Chris Perry, Author

Tag: 16th century Japan

  • The Eisho Disturbance

    The Eisho Disturbance

    Last time, we looked at the Meio Coup that saw the Shogun’s kanrei (deputy), Hosokawa Masatomo, take over the government and install a puppet Shogun with himself in effective control. At the end of that post, we also looked at how, despite the coup’s success, Masatomo’s grip on power was far from secure.

    Hosokawa Masatomo, the most powerful man in the realm following the Meio Coup.

    As soon as the dust settled, Masatomo found himself surrounded by problems. Some had been long-standing, violence between powerful clans in the provinces had been a problem for decades, and Shogunate authority outside of Kyoto was tenuous at best.

    Within Kyoto, too, there were enduring rivalries between different factions, sometimes within the same family, all revolving, as it always had, over who would control the throne, or the man (it was always a man) sitting on it. In many ways, Masatomo’s coup can be seen as a continuation of political instability that went back centuries. As long as there had been an Imperial Throne (nearly a thousand years at this point), there had been powerful families vying to control it. That situation hadn’t really changed when the centre of power became the Shogun instead of the Emperor.

    Some of the problems were of Masatomo’s own making, though. He was, but most contemporary accounts describe him as an authoritarian and quite eccentric character. It is easy for us to imagine the Shogun as some all-powerful ruler, but the reality was that there was a considerable amount of power sharing in the capital. This was no democracy, but it was also expected that the powerful clans surrounding the throne would be consulted about government matters and have their seat at the table when it came to running things.

    There had been several examples of powerful families coming to dominate the government, and again, Masatomo was just continuing that trend, but like the families who came before him, centralising all power in one man attracted a lot of hostility from the other clans who now found themselves frozen out.

    The other problem with Masatomo was that he was something of an eccentric iconoclast. A follower of the ascetic Shugendo sect of Buddhism, he lived an austere life, swearing off certain foods, all alcohol and the company of women, though some contemporary sources suggest his aversion to sex wasn’t limited to his male companions, and he was apparently a practitioner of shudo, a kind of ritualised homosexuality that was common amongst Samurai.

    Modern day practitioners of Shugendo, of which Masatomo was a keen adherent.
    By 唐山健志郎 (Kenshiro Karayama) – 唐山健志郎 (Kenshiro Karayama), CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2259089

    Masatomo is supposed to have believed that his religious fervour would allow him to engage in magical feats, such as being able to fly or speak mystical languages. He had more practical eccentricities as well; he would go on long journeys, sometimes alone, and without telling his retainers, meaning that government would effectively come to a halt until he could be found.

    Religious and sexual habits aside, Masatomo also opposed much of the pomp and ceremony surrounding the institutions of government. It is said that he disliked the formal clothing required at certain ceremonies, and the official enthronement of the new Shogun was delayed simply because Masatomo refused to wear the eboshi hat required by tradition.

    A 17th Century depiction of an official wearing the eboshi hat that Masatomo despised.

    Masatomo also had a shockingly (for the time) rational approach to the Imperial Court as well. He is supposed to have opposed the enthronement ceremony of Emperor Go-Kashiwabara on the grounds that, since the Emperor no longer had any real power, there was no point in a grand ceremony. This was technically true, but flew in the face of long-established tradition.

    So a combination of Shogunate weakness, Political problems, and personality issues meant that Masatomo’s position was never strong, and he wouldn’t help matters with some of the decisions he made. Given Masatomo’s apparent aversion to women, he wasn’t able to produce an heir (obviously). This problem wasn’t an uncommon one at the time, and adoption was usually the preferred solution.

    Masatomo, never one to do anything the easy way, adopted three sons, Sumimoto, Sumiyuki, and Takakuni. You may remember, in the period leading up to and including the Onin War, one of the key factors in the instability that gripped the realm was the frequency of internal conflict over clan succession. One of the reasons the Hosokawa Clan had been able to take such a strong position was that they had largely been able to avoid these struggles, with Masatomo succeeding his father relatively smoothly.

    Some contemporary sources suggest that Masatomo’s ultimate plan was to divide the Hosokawa lands between two of these sons, while the third would inherit the position of kanrei and thus real political power. Initially, it seems that Masatomo favoured Sumimoto to succeed him as kanrei, but the fact that all three ‘sons’ came from three different families meant that the succession was now the subject of growing factional rivalries.

    Hosokawa Sumitomo, Masatomo’s choice as heir.

    This situation was precarious, but held together by the sheer force of Masatomo’s will. With power centralised in his hands, he could exert enormous control over what remained of the Shogunate government and its nominal loyalists. This way of doing things required him to be alive, however, which he no longer was after June 23rd, 1507, when he was assassinated.

