Chapter 345: Demon God Toyotomi Hideyoshi
"This happened several years ago already." Ieyasu looked at Shirou with a strange expression. How could someone who seemed so insightful regarding the general trends of the world be so ill-informed about such a basic matter that everyone knew?
"What exactly happened? How was Nobunaga killed?" Shirou asked.
"During the Incident at Honno-ji, Toyotomi Hideyoshi directly killed both Nobunaga and Akechi Mitsuhide, who was serving as Nobunaga's guard. Even the Demon King Nobunaga was, in the end, a mortal of flesh and blood like me; he was no match for the Demon God Toyotomi," Ieyasu said with a grim face.
"Demon God? Is he even more terrifying than Nobunaga?" Shirou asked in confusion.
"Toyotomi Hideyoshi is a true monster. He possesses the strength to lift a tripod; he can drag two oxen just by holding their horns. His body is as hard as metal and stone, impervious to blades and spears. He has never sustained a single injury while charging on the battlefield. It is said that ninjas attempting to ambush him couldn't even get near his person, and poisons or drugs had no effect on him whatsoever. He is practically a demonic creature," Ieyasu explained.
"Furthermore, Toyotomi Hideyoshi is strange in other ways. He possesses the art of prophecy. He has predicted that the Ming Dynasty is destined to fall, and he is preparing to move when the time is right."
"He won't be able to wait for that day," Shirou said, shaking his head. Historically, when Toyotomi Hideyoshi died, it was still during the Wanli era; the Ming Dynasty still had about fifty years of national destiny remaining.
"What if he can live to be over a hundred years old? While others cannot, he is a monster," Ieyasu countered.
"What!" Shirou was startled. Could it be that this Toyotomi Hideyoshi not only possessed transcendent abilities but also knowledge of the future?
If Toyotomi Hideyoshi truly could remain immortal for a century and wait for the Ming Dynasty's weakest moment, it really wasn't certain that he couldn't succeed.
In the beginning, the Qing Dynasty—then known as the Later Jin—though it had unified the Mongols of the steppes, wasn't actually exceptionally strong. The 80,000 elite troops of the Guan-Ning Iron Cavalry under Wu Sangui alone were enough to hold them outside the Great Wall in a bitter stalemate.
However, the Ming Dynasty was attacked from within and collapsed directly at the hands of Li Zicheng's rebel army. Wu Sangui ultimately chose to surrender to the Qing, acting as the vanguard and leading the Qing army into the Central Plains.
The internal state of the Ming was already terminally ill; the treasury was empty, and there was no capacity for disaster relief, leading to peasant uprisings and enemies on all sides.
The Ming Dynasty was an era that produced eccentric emperors. Because of a highly sophisticated cabinet system—where several Grand Secretaries acted as the Emperor's secretaries to handle all affairs—the Emperor only needed to make decisions and apply his seal. In fact, even if the Emperor were absent, the Ming government could continue to function.
As a result, with the emperors having so much free time, all sorts of eccentrics appeared, frequently performing startling feats that were sometimes farcical or irrational.
In truth, this wasn't the case at the start. The founding emperor, Zhu Yuanzhang, was a diligent and capable ruler who held power firmly in his grasp.
His style was populist toward the people but ruthless toward officials. Born as a destitute peasant, he had been a monk and a beggar. Through self-study, he became a genius and enacted massive reforms after becoming Emperor. Sometimes, the bad things he did out of impulse actually yielded some positive results.
As a legendary hardliner, Zhu Yuanzhang established various regulations and demanded that future emperors follow them. He even designed a basic "Emperor's Handbook"; as long as his descendants followed it, worked conscientiously for over ten hours a day, they could keep the Great Ming running smoothly.
However, aside from Zhu Di, none of the subsequent Ming emperors were workaholics. Although Chongzhen was diligent, he had flaws; his relationship with his ministers was abysmal, and by the time national disaster struck, it was beyond saving.
By the third generation, problems emerged. Shortly after Zhu Di's son, Zhu Gaochi, took the throne, he literally died of obesity within a year due to his constant gluttony. With the Emperor lacking capacity, more ministers were needed to share the burden, and thus the power of the Grand Secretaries grew.
Yet, as eccentric as these emperors were, they were very obedient when it came to following ancestral rules. Consequently, both good and bad systems were preserved without adapting to the times.
