Toyotomi takeover of China

What if Hideyoshi had been successful in taking over China or just North China?

okamido said:

Did he ever have a large enough force, as well as the logistics capabilities, to march into China? Japanese forces to a good beating just in Korea.

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Hideyoshi sent an invitation to the Korean King to submit to Japan (or face invasion) and join in a war against the Ming (which the Korean court did discuss), though the Korean ambassador Kim Saung-Il claimed the letter was nothing more than a bluff. Meanwhile the Korean court thought the Japanese were still internally divided and underestimated Japanese capability at the time. (one of the primary reasons for Hideyoshi's call for war was that with the unification of Japan he had leftover soldiers and Samurai with little to do and thus saw war abroad as a means of preventing civil disobedience and thus solidifying his rule at home). The general consensus was that they should wait it out and see what the Japanese would do.

The Koreans thought that Hideyoshi's invasion would be little more than an extension of previous Japanese pirate raids (ironic, considering that under Hideyoshi the pirate raids were put an end to). Perhaps if the Koreans had been better informed about the state of freshly unified Japan (which had 500,000 soldiers with little to do) they would have accepted the invitation to submit and invaded China together with the Japanese.

I'm not entirely sure about the status of the Chinese military at the time (though the Ming was rather unstable during that period, no?) but the Japanese were proficient warriors and were quick adopters of the arquebus.

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If the Koreans don't submit, Yi Sun-sen's destruction of ships carrying troops and supplies headed for NW Korea near the Yalu that stopped the Japanese from going past the Yalu. Perhaps if he was defeated the Japanese could have won there they could have managed a resupply and marched into China. If Admiral Yi were to have been killed at some point the Japanese would have fared far better.

hoihoi said:

it is simple.
Japan would be China
as for name China, it would not change in English
Japan dynasty. however it is called china.

Japan would be a part of china

Because ..Tang,.. Yuan Qing became China

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It is true that assimilation was the usual fate of conquerors of China, but the Japanese seem a bit more xenophobic and more proud of their cultural distinction and I figured that could lead to a dynasty not as assimilated as the Yuan or Qing.

Gkidia said:

Post-modern technology no way.
It's about supply.
The Chinese had problems fielding troops during the Imjin War because it was just too far from any base of production.

I think there would be a small influence on Chinese culture from the Japanese, but eventually it would become China. Worst case scenario, Hideyoshi becomes Emperor of China, but he loses power, and Japan becomes part of China from then on.

To control China his heirs would have had to live in the capital, as the Manchu did, and thus culturally he would be Chinese and take a Chinese Han bride. His descendants would also be Chinese, and as there would be little distinction between aesthetics, he would have a rightful claim to the Japanese islands.

This was pretty much how Manchuria became part of China. It was abandoned in favor of the greater power and control of the Han capital. Now it is just a smaller province of a Chinese nation.

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All good points, except unlike Manchuria which was empty and contiguous with Han China, Japan was a densely populated island. It would be hard to assimilate in the same fashion. I think we could see a Japonization of Korea but China would remain Han though slightly tinged with Japanese influences meanwhile a strong (but selected) amount of Chinese culture would return to the home Islands. The Qing and Yuan were nomads from the North. The Japanese were an established state-based polity thus making them harder to assimilate than the Manchu or Mongols. Rather than this being a continuation of Ibn Khaldun's pattern of history, this is one state conquering another.

Perhaps using Chinese wealth the Hideyoshi's descendants could take control of the Ryukyus and Spanish East Indies, ideas historically tossed around by the Japanese.

Do you think the Japanese could have conquered all of China or that it would have been split with a Southern Ming and a Northern Toyotomi similar to how there was the Southern Song and the Northern Jin/Yuan?

Also there would the be the great political question: Once Toyotomi captures Beijing, who rules China? Would it be the Shogun or the Emperor or would it be an extension of what had happened in Japan where the Emperor is there but the the Toyotomi were in charge.