Alexmagnet Explains: The Sengoku Period 2 (Now with added war!) · 8:49pm May 20th, 2014
Well, here we are, it’s been awhile since I posted the first part of this, and I’ve done a lot of things since then. But no one cares about that, let’s just move right the hell on to the second half of The Sengoku Period. When we last left off, we had just finished setting the stage for one of the period’s most controversial figures to show up. Now that Nobunaga is here, and he’s ready to kick some ass, let’s go ahead and dive back into this thing.
Oh, by the by, FanOfMostEverything suggested, in the last post, that I talk about the Normans next. Now, unfortunately I know next to nothing about the Normans, so unless there’s something specific you wanted me to talk about that I can research, I’ll have to set them aside for now. What I want to talk about next is something that is very relevant currently, but has tendrils running all the way back to the 1st century. I’m going to talk about the complex geo-political quagmire that is the Middle East. If that seems like a hell of an undertaking to you… well, it is. This is something that I could, and people have, write an entire series of books about, so condensing it in an easily digestible format is going to take some time and a lot of work. Also, it’ll likely end up being several parts. Because of this, I’m going to make that a separate project and just update it whenever I can, and in the meantime I’ll work on much shorter, one-part blogs about smaller events in history. There’s a guy called Nicolae Ceaușescu who led one of the worst dictatorships in modern history, and I want to talk about some of the crazy shit he did.
Anyway, without further adieu, let’s finish Sengoku Jidai up and move on to something else.
Okay, so if you’ll recall the last thing that we talked about in the previous blog was the Uesugi’s stunning defeat during a nighttime battle at Kawagoe castle. For the next few years, nothing really major happened, but in 1549 the muskets the Portuguese had brought years earlier saw their first major usage in battle. The battle, and subsequent siege at Kajiki castle by the Shimazu (who themselves were a rather unimportant clan with little importance, being one of the tozama: outsider daimyo) was the first time in Japanese history that guns were used to any significant effect. I couldn’t find much information on the battle, and even the apparent Japanese history sources are a bit quiet on the whole thing. Suffice it to say that there’s a general consensus that this was one of, if not the, first uses of Japanese-style (which were derived from Portuguese-style) arquebuses, or teppo.
Most Japanese armies wouldn’t adopt the arquebus for many years to come.
After this battle, once again, things were quiet. Nobunaga, it is often said, had a real love for Western guns, and he was the first general to bring them into regular usage. Some sources said that he developed an interest as young as 15, and others say those sources are full of shit. Suffice it to say, though, that Nobunaga was undoubtedly known for using guns. In 1560, when Imagawa Yoshimoto, who himself was an incredibly powerful daimyo of the Tōkaidō region, was marching to Kyoto and had to pass through lands controlled by Nobunaga’s clan, he failed to mention this to Nobunaga, assuming he was too small and weak to really do anything about it. Nobunaga, to say the least, wasn’t too pleased with this.
Imagawa has been variously portrayed as: an utter baddass, a pompous dickbag, an 11 year-old girl, and a fat dipshit, but the one thing we can say for sure about him is that he was one unlucky son of a bitch. Little did he realize what hell he was about to bring on himself when he passed through the Owari Province. Things started off well enough. Imagawa was able to capture a pair of fortresses, Washizu and Marune, alerting the various warlords of his presence and intent ahead of time, as was the custom at the time. After a bit more travelling, Imagawa, for some inexplicable reason, decided it’d be a good idea to set up camp in the middle of a gorge. He was warned by advisors that this was, “Seriously a bad fucking plan” and, “You’re literally going to get us all killed, you idiot” but Imagawa was pretty confident that his army of 25,000 would be more than enough to deal with the only notable clan in the area, namely the Oda clan which only had 5,000 men total. Nobunaga, on the other hand, was understandably a bit pissed that Imagawa was being such a dick to him. His scouts had reported that they were camped out in his lands without permission, and so he decided it was his time to step up and kick some ass.
