Chris Perry, Author

Tag: Japanese feudal warfare

  • The Odawara Campaign

    The Odawara Campaign

    Just a quick note from me: Due to real-life changes with workload, I’ve decided to reduce the number of blog posts to one per week. Going forward, the blog will be posted on Fridays.

    In 1589, the Hojo openly defied Toyotomi Hideyoshi’s peace orders, prompting the new regent to declare them in rebellion against the throne. (Side note, Hideyoshi, as the son of a peasant, couldn’t be declared Shogun, so he took the title of Kampaku, officially the chief advisor of the Emperor, but in reality, the political master of Japan.)

    Toyotomi Hideyoshi

    There were some final (and quite half-hearted) attempts at negotiation, but Hideyoshi’s position was clear: either the Hojo would submit, or they would be destroyed. The Hojo, an old, proud, and powerful clan, refused to bow, and by 1590, Hideyoshi had mustered an army of some 200,000 men to force the issue.

    Tokugawa Ieyasu, whose lands lay between the Hojo and Hideyoshi, initially sought to mediate, as his daughter was married to Hojo Ujinao, the nominal lord of the clan. These attempts failed, however, and Ieyasu threw in his lot with Hideyoshi, making preparations in his lands for the movement of thousands of troops advancing on the Kanto.

    The Kanto is surrounded by mountains and, at least in theory, very easy to defend, as there are only a limited number of passes through which a large body of troops can pass. The Hojo knew this and fortified as many of these passes as they could. Unfortunately, they were now being attacked on practically all sides. As well as the Tokugawa-Toyotomi force coming from the east, they also face an army sent along the Nakasendo road to attack Usui Pass in the north, and a force dispatched from the North-East would advance into Musashi Province and attack the castles there. Even the ocean to the south wasn’t open to the Hojo, as a naval force attacked Nagahama Castle in Izu.

    The site of Nagahama Castle today.

    The main blow would come from the west, however, as Hideyoshi led his army in an attack on the apparently formidable fortress of Yamanaka. Before the outbreak of hostilities, the Hojo had dispatched a garrison of 4000 men to the castle and set about improving its fortifications. Unfortunately, this work was not completed by the time Hideyoshi’s army arrived, and, despite its reputation as the “gateway” to the Kanto, Yamanaka fell in a single morning, despite brave resistance from the overmatched garrison.

    Other castles in the area were taken or besieged, bottling up their garrisons and preventing them from supporting the main attack on Odawara, which itself came under siege in early May. Odawara itself was an enormous castle, and despite the size of Hideyoshi’s army, there was no serious attempt to take it by storm. Instead, the siege camp became something of a small town, with everything from prostitutes to theatrical troupes plying their trade amongst the besiegers, whilst the Hojo defenders were often obliged to sleep on the battlements in their armour, for fear of a sudden attack.

    With Odawara now firmly under siege, Hideyoshi was confident enough to dispatch forces to support the campaigns in other parts of Hojo territory, with many of the castles falling with surprising speed. This was largely due to the fact that the Hojo had mobilised the vast majority of their forces for the defence of Odawara itself, leaving most of the outlying castles only lightly defended. When faced with the overwhelming strength of the forces arrayed against them, most of these castles surrendered immediately, or else were taken after only brief resistance.

    The layout of Odawara Castle.

    There is some evidence that the speed at which many of these castles fell led Hideyoshi to criticise his generals in the region, suggesting that taking so many castles so easily could not be considered a military achievement.

    The ease of the advance wasn’t true everywhere, however. At Iwatsuki (in modern Saitama), a force of 20,000 was held up by the defenders for several days despite a numerical advantage of 10-1. When the castle fell, Hideyoshi ordered that all the fighting men be killed, and the women and children taken prisoner. Instead, the commanding general, Asano Nagamasa, had already agreed to spare the surviving warriors, the women and the children as part of the surrender agreement.

    Meanwhile, the Siege at Hachigata Castle (also in Saitama) concerned Hideyoshi enough that he sent a sternly worded letter to Nagamasa, ordering him to focus his efforts there. Nagamasa did so, and a combined army of some 35,000 men attacked Hachigata, forcing the garrison to surrender. Once again, arrangements were made to spare the garrison and non-combatants, though this time it doesn’t seem to have been in defiance of Hideyoshi’s orders.

