Shimazu Yoshihiro
Daimyō of Satsuma; commander of the Fourth Division
"If we must go back, we shall go back through them."
Biography
The Satsuma lord was fifty-seven when the invasion began and the most feared Japanese field commander in Korea. His men were called the Oni-Shimazu — the demon Shimazu — and at Sacheon in 1598 he broke a Ming-Korean army several times his size with a counter-attack out of his own gate after a gunpowder explosion threw the besiegers into confusion. His troops took thousands of noses from the field. That victory was won six weeks after Hideyoshi had already died in Kyoto, which is the war in a sentence: a brilliant tactical success in a campaign that was already over and that nobody in Korea had been told about. He fought at Noryang covering the evacuation and got most of his men home. He went on to Sekigahara in 1600, where he found himself on the losing side, surrounded, and performed the most famous retreat in Japanese history — charging straight *through* the Tokugawa centre and out the other side, losing all but around eighty of his men. He survived to negotiate terms and Satsuma kept its lands, which is why the province was still powerful enough, 268 years later, to help overthrow the Tokugawa in the Meiji Restoration.
Did you know?
Surrounded at Sekigahara in 1600, he escaped by charging directly through the enemy centre rather than around it — losing all but about eighty men, but surviving to keep Satsuma, which helped overthrow the Tokugawa 268 years later.
Key Battles
The Landing at Busan
Toyotomi Japan victoryMay 25, 1592 · 8,500 total casualties
Korea had not fought a real war in two centuries; Japan had just finished fighting one for a hundred years. The gap showed instantly. Every Japanese soldier who landed was a veteran of the Sengoku wars and a third of them carried arquebuses, a weapon the Korean army had essentially no answer to. Within three weeks the Japanese would be in Seoul.
Siege of Sacheon
Toyotomi Japan victoryOctober 30, 1598 · 9,000 total casualties
Shimazu's tactical masterpiece and the last significant Japanese victory of the war, won six weeks after Hideyoshi had already died in Kyoto — the invasion was over and nobody in Korea had been told. The noses taken here went to the Mimizuka, the 'ear mound,' in Kyoto, where tens of thousands of Korean noses were buried under a monument that still stands.
Battle of Noryang
Joseon Korea & Ming China victoryDecember 16, 1598 · 12,000 total casualties
The last battle of the war, fought over an enemy who was already leaving, and it killed the man who had won it. Yi Sun-sin fought at least twenty-three engagements and never lost one, against a navy that outnumbered him at every turn, for a government that had imprisoned and tortured him. He is Korea's national hero without qualification, and the Japanese admirals who fought him said so too — Tōgō, who destroyed the Russian fleet at Tsushima in 1905, reportedly refused comparison with him.
Life Journey
Timeline
August 21, 1535
🌅 Birth
Born into the Shimazu house of Satsuma
1587
📍 Posting
Submits to Hideyoshi after nearly taking all Kyushu
May 25, 1592
⚔️ Battle
Lands in Korea with the Fourth Division
October 30, 1598
⚔️ Battle
Routs a far larger army at Sacheon
December 16, 1598
⚔️ Battle
Fights at Noryang covering the evacuation
October 21, 1600
⚔️ Battle
Charges through the enemy centre to escape Sekigahara
August 30, 1619
✝️ Death
Dies in Satsuma at eighty-four