There is one definite reason why I bothered myself writing this frustating article, it's because Inuyasha lived in Sengoku Jidai ^o^. I couldn't ignore myself to be idle but doing my best research to know its historical background. The same like when I was so much in love with Rurouni Kenshin, which started my first project. Hopefully this time I could bring sufficient info about Inuyasha's world ^_~. I'd like to dedicate this page for my 2 best fella; Tami-chan and Vita-chan, who've never get bored to support me. I LOVE YOU GIRLS!!!

The Failure of Ashikaga Rule
The Ashikaga family, so powerful under Yoshimitsu around 1400, failed to keep control of the country in the fifteenth century. Disputes between powerful military house were so continuous that for the hundred years from the 1470s no central government existed. This century is called the Sengoku Jidai, best translated as the "period of the country at war". It is easy to overestimate the destruction suffered in the sengoku jidai. True, Kyoto, once "the capital of flowers", was reduced to a burned field, and the appalling loss in metropolitan temples, shrines, palaces, and their treasures fully matched the decline in metropolitan political authority and prestige. Nevertheless, in the country as a whole, new social forces were being released which in time produced a better life for more people.

The weakness of the Ashikaga was revealed fully during the Ounin War (1467-1477), fought through eleven years within the city of Kyoto and in the neighboring districts. This terrible conflict between the Hosokawa family and the Yamana family arose from a dispute over who should control the affairs of the Bakufu at its center in the capital. Yoshimasa, living on the very edge of the fighting, pursued his own private interest, and was no more effective governing in the country than the emperor himself. Both shogun and emperor remained simply symbols of a political unity that was to be the chief casualty of the fighting. As the war dragged on, the great military families realized that fighting in the capital was of less importance than what was happening in the provinces. The troops went home to put down risings, leaving Kyoto burned and looted. However, when those military leaders who had been appointed shugo (constable) by the Ashikaga returned to the provinces they found that the Bakufu no longer had the power to support them. When armed conflicts broke out in the decades after 1477, the shugo had to fend for themselves. Very few succeeded in holding their position against attack by new families (often their own vassals or relations). The Hosokawa, though reduced in power, remained influential, but other families disappeared altogether.

The Three-Headed Dragon; Nobunaga, Hideyoshi and Ieyasu.
After a century of widespread turbulence, Oda Nobunaga (1534 - 1582) and Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1536 - 1598), working to much the same purpose, gradually compelled their fellow daimyo to submit to their political control, taking care to link their fortunes with the name of the emperor. This development marked the end of the era of the country at war (sengoku jidai). A third daimyo, Tokugawa Ieyasu (1546 - 1616), profited most by the reunification. Shortly after 1600, he established the Tokugawa Bakufu which, after a settling-in period, was to govern the country in deep and lasting peace over two centuries.

Warfare was in Oda Nobunaga's blood, as was the case with so many other men of the samurai local-official class. At the age of twenty-five he gained control of his native province. Already he was thinking of extending his influence westwards into the Kyoto region; and the following year, 1560, he won the crucial battle of his career. In what is known as the battle of Okehazama, he made a surprise attack on the camp of Imagawa Yoshimoto with a relatively small body of troops. Imagawa, who was daimyo of Toutoumi and Suruga, also had designs on Kyoto and had invaded Owari on his way to the capital. Nobunaga protected himself from further attacks from the east while he was away in Kyoto by making alliances with Tokugawa Ieyasu (Mikawa province), Takeda Shingen (Kai province), and the powerful Houjou family in Sagami. Having taken these precautions he at last entered Kyoto in 1568 together with a member of Ashikaga family, Yoshiaki, whom he duly had appointed shogun.

