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 surrendering their arms for the sake of the Buddha, donors 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 also emphasized the class distinction between soldiers and farmers, 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, 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-ohashi, the Great Bridge of Fifth Street, to facilitate the delivery of materials to the site. The temple was completed in 1589, with one thousand priests participating in the dedicatory ceremonies. Unhappily, the image was doomed to disaster. 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 the successor to Hideyoshi lay open since his intended political heir, his son Hideyori, was only five years old.
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 (1543-1616) to gain control of the government by 1603 both by guile and by force. Concerned with creating 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 ten million gold coins from Hideyoshi's estate to obtain the needed funds for a gigantic image which would replace the Great Buddha. 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 finances.
By 1609 the Buddha had been recreated (in wood), and by 1612 the temple was restored. This second hall was 272 feet long by 167.5 feet deep, and it rose 150 feet into the air. Ninety-two pillars supported the roof over the 58.5-foot-tall image of 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 tall and nine feet in diameter; it is 9 inches 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 Hideyoshi but also claimed that the second and fourth characters in the inscription on the bell could be read as "Ieyasu." 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 Hideyori had inherited from his father. The Toyotomi family was exterminated, and one of the justifications used by Ieyasu for this treacherous and brutal act was the supposed threat which had appeared on the great bell at the Hokoji. Afterwards, 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 Hokoji today is a rather nondescript complex. The 1609 Buddha and its hall, which were restored at the expense of 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 remains of the original Hokoji is the Great Bell of 1615 which stands in a belfry 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 have read. Today, one can have the experience of pulling the cord that sends the wooden beam of the belfry crashing against the side of the bell—to sound the praise of Hideyoshi or to curse Ieyasu, as one is so inclined.
One other item of note remains from the sixteenth-century temple: the huge stone walls along Yamato-oji-dori which served to hold the embankment on which the Hokoji was built. These gigantic stones were gifts from Hideyoshi's daimyo, many of these daimyo competing to see if they could send a larger stone from their fiefdom than could other donors. The stones are still in place, today encompassing the grounds of both the Hokoji 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. Before leaving the Hoko-ji, one should be conscious of the Mimizuka mound which was created in front of the Great Buddha Hall of the Hokoji. It reflects the obverse side of the honor given to Hideyoshi in his own day, for it is illustrative of the cruelty of the wars waged by the warriors of that as well as of later times.
MIMIZUKA
The Mimizuka (Ear 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.
The Mimizuka 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 Daibutsu-den (Hall of the Great Buddha) of the Hokoji, a hall which has now been replaced by the Hokoku Shrine in honor of Toyotomi Hideyoshi. The mound is a tall hill surrounded by a fence and topped by a very tall five-tier 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 to the Tumen River as far as the border of China. Ultimately forced by the Chinese to retreat to the south of Korea, Hideyoshi failed in his quest, and the war merely engendered 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. Harassment of his supply lines by Korean armored boats and the combined military forces of Korea and China proved an overwhelming series of obstacles to his expansionist goals. His death in 1598 provided his successors with an excuse for a withdrawal from Korea—until the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
The custom of victorious armies severing the heads of the defeated enemy for presentation to their commander as a 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 in front of the gateway to the Daibutsu-den of the Hoko-ji of Hideyoshi and marked by five large, circular stones. Again, in November 1598, the ears and, this time, the noses of 38,000 victims of the Japanese forces in Korea were buried in Mimizuka. The noses were hung up by threes for inspection, verification, and counting before they were pickled and shipped. According to some sources, the mound should be called Hanazuka (Nose Mound) since it was noses rather than ears that were shipped and buried.
A moat 12 feet broad was created around a mound 720 feet in circumference and 30 feet high. On top was placed a five-story, 21-foot-tall sotoba (Buddhist shrine) with a 15-foot-wide base. In earlier days, there was a bridge with railings which crossed the moat from the north side. The mound and sotoba were built at Hideyoshi's order, and on June 12,1597, he had three hundred priests chant a requiem prayer for the Korean dead. In former times, when Korean embassies came to the court on official visits, they always worshipped at this mound.
The Mimizuka mound reflects the senseless military ardor of Hideyoshi,
