s action. His motive, however, has been
variously interpreted. Some historians maintain that his prime
purpose was to find occupation for the vast host of soldiers who had
been called into existence in Japan by four centuries of almost
continuous warfare. Others do not hesitate to allege that this
oversea campaign was designed for the purpose of assisting to
exterminate the Christian converts. Others, again, attempt to prove
that personal ambition was Hideyoshi's sole incentive. It does not
seem necessary to estimate the relative truth of these analyses,
especially as the evidence adduced by their several supporters is
more or less conjectural. As to the idea that Hideyoshi was
influenced by anti-Christian sentiment, it is sufficient to observe
that out of nearly a quarter of a million of Japanese soldiers who
landed in Korea during the course of the campaign, not so much as ten
per cent, were Christians, and with regard to the question of
personal ambition, it may be conceded at once that if Hideyoshi's
character lays him open to such a charge, his well-proven statecraft
exonerates him from any suspicion of having acted without thought for
his country's good.

One fact which does not seem to have been sufficiently considered by
annalists is that during the sixteenth century the taste for foreign
adventure had grown largely in Japan. Many persons had gone abroad in
quest of fortune and had found it. It is on record that emigrants
from the province of Hizen had established themselves in considerable
numbers in China, and that their success induced their feudal lord,
Nabeshima, to seek the Central Government's permission for returning
his province to the latter and taking, in lieu, the district near
Ningpo, where his vassals had settled. Hideyoshi doubtless shared the
general belief that in oversea countries Japanese enterprise could
find many profitable opportunities, and it is easy to believe that
the weakened condition of China towards the close of the Ming dynasty
led him to form a not very flattering estimate of that country's
power of resistance.

The conquest of Korea had not in itself any special temptation. He
regarded the peninsula simply as a basis for an attack upon China,
and he made it quite clear to the Korean sovereign that, if the
latter suffered his territories to be converted into a stepping-stone
for that purpose, friendship with Japan might be confidently
anticipated. Korea, at that time, was under