    The assassins were apparently partisans of Sumiyuki, favouring him as kanrei over Sumitomo, who they also attacked at the same time as his father, though Sumitomo was able to escape with the help of his supporters, led by members of the Miyoshi Clan (a name that will become important later).

    The fact that Sumitomo survived was a problem for Sumiyuki, especially after he fled to Takakuni, the third brother, who agreed to support him and march against Sumiyuki. There was a series of blood battles between the rival factions until Sumitomo’s supporters, led by Miyoshi Yukinaga, took his final refuge at Yushoken, forcing Sumiyuki to commit suicide.

    An image depicting Sumiyaki at the moment of his death.
    Musuketeer.3 – 投稿者自身による著作物, CC 表示-継承 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=24893374による

    It turns out that your enemy’s enemy isn’t always your friend, though, and it wasn’t long before Takakuni and Sumitomo were at each other’s throats. The problem stemmed from Sumitomo’s supporters amongst the Miyoshi Clan, whose strength and growing overbearingness earned them many jealous rivals. Then, in late 1507, former Shogun Yoshitane (who had fled after the Meio Coup) returned to the scene.

    Yoshitane, after fleeing into exile, had been supported by the Ouchi Clan based in modern-day Yamaguchi Prefecture, and now they raised their banners in support of his march on Kyoto. Although not strong enough to take the city at first, shortly after the new year, Takakuni became the focal point for anti-Miyoshi feeling and chose to throw in his lot with the old Shogun.

    This combined force attacked Kyoto and took the city in early April, forcing Sumitomo and Shogun Yoshizumi to flee. Takakuni was recognised as the new head of the Hosokawa Clan, and Yoshitane was reinstated as Shogun, beginning his second reign.

    Sumitomo and Yoshizumi were down but not out, however, and what followed was more than 20 years of strife that is collectively called the Hosokawa Civil War, or Hosokawa Rebellion. This conflict had all the hallmarks of the internal violence that had wracked multiple clans throughout this period, but wrought on a massive scale, involving not just the Hosokawa but their vassals, retainers, and the Shogunate itself.

    Sources
    https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%B0%B8%E6%AD%A3%E3%81%AE%E9%8C%AF%E4%B9%B1
    https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E7%B4%B0%E5%B7%9D%E9%AB%98%E5%9B%BD
    https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E4%B8%89%E5%A5%BD%E4%B9%8B%E9%95%B7
    https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E7%B4%B0%E5%B7%9D%E6%BE%84%E4%B9%8B
    https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E7%B4%B0%E5%B7%9D%E6%94%BF%E5%85%83

  • The Power in the Provinces Part Two

    The Power in the Provinces Part Two

    Western Japan

    Western Japan was, much like the Kanto, away from the centre of power, but still close enough to be a perpetual source of trouble.

    The Ouchi

    The mon of the Ouchi Clan
    By Mukai – No machine-readable source provided. Own work assumed (based on copyright claims)., CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7845833

    At the end of the 15th Century, the Ouchi Clan were one of the strongest in Japan. Based at Yamaguchi, in the furthest west of ‘The West’, they were in an enviable position. Their centre of power was far enough away from Kyoto that they were often spared the worst of the destruction, and the city of Yamaguchi, positioned as it was, near the coast, was a prime location for getting involved in the trade with China and Korea.

    These close links to mainland Asia go back into the mists of time. Unlike many other clans, the Ouchi did not claim descent from one of the ‘Imperial’ Clans (Fujiwara, Minamoto, or Taira). Instead, they claimed as their ancestor a Korean prince, Prince Imseong, although the long years involved make a definitive link impossible to prove.

    During the Nanbokucho Period, the Ouchi proved to be staunch supporters of the Northern Court and the Ashikaga Shoguns, earning them rich rewards, and by the time of the Onin War, they had extended their control into Northern Kyushu, officially on behalf of the Shogun, but effectively ruling their little empire independently.

    During the Onin War, the Ouchi sided with the Yamana Clan and the Western Army. In fact, after the decline of the Yamana during the war, it was the Ouchi who stepped forward and played the leading role in securing Western military victories in the West. When the war ended, the Ouchi regained control of their former territories in northern Kyushu, and would continue to be one of the leading powers at the dawn of the 16th Century.

    Their links to international trade continued during this period as well, in fact, during the mid-16th Century, they would prove to be one of the key clans in what became called “Nanban trade”, literally the “Southern Barbarian Trade”, the ‘Barbarians’ in this case, being the Portuguese, who arrived in Japan in the 1540s.

    Despite their wealth and power, the Ouchi would eventually become overstretched. Facing powerful clans in Kyushu and nearer to home, they would initially see success, crushing the Shoni Clan of Kyushu in 1536, and facing the Amago Clan of Izumo Province in 1541. An initial victory over the Amago was followed by a serious defeat in which the Ouchi clan’s heir was killed.

