total war™ and the official expansion pack

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Manual Cover - SHOGUN TOTAL WAR GOLD EDITION
AVAILABLE NOW
SHOGUN: TOTAL WAR™
OFFICIAL EXPANSION PACK,
MONGOL INVASION
INCLUDES
AND THE
®
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SEGA Europe Ltd, 27 Great West Road, Brentford, Middlesex, TW8 9BW.
™
®
CONTIENT
SHOGUN: TOTAL WAR™
OFFICIELLE
MONGOL INVASION
ET L'EXTENSION
UND DAS
ENTHÄLT SHOGUN: TOTAL WAR™
OFFIZIELLE MONGOL INVASION
ERWEITERUNGSPAKET
Introduction ......................2
1: A History of Japan ........6
4: Three Samurai
Campaigns ..............................80
Early Japan ............................ 7
A Tactical Revolution ..........81
The Rise of the Samurai ...... 8
The Battles of Oda Nobunaga,
1560-1575 ..........................82
The Gempei War ................10
The Battles of Toyotomi
Hideyoshi, 1582-1590 ........89
The Early Shoguns ..............11
Sengoku:
The Country At War ..........12
The Battles of Tokugawa Ieyasu,
1564-1600 ..........................94
The Last Shogunate ............28
5: The Mongols ............101
History In The Game ..........29
Who were the Mongols? ......101
Temujin ................................102
Kublai Khan ..........................106
The Invasion of Japan ..........109
The Mongol Army ................113
Mongol Military Units in Shogun:
Total War ..............................118
The Daimyo In Shogun:
Total War ............................30
2: The Samurai ........................34
Bushido:
The Way of the Warrior......35
Arms & Armour ................39
Samurai Armies ..................46
Army units ..........................50
Castles & Siege Warfare ....58
Artillery In Japan ................59
Naval Forces In Japan ........60
Strategic Units In Shogun:
Total War ............................60
Credits ..................................120
Licence ..................................121
Warranty ..............................123
Product Support....................123
3: THE LAND OF THE
DAIMYO ..................................64
Rebellions, Peasant
Revolts & Ronin ................67
Military Buildings in Shogun:
Total War ..........................70
1
The game has been designed and programmed to think like the daimyo and follow the
ideas of Sun Tzu, the Chinese author of The Art of War. If you do the same and follow
his principles of warfare, you will triumph and end up as the new shogun!
Introduction
“If you know your enemy and know yourself, you will not be imperilled by a
hundred battles. If you do not know the others but do know yourself, you will win
one and lose one. If you do not know the enemy and do not know yourselves you
will be in danger in every battle.”
— Sun Tzu, The Art of War
Much of Shogun: Total War™ — Gold Edition is set in the Sengoku period of Japanese
history. Now, unless you’re a Japanese historian and recognise that this means “The
Country at War”, that probably doesn’t mean very much to you. By the time you’re
playing the game (and if you’ve read at least some of this manual), you will realise that
this is one of the most dramatic and exciting times in the history of Japan. In fact, it’s
one of the most dramatic and exciting periods of history anywhere in the world!
“Act after having made assessments. The one who first knows the measure of far
and near wins — this is the rule of armed struggle.”
In the space of a little of over one hundred years, samurai armies fought for control of
Japan. They were lead by the daimyo, a group of hugely powerful warlords who
would have been kings and princes in their own right anywhere else in the world.
Some of the daimyo were undoubtedly heroes, and some were undoubtedly utter
monsters, but all of them were vastly ambitious! You’re about to be pitched into the
middle of this epic struggle between the daimyo. The prize is to become shogun, the
military ruler of Japan, and the controller of the nation’s destiny. The shogun is a more
powerful man than the Emperor himself. The reward is tremendous, but the price of
failure is death for you and your adopted clan!
“To perceive victory when it is known to all is not really skilful… It does not take
much strength to lift a hair, it does not take sharp eyes to see the sun and moon,
it does not take sharp ears to hear the thunderclap.”
History and warfare doesn’t happen by accident. You’ll understand the game much
better if you read at least some of this manual. You don’t have to remember
everything (there’s no test on this stuff, we promise), but if you do know why daimyo
A hates daimyo B but is willing to do a deal with clan C, you’ll have a lot more fun
while you’re playing. At the very least, it’ll explain who all these people are, and who
knows, it might even help you win Shogun: Total War — Gold edition! Think like a
daimyo, and you’ll win like a daimyo!
“When on surrounded ground, plot. When on deadly ground, fight.”
So trust no one. Keep your friends close… but remember to keep your enemies
closer still!
So who was Sun Tzu?
All through the Shogun: Total War - Gold Edition game and this manual, you’ll find
references to — and quotes from — Sun Tzu, and most especially his book, The Art of
War. So why was a Chinese writer who’d been dead for centuries so important to the
samurai?
“In ancient times skilful warriors first made themselves invincible, and then
watched for vulnerability in their opponents.”
Sun Tzu was a contemporary of the great philosopher Confucius, and lived around
500 B.C. in the kingdom of Qi, which is roughly the modern Shandong province in
Eastern China. During his life, China was being torn apart by a series of wars as lesser
states fought for dominance. None of these states recognised the central authority of
the Zhou Imperial dynasty any more. As you’ll see later, this is a similar state of affairs
to the Sengoku period in Japan.
Sun Tzu was therefore quite familiar with warfare in all its forms. He is supposed to
have written his book for Helü, the King of Wu during 514-496 B.C. He ruled part of
the lower Yangtze Valley and was locked in constant warfare with the rival kingdom of
Yue. Other than that, little is known about Sun Tzu’s life. Biographies from as little as
300 years after he was alive don’t include much more definite information than that,
other than repeating the tale of how Sun Tzu convinced his king that he knew how to
train soldiers.
The story goes that Sun Tzu claimed he could train anyone to obey military orders,
and so the King challenged him to turn the court concubines into soldiers. Naturally,
the women were far from being any kind of soldiers (much less good ones) and
disobeyed all of Sun Tzu’s orders. He explained his instructions carefully and patiently
and tried again, with equally disastrous results. Having done all that he could as a
commander, he ordered that the leading concubines should be put to death, as once
orders have been clearly explained it is the duty of the soldiers to obey!
“Those who know when to fight and when not to fight are victorious.”
2
3
The King wasn’t very happy about the idea of his two favourite concubines being
executed, and told Sun Tzu that he really did believe he could train troops using his
methods. Sun Tzu replied that once a general is directing his troops, he should reject
further interference from his sovereign. It’s the ruler’s job to find the best general, and
then let him get on with winning the war. The women were put to death.
All at once the rest of the concubines suddenly discovered that they could, oddly
enough, obey any orders to the letter. And although he was rather put out by the
death of his favourite courtesans, the King of Wu recognised that Sun Tzu knew what
he was talking about…
What is known for certain about Sun Tzu comes from his key work on the theory and
practice of warfare, The Art of War. He was obviously a clever man, a clear thinker and
someone with practical military experience. Sun Tzu took his accumulated knowledge
of how to fight wars and applied careful thought to the problems that he had found.
The product of all his thought was the earliest book in the whole world on what might
be termed the philosophy and practice of warfare.
“Cutting down the enemy is the Way of strategy, and there is no need for many
refinements of it.”
— Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Rings, The Wind Book
Sun Tzu would not necessarily have approved of Musashi’s apparently simplistic
attitude at all!
Although times and weaponry have changed over the centuries, the problems
confronting military commanders have not, and Sun Tzu remains as relevant today as
he was when he first formulated his thoughts, and when he was read assiduously by
the samurai. It is still considered essential reading by modern military strategists. Even
today, The Art of War remains one of the definitive guides to warfare, and has been
read by great commanders the world over.
His book, however, is more than just a “how to win” handbook on Chinese warfare.
Although a study of warfare, The Art of War applies to situations on every level from
the interpersonal to the international. Its aims are invincibility, victory without battle
and unassailable strength through understanding every aspect of conflict. This is a
remarkable set of claims for any book. What is even more remarkable is that The Art
of War achieves all it sets out to do! It lays strategy in such a clear and wise fashion
that at times it almost seems too straightforward and obvious — almost too simple —
to be right.
“Be extremely subtle, even to the point of formlessness. Be extremely mysterious,
even to the point of soundlessness. Thereby you can be the controllers of your
opponent’s fate…”
Shogun: Total War - Gold Edition uses the strategies and lessons found in The Art of War
as a major
part of game play. The game has been programmed to follow Sun Tzu’s precepts
because the daimyo and their samurai did so too. Over the centuries, the Japanese
have had a long tradition of taking the best and most useful ideas from Chinese culture
while managing to keep their independence. The Art of War was one of the many
books that arrived from the mainland and was seized upon by the Japanese for its
good sense and usefulness. Perhaps this was one of the reasons why the Sengoku
period was as violent as it became. Had only one of the great daimyo warlords read
and learned from Sun Tzu, the wars would have been over very quickly. However,
they had all learned from the same master of strategy.
The samurai took Sun Tzu’s book and used its wisdom in their many wars, but they
also brought their own unique Japanese perspective to the principles of warfare. In the
process they gave warfare a character all their own:
4
5
1: A History of Japan
“Military action is important to the nation — it is the ground of death and life,
the path of survival and destruction, so it is imperative to examine it.”
“There is a time and place for the use of weapons.”
— Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Rings, The Ground Book
Like many peoples, the Japanese have a
creation myth that makes them the
children of the gods. The Japanese home
islands were created when the gods
Izanagi and Izanami stood on the bridge of
heaven and stirred the waters of the
Earth with a spear. The drops of water
from the spear tip gathered together and
became the Japanese home islands. The
two then descended and raised the spear
as the centre pole of their house.
Izanagi and Izanami had children. Their first-born was Amateratsu, the Sun Goddess,
but like all families they had problems. Being gods, they had god-sized problems:
Izanagi slew his second child, the Fire God, who had caused his mother, Izanami,
enormous pain when he was born. Izanami fled into the Underworld in grief at this
killing. Susano-o, their other son, was given to fits of temper. His violent behaviour
included throwing thunderbolts across the sky, and he even threw a dead horse at
Amateratsu, forcing her to hide in a cave. With the Sun Goddess in hiding, the world
was plunged into darkness. The sight of her own beautiful reflection in a mirror and a
necklace of precious jewels eventually tricked Amateratsu into coming out of her
hiding place…
Susano-o did eventually make amends by slaying a great serpent with eight heads and tails. The
serpent had a taste for young maidens and this, along with an equal appetite for sake. Susano-o
used both to lure the serpent into a trap, then slew it once it was drunk! In hacking it to pieces,
he discovered a sword embedded in its tail which he then he gave to Amateratsu. This was the
Ame no murakomo no tsurugi or “Cloud Cluster Sword.” From almost the first moment of
Japanese history, there was a sword, and a sword with mystical powers at that.
As the first born child, Amateratsu inherited the earth and in time, Amateratsu sent her
grandson, Ninigi, to rule Japan. She gave him three gifts, the mirror, the jewels from the
necklace and the ‘Cloud Cluster Sword’ to make his task easier. These gifts from heaven
became the Japanese Crown Jewels. The throne eventually passed to his grandson, Jimmu,
who was the first earthly Emperor of Japan. He took the throne in 660BC on 11 February, a
date which is still celebrated with a public holiday in Japan. The current Emperor is seen as a
lineal descendant of this first Emperor.
6
In around 200BC, Emperor Sujin and his son Prince Yamato (later Emperor Keiko) are
the agents of an important change in Japanese history. The nation at this time was
composed of many clans, of which the strongest was the Imperial Yamato family. The
Yamato (named for their home province in central Honshu) were one clan amongst
many – but they claimed the right to rule because they were descended directly from
the Sun Goddess, Amateratsu. Sujin was the first Emperor to appoint four generals to
deal with rebels in his realm. Each general was given the title of shogun (which can be
translated as “Commander in Chief” at this point in history). Yamato Sujin is a figure
partly of myth and partly of history. He is the prototype of later samurai heroes: a
skilled and noble warrior harried and hunted down by his many enemies who —
although he comes to a tragic end, has a worthwhile death.
Early Japan
“In ancient times skilful warriors first made themselves invincible, and then
watched for vulnerability in their opponents.”
More realistically but a lot less romantically — archaeology has revealed that there
have been humans in Japan for around 100,000 years. The original inhabitants of Japan
were the Ainu, a group unrelated to the Mongolian people who arrived and gradually
drove them out until the Ainu remained only on the island of Hokkaido. The incoming
people were split up along tribal and clan lines, but over the course of time the
Yamato clan came to dominate from its central position on the Kanto plain. The
Yamato chieftains also consolidated their power by making an early form of Shinto the
general religion of the country. After all, rebellion against the descendant of a god is
not as easy to contemplate as fighting another warlord!
During the early period of Yamato rule the influence of the mainland began to be felt
in Japanese culture. Thanks to the relative ease of travel and trade from the kingdom
of Paekche in southern Korea, iron, Chinese writing, literature and philosophy came
into the Yamato lands. The Yamato regime even adopted Chinese script for its
documents, and the first dependable records in Japanese history date to around
430AD. The Yamato also imported a religion too: Buddhism appeared in Japan about
100 years later. Japan’s position off the mainland gave two benefits: culture, technology
and ideas could be brought into the country, but the voyage to Japan was just difficult
enough to help keep out unwanted ideas and influences. That said, the Yamato
government was strongly based on the Chinese system: there were eight carefully
graded ranks of court official and a great council, the Dajokan, ruled through local
governors. Everything was controlled from the capital — Nara in Yamato province
after 710AD — while Kyoto became the Imperial home and remained so until 1868.
Although the Yamato came to rule all of Japan, by the 9th century the Emperors were
actually pulling back from the day-to-day business of ruling a country. They were
becoming symbols of power rather than the wielders of power.
7
As the Emperors retired from government, control passed to the court officials,
particularly the Fujiwara family. The Emperors continued to reign, but they no longer
ruled the country. In 858AD, a Fujiwara prince, Yoshifusa, became the regent for his
one-year-old grandson (having made sure that his daughter had married into the
Imperial family). The Fujiwara also made sure that family members filled all the
important jobs at court and in the general administration of the country. Eventually,
Fujiwara Motosune was announced as the kampuku — a “civil dictator” — in 884, and
he was followed a century later by the cleverest of the Fujiwara, Michinaga. He made
sure that five successive Emperors married one of his daughters, thus making sure of
the family position at Court!
The Fujiwara period was a time when Japanese culture came into its own, leaving its
Chinese-dominated roots behind. Michinaga’s dictatorship is one of the classical ages
of Japanese literature, for example. At the same time, however, the Fujiwara were
changing the way that Japan was governed. The central government became corrupt
and weak. Land ownership started shifting to great estates: nobles who held
government offices were given tax-free hereditary estates as payments. Many peasants
and lesser landholders were only too happy to hand over their property to these
estates to escape from the heavy taxes levied on them!
The Rise of the Samurai
No longer content to merely serve and fight, the samurai began to interfere in
government politics. It’s worth considering all the political and military action that
happened over the next decades, because it set the pattern for later Japanese history:
a pattern of ruthless power politics with the winner taking all and losers, well, literally
losing their heads!
In 1155 there was a crisis in the Imperial succession. There were two ex-Emperors at
the Imperial Court and new Emperor Konoe was a sickly child. When Konoe was
poisoned the Fujiwara clan backed ex-Emperor Sotoku. His father, however, was the
ex-Emperor Toba and he insisted that another one of his sons should be the new
Emperor, and therefore Go-Shirakawa dutifully ascended the throne. Toba, however,
died in 1156 and both the Emperor Sotoku and Emperor Go-Shirakawa summoned
their supporters to the capital. The Taira and Minamoto clans divided by personal
loyalties, but the important point was that it was the samurai that were to decide the
course of Imperial politics, not the Fujiwara court officials, who had always done so in
the past. Japan was going to learn what it was like to be ruled by the sword from this
time on.
“The Way of the warrior is death. This means choosing death whenever there is a
choice between life and death. It means nothing more than this. It means to see
things through, being resolved.”
— Yamamoto Tsunenori, Ha Gakure (Hidden Leaves)
“Generally speaking, the Way of the warrior is resolute acceptance of death.”
At around the same time, the samurai
were coming to prominence as more than
just another group of fighting men. Like
the medieval knights of Europe, the
samurai were the leaders of common foot
soldiers. Like the knights it was possible
to win promotion to the ranks of the
samurai. And like the knights, to be
samurai also implied a degree of service
to a superior. In the case of the samurai,
this service was to the Emperor, a noble
or a warlord. The word samurai had its roots in the verb “to serve”.
The Imperial government found samurai incredibly useful in putting down rebellions,
but with the shift in power to mighty landowners, the loyalties of the samurai shifted.
The samurai came to serve the great lords, fighting against bandits, rebellious locals
and other great landlords. Although some of these samurai were from humble
families, the clans that prospered could trace their ancestors back for centuries, often
to some (minor) Imperial relative banished from Court to seek his fortune elsewhere.
Among these clans of aristocratic samurai were the Minamoto in the east and the
Taira in the south west of Japan.
8
At the Battle of Hogen, Sotuku’s samurai were defeated. Emperor Go-Shirakawa had
an expectation that the defeated samurai would pay the price for their defiance. The
only important Taira samurai to support Sotuku was so unpopular among his kinsmen
that his execution was a forgone conclusion. The Minamoto family had backed Sotuku
in greater strength and their clan leader, Minamoto Tameyoshi was put to death on
the orders of his son, Yoshitomo in an act of loyalty to the new regime. Tameyoshi’s
son (and Yoshitomi’s brother), Tametomo, was deliberately maimed and exiled, but
chose death instead. He became one of the first samurai to kill himself by cutting open
his own stomach in an act of hara-kiri.
All these deaths helped the Taira clan rise rapidly to power in the Imperial Court.
Once he was secure, Emperor Go-Shirakawa decided that he had had enough of
ruling and abdicated in favour of his son, Nijo. Their leader, Taira Kiyomori, took a leaf
out of the Fujiwara book, declared that he was now Prime Minister and began a policy
of making sure that Imperial wives and concubines came from the Taira clan. There
were, however, still members of the Minamoto clan at court, and the Fujiwara clan
persuaded them that revenge was a very good idea. All in all, the Minamoto didn’t
take much persuading.
This time, in 1159-60, the civil war that followed was a straightforward fight between
the Taira and the Minamoto. Although the war seemed to go well initially for the
Minamoto, events soon turned against them. The Taira attacked the Minamoto
headquarters, and then lured them into a counter-attack that failed when Minamoto
Yorimasa refused to join in because he could not violate his duty to the Emperor. The
surviving Minamoto were pursued and slaughtered without mercy.
9
Minamoto Yoshitomo fled with three of his sons. One of them, Tomonaga, was so
badly wounded that he begged his father to kill him so that the others could flee with
more speed. Yoshimoto did this, but to no avail. He was caught and murdered in his
bath, taken when he thought he had outrun his pursuers. Taira Kiyomori literally
beheaded the Minamoto clan. Tomonaga didn’t escape execution, even though his
father had already killed him. His body was dug up and beheaded too!
The Early Shoguns
“Thus one advances without seeking glory, retreats without avoiding blame, only
protecting the people to the benefit of the ruler as well, thus rendering valuable
service to the country.”
The Gempei War
“A good army should be like a swift snake that counters with its tail when
someone strikes at its head, counters with its head when its tail is struck, and
counters with both when someone strikes it in the middle. Can an army be made
like this swift snake? It can. Even people who dislike one another will help the
others out of trouble if they are in the same boat.”
Taira Kiyomori was seemingly unassailable. He had beaten his samurai rivals and the
Fujiwara. In 1180 his grandson (via his daughter), Emperor Antoku, took the throne.
Kiyomori, however, hadn’t quite killed all the Minamoto and in 20 years the survivors
had become strong enough to challenge him once again.
The Gempei War would last for five years. The seemingly odd name of the war comes
from the Chinese pronunciation of ideographs in the Taira and Minamoto clan names.
Once again, the Minamoto and Fujiwara opposed the Taira, but this time they were
supported by the sohei, warrior monks from the temples of Nara and Kyoto. As an
aside, these warrior monks (who despite being monks were actually often fanatically
brave fighters) intervened at several critical points in Japanese history. You’ll see in a
moment that groups of monks came to be a considerable problem for later warlords.
Again, the Taira were initially successful, defeating the Minamoto army at the battles of
Uji and Ishibashiyama.
In 1183 the course of the war began to swing towards the Minamoto. They won a
series of brilliant victories, culminating in 1185 with the Battle of Dano-Ura. Both the
Taira and Minamoto clans boarded fleets of warships and sailed into the Straits of
Shimonoseki. What happened at the Battle of Dano-Ura was virtually a land battle
fought from ship to ship. The sea is supposed to have run red with blood during the
battle as the Minamoto smashed the Taira army. In the middle of the Taira fleet was
the Emperor Antoku. He was still a child and the symbol of Taira and Imperial
legitimacy, and thus an important element of the Taira claim to rule Japan. Emperor
Antoku was drowned, and his deeply symbolic replica of the Ame no murakomo no
tsurugi, the “Cloud Cluster Sword” that the Sun Goddess herself had given the original
Emperor was lost overboard too. Fortunately, it was just a replica, but the symbolic
damage done was almost as bad as if the original had gone. If this seems odd, it’s
worth remembering that the Emperors were, for all the clans who were seeking to
control them, the direct descendants of the Sun Goddess and as important for their
symbolism as such as for any earthly power that came through controlling them.
