Daimyo: The Warlords of Japan
reached Kenshin that Shingen’s salt
supply had been disrupted by another
daimyo, he delivered some of his own to
his enemy, saying that he battled with
a sword, not salt.
Oda Nobunaga
After the unravelling of the Ashikaga
Shogunate following the Ōnin War, Japan
would be bereft of a central government
for over a century. The civil wars would
come to an end only with the appearance
of three remarkable daimyo. The first of
these was Oda Nobunaga.
The son of an unimportant daimyo
in Owari province, Nobunaga won
a surprising victory over a much stronger
opponent in 1560 at the Battle of
Okehazama. In 1568, he was in control
of Kyoto, and the shogun, Ashikaga
Yoshiaki, was his own creature. In
1573, Yoshiaki made the mistake of
going against Nobunaga, who drove him
into exile. A good portion of Kyoto was
burned in the process. The Ashikaga
Shogunate, for so long toothless, was
now truly finished.
Nobunaga was an enthusiastic adopter
of firearms, the first of which had been
brought to Japan by Portuguese traders.
His arquebusiers, deployed in lines and
firing in disciplined volleys, decimated
the charging cavalry of the Takeda clan
(the formidable Takeda Shingen was now
dead) at the Battle of Nagashino in 1575.
Nobunaga’s control over Japan
increased over the next few years, and
he would eventually corral 22 provinces
into submission. However, in 1582 he
would be betrayed by one of his own
vassals while in Kyoto’s Honnō-ji temple.
The building was set on fire and, like
a true samurai, Nobunaga committed
seppuku (ritual suicide) so that he might
die by his own hand.Toyotomi Hideyoshi
One of Nobunaga’s subordinates,
Toyotomi Hideyoshi, seized the chance
brought about by his death to take
vengeance on the perpetrators. An
extremely capable general of low birth,
Hideyoshi vaulted to the pinnacle of
power and set about bringing Japan’s
daimyo under his own domination.
With an army of around 250,000
soldiers, he extended his power over
the southern Japanese islands of
Kyushu and Shikoku in 1587. By 1590,
he had secured the submission of the
last remaining independent daimyo
in Honshu, Japan’s main island. The
country had at last been unified. All
daimyo swore loyalty oaths to Hideyoshi,
getting in return acknowledgments of
their rights to their own fiefs.Tokugawa Ieyasu
Hideyoshi’s 1592 invasion of Korea
would last several years and prove to
be a bloody, costly failure. His death in
1598 created a path to ultimate power
for the greatest of the Sengoku daimyo
to arise: Tokugawa Ieyasu. A leading
vassal of Hideyoshi, he had his base
at Edo (the future Tokyo) and first
defeated a powerful alliance of his
enemies at the Battle of Sekigahara
in 1600. The last embers of rebellion
were finally stamped out with Ieyasu’s
capture of Osaka Castle in 1615.These military successes made Ieyasu
the unchallenged master of all Japan.
Having taken the moribund title of
shogun in 1603, he made Edo the seat
of the national government. For him,
and his descendants who would become
shoguns after him, the goal was a stable,
peaceful Japan. The land would still
be ruled by daimyo, with each man
the lord of his domain, but all would
acknowledge the Ieyasu shogun as his
supreme overlord.Rōnin: Men of the Waves
The samurai, so strongly linked to his
daimyo, might well find himself without
a lord, depending upon the fortunes of
war or other vicissitudes of life. These
samurai without masters were known
as rōnin, ‘men of the waves’. Though
they may have lacked masters, they
still possessed their superlative military
skills, and they were a ready source of
recruits for a daimyo who wished to
quickly bulk up his army.
One daimyo, for example, named
Kuroda Yoshitaka, shrewdly advised his
officials to overlook it if the coins paid
to the rōnin were too heavy or if the
rōnin pilfered some of them. He needed
to bring rōnin to his banner and having
a reputation for generosity was the surest
way to do this.
At the end of the Sengoku Jidai, many
rōnin made their way to Osaka Castle to
defend it against Tokugawa Ieyasu. Such
service brought them money, always
welcome, and also gave them the chance
to take vengeance on the enemy. In the
end, Osaka Castle was doomed and the
rōnin inside along with it. After it fell
in 1615, many were beheaded by the
victorious Ieyasu.
Rōnin might come into existence even
after the end of the Age of the Country at
War. In the late 19th century, when the
forces of the resurgent emperor moved
to supplant the Ieyasu shogunate as the
central government, they sought the
support of the peasantry. To this end,
rōnin were used to disseminate the news
that taxes would be slashed in half if
the imperial side gained power, and the
message did not fail to gain adherents for
the imperial party.
The memory of the rōnin persists
among modern Japanese. The story of
the 47 Rōnin who took vengeance for
their master is justly famous. Also, high
school graduates who fail to secure
admission to the universities of their
choice and choose to wait a year to take
the entrance examinations again are
called rōnin.LEFT The Takeda
clan horsemen
were cut down by
Oda Nobunaga’s
arquebusiers
at the Battle of
Nagashino in 1575BELOW Arguably
the first of the true
daimyo, Hōjō Sōun
exemplified the
samurai who had
risen from obscurity
to a position of
power in Japan’s
turbulent Age of
the Country at WarImage^ source:^wiki/TokugawaArtMuseumImage^ source:^wiki/OdawaraCastleTowerCollection