    Ouchi Yoshitaka, who oversaw the decline of his clan.

    After this, the head of clan, Yoshitaka, began neglecting affairs of government, and the Ouchi would enter a period of steep decline. In 1551, Yoshitaka was killed in a rebellion, and over the next five years, the Ouchi’s once expansive domains were chipped away, as rivals took advantage of the chaos, and even formerly loyal vassals (most notably the Mori Clan) went their own way, often violently.

    The Ouchi would enter terminal decline from this point. There was a brief attempt at a restoration in 1569, but it was crushed by the Mori, and the original Ouchi Clan ceased to exist. A supposed branch of the family, the Yamaguchi Clan, would survive as rulers of the Ushiku Domain, in modern Ibaraki Prefecture, but they appear to have died out in the male line in 1991.

    The Mori

    The mon of the Mori Clan.
    Kashiwamon – 投稿者自身による著作物, CC 表示-継承 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=91163213による

    Like the Hojo in the Kanto Region, the Mori were arguably the most successful clan based in Western Japan. Despite this, the origins of the clan are actually in Sagami Province, close to the modern city of Atsugi in Kanagawa Prefecture. From there, the clan would branch off (as they always seem to) into several different ‘Mori’ Clans, but the one we are focusing on here is the ‘Aki Mori’ Clan, which came to be based in Aki Province in what is today Hiroshima Prefecture.

    During the period of the Kamakura Shogunate, the Mori clan remained largely aloof, and when the Emperor Go-Daigo overthrew the Kamakura, the Mori did not get involved. This actually worked against them as Go-Daigo adopted a “With me or against me” approach, and the Mori temporarily saw their territories forfeit.

    This backfired pretty spectacularly when, just three years into the “Kenmu Restoration”, Emperor Go-Daigo himself was overthrown by the Ashikaga Family, leading to the establishment of the eponymous Shogunate, and the Mori (who had helped the Ashikaga) being restored to their lands.

    Much like every other major Samurai family, the Mori broke up into several branch families that would often end up fighting each other. Their situation in the mid-15th Century was further weakened by the presence of the powerful Ouchi and Amago Clans in the region.

    Through the late 15th Century, the Mori would find themselves caught between these two powers, but in the 16th Century, several savvy political marriages and a few adoptions improved their position considerably, and they would eventually rise to eclipse their former masters, the Ouchi, entirely.

    Mori Motonari, the man who would lead his clan to the height of their power.

    Throughout the Sengoku Period, the Mori would become the power in the West in the same way the Hojo were the power in the East. When Oda Nobunaga (him again!) drove the last Ashikaga Shogun out of Kyoto in 1576, he sought protection from the Mori, who would remain Nobunaga’s chief rivals in the West until his death (spoilers) in 1582.

    The Mori would make peace with Nobunaga’s successor, Toyotomi Hideyoshi and remain a major power, eventually establishing their base at Hiroshima. However, the final battles of the Sengoku period would see the Mori choose the losing side, and they were eventually reduced to just two provinces, which became known as the Choshu Domain.

    There they would remain, implacably opposed to the new government, but far enough away from the capital to be too much trouble to get rid of. During the Meiji Restoration in the 19th Century, it was Choshu, and the Mori clan, who would play a leading role in the modernisation of Japan, but that’s a story for another time.

    The Mori family continued through this period and into the modern era, with the current head being Mori Motohide, who works for Hitachi Steel Works, and became the family head in 2020.

    The Amago

    The mon of the Amago Clan

    The Amago were a branch of another clan, the Kyogoku, who were themselves descended from the Sasaki Clan, whose progenitor was a son of the Emperor Uda, who ruled in the late 9th century.

    Emperor Uda, who ruled from 887-897. The Amago claimed him as their illustrious ancestor.

    The Amago Clan themselves were a relative latecomer; their direct ancestor (the ‘first’ Lord Amago) was Takahisa, who took the name Amago for the area (near Kyoto) where he had his manor. In the early 15th Century, he was appointed as the deputy governor (shugo-dai) of Izumo Province (in modern Shimane Prefecture) on behalf of the Kyogoku Clan, who were obliged to reside in Kyoto.

    We’ve discussed in previous posts how the Shogun’s policy of demanding that Shugo reside in Kyoto led to the rise of independently minded deputies; well, the Amago are one of them. Although officially only deputies, the Amago would take advantage of the chaos of the Onin War to consolidate their power, and by the time the war ended, they were in effective control.

