J. Kurashige
(the government- enforced division of warriors from agriculturalists in both status and physical
living space) has become a hotly debated topic among historians of the early modern period, but
less so for medieval researchers. As Yoshida Yuriko described in 2004, some historians are now
questioning the received wisdom that this famous separation of warriors from peasants—which
dramatically shaped the social fabric of early modern Japan—originated with Toyotomi Hide-
yoshi, contending instead that it was merely the culmination of a process that began earlier, in
various regions across the country.^48 These are questions that will help explain how to divide
premodern from early modern, and also explore whether the Sengoku period was simply a trans-
itional era, or an age distinct in its elements from both those before and after. Only by approach-
ing these kinds of questions will we then be truly free from Spafford’s “teleology of
unification.”
Conclusion
Scholarship on the Sengoku period continues to evolve rapidly both outside Japan and within.
Fields like economic and political history may one day come to be eclipsed by cultural and gender
history as the most popular subjects for exploration, recalling the pattern of development of
studies on medieval Europe. Nevertheless, questions remain to be answered in all sectors of
fifteenth- and sixteenth- century history if a fuller picture of the era is to be achieved.
At least, however, it is not difficult to echo Jeffrey Mass’ optimism when he posited that
Japanese medieval studies—and investigations into the Sengoku period in particular—will avoid
“sinking into fixity.”^49 The rise of Japan’s soft- power in the form of anime and pop- culture that
so often focus upon the Age of the Country at War has helped draw young blood into the field.
Even if many of these scholars begin as “Sengoku groupies,” like the rekijo described above,
whose focus is more upon image than reality, it is not difficult to imagine more than a few even-
tually pursuing their interest in a more scholarly direction. Premodern historians dealing with
both the Heian and Kamakura periods still remain more numerous in the field as a whole, but as
noted earlier, the increase in scholars focusing upon the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries certainly
is encouraging.
Returning to our initial image of Okehazama, let us hope that instead of a trend toward
intellectual consolidation in a few field leaders parallel to the regional consolidation that followed
the battle of 1560, rather a continued influx of new blood—and thus new ideas—into the field
proves to be the new dynamic.
Notes
1 Oddly, no recent historian had provided a detailed synthesis of the existing English- language scholar-
ship on Sengoku era studies until my own “Eikokuen ni okeru Nihon no Sengoku jidaishi kenkyū no
kiseki to kadai” appeared in 2008. Because it was published in Japanese, however, the article failed to
find a wide readership in the West.
2 Bardwell Smith, “Japanese Society and Culture in the Momoyama Era: A Bibliographic Essay.”
3 John W. Hall, “Terms and Concepts in Japanese Medieval History: An Inquiry into the Problems of
Translation.” The quoted line appears on page 7. For additional discussions of the uses and abuses of the
feudal paradigm in application to Japanese history, see Chapters 8 and 22 of this volume.
4 Mary Elizabeth Berry, Hideyoshi; Nagahara Keiji, “The Sengoku Daimyō and the Kandaka System.”
5 Peter Shapinsky, Lords of the Sea: Pirates, Violence, and Commerce in Late Medieval Japan. The term is defined
on page 13 of the text. Amino Yoshihiko, Rethinking Japanese History.
6 The interview appeared in Katsumata Hideki, “Ano hito ni semaru: Ikegami Hiroko rekishi gakusha.”
7 David Spafford, A Sense of Place: The Political Landscape in Late Medieval Japan. The term is defined on page
12 of the text.