Because of the rules set by Zhu Yuanzhang, the salaries of Ming officials were extremely low—so low that it was impossible to survive without earning "extra" money on the side. Furthermore, the monetary system was broken by Zhu Yuanzhang from the start.
One could only use "Treasure Notes" (paper money) and copper coins. But in an era of high prices, copper coins were like small change today—impractical. Carrying dozens of pounds of copper coins to the market was simply too inconvenient.
Despite the technology for minting coins existing since the Qin Dynasty, Zhu Yuanzhang set a rigid rule prohibiting the use of gold and silver for minting coins. Thus, everyone had to carry scales to weigh scraps of silver.
The Song Dynasty had "Jiaozi" (early banknotes), which were a magical tool for the government—allowing them to create vast sums of money just by stamping a piece of paper—but they were also the cause of inflation.
In the Ming, these became one-way exchange notes: you could trade silver for notes, but you couldn't trade notes for silver. Consequently, the paper currency lost all public trust and devalued drastically. At its lowest, its purchasing power was less than half that of silver, and eventually, it was completely abandoned by the people.
It's like the national debt of the United States in later generations; people buy it because the U.S. has a vault full of gold and national credit as a guarantee. But if the U.S. said you could buy debt but never trade it back for its original value—and if that debt kept falling and devaluing—no one would buy it.
Because of Zhu Yuanzhang's rules, the Ming government was not allowed to manufacture gold or silver coins, leaving silver scraps to circulate among the people based on weight. They lost a crucial financial lever.
One should know that later, after Sir Isaac Newton stopped doing physics and became the Master of the Mint, he devised a system where 70% gold content could be used as 100% value, backed by the credit of the British Empire.
Thus, the Ming's finances were crippled from the start. During the reigns of Zhu Yuanzhang and Zhu Di, the problems weren't obvious as everything was being rebuilt. But afterward, the royal family and great gentry clans grew increasingly bloated. Their descendants, pursuing luxury, found the original income insufficient.
The gentry began using their privileges to practice usury and buy up land without paying taxes. When commoners faced accidents or illness and were forced to sell their land, they became displaced, serving as laborers for the wealthy. Thus, the gentry grew more powerful while the commoners grew more miserable.
The national treasury grew smaller, forcing tax increases that made life unbearable. The Ming was on the verge of collapsing due to its empty coffers.
Later, Zhang Juzheng's "Single Whip Reform" gave the Ming a few more decades of life. However, after Zhang Juzheng's death, the treasury returned to a state of annual decline. While it could handle small mishaps, it no longer had the capital to resist large-scale disasters or foreign invasions.
Moreover, during the late Ming, the "Little Ice Age" arrived. Global temperatures dropped significantly. Rivers that were usually navigable year-round froze over; sleeping on a southern
street for a night could lead to freezing to death. Grain production plummeted, and the population dropped sharply.
This was a super-disaster lasting decades—a catastrophe for any dynasty. Every such event leads to a massive reduction in life on Earth. China has experienced four Little Ice Ages; during the first three, the population was directly reduced by four-fifths.
In the late Ming, because of the Americas, the drought-resistant crops cultivated by Indigenous peoples—potatoes, corn, and sweet potatoes—kept that number down to one-half.
Still, it was horrific. Due to climate changes and drought, crops in vast areas couldn't survive. According to records, a Great Famine broke out in Northern China; Shaanxi, in particular, suffered year after year of drought, turning thousands of miles of fertile land into a wasteland.
Elsewhere, massive floods submerged the homes of thousands. With drought on one side and flooding on the other, autumn brought locust plagues. The disaster zones spread from Shaanxi to Northern Shaanxi, then to Henan...
People in disaster areas could only eat wild grass and bark. When those ran out, only "Guan-yin soil" (white clay) was left, which would cause one to die of abdominal distension if eaten in excess. It was said that of every ten people on the road, three were corpses, three were sick, and the remaining four had become thieves.
The emergence of bandits made regional politics unstable, and with corpses lying everywhere, a terrifying plague followed.
Cannibalism began, and bandits ran rampant. Peasants with nothing to eat would not simply watch the "wine and meat rot behind vermilion gates" while they waited to become the "frozen bones by the roadside."
Uprisings began everywhere, eventually leading to the start of the turbulent life of a minor postal official named Li Zicheng in Northern Shaanxi.