    When the Kyogoku line became extinct in 1514, with the death of the last lord, the Amago graduated from de facto to actual lords of Izumo, and it would be there that they based their power. The rise of the Amago was initially opposed by the Ouchi, and throughout the early 16th Century, they would engage in something of a hostile coexistence, neither side quite able to overcome the other, with the Ouchi focusing on the west, whilst the Amago had their eyes to the east.

    The Amago would eventually rise to be the masters of eight provinces in the region, but in the 1540s, the rise of the Mori clan would lead to the decline of the Ouchi and directly threaten the Amago. The conflict between these clans would drag on for nearly 40 years, but the Mori would eventually prevail, with the surviving members of the Amago family serving as retainers for the Mori throughout the Edo Period.

    The family itself would survive until 1940, when the last head of the clan passed away without an heir.

    The Akamatsu

    The mon of the Akamatsu Clan
    By お茶飲む人 – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=53365103

    Unlike many of the other clans we’ve been looking at, the Akamatsu Clan were a family that peaked early, and then never really recovered. The exact origins of the clan are disputed, with some sources suggesting they descended from the Minamoto Clan, whilst others refute this, leading to some confusion.

    What is not disputed is that the Akamatsu Clan originally supported the Emperor Go-Daigo during the short-lived Kenmu Restoration, earning Harima Province for their trouble, only for the province to be forfeited shortly afterwards during Go-Daigo’s controversial “Alienate everyone as quickly as possible” policy, which saw him overthrown by the Ashikaga Shogunate after just three years.

    The Akamatsu, thoroughly alienated as they were, sided with the Ashikaga and had Harima Province restored to them after their victory, and the clan would be steadfast loyalists of the new Shogunate, at least for a while. The Akamatsu remained faithful, but in 1429, a serious peasant revolt in their home province badly weakened them, and not long after that, the Shogun, Yoshinori, came to the throne and proved to be an effective, but extremely paranoid ruler.

    The exact reasons for the so-called Kakitsu Rebellion are unclear, but members of the Akamatsu Clan assassinated the Shogun in 1441, after which they raised an army only to be crushed by the Shogunate army shortly afterwards.

    Branches of the family would survive, and after conspicuous service during the Onin War, the Akamatsu were actually restored to control of Harima Province. For a while, things were looking up. By 1488, the head of the clan, Masanori, had established control of three provinces, and there was every indication that the Akamatsu would enter the 15th century as one of the major players.

    You’ve probably already guessed that that isn’t what happened, though, and you’d be right, good on you for paying attention. Masanori died suddenly in 1496, and his heir was just four years old, meaning that the clan fell into the hands of so-called ‘Elders’ who were supposed to rule until the little lord came of age.

    Akamatsu Masanori, who might have held things together for his clan, if he’d lived.

    This might have worked in more peaceful times, but in the early days of the Sengoku Jidai, it led to chaos. Before long, different factions of the clan were fighting each other, and the Akamatsu entered a period of steady decline. Even after the lord, Yoshimura, came of age, he couldn’t change the situation.

    It got so bad that Yoshimura was first forced to abdicate in 1521 and was then assassinated shortly afterwards. His son, Harumasa, was young and easier to control, which might be why the ‘elders’ favoured him as ruler.

    There was a brief resurgence in 1531, when Harumasa managed to establish his own rule, but years of infighting had effectively bled the Akamatsu dry, and in 1537, the neighbouring Amago Clan invaded and conquered the Akamatsu’s home province of Harima.

    The Akamatsu would return to Harima, but they were never able to establish control of the whole province ever again, and throughout the 16th century, their power was gradually eroded away, until 1568, when they made the somewhat short-sighted decision to resist Oda Nobunaga, who promptly crushed them and took Harima for himself.

    Branches of the family would survive in one form or another, but they never ruled large territories again. In the modern era, a descendant of the clan, Akamatsu Yoshinori, served in several high positions in the Imperial Navy, eventually being granted the title of Baron. His descendants are still going today, although there’s not a lot of information available online.

    Sources
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%8Cuchi_clan
    https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%A4%A7%E5%86%85%E6%B0%8F
    https://reichsarchiv.jp/%E5%AE%B6%E7%B3%BB%E3%83%AA%E3%82%B9%E3%83%88/%E7%89%9B%E4%B9%85%E5%B1%B1%E5%8F%A3%E6%B0%8F
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C5%8Dri_clan
    https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%AF%9B%E5%88%A9%E6%B0%8F
    https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%AF%9B%E5%88%A9%E5%85%83%E6%95%AC
    https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%AF%9B%E5%88%A9%E5%85%83%E6%A0%84
    https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%B0%BC%E5%AD%90%E6%B0%8F
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akamatsu_clan
    https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E8%B5%A4%E6%9D%BE%E6%B0%8F