The Kinai (Kyoto - Osaka) district was of great value to Nobunaga. If he could keep military control of the capital, then the emperor and shogun would be obliged formally to sanction his schemes for further aggrandizement. Nobunaga soon found, however, that his mere presence in this key area was not enough to reduce it to political obedience, and almost to the end of his life he was occupied with strengthening his hold over it by military means. Ashikaga Yoshiaki resented having no power, and started intriguing against his upstart patron from Owari. Nobunaga, aware of what was going on, had no difficulty in chasing Yoshiaki out of Kyoto when matters came to a head in 1573. The glory of the Ashikaga family, which had long flickered fitfully, was finally extinguished.

Nobunaga realized that the political independence of the Buddhist sects stood between him and national domination. The man whose motto was "Rule the Empire by Force" began his momentous siege of the Shinshuu fortress-temple of Ishiyama Honganji in 1570. Situated on an island in Osaka, it was virtually impregnable so long as the monks could bring in supplies and reinforcements by sea from provinces outside Nobunaga's control. In 1580, after ten weary years of effort, he was at last in position to arrange the surrender of the Ishiyama Honganji through the good offices of the emperor. Its exhausted defenders were allowed to leave peaceably. Twelve months later the emperor intervened again, this time to save the historic Shingon monasteries on Kouyasan (Mount Kouya) from a punitive expedition dispatched by Nobunaga. Once he had quelled his religious opponents in the central provinces, Nobunaga was free to extend his dominion. In the east, in alliance with Ieyasu and the Sagami Houjou, he destroyed the powerful Takeda family domain in Kai in 1581. In a previous campaign against Takeda, at the battle of Nagashino in 1575, Nobunaga used firearms, first introduced by the Portuguese thirty or so years earlier, in a new and deadly fashion (but not as deadly as riffle, yet...). Sustained volleys from the disciplined troops decimated the Takeda cavalry.

The Death of Nobunaga, The Raise of Hideyoshi
In 1581, Nobunaga also sent armies westwards, to do battle with the Mouri family, who ruled all the provinces between Kinai and the western tip of Honshu. These armies were led by two of his best generals, Akechi Mitsuhide and Toyotomi Hideyoshi. The campaigning was inconclusive, and in the summer of 1582, Akechi returned with troops to Kyoto, surrounded the monastery where the unsuspecting Nobunaga was staying, and killed him. Akechi's success was short-lived. Hearing the news of Nobunaga's death, Hideyoshi immediately made peace on favorable terms with the Mouri daimyo, marched his soldiers in the direction of Kyoto at top speed, and destroyed Akechi and his army.

Nobunaga was dead; but Hideyoshi went on to complete his former overlord's plan for unification, and at the same time to leave his own indelible stamp on his country's history. Hideyoshi's was a truly remarkable career. A peasant's son, he became de facto ruler of Japan, corresponding by letter with the emperor of China and the King of Spain on equal terms. Not until the nineteenth century did individuals have another opportunity to rise so far (Yea, Hideyoshi Rules!). Though a seasoned warrior, Hideyoshi seldom missed a chance to talk peace in the interest of avoiding futile loss of life (what a wise guy @_@). He preferred to conquer not by using force but by making a convincing show of it. A characteristic victory was that won in 1582 over the huge Mouri domain. Unable to take the major border stronghold of Takamatsu (modern Okayama Prefecture) by direct assault, the attacking troops were ordered to raise the level of water in its provinces and Shikoku under Hideyoshi's sway. Not to mention his most brilliant feat of arms, in Kyushu (e-mail me if you want to know the detail ^_^).

In 1590, Hideyoshi fought his last battle on Japanese soil, against the Houjou family's castle at Odawara in Sagami. He employed the familiar tactic of surrounding the castle with an overwhelming force and waiting for the inevitable surrender. This time, however, when it was all over, he departed from his usual practice of confirming his opponents in a substantial part of their holdings. The Houjou had given ample opportunity to make a peaceful submission in the years before 1590, but had insultingly refused to do so. Hideyoshi now ordered their leaders to commit seppuku, and handed over entire domain on the rich Kanto plain to Tokugawa Ieyasu who had been his most prominent ally in the Odawara campaign. At the same time, Ieyasu agreed to surrender his ancestral lands in Mikawa and Toutoumi for redistribution among some of Hideyoshi's retainers. By this maneuver Hideyoshi moved the power base of the second most important warlord in Japan into two hundred and forty kilometers farther east, across the Hakone pass and well away from the strategic heartland of the empire in the Kinai district.