10
His military victory secured, Minamoto Yoritomo did not bother with any of the political
manoeuvring at the Imperial Court that the Taira and the Fujiwara had tried. His power was
based on his armies, not on Imperial family connections. The Emperor was forced into
retirement, becoming just a symbol. Yoritomo took the title and office of seiitaishogun
(usually shortened to shogun), the “commander-in-chief for suppressing barbarians”.
Yoritomo also moved the centre of power to Kamakura on the Kanto plain (near modern
Tokyo). The old Imperial Court was ignored and became largely irrelevant to the running of
the country. The first of the true shoguns had arrived.
Eventually, however, the Hojo clan replaced the Minamoto family. They did it through a
clever series of murders and conspiracies that killed every Minamoto heir and many of their
supporters. The new Hojo rulers, however, never bothered becoming shoguns. Instead,
they appointed a series of puppets to the role, including even young children! The Hojo
ruled as shikken, or regents, which meant that there was a figurehead shogun nominally
ruling for a distant, symbolic Emperor, while a third person with actual power really ran the
country! The Hojo knew that power meant more than any title.
This arrangement worked well enough for the Hojo to hold on to power until 1333. In
1274 and 1281, the Hojo were able organise Japanese resistance to two invasions by Kublai
Khan, the ruler of the Mongols. The 1281 expedition was finally destroyed by the kamikaze, the divine wind that saved Japan. Beating the Mongols, however, had weakened Hojo
resources and power slipped away from the clan. They were unable to resist when
Emperor Go-Daigo brought about a restoration of Imperial power in 1333.
Go-Daigo did try to do away with the shogunate, but he was frustrated in this when his
vassals the Ashikaga rebelled. The Ashikaga drove Emperor Go-Daigo from Kyoto and set
up yet another Emperor under their direct control. The “Wars between the Courts”
dragged on for 56 years as Go-Daigo and his heirs fought against the Ashikaga shoguns and
their emperors. In 1392, however, an Ashikaga ambassador convinced the enemy (and true)
Emperor to abdicate and give up the Crown Jewels and other Imperial regalia.
With their puppet branch of the Yamato family now seen as the rightful Emperors, the
Ashigaka shoguns now came into their own, but their rule was not to go unchallenged. In
1441 the shogun Ashigaka Yoshinori was assassinated and was followed by his eight-year-old
son. He too died, and was followed by his (even) younger brother, Yoshimasa. Even though
he lasted for 30 years as shogun, Yoshimasa couldn’t — or more correctly wouldn’t — halt
the decline of his family fortunes. Real power had passed from the shogun to the other
great samurai families who had become a class of hereditary feudal lords called daimyo. The
Ashikaga shoguns were never able to control these daimyo, and this failure was to lead to a
century of terrible violence.
11
Sengoku: The Country At War
“Confront your troops with annihilation and then they will survive; plunge them
into a deadly situation and then they will live. When people fall into danger, they
are then able to strive for victory.”
The time from 1477 to 1615 is called the Sengoku Period, which translates as “The
Country at War”. This is the main period of Shogun: Total War – Gold Edition.
The Ashikaga period was one of great refinement of manners, of great art and literary
works and, incidentally, marked the rise of Buddhism as a political force. While the
Ashikaga shoguns became more interested in the intricacies of the tea ceremony and
poetry, other forces were on the move. The great landowners and the greatest of the
samurai had become one and the same thing. These men owned huge tracts of land
and commanded armies that would have been the envy of kings. They were the
daimyo.
The word daimyo can be translated as “one who aspires to something better” and
aspirations to power were not noticeable by their absence among the daimyo! All the
daimyo were ambitious and the greatest of them certainly nurtured dreams of
replacing the Ashikaga shogunate. This is quite understandable, because the Ashikaga
were no longer capable of effective government. Ashikaga Yoshimasa, for example,
tried to abdicate as shogun and pawned his armour to pay for his expensive pastimes,
such as flower-viewing parties! This is hardly what you would expect of a “Barbariansubduing Commander in Chief”, and it was not the sort of behaviour that was going
to keep control of increasingly belligerent daimyo, who had little reason to respect the
feeble authority of such a shogun.
The Ikki and The Ashigaru
“Using order to deal with the disorderly, using calm to deal with the clamorous,
is mastering the heart.”
The daimyo weren’t alone in aspiring to something better. By the early years of the
15th century the traditionally docile peasantry had reached the end of its patience. By
and large — and unlike European peasants of the same era — Japanese peasants were
usually safe from the armies that tramped across their fields. Apart from having crops
damaged or stolen, they didn’t have to worry about war destroying their lives.
Japanese peasants were unlikely to be murdered, raped or impressed into in one army
or another.
Instead, they had another problem: the shogun’s taxmen. Expensive pastimes and
refined tastes need money to pay for them, and the Ashikaga’s tax collectors raised
that money with consummate efficiency. At times, they took up to seventy percent of
harvests in taxes! In return, the peasants got nothing.
12
This wasn’t a situation that was likely to make the peasants feel well disposed towards
their masters.
And it wasn’t just the peasants on the bottom rung of society who were suffering.
There had always been the ji-samurai, a class of “gentleman farmers” in between
samurai who did nothing but fight and the peasants who did nothing but work the
land. The ji-samurai worked the land, but also went to war during campaign seasons.
Like the lesser peasantry, they too were being squeezed out of existence by taxes, or
being driven to seek the protection of the daimyo. This protection came in return for
handing over all their lands to the daimyo’s clan, of course.
Something had to give, and what gave was the patience of the people. The ji-samurai
and the peasants came together in mutual defence leagues or ikki. These leagues were
a genuine expression of popular discontent and gave rise to a series of revolts: in 1428
a rising in Kyoto triggered further revolts throughout Japan. In 1441 the ikki returned
to Kyoto again, driven there by high taxes and endless debts, virtually besieging the
city in an outburst of rioting and arson. After a week of violence, the Ashikaga
shogunate cancelled the peasants’ debts to the moneylenders and pawnbrokers
(which undoubtedly did nothing for the shogun’s standing with the same moneylenders
and pawnbrokers he needed to finance his own loans!) and set the pattern for future
behaviour by the Ikki. They came back to Kyoto in 1447, 1451, 1457 and 1461. In
1457, the Ikki even managed to defeat an army of 800 samurai who had been sent
against them!
“The Way means inducing the people to have the same aim as the leadership, so
that they will share death and share life, without fear of danger.”
The other escape for a peasant from the oppressive taxman was to run away and join
one or other of the many clan armies under a daimyo. All that he needed was armour
and weaponry, and these were easy to obtain. Thanks to years of warfare Japan was a
country awash with weapons. The possibility of elevation from the ranks of peasantry
was slight but it was there and there was always booty to be taken. These peasant
soldiers the ashigaru (or “light feet”, as the word directly translates) were a useful
asset to a good commander, even if their discipline left a lot to be desired. From the
start, the ashigaru were notorious for looting (seeing this as a “perk” of their job and
extra pay), and their morale was not that of the true samurai. But in the wars that
followed every daimyo made extensive use of ashigaru troops to support their samurai
warriors — they became an indispensable and relatively cheap source of military
might.
It’s also worth noting that the ashigaru and the Ikki were a definite change in the social
pattern of Japan, and in the warfare of the time. They mark the start of a trend called
gekokujo, or “the low oppress the high” by Japanese historians. This trend was to
culminate during the Sengoku period with vassals overthrowing established warrior
clans, the very liege-lords to whom they should have been loyal to the point of death.
13
But clearly, with all these troubles and changes in the “natural order” of the Japanese
social hierarchy, the Ashikaga shogun was in no position to dictate terms to the
daimyo when he had to give way to mere rebellious peasants.
The situation was ripe for trouble, and that trouble wasn’t long in coming.
The Onin War
“Act after having made calculations. The one who first knows the measure of far
and near wins — this is the rule of armed struggle.”
With the start of the Onin War in 1467 the “Country at War” becomes more than just
a phrase. So called because the fighting began in the first year of the period of Onin,
the war was different because nearly all the fighting happened within the city of Kyoto
itself. Even after the Ikki-inspired rioting of the previous decades, the capital was still
the most magnificent city in Japan.
The War began when the shogun, Yoshimasa — the same shogun who had tried to
pawn his armour to pay for his tea ceremonies — proclaimed his brother, Yoshimi, to
be his heir. He even dragged Yoshimi out of a monastery to do it! A year later,
Yoshimasa changed his mind when his first son, Yoshihisa, was born.
While all this was happening, the Yamana and Hosokawa clans were looking for an
excuse to fight each other. They had spent long years as rivals. With two candidates to
be the next shogun, it was almost inevitable that each family would choose to back a
different side. Yamana Sozen, called the “Red Monk” thanks to his terrible temper and
membership of the priesthood, decided to support the infant heir, Yoshihisa.
Hosokawa Katsumoto threw his clan behind Yoshimi, the current shogun’s brother.
Just to add fuel to the fire and make the struggle even more bitter and personal, the
two leaders were related, as Yamana Sozen was the father-in-law of Hosokawa
Katsumoto.
The two sides gathered their armies in Kyoto. The Yamana gathered 80,000 samurai
and other soldiers, while the Hosokawa forces numbered some 85,000 men. The
numbers involved are interesting, and show just how wealthy Japan was at this time.
Compared to European armies of the same time, these are enormous numbers,
especially when it is remembered that these are clan not national armies. For
example, during the Wars of the Roses in England — a civil war on the other side of
the world that was happening at this time — the armies raised rarely numbered more
than about 10-12,000 men on each side, and these were considered large by English
standards.
“When you are going to attack nearby, make it look as if you are going to go a
long way; when you are going to attack far away, make it look as if you are going
just a short distance. Draw them in with the prospect of gain, take them by
confusion.”
14
Neither side, however, could quite bring itself to start the war. The side that struck
first ran the risk of being called rebels by the weak shogunate, and a rebel would
inevitably lose support. Eventually, however, the tension grew too great. With another
20,000 Yamana men marching on Kyoto, a Hosokawa mansion mysteriously burnt to
the ground. Then Hosokawa troops attacked a Yamana food supply line. It didn’t take
much longer for the serious fighting to begin and by July 1467 — after two months
fighting — the northern parts of Kyoto were in ruins. The two sides settled down
behind hasty barricades and began static warfare of raids and counter-raids. Everyone
else fled Kyoto and the armies took over.
The war went on and on, as neither side could actually work out a way of stopping
the fighting. Yamana Sozen and Hosokawa Katsumoto both died in 1473, and the war
still dragged on. Eventually, however, the Yamana lost heart as the label of “rebel” was
at last having some effect. Ouchi Masahiro, one of the Yamana generals, eventually
burned his section of Kyoto and left. It was 1477, some ten years after the fighting had
begun! Kyoto was now looted as the mobs moved in to take what was left. Neither
clan had achieved its aims, other than to kill some of the other clan.
During all of this the shogun did nothing. Ashikaga Yoshimasa can only be described as
having a “passing acquaintance” with reality. He certainly didn’t seem to care what was
happening to Japan. While Kyoto was wrecked, he spent his time on poetry readings
and other high cultural events and in planning the Ginkaku-ji, a Silver Pavilion to rival
the Golden Pavilion that his grandfather had built.
The fighting in Kyoto, however, had serious consequences throughout Japan. The Onin
War — and the shogun’s lack of any response — effectively “sanctioned” private wars
between the daimyo, which now spread until no part of the country was untouched
by violence. The daimyo could see that they were now free to settle any dispute at
the point of a sword. After all, who was going to stop them? The shogun certainly
couldn’t, or wouldn’t stop them.
The Ikko-Ikki
“When the speed of rushing water reaches the point where it can move boulders,
this is the force of momentum. When the speed of a hawk is such that it can
strike its prey and kill, it is precision. So it is with successful warriors.”
Although the fighting in Kyoto was over, warfare spilled over into the rest of the
country. In Yamashiro province, the Hatakeyama clan split into two parts that fought
each other to a standstill. This stalemate, however, was to have serious consequences.
In 1485, the peasantry and ji-samurai had enough and finally revolted. They set up
their own army and forced the clan armies out of the province. The Ikki were
becoming a coherent force, not just an armed mob. In 1486 they set up a provisional
government in Yamashiro.
In Kaga province, things went even further. Founded in the 13th century, the Ikko
were a sect of Amida Buddhists who drew most of their support from the peasantry.
Unlike other — rather more aristocratic — Buddhist sects, the Ikko made every effort
to appeal to the common people, which gave them secular power.
15
Perhaps foolishly, one of the prominent lords of Kaga province, Togashi Maschika,
enlisted their help. Included in his army, the Ikko began evolving into the Ikko-ikki, a
force of fanatical holy warriors. Convinced by their leaders that paradise was the
reward for death in battle the Ikko-ikki let nothing daunt them. The greater the odds
against them, the more the Ikko-ikki fought like fiends.
Togashi Maschika had made a rod for his own back. In 1488 the Ikko-ikki revolted,
expelled him from Kaga, and took control of the province. As with the Ikki, the rise of
the Ikko-ikki was part of the process of gekokujo: “the low oppress the high.” In 1496,
the Ikko-ikki began building a fortified “cathedral” as a headquarters at the mouth of
the Yodo River. They chose the site for the Ishiyama Hongan-ji well. Osaka Castle was
to be built at the same spot when they were eventually defeated. The last battles of
the Sengoku period would be fought here a hundred years later…
Overthrow and Treachery
“Use humility to make the enemy haughty. Tire them by flight. Cause division
among them. When they are unprepared, attack and make your move when they
do not expect it.”
As the Onin War spread, other daimyo
took the opportunity to settle old scores
— and gain territory at the expense of
their neighbours. The war was almost
Darwinian: the survival of the fittest was
all that counted, no matter how that
survival was secured. And not all of the
clans survived in the years that followed.
The Shiba and Isshiki, as well as the
Hatakeyama from Yamashiro and even the
previously mighty Yamana clan had, by
1500, managed to wipe each other out.
They weren’t the only people to suffer. One family lost rather more than might be
expected given the reverence towards them that had been customary. The Imperial
Yamato family was virtually bankrupt and couldn’t even pay for the funeral of Emperor
Go-Tsuchi-Mikado in 1501. The coronation of Emperor Go-Nara had to wait for 20
years until the Ikki (of all people) gave the Imperial family enough money to pay for
the ceremony. Before his death, Go-Nara lived in a wooden hut, and was reduced to
selling his autograph.
The Ashikaga shogunate was equally poor. The central government had effectively
vanished. The daimyo were free to wage any wars they wanted or could afford. The
lesser samurai families were quite free to dream of greater power and steal land from
each other as well. The story of Ise Shinkuro is a good example of the kind of thing
that was happening.
16
The Rise of a Samurai
Ise Shinkuro was a fairly obscure samurai, until he chose to get involved in the affairs
of the Ashikaga clan. Ashikaga Chacha had been ordered to join the priesthood by the
shogun, but he refused. Shinkuro took it upon himself to deal with Chacha and forced
him to commit suicide. Shinkuro’s reward was Izu province, and he lost no time in
changing his name to Hojo Soun (he had also decided to take a Buddhist name at the
same time). The Hojo had, of course, been rulers of Japan hundreds of years earlier,
but Shinkuro — or Hojo Soun as he now was — had no connection with the original
family at all until he married off a son to a distant descendent of the “real” Hojo!
Hojo Soun now decided to expand his lands. A deer hunt gave him the opportunity to
have a neighbour assassinated, and gave him control of Odowara. He then moved to
secure the Sagami and Musashi provinces, and then moved out onto the Kanto plain.
He waited until the Uesugi family were occupied with their own problems then
managed to seize their castle at Edo, the old Imperial capital (and now the site of
Tokyo). Soun’s son, Ujitsuna and grandson, Ujiyasu, continued his struggles against the
Uesugi and defeated them in 1542 at Kawagoe Castle.
The point of this account is that Hojo Soun (or Ise Shinkuro as he had been) had come
from nowhere and, within the space of three generations he and his family had carved
themselves out a significant domain. They did it through treachery and violence against
their “betters”, something that could never have happened if the Ashikaga shogunate
had been doing its job.
The Warring Clans: Shifting
Fortunes
The Uesugi clan was also busy with its other struggles. Their most famous general,
Uesugi Kenshin, was actually adopted into the struggling clan around 1552. He
managed to mount some raids against the (new) Hojo clan, but he spent most of his
time fighting against the Takeda clan and, in particular, Takeda Shingen. The two sides
were well matched, but their battles were a little strange. Uesugi Kenshin and Takeda
Shingen fought a series of battles on the Kawanakajima plain in Shinano province in
1553. They returned to the same place and fought all over again in 1554, 1555, 1556,
1557 and 1563, treating the battles almost as rituals. At much the same time, Takeda
Shingen was in the process of absorbing Shinano, the lands of the Murakami Yoshikiyo
— it was the Murakami clan that asked Uesugi Kenshin for help and started his long
rivalry with Shingen.
“Steady as a mountain, attack like fire, still as a wood, swift as the wind. In
heaven and earth I alone am to be revered.”
— Motto on the war banner of Takeda Shingen (1521-1573)
17
Ouchi Masahiro had managed to outlive his Yamana sponsors and gain his clan
substantial power, and his son Yoshioki was equally warlike. The family prospered until
Masahiro’s grandson, Ouchi Yoshitaki took over. With Yamaguchi as a secure and rich
home territory, after 1543 Yoshitaki worked out that warfare was a little too
dangerous, and took to a life of culture, aided by exiled courtiers from Kyoto.
Unfortunately for him, his two chief retainers Mori Motonari and Sue Harukata
warned him that he was risking everything by this attitude and that his domain was
ripe for a coup under the command of some ambitious samurai. Just to make sure that
his warning was right, Sue Harukata rebelled. Trapped and apparently friendless,
Ouchi Yoshitaki killed himself.
This wasn’t the end of the matter, though. Mori Motonari felt it was duty to avenge his
former master, but he took his time. In 1555 he managed to lure Sue Harukata, who
had more troops, into capturing a castle on the island of Miyajima. However, once
there, his numbers were less important because he was trapped on the island. The
battle that followed ended with the defeated and demoralised Sue forces killing
themselves en masse. As a result, the Mori clan rose to become the mightiest clan in
Western Japan.
“When you want to attack an army, besiege a city or kill a person, first you must
know about their defending generals, their visitors, their gatekeepers and their
servants. Have your spies find all this out.”
This shifting pattern of rivalries and alliances was typical of the times. One clan would
ally with another against the threat from a third, only to find that their allies had
become just as great a threat, or that previously loyal underlings were now more
dangerous than any external threat.
Samurai warfare had always used dirty tricks, assassination and outright treachery but
during earlier conflicts, such as the Gempei War, the clans who had behaved in this
fashion were widely regarded as out-and-out villains. By the Sengoku period, however,
all was fair in love and war. A quick murder was as acceptable as winning a battle. The
new daimyo had read Sun Tzu and taken his work seriously, especially the sections
that dealt with the use of spies and assassins. The daimyo, of course, had access to
some of the best spies and assassins from any period of history anywhere in the world
— the ninja. A wise man always took precautions against assassination, even if he
didn’t plot the deaths of his rivals and superiors.
18
Firepower
“[The gun] is the supreme weapon on the field before the ranks clash, but once
swords are crossed, the gun becomes useless.”
In the middle of all this strife, Europeans arrived in Japan when a group of Portuguese
traders landed near Kyushu in around 1543. The Europeans brought two major
cultural items with them: effective gunpowder weaponry, and Christianity. We’ll return
to the influence of Christianity slightly later in this account.
Gunpowder weapons weren’t a complete mystery to the samurai. They almost
certainly knew about Chinese handguns, and the Mongols had used primitive hand
grenades against the samurai in 1274. But gunpowder hadn’t really “arrived” in
Japanese warfare until now. The guns that the Portuguese brought to Japan were
arquebuses or matchlocks. Rather than using a flint to strike a spark and set off the
gunpowder, a burning cord was used to fire the weapon. Arquebuses were light
enough to be used by one man and relatively safe at least when compared to earlier
types of firearms — they didn’t have quite the tendency to explode in the user’s face
that earlier guns had! The arquebus did have a slow rate of fire on the battlefield, but
it did have one massive advantage that was recognised in Japan as quickly as it had
been spotted in Europe. Training a man as an archer takes years of dedicated work
and some basic skill. Learning to use an arquebus takes days, at most, and almost
anyone can be drilled to use it. The ashigaru were a pool of soldiers in every army
ready and waiting for an easy-to-use missile weapon.
Given the skills of Japanese sword smiths and armourers, it’s hardly surprising that it
took little time before the arquebus was being produced in Japan, or that it was
adopted enthusiastically by the daimyo for their armies. However, although everyone
could see that the arquebus was a useful weapon, it would take time before someone
would work out how to use a substantial force of arquebusiers in an effective fashion.
