Why Toyotomi Hideyoshi believed it was possible for Japan to invade both Korea and China...

>Were the japanese armies better equiped, trained etc.?

Depends on what aspect.

For starters, Japan has more Musket-to-soldier ratio than Korea (who started the war with 0 muskets) and China (who had muskets but to a lesser ratio). But Ming China balances that out with having a fuckton of artillery than anyone in the region.

Japan's soldiers are veterans of the Japanese warring states, while Koreans have been enjoying Joseon Peace (with the exception of pirate raids I guess) for much of the 16th century. The Ming forces who came to Korea's rescue were veterans of the border wars with the Mongols and interior conflicts with bandits and rebels down South.

Finally, Japan can't into navy to save their fucking lives. Korea's navy meanwhile has been fighting pirates for over a century by that point while China is the naval power in East Asia.

All in all Korea was really the bitchboy of the war.

>China (who had muskets but to a lesser ratio).
The Chinese actually produced more muskets as whole,though the majority of their soldiers were mounted infantry/cavalry from the northern garrisons who eschewed them for primitive handguns.
greatmingmilitary.blogspot.com/2017/01/random-mythbusting-part-2.html

>The Ming forces who came to Korea's rescue were veterans of the border wars with the Mongols and interior conflicts
The image you've attached is actually from completely separate campaign(1574-1577) depicting the soldiers from Guyuan border garrison.

Out of all the northwestern garrisons,only Yansui sent a small detachment while the majority were from Xuanfu,Datong,Ji or Liao.

The Japanese struggled against Ming cavalry despite their numerical superiority such as Byeokjegwan.

>with bandits and rebels down South.
The majority of the ex-Qi Jiguang coastal militias were old men,though some participated such as Wu Weizhong. The "Southern soldiers" were most likely a younger generation drilled in the same fashion as their predecessors.

He made a lot of money selling Korean slaves to the Portugese out of it

wew, details? what did the portuguese use them for? as galley slaves or as slaves on plantations or as domestic labor at portuguese outposts?

This is going to sound really odd, but they were used as slaves for slaves, usually as sex slaves. Hideyoshi banned them taking the Japanese as slaves and they were used exactly the same until that ban

so you mean sex slaves for one's own slaves, or sex slaves of the portuguese masters, or both?

Both, guess it gave the slaves one less thing to bitch about

Actually Hideyoshi send many samurai that were loyal to him to Korea, while left many with dubious loyalty at Japan.

That's part of the reasons why his reign ended so quickly after the war.

Untrue. When the threat of an invasion was looming, Ming court actually suggested to the Korean with something along the line of

"hey, we have this nice thing called matchlock, want to have some?" (Korean refused it)

And during the war, Korean actually commented that Chinese matchlock outranged Japanese matchlock

This was most likely not cause by any technological superiority on the Chinese part, but because Chinese retained a 1:1 gunpowder to ball ratio, while Japanese used (roughly) 1:2.

He wanted to be the Japanese Alexander.

Didn't 100.000 manchu steppe niggers conquer China several decades later with Chinese help?

For that matter the Spanish had planned an invasion of China and reckoned they'd need less than 40.000 men to pull it off, mostly betting on the local population supporting them over the Ming government.

The Manchus actually offered to join the war against Japan, because for obvious reasons a Japanese hegemony would have interfered with their own plans. The offer was rejected.

desu i was basing it off of this description in pic related

>"Japan being /an island/"
>"Japan did not invade Korea again until the beginnings of World War II"

>Didn't 100.000 manchu steppe niggers conquer China several decades later with Chinese help?
For starters the Ming already collapsed one the eve of the Qing conquest. The Manchus had their own contingents of heavy cavalry,artillery and war wagon crews,something the Japanese lacked.

>For that matter the Spanish had planned an invasion of China and reckoned they'd need less than 40.000 men to pull it off, mostly betting on the local population supporting them over the Ming government.
Considering how much the Spanish struggled with tertiary powers such as the Cambodians,Chinese/Japanese pirates etc. this is nothing more than a pipe dream.

>The Manchus actually offered to join the war against Japan, because for obvious reasons a Japanese hegemony would have interfered with their own plans. The offer was rejected.
Nurhaci was busy uniting the Jurchen tribes during the Imjin War.

Nurhaci offered his help after Kato Kiyomasa managed to intrude upon his territories,even if the Ming wanted to use his services the animosity between Jurchens and the Korean populace made it unwise.

>For that matter the Spanish had planned an invasion of China and reckoned they'd need less than 40.000 men to pull it off, mostly betting on the local population supporting them over the Ming government.

If the Spanish had the advantages of the Manchus...i.e steady resupply and a home base that they can retreat to if things didn't going their way, they *MAY* be able to pull it off if they acquired Chinese support.

Too bad they came from the sea, and thus with all the complications that entails. They couldn't even pacify Philippines.

It was insane, but also seen as necessary by Toyotomi at the time.

By the time Japan was united, they just exited nearly a century of civil war, with the grand majority of the workforce having few other skills than fighting after 4 generations of nothing but warfare.

To him, having a entire working population of soldiers who were no longer fighting was a recipe for more civil war in the future, seeing that they would just take up arms again cause that's how they made their living.

So to prevent civil war, he started a war outside Japan to keep a potentially rebellious legion of soldiers something to do and conquer Korea and eventually China.

