Le cortège fantôme - Les funérailles et la déification de Toyotomi Hideyoshi

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A widely circulated Edo-period text tells of the fabulous funeral procession organized for Toyotomi Hideyoshi, one that brought together all the great daimyō of the time. The ceremony matched the significance of the event - the death of the most powerful man in all of Japan. But this procession never really happened, although it was planned. Still, many people during the Edo period accepted as true this solemn homage from great warlords, a natural complement to Toyotomi s funeral rites and deification. To put it another way, this great procession of warriors (which never really happened) took the place in people's memories of the deification proper (which did happen, but was finally nullified and officially denied by Tokugawa Ieyasu right after the fall of Osaka Castle). When the cult offered to Toyotomi at his Toyokunisha sanctuary was forbidden, his phantom funeral cortege grew in significance. Besides sorting out the criss-crossing of planned events and actual happenings, we are faced here with the problem of the deification of a great national figure in early modern times. Rather than the result of a long tradition, this particular deification may be seen as an expression of the move into modernity.