19
The Three Rivals: Oda Nobunaga,
Toyotomi Hideyoshi and Tokugawa
Ieyasu
“The general changes his actions and revises his plans so that people will not
recognise them. He changes his abode and goes by circuitous routes so that
people cannot anticipate him.”
One of the problems with the collapse of
any centralised Ashikaga authority was
that, while taking Kyoto and becoming a
family of new shoguns was undoubtedly
tempting for the Hojo, Takeda and Uesugi
clans, any attempt to do so would invite
trouble. The first daimyo to leave his
home domain would, in effect, invite his
rivals to invade. It’s now time to consider
the Oda clan, another one of those small
samurai families who had gained control
of a province (Owari, in their case) during the Sengoku period. In 1551, the ruthless
Oda Nobunaga became head of the clan. In 1558, he gained the services of an
ashigaru called Toyotomi Hideyoshi, who was to prove a superb general. At the same
time, another young samurai, Tokugawa Ieyasu, was in the service of the Imagawa clan
— although, technically, he was a hostage against his family’s good behaviour. As you’ll
see, it was these three men who were to decide the fate of Japan.
For the moment, though, there were others who had designs on Kyoto.
Imagawa Yoshimoto was one daimyo with an ambition to be shogun, and in 1560 he
marched towards Kyoto, taking advantage of the fact that the Hojo and Uesugi were
busy fighting each other. Between him and his target lay three provinces, one of which
just happened to be Oda Nobunaga’s home, Owari. Initially, the campaign went well
for the Imagawa. Tokugawa Ieyasu (fighting for the Imagawa) took the frontier fort at
Marune and all that stood between the Imagawa’s 25,000 men and victory was
Nobunaga and his small army of 2000 soldiers.
Despite the odds, Nobunaga decided to attack. After a brilliant bit of trickery, he
managed to convince Yoshimoto that his army was camped in one place then
ambushed the main Imagawa force in a gorge. The Battle of Okehazama lasted
minutes rather than hours. Yoshimoto was killed, and only realised at the last minute
that the samurai who were attacking weren’t part of his own force who were the
worse for drink. That he should think his own samurai were so drunk as to fight
amongst themselves doesn’t say a lot for the level of control he had over his men!
However, Oda Nobunaga was now a real power in the land and now the new liege of
Tokugawa Ieyasu. He had been freed from his obligation to the Imagawa clan by
Yoshimoto’s death.
The temptation to march on Kyoto must have been there for Nobunaga as well, but
he waited and secured alliances with his neighbours by marrying off his daughter and
his younger sister. He had also married himself, to the daughter of another neighbour,
Saito Toshimasa, a one-time oil merchant turned daimyo in Mino province. Toshimasa
was widely regarded as a completely bad lot, as he was rather fond of torturing
people in general and boiling people in particular! However, he came to a suitably bad
end when his own son, Yoshitatsu, killed him and took control. He, in turn, died of
leprosy, but not before Nobunaga had (conveniently) declared war to avenge the
rather nasty Toshimasa who was, after all, his father-in-law. This rather feeble excuse
was all he needed to brush the Saito clan aside so that his route to Kyoto and the
shogunate was open. Toyotomi Hideyoshi was given the job of destroying the last of
the Saito clan. He carried out this task in 1564.
All Nobunaga needed was a good excuse to march on the capital, and in 1567, he got
one. Ashikaga Yoshiaki was the heir to the shogunate, and a valuable symbol for that
very reason. His brother, Yoshiteru, had been the previous shogun, and was
completely under the control of a couple of malicious Christian courtiers Miyoshi
Chokei and Matsunaga Hisahide, who eventually killed him so that they could install his
much younger cousin as an even more controllable puppet. Yoshiaki was in danger
from the pair, but managed to escape and take refuge with Nobunaga.
Oda Nobunaga entered Kyoto in November 1568 with Ashikaga Yoshiaki as his own
puppet shogun. Nobunaga ruled as the real power behind the throne of a ceremonial
commander-in-chief of a ceremonial Emperor. There were dynastic reasons why the
Oda family would have been unacceptable as shoguns in their own right, but the new
arrangement gave Nobunaga all the power he needed.
“By victory gained in crossing swords with individuals, or enjoining battle with
large numbers, we can attain power and for ourselves or our lord. This is the
virtue of strategy.”
20
21
Nobunaga: Consolidation and
Treachery
Nobunaga spent the rest of his life in crushing his remaining rivals. In this, he had two
fine lieutenants in Toyotomi Hideyoshi and Tokugawa Ieyasu. Nobunaga was quite
powerful and secure enough to give them all the authority they needed. This in itself is
a sign that samurai politics had moved on a little from the dog-eat-dog days. At one
point, Hideyoshi and Ieyasu would have been busily plotting against Nobunaga and
each other…
Now, however, Ieyasu was despatched to crush the Ikko-ikki (in 1563) and had a
narrow escape in doing so when two bullets penetrated his armour but didn’t go
through his robe underneath! Nobunaga’s next — successful — proxy campaign was
against Miyoshi Chokei and Matsunaga Hisahide who were defeated at the Battle of
Sakai in 1567. This battle is noteworthy because of the large numbers of Christian
samurai on both sides (they took Mass together before the fighting). Christianity — or
perhaps the dedicated Jesuit missionaries who were preaching Christianity —
appealed to the samurai and from this point Christian samurai were not unusual.
Although Oda Nobunaga never became a Christian, he did support Jesuit missionaries
in Japan, undoubtedly because of their political usefulness against troublesome
Buddhist sects. Wholesale persecution of Christians still lay in the future.
“When the laws of war indicate certain victory it is surely appropriate to do
battle, even if the ruler says there is to be no battle. If the laws of war indicate
defeat it is appropriate not to fight, even if the ruler wants war.”
The remainder of Nobunaga’s life was a succession of campaigns to secure his control of
the country. In 1570, he fell upon the Asakura in Echizen province, but was forced to
retreat when his own brother-in-law, Asai Nagamasa, declared for the Asakura clan.
Nobunaga returned later in 1570 and won an indecisive victory at the Battle of Anegawa.
While his forces won the day, they didn’t completely crush the Asakura and Asai. Troubles
now multiplied for Nobunaga and he found he was facing not only the Asakura and Asai
army, but also Ikko from Ishiyama Hongan-ji and sohei (warrior monks) from Enryaku-ji
near the capital. In addition, his general Tokugawa Ieyasu was now facing both the Hojo
army and Takeda Shingen.
Nobunaga appeared to be encircled, so he attacked! His men surrounded Enryaku-ji and
killed everyone — man, woman and child — they found in or near the monastery.
Nobunaga was now free to turn against his other enemies, but Takeda Shingen moved
against his forces in 1572, almost trapping Tokugawa Ieyasu in Hamamatsu Castle. Ieyasu
was faced with a simple choice: stay where he was and fail in his duty to prevent Shingen
reaching Kyoto, or fight. He chose to leave the castle and met the Takeda army in the
snow at Mikata-ga-hara, a stretch of open moors near the Magome River. The battle was
indecisive, and both sides eventually withdrew. Ieyasu returned to Hamamatsu Castle
with his job of delaying Shingen achieved. Shingen went home and never got to Kyoto.
22
Shingen came on again in spring 1573, this time into Mikawa province, intent on taking
Kyoto for himself. It was not to be. In the fighting that followed, he was wounded by a
bullet and died later. This loss was a disaster for the Takeda clan as Shingen’s son,
Katsuyori, was not the man his father had been. Uesugi Kenshin is said to have wept
over the loss of so noble an enemy. Kenshin himself was to die under somewhat
mysterious circumstances in 1582. Although nothing has ever been proved, Nobunaga
was suspected of having used ninja to remove another rival. One (probably untrue)
version of the events around Kenshin’s death is recounted in the section about ninja
later in this manual.
“A true samurai cannot possibly forget his wife and family when he goes into
battle, because a true samurai never thinks of them at any time!”
— Remark attributed to a Takeda retainer
It took two more years before the defeat of the Takeda clan was secured. In 1575
Takeda Katsuyori surrounded Nagashino Castle with his army, but the Oda defenders put
up a gallant resistance. Nobunaga saw that the relief expedition would be a chance to crush
the Takeda clan, and he was right. The Battle of Nagashino that followed was a triumph for
Oda Nobunaga and for the arquebus. Nobunaga organised his 3000 best shots into a single
unit and placed them in three lines behind a palisade of stakes. As the Takeda clan charged
across the waterlogged battlefield, they were torn to pieces by volley after volley.
Nobunaga’s other soldiers cut down the Takeda men that survived the gunfire. Even the
castle’s defenders left their walls and fell on the rear of the Takeda army. The victory was
complete. Katsuyori Takeda managed to escape the carnage, but he was never to threaten
Nobunaga seriously again and was killed in 1582.
Nobunaga now turned eastwards towards the Mori clan. Mori Motonari was dead, but his
grandson, Mori Terumoto, ruled a rich domain of ten provinces. Terumoto had been asking
for trouble, as he had broken through Nobunaga’s naval blockade of the Ikko-ikki at
Ishiyama Hongan-ji. Nobunaga responded by sending an army with Toyotomi Hideyoshi, his
ashigaru general, and Akechi Mitsuhide, another of his samurai generals, at its head. He
continued his campaign against the Ikko-ikki, even building warships with iron plate armour
(!) for use against them at one point. It would be another three centuries before such
armour plate was used in the West.
The Ikko were surrounded and in 1580 were forced to give in. The warrior fanatics had at
last been broken as a power. While all this was happening, Nobunaga also started to build a
castle at Azuchi on Lake Biwa near Kyoto. It was colossal, and a sign of where the true
power in Japan now lay. It was also revolutionary for the way its design took firearms into
account, with stout stone defences and loopholes for gunners.
Nobunaga’s army now turned its full power towards the Mori. Toyotomi Hideyoshi had
been making steady progress, and had besieged their castle at Takamtsu — even the course
of the nearby river was altered so that the place would flood! The entire Mori clan gathered
to try and lift the siege, and Hideyoshi summoned reinforcements when he realised what he
was facing. Ieyasu and, as it turned out, too many Oda warriors were sent out to support
his army. Nobunaga was left in Kyoto with only 100 men to guard him, instead of the 2000
that normally formed his bodyguard. It was to prove a dreadful error.
23
Akechi Mitsuhide, on the other hand, had failed in his campaign against the Mori, and had
suffered Nobunaga’s scorn because of this and much else. He was marching near Kyoto at
the time that Nobunaga was almost unguarded. Quite why he turned his troops around and
attacked Nobunaga’s mansion in Kyoto has never been explained, but on 21 June 1582,
Nobunaga was shot down on the orders of his own general. He died thanks to the weapon
with which he had transformed the battlefield: the arquebus.
Even by the standards of his age, Nobunaga was a ruthless man — his sole idea of victory
was the extermination of the enemy. But he changed Japan. His military improvements
altered the way wars were fought. At one time, peasants and ji-samurai would leave the
fields to fight. Under Nobunaga, men fought or they farmed. The samurai and the ashigaru
became warrior classes who didn’t have to return to the land when it was time to gather
the harvest. All they had to do was fight for their overlord.
The Thirteen Day Shogun
“The individual without a strategy who takes his enemies lightly will inevitably
end up as a captive of another.”
When news of Akechi Mitsuhide’s treachery reached Toyotomi Hideyoshi, he
immediately negotiated a peace treaty with the Mori clan and then marched on Kyoto.
In the meantime, Mitsuhide was following the time-honoured precedent of
slaughtering every one of Nobunaga’s relatives and supporters that he could reach.
Tokugawa Ieyasu had vanished into hiding. Although it probably wasn’t Mitsuhide’s
doing, the magnificent Azuchi Castle burned down. But days later, the Akechi
shogunate was over. Hideyoshi attacked and Mitsuhide fled. He was captured by
plunder-seeking peasants and beaten to death rather than dying beneath a samurai’s
sword. He had been the “Thirteen Day Shogun.”
Toyotomi Hideyoshi was now the “official” avenger of Nobunaga and in a very strong
position. His humble ashigaru beginnings made him popular among his own ashigaru
soldiers and he was a singularly able commander. Naturally, the surviving relatives of
Oda Nobunaga — in particular his third son, Nobutaka — were not too keen on
seeing Hideyoshi in control of the clan. There were also Nobunaga’s other generals to
consider too. Apart from Tokugawa Ieyasu, there were Shibata Katsuie, Niwa
Nagahide, Takigawa Kazumasu and Ikeda Nobuteru with equally good claims to
Nobunaga’s power!
Warfare was the only likely result of all this, despite — or perhaps because of —
Hideyoshi’s suggestion that Nobunaga’s one year old grandson should be the new clan
leader. A puppet with a powerful man behind him was a very traditional way of taking
power. The next months presented Hideyoshi with a difficult series of campaigns. By
far the most dangerous threat came from Shibata Katsuie. Katsuie had actually tried to
attack Akechi Mitsuhide, but had arrived too late to share in the credit of defeating
him. Had Katsuie managed to co-ordinate his actions with those of his allies, Oda
Nobutaka and Takigawa Kazumasu, the three might well have won. Ieyasu and the
others were waiting too, either for a chance to take the prize, or to make sure that
they backed the winning side!
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Katsuie, however, was not blessed with wise allies. While the Shibata lands were still
snowed under, Nobutaka decided to attack. This gave Hideyoshi the chance to divide
and conquer his opponents. Nobutaka was surrounded in the Oda clan’s Gifu Castle
and begged for mercy. At this point, Hideyoshi did something rather remarkable: he
spared Nobutaka’s life and took hostages to ensure his future good behaviour. In the
just-gone old days, Nobutaka’s father, Nobunaga, would have killed every enemy
within reach and spent time hunting down those out of reach! Hideyoshi then split
Takigawa Kazumasu’s forces by bribing a key garrison and even captured Kazumasu
himself.
“Those who come seeking peace without a treaty are plotting.”
By this point, Shibata Katsuie was able to send out troops thanks to the thawing snow,
and Oda Nobutaka now repaid Hideyoshi’s mercy with rebellion. The Shibata general,
Sakuma Morimasa, however, made a serious error of judgement when (having failed to
learn the lessons of the Battle of Nagashino) he attacked arquebus-armed troops in a
strong defensive position. The resulting Battle of Shizugatake in 1583 was a disaster
for the Shibata forces, and they were pursued back to the gates of Katsuie’s castle.
Recognising that his war against Hideyoshi was lost, Katusuie took his own life and
burned his fortress. When he heard the news, Oda Nobutaka saw the writing on the
wall and took his own life too.
The stage was set for the confrontation
between Hideyoshi and Ieyasu,
Nobunaga’s greatest supporters and his
greatest generals. Both sides looked for
allies, and the important clans in
Nobunaga’s old holdings divided between
them. With two such able commanders,
stalemate was the inevitable result, although
there was much fighting, such as at the
bloody Battle of Nagakute in 1584.
When the battle was over, Ieyasu sat down
to count almost 2500 heads taken from an enemy army of around 9000 soldiers. His
army’s losses were around 600 men, but the battle decided nothing.
A Practical Arrangement
In the end, Ieyasu submitted to the authority of Hideyoshi. His decision was supremely
practical. Together, the two men were unbeatable, and Hideyoshi, the older man,
could not last forever… With Ieyasu now an ally, Hideyoshi was in a position to
conquer the rest of Japan. That he managed this as quickly as he did is a tribute not
only to his military skills, but also to his political skills. When facing Nobunaga, for
example, there was little point in not fighting to the bitter end. After all, he was likely
to kill everyone whether they resisted fiercely or not.
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Hideyoshi, however, was more political (or just plain cunning). He was generous
towards his enemies, letting them keep some of their holdings (but he did need some
conquered lands to use as rewards for his own loyal followers). He also took hostages,
but he didn’t kill off entire clans. He left them in charge of their lands, having secured
their loyalty. As a result, he managed to add the armies of his enemies to his own
forces and grow stronger over time. Also, Hideyoshi didn’t need to take all of a clan’s
landholdings, because he had changed the way that samurai were rewarded for their
conduct in battle; rather than handing out captured lands, he paid his men in gold!
Hideyoshi was now master of Japan and now free to pursue other aims. He built
Osaka Castle on the site of the old Ikko fortress of Ishiyama Hongan-ji. He also
organised the most important social change to take place in Japan: “The Great Sword
Hunt”, which started in 1588. Simply put, all weapons in the hands of the peasantry
were taken away and melted down for use in the construction of Hideyoshi’s Great
Buddha. The only people who would be allowed to carry weapons from now on
would be warriors, and the social distinctions between unarmed peasants (completely
unarmed), ashigaru soldiers (some weapons) and samurai (the only people who could
carry two swords as a badge of rank) now became a fixed feature of the social
landscape.
He also had plans for the conquest of China. The story of this expedition is outside
the scope of both Shogun: Total War - Gold Edition and this manual, but his Korean War
ended in strategic failure for the samurai. They failed to carve out a mainland empire,
but they did have the satisfaction of bringing back considerable loot. Oddly, Tokugawa
troops had taken no part in the fighting on the mainland.
The Final Struggle
“Those whose words are humble while they increase war preparations are going
to attack. Those whose words are strong and who advance aggressively are going
to retreat.”
“Speed is not a part of the true Way of strategy. Speed implies that things seem
fast or slow, according to whether or not they are in rhythm. Whatever the Way,
the master of strategy does not appear fast.”
— Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Rings, The Fire Book
Ieyasu had other plans, but the opposition to him came from a courtier outside the
regency, a bureaucrat called Ishida Mitsunari. On the other hand, Ieyasu had no desire
to be seen as the one starting any war, so he did little other than wait for Ishida
Mitsunari to make the first move. In the meantime, the “significant players” slowly
declared for one side or another. Fortunately for Ieyasu, most of Hideyoshi’s old
supporters chose him as the natural military successor. He also had one other piece of
luck. In 1600, he met the first Englishman to arrive in Japan, Will Adams. While Adams
was interesting enough, his cargo of guns, ammunition and good quality European
gunpowder was far more useful. Ieyasu made sure the whole lot found its way into his
armoury.
Ishida’s followers — usually referred to as the Western Army in accounts of the
period — eventually made their move. Unfortunately for them, the Tokugawa —
Eastern — garrison of Fushimi Castle proved to be incredibly stubborn and tied them
down for far too long. When the defenders were down to their last two hundred
men, they opened the gates and repeatedly charged the whole Western Army!
Although killed to the last man, they bought enough time for Ieyasu to move against
Ishida’s army.
The two sides met, or virtually blundered into each other in the fog, at a narrow pass
at Sekigahara on 21 October 1600, in damp and miserable conditions. Both armies
were soaked through and neither side could see the other because of the dense fog.
In the early part of the day, however, the fog lifted and the battle commenced as one
huge, mud-soaked brawl. The Western Army, however, had never been a united
force, and once battle was joined, Kobayakawa Hideaki made no effort to move
against the Eastern, Tokugawa army. When he did move, it was against his “own” side.
The Western army was beaten.
In 1598, Hideyoshi was dying, but he had enough of his old political skill left to appoint
five regents to rule in his infant son’s name. Toyotomi Hideyori was only five years old
when his regency council took over. Of these, the most important was Tokugawa
Ieyasu, now staggeringly rich by any standards: his revenue from his lands was
2,557,000 koku — a koku being the quantity of rice needed to feed one man for one
year. And this, remember, was his annual revenue, not the value of his domains. The
others were Ukita Hideie, Maeda Toshiie, Mori Terumoto and Uesugi Kagaktasu.
These were the most important daimyo in Japan, and Hideyoshi obviously wanted
them united behind his clan.
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“When the terrain has impassable ravines, natural enclosures, prisons, pitfalls
and clefts, you should leave quickly and not get near them. For myself, I keep
away from them, so that the enemy is near them. I keep my face to these so that
the enemy has his back to them.”
By mid-afternoon, Ieyasu was again counting the heads of his defeated enemies.
Although he hadn’t secured a total victory over every opponent in the field, he must
have been rather pleased with the haul. Ishida’s challenge was over. The daimyo that
survived — and had sense enough to submit — prospered or suffered in direct
relationship to their allegiances at the battle. From this day on, Tokugawa Ieyasu must
have known that he would be the undisputed ruler of Japan.
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In 1603, he was declared shogun, the title having been unused for nearly 30 years
after the removal of Yoshiaki, the last of the Ashikaga clan. But there was still one
opponent to deal with. Toyotomi Hideyori was still alive and scheming.
Ieyasu chose to wait and had the sense to concentrate on good government over the
next 14 years, until the chance came to deal with this last enemy. When the excuse
came — an implied insult — it was a little feeble, but good enough. After a long and
inconclusive siege at Osaka Castle, Hideyori’s troops marched out to meet the
Tokugawa army. Hideyori’s troops fought with brave desperation, but the Tokugawa
army showed that it had become “stale” over the years. It won, but without any real
elan. The wars for control of Japan were, however, finally at an end. No future
rebellion would be tolerated and the last of the Toyotomi clan, Hideyori’s eight-yearold son (Hideyoshi’s grandson), was put to the sword.