    The site of Hachigata Castle as they appear today.
    Taketarou – 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=1273726による

    While most castles were taken by force, negotiation, or a combination of the two, some held out, either through the skill of their defenders or, as was the case at Tatebayashi Castle, by apparently divine intervention. The castle was apparently founded with the help of a grateful fox, who rewarded the lord of the castle for rescuing its baby by marking out the foundations of the fortress in an area of swampy ground.

    This soggy position made the castle very difficult to approach, and when it came under siege, the attackers laid down logs across the swamp to create a roadway to the castle walls. With their pathway secure, the besiegers got a good night’s rest and prepared for a dawn attack. When the sun rose, they found that the roadway had disappeared completely, something put down to the fox spirit protecting the castle rather than the possibility that the logs had just sunk.

    Another famous, watery siege was that of Oshi Castle. Surrounded on two sides by rivers, Oshi was besieged by forces led by Ishida Mitsunari (who will become very important). Much ike Tatebayashi, Oshi’s watery position made it difficult to overcome. Mitsunari (apparently on written instructions from Hideyoshi) set about building an enormous levee surrounding the fort, forcing the water from the two rivers to inundate the castle and flood out its defenders.

    The levee (Ishida Tsutsumi) as it appears today in modern Konosu, Saitama.
    京浜にけ – 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=100409931による

    To the besiegers’ surprise, the waters didn’t actually flood the castle; instead, they gave it the appearance of floating on the water, leading it to be referred to as the “Floating Castle” (this is the title of a manga and its later 2012 adaptation, both about the siege). Following several days of heavy rain, the levee broke (or was sabotaged in some sources), flooding the siege camp and killing up to 200 warriors.

    The failure of this approach would seriously damage Mitsunari’s military reputation (some sources point out that he was just following Hideyoshi’s instructions, but the damage was done), and the siege was eventually taken over by Asano Nagamasa. An all-out assault on the castle was impossible due to the effects of the flooding, which had turned the ground into an impassable quagmire, and Oshi has the distinction of being one of the few fortresses that held out until the end of the Odawara Campaign, before eventually surrendering nearly 2 weeks after the fall of Odawara.

    Odawara, as one of the most formidable castles in the realm, hadn’t come under direct attack, but the siege had been dragging on for weeks, and news from other parts of the Kanto was almost universally bad, sapping the already fragile morale of the defenders. Shortly after the siege began, the loyalty of the Date Clan was still in doubt, and the Hojo held out hope that they might receive aid from outside the Kanto. Date forces indeed entered the Kanto, but in support of Hideyoshi, ending any hope of relief.

    Date Masamune. His decision to support Hideyoshi ended any hope the Hojo had of outside support.

    Though no general assault was launched, there were a few small-scale skirmishes and sporadic gunfire, and by early summer, signs of a breakdown in morale were appearing on both sides, with an increase of desertion amongst the besiegers, and the ever-present possibility of defection from the Hojo, especially as news of the rapid fall of other castles arrived.

    Negotiations began early in the siege, largely facilitated by Tokugawa Ieyasu, Hojo Ujinao’s father-in-law. Rumours of a peace agreement spread almost immediately, and Ujinao’s grandmother and step-mother (Ujimasa’s second wife) both died mysteriously on the same day. Historians generally believe they committed suicide, either in protest of a peace deal or in prospect of one.

    News of the fall of other fortresses was followed by the public display of the heads of those killed, and then the wives and children of the survivors outside the castle walls, further depleting the defenders’ morale. Towards the end of the siege, the appearance of Ishigakiyama Castle, built in just a few months, on a mountain not far from Odawara, effectively ended what remained of the Hojo’s will to resist.

    Odawara Castle as seen from Ishigakiyama.

    A side note here, there is a popular legend that Ishigakiyama Castle was ‘built in one night’, which was clearly impossible, with later sources suggesting that rather than literally being built overnight, the castle was instead constructed behind a forest, which was itself cut down overnight, giving the impression that the castle had appeared from nowhere. Modern scholars doubt that either version is true, as Ishigakiyama is easily visible from Odawara, and though the castle was certainly built unusually quickly, it is now thought to have been constructed in full view of the Hojo, to highlight the impossibility of their situation.

    After this, the besiegers made a point of keeping up a light but continuous rain of gunfire on the castle, intending to grind down their morale, and when a final, furious night attack from the castle was repelled in August, the writing was on the wall, and a delegation from the Hojo was sent out to offer the seppuku of Hojo Ujinao and the surrender of the castle, in exchange for the lives of the remaining garrison.