Against the better judgement of his advisors, Nobunaga took up camp at a nearby temple called Zenshō-ji. He knew he couldn’t meet Imagawa’s army head on, since that would be suicide, and if he stayed holed up in Zenshō-ji, that would just prolong the amount of time his head would still be on his shoulders. So, instead, he decided to pull the oldest tactical trick in the book: sneak attack (I don’t actually know if that’s the oldest, but it’s probably up there). Leaving a small force, read: more than half his army, behind with a shitload of banners to give the impression his force was still holed up in Zenshō-ji, Nobunaga led 1500 men through the surrounding forest. As they snuck up behind Imagawa’s camp, they noticed that the men were partying like it was their last night on Earth. They had just kicked major ass all the way across the region, and they were celebrating their victories with karaoke, sake, and whatever else Japanese people do for fun. Right before Nobunaga was to lead the charge, the sky’s opened up and poured rain as if to aid Nobunaga. If he’d been a religious man, Nobunaga might’ve seen this as a sign. However, once the rains cleared, he took up his katana and charged straight into the Imagawa camp with his men. The enemy samurai were so startled, most of them barely had time to stumble backwards before they were relieved of their heads. The rest of the soldiers, who still had their heads, ran off like a bunch of little girls. By the time Imagawa knew what was going on, he already had a spear in his neck.
America’s not the only country that’s learned to capitalize off the deaths of historical figures.
With the battle of Okehazama over, and Nobunaga walking away the clear victor in what was a resounding and stunning defeat, the remaining Imagawa samurai knew a real leader when they saw one and joined Nobunaga’s army. Several other warlords would join Nobunaga shortly after this battle, including the famous Tokugawa Ieyasu, who would remain loyal to the new warlord until his death. For the next 11 years, Nobunaga consolidated his power and his army continued to swell. By the time he was ready for his next battle, Nobunaga commanded a force of over 30,000 men.
The year is 1571, and the Tendai monks of Mt. Hiei are being a bunch of bitches. They’d long since been a powerful and independent force, and they were standing in the way of Nobunaga’s vision of a unified Japan. That, and he really didn’t like that they were allies with the Azai and Asakura clans. So, taking his army, Nobunaga stormed the area around Mt. Hiei and murdered upwards of 20,000 innocent civilians. After that, he ascended the Mt. Hiei, burning down any shrines he found along the way, along with the famous shrine to Sannō, the kami of the mountain. When he finally reached the temple at the top, Enryaku-ji, he killed all the monks and destroyed the temple, killing anyone who had managed to escape. If there is one thing that could be said about Nobunaga, it’s that he was thorough.
For the next ten years, Japan was abuzz with activity, and there was a major battle, or event, taking place nearly every year. In 1573 Takeda Shingen, “The Tiger of Kai”, died in his camp. Shingen, who’d long been seen as the only shogun who could possibly stand against Nobunaga’s meteoric rise, left a vacuum with his death. The Takeda clan never truly recovered, though Shingen’s military and governmental policies would live on after his death, and influence much of Ieyasu’s own governing later on.
The didn’t call him “The Tiger of Kai” for nothing.
One year later, in 1574, Nobunaga was at it again. For a period of 11 years, ranging from 1571 (with the siege of Mt. Hiei) to 1582, Nobunaga waged a war against his, arguably, greatest enemy, the Ikkō-ikki, or warrior monks. With his successful taking of Mt. Hiei’s monastery complete, Nobunaga attempted a siege against the larger, and more well-defended castle: Nagashima. This first siege was an utter failure. In attempting to take the surrounding fishing villagers hostage, he and his men became trapped in a bog that ended up costing the lives of many of his men as their horses tripped and they were either shot or drowned. Not one to be deterred, Nobunaga attempted to take the castle again two years later in 1573. Unfortunately for him, this siege went about as well as the first. By this time Nobunaga, along with the Ikkō-ikki, was known for his use of arquebusiers, and he planned on using them to take the castle. However, a heavy rain left the vast majority of his guns useless, and the Ikkō-ikki, who’d had the good sense to cover their arquebuses made short work of Nobunaga’s attacking force. Angry, but determined, Nobunaga was forced to retreat again.
