Hideyoshi’s 1592–98 invasions stalled under Ming and Yi fleets
The Imjin War names Japan’s two invasions of Korea—1592 and 1597—with a truce between. Toyotomi Hideyoshi aimed to conquer the peninsula; early gains crumbled under Ming Chinese reinforcements and Korean naval disruption. A second push again stalled in the south before Japan withdrew.
Korean calls the first wave, 1592–1593, the Imjin Disturbance after its year in the sexagenary cycle and the second, 1597–1598, the Jeongyu War; Chinese sources name it for the Wanli emperor, and Japanese eras yield the Bunroku and Keichō labels. Ming China and Joseon Korea, both born in the fourteenth century after the Yuan collapse, shared Confucian ideals and the same enemies: Jurchen raiders in the north and wokou pirates on the coasts. Yi Sŏnggye’s 1392 coup had founded Joseon inside the Ming tributary order, which is why Chinese armies answered Seoul’s call.
Hideyoshi, a man of humble birth who had unified Japan by force, wanted war to legitimise his rule, perhaps to fulfil Oda Nobunaga’s dream of taking China and to keep idle samurai and ambitious lords busy. Japan may have started building up to 2,000 ships as early as 1586, and from March 1591 Kyushu lords raised Nagoya Castle at Karatsu as the staging base. The 1588 sword hunt and a 1591 edict ending lords’ support for piracy showed a newly united Japan.
Seoul misread the danger. Envoys sent to Kyoto in 1590 brought back a letter inviting Korea to submit and join an attack on China, but Kim Sŏngil dismissed it as bluff, and the court assumed any invasion would resemble earlier pirate raids. Hideyoshi could draw on some 500,000 veteran soldiers, and Japanese matchlock arquebuses dominated land fighting, whereas Korea’s strength in cannon and shipbuilding gave it the edge at sea.
The second invasion again stalled on the southern coast in a ten-month deadlock. Hideyoshi then died, the Japanese lost the naval Battle of Noryang, and the new Council of Five Elders ordered the troops home; years of talks eventually normalised relations.
Source: Imjin War
