Kyoto. John H. Martin
monks who had plagued the government before being crushed by Oda Nobunaga, Hideyoshi’s predecessor, were also a target. Thus a government decree ordered the surrender of “any sword, short sword, bows, spears, firearms or other types of arms.” The avowed purpose of this 1585 “Taiko’s Sword Hunt” (as the campaign was known, Taiko (His Highness) being the title by which Hideyoshi was regarded by the public) was to melt down such metals in order to create the nails and bolts needed for the erection of the great hall to house the Buddha at the Hoko-ji. With the public deprived of arms, according to official pronouncements, the populace would have a double benefit: without arms, there would be less chance of death from armed conflict and, by giving their arms for the sake of the Buddha, the donor would be granted peace not only in this life but in the next world as well. In the long run, this not only removed the danger of uprisings against the ruling authorities, but emphasized the class distinction between soldiers and farmers and soldiers and merchants. It made the wearing of a sword a badge of rank, a privilege granted only to the samurai. The rigid stratification of society during the following 265 years of Tokugawa rule, after Hideyoshi’s demise, was in process.
The Bukko-ji Temple, which stood on the site of Hideyoshi’s projected Great Buddha image, was conveniently moved across the river in order to provide sufficient land for the gigantic undertaking. Canals were dug and a new bridge was built, the Gojo-O-hashi, the Great Bridge of Fifth Street, to facilitate the delivery of materials to the site. The temple was completed in 1589, and 1,000 priests participated in the dedication ceremonies. Unhappily, the image was doomed to failure: in 1596, a great earthquake damaged much of the Kyoto area and the Great Buddha was destroyed. Two years later, Hideyoshi was dead. The question of Hideyoshi’s successor lay open since his intended political heir, his son Hideyori, was only five years old. Ostensibly, the various lords who formed a regents’ council had pledged to support Hideyoshi’s son as the next political ruler when he came of age. Dissension among them, however, enabled Tokugawa Ieyasu to gain control of the government by 1603, both by guile and by force. Concerned to create a new ruling family, he determined to get rid of Hideyori in time. In order to weaken Hideyori financially as the years went by, Ieyasu encouraged him and his mother to melt 10 million gold coins from Hideyoshi’s estate to obtain the needed funds for a gigantic image to replace the destroyed Great Buddha.
Hoko-ji, home of the great bell of 1615.
For Hideyori’s political supporters, this rebuilding of the Great Buddha provided an opportunity to restore the family’s flagging political influence. Thus the rebuilding began in 1603. Unfortunately, a fire in the nearly completed hall destroyed the work already done. Ieyasu convinced Hideyori and his mother once more that the project had to be completed, thereby further sapping the Toyotomi coffers. By 1609 the Buddha had been recreated (in wood), and by 1612 the temple was restored. This second hall was 272 feet (81.6 m) long by 167.5 feet (50.3 m) deep and rose 150 feet (45 m) into the air. Ninety-two pillars supported the roof over the 58.5 foot (7.6 meter) tall Buddha. In 1615, to mark the completion of the project, a huge bronze bell was cast and mounted in its own structure. It still stands, 14 feet (4.2 m) tall and 9 feet (2.7 m) in diameter; it is 9 inches (22.5 cm) thick and weighs 82 tons. On it, Hideyori had inscribed the words KOKKA ANKO (“Security and Peace in the Nation”). Ieyasu, looking for a pretext to undermine Hideyori, whom he found too handsome and too capable and thereby a political threat to his and his family’s continued rule, had not only refused to contribute funds to the rebuilding of this popular memorial to Hide-yoshi, but claimed that the second and fourth characters in the inscription on the bell could be read as “Ieyasu.” Thus the intent, he claimed, was to place a curse upon him. In time, Ieyasu resorted to armed force, and in 1615 he besieged Hideyori in his castle in Osaka, a castle which Hideyori had inherited from his father. The Toyotomi family was exterminated, and one of the justifications used by Ieyasu for his treacherous and brutal course of action was the supposed threat that had appeared on the great bell at the Hoko-ji. Later, the head of Toyotomi Hideyori’s seven-year-old son was displayed at the Sanjo (Third Street) Bridge in the same manner as were those of traitors and criminals.