Finally, in 1574, Nobunaga got his comeuppance when he, and a naval force commanded by Kuki Yoshitaka, bombarded the Ikkō-ikki’s wooden fortresses and watchtowers with flaming ammunition. Once he got control of the surrounding area, Nobunaga had his men build a large wooden palisade around the Ikkō-ikki’s main temple, Ganshō-ji. Completely cut off from the outside, the warrior monks were left without any hope of escape. Neither them nor their allies could get past Nobunaga’s blockade. Then, just because he was still pretty pissed about his last two failed sieges, Nobunaga decided he wasn’t feeling too merciful and he had the wooden palisade set on fire. As the entire fortress complex burnt to the ground, Nobunaga had his men make sure no one escape alive… and no one did. All of the warrior monks, nearly 20,000 men, were killed that day, and the Ikkō-ikki were severely crippled.
Riding high off his success, Nobunaga turned his attention to the Mikawa Province where Takeda Katsuyori (the son of “The Tiger of Kai”, occasionally referred to as “The Younger Tiger of Kai”) was busy sieging Nagashino castle. Takeda was concerned about the castle’s ability to interrupt his supply lines, and so he decided that it needed to be dealt with. Unfortunately for him, Nobunaga wasn’t having any of it. The Battle of Nagashino is remembered as a major turning point in Japanese warfare because it is often as seen as Japan’s first “modern” war. It was Nobunaga’s use of rotating volley fire from his arquebusiers that won him the day decisively. From then on, everyone would learn to fear Nobunaga’s affinity for firearms.
Say what you will about America’s whitewashing/bastardization of history, but at least you’ll never see Thomas Jefferson or John Adams as a prepubescent girl.
Pleased with his recent successes, Nobunaga ordered the construction of his own castle, called Azuchi castle. He had it built near enough to Kyoto that he could defend the capital against invasion, but far enough away that he didn’t have to deal with all the pains that came with living in a huge city like Kyoto which had somewhat of an affinity for catching on fire or housing petty squabbles that turned into city-wide events. The castle took several years to build, but became a symbol of Nobunaga’s immense power. Skip forward a few years and the long-standing rival of Takeda Shingen, Uesugi Kenshin (who had taken the name Uesugi after inheriting the clan in a bid to restore the power of the Kanto Kanrei), sometimes called “The Dragon of Echigo”, and believe by some to be the reincarnation of the Buddhist warrior god Bishamonten, went and died. The man had long been feared for his prowess in battle, but he was, much like his counterpart, a great administrator as well. It was his death that prompted Nobunaga, who now faced virtually no real opposition in his quest to see a unified Japan, to utter the words, “Now the empire is mine.”
With no one left to oppose him, Nobunaga decided it was time to finish his campaign against the warrior monks. In 1580, after ten years of war with the Ikkō-ikki, Nobunaga finally received a notice of surrender from the monks. The Emperor of Japan, who was still technically the ruler at the time, even though Nobunaga, and several warlords before him now held all the real power, issued a letter to the Ikki, asking them to surrender to Nobunaga’s forces since they were likely to get slaughtered otherwise. When they finally did, Nobunaga’s dream came true. Virtually all of Japan was now under his rule, with only little pockets of resistance remaining. One of these pockets, the castle of Tottori, was one of the very few examples in history where starvation alone was enough to force the defenders into admitting defeat.
By now the year was 1582, and Nobunaga was enjoying his well-deserved (though dubiously well-respected) position as the single most powerful man in Japan. This was a short-lived feeling, however, as later that year, on June 21, Nobunaga committed seppuku at the temple of Honnō-ji. Nobunaga had been betrayed by his former vassal, Akechi Mitsuhide, and he and his son were attacked by a handful of men in the middle of the night. In an attempt to preserve his honor, Nobunaga took his own life, assisted by his page, Mori Ranmaru (who also committed seppuku), before Mitsuhide’s men could get to him.
