried out part of this plan; he had brought the whole of Chugoku
and of the island of Kyushu under his rule. It remained for him to effect
the conquest of Korea and China in order to complete his ambitious
project.

For this purpose he needed ships on a large scale, for the transportation
of troops and for keeping them supplied with necessary provisions. From
the foreign merchants, who traded at his ports, he hoped to obtain ships
larger and stronger than were built in his own dominions. It was a great
disappointment to him when he found this impossible, and that the
merchants, whom he had favored, were unwilling to put their ships at his
disposal. It is claimed by the Jesuit fathers that this disappointment was
the chief reason for the want of favor with which Hideyoshi regarded them
during the last years of his life. It is also advanced as one reason for
his entering on the invasion of Korea, that he might thus employ in
distant and dangerous expeditions some of the Christian princes whose
fidelity to himself and loyalty to the emperor he thought he had reason to
doubt. He was ambitious, so they said, to rival in his own person the
reputation of the Emperor Ojin, who rose in popular estimation to the rank
of Hachiman, the god of war, and who is worshipped in many temples,
because, while he was still unborn, his mother led a hostile and
successful expedition into this same Korea.

The immediate pretext(178) for a war was the fact that for many years the
embassies which it had been the custom to send from Korea to Japan with
gifts and acknowledgments had been discontinued. In A.D. 1582 he sent an
envoy to remonstrate, who was unsuccessful. Subsequently he sent the
prince of Tsushima, who had maintained at Fusan, a port of Korea, a
station for trade, to continue negotiations. After some delay and the
concession of important conditions the prince had the satisfaction, in
A.D. 1590, of accompanying an embassy which the government of Korea sent
to Hideyoshi. They arrived at Kyoto at the time when Hideyoshi was absent
on his campaign against Hojo Ujimasa at Odawara. He allowed them