Hideyoshi's greatest ambition, however, was a Japanese empire extending over the whole of Asia. Throughout the medieval period, the centrality of Japan became more and more an intrinsic aspect of the Japanese national identity. Nobunaga had harbored dreams of a Japanese conquest of China and Hideyoshi attempted to bring those dreams into reality. Shortly after he had unified the feudatories of Japan, he began planning his conquest of China. In 1592 and 1597, he invaded Korea and seized much territory in order to prepare a jumping-off point for the conquest of China through Korea. When he died in 1598, however, all his plans died with him. It was not until the twentieth century that the dream of a Japanese empire would again stir the Japanese to attack Korea and then China.
Hideyoshi's imperial ambitions led him to neglect domestic politics throughout the 1590's. The peace he had brought to Japan had held together only out of personal loyalties to Hideyoshi. These loyalties ran deep, for Hideyoshi had amassed tremendous wealth and lavished it on the imperial court and on various lords throughout the country (hence his posthumous title, "Wealth of the Nation"). When he died, however, the loyalties that people felt for him died as well. He was enshrined in his own temple, called Toyokuni ("Wealth of the Nation") sitting above the Great Buddha he had built in Kyoto. His shrine became a prominent Shinto site, but the affection form him and his era could not hold the country together. The various feudal lords again fell into contention with one another and Hideyoshi's son lost out in the scramble for regional power. The final unification of Japan would fall to the third great hero of Japanese history, Tokugawa Ieyasu.