Emperor Chongzhen committed suicide, and the "Dashing King" Li Zicheng occupied the capital. His men killed the corrupt officials who had opened the city gates with gold and silver to surrender. In fact, most peasants didn't hate the Emperor; even Li Zicheng admitted Chongzhen wasn't a bad Emperor. Their hunger wasn't the fault of the equally impoverished and diligent Emperor, but rather the corrupt officials and local gentry.
Later, the Dashing King declared himself Emperor and indulged in luxury with his men, dividing the spoils. By this time, the rebels had lost their fighting spirit and were driven back by Wu Sangui. The Manchus led the Eight Banners into the Pass.
Through the efforts of several Qing emperors, by the time of Qianlong, the empire was officially stable. As a Manchu Emperor, he did quite well, though history views him with mixed reviews and leaves much controversy.
Although the Manchus adopted the Han system to rule China and integrated into the Han ethnicity, they ultimately lacked a certain vision and the spirit of moving with the times.
They could not match the Song Dynasty's respect for scholar-officials, nor could they match Ming Emperor Zhu Di's construction of world-leading sea vessels for Zheng He's voyages to Asia and Africa.
They would not allow the freedom of speech advocated by Confucianism; the idea that "the Son of Heaven is subject to the same laws as commoners" was nonsense to them.
Furthermore, because the Manchus had suffered greatly from Ming firearms, they banned them, strictly preventing their circulation. By the time the Eight-Nation Alliance attacked, this continent—which had first invented gunpowder—couldn't even find enough craftsmen who knew how to manufacture or maintain these weapons.
In two hundred years, though the Manchus integrated into Han culture, they never learned the fundamental spirit of the Han people. The emperors lacked basic character and responsibility. When strong, they were tyrannical butchers; when weak, they exposed flaws of greed, cowardice, and shortsightedness—ceding territory, paying indemnities, and signing unequal treaties. They were willing to be puppets just to keep the throne.
Because the land was never truly theirs, and they never regarded the people as their compatriots, they could discard them at will.
However, "the winner takes all." The Qing truly relied on incredible luck, taking advantage of time, geography, and human factors to become, alongside the Yuan, one of only two non-Han empires to unify China. And unlike Genghis Khan's use of supreme military force, they studied the psychological weaknesses of Han warlords and used various schemes. Relying on a superior system of rewards and punishments, they succeeded through a miracle of the weak overcoming the strong.
From then on, China's status as the undisputed leader of the Sinosphere was completely bankrupt. Although Joseon and Ryukyu still paid tribute to the Qing, they no longer felt the same awe they once held for the Han, Tang, or Ming.
Because at this time, the spiritual culture passed down through generations from Duke Zhou and Confucius had been severed on this continent. When even basic clothing couldn't be guaranteed—when people had to shave half their heads and leave only a "pig's tail"—how could they be the orthodox successors of China?
"Please, tell me more about the monsters," Shirou urged.
"What I have said is not entirely unrelated to the monsters," Ieyasu agreed.
"Oh? Please explain," Shirou looked at Ieyasu curiously.
"Ever since the year Toyotomi Hideyoshi appeared, monsters began to appear in Japan. And in whatever city he stays, an exceptionally high number of ghosts and monsters always appear.
In fact, we have had suspicions—could these monsters be related to Toyotomi Hideyoshi himself?" Ieyasu said.
Now, hearing Ieyasu say that Toyotomi Hideyoshi actually planned to compete for national destiny against the Manchus, Shirou realized he was a madman—and the most dangerous kind.
Reality is cruel; the resources of the East Asian land only allow for one hegemon. Korea and Vietnam are too small, with congenital deficiencies. When the Manchus of the steppes no longer held an advantage, the only one capable of competing with China was Japan, using the sea as a natural barrier. They had bided their time for over two thousand years, finally waiting for a chance to reverse their fate.
Inland countries have smooth transportation, facilitating trade and territorial expansion. But islands have their own advantages. Before navigation was well-developed, they had to be self-sufficient, making them less dependent on larger inland nations and providing a natural layer of protection. Even the highly aggressive Mongol hordes failed to conquer Japan due to sea storms.
Britain took advantage of its island status to remain secure during conflicts in Western Europe, moving when the time was right to reap the greatest benefits. The United States, even more so, watched the fire from across the shore, quietly profiting from one war after another.
A place as disaster-prone as Japan was practically out of reach in ancient times; even if one had the power to conquer it, there was no energy to develop it.
But if Japan ever wanted to rise as a true major power, it could not bypass the great mountain that is China.
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