Taiko. La vida de Toyotomi Hideyoshi

by Walter Dening, Fernando Álvarez Rodríguez (Traductor)

Genio militar y brillante estadista, Hideyoshi es probablemente el personaje histórico más relevante de su época, no solo en Japón, sino en todo el mundo.

En el siglo XVI, durante el periodo Sengoku, el principio de lealtad entre los señores feudales había caído en el olvido. Las traiciones y cruentas luchas entre clanes parecían no tener fin, haciendo de Japón un país prácticamente ingobernable…. hasta que Toyotomi Hideyoshi, el simple hijo de un campesino, acomete la colosal hazaña de restaurar la paz y unificar la nación. El joven Hideyoshi, al que todos llaman cara de mono, no se conforma con una vida anodina y, pese a sus orígenes humildes, decide buscar un señor al que servir y por el que luchar. Ningún apellido ilustre lo respalda, pero gracias a su carácter singular, su ingenio y su indómito valor, consigue entrar al servicio del clan Oda…

Genres: History

400 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1971

About the author

Walter Dening was a Christian missionary born in the United Kingdom.

Reviews

[Maria Rosas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Una biografia compleata para conocer la vida de un genio militar y conquistador del antiguo Japón. Ademas de familiarizar al lector con el contexto historico en que actuo el personaje, una biografia donde se muestra al Taiko tanto con sus fortalezas como sus debilidades.

[John Eliade · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was a wild ride. First off, Hideyoshi is, IMO, one of the most fascinating and interesting human beings who ever lived. He was born a peasant in a highly stratified society, and rose to be come the most powerful person in all of Japan, and one of the most powerful men in all of Asia. He was hideously ugly, yet had a deep passion for the arts, though he was ill-gifted in practically all of them. The one exception being war. Hideyoshi was by no doubt a man who understood the logistics of military maneuvering and mustering in ways that only come once in a generation. A veritable medieval Japanese Ender Wiggin.

That said, Mr. Dening, the author, literally refers to Hideyoshi as a "genius" and very often excuses his, erm, "excesses of genius" as failings literally comparable to Biblical heroes. While, again, I find Hideyoshi endlessly fascinating (hence why I hunted down this book) I also find, you know, Hitler and Stalin fascinating. Fascinating is, at no point, a stand in for respect, admiration, or comparable to moral righteousness. Dening, writing the original draft of this book in 1903, either didn't know what we currently know (possible) or chose to excuse Hideyoshi of them (probable).

Hideyoshi rather famously ordered his tea master Sen no Rikyu to commit suicide. I always wondered what the exact set of circumstances and the order of events that led to this horrible outcome. The award winning (and amazing) 1989 film RIKYU explicitly states that it was Rikyu's criticism of Hideyoshi's plans of pan-Asian conquest that caused Hideyoshi to order his death. I hoped this book might illuminate further on this episode, but Dening doesn't touch it at all. But he certainly was aware of Rikyu. He relates the story of Rikyu's daughter whom Hideyoshi fancied, but both Rikyu and his daughter did not want to become a member of Hideyoshi's household, even as a concubine. Rikyu tried to politely rebuff Hideyoshi (at which point I thought this was when Hideyoshi would order his suicide) but to spare her the shame, the daughter chose to take her own life instead. Dening then compares this episode to David's lusting over Bathsheba! Which... I mean, ok, sure. But still, societal and cultural expectations of the time under consideration, I don't see that as a reason to salivate over the man.

That's not the only example that made me go, "wtf." Hideyoshi as an old man increasingly entered a zone detached from reality. While Ukita Hideie, Konishi Yukinaga, Kato Kiyomasa, and others swarmed over the Korean peninsula in the aim to conquer all of China, the Philippines, and (not kidding, this is well-attested in the historical record) all of India, Hideyoshi kept entertaining ideas of heading over to Korea to lead the war himself, meanwhile he was essentially slowly dying in Fushimi, Osaka, and Kyoto, recording his daily diet, which got poorer as time went on. Granted, his only son had also just died as an infant, followed closely by the death of his mother (or... I might have gotten those reversed), so even for a man who went from the peasantry to literally divine status, losing his family in a one-two blow must have been emotionally devastating. Meanwhile his body began to betray him. Yet, while he nursed ambitions to head over to Korea to relive his glory days in the field, he also put on bizarre No dramas that he wrote himself (which one Jesuit priest wrote about saying the Taiko danced with "such and evil grace..."), tea ceremonies in a literal golden box (which you can see today in the Osaka Castle Museum), and on-the-nose masquerades where Daimyos dressed as peasants and laughed about their proletariat LARPing (not kidding, Hideyoshi dressed as a melon-seller and carted a wheelbarrow around Fushimi castle courtyard shouting "Melons for sale!" which... has to be Freudian, right?).

