Toyotomi Hideyoshi Chapter 8 Analysis

While Toyotomi Hideyoshi’s ambitions were established to centralization, also wanting a military purification. These actions however do not constitute the definition of unification. Berry attempts to differentiate Hideyoshi from Nobunaga’s terrors “threaten all the lords of his day” (70) while offering Hideyoshi’s separation from radical policies (121, 126, and 144) for the commoners to that of conservative ones for the daimyo (159-161). Berry contemplates Hideyoshi’s actions as radical and conservative, absolutism and feudalistic, before she settles on the term federalist. In chapter six we can see references to Berry’s term federalism, however in chapter eight we find the lord is no longer acting in a moderate federalist way perhaps due to the grief of losing close loved ones. In 1590 Hideyoshi’s infant son dies, Tsurumatsu, he is overcome with grief. …show more content…
He would attempt to create a council of five elders in efforts to protect his son’s succession (235). Hideyoshi has come to the last stage of not only grief, but his life: acceptance, he was dying. One September 18, 1598 Hideyoshi has passed.
Many of Berry’s rationales attempt to justify the chaotic actions of an experienced leader and militant man. Some would speculate the mental capabilities of his later years, other believed he was going through what is known as post-traumatic stress disorder, and yet I find that it may have very well been as simple as that of the loss of his mother. Perhaps she was the source of his confidence, counsel, and guidance through all those earlier years; once she was removed from him, he began to act in the emotional way a man who had not dealt with grief would thru all five