Ieyasu had this final victory in 1615, but he didn’t have much time to savour it. Within
a year he was dead, his remarkable constitution having failed to fight off stomach
cancer (as far as modern diagnosis can tell from this distance in time). But his passing
was not marked by war, assassination and fevered plotting among his retainers. His
son, Tokugawa Hidetada, quietly took control of the government and became the
second Tokugawa shogun. The shogunate was secure and the country peaceful.
In the face of these unwelcome facts, the clans remained fiercely xenophobic and
organised attacks on foreigners in Japan, which in turn weakened the position of the
Tokugawa shogun, who could no longer control them. The Meiji Restoration that
came in 1867 didn’t bring back the Emperors (naturally, they had never disappeared),
but it did restore power to the Imperial family and lead to the end of the shogunate.
The clans were disarmed and their fiefdoms were taken away over the next decade.
The new Imperial government set out to make Japan a modern nation. In this, they
were partly driven by the quite understandable fear of ending up as just another
European colony in the Far East. They had only to look towards China and India to
see what could happen to them. In the space of 50 years, Japan changed from a
medieval society to a modern industrial nation: no other country has ever changed so
dramatically in such a short space of time. With the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-5,
the Japanese proved that their transformation was complete when they defeated the
Russian Empire on both land and sea. Both the Imperial Army and Navy proved that
they were modern, forward-looking and equal to anything from Europe.
Ieyasu also achieved a kind of immortality. He was deified as To-sho-gu, the Sun God of
the East.
It hadn’t been an easy transition, though. The “last hurrah” of the old samurai order
came with the Satsuma Rebellion in 1877 led by Saigo Takamori. A medieval samurai
army fought against a modern conscript army and was convincingly beaten. At the last,
samurai bravery alone hadn’t been enough to halt the future and Takamori took his
own life in the traditional fashion.
The Last Shogunate
Ironically, it was in the Imperial Japanese Army that broke the samurai rebels where
the spirit of the samurai was to live on…
“Those who are first on the battlefield and await their enemies are at ease.
Those who are last on the field and head into battle become worn out.
Therefore, wise warriors cause the enemy to come to them and do not go to
others.”
History In The Game
“If you know your enemy and know yourself, you will not be imperilled by a
hundred battles. If you do not know the others but do know yourself, you will win
one and lose one. If you do not know the enemy and do not know yourselves you
will be in danger in every battle.”
The Tokugawa shoguns remained the undisputed masters of Japan for the next 250
years. The Emperors remained shadowy god-like figures insulated from real power.
Meanwhile, the Tokugawa shoguns made sure that Japan remained equally insulated
from the outside world. Even before the final victory at Osaka, the Tokugawa had
turned against foreigners. Christians were officially persecuted from 1612 onwards,
the Spanish were refused permission to land in Japan after 1624, and in the next ten
years the Japanese themselves were forbidden to travel. Japan was sealed off, other
than for limited contacts with small Dutch trading missions. The shoguns were largely
successful in their isolationism until 1853, when the arrival of a US Navy detachment
under Commodore Perry — and the threat of being incorporated into one of the
expanding European empires — forced home the idea that isolation as the only policy
was no longer workable. Japan had been left behind, a feudal backwater in the newly
modern, industrial, Victorian world.
All of this history might have seem a little long-winded in places, but it all goes to
show important lessons that you’ll need to remember if you want to win when playing
Shogun: Total War — Gold Edition. Knowing the way that real history unfolded, you’ll
be in a better position to crush your enemies when the opportunity presents itself. No
daimyo ever achieved success without a degree of ruthlessness, lots of information
about his enemies, and an eye for the main chance!
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You should also have spotted that although Oda Nobunaga, Toyotomi Hideyoshi and
Tokugawa Ieyasu became the three main contenders to become shogun, there was no
guarantee that these men were going to succeed. All the other daimyo had every right
to think that they had just as good a chance as anyone else. If, perhaps, the weather at
Nagashino had been better and the Takeda cavalry not so pig-headed as to charge
directly into the muzzles of the Oda clan, it might have been one of the Takeda clan
who became shogun. In Shogun: Total War — Gold Edition, you have the chance to find
out just how likely this outcome might be…
Shogun: Total War - Gold Edition starts in the year 1530, in the middle of the Sengoku
Period. Serious warfare has been a way of life for two generations, and the struggle
for the shogunate and ultimate power is far from being over. Most importantly for
samurai generals, warfare at this point is still very traditional: “modern” (for the time)
European firearms have yet to arrive in Japan and make their impact. It is during the
course of the game that arquebuses will arrive and be incorporated into the different
clan armies with varying degrees of success.
Remember, though that you can also journey back 300 years in this special Shogun:
Total War – Gold Edition to the era of Mongol invasions.
The Daimyo In Shogun:
Total War
“Leadership is a matter of intelligence, trustworthiness, justice, courage and
authority.”
It’s traditional for Japanese names to be given as the family name first, followed by the
individual’s given name, so Tokugawa Ieyasu is actually “Ieyasu of the family/clan of
Tokugawa”. By and large, family and clan loyalties were the most important
relationships between the “big players” in this period of Japanese history, which makes
it slightly easier to keep track of the different factions in Shogun: Total War - Gold
Edition! If people share the same family name, they’re generally on the same side. As
we’ve seen, this doesn’t stop some daimyo and samurai plotting against their
overlords, relatives and friends as well as everyone else, of course!
The following great daimyo, then, are leading their respective clans:
Hojo
Hojo Ujitsuna — Ujitsuna would like to be
heir to a proud tradition. The Hojo had been the shoguns of
Japan, brought peace and prosperity and even driven away the
Mongol hordes! Ujitsuna and his sons are powerful daimyo
and will struggle for many years against the Takeda and Uesugi
clans. In fact, the founder of the clan, Hojo Soun, was a lowly
samurai adventurer who overthrew the old order in his home
province and took an old name as his own. His descendants are equally ruthless!
Imagawa
Imagawa Yoshimoto — Under Yoshimoto, the Imagawa
clan managed to gain control of Mikawa, Totomi and
Suruga provinces. However, a move into Owari brought
him into conflict with Oda Nobunaga (the son of
Nobuhide, below) and Yoshimoto was defeated and killed
at the battle of Okehazama. Once he was gone, the clan’s
power declined rapidly.
Mori
When the action starts in Shogun: Total War - Gold Edition, the daimyo warlords are
well established in their home fiefdoms, and each has a realistic expectation of success
in the war to come. All the clans have a reasonably equal chance of being the next
shogun family at the start of play. There are many candidates who could become
shogun, but only if they have the skill to succeed in war and the will to prevail over
their enemies!
Mori Motonari — Originally vassals of Ouchi Yoshitaka,
the Mori family came to dominate the Inland Sea of Japan
for around 50 years and fight the Amako. When the Ouchi
were overthrown Motonari seized the opportunity and
defeated all rivals to their territory. With his power base
secured, he continued to expand his families’ holdings with
successes against the Amako, although his grandson and
successor was to be opposed by the generals of Oda
“If you do not know the plans of your competitors, you cannot make informed
alliances.”
Nobunaga.
In reality, Tokugawa Ieyasu (who was held hostage during his childhood by Imagawa
Yoshimoto in the list below) eventually came to prominence by astute political
manoeuvring and great military skill. His family lasted as shoguns for 250 years, but
there’s no reason for your version of history to turn out that way! It’s up to you to
steer your chosen family to the Shogunate, with all your enemies crushed and your
clan in power. The Imagawa/Tokugawa don’t have to be the winners… unless you are
their warlord and ruthless enough to take them to final victory!
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Oda
Uesugi
Oda Nobuhide — The father of the more famous
Oda Nobunaga, and a relative of the Taira clan who
had once ruled Japan. Nobuhide lead his clan to
victory against the Imagawa (above) at Azukizaka in
1542 and paved the way for his children to rise to
prominence. His most famous son, Nobunaga, was a
greedy, utterly ruthless man who nevertheless
became the archetypal daimyo general of the period
and the power behind the last of the Ashikaga
shoguns.
Uesugi Tomooki — Tomooki spent much of his time
at war with the neighbouring Hojo clan. His branch of
the Uesugi family (the Ogigyatsu) came to a premature
end when his son, Tomosada, was killed in battle in
1545 against the Hojo while trying to retake Kawagoe
castle. The other branch of the family, the Yamanouchi,
lasted longer and eventually fared better. Uesugi
Kagekatsu switched sides to the Tokugawa after
Sekigahara and was rewarded for his new found loyalty
with the valuable Yonezawa fief. The Uesugi also had a
long-running dispute with the Takeda clan.
Shimazu
Shimazu Takahisa — Based in the southern part of
Kyushu, Takahisa led the Shimazu clan in an able and
innovative fashion. He was the first of the daimyo to
equip his soldiers with European arquebuses on a large
scale, and the first to win a victory with them in his
attack on Kajiki Castle in Osumi province. After his
death the family fortunes declined, and they chose to
support Ishida Mitsunari at the Battle of Sekigahara
which lead to their eventual downfall.
Takeda
Takeda Nobutora —Nobutora seems to have been a
mostly able ruler of Kai province, but favoured his
younger son as his successor, which lead the elder,
Takeda (Harunobu) Shingen, to revolt. Nobutora then
had to suffer the indignity of being held prisoner by a
neighbouring lord by his own son’s orders! Despite this
seemingly poor beginning, Shingen became one of the
ablest of the daimyo. He was also the subject of
Kagemusha, Akira Kurosawa’s epic samurai movie —
and the movie is an excellent source of hints and tips
for double-dealing in the game!
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2: The Samurai
“Look upon your soldiers as beloved children and they willingly die with you. If
you are so nice to them that you cannot employ them in battle, so kind to them
that you cannot command them, so casual that you cannot establish order, then
they are useless, like spoiled children.”
The samurai are the defining image of
medieval Japan, and for many they are still a
defining image of Japan. They are widely
seen as being the ultimate warriors, ready to
charge into danger at a moment’s notice,
ready to kill themselves when events went
against them, and completely unforgiving
towards their enemies. As with any
stereotype, though, this image of the
samurai is both right and wrong. As it turned
out many were equally ready to rebel when
they thought they could get away with it!
As Japanese history shows, for centuries the samurai had been changing from their
position as the military servants of “the great and the good” and had increasingly
become “the great and the good” themselves. What could be held by the power of
the sword could also be taken by the power of the sword. The samurai became the
people with power who mattered in affairs of Japan.
And this group is where most of the great clans and the daimyo were drawn from.
The daimyo were not a separate class of great landowners in society, cut off from
everyone else by wealth and privilege.
They were the oldest, the most “noble” or simply the most ruthless among many
samurai families. Without military backing, by the time of the Ashikaga shogunate and
the Sengoku period, no daimyo could hold on to his lands. At the same time, more
than one of the daimyo worried that one of his followers would try to rebel one
day…
In theory, however, samurai were supposed to follow a code of honour. Many —
indeed most of them — did so to the point of death. This code was called bushido,
“the way of the warrior”.
Bushido: The Way of the
Warrior
“Today is victory over yourself of yesterday; tomorrow is your victory over lesser
men.”
— Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Rings, The Water Book
Bushido as a code of principles existed from the very start of the samurai. It was only
towards the end of the Sengoku period and at the start of the Tokugawa shogunate
that the “rules” came to be written down. The purpose of bushido was much the
same as the “rules” of medieval chivalry: it gave warriors a set of ideas to live by,
elevating them above the normal run of hired killers. Rectitude, endurance, frugality,
courage, politeness, veracity, and, especially, loyalty were all-important as virtues for a
samurai who truly followed the code of bushido.
As long as a samurai was true to his calling, he retained honour. This obsession with
honour at all costs allowed samurai to carry out acts of seemingly wasteful selfsacrifice. A samurai who was surrounded by enemies and still advanced into the
middle of them was not, according to the code of bushido, throwing away his life. He
was demonstrating that his loyalty was truly sincere. And this is where bushido can
look odd or even suicidal to modern eyes. It wasn’t at all. It was no “odder” than
European ideas of chivalry. A samurai imbued with a true sense of bushido didn’t think
about his own life at all when considering his actions. Life and death were quite
incidental to any outcome, providing the act carried out was the right thing to do.
Trying and dying in the process was more worthy than not trying at all, because the
attempt had been made without concern for the personal consequences.
This didn’t stop some samurai from running away in battle (they were only human,
after all), but it should be clear that bushido simply didn’t mean fighting to the bitter
end regardless of any odds either. A samurai was expected to act intelligently as well
as bravely and simply throwing your life away wasn’t only wrong, it was foolish. Acts
of apparent suicide — such as the fairly regular occurrence of a castle garrison
opening the gates and charging the enemy — need to be looked at from the
perspective of bushido. Charging an enemy besieging your castle may be personally
suicidal, but if it delays the enemy and allows your lord to eventually beat the enemy,
it is an act driven by loyalty and bravery, not by a self-destructive impulse. This is what
the last 200 Tokugawa defenders at Fushimi Castle did in 1600 when they opened
their gates and repeatedly charged the whole Western army! This, of course, is also an
explanation for the suicidal banzai charges made during the Second World War by
Japanese garrisons on islands all across the Pacific. The code of bushido survived into
the 20th century in the Imperial Army and Navy.
Bushido, like all formalised codes of conduct, could also have a dark side to it. Samurai
often treated prisoners harshly because the captives had failed to live up to the code
of bushido. Many enemies were executed right after battles for just this reason.
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Unlike Medieval Europe, where it was accepted that a captive nobleman or knight
would be held for ransom (often for years), Japanese warfare never really developed a
similar system of cash-for-prisoners. A samurai or daimyo taken alive on the battlefield
would generally expect to die ignominiously at the hands of his captors.
The books on bushido that have survived from the Sengoku period and later years fall
into three basic categories. Some are general “how-to” manuals of weapons handling,
where bushido is largely reduced to a practical set of skills. The book Tanki Yoriaki
(literally, “A Single Horseman”) is a work from 1735 that concentrates on arming a
samurai before battle. The subtitle is Hi Ko Ben or “The Art of Armour Wearing” and
it explains exactly what the book is about. Although written long after the Sengoku
period, the inherent conservatism of the Tokugawa shogunate means that the
techniques described in it were still perfectly valid after more than a century.
Others are philosophical works where the mindset of combat is applied to the wider
world so that the ideas and theory of bushido can be used to achieve anything. The
third category are the practical and mundane notes for running a castle and an army of
samurai, but they also throw light on how bushido was expected to apply to everyday
life for samurai. The command of Kato Kiyomasa that “A samurai who practices
dancing… should be ordered to commit hara-kiri…” looks a little harsh, but perhaps
Kiyomasa had his reasons. Perhaps he wasn’t a very good dancer, or just felt that it
was a warrior’s task to devote his energy to the martial arts rather than the cultural
ones.
That said the “complete samurai” was expected to be a cultured man as well as a
skilled warrior. He was not only expected to be good with a sword, but equally good
at more sociable skills, including the tea ceremony and poetry. There was even a
specific type of poetry duel that samurai indulged in, sometimes even on the
battlefield! One samurai would make up the opening line and it was up to his
opponent to reply quickly. Clever puns and allusions were very highly regarded in this
game of wits. Japan, of course, was a rather wealthy country, and samurai — being
high on the social ladder — had every opportunity to sample the finer things in life.
The daimyo, of course, lived the kind of life that would have been recognisable in its
opulence by a land magnate of the time anywhere in the world.
Hara-Kiri: Death and Honour
“In all forms of strategy, it is necessary to maintain the combat stance in
everyday life, and to make your everyday stance your combat stance.”
— Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Rings, The Water Book
There was also the curious (to outside eyes) practice of samurai killing themselves to
protest against a decision that their liege lord had taken. This was seen as the height of
loyalty even if the lord in question took no notice of the act, although it was a rare
man who didn’t reconsider his actions when a retainer had chosen to kill himself
rather than obey.
It should be immediately obvious that hara-kiri or “cutting the belly” is intensely
painful, and is intended to be so. The victim was expected to cut his stomach open
with more than one stroke. Self-disembowelment was so horrible that the samurai
eventually modified the act so that it became a simple stabbing carried out by the
victim. Once the first cut had been made a friend or trusted retainer would
immediately deliver a mercy blow and cut off the victim’s head. Although the
deathblow was merciful, the first cut still required enormous self-discipline from the
person committing hara-kiri.
Hara-kiri wasn’t the only form that formal suicide took in Japan. Togo Shigechika, for
example, is a figure from samurai legend as much as from history, but his death was
singularly grisly! Having vainly attacked an enemy fortress, he was buried alive — fully
armoured and on horseback — while swearing ghostly vengeance upon his foes!
Samurai & Ninja
“Foreknowledge cannot be had from ghosts or spirits, cannot be had from astrology,
and cannot be found by calculation. It must be obtained from people who know the
condition of the enemy.
“There are five kinds of spy: the local
spy, the inside spy, the reverse spy, the
dead spy and the living spy. Local spies are
hired from among the inhabitants of a
place. Inside spies are hired from
among enemy officers. Reverse spies are
hired from enemy spies. Dead spies give
false information to the enemy. Living spies
come back to make their reports.
“Therefore, no one in the army is treated as well as spies, no one is given rewards as
rich as those given to spies and no matter is more secret than the work of spies.”
Formal suicide is not just a Japanese idea. The Roman Emperors, for example, often
allowed conspirators against them to commit suicide and so preserve their family’s
fortune: being ordered to die by your own hand was punishment enough.
But among the samurai, things were slightly different. Death by your own hand was a
legitimate way of keeping honour, as well as a punishment. Samurai often killed
themselves to avoid capture, or because their lord had died and they wished to show
their utter devotion.
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No discussion of medieval Japanese warfare would be complete without mentioning
the master assassins and spies of the time: the ninja.
Ninja have become staple “bad guys” in martial arts movies, perhaps a little unfairly. In
their fashion they were brave and skilful. It is, for example, claimed that ninja could
dislocate their limbs to escape from any bindings, that they could kill any target, hide
in plain sight and even leave no trail that a man could follow. They also have “Robin
Hood” style legends attached to them of protecting peasants and the weak from
rapacious overlords. The number of tricks, traps and early warning devices that were
incorporated into castles and mansions shows that they were taken seriously as a
threat at the time.
One, possibly apocryphal, story shows the level of danger ninja posed to those they
targeted for death. We’ve already seen that Takeda Shingen and Uesugi Kenshin fought
a running series of battles for control of the Kawanakajima plains, but even after five
battles nothing had been decided. Uesugi Kenshin however, did not live to enjoy
another contest. He was allegedly assassinated.
Naturally, samurai retainers had guarded Uesugi Kenshin night and day, but this didn’t
save him. His killer hid himself beneath Kenshin’s privy for several days, waiting in the
latrine pit for the right person (or rather, the right bottom) to appear. After several
days — days that must have been remarkably smelly and unhealthy — the ninja’s
patience was rewarded when Kenshin answered a call of nature. One swift upward
thrust was all that was needed to despatch the very surprised warlord! Takeda
Shingen may have been the person who commissioned his death, but there were
other daimyo with an equal wish to see a rival dead. It’s equally possible that Oda
Nobunaga had Kenshin killed, or that his death was from natural causes.
Nevertheless, it is significant that a ninja could be credited with his assassination and in
such a fashion…
Death & Defeat of A Daimyo
The defeat and death of a samurai general
or daimyo was usually catastrophic for his
followers unless there was a son or heir to
take over. Even then, problems could just
be postponed if the successor wasn’t up to
the standards of his illustrious predecessor.
It wasn’t completely unknown for samurai
to kill themselves on the death of their lord
as a mark of ultimate loyalty.
The end of a daimyo’s family often resulted
in many of his former retainers losing their
positions and income. Samurai without a master were referred to as ronin, literally
“men of the waves”. Most did not wander for long, as there was fierce competition
for good warriors among the daimyo. However, it wasn’t entirely unknown for ronin
to set themselves up as petty warlords in a province — after all, this was how many of
the great daimyo and their clans had got started on the road to power!
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At worst, the ronin could end up selling their swords to the highest bidder, no matter
who that might be, or become bandits in their own right. The Seven Samurai in the
movie of the same name are ronin. They have fallen on such hard times that they are
willing to sell their skills for a bowl of rice.
Arms & Armour
“An army perishes if it has no equipment, it perishes if it has no food and it
perishes if it has no money.”
Samurai weaponry and armour are huge subjects that have filled books far larger than this
game manual. This can only be a brief overview rather than a full account and if you want to
know more, you would be well advised to pick up one of the many books on the subject.
Samurai Heraldry
“Heraldry” in Japan had exactly the same purpose as it did in the West. It was there to
make it easy to recognise “who was who” on the battlefield. Wearing armour tends to
make people look identical, so some clear means of working out which anonymous
armoured figures you should be killing and which ones are your friends was absolutely
vital.
To begin with, armies carried large coloured banners to show family allegiances. But
even from the earliest times, the mon, a (usually symbolic) family crest was stencilled
onto banners, painted onto armour or displayed on large wooden shields.
Unlike Western heraldry, the design of a mon was more important than its colour. It
also didn’t change once adopted by a family. In European heraldry the division of a
coat of arms into halves, quarters and the like often showed the parentage of the
owner. Likewise, the design would be modified by a first, second or third son, making
the whole business of heraldry very complicated indeed. In Japan, all members of a
single family and all their retainers used the same mon.