    Hideyoshi accepted the surrender of the castle on the condition that all the remaining senior Hojo, Ujinao, his father Ujimasa, and uncle Ujiteru, commit seppuku, and that the provinces of Musashi, Sagami, and Izu (the Hojo heartlands) be given up. Further resistance was now impossible, and the Hojo agreed. Tokugawa Ieyasu successfully intervened for the life of his son-in-law, Ujinao, but he would fall sick (possibly with smallpox) and die by the end of the year.

    Hojo Ujinao.

    In the aftermath of the fall of Odawara, the Kanto would come under the control of Tokugawa Ieyasu, who had previously agreed to trade his three home provinces for the five of the Kanto, making his new base at Edo Castle, the site of the modern Imperial Palace in Tokyo. In the long-term, this would prove to be a genius move on Ieyasu’s part, but for now, the man who came out on top was Toyotomi Hideyoshi.

    With the Hojo defeated, there were no longer any serious rivals to his rule. For the first time in more than a century, the realm was united under a single, undisputed leader, who set about ensuring it would never again fall into chaos.

    The situation after the fall of Odawara. No more division, no more chaos, at least on paper.
    By Alvin Lee – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=39214210

    Hideyoshi’s conquest of Odawara marked the end of the second phase of Japan’s reunification. Next week, we’ll take a step back to look at another name we’ve mentioned a lot, Oda Nobunaga, the first of the great unifiers.

    Sources
    https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%83%A3%E7%84%A1%E4%BA%8B%E4%BB%A4
    https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%B1%B1%E4%B8%AD%E5%9F%8E
    https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%B0%8F%E7%94%B0%E5%8E%9F%E5%BE%81%E4%BC%90
    https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E7%9F%B3%E5%9E%A3%E5%B1%B1%E5%9F%8E
    https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%BF%8D%E5%9F%8E%E3%81%AE%E6%88%A6%E3%81%84
    https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%BF%8D%E5%9F%8E
    https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E7%9F%B3%E7%94%B0%E5%A0%A4
    https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E9%A4%A8%E6%9E%97%E5%9F%8E
    https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%B2%A9%E6%A7%BB%E5%9F%8E
    https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%B5%85%E9%87%8E%E9%95%B7%E6%94%BF
    https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E9%89%A2%E5%BD%A2%E5%9F%8E
    https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E9%9F%AE%E5%B1%B1%E5%9F%8E
    https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E9%95%B7%E6%B5%9C%E5%9F%8E_(%E4%BC%8A%E8%B1%86%E5%9B%BD)
    https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%9D%BE%E4%BA%95%E7%94%B0%E5%9F%8E
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyotomi_Hideyoshi
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Odawara_(1590)


  • The Onin War

    The Onin War

    As we discussed last time, Japan in the 1460s was a chaotic place. Rival clans engaged in bloody feuds with each other, and it wasn’t uncommon for members of the same families to take up arms against each other in disputes over who was really in charge, taking sibling rivalry to a whole new level.

    By this time, endemic warfare was just a part of life in Japan.

    In the centre of this chaos was a Shogun who was so weak he might as well not have existed, and when the violence inevitably reached Kyoto, there was little he could do to stop it.

    The exact origins of the Onin War are disputed, but the main rivals were the Yamana and Hosokawa Clans, arguably the two most powerful clans of their day, with both playing key roles in the government and having control of vast swathes of land, and the wealth, manpower, and allegiances that went along with it.

    Throughout the 1450s and 60s, the Yamana and Hosokawa Clans had been engaged in something of a ‘Cold War’ in which they supported rival factions in numerous proxy wars around Japan, most importantly, the ongoing civil war within the Hatakeyama Clan.

    In January 1467, Yamana supported Hatakeyama forces attacked those of the Hosokawa at the Battle of Goryo Shrine (sometimes just called the Battle of Goryo). Though the battle resulted in a Yamana victory, the intervention of the Shogun brought an end to the immediate hostilities, and both Yamana and Hosokawa partisans remained in the capital.

    The marker at Kamigoryo Shrine in Kyoto, showing the spot where the Onin War broke out.

