The Third Unifier – Tokugawa Ieyasu. Part Three.
After the disastrous Battle of Mikatagahara in January 1573, contemporaries might have been forgiven for thinking that Tokugawa Ieyasu was finished. His army had been defeated and scattered, several important fortresses had fallen, and Takeda forces were camped deep inside his home province of Mikawa. Fate, however, was on Ieyasu’s side. Though Mikatagahara had been…
The Third Unifier – Tokugawa Ieyasu. Part Two.
The Battle of Okehazama in 1560 saw Tokugawa Ieyasu’s masters, the Imagawa, dealt a serious blow at the hands of Oda Nobunaga. In the aftermath, Ieyasu began asserting his independence, and in 1562, the so-called “Kiyosu Alliance” between Ieyasu and Nobunaga was formalised. The Imagawa, however, were down, but not out, and Ieyasu’s position was…
The Third Unifier – Tokugawa Ieyasu. Part One.
If the bird will not sing, wait for it to sing. The third, and ultimately, final unifier was born Matsudaira Takechiyo in December 1542. His father, Matsudaira Hirotada, is a somewhat mysterious figure, with several theories about the events of his life, and even his death, but what is known with (relative) certainty is that…
The Second Unifier – Toyotomi Hideyoshi. The Final Chapter.
In 1591, with dominance of Japan secured, Hideyoshi announced his intention to invade Ming China, via Korea, launching the first of two campaigns to subjugate the small kingdom. We’ll take a look at these invasions in more detail later, but in summary, the Japanese landed with a force of some 160,000 veteran warriors and achieved…
The Second Unifier – Toyotomi Hideyoshi. Part Six.
By the late 1580s, Hideyoshi was at the very pinnacle of political and military power in Japan. Jesuit records from the time name him “tyrant” and suggest that he has achieved more power over the realm than any warlord before him. After the successful conclusion of the Kyushu Campaign, Hideyoshi ordered a new palace built…
The Second Unifier – Toyotomi Hideyoshi. Part Five.
In 1586, the powerful Tensho Earthquake brought about a temporary halt to Hideyoshi’s campaign to subdue the entire realm. In the aftermath, he had made peace with, then accepted the formal submission of Tokugawa Ieyasu, and now turned his attention to Japan’s southern island, Kyushu. As we’ve looked at in previous posts, the most powerful…
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