By the Sengoku period, the use of mon by samurai families had become firmly
established. The Tokugawa clan used the aoi (a hollyhock) in a three-leaf design in a
circle. Several families used the same variation on the tomoe (the comma shape used
in yin and yang symbols).
Mon were used on the sashimono flags worn on the back of individual samurai and
ashigaru. The background colour of the flag indicated which army unit the wearer
belonged to. Famous (or perhaps just overly proud) samurai sometimes had their
names emblazoned on their sashimono rather than a clan symbol. They were also
clearly displayed on the nobori, banners carried by standard bearers attached to units.
The nobori was a long vertical flag that had a rigid crosspiece along the top. The mon
would be stencilled on to the flag near the top. Other nobori for a unit might carry an
appropriate motto.
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Battle flags carried for units and the entire army could also include inspirational
messages rather than just a drawing. One of the flags used by Tokugawa Ieyasu carried
the Buddhist slogan “Renounce this filthy world and attain the Pure Land.” The text of
the battle flag carried by Takeda Shingen’s troops is quoted in full elsewhere in this
manual.
The sheer number of flags and banners carried by a samurai army could be impressive
in itself. Every soldier could have his own sashimono. His unit would have one or
more nobori flags, and there were also other banners, streamers, flags and simple
extravagant insignia carried by the army. Fukinuki, for example, were brightly coloured
and boldly designed cylindrical streamers on circular frames: they were almost the
same as modern windsocks!
Armour
Samurai did not wear plate armour in the European or mainland Asian style. Armour
had been brought from China but instead samurai armour came to be made of small
plates held together by silk or leather cords. Originally designed for mounted use the
armour, called yoroi, weighed around 30 kilos and was quite effective for a horseman.
The wearer’s shoulders carried nearly all the weight and this made the armour a little
restrictive when swinging a sword. However, given that the early samurai were largely
mounted bowmen, this wasn’t much of a problem.
During the Onin War armour began to change so that its weight was more even
distributed across the torso. This helped when using a sword in particular, as shoulder
movements no longer had to work against the weight of the armour as well as the
sword. The distinctive lacing was kept, and it required enormous attention in both
manufacture and day-to-day care to make it “work” properly. For a country that was
covered in paddy fields, having armour held together with laces might seem a little
odd. The laces themselves would become waterlogged quite easily, and therefore very
heavy. In cold weather, they could easily freeze.
They did, however, mean that the armour was flexible, easy to wear and relatively
easy to repair. Coloured laces also made it easy to identify armies and individual units
belonging to specific clans on the battlefield, in exactly the same way as any other
uniform does. In the confusion of hand-to-hand fighting, being able to spot your allies
and your enemies quickly is rather important!
It is this lacing that makes Japanese armour so colourful and attractive to the modern
eye. The samurai were naturally practical about their armour. The samurai didn’t
always approve of colourful displays just for the sake of looking good. Apart from
anything else, some dyes weakened the silk and made the laces fall to pieces, which
largely defeats the point of using them to hold armour together.
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Fashion, however, did play a part: after 1570
jet-black dye became available and blacklaced armour became popular. Armour,
above all, was an important “tool of the
trade” as far as the samurai were
concerned, being there to keep the wearer
alive in the very hostile environment on a
battlefield!
“Good warriors make their stand on ground where they cannot lose and do not
overlook anything that makes the enemy prone to defeat.”
Samurai armour was made of many pieces that could be worn individually. The plates
themselves were often cleverly manufactured with more than one layer to them: a
backing of soft iron to absorb impacts, a harder steel face and finally layers of lacquer
to stop rusting. The sectional nature of the armour meant, for example, there was no
need for a samurai who was just on guard duty at his master’s mansion to wear full
armour. He could manage for this task by simply using armoured sleeves beneath his
everyday clothes. These flexible sleeves were made of small plates sown into silk or
leather coverings, and worn with shoulder cords to hold them in place. Likewise,
when an attack wasn’t expected he could still wear some armour (in camp, say) and
save putting on the heavier pieces until absolutely necessary.
Putting on full armour involved a set ritual specifying a hand, leg or arm to be covered
first. Apart from anything else, the ritual served a practical purpose in making sure that
the samurai and his servants didn’t forget any part of the process. It also helped in
organising the armour so that the pieces put on later always overlapped the
underlying, earlier bits. As a result, the protection was maximised because any blow
would be deflected away from the wearer by a series of glancing surfaces that started
at the samurai’s shoulders and went all the way down his body. There was little that
stuck out from the armour for a blow to catch on and lead a blade towards the
samurai beneath.
Samurai helmets almost defy description. They could be enormous and frightening,
ornate and completely “over the top”. They carried antlers, enormous crests, horns,
huge feathers and sunbursts, suns and anything else to make the wearer more
intimidating and impressive. The heraldic mon was also a favourite device on helmets.
Added to this stunning effect, protective masks were often terrifying renderings of
demonic faces, or deliberately grotesque “cartoons” of the samurai under the mask!
Few daimyo went quite as far as Date Masamune who gave his entire hatamoto
(bodyguard unit) of 200 men gold-lacquered, pointed helmets that almost doubled the
height of their wearers!
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It’s worth remembering, though, that some of the extremely decorative armours and
helmets that still survive would never have been worn near a battlefield. A samurai
who could afford it (or a daimyo who could afford it for his men) would have almost
certainly equipped them with down-to-earth battlefield gear and other decorative,
ceremonial items as well.
After the arrival of the Portuguese there was also a fashion for “Christian” armour
among the samurai. In fact, this “Christian” armour was a Spanish pattern and, it can
be argued, not as technologically advanced as Japanese armour of the same period.
Even so, there are illustrations of samurai using European armour. This, perhaps, was
a fashion statement as much as a practical decision, perhaps to show that the wearer
was extremely wealthy (armour carried all the way from Europe was always going to
be expensive!) and perhaps as an open mark of a new Christian faith. Surviving
examples of European armour from this period nearly always have a bullet mark
somewhere on the breastplate. This doesn’t mean that the wearer was shot, but that
a bullet had been fired at the armour to test it. The dent was left to show the
customer that the gunfire test on his new armour had been successful.
Ashigaru Armour
Many ashigaru soldiers were often issued with standardised armour and weapons by
the clan they served (ashigaru had to provide a sword for themselves). To give them a
uniform appearance coloured lacquer was often used on the iron plates, and the clan
heraldic mon would often be painted on the chest and back plates too. Of far cheaper
construction than samurai armour, ashigaru armour was nevertheless a good
compromise between protection and mobility, and much better than the equivalent
peasant in a European army of the time would have been given.
Ashigaru helmets were almost always the same low conical jingasa, a practical bit of
gear that, when turned upside down over a fire, could be used as a rice boiler.
The Sword
“Cutting down the enemy is the Way of strategy, and there is no need for many
refinements of it.”
— Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Rings, The Wind Book
The Sengoku period was a pretty lawless one. Even peasants habitually went armed
with all kinds of weapons.
The samurai used the katana to defend as well as attack and as a result never adopted
shields, unlike the knights of Europe. They never needed to, because of the superb
metalwork in the katana was good enough to act in both capacities.
A samurai sword was carefully constructed out of many layers of steel and iron. The
two would be hammered out and folded over many times to produce a “sandwich” of
many layers. Each repeated forging doubled the number of layers of metal in a sword,
in some cases 220 — 4,194,304 — layers of metal would be the result. The maximum
number of folds recorded is some 230 (or 10,736,461,824!) layers of forged metal. This
gave the sword enormous strength when the iron and steel were welded together.
The iron at the sides and back edge gave flexibility to the blade, while the steel core
could be hardened to make a perfect edge.
The final process in the forging was particularly clever. The blade was coated with clay
built up to a different thickness across the blade: thin at the cutting edge and thick
towards the back. When the sword — in its clay overcoat — was heated and then
quenched, it cooled at different speeds and the metal crystals in each part in the blade
ended up as different sizes. They were large where the clay had been thick, which
meant that they were flexible, but small at the cutting edge, so they would form a
hard edge that could be sharpened. Once the sword blade was polished, the change
from the softer steel and the harder edge would show up as the yakiba, a line that
resembles a breaking wave. Once the blade had been signed by the smith and hilt and
guard fitted, the sword was ready for use.
The result of all of this was a sword that could cut a man in two — literally.
Occasionally condemned criminals were used to test new swords, but it was more
common to use a bundle of rushes and bamboo or to use corpses. Some swords had
details of their testing carved into the tang (the piece of the sword inside the hilt).
Thanks to the resilience of such a blade, a samurai could block and turn blows that
would have shattered any ordinary steel weapon. Its razor sharp edge gave him the
ability to cut through an opponent right down to the bone. These two contrasting
qualities were the result of the skills and experience that Japanese sword smiths had
accumulated over centuries. No other sword, even the famous blades from Toledo in
Spain, ever equalled these Japanese weapons. The katana is still probably the best
hand weapon ever produced.
A sword became the “soul of samurai” who carried it and many became family
heirlooms. As late as the Second World War some officers had their family blades
placed in army-issue fittings then carried them into action. Officers’ swords that were
carried home by Allied soldiers as war souvenirs from Pacific battlefields are still
occasionally identified as ancient, incredibly valuable blades even today.
However, samurai were the only people allowed to carry two swords, a pair called
the daisho, (the “long and short”) as a badge of their unique warrior status. These two
weapons, the long katana and the shorter wakizashi, were worn together although
rarely used as a pair of weapons in combat. Miyamoto Musashi, the sword-saint and
writer of the best-known book on swordsmanship, A Book of Five Rings, was unusual in
that his “Two Heavens” fighting style did use two swords at the same time. One other
sword is worth mentioning at this point, the no dachi.
These enormous two-handed weapons were only ever used on foot.
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The Bow
“The bow is tactically strong at the commencement of battle, especially battles
on a moor, as it is possible to shoot quickly from among the spearmen.”
Archery was the skill that the early samurai prized above all others, even more than
swordsmanship. They even used the term “The Way of Horse and Bow” to describe
their military calling. This dates back to the time when samurai were primarily cavalry
soldiers and fought as mounted archers. Over the centuries two slow evolutions took
place so that cavalry became primarily armed with spears and many other samurai
took to fighting as foot soldiers. Using the bow well, however, remained the mark of a
well-trained and disciplined warrior.
A samurai bow looks ungainly as the handgrip is not central, but two-thirds of the
distance along the bow, with the longer section above the handgrip. This odd
appearance was quite deliberate, because it allowed a much more powerful bow to
be easily used from horseback. The short lower section could easily be swung across a
horse’s neck so that the samurai could fire at any target. A symmetrical bow would
have been smaller (and therefore less powerful) or been ungainly for mounted use.
The bow itself was carefully laminated from deciduous wood and bamboo and then
bound for extra strength. The whole thing was carefully lacquered to keep out damp.
Stringing a bow could take the combined effort of several men, so the whole bow had
enormous power.
The level of skill that a samurai archer could achieve was the product of long years of
practice. Samurai were expected to hit small targets while riding at full gallop. This is a
skill that is still demonstrated today at yamasame festivals.
Arrows came in many types, but the most unusual were signalling arrows that had a
large wooden whistle fitted to the head. These made a warbling noise as they flew
through the air and were fired at the start of battle to attract the attention of kami, or
spirits, to witness the brave deeds that were about to be performed. Fire arrows
were also popular, particularly during sieges.
The Naginata & Yari
“Nothing is harder than armed struggle.”
The naginata looks remarkably like a quarterstaff with a large sword blade fixed to one end. The
sohei warrior monks particularly favoured them, but in the hands of a skilled man (which is to say
a samurai) they were devastating against almost any opponent. During the Sengoku period the
naginata fell out of widespread use as the yari became a popular weapon with the clans.
As with all Japanese weapons, skilled craftsmen often made yari. The yari’s shaft was often of
oak, surrounded by bamboo laminations and then covered with weatherproof lacquer.
A razor-sharp blade completed the spear.
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Originally, the yari was about 3 or 4 metres in length, but as the Sengoku period
continued, it became longer as the daimyo experimented with its tactical use. The
Date family, for example, equipped their men with 5.4 metre (around 18 feet) yari.
The daimyo came to see the yari as a valuable “offensively” defensive weapon, the
theory being that enemy warriors couldn’t get into close combat past a row of sharp
blades at the end of a long spear. Different clans also standardised on different lengths
for their yari; for example, those used by Oda clan spearmen were also well over five
metres long. This was partly thanks to their use as a “shelter” for arquebus-armed
troops, who needed yari-armed comrades to keep the enemy at bay while they
reloaded.
The Arquebus
“Defence is for times of insufficiency. Attack is for times of surplus.”
The arquebus or firelock is almost as simple as firearms get. Powder, wadding and a
ball are rammed home down the barrel, the touchhole is primed and then a
smouldering cord, the match, sets off the weapon. Unlike very early handguns, where
the match was simply held in the gunner’s hand, the match on an arquebus was held
by a short arm-like lever and flipped into place at the touchhole when the trigger is
pulled. There’s no flint or other relatively complicated sparking mechanism to go
wrong. What could go wrong was that the arquebus could explode in the face of the
user (although this wasn’t too common), or that damp could get into the powder,
making the weapon an expensive club. As a result, an army armed with arquebuses
was dependent on having good weather on a battle day.
All that said, once they had been introduced to the arquebus, the daimyo and their
samurai retainers recognised its usefulness almost immediately. After 1542 it took very
little time for local craftsmen to start making them for the samurai.
Many samurai carried the arquebus in battle, and used it to snipe (with mixed success,
given the inherent inaccuracy of a smoothbore weapon) at important enemies.
However, it was never the primary weapon of a true samurai. That remained the
sword. As a weapon for individual (and in the early years, wealthy) samurai, it was
never going to be truly effective in the hands of just a few samurai. Apart from
anything else, it was usually good for just one shot because there was rarely chance to
reload on the battlefield, even with servants to help.
The weapon’s true utility came when it was used by massed ranks of ashigaru. In
modern terms, great numbers of arquebuses made up for the weakness of the
individual weapon by turning it into a weapons system. When firing as a single mass or
volley firing, larger units overcame the fact that the arquebus — like all early firearms
— was hugely inaccurate and slow. It was more by luck than judgement that an
arquebusier could hit a man-sized target at 50 metres or so. Beyond 100 metres,
anyone struck by a ball from an arquebus was unlucky rather than a victim of
deliberate fire. By mass firing against massed targets, these limitations were overcome
and the weapon system that resulted changed Japanese warfare.
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The effects of an arquebus wound, once the target was hit, could be very nasty
indeed. The large shot fired (around 25mm in diameter) were hand cast, and as a
result were often flawed. A hand-cast lead bullet could quite easily break up once it
had entered the target and cause very severe injuries. Arquebus bullets also travelled
relatively slowly, so that nearly all their energy was delivered into the target, giving rise
to shock effects as well. It was not uncommon for people hit in the arms or legs to die
from the shock of the wound. By contrast, a modern bullet travels much faster and
will sometimes pass through its target completely. Not as much of its energy will
dissipate into the person who has been hit, nor will it shatter into pieces on entry.
At the end of the Sengoku period firearm development was generally abandoned
under the Tokugawa shogunate. The samurai became the only warriors in the world
to turn their backs on gunpowder — the weapon system of the future.
Samurai Armies
“I. All men, including those of the samurai class, in this country district are
ordered to come and be registered on the 20th day of this month. They are to
bring with them a gun, a spear or any kind of weapon, if they happen to possess
one, without fear of getting into trouble.
“II. If it is known afterwards that even one man in this district concealed himself
and did not respond to this call, such man no matter whether he is a district
commissioner or a peasant, shall be beheaded.
“III. All the men, from fifteen to seventy years of age, are ordered to come; not
even a monkey-tamer will be excused.”
— Recruiting orders issued by Hojo Ujiyasu (1515-1570)
No matter who fought with them, it was the samurai that eventually decided the
course of a battle. It was traditional for samurai to advance into a fight shouting out
their names and looking for a worthy opponent. When a samurai found one, he would
engage him in single combat. The winner would move on, and his defeated foe would
be beheaded. The head would be tagged so that everyone knew exactly who claimed
the kill. At the end of the battle the victorious general would inspect all the heads and
reward his followers according to their individual prowess — but woe betide any
samurai who accidentally killed an ally!
All of this led to many battles that were mass brawls rather than organised affairs.
Brave samurai would be quite willing to charge into the ranks of the enemy looking for
opponents to kill in the hopes of gaining recognition. Indeed, some individuals came to
see it as a right that they should advance and look for a worthy opponent, regardless
of any battle plan their generals might happen to be considering. This enthusiasm
could be a dubious benefit from the point of view of a general: it was sometimes
impossible to restrain headstrong troops from attacking the enemy. More than one
plan was ruined because the samurai decided to take the fight to the enemy without
thought of the consequences.
Nevertheless, under the right commanders a samurai army was a formidable
instrument of war. It could be difficult to manage at times, but it was also a war
winner.
Tactics
“When the enemy presents openings, penetrate immediately. Get what they want,
subtly anticipate them. Maintain discipline and adapt to the enemy to determine
the war’s outcome. At first you are like a maiden so that the enemy opens his door;
then you are like a rabbit on the loose, so the enemy cannot keep you out.”
Like the best armies have always been, a samurai army was a “combined arms” force.
It included cavalry, missile troops and infantry (in varying proportions, depending upon
the clan in question) to act in concert on the battlefield.
As the Sengoku period progressed, the ashigaru became an increasingly important part
of every clan army. On one level, this was inevitable: the simple need for fighters
meant that the samurai had to be supplemented in some fashion! But the samurai had
never gone into battle alone anyway. From the very earliest times, servants had
attended each samurai. These servants (genin or shoju) acted as his “support team”,
ready to bring him the right weapon at the right time, re-supply him with arrows, and
even count his conquests.
“Avoiding confrontation with orderly ranks and not attacking great formations is
mastering adaptation. The rule for military operations is not to face a high hill
and not to oppose those with their backs to a hill.”
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All daimyo made use of their army’s best features in battle. The Takeda clan, for
example, was fond of beginning with a cavalry charge. Their mounted samurai were
among the best in the country, and this simple tactic exploited that fact. It worked
well, for the most part, until they chose to charge across waterlogged ground towards
Nobunaga’s arquebusiers at the Battle of Nagashino (1575). That day the Takeda clan
learned that warfare had changed. The Nobunaga clan, as might be expected, used
their arquebusiers to good effect and slaughtered their bogged-down enemies.
The important thing for any army was to attack as small a part of the enemy with as
many of its own samurai as possible. Although ashigaru made up the bulk of a clan
army by a head count, it was the samurai who were the “arm of decision” in most
battles. No ashigaru force could be expected to stand up to the same number of
samurai in a straight fight. The samurai ethos of warfare and his superior training
counted for too much. After all, a samurai had been trained for warfare almost from
the time that he could walk.
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The chances were that an ashigaru had chosen the life of a soldier as an easier option
to endless toil in a rice paddy.
For the most part, the great general of the Sengoku period, Oda Nobunaga wasn’t a
formal tactician, but he did understand that discipline, drill and training were vital in
making sure that an army worked together effectively. He also insisted that his soldiers
wore easily seen and highly coloured uniforms. These simple changes in army
organisation and practices impressed his opponents at the time. In these simple ideas,
he was ahead of many of his contemporaries.
Tactics and the Arquebus
“When generals cannot assess opponents, clash with much greater numbers or
more powerful forces and do not understand the level of skill of their own
soldiers, they are beaten.”
The arrival of the arquebus and his use of volley fire also gave Oda Nobunaga’s tactical
innovations added impetus. A good unit of arquebus-armed troops would be lucky to
get off three shots in a minute. It was more likely that the rate of fire would be only
two volleys per minute. In between while the ashigaru were busy reloading, enemy
warriors could close and engage. And an unloaded arquebus was only useful as a heavy
club.
All the daimyo had incorporated ashigaru arquebusiers into their armies but usually
everyone in a unit fired at the same time. This could be devastating, but it meant that
the unit was effectively useless for the time the gunners were reloading. Nobunaga, on
the other hand, made sure that only some of his men fired at any one time. This volley
fire was an important innovation in battle practice: by having his soldiers fire in ranks
or sections, Nobunaga was able to keep up a steady, continuous fire against the
enemy. This made it dangerous to close with his troops because there was no “down
time” between shots from the ashigaru.
Japanese armies had also begun to evolve along the same lines as the European “pike
and shot” armies of the same period. Spearmen were used to protect the
arquebusiers while they reloaded. The tactical solutions that arose weren’t identical in
Europe and Japan. The Japanese never, for example, ended up with spearmen (pikes)
fighting in units that were 30 or or more ranks deep. “Push of pikes”, that huge
shoving match that many European battles degenerated into, never became a major
part of a samurai battle. The presence of samurai each armed with a katana made sure
of that.
“On level ground take up positions where it is easy to manoeuvre, keeping the
higher land to your right rear, with low ground in front and high ground behind.”
Keeping charge of an army was, at times, remarkably difficult. Flag signals, conch horn
signals and drums could carry simple orders to units, but mounted messengers carried
difficult instructions to distant units. This was why set battle formations became so
important. When every man had a set position in a battle — and this had been
repeatedly drilled into him — the need to communicate with subordinates was less
pressing.
