Japanese forces were largely successful in capturing the Korean Peninsula but were unable to push forward into China.
Hideyoshi retreated his troops, but returned the next year, in 1597, with a second offensive.
The hostilities came to an end only after the sudden death of Toyotomi Hideyoshi in 1598.
Mimizuka Mound in Kyoto.
Eventually, it was decided that only noses would be collected.
Enemy troops were still beheaded, but only thenoses were cutoff and shipped back to Japan.
When they were cornered we made a wholesale slaughter of them.
We cut off their noses, which told us how many heads there were.
By this time Yasuharu’s total of heads was over 2,000.
According to Stephen R. Turnbull, Hideyoshis troops collected 185,738 Korean heads and 29,014 Chinese ones.
It is impossible to figure out the actual number of casualties because many headsmight have beendiscarded.
On the other hand, not all noses were cut off corpses.
so you can inflate the body count, many soldiers hacked the noses of living people.
These Koreans reportedly survived for many years without noses or ears.
Statue of Toyotomi Hideyoshi at Hokoku shrine, Osaka.
Photo credit:Pumidol / Shutterstock.com
The noses sent to Japan were buriedmainly at two placesKyoto and Okayama.
Since the 1980s, a sanitized version is being taught in schools.
For many Koreans, the mound is nothing more than a victory monument to Hideyoshi’s feats of arms.
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