    It has been speculated that both side were willing to let the Shogun mediate because neither of them was ready for all out war, because through early Spring, forces gathered in and around Kyoto, until May of that year, when it is said in some (probably exaggerated) sources that there were more than 270,000 warriors present, with the Hosokawa having a significant advantage in numbers (160,000-110,000).

    Though the Yamana had secured an advantage after Goryo and controlled the Shogun, the Hosokawa did not sit idly by. Their leaders issued orders and summons of their own, and set about raiding Yamana/Shogunate supply lines, and literally burning bridges.

    Due to the location of their relative bases in Kyoto, the Hosokawa and their allies became known as the Eastern Army, and the Yamana and theirs were called the Western Army, and it is by these names that we’ll refer to them going forward.

    Tensions finally boiled over in late May 1467, when forces of the Eastern Army launched a dawn attack against the Western forces around the Shogun’s palace, driving them away, occupying the palace, and bringing the Shogun under their control.

    A scene from later in the war, depicting just how chaotic the battlefield could be.

    Shortly after this victory, Ashikaga Yoshimi (the Shogun’s brother, and still heir) was declared commander in chief, and the Shogun himself handed over an official banner to the Eastern Army, proclaiming them to be the official army of the Shogun, effectively branding the Western army rebels.

    Despite their setback, the Western forces regrouped and attacked Kyoto in August, driving Yoshimi and his supporters out of the city and establishing control for themselves. It is at this point that the Western Army stopped deferring to any Shogunate officials and instead began issuing orders signed by a ‘junta’ of their most senior generals.

    Further attempts by the Western army to press their advantage failed, and several battles throughout September and October ended in bloody stalemate. In December, the Emperor issued a decree stripping all Western generals of their formal Imperial titles in an attempt to further delegitimise their cause; however, it had no practical effect, and as 1467 came to an end, the Western Army was in control of Kyoto, but the war was a stalemate.

    Throughout early 1468, there were sporadic outbursts of fighting in and around Kyoto, leaving large areas of the city in ruins, with the two sides gaining and losing ground in return, until the capital they had been so eagerly fighting over was no longer a prize worth having.

    In the summer of that year, Yoshimi, who had been in hiding away from Kyoto, was persuaded to return to the capital by his brother, the Shogun. This reconciliation was short-lived, however, as it was becoming clear that the Shogun now supported his (still infant) son, Yoshihisa, as heir. The key leaders of the Eastern Army, too, were behind Yoshihisa, and so Yoshimi fled to Mt Hiei, where, in November, messengers arrived from the Western Army, declaring him to be the ‘new Shogun’. From then on, Western Forces began issuing formal declarations from the ‘Shogun’, Yoshimi, although in reality, the generals remained in control, and Yoshimi was effectively isolated on Mt Hiei.

    By early 1469, the conflict had spread to Kyushu and the Kanto as well, where nominally Western and Eastern forces would fight it out in localised episodes of the wider conflict. In reality, however, the complete breakdown in central authority meant that these forces had no loyalty to anyone but themselves, and this fighting is often considered to be the start of the Sengoku Jidai or “Age of the Country at War.”

    As 1469 dragged on, the main forces around Kyoto were exhausted. The capital was a ruin, and the Shogunate’s power, already tenuous, had ceased to exist entirely. There had been many reasons for the outbreak of war, but the main one had been control of the Shogunate; now that there was no real Shogunate to control, neither side had much motivation to continue fighting.

    Rival forces loot Kyoto as the city burns around them. By the end of the Onin War, Kyoto was a ruin.
    Docsubster – 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=63970510による

    As Machiavelli said, though “Wars begin when you will, but they do not end when you please,” and the Eastern and Western forces were now discovering how true that was. Although superficially a conflict over the Shogunate, by 1470, factions on both sides had begun working for themselves. There were numerous internal conflicts, feuds, and defections, and by 1471, there were several clans that had switched sides, and some that had done so more than once.

    In 1472, there was a serious effort to make peace, with the leaders of the Yamana and Hosokawa clans (the originators of the feud) agreeing, in principle, to return to the antebellum situation. These terms were unpopular with other factions, however, many of whom had gained significant territories as a result of the war. The head of the Yamana Clan even went so far as to attempt suicide, in a move that historians have suggested shows the extent of his desire to find a settlement, but it did no good, and the fighting dragged on.