Fortunately, from their perspective, Japanese generals rarely had a problem with
cowardice in the presence of the enemy. If anyone was likely to “cut and run” under
the stress of battle, it would be the ashigaru. A good general made sure that ashigaru
were never given the key position in any battle, and that there were troops behind
them to bolster their morale, act as a rallying point or just simply kill them if they did
choose to run.
Samurai would never voluntarily abandon a fight unless it was truly hopeless and dying
served no purpose. Sometimes, this single-minded bravery could be slightly
problematic. Samurai were known to break ranks and charge the enemy despite of
having orders not to do so, and despite it being pointless. There were times when
“running away and living to fight another day” would have been the right thing to do in
strategic terms, even if it meant losing a tactical battle. Such pig-headedness, while
commendable on one level, could lead to the best-laid plans going awry through
foolish dedication rather than failed morale.
Formations
“The victorious general gets his troops to go into battle as if he was directing a
massive flood of water into a deep canyon. This is a matter of formation.”
Getting an army organised on the field of battle was an important drill that every
general would have had his troops practice. The process of getting an army out of a
marching column and into some kind of battle line was helped because there were
standard formations for an army about to enter battle. The following six were
recommended battle formations that every army would know how to apply when
entering a fight.
All formations were based on older Chinese ideas for deploying armies, and all of
them had elements in common. The taisho, or general, was always near the centre of
his army, where his command skills could be best used to control his followers.
Cavalry — and this meant exclusively samurai — were positioned where they could
charge against vulnerable enemy units. A skirmish line of brave samurai and ashigaru
missile-armed troops were in a forward position to harass and break up the enemy’s
ordered ranks as they approached. Most importantly, there would be a substantial
contingent held in the rear as a tactical reserve to be committed at a battle-winning
moment.
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Ganko — This is a flexible and powerful formation that can quickly change
into a defensive pattern called onryo by a series of pre-arranged moves.
The units of samurai could be pulled back at an angle to make the second
formation.
Gyorin — Effectively this is a “blunt arrowhead” formation similar to the
hoshi. Typically, an army that was badly outnumbered by its opponents
would use this formation.
Hoen — This was a keyhole-shaped formation that was widely regarded as
the best counter to the hoshi arrowhead. The enemy drawn into the
centre and destroyed in detail.
Hoshi — This is an attacking formation, and regarded as one of the
strongest. The arrowhead brings the maximum pressure to bear against a
small portion of the enemy battle line.
Kakuyoku — This is another strong formation that can be quickly changed
to suit the emerging battle situation. As it stands, the kakuyoku is equally
good for offence or defence. Without too many movements by the
component units, the entire army could be changed into a hoshi and sent
against the enemy.
Koyaku — Another flexible formation that, thanks to the split vanguard, is
capable of absorbing an enemy initial attack for long enough for the
enemy’s true intentions to become plain. Once they were, the army could
adapt its tactics to match.
Army units
“The consummation of forming an army is to arrive at formlessness. When you
have no form, spies cannot find anything out and the enemy cannot produce a
strategy.”
All the units below are included in Shogun: Total War - Gold Edition. All the units will be
produced at a stockade or castle of one kind or another within the producing clan’s
domains. Some units also require that the castle be upgraded with specialist weapon
makers or dojo — specialised training establishments.
A clan’s resources must be sufficient to pay the cost of the unit in koku. Some of these
units might seem “cheap”, but that’s only until you remember that a koku is the
quantity of rice used to feed one man for a whole year. That’s not to say that a unit of
cavalry archers needs several warehouses full of rice to keep them going, but that this
is the level of wealth that’s needed to pay for their training and upkeep. Remember
that not all the clans necessarily get their money in rice from the peasants.
taxing trade with the Chinese mainland. Koku, however, are a good standard measure
for wealth in Shogun: Total War - Gold Edition.
An army is made up of a mixture of unit types, simply because each style of fighting
has its own strengths and weaknesses. A skilled general takes into account the
strengths of each kind of unit while being aware of their weaknesses. By making sure
that the weaknesses of one sort of unit are screened or compensated by another unit,
a strong army can be built up.
“Those who use an army skilfully do not raise troops twice and do not provide
food three times.”
The exact mix of units in an army depends on the personal command style of the
daimyo in charge. The Takeda clan, for example, used to include quite a high
proportion of cavalry in their armies because it was their standard (and often
successful!) tactic to begin a battle with a full-blown cavalry charge into the enemy.
The shock effect of this cavalry charge often demoralised an opposing force before the
real battle began, making victory an easier proposition. The mix of units in your army
when playing Shogun: Total War – Gold Edition will depend on the tactics that you
want to try out, what opponents are fielding against you, and what units you can
afford to train.
A good taisho also kept his army intact as far as possible. There was little point in
winning a battle if the victory has cost too much blood. Because warriors in Shogun:
Total War gain experience when they fight, it is a sensible policy to try and keep
casualties to a minimum. Units that are bled white in battles not only lose soldiers;
they also lose valuable combat effectiveness as the knowledge of how to fight — and
win — dies with the warriors who are killed.
“Getting soldiers to fight by letting the force of momentum work is like rolling
rocks or logs… When troops are skilfully led into battle the momentum is like
that of round rocks rolling down a high mountain. This is force.”
Finally, when looking at these different types of soldier, remember that the samurai
were the living embodiment of a simple military principle. Weapons are useless unless
used well, and the warriors carrying the swords and guns are more important than the
weapons they carry. It almost goes without saying that a unit of samurai is much better
in terms of quality than any ashigaru force, no matter what their armaments. Both,
however, are necessary when building an army because having many “cheaper” men is
often useful in battle and in holding ground once it is taken.
The Takeda were lucky enough to own a gold mine, while other clans made money by
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Samurai Archers
No Dachi Samurai
These troops are among the most useful in Shogun: Total War as
they can be trained quickly and are relatively inexpensive. They are
extremely useful in any army. As samurai, their morale and
fighting skills are excellent. They are also armed with both bows
and swords, meaning that they can stand off and shower enemy
forces with arrows, then close in and fight hand-to-hand when
needed. Their armour is also of good quality and their morale as
samurai is exceptional, making these among the most useful soldiers daimyo can have
under their command, especially early in the game.
Every samurai carried two swords as a mark of his class. Samurai
armed with the no dachi went one better, as this was a large twohanded sword that could cut down almost any opponent when
used with skill. Samurai armed with the no dachi are used as shock
troops to break into enemy formations.
They can also be used very effectively against troops whose morale
is already suspect — an attack by a unit swinging two-handed
swords can cause even the sternest heart to quail! No dachi samurai, then, are superb
when used to take an attack to the enemy, but they are less effective when used
defensively.
Most clan armies will include a good number of these units simply because of these all
round abilities.
“Standing your ground to wait for the enemy who is far away, waiting for the
weary in comfort, waiting for the hungry with full stomachs, is mastering strength.”
Naginata Samurai
The naginata is a dangerous weapon in the hands of a samurai.
Its reach may not be as long as a yari, but it is “handier” for
close combat and has a greater attack range than a sword. This
makes it a terrible weapon to face: for example, a single sweep
from a naginata can neatly decapitate a charging horseman or
cripple his horse. In either case, the horseman has been
defeated!
Samurai who used the naginata often used heavier armour than was usual which
makes them a little less mobile than other samurai units. It does, however, give them
defensive bonuses in combat.
Yari Samurai
The yari is a long spear tipped with a razor sharp blade. Originally,
this was simply a slightly sturdier version of the lance-like spear
used by mounted samurai, but over the years it became a different
and heavier weapon. Once battle had been joined samurai
equipped with the yari were equally adept in close combat as long
as the unit kept good order in its ranks.
Yari samurai are extremely effective against cavalry. It is, after all, very difficult to force
even the best-trained cavalry horses to charge into a mass of spear points! Thus, they
tend to be used “defensively”. In an ideal world, the enemy would be tempted into
charging onto the spears, dashing themselves to pieces against a foe which who is just
a few metres away beyond the range of a sword swing.
Warrior Monks
Religious certainty and samurai training are a potent combination.
The sohei — Buddhist warrior monks — had a tradition of getting
involved in wars that didn’t necessarily concern them. Many
monasteries also had a tradition of producing brave and fanatical
warriors, men who were certain that death on a battlefield would
not mean defeat, disgrace and failure but a certain place in paradise.
A unit of warrior monks is a powerful fighting force, motivated as it
is by religious devotion. It also uses a “portable shrine” in place of a battle flag as its
standard. The presence of this shrine makes other troops reluctant to attack them, if
only because of the potential sacrilege. However, Christian samurai units (that may
existent after the arrival of the Portuguese in 1542 and the subsequent appearance of
the Jesuits) don’t suffer any penalties when attacking warrior monks.
cavalry archers
Armed with swords and bows, cavalry archers are a potent
skirmishing force. Being mounted, they have excellent mobility;
being armed with bows, they can shower opponents with arrows;
being armed with swords, they can close with the enemy; being
samurai, they are dedicated and fearless!
However, cavalry archers lack the “weight” to charge home
successfully against properly organised defenders, but against poorly
positioned, badly managed or already “wobbly” troops they can be deadly. They can
be used to harass the enemy with missile weapons, manoeuvred to threaten
vulnerable flanks, or sent in to break wavering troops.
As with all cavalry, however, cavalry archers need careful handling when going up
against arquebusiers. They can be quickly shot to pieces.
“Attack without warning where the enemy is not expecting it, and while his spirit
is undecided follow up your advantage and, having the lead, defeat him.”
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Heavy Cavalry
Heavily armed and armoured, these samurai are an elite. Able to
take nearly any enemy and win, they have the speed, weight and
power to be powerful shock troops when they can come to grips
with an enemy. Relatively speaking, they are less effective against
troops armed with yari (who can hold them off at a distance beyond
the swing of a katana), and against arquebus-armed ashigaru.
“Relatively”, however, is the key word here. If heavy cavalry are in
close combat against anyone, they will do severe damage to their opponents. Heavy
cavalry are also well able to defend against most attacks. Nearly all clan armies will
include heavy cavalry. They are simply too threatening not to include in an army.
Historically, the Takeda clan made great use of cavalry to deliver a punishing charge in
the first few moments of a battle.
Yari Cavalry
These samurai shock troops fall somewhere between their light
and heavy comrades in arms. They can be used to break infantry
formations, as their lances give them a reasonable “reach” in
combat. The lance used by mounted samurai is the direct
“ancestor” of the yari carried by infantry. It is, however, shorter and
lighter than the foot samurai and ashigaru version of the spear, but
it does mean that lancers are at less of a disadvantage against yariarmed warriors.
Overall, they are potent units, but lack the defensive bonuses of the heavy samurai
cavalry. Again, they are forces that need to be carefully handled when attacking
arquebusiers. If a charge is poorly timed, any cavalry unit will be shot to pieces before
it can attack itself.
As with many European “pike and shot” armies, yari-armed troops were used to
create a “wall” of spear points for other soldiers to shelter behind. It takes some time
to ready an arquebus and the enemy can be kept at bay during reloading by yariequipped troops.
Arquebus Ashigaru
The coming of the arquebus in 1542 led to a revolution in the way
that clan armies were armed and organised. Properly used in large
numbers, arquebuses could be devastating missile weapons, even
though it was out-ranged by, and slower than, a traditional bow.
Early arquebuses were very heavy, and often needed a stake-like
support for the barrels. In turn, this made them cumbersome to
move and deploy, as they certainly couldn’t be used without such
supports. This also means that arquebus-armed ashigaru aren’t
very effective in hand-to-hand combat. Their firepower can inflict heavy casualties on
anyone who comes near, but if the enemy gets close enough, the arquebus-armed
ashigaru are at a huge disadvantage in hand-to-hand combat. They will, quite simply,
be cut to pieces.
Because arquebus-armed ashigaru require a trading post to be constructed in a clan’s
domain, they can only be produced after the arrival of European traders in Japan: the
Portuguese arrive in 1542, while the Dutch land in 1561. European traders were quite
happy to sell guns to the daimyo warlords, but their European gun makers were at the
other end of a very long and hazardous sea voyage. Local gunsmiths did manage to
copy European arquebuses, but not immediately in large quantities. This is part of the
reason for the relatively long training time for arquebus-armed ashigaru. It’s not hard
to teach troops to use the weapons, but getting hold of enough arquebuses plus good
quality powder and shot can be headache!
Musketeer Ashigaru
Yari Ashigaru
At the start of play in Shogun: Total War, most clans will receive
a yari ashigaru unit “free of charge” as the start of their army.
The yari, or long spear, was popular as a weapon among the
daimyo for their ashigaru because it was relatively easy to train
large numbers of peasants to use it. Learning to hold a spear
(and point it in the right direction) doesn’t take anything like as
much time as learning to use a sword properly!
Yari Ashigaru should not be compared directly to samurai warriors
armed in a similar fashion. Ashigaru fighting ability, morale and general levels of
equipment are markedly inferior to those of true samurai. On the other hand, the
ashigaru are relatively cheap soldiers and can be trained in great numbers quite
quickly. Ashigaru soldiers of this type are usually present in clan armies in considerable
numbers for just these reasons.
Qualitative improvements in gunpowder weapons and (just as
importantly) their tactical use mean that later in the Sengoku
period — and in Shogun: Total War — an improved form of
arquebus-armed ashigaru can be trained for inclusion in your army.
These troops have a slightly greater range with their gunfire and a
higher rate of fire. By this point the arquebus has become a more
refined and — most importantly — a lighter weapon that can be
aimed without the need for an extra support.
Note: Clearly, arquebus-carrying units are not available in campaigns. from the
Mongol invasion era.
The term "musketeer" isn’t strictly correct because these ashigaru aren’t technically
armed with muskets as such but with a lighter, improved type of arquebus. However,
"Slimmed-Down-But-Improved Arquebus Ashigaru" is a bit of a mouthful for a unit
title!
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NAGINATA CAVALRY
A further refinement of heavy cavalry came about when samurai began
using naginata polearms from horseback. This gave them many of the
advantages of a sword, with the reach of a spear!
Naginata Cavalry can only be trained at a location where there is a
Famous Horse Dojo (i.e. one that has already been improved) and a
MONGOL UNITS
All the Mongol units are described in the section on The Mongols, as
they only appear in battles and campaigns of that historical period.
All the Mongol troop types land as reinforcements in Japan, spirited
across the ocean from mainland Asia. The Mongols never train new
units on the map, so there are no building requirements for them.
Spear Dojo.
KENSAI
Kensai is the term for "sword saints", the almost superhuman masters
of the sword that only years of training and dedication can produce.
Although he lived at the end of the Sengoku period, Miyamoto Musashi
was one such figure. These men were capable of taking on many
opponents at once and emerging victorious and often untouched. Few
nations have ever produced such skilled swordsmen, and possibly only
the very greatest fencing masters in Europe could ever be judged to have the same
level of skill with their chosen weaponry.
Kensai, as masters of swordsmanship, can only be trained at the most exalted of dojo:
a Legendary Sword Dojo. They appear on the battlefield as single warriors, but don’t
be deceived — they are truly deadly!
BATTLEFIELD NINJA
Unlike the other ninja in the game who operate as "strategic" pieces
and carry out assassinations, Battlefield Ninja do exactly what their
name suggests: they can be deployed like any other troops on the field
of combat.
Well, perhaps not quite like any other troops, since they have superior
stealth abilities and can therefore hide very effectively from enemy forces. As such,
their position is only revealed when they finally attack.
ASHIGARU CROSSBOWMEN
Ashigaru rossbowmen are described in more detail in the section on
The Mongols, as they only appeared in that historical time period.
Their training requires a Bow Dojo.
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Castles & Siege Warfare
Throughout Japanese history, warfare nearly always involved castles. Shogun: Total War
— Gold Edition includes both castles and the battles that were fought over them.
In Shogun: Total War - Gold Edition, you won’t have to sit and watch a long siege, as
all the details will be handled for you by the strategic game system. If your forces
invade a province with a castle, they will have to fight the province’s garrison as
always, but victory doesn’t automatically take control of the province.
Instead, the defeated defenders retreat into the castle and the province becomes
contested by the two daimyo. This stops either side getting any tax income from the
province, but it also stops the defender building any new military units there as well.
As long as there is an attacking army in the contested province, the castle is besieged.
You, as commander of your clan, don’t have to worry about the details of the siege. As
long as the castle is besieged, the defending troops will suffer attrition losses as they
starve or your own men conduct small-scale attacks. This is a slow but fairly certain
method of taking a castle. Of course, you can always order an assault that will result in
another tactical battle or decide that a siege is going to take too long and try a
different strategic approach.
It might look like the defenders, on the other hand, have no choice but to sit there
and wait to be starved out, but there are options for them too in Shogun: Total War Gold Edition. The first of these is, naturally enough, just to sit there and hope the
attackers give up! This may, however, be only postponing the inevitable. The
defenders can sally forth and fight it out on the battlefield, but defeat will let the
attackers into the castle. Alternately, the defenders can also be aided by another
friendly army acting as a relief column to raise the siege. The arrival of a relief column
will also trigger another tactical battle in the province.
Assuming that the attackers are successful, they will gain control of the castle, but it
will have been damaged as a result of the siege. This may mean that some of the
castle improvements (as explained later) will not function until the castle is fully
repaired.
As you can see, castles are hugely useful in slowing down the advance of an attacking
army because it will take time to besiege or assault a castle. This is quite apart from
the benefits they give to their owners as training grounds for new troop units.
Historical Castles
Castles in historical Japan were naturally built to be defensible when under siege, and
nearly all the early castles in Japan were built in the most awkward places (for the
attacker) that could be found. Early castles were almost always wooden stockades
with a few stone reinforcements. Hilltops and even mountaintops were fortified, and
the nearby availability of suitable wood and stone undoubtedly helped the builders.
Unlike in Europe, the defenders were lucky in one respect.
They never had to worry about lots of siege machines other than battering rams. The
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techniques of taking a castle were simple and rather brutal: the attacking army
surrounded the castle, attempted to burn it down with fire arrows and, at some point,
mounted an infantry assault over the walls or against its gate. By and large, the
defenders only had to wait out the siege and hope that their enemy would give up as
his troops deserted or disease took its toll. Often, however, the defenders didn’t wait
around for the attackers to leave. Japanese history is full of accounts of samurai leaving
the safety of their castles to take the fight to the enemy, often with mixed results.
By the Sengoku period, castles had been built along the same principles for centuries,
and siege techniques hadn’t changed all that much either. After all, there was no real
need to change a design that worked. A tradition of building stone castles was never
really developed before the Sengoku period, possibly for the good reason that Japan is
one huge earthquake zone, but also because it simply wasn’t really necessary. A good
set of compromises between wood and stone did eventually emerge, with stone being
used to create “artificial hills” on top of which castles were built.
The key feature in castle design, its defence and in siege warfare remained the range
of a fire arrow. The ability to burn down a castle was all-important, as was the ability
to keep the defenders far enough away from vulnerable internal buildings so that they
couldn’t burn them down. All this changed, of course, with the introduction of
firearms. Now both defender and attacker had to take into account snipers, as well as
larger siege guns, of which there were some in Japan.
One thing didn’t change during the Sengoku period, and that was the same willingness
of the defenders to charge out of the castle to meet their enemies on an open field.
Given the influence of bushido upon a samurai’s actions, it is less surprising that so
many chose to fight in the open than act in a completely defensive fashion!
Some castles of the Sengoku period could be enormous. Toyotomi Hideyoshi’s
fortress at Osaka was truly vast, and the equal of any defensive structure in the world
at the time. It used the river nearby as part of its defences, and had defensive outer
walls some 18 kilometres long. Within, a series of baileys meant that an attacker was
forced to besiege one inner wall after another to have any hope of taking the place.
Artillery In Japan
In the eyes of a 16th or 17th century European general one thing would seem to be
missing from a samurai army. Where is the field artillery? In Europe, gunpowder
weapons were expensive to manufacture and difficult to use, at least when first
created, so artillery was in use before handguns became common.
In Japan, however, matters were largely reversed. This was thanks to earlier Imperial
edicts against wheeled transport of all kinds. Japan had become a society where
everyone walked, or rode on horseback or was carried by palanquin.
Without a good, wheeled carriage, it is very nearly impossible (and definitely
impractical) to move field guns around open countryside. Try carrying a car’s back axle
and transmission across a muddy field while (a) several hundred people try to kill you
and (b) you try to keep the whole thing dry and then you’ll have some idea of the
practical difficulties of dealing with artillery on a samurai battlefield!
The daimyo took to arquebuses with enthusiasm, but artillery never really got used as
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a separate “weapon system” for the battlefield. There were large guns but these were
used in siege warfare. Changes in castle building techniques mostly kept ahead of
artillery practices. This is why large field guns haven’t been included in Shogun: Total
War - Gold Edition. Artillery pieces just weren’t that significant in Japanese battlefield
warfare at this time.
to ninja assassination attempts. Taisho are definitely assets worth using (and
protecting) on the battlefield.
Emissary
Emissaries are samurai who have been
specially selected for their loyalty and given
training to be courtiers as well as warriors.
