Toyotomi Hideyoshi

unifier of Japan

1537 – 1598 · 61 years · Osaka · Asia

Reign: 1582 – 1598 (Japan: shoguns & emperors)

Peasant's son who rose to rule all Japan, completing its unification, building Osaka Castle and twice invading Korea.

Portrait: Kanō Mitsunobu · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

Contemporaries around the world

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Yermak Timofeyevich — Cossack conqueror of Siberia, 5 years older
False Dmitry I — pretender who claimed to be Tsarevich Dmitry, 44 years younger
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Abbas the Great — Safavid Shah of Iran, 34 years younger
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Murad III — sultan who won the Caucasus from the Safavids, 9 years younger
Taqi ad-Din Muhammad ibn Ma'ruf — Ottoman astronomer and engineer, 11 years older

Akbar the Great — Mughal emperor, 5 years younger
Tokugawa Ieyasu — first Tokugawa shogun, 6 years younger
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Yi Sun-sin — Korean admiral, 8 years younger
Matteo Ricci — Jesuit missionary in China, 15 years younger
Oda Nobunaga — Japanese warlord, 3 years older

Bartolomé de las Casas — friar and defender of Native Americans, 53 years older
Hernán Cortés — conquistador, 52 years older
Inca Garcilaso de la Vega — chronicler, son of a conquistador and an Inca princess, 2 years younger
Samuel de Champlain — French explorer, 30 years younger