Now, NONE of this is in Dening's book. Which, again, either means he didn't know, or that he just chose not to relay it... at which point I feel like he definitely chose to omit it. Because in Hideyoshi's old age, he describes him literally as a Samson who has his hair cut off. Because, yeah, that definition fits. Hideyoshi in his old age, and suffering from the devastating emotional loss of his mother and his son, clearly was losing his mind, or had lost all perspective of what it was like to be one of the men suffering from Korean swords and arrows across the Straits of Tsushima.

I've read a bunch of histories written in the late-1800s/early-1900s that take this kind of perspective, feeling like things in the East are actually QUITE interesting, and some of those fellows over there were not just interesting, but could rival the minds of any European! Indeed, Dening thinks that Hideyoshi is not just comparable to Napoleon, but superior to him. And while he does acknowledge that Hideyoshi wasn't very helpful to the lower classes, that it wasn't a very unique feature. Napoleon, he says, wasn't all that helpful to the majority of French peasants, just as Hideyoshi wasn't to the majority of Japanese peasantry.

It was Hideyoshi who also began the persecution of Japanese Christians, initiating that dark chapter in history by crucifying some 23 Christians in Nagasaki. This was strictly a realpolitik event, initiated by a Spanish captain essentially relaying to Hideyoshi that Spain was able to conquer half the known world by sending missionaries to convert the people to ready them for Spanish Colonization. Hideyoshi then freaked out, upon realizing that Jesuit missionaries had been in Japan for decades, essentially making it ripe for colonization... and initiated the purge of Christians from Japan which went on for three centuries.

And while I'm certainly not interested in legislating the event, it feels... weird, that in an age (1903) where Christianity was both ascendant in the culture, dominant in academic thought, and assumed in polite society, it's odd that Dening feels the need to excuse it. (And this is to say nothing about the horrors of the Imjin War, what Dening refers to as "the Korean War.")

I have to reiterate, I actually enjoyed reading this book. If you're interested in the Sengoku Jidai, and have a fascination for Hideyoshi like me, definitely read it. But it's... weird, that Dening seems able to know that Hideyoshi may have been a prodigy of tactics and strategy, and yet felt the need to praise his moral worth, comparing him literally to biblical heroes, and ignores his excesses, moral failings, and the ways his reign led to literal horrors.

It's not unusual for historical actors to be complex. And I think Hideyoshi certainly was. It's just weird to see someone salivating over one who literally lost his mind, engaged in a vindictive war of vengeance over a slight to his ego, and led to the slaughter of thousands, if not millions.

I guess 1903 was just a weird time.

[Fernando Pachón Cárdeno · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mi problema principal con el libro es que se escribió en 1904 y eso se nota. Ha envejecido bastante mal, historiográficamente hablando. Muchos de sus defectos como parquedad en las fuentes, paradigmas de grandes hombres y grandes batallas, historias moralizantes, el gusto por la anécdota aunque sea reconocidamente apócrifa... hacen que se disfrute mucho menos tal y como se planteó: como un texto académico, científico. No es una novela histórica aunque casi siempre lo parezca.

Lo bueno es que es un ejercicio de erudición interesante y lo que cuenta, al menos, puede servir como esquema muy general para la vida del Taiko si pensamos en paradigmas puramente cronológicos y de hechos brutos. Está escrito de manera bastante amena. Y es de lo poquito que tenemos en castellano (se trata de una traducción) que se centre en la biografía de Toyotomi Hideyoshi.

Siempre va a ser interesante y entretenido si te interesa a cualquier nivel el periodo histórico en el que se sitúa la acción. Eso sí, no esperes que vaya a aportar mucho más que una biografía que por momento parece interesarse en aislar al hombre de su época.

[Juan Gallego · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars

[Publius · Rating 3 out of 5]

Entertaining, reads like a novel, but seriously questioning the historical accuracy. A lot of dialogue and very detailed accounts of Hideyoshi’s childhood which are questionable…