With the country at peace, foreign trade flourishing, and a rigorous system of taxation in force, Hideyoshi found himself with an excess of time and money. His response was to launch the Momoyama age of Japanese art. With more power than any ruler since Ashikaga Yoshimitsu, he was in a position to direct taste, if not to dictate it. This time there were few Zen monks in attendance to advise him on expenditures (Hideyoshi continued to keep the Buddhists under close guard, a practice as pleasing to the Jesuits as his harem was displeasing), and his flamboyant taste had full reign. Momoyama art became, in many ways, the antithesis of Zen aesthetics. Hideyoshi ordered huge screens to be covered in gold leaf and decorated with explicit still-lifes painted in vibrant primary colors. Yet he was no stranger to Zen ideals; he kept a famous tea-ceremony aesthete as adviser and lavished huge sums on the special ceramics required for this ritual. In many ways, the Zen tea ceremony and tea ceramics became for Hideyoshi what Zen gardens, painting, and the No were for the Ashikaga. His patronage not only inspired a flourishing of ceramic art; the tea ceremony now became the vehicle through which Zen canons of taste and aesthetics were transmitted to the common man. The patronage of the Ashikaga had furthered Zen art among the _samurai _and the aristocracy; Hideyoshi's patronage opened it to the people at large. Ironically, the Zen arts profited from Hideyoshi's military blunders as well as from his patronage. At one point in his career he decided to invade China, but his armies, predictably, never got past Korea. The enterprise was unworthy of his military genius, and puzzled historians have speculated that it may actually have been merely a diversion for his unemployed _samurai_, intended to remove them temporarily to foreign soil. The most significant booty brought back from this disastrous venture (now sometimes known as the "pottery campaign") was a group of Korean potters, whose rugged folk ceramics added new dimensions to the equipment of the tea ceremony. Having maneuvered the shogunate away from Nobunaga's heirs, Hideyoshi became increasingly nervous about succession as his health began to fail, fearing that his heirs might be similarly deprived of their birthright. The problem was particularly acute, since his only son, Hideyori, was five years old and scarcely able to defend the family interests. In 1598, as the end approached, Hideyoshi formed a council of _daimyo_ headed by Tokugawa Ieyasu to rule until his son came of age, and on his deathbed he forced them to swear they would hand over the shogunate when the time came. Needless to say, nothing of the sort happened.