The Hoko-ji Temple today is a rather nondescript complex. The 1609 Buddha and its hall, which were restored at vast expense by Hideyori and his mother, were destroyed by an earthquake in 1662, and the replacements of these were lost in a fire in 1798. The new image of 1843, which replaced the previous Buddha, was destroyed in a 1973 fire. Thus the existing halls of the temple are not very important since all that was of consequence has been consumed by the flames of the centuries. What alone remains of the original Hoko-ji is the great bell of 1615 in a belfry which was rebuilt in 1884. The offending characters of KOKKA ANKO were removed at Hideyori’s order soon after the bell was completed because of Ieyasu’s pretended offense at the curse he claimed to read into the characters. Today, one can have the experience of pulling the cord which sends the wooden beam of the belfry crashing against the side of the bell—either to sound the praise of Hide-yoshi or to curse Ieyasu, as one is so inclined.
One other item of note remains from the 16th century temple: the huge stone walls along Yamato-oji-dori that served to hold the embankment on which the Hoko-ji Temple was built. These gigantic stones were gifts from Hideyoshi’s daimyo, many of whom competed with each other to see if they could send an even larger stone from their fiefdom than other donors. The stones are still in place, today encompassing the grounds of both the Hoko-ji Temple and the Hokoku Shrine. The entrance to the present Hokoku Shrine at the head of Shomen-dori is approximately the entrance to the Great Buddha Hall of the past.
4 MIMI-ZUKA
Before leaving the Hoko-ji, note the Mimi-zuka mound, which was created in front of the Great Buddha Hall of the Hoko-ji. It reflects the obverse side of the honor given to Hideyoshi in his own day, for it is illustrative of the cruelty of wars waged by the warriors of that time as well as of later times. The Mimi-zuka mound is on Shomen-dori just west of where that street intersects with Yamato-oji-dori (west of the entrance to the Hokoku Shrine) and immediately to the west of the children’s playground. Mimi-zuka is a mound in which the ears and noses of defeated Koreans were buried after the Korean wars of Hideyoshi in 1592 and 1597. The mound originally stood in front of the gateway to the Daibutsuden (Hall of the Great Buddha) of the Hoko-ji Temple, a hall which has now been replaced by the Hokoku Shrine in honor of Toyotomi Hideyoshi. The mound is a tall hill behind a fence and is topped by a very tall sotoba (a five-part memorial stone). In 1592, Toyotomi Hideyoshi determined that he would conquer China, a part of his dream of ruling all of East Asia. He sent a massive army into Korea, penetrating to Pyongyang and the Tumen River to the border of China. Ultimately forced by the Chinese to retreat to the south of Korea, his war was not a success; it merely resulted in many casualties on both sides as well as a continuing antagonism with Korea and China. In 1597, he launched a second attempt against Korea so as to reach China, a land of whose vast dimensions he was not that knowledgeable. Harassment of his supply lines by Korean armored boats and the combined military forces of Korea and China proved overwhelming obstacles to his expansionist goals. His death in 1598 provided his successors with an excuse for a withdrawal from Korea, which lasted until the 19th and 20th centuries.
The custom of victorious armies to sever the heads of the defeated enemy for presentation to their commander as proof of victory proved logistically impractical during these overseas military adventures. Therefore, in 1592 the ears of the defeated enemy were cut off and shipped back to Kyoto in barrels of brine. They were buried in a mound, Mimi-zuka (Ear Mound), marked by five large circular stones in front of the gateway to the Daibutsuden (Hall of the Great Buddha) of the Hoko-ji Temple. Again, in November 1598, the ears and, this time, the noses of 38,000 victims of the Japanese forces in Korea were buried in Mimi-zuka. The noses were hung up by threes for inspection, for verification in Korea, and counted before they were pickled and shipped. According to some sources, the mound should be called Hana-zuka (Nose Mound) since it was noses rather than ears that were shipped and buried.
A moat 12 feet (3.6 m) broad was created about the mound, 720 feet (216 m) in circumference and 30 feet (9 m) high. On top was placed a five-story 21 foot (6.3 m) tall sotoba with a 15 foot (4.5 m) wide base. In earlier days, a bridge with railings crossed the moat from the north side. The mound and sotoba were built at Hideyoshi’s orders, and on June