Nobunaga’s death has been portrayed many times in Japanese popular culture… some more accurately than others.
The reason for Mitsuhide’s betrayal has been the subject of much debate, but for my money, it was the combination of several events that likely pushed Mitsuhide over the edge. For years Nobunaga had been a total dick to Mitsuhide, constantly ridiculing him and pushing him around. On top of that, Mitsuhide was jealous that a fellow vassal, Hashiba Hideyoshi, had risen through the ranks so much faster than him to become Nobunaga’s top general. There was also the fact that Mitsuhide’s mother had been killed indirectly by actions taken by Nobunaga, and his further envy (possibly) of the page More Ranmaru, who was rumored to be engaged in a form of ritualistic homosexual relations with Nobunaga, called shudō, which was basically an affectation for adolescent boys. It’s sort of unclear whether Nobunaga was actually gay, or if he just didn’t discriminate, but either way, it likely didn’t help Mitsuhide’s jealousy.
All right, this blog post is getting pretty close to the length that I want it to be at, but there’s still a bit more to go. I don’t want to make a third post about this, so instead I’m going to do my best to quickly summarize the following decades that would eventually lead to Nobunaga’s longtime friend, Tokugawa Ieyasu’s ascension to Shogun, a position he would hold for many years to come.
Understandably, Nobunaga’s death left Japan in a state of disarray. No one really knew what to do, but it was clear the two major players were surfacing to vie for control of the power vacuum that Nobunaga left. Tokugawa Ieyasu, who I said before would eventually become Shogun, and Hideyoshi Toyotomi (who would change his name from Hashiba later in his life). Shortly after Nobunaga’s death, in 1583, forces backing Nobutaka (Nobunaga’s heir), and forces backing Hideyoshi clashed in the Battle of Shizugatake. It was a short, and one-sided battle because two of Nobutaka’s generals suffered from one of them, Sakuma Morimasa, being an idiot who didn’t listen to orders. While dangerously overextended, Sakuma refused orders from Katsuie (one of Nobunaga’s greatest generals) and pressed forward, a move that would eventually lose him, and the rest of Nobutada’s forces, the battle. This victory secured Hideyoshi’s place as a major player in Japan, and gave him yet more power.
In the following years, the two major forces clashed several times, including the battles at Komaki and Nagakute. There were actually several small battles that make up these two major campaigns, but the end result is that Nobunaga’s third son, Nobukatsu, and his second son, Nobutada, lost their place of having any real power, and the battles really came down to Hideyoshi and Ieyasu, each of them backing a different son, though really doing it for themselves. For a long time it seemed like Hideyoshi was poised to be the next Shogun. In 1587, Hideyoshi’s forces turned southwards and invaded the Kyūshū Province, eventually taking the whole area under his control. Then, in 1590, Hideyoshi decided to lay siege to the last great stronghold of the Hōjō clan, Odawara castle. The end result is that Hideyoshi forced a surrender with little fighting, but it’s interesting to note that this may have been the most bizarre siege of all time. During their siege, the Hideyoshi samurai were entertained by a literal circus and even prostitutes and musicians. I guess the Hōjō planned on using goodwill to get the Hideyoshi clan to just give up… though that clearly didn’t work.
Instead of doing a google search for “Japanese prostitute”, I decided it’d be better to just not do that. So have this gif instead.
After the final siege of Odawara castle, Hideyoshi, now sitting pretty atop most of Japan, turned to Konoe, a castle under the control of Kunoe Masazane, who was a relatively unimportant warlord, and was such was defeated relatively quickly. With this final siege, Hideyoshi had successfully completed Nobunaga’s quest to unify Japan. Under this newly unified leadership, Japanese forces launched two unsuccessful invasions of Korea, so that they could attempt to conquer China. This was just the beginning of Japan’s long history of imperialism that would be stifled for a century under Ieyasu’s control, but would later start again shortly before World War I. Everything seemed to be going pretty well for Hideyoshi, who really should’ve realized that that is exactly when things go wrong, as they had with Nobunaga. Because in 1598 he succumbed to the bubonic plague, a disease that had mostly been absent from Japan due to its isolation as an island. After his death, the Japanese forces in Korea were forced to withdraw, and Hideyoshi’s son, Hideyori, took control of his army.