    Yamana Sozen, head of the Yamana Clan, whose attempted suicide is supposed to have shown how sincere he was about forging peace.
    By Mt0616 – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=99587678

    At the Shogunate court, a priest commented:

    “The affairs of the nation were being handled, the maids were planning (all the politics of the nation were being planned by Tomiko, a woman), the Shogun (Yoshimasa) was drinking sake, and the feudal lords were wearing dog hats (a reference to a kind of hat worn during mounted archery displays) . It was as if the world was at peace.”

    This quote gives us the impression of a court completely out of touch with the wider world, and indeed, other sources state that Yoshimasa’s drinking was no mere social tipple; he would drink to excess, and it was said that the Emperor got into the habit of joining him, further eroding the respect and prestige of whatever government remained.

    In March and May 1473, first the Yamana, then the Hosokawa Clan heads died, and a new generation took their place. Also in that year, Shogun Yoshimasa retired as Shogun, handing the title over to his nine-year-old son, Yoshihisa, whilst keeping the actual power for himself.

    Peace was finally agreed between the two main protagonists in April 1473, but the war didn’t come to an immediate end; defections and skirmishing continued, and it wasn’t until 1477 that the Western Army was formally disbanded. In November of that year, the Shogunate held a formal celebration, announcing the restoration of peace.

    Despite eleven years of Civil War, very little had actually been achieved. Yoshimasa had remained Shogun and handed the title to his son, Yoshihisa. The rival claimant, Yoshimi, had fled into exile but was formally pardoned in 1478, along with most of those who had supported him.

    Early in the war, the Eastern forces had been granted a banner from the Shogunate, effectively declaring themselves the legitimate party, whilst their Western enemies were branded rebels. In the wake of their victory, then, you might have expected the Eastern leadership to seek ‘justice’ (or more likely, revenge) against the Westerners.

    So why didn’t it happen?

    The answer is fairly simple: the Eastern Army, now just the Shogunate, was too weak. Eleven years of Civil War had resulted in nothing but fatally weakening both sides, and even though they were victorious, no one amongst the Shogun’s supporters had the strength to mete out any kind of justice.

    Ashikaga Yoshihisa, nominally Shogun at this point, but far too weak to actually exercise his power.

    This weakness is best seen in the fact that, despite a formal peace agreement, the fighting didn’t end. Kyoto was a blackened ruin, and the formerly great clans were exhausted, but in the provinces, the war went on, and on, and on.

    Though it would not be called the Sengoku Jidai until much later, the Onin War brought about a period of anarchy that would last for more than 120 years, and the Ashikaga Shoguns would never hold any real authority outside of Kyoto, despite some brief resurgences in the late 15th century.

    It wasn’t just the Shogunate that was weakened; however, many of the shugo, regional lords, had committed considerable resources to the fighting, expending blood and treasure in pursuit of their goals, only to find themselves with little to show for it. In the 1480s, the system of shugo-in, the policy of requiring the lords to remain in Kyoto, formally broke down, and the shugo returned to their provinces, where some were able to restore their wealth and power, but many others became the first victims of gekokujo, (lit. lower rules/overthrows high) in which deputies of nominally lower rank were able to overthrow their masters, a phenomenon that would become common in the century ahead.

    Kyoto itself was also left as a practical ruin by the end of the fighting. The expense of restoring the city and the fact that the Shogun and his wife (Tomiko) were seen as embezzling huge sums of money led to outbreaks of rebellion in the 1480s and only served to further erode what little remained of the Shogun’s authority and prestige.

    The Onin War also foreshadowed several developments of the Sengoku Jidai, especially the end of the reliance on Samurai-only armies. The Samurai as a class had once monopolised war, but they were too few to man the much larger armies required in the 15th Century and later. This led to the rise of the Ashigaru, or Foot Soldiers. Originally peasant levies, the Ashigaru would evolve into something that could be recognised as professional soldiery, and they would play a key role in the wars to come, with one of their number, a man who would eventually be known as Toyotomi Hideyoshi, rising to a position of supreme power a century later.

    Sources
    https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%BF%9C%E4%BB%81%E3%81%AE%E4%B9%B1
    https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E8%B6%B3%E5%88%A9%E7%BE%A9%E5%B0%9A
    https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E8%B6%B3%E5%88%A9%E7%BE%A9%E8%A6%96
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashikaga_Yoshimasa
    https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E8%B6%B3%E5%88%A9%E7%BE%A9%E6%94%BF