ABSTRACT
During the campaign of Odawara, Hideyoshi offered Ieyasu the lordship of the Eight Provinces of the Kwanto, and he accepted it. This meant that he would move to the eastward beyond the barrier of Hakone, and would relinquish his ancestral fief of Mikawa with the provinces of Tōtōmi, Suruga, Shinano, and Kai, that he had conquered himself, and these would naturally then come under the control of Hideyoshi. The offer is related in the Kwan-hasshu-kosen-roku as follows: “One day Hideyoshi went out with Ieyasu, who was in charge of the main army there, to inspect the castle of Odawara. Taking Ieyasu’s hand he said: ‘See, we shall soon overthrow the Hōjō now, so I promise you as your fief the Eight Provinces of the Kwanto.’ ‘Good. Let’s piss on the bargain, then/replied Ieyasu, and the pair of them went over toward the castle and pissed together. So to this day the children speak of them as the ‘Pair of pissers on the Kwanto’ (Kwanto no tsure-shōben).”