The Sword Hunt
Ieyasu's transfer is typical of the way in which Hideyoshi sought to stabilize the existing power structure in what he saw as his own and the national interest. His unification was based neither on outright despotism nor on visionary ideas, but on precedent and a prudent assessment of actualities. The daimyo were not eliminated as a class, although many daimyo families lost territory to Hideyoshi's most capable and trustworthy followers. All daimyo - old and new - were required to swear a solemn oath of allegiance to the emperor, promising at the same time to obey the commands of his regent (i.e. Hideyoshi) "down to the smallest particular."

Hideyoshi also realized that the problem of daimyo allegiance was part of the wider problem of general pacification. Since the end of Heian period (which I probably will explain later) a vast quantity of arms - mainly swords - had been produced in Japan, and these were widely distributed among the population (the situation may be compared to the present-day prevalence of firearms in the US). Internal peace depended on a sweeping domestic disarmament. Hideyoshi enforced this in 1588 with his "sword hunt" decree in which he instructed peasants everywhere to hand over swords and armor to their official superiors. The metal collected would, he announced, be used for the manufacture of a huge statue of Buddha in Kyoto, and so those who obeyed promptly would make things easier for themselves in this and the next world. Defaulters were severely treated by inspectors sent out to supervise the sword hunt, which proved successful in its primary aim of disarming the population. It also marked an important stage in differentiating between the samurai, or warrior vassals, and the peasant masses. Hitherto there had been no sharp distinction, but from then on the large class of samurai-farmers (from whose ranks Hideyoshi himself had come) was force to choose between soldiering and farming; no longer could its member do a bit of both.

The Tragic End of Hideyoshi Rule
Hideyoshi made up his mind that his authority should continue in his own family, but he was dogged by misfortune. He had made his nephew, Hidetsugu, his heir in 1592 because his son had died in infancy two years earlier and he despaired of having more children (Doushite? @_@). Then the following years, his favorite concubine had another son, who was called Hideyori. Delighted with this turn of events, Hideyoshi resolved to make the new baby his appointed successor. To do this, he had to disinherit Hidetsugu. The task was not difficult, as his nephew had earned a reputation for dissipation and cruelty. But Hideyoshi went to extremes against his former heir. In 1959 he ordered him to commit seppuku and then had all his wives and children killed in a public and brutal way (sorry, cannot tell you the details). It has been suggested that Hideyoshi's mind was somewhat affected during these last years of his life. Certainly, his treatment of Hidetsugu's household differs markedly from the generosity he had customarily shown his political foes. Yet the succession problem was a unique one, and the way he handled it cannot really be compared with his attitude towards other weighty matters. Moreover, the problem was virtually insoluble in the condition of the time, because the daimyo were still free to contest national leadership for themselves after Hideyoshi's death, and because the principle that the national leadership should be determined in terms of national, not family, interest was by no means established.

Hideyoshi attempted solution was therefore understandable, but was sadly mistaken. Too much was at stake to leave to an infant - Hidetsugu at any rate had had the merit of being a man in his twenties. Again and again in his dying moments Hideyoshi called on the greatest daimyo to swear support to Hideyori. They swore readily enough, but the fate of Nobunaga's grown-up sons in 1582 and later must have made him realize the uselessness of such promises. Other troubles which clouded the hero's old age were an abortive war against China and increasing anxiety about Christianity (e-mail me for the details, ok?!)

Acknowledgments:
1. Mason, R. H. P. and J. G. Caiger. A History of Japan, Revised Edition: The Fourth Printing. Tuttle Publishing: Boston, Rutland, Vermont, Tokyo. 2001.
2. Papa, thank you for lending me some money to buy "outstanding" books.

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