Their diplomatic skills have been honed to
a fine pitch, and they can be trusted to
treat daimyo with respect and honour
when negotiating with them. Every time an
emissary succeeds in a diplomatic mission,
his experience increases; this both
increases his chances of success in future
and makes him slightly less vulnerable to
Note: You can play with gunpowder if you undertake any of the Mongol invasion
scenarios! You’ll have the opportunity of unleashing the fear of the difficult to use, but
deadly, Korean Thunder bombers upon your opposition!
Naval Forces In Japan
It would be fair to say that that the samurai were never consummate masters of naval
combat, because they never really needed to become expert sailors. A fleet wasn’t
going to make its owner the shogun, but a samurai army might just do the job!
Warships were built and used, but they weren’t really a decisive factor in the Sengoku
period. As a result, Shogun: Total War - Gold Edition doesn’t include naval forces.
During the game you can build shipyards in coastal provinces, but these are needed
for transport and trade between the main islands of Japan.
Strategic Units In Shogun:
Total War
In Shogun: Total War - Gold Edition the following units are deployed on the strategic
map of Japan. With the exception of the taisho, a general, they don’t appear on tactical
battlefields. They do have skills and abilities that a wise daimyo is well advised to use
to full advantage, as you’ll see!
Taisho
Drawn from the ranks of the most able
samurai, a taisho is a general given
command of part (or all) of a clan’s army.
The taisho shows the position of the army
on the strategic map of Japan, and he is
also present on any battlefield involving
units under his command. On a
battlefield, a taisho has a small group of
bodyguards (his hatamoto) to protect him.
A general has an influence on all the units
under his command.
As he gains honour and experience, the units a taisho commands receive bonuses to
their morale.
assassination attempts by ninja.
Finally, there is always the risk that an emissary will not only fail in his diplomatic
mission, but that he will become a “rejection note” himself. One possible result of
sending an emissary to see a daimyo is that his head — and just his head — will be
sent back! This definitely means “no!” whatever the question!
Ninja
Ninja are spies and assassins par excellence.
It’s a foolish daimyo that doesn’t at least
consider using ninja against his rivals. Ninja
can be sent out to kill important people in
other clans, including emissaries, taisho and
the daimyo himself. The more important a
target the ninja is sent against, the lower
his chances of success. Master and
legendary ninja who have already carried
out many successful missions can also be
used during sieges.
They can sneak into a castle and open the gates for the attackers!
Each time a ninja manages to complete a mission he gains experience and will have a
higher chance of success the next time he is sent out — assuming that he isn’t caught
and executed (in some appropriately horrible fashion) by the opposition, of course!
Generals can be killed on the battlefield by enemy troops and they are also vulnerable
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Shinobi
Jesuit Priest
The shinobi is a spy, sent into enemy
territory to gain information and cause
dissent. Without owning a province, a
daimyo in Shogun: Total War won’t have
access to any information about that
province unless, that is, he sends a shinobi
to spy out the land. This spy can give
reports on the value of the province (its
productive value), any improvements that
have been built there, and some military
information too.
The other purpose of a shinobi is to encourage revolt against the province’s overlord.
A province that revolts doesn’t automatically change allegiance, but instead it becomes
independent with its own standing army of peasants and ronin.
Jesuit priests can be used as emissaries, and
are especially effective when used in this
fashion on diplomatic missions aimed at
securing treaties with Christian rulers. No
matter what the result of his diplomatic
mission, a Jesuit will never be killed and
his head sent home in a bag by a Christian
daimyo. A Buddhist daimyo, however, is
under no obligation to respect the sanctity
of the church or its representatives!
Used “defensively” a shinobi acts as a kind of secret policeman, making sure that the
daimyo’s enemies never get the chance to spread dissent and dissatisfaction to the
peasants in a province. Endless rebellions can, of course, destroy the domain of a
daimyo just as surely as an army marching across it.
The Legendary Geisha
The Legendary Geisha is the supreme
diplomat, spy and assassin. She can be sent
as an emissary to see another daimyo, but
while in his castle also acts as a spy,
obtaining information normally only
available to ninja sent as spies. What’s
almost insulting to the “victim” daimyo is
that he knows that the Legendary Geisha
is up to no good, but can do nothing about
it other than having her assassinated by a
ninja of his own! It’s worth remembering
that geisha were not openly prostitutes or courtesans, but “educated escorts and
entertainers” — the perfect people for overhearing sensitive information…
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3: THE LAND OF THE
DAIMYO
“Terrain is to be assessed in terms of distance, difficulty or ease of travel,
dimension and safety.”
Land has always been at a premium in Japan.
The basis for nearly all wealth and prestige in
feudal Japan was land and the rice that the
peasantry grew. It’s worth remembering that
the population of Japan was greater than that
of the whole of Medieval Western Europe
— Japan has always been a relatively
crowded nation, and this has given extra
impetus to the demand for land.
The country itself is made up of four main
islands: northern Hokkaido, the main island
Honshu, and the smaller islands of Shikoku and Kyushu. Shogun: Total War - Gold
Edition doesn’t include Hokkaido for the simple reason that control of this island
wasn’t strategically or tactically important during the Sengoku period. It was still
largely a cold, barbaric “backwater”, inhabited by the Ainu people, the original
inhabitants of Japan. Honshu was the most important of the islands (and remains so to
this day). It was control of the provinces of Honshu that brought victory to the
Tokugawa clan. It would, however, be a mistake to dismiss Shikoku and Kyushu as
irrelevant, as powerful daimyo arose on both islands. The straits around those islands
make superb protective moats behind which quite a powerful army can be trained!
“A victorious army first wins and then seeks battle. A defeated army first battles
and then seeks victory.”
The Asian mainland is just far enough away to the west to be “inconvenient” for
invading armies, as the Mongols found out to their cost. This allowed the daimyo to
fight each other without really having to worry about the arrival of a Chinese or
Mongol army in their midst, eager to take advantage of a Japanese civil war. Perhaps
the Sengoku period would never have happened if the daimyo had been forced to
consider external threats. Then again, the Ancient Greek cities squabbled continuously
even though the Persian Empire regularly tried to invade.
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PROVINCES
Even given the scale of the strategic game in Shogun: Total War - Gold Edition, the
provinces are functionally different. Each province in the game is valuable in itself
because of the money (measured in rice koku) that it produces, because of its
strategic position and because of the prestige that ownership gives the controlling
daimyo. This is true no matter where the province happens to lie. The daimyo sets
the tax rate across his whole realm, but rich and properly developed provinces
obviously give the maximum tax income. At the same time, a daimyo has to be careful
in balancing his obvious need for money to pay for his armies, fortifications, spies, and
all the rest against the risk of starting a peasant rebellion. The Ikki defence leagues of
peasants and ji-samurai are not going to remain loyal forever if their overlords do
nothing but squeeze them for taxes!
A province like Yamato or Hida on the main island of Honshu is useful strategically
because it allows its owners to attack in many directions; this same strategic
usefulness can also be a liability to a weak overlord because the same province can be
overrun from all sides. Conversely, one of the provinces on Kyushu is excellent
defensively, but isolated from the centre of Japan with many (often heavily) defended
provinces between it and the centre of power in Kyoto. Both kinds of province have
their uses to skilled daimyo that think in larger terms than just winning the next battle.
“A wise general strives to feed off the enemy’s land. Each bushel of food taken
from the enemy is equivalent to twenty carried from home.”
Provinces also differ from one another in one other important respect. In Shogun: Total
War - Gold Edition many provinces have what can be termed a “special ability”. Some
provinces contain gold or other valuable mineral wealth that can be mined, for
example. Others are home to natural horsemen (and so cavalry units are easy to
produce there) or have a tradition of producing ninja assassins. It’s a good idea to
decide if the special conditions in a province make it worth capturing, either because it
will further your own plans or deprive an enemy of a valuable resource.
You can use a shinobi to discover the details of a province before you attack it. Both
the strategic position of a province and its revenue need to be considered before it is
added to your holdings! There is, of course, a double benefit to attacking enemy
provinces. Not only do you get the use of the territory, your opponent is deprived of
its income and many improvements that he has built there. Taking a province actually
shifts the balance of power by “two provinces’ worth” in favour of the conqueror
(plus one for the conqueror, minus one for the defeated party), and may open up
further strategic opportunities to divide an enemy’s domain.
One of the other nice things about capturing a province is that you also capture any
castle that happens to be there.
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As you’ve already seen, though, it’s not necessarily a fast or easy process to capture a
castle. You’ll either need to fight at least two battles or starve the garrison into
submission through a protracted siege. Naturally, the castle itself will be damaged in
the process of being captured (it will be reduced by one level, in fact), but this is often
much cheaper than having to build a new structure from scratch. Any military
structures associated with the castle will also be captured, unless the castle itself is no
longer prestigious enough to be a home for them. Thus, taking a province can also
slow or cripple an enemy’s war production and give your own production capacity an
almost-instant boost too!
Watchtowers & Border Forts
There are two “non-economic” improvements that a daimyo can make in Shogun:
Total War - Gold Edition. Firstly, he can build a watchtower in any province that he
controls. This doesn’t help defend the province, but it does act as a permanent spy in
all the adjacent provinces. Secondly, he can build a border fort, which acts as a
permanent counterspy in the province where it is built. This stops enemy spies from
obtaining any information about the province. Watchtowers and border forts also help
improve the loyalty of the local peasants.
Improving Provinces
In addition to being great commanders, the daimyo were also great landowners. They
had to be, as maintaining an army in the field was a hugely expensive proposition. Like
all sensible landlords, the daimyo kept an eye on their holdings and regularly invested
in schemes to increase their worth and, in the process, the taxes that they could raise
from a province.
In Shogun: Total War - Gold Edition, you can also improve provinces by spending koku
on them. Any province can have its farmlands upgraded at least once (and up to four
times in most cases) to produce more annual revenue. Provinces with mineral wealth
can also have mines built in them. There’s nothing quite as useful as finding gold or
other mineral riches in your domain! This was what allowed the Takeda clan to be so
mild in their taxes and yet build up a substantial cavalry army.
One thing that doesn’t need improvement is the permanent garrison that is found in
every province. Even without having an army in the field, a daimyo can rely on a
“scratch force” of local peasants, ashigaru and ji-samurai to protect his interests.
Effectively, these people become an extra couple of units on any battlefield when a
daimyo is on his own territory. Even when a daimyo doesn’t control a province, it’s
garrison remains in place to protect their own homes.
Disasters
Japan has always been a country where
Nature can turn on the works of mankind
and destroy them in an instant. There is
always the risk that an earthquake can strike
and wipe out some or all of the buildings
and improvements in a province.
Fortunately, earthquakes aren’t very
common.
Equally dangerous and expensive when they
do strike are typhoons (the word itself is a
direct transliteration from Japanese). These
terrible storms can sweep across the Pacific and make landfall with damaging effects in
coastal provinces. However, the western coast of Japan faces China and the seas there
simply aren’t big enough for these storms to really get going. As a result, the western
coastal provinces are safe from any typhoons.
Rebellions, Peasant Revolts
& Ronin
Not all provinces in the game are actually commanded by one of the daimyo. Just as in
the historical Japan, there are provinces where the Ikko-ikki have kicked out their
overlords, or where more generalised peasant revolts have taken place.
Every province in Shogun: Total War - Gold Edition has a loyalty rating. This measures
how the peasants and ji-samurai feel towards their current ruler, and it can be affected
by a number of factors. Nothing is likely to cause more damage to loyalty in the long
run than consistently high taxes. It’s a great way to raise income, but keeping the tax
rate too high can lead to unrest. After the arrival and spread of Christianity, religion
can also have an effect on the people’s loyalty, as you’ll see in a later section.
Rebellions also have a nasty tendency to spread if left unchecked, as peasants in one
province will see that their near neighbours are getting away with rebelling and try it
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themselves. Just to make life difficult, peasants can sometimes rebel if their harvests
have been poor or a natural disaster has struck. After all, it is better from their point
of view to keep all of a poor harvest and face a daimyo’s wrath than starve to death
after handing over most of a poor harvest in taxes.
At the same time, there are things that a daimyo can and will do to make his provinces
happier with his leadership. On the military front, keeping a garrison in a province
helps suppress some disloyalty, and is very useful in itself as a “tripwire” force should
any of your neighbours decide to invade. Shinobi can also be used as “secret
policemen” to weed out malcontents in a province and suppress dissent as well.
Border forts and watchtowers will also make the peasants feel better about their lot:
at least they can see that their taxes are being spent on something to protect them,
and not just on a daimyo’s fancy army. Likewise, spending money to make the
peasant’s lives better in the long run by improving their farms also makes a daimyo
popular.
There’s also one other factor in whether rebellion breaks out or not: a just-conquered
province is likely to rebel and declare loyalty to its former owner if the peasants are
given half a chance. Not keeping a garrison force (and possibly a shinobi) in a recently
conquered province is likely to cause a revolt. A “change of ownership” takes five
years or so to take hold in the hearts and minds of the local population in a province,
so bear this in mind when setting tax rates and moving troops around.
Sooner or later, however, it’s likely that someone, somewhere will revolt when you’re
playing Shogun: Total War - Gold Edition. Depending on the cause of the revolt, it may
turn out to be a direct threat or a problem that can be ignored for a little while (but
not too long, remembering that rebellion can spread!).
These soldiers might look like rebels, but they are actually self-interested warriors
only after extending their own powers. They can be among the most dangerous
“independent” forces in Shogun: Total War - Gold Edition, but fortunately the ronin
don’t tend to be that co-ordinated in their actions. The ronin in each province will
generally act in selfishly and not come to the aid of any neighbouring ronin who are
currently being attacked.
Religion
Sooner or later every daimyo in Shogun: TotalWar - Gold Edition will have to make a
decision about his religious convictions, and this can have profound consequences on
the loyalty of his people. The arrival of Roman
Catholic Christianity with the Portuguese, and
in particular the arrival of the Jesuits, made
sure that the accommodation between
Buddhism, Shinto and Zen that had been
arrived at in Japan would have to change.
The Society of Jesus — the Jesuits — had
been formed in Europe as “soldiers of the
Counter-Reformation” to defeat the rise of
Protestantism on all levels. They were not
only a militant order, but were often superb
scholars, consummate diplomats and very occasionally good soldiers as well. Jesuits
were often involved in journeys of exploration simply because they made such superb
papal representatives.
The least dangerous revolt, from a daimyo’s viewpoint, is a peasant rebellion. This
causes the Ikki in the appropriate province to raise an army of ashigaru spearmen to
defend their homes. With a bit of care, a samurai army should be able to crush this
kind of rebellion.
Religious rebellions are slightly more dangerous, in that they tend to produce better
quality field armies of fanatical believers. A rebellion by Christians puts a militant
samurai army in the field and these troops are often supported by ashigaru
arquebusiers. A Buddhist Ikko-ikki revolt, on the other hand, doesn’t have any
arquebusiers (as these are a “Christian” weapon), but it can have substantial numbers
of warrior monks in its army. In both cases, these can be tricky revolts to put down
quickly because of the quality and quantity of the rebel forces involved.
Finally, and only in recently conquered provinces, there is the risk that a “loyalist” (to
the old daimyo) faction will take control of the province. This can be a double-edged
sword, depending upon whether you are the victim of the rebellion or the daimyo for
whom the loyalists have declared. If you’re the victim, as soon as a province begins a
loyalist revolt, you’ll find yourself facing a new samurai army loyal to the previous
daimyo. If you benefit from the loyalist revolt, you’ll suddenly find yourself in a control
of a brand new samurai army in your old province!
Finally, after the death of a daimyo (without any heir) his domain doesn’t simply
disappear. It dissolves into independent “mini-statelets” under the control of ronin, the
daimyo’s former soldiers.
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In Japan their martial spirit was immediately appealing to the samurai, and this was a
legacy from their founder, Ignatius Loyola, who had been a military man.
Christianity, however, demanded that other belief systems be put aside, and the old
compromises were not acceptable to true believers. As a result, friction grew up
between the followers of the new religion and the more militant elements of the older
faith, Buddhism.
In Shogun: Total War - Gold Edition this tension is reflected in the damage that can be
done to the loyalty of a province if the religion of the majority of its population doesn’t
match that of its ruling daimyo. Simply put, a Buddhist daimyo has an easier time in
ruling (and collecting taxes from) a predominantly Buddhist population. The same
holds true for Christian daimyo and Christian populations, of course.
Each religion brings its own benefits: becoming a Christian daimyo gives easier access
to guns earlier in the game (at least until the arrival of the Dutch traders, who don’t
care about much except a man’s gold). Remaining as a Buddhist allows fanatical and
skilled warrior monks to be used in a daimyo’s armies.
In either case, the majority religious affiliation of a province will tend to drift towards
the faith that is “in charge” (i.e. the faith of the province’s daimyo), and be affected by
nearby Christian Churches and Buddhist Temples, which influence nearby populations
into supporting the appropriate faith.
And finally (on this subject) as was noted earlier, it’s quite possible for religious
differences between a daimyo and his people to become a key factor in triggering a
rebellion!
Military Buildings in Shogun:
Total War
Japanese buildings have always been constructed with the need to withstand
earthquakes in mind. The wooden construction used for traditional buildings was a
sensible and practical solution to preventing earthquake damage. A lighter, wooden
building stood a better chance of “giving” and moving with a quake rather than simply
falling down!
This isn’t to say that stone buildings didn’t exist in Japan. Stone construction came
about as a response to the arrival of gunpowder on a large scale. As in the rest of the
world, Japanese castles began as purely defensive structures and only gradually
became homes as well as fortresses. Over the years castles became increasingly
elaborate as military tactics developed. The best of the Japanese castles built at the
end of the Sengoku period were certainly the equal — if not the superior in terms of
comfort and facilities — of any fortresses in the rest of the world at the time.
Before rockets and cannon arrived in Japan, the main method of attacking a castle was
to shoot fire arrows into it and hope that the fire caught. By and large, with wooden
buildings within archery range, this was a tactic that worked. With the arrival of stone
curtain walls, the inner defences were kept beyond the range of the enemy fire
arrows.
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“Those skilled at the unorthodox are infinite as heaven and earth, and as
inexhaustible as great rivers. When they come to an end, they begin again, like
days and months. They die and are reborn, like the four seasons.”
Shogun: Total War - Gold Edition doesn’t include the battles that arose from siege
warfare because the long, slow business of laying siege to a castle doesn’t make a very
exciting game. Sieges are covered in the strategic game in a straightforward fashion so
that you don’t have to worry about the details. Siege warfare was often neither heroic
nor dramatic. In fact, most of the time it was a fairly squalid affair. If you want to
imagine what a siege would have been like, think of the most overcrowded camping
holiday you’ve ever had or heard about, with utterly dreadful food, no toilets, no
reliable fresh water, constant bad weather, no chance to wash for weeks on end and
no chance to move somewhere more interesting. Now add in random bouts of illness
(caused by the food, bad water, bad weather, lack of hygiene and overcrowding) and
random episodes of small-scale violence when the people you are besieging try to kill
you or you try to break in and kill them.
Of course, none of the intricacies (and boredom) of siege warfare mattered on many
occasions. At Osaka in 1615, for example (and at other sieges), the troops inside the
castle left the protection of the walls to fight it out with the enemy on an open
battlefield. Sometimes this was a good move, breaking the siege in one climactic
action. At other times, such as Osaka Castle, it simply meant the defenders were cut
down outside the walls rather than being starved or slaughtered within them.
Samurai Castles
There are four levels of castles in Shogun Total War, but they all perform the same
function. They are the bases for armies and the visible signs of the daimyos’ power,
honour and control of provinces. Without a castle to act as an
administrative centre, no other military structure can be built in
a province. The simplest (and cheapest) castle type in the game
is the castle (castle 1). All other types of castle are
developments of the basic castle. A castle is roughly the
equivalent of a wealthy landowner’s fortified manor house.
At the other end of the scale, the citadel
(castle 4) is a truly awe-inspiring structure equal in scale and
grandeur to Osaka Castle.
In all probability, there won’t be more than one or two citadels
built during the course of a single game of Shogun: Total War Gold Edition. As well as their more obvious defences, Japanese
castles were also designed with tricks and traps to defeat ninja assassins. All castles
add to the honour and prestige of their owners. They are visible symbols of wealth,
power and permanence and as such send a powerful message to friends and enemies
alike just by “being”.
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Each type of castle can have a number of military buildings
and functions attached to it, as described below. As a general
rule, the larger and more prestigious a castle is, the better the
quality of its associated buildings, and the better their
products. A small stockade, for example, can only have the
most basic type of each building attached to it, while the
larger castles attract master and legendary
craftsmen and sensei to work in them.
These highly trained individuals help to
train better quality troops and a greater
variety of them too.
In Shogun: Total War - Gold Edition, you’ll probably find that it is
wise to create one or two large castles within your domain that
act as specialised “centres of excellence” for one or two kinds of
fighting unit, rather than create a castle in every province and
hope to make them all perfect. Remember that it’s quite easy
to run out of money: harvests and taxes come once a year,
but the money can be spent all the year round! Remember too, that castles and the
military buildings can only support your efforts to become shogun. In order to win,
you’ll need soldiers, not just the places to train them!
