East Asia's world war: the IMJIN WAR
Anyone here interested in ancient Asian military history? For those who love the classic kung-fu movies back in the early to mid-1970s, you probably got a taste of it as the movies took place four to three hundred years ago. In the last ten years as the Chinese and Korean movie industries took off and grew, more historical Asian war movies appeared, much appreciated without the schlocky kung-fu flying-thru-the-air nonsense.
Europe had its world wars and indeed, by the definition of what makes a world war, there have been several others that should have been counted among the world wars: Hunnic invasions of Asia and Europe; Alexander's conquest and unification of Greece and his invasions of the Near East and Central Asia; the Arabic invasions of Europe, Eurasia, and Central Asia; the Thirty Years War; the Seven Years War; the Napoleonic Wars.
But western historians should pay attention to the Far East and East Asia, essentially the same geography.
In 1592, Japanese warlord Hideoyoshi Toyotomi succeeded in unifying all of Japan - heretofore a patchwork of warring, powerful daiymos - under his iron rule. Seeking to further his long-held ambitions and no doubt to keep hundreds of thousands of samurai warriors, ashigaru soldiers, and the daiymos themselves pre-occuppied, Hideoyoshi the taiko (regent) embarked upon a massive sea-borne invasion of Korea with the intent of conquering Ming China. The plan was straightforward. Run a katana sword thrust through the heart of Korea and bring that country to willing submission. Subsequent, Japanese and Korean armies would mount a lightning blitzkrieg from northwest Korean straight into the heart of Ming China, it's capital, Beijing, then known as, Peiping. Following the overthrow of the Ming emperor, Hideoyoshi would transfer the Japanese figurehead emperor to the Ming Dragon Throne, to rule as a puppet emperor, while a Hideyoshi relative took the Japanese throne. Hideoyoshi would be the grand supreme warlord of Japanese China, Korea, and homeland Nippon. Massive Chinese armies, supplemented by the Korean army and all built around a core of steady, battlehardened Japanese samurai and ashigaru soldiers, would fan out to conquer India and the Philippines. After that, who knew? Perhaps Hideoyoshi might be tempted to follow the path of the Huns and the later Mongols and sweep westward through Eurasia and to the very doors of Europe itself, sweeping away everything in front with their deadly katanas and effective matchlock firearms.
I hoped here to pique your curiosity. I'm not going to write a huge history lesson here. Go to Google and type in, 'the Imjin War', or, the Japanese invasion of Korea in 1492. The war was so devastating that Korea never fully recovered from it. While victorious in repelling the Japanese after five years of brutal fighting and horrendous losses and terrible devastation, the history of East Asia changed. The weakened Ming Chinese dynasty would collapse in 1644. Korea didn't seem to learn from its war. A modern, militarized Japan would return in 1894 and 1910 with modern, metal warships built along British lines with a modern army built along Prussian influence, and would accomplish in 1910 what it couldn't do in 1592, completely conquer Korea and subjugate her people. But that is another history lesson.