This is the second episode of the IMJIN WAR, based on my book “The Imjin War: Japan’s Sixteenth-Century Invasion of Korea and Attempt to Conquer China.” This week, I explore Hideyoshi’s reasons for wanting to invade Korea and conquer China—an idea he in fact inherited from his former daimyo lord, Oda Nobunaga. Nobunaga, while still immersed in civil war against rival daimyo, had spoken of conquering China after he completed the unification of Japan.