This left Ieyasu in prime position for takeover and eventual rise to the Shogunate since he was not, unlike Nobunaga and Hideyoshi, of common blood, so he could be named Shogun. In 1600, a massive amalgamation of forces, each fighting for one of two sides (either Hideyori or Ieyasu), crossed swords in a series of battles collectively known as the Battle of Sekigahara, which is unofficially seen as the start of the Tokugawa Shogunate since Ieyasu did eventually win. Now, as much as I’d like to talk at length about the Battle of Sekigahara, it’s quite long and involved, and could be an “Alexmagnet Explains” all on its own, so instead we’ll discuss what happened briefly.
Initially outnumbered, Ieyasu began courting local warlords that were on the fence about who to support to join his side, promising that he wouldn’t murder them in their sleep if they joined him. A fair number did, but several did not. This left Ieyasu in the uncomfortable position of having to force them to choose a side by sending his men to attack them to prove his strength. With this new force by his side, Ieyasu turned the main brunt of Mitsunari’s (Mitsunari was a general who supported Hideyori) Western army. Due to a series of kerfuffles, including one lazy general, Mitsunari's forces were defeated and he was taken captive and later executed.
Three years later, Ieyasu was finally named Shogun and asserted his control over all of Japan. A long period of peace followed what had been a century of war, and never again would Japan be the same. No longer a series of feudal states, it was now a unified country, a unified force. As was said in the last blog’s comments, Nobunaga did the work of gathering the disparate generals, as well as starting the unification process. Hideyoshi finished the job. And finally, Ieyasu reaped the benefits of a century of conflict through several centuries of peace. With the death of Hideyori in 1615, nothing now stood in the way of Ieyasu’s Shogunate. The Sengoku Period had finally ended, and the Edo Period was beginning.
Gintama: an accurate portrayal of the Edo period.
Welp, there we go. It ended up a bit long, but hopefully it was an entertaining and informative ride. I do love Japanese history, and it’s unfortunate that it’s so unknown in American, and even European, culture. While I don’t recommend most anime adaptations of this period, if you want historical accuracy that is, I do recommend watching Kagemusha, one of Akira Kurosawa’s greatest films. It’s a fantastic movie (it’s Kurosawa, that much should be obvious), and it deals with some of the people I’ve mentioned here, including the famous and somewhat mysterious death of “The Tiger of Kai” Takeda Shingen. Also, though I haven’t seen it yet, I hear Heaven and Earth is pretty good as well.
Anyway, as I said in the beginning, I’ll be taking on the history of the Middle East next (though it’ll be somewhat fragmented), and also a few smaller events that can be talked about in one blogpost. In addition to the Nicolae Ceaușescu thing, I think I’m going to talk about some American history since there’s plenty out there you don’t learn about in school. But enough about all that, it’s time to wrap this thing up.
See you kids next time…
Nice. Looking forward to the Middle East posts since I know next to nothing about that area of the world, let alone its history.
You should start a real blog about this stuff. Your style is approachable and entertaining while still being informative as heck. You could go places with this!
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You're like the second or third person to tell me that, so maybe you guys have a point. All right, I guess it's time to start a blog. Just gotta figure out how I'm gonna do that first...
Am I the only person who thinks this reads like a Cracked article with fewer ads?
I love your history blogs please make a real blog (and have my babies ༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ )
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Wordpress? :B
"A series of kerfuffles" may be the best summary of human history I've ever heard, even if that's not how you meant it.
In any case, thank you for another hilariously enlightening blog and a look into the swirling madness that is Japanese history as interpreted by the Japanese.
Also, sorry for picking something you're unfamiliar with.
I do look forward to the story of the desert quagmire.