He didn't do this solely to send them to the meat grinder and relieve his fear of uprisings against him, he did truly thing that conquering China was possible, but a fortunate side effect was that most of Japan's skilled fighting force was busy fighting elsewhere, and most were killed there to suppress any reigniting of the Sengoku period.

This especially worked in Tokugawa's favor, who cut a deal with Toyotomi excusing his soldier from participating in the Imjun Wars, so when the war was over and Toyotomi was dead, that veteran force they sent to Korea was so depleted that Tokugawa's men had a real chance to seize the nation for him, and they did, creating a quiet, united Japan.

In a way the wars were beneficial for Japan on the homefront in this way.

yeah wtf i see that now

Because Greeks had defeated Persians several times before, also the army of Macedon was the most powerful one among Greeks. Japan in 16th century didn't have either, and 豐臣秀吉 is not Alexander.

The Manchu actually had a few small skirmishes with Japs, and they won.

Also Ming government already collapsed before Qing conquest, it's a Ming general allowed Manchu marched in after the central government collapsed. Ming already had several conflicts occurred in different fronts when they sent help to Korea back in 16th century.

wrong, you faggot. korea was the dominant power in the region

>korea was the dominant power in the region
Yeah, so dominant that even their name "Joseon" was given by China. They're nearly wiped out by Japs in the beginning, they couldn't deal with Japs in lands at all without China's help.

>china's help
the reason china helped at all was because they were so afraid of the japanese and koreans. otherwise they would've avoided intervention like they usually do

>even their name "Joseon" was given by China
Source? I thought the name came from Gojoseon.

>wrong, you faggot. korea was the dominant power in the region
What a joke. The Joseon rump court fled to Uiju within 2 months.

If it wasn't for the Ming intervention there wouldn't be a Joseon dynasty.

>Source? I thought the name came from Gojoseon.
Taejo petitioned the Ming with the dynastonyms of Joseon and Hwaryong,the former named after an ancient polity and the later after his birthplace. Zhu Yuanzhang chose Joseon as the Chinese were more familiar with that toponym.

Gojoseon was originally a polity in northern Hebei/Liaoxi and gradually moved eastwards towards Liaodong/northwestern Korea.

>chinese revisionism: the post

this is a Japanese map of the world from the early 19th century
take a look at Japan's size and take a wild fucking guess

>chinese revisionism: the post
Care to point out which part of my post contains revisionist historiography?

Jap nationalist leadership tends to be insane

He's not wrong you fucking shitposter

He thought Korea were pussies that could be pushed around and would just allow them to stroll to China.

he was half right but he didn't expect them to have an OPMC

>korea was the dominant power in the region

When has Korea ever been simultaneously more powerful than both China and Japan?

Did the Japanese at this point actually know who Alexander the Great was?

>what is goguryeo

>the reason china helped at all was because they were so afraid of the japanese and koreans. otherwise they would've avoided intervention like they usually do

Heh, the reason China's help didn't come sooner was because they too were dumbfounded on how fast Joseon defense collapsed, and initially suspected the Korean was making shit up (again).

> The Chinese actually produced more muskets as whole,though the majority of their soldiers were mounted infantry/cavalry from the northern garrisons who eschewed them for primitive handguns.

Just to point out that while the Northern troops eschewed the matchlock, they had good reason for doing so (windy climate tend to blow away the powder in the flash pan).

Plus they still had plenty of matchlock, just not as much as their Southern counterpart..

>Manchu
> steppe niggers

Will this meme never end? The Manchu, while certainly considered 'barbarians' by both the Han and Koreans, were not a steppe people. They were mostly-sedentary forest/river valley farmers from a cold but temperate climate too forested and mountainous for any real plains or steppes. Their society was based around mixed crop farming villiages. They just get lumped in with Mongolians and other foreign groups to conquer China so people assume they must have been mounted nomads. Not so. Even the Manchu language is/was a Tunguskic language, more closely linked to Siberian than Central Asian/Turkic groups.

>the reason china helped at all was because they were so afraid of the japanese and koreans

>Just to point out that while the Northern troops eschewed the matchlock, they had good reason for doing so (windy climate tend to blow away the powder in the flash pan).
Correct. Handguns such as the Kuai Qiang,can also be used a blunt weapon.
greatmingmilitary.blogspot.com/2015/10/kuai-qiang.html

I wonder if there are any Imjin War Japanese sources on Ming firearm/artillery efficacy.

>Plus they still had plenty of matchlock, just not as much as their Southern counterpart..
This would probably depend on the individual garrison.

why did china not join initially? did they fear the black samurai warrior?

>why did china not join initially? did they fear the black samurai warrior?
Scouting forces from Liao garrison certainly did,though they only managed to inflict minor casualties before being routed from Pyongyang.

The Ming was preoccupied with Pubei's mutiny,shoring up their coastal defenses as well as vigorously debating whether the Koreans were colluding with the Japanese(Hanseong was captured relatively quickly).

the chinks were literally afraid of the norks, their own ally, in the korean war

"afraid" in the sense of the average infantryman thinking "holy shit these norms are crazy; I don't want to work with them and don't trust them" maybe; "afraid" in the sense of the Chinese leadership thinking NK had the capacity to invade China itself, lol no

why would nk invade their own ally. are you stupid

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