“There are routes not to be followed, armies not to be attacked, citadels not be
besieged, territory not to be fought over, civilian instructions not to be obeyed…”
Armoury
Samurai nearly always provided their own armour and
weaponry. The same, however, was not true of the ashigaru
who were drawn from the lower, poorer classes. The
importance of providing standardised equipment to their
soldiers was realised by the more astute daimyo during the
Sengoku period. Apart from the obvious benefits of making
sure that their troops were properly equipped, there was an additional benefit in
terms of creating an esprit de corps among the ashigaru.
In Shogun: Total War - Gold Edition, an armoury improves the armour values of any
units trained at the castle where it is located. An armoury can also be improved to
famous or legendary status in larger castles with subsequent armour benefits for units.
“The important thing in war is victory, not persistence.”
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Bow Dojo
Samurai originally defined themselves by their skills at
archery, especially archery from horseback. The magnificent
asymmetrical longbows of the samurai needed highly skilled
craftsmen to construct them. It was in the interests of every
lord to make sure that such craftsmanship was encouraged
— and well paid — in his domain, and that the sensei needed
to train men to use them were also available. A bow dojo is
also one of the fundamental military improvements that can
be constructed at any castle.
By the Sengoku period, archery was beginning to fall out of favour, a process that
would accelerate with the arrival of the arquebus. A Bow Dojo allows the castle
where it is located to produce Samurai Archers, and it can be improved to famous or
legendary status in larger castles, allowing the training of higher honour Samurai
Archers.
“When you know sky and earth, victory is inexhaustible.”
Church And Cathedral
The Portuguese not only brought advanced military
technology in the shape of guns, they also imported a religion
as well: Roman Catholicism. The Jesuits who came to Japan
spread a very militant variety of Christianity, as they were
formed in Europe as “soldiers of the Counter-Reformation”.
Their leader, Loyola, had been a military man and he imbued
the whole order with a martial spirit that was appealing to the samurai. Within a few
years of their arrival, the Jesuits had converted substantial sections of the local
population. The persecutions of the Tokugawa shogunate lay in the future.
With a flock of converts, the Jesuits lost little time in making
sure that there were churches for the newly faithful as a
visible sign of their influence. Daimyo who build Jesuit
Churches must have adopted Christianity as their religion.
Once built, Churches help to spread the doctrine of
Christianity to the local population, increasing the number of
Christians in nearby provinces and, in the long term,
reducing the chance of a religious revolt. A church allows the training of Priests. It can
be eventually improved to become a Cathedral, which has consequently greater
power in spreading Christianity.
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Geisha House
Ninja House
When all the trappings of culture have been built at a castle (a
Temple, a Tranquil Garden and a Legendary Tea House), a
daimyo can add the final flourish: a Geisha House. These can
only be built at the very largest castles, and help train Geishas
for use as spies and messengers.
The secretive ninja require their own dojo (of sorts) to learn
their black arts of assassination and spying. Their weapons and
skills are so specialised that only a master ninja can hope to
teach his followers, and even then it may take many years of
training starting in childhood to produce one of these lethal
killing machines.
Once a fortress has been built, an Infamous Ninja House can
be constructed.
Gun Factory
Once knowledge of arquebuses was generally available, the
daimyo wasted little time in setting up their own craftsmen to
make them. The European weapons were perfectly acceptable,
of course, but rather expensive after travelling halfway round
the world. Within a remarkably short space of time Japanese
armourers had mastered all the skills they needed and were producing arquebuses
that were as good as anything from abroad.
In Shogun: Total War - Gold Edition a Gun Factory can only be created at the largest of
castles.
Horse dojo
Port
A port can be built in any coastal province that contains a
castle. It allows the training of emissaries and spies, and also
gives a trade revenue bonus. It also allows the transport of
military units by sea to other provinces.
A port is a necessary building before the Trading Post and Gun
Factory improvements can be constructed at larger castles.
Portuguese & Dutch Trading Posts
Cavalry require large numbers of horses, both for use in
battle and for transport. A battle is a frightening and confusing
experience for a man let alone an animal, and training a horse
so that it was willing to charge the enemy took time and skill.
Horses were also trained to kick and bite foes. This means
that a samurai warrior would require at least two horses and
probably more. A battle-hardened animal was too valuable
(and probably dangerous) to be ridden simply as a means of getting from A to B, so
the samurai would need at least one more ordinary riding animal to get him to a
battle.
A Horse Dojo cannot be built at a basic castle (level 1 Castle), but it does require a
Bow or Spear Dojo to have been built on the same site. It can be upgraded to famous
and legendary status. A Horse Dojo will produce Cavalry Archers and Yari Cavalry.
With an Armoury, a Master Horse Dojo can also train Heavy Cavalry.
“Fight going down hill, not climbing up.”
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While the samurai had experience of Chinese gunpowder
weapons,including a primitive form of hand grenades seen in
the hands of Korean Thunderbombers in the Mongol invasion
period battles, it was the arrival of Portuguese traders
that brought the arquebus into Japanese warfare. Japanese
craftsmen made most of the guns used by samurai and ashigaru
troops, but these weapons were copied from the samples provided by European
traders. In addition, European gunpowder was regarded as being superior to the
locally produced item, which means that a Trading Post is a very useful asset for an
ambitious daimyo to have in his lands.
By the time the Dutch arrived in Japan, the Portuguese and the Jesuits had been there
for some time. The Dutch were the same in their willingness to provide arquebuses to
any daimyo who was willing to trade for them, but they differed in not bringing Roman
Catholicism as “part of the package”. As a largely Protestant nation, the Dutch didn’t
have quite the same religious drive to convert the world that the Jesuits brought. For
the Dutch traders it was enough to make money without worrying about the souls of
their customers!
There must be a Port present at the castle where a Trading Post is established.
A daimyo can have either Portuguese traders or Dutchmen in his domain, but not
both.
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Spear Dojo
A dojo is a place of training where a sensei — a master in a
particular skill, craft or art — can impart his knowledge to
students in the proper atmosphere of calm and learning.
This is as true for the martial arts as for any peaceful
pursuit. The best of the sensei were always encouraged to
settle by daimyo and begin their teachings, not only for the
practical benefits of spreading their skills, but also for the reflected glory and honour
that a true sensei could give to his patron.
Both Yari Ashigaru and Yari Samurai are trained at the Spear Dojo. It can be upgraded
to famous and legendary status at larger castles, and once it has attained Famous Spear
Dojo status it can also be used to train Naginata Samurai, providing there is an
Armoury at the castle too.
Sword Dojo
The sword is the weapon mostly closely associated with
the samurai, and mastering its proper use takes time and
endless practice. Many schools of swordsmanship existed in
Japan, and adherents of particular styles were not above
duelling against one another to prove who was the best.
Even Miyamoto Musashi, the sword-saint, killed his fair
share of opponents when he was young in such duels, largely to prove that his
particular teachings were the best method of using the sword…
A Sword Dojo can only be built when a samurai in the daimyo’s army has become a
legendary swordsman by killing many opponents in battle. This is one more good reason for
making sure that troops not only survive, but also prosper! Just like a Horse Dojo, a Sword
Dojo cannot be built at smaller castles, but once constructed it can be used to train No
Dachi Samurai units. It can also be improved to famous and legendary status.
Swordsmith
Once a large castle has been built in a region, a wise
daimyo will enlist the services of an experienced
swordsmith. Swordsmiths will enhance the attacking ability
of all the troops produced in the region. The swordsmith
has rediscovered the lost arts of blade making, and
produces weapons of such quality that they will never be
surpassed. This building can also be improved to famous
and legendary status.
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“To master the virtue of the long sword is to govern the world and oneself, thus
the long sword is the basis of strategy. If he attains the virtue of the long sword,
one man can beat ten men. Just as one man can bear ten, so a hundred men can
beat a thousand, and a thousand can beat ten thousand. In my strategy, one man
is the same as ten thousand, so this strategy is the complete warrior’s craft.”
Tea House
“Pen and sword in accord” is a simplification of the Samurai
way, but it is a convenient one. Samurai were not only
expected to be to be skilled warriors, but highly cultured
men able to produce a haiku verse or officiate at the tea
ceremony. One of the reasons, of course, for Japan’s
descent into the turmoil of civil war was the Ashikaga
shoguns’ love of the tea ceremony and other pleasures over good governance!
A Tea House can be upgraded to famous and legendary status at larger castles.
Buddhist Temple
Although religion often leads to a contemplative life of meditation, there have always been
religious orders that have valued military prowess as much as prayer. In Japan, several
orders of Buddhist warrior monks were the equal of any other warriors at the time, and
showed no reluctance to become involved in politics beyond the Temple walls.
The Nobunaga clan, as we’ve seen, had trouble with
warrior monks from time to time. As allies the monks were
extremely valuable, but as the section on Japanese history
shows, keeping control of them could sometimes be a
problem.
A Temple helps to support the doctrines of Buddhism
among the people of nearby provinces and can “roll back” the presence of
Christianity. A Temple allows Monks to be trained. Famous Temples and eventually
Temple Complexes can be constructed at better castles, and these in turn train more
expert Monks. Famous Temples and Temple Complexes also help counter Christianity
in a much more effective fashion.
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Battlefield Ninja Dojo
Tranquil Garden
Most temples and large, formal houses in Japan included space for a garden as a place
for rest and reflection. Gardens are also, of course, the perfect place to have a private
conversation with agents, spies and emissaries away from the ears of guards and
servants — not something that is necessarily very easy in a Japanese building with thin
bamboo and paper screens rather than solid stone walls!
A Tranquil Garden can be built in any castle, but it is also a pre-requisite before
building any kind of Temple or Church.
The Battlefield Ninja Dojo extends the teaching of the
black arts of the Ninja beyond the usual skills of spying and
assassination. Instead, the units of this dojo are taught
practical fieldcraft that allows them to hide and act as
“special forces” on the battlefield. The Battlefield Ninja that
are trained here are a force to be reckoned with!
The Battlefield Ninja Dojo requires a Sword Dojo (of any kind) and an Infamous Ninja
House to be present in the province where it is constructed.
Border Defences
As your empire expands, it will become necessary to ensure
that your hard-earned provinces are adequately defended.
Border Watch Towers are particularly useful for seeing far
into the neighbouring provinces.
Passing tradesmen and peasants are
questioned at these points and
information on the location of enemy armies and other units is
gathered. Border forts serve the added function of effectively
sealing your borders and making it more difficult for enemy
spies to infiltrate.
Drill Dojo
The training of soldiers is more than just imparting skills to
an individual. Soldiers must be taught how to fight as a
coherent group in order to get the best from them, and all
armies have developed their own form of drill in order to
instil this group cohesion and discipline. Although
formalised, drill is usually based on the most practical
methods of weapons handling when in a group. After all, when a large group of people
are all wielding long spears, they had better think and move as one, or chaos will be
the end result!
A Drill Dojo allows the castle where it is located to produce units with improved
discipline. It requires a Palace to be in the same location.
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4: Three Samurai Campaigns
The three historical campaigns featured in
Shogun: Total War – Gold Edition all come from
the latter years of the sengoku
jidai, the “Age of the Country at War”. It was
at this time that the main historical players in
the struggle to control Japan came to
prominence and crushed their rivals in truly
cataclysmic fashion. In earlier chapters of this
manual, we’ve already witnessed Oda
Nobunaga’s ruthlessness in the face of his
enemies
and what a cunning warrior he could be.
These campaigns give you the opportunity of
seeing the nitty-gritty of samurai at their best
—engaged in a battlefield situation. You’ll be
able to match the achievements of Oda
Nobunaga, Tokugawa Ieyasu and Toyotomi
Hideyoshi, the three pivotal figures that
brought an end to the sengoku jidai and
imposed their will upon Japan. Their careers
also crossed many times, both as rivals and
allies, so you’ll notice, for example, that Tokugawa Ieyasu was present at Anegawa
(one of Oda Nobunaga’s classic battles) as a young man.
“The battle victories of good warriors are not noted for cleverness or bravery.
Their victories are not lucky, because they position themselves where they will
surely win, prevailing over those who have already lost.”
Historians who consider alternate and “counterfactual” versions of history often ask
themselves questions such as “What would have happened if Tokugawa Ieyasu
hadn’t risen to become the undisputed shogun of Japan?” (the chances are that
another daimyo would have taken his place and a different family of shoguns would
have controlled Japan). Counterfactual historians also make an equally important point
about history.
There is no path of predestination that meant that events had to unfold as they did.
There were no guarantees for Oda Nobunaga that he was going to win, just as there
are no guarantees that you will triumph when fighting out his battles. There were
many moments of decision that could have sent history along a different path, and
these campaigns show the kind of battlefield crises that each of these three powerful
daimyo faced and mastered. Now you can attempt to match their achievements and
take your place among the greatest of the daimyo!
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A Tactical Revolution
Although guns and gunpowder had been in Japan for years, it is during these three
campaigns that the arquebus becomes an important factor — perhaps the
deciding factor — in samurai warfare.
There were many reasons for this move to the use of arquebus-toting troops in
armies, but the main one was the same reason that archers had already declined in
numbers in European warfare of the period.
It takes time and constant practice for a man to master the bow even though, once he
has done so, he can fire several arrows with accuracy in the time it takes an
arquebusier to get off one barely aimed shot. It also takes a great deal of practice time
to keep any skill in using a bow, and not everyone has the basic strength and dexterity
needed. On the other hand, almost anyone can be taught to hold and fire an
arquebus. The training may be rigorous and disciplined, but armies are focussed upon
the training of troops, and it is hardly a difficult weapon to gain a degree of
competency with. For these reasons, the arquebus became the perfect weapon for
the daimyo with a large ashigaru contingent in his army.
This led to changes in the way that samurai armies were organised and deployed on
the battlefield. The days when individual samurai would charge forward shouting out
their names in the hopes of meeting a worthy opponent rapidly passed away. In the
place of individual honour was coming an era when an almost “professional”, practical
attitude to the business of slaughtering one’s enemies would hold sway. It was a
change brought about by the increasing inclusion in every samurai army of ashigaru.
Those ranks of lesser warriors who had no need of a concept of individual honour.
Indeed, the ashigaru themselves were evolving from a rabble recruited just for a
summer’s warfare to a major part of the standing army of every clan. The ashigaru
themselves were becoming a professional force that did nothing but fight for pay.
“Everything is very simple in war, but the simplest thing is difficult”
— Carl von Clausewitz, On War
Where the great daimyo — and Oda Nobunaga was one of these — distinguished
themselves was in the recognition that to be truly effective one had to develop what
would now be termed “a weapon system”. This meant that the arquebus-armed
ashigaru had to be in the front line of the army. However, this was the position of
honour that had, previously, always been reserved for the samurai warrior caste.
Nobunaga, who was a strategist and a realist rather than a dogged traditionalist,
grasped quite clearly that arquebuses had to be used to break an enemy before other
troops moved against them.
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This didn’t mean that an army had to be
made up only of ashigaru armed with
arquebuses — far from it. His army
contained all types of troops. But under
Nobunaga a trend emerged that was
leading, slowly and surely, to the other
types of ashigaru, and even samurai
warriors, becoming supporting troops to
the arquebusiers. Massed fire was
becoming the deciding factor in battle.
Had the Sengoku period not come to a
dramatic end, it’s quite possible that Japanese armies would have evolved into
something based entirely around fire tactics, rather than the tactics of bow and sword
used in conjunction with the arquebus.
To put it concisely, Nobunaga’s true tactical revolution was his realisation that victory
was more important than honour and tradition. Being prepared to use ashigaru as the
arm of victory rather than samurai can be seen as a sign that Nobunaga wasn’t thinking
in a hidebound way at all. To achieve victory, then, his practical revolution was in using
gunpowder weapons effectively in large numbers so that they would have the greatest
possible effect. He wasn’t the only man to identify that the arquebus was a weapon of
the masses, but he did seem to have a clearer appreciation than his contemporaries as
to its uses. He was, after all, the only daimyo to have his troops use volley fire so that
a constant barrage against the enemy was set up and maintained. While one section of
arquebusiers reloaded, they would be covered by fire from other sections. His
enemies had an all-or-nothing approach to gunfire, which gave the enemy a chance to
close in while all the army’s arquebusiers were reloading.
“If you outnumber the enemy by ten to one, then surround them; five to one;
attack, two to one, divide the enemy forces. If you are equal, then fight if you are
able. If you are fewer, then keep away from the enemy. If you are not as good as
the enemy, flee if you can. If the smaller force is stubborn it will become
prisoners of war.”
The battles in Shogun: Total War — Gold Edition, however, show his rise to dominance
from the stunning victory at Okehazama in 1560 (detailed below), to his decisive
confrontation with the Takeda clan at Nagashino in 1575. Along the path between
these two battles, we’ll see how the Nobunaga clan broke the power of the Asakura
family at Anegawa in 1570. Nobunaga also had little time for religion when it was
used to oppose his will, and he turned against the Ikko-ikki at Nagashima in 1573.
Finally, the battle of Nagashino demonstrates the classic victory of firepower over
tradition, as Nobunaga’s men defeated the massed cavalry of the Takeda clan.
Okehazama, 1560
“When you do battle, even if you are winning, if you continue for too long it will
dull your forces and blunt your edge… If you keep your armies out in the field for
a long time, your supplies will be inadequate.”
Oda Nobunaga showed little interest in ruling his clan when he inherited at the age
of 15. It took the suicide (as a protest against the young man’s indolence) of his
loyal retainer Hirade Kiyohide to startle him into working for his clan. Once he had
begun to lead, however, Nobunaga cut a path to the top with amazing feats of
arms and, at times, quite stunning brutality towards his enemies.
His death was as brutal as his life in many ways, as he was (according to one version of
his death) ambushed and shot dead by arquebusiers on the orders of a turncoat
general from his own army, Akechi Mitsuhide.
By June 1560 Imagawa Yoshimoto had assembled an army for his advance towards
Kyoto. Unfortunately for him, in his path lay the lands of Oda Nobunaga. Yoshimoto
forces advanced quickly and destroyed the
border forts at Washizu and Marune; then
they camped in a narrow gorge at a spot
called Dengaku-hazama in Owari province. It
was there that Nobunaga’s scouts found
them, in territory that he knew well.
His cunning evident even at this stage in his
career, Nobunaga prepared an ambush.
Leaving a dummy army ahead of the
Imagawa, he quietly took his much smaller
force to their rear. Thanks to the hot day, the
Imagawa sentries were sleepy rather than
watchful, and their guard duties weren’t
made any easier by a terrific summer thunderstorm that broke as Nobunaga’s men
made their final approach to the Imagawa camp. Under the cover of the rain,
Nobunaga’s men got close enough to charge home just as the weather cleared.
Panicked by the sudden appearance of an unexpected army to their rear, the Imagawa
soldiers fled. Imagawa Yoshimoto was left entirely unprotected in his field
headquarters at the centre of the camp. He didn’t have time to worry about this,
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The Battles of Oda Nobunaga,
1560-1575
however, as he was as confused as to the true state of affairs as his own men, and
assumed that some kind of drunken brawl had broken out between factions among his
own troops! This assumption speaks volumes for the lack of discipline in the Imagawa
camp.
By the time Yoshimoto realised that all was not well, it was far too late. After trying to
order Nobunaga’s men to return to their duties (assuming they were his own troops)
he was cut down, along with all but two of his senior officers. In the space of one
afternoon, the heads of the Imagawa clan had been quite literally parted from their
bodies! They were never to be a significant force again.
Oda Nobunaga’s forces at this battle were outnumbered by more than three-to-one,
yet he managed to crush his enemy most convincingly by striking quickly with welltrained and well-motivated troops from an unexpected direction. In the Shogun: Total
War - Gold Edition battle, the Imagawa clan start with shaky morale, and if you can
keep up the pressure they will crack. Once they are on the run, the battle can be won
either by completely driving them from the field or, in a manner appropriate to
Nobunaga, killing Imagawa!
Anegawa, 1570
“Anger can revert to joy, wrath revert to delight, but a nation destroyed cannot
be restored to existence and the dead cannot be restored to life.”
Note: This Battle is accessed through the Historical battles section of the game rather
than the Historical Campaigns.
The Battle of Anegawa was a family affair
on one level: Oda Nobunaga had launched
an attack against his brother-in-law, Asai
Nagamasa! Aiming to take Odani castle, by
mid-July 1570 the bulk of Nobunaga’s
army reached the southern banks of the
Anegawa River where they camped to
await reinforcements under Tokugawa
Ieyasu, who was marching from Mikawa
province. Part of the Oda army was sent to
besiege Yokoyama castle as a diversionary
attack.
At the same time, Asai Nagamasa had received support from the Asakura clan and
they sent an army to meet his forces on the northern bank of the Anegawa. The scene
was set for an inevitable showdown.
Once Tokugawa Ieyasu arrived, it was clear that Nobunaga had a numerical advantage
over his enemies, but some of his soldiers were unreliable at best and possibly
treacherous at worst. They had been drawn from lands that once belonged to the
Asai clan. Nobunaga put the ever-reliable Toyotomi Hideyoshi in command of them
and took direct command of the troops that were opposite the Asai clan. He had a
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personal grudge against Nagamasa and meant to settle it!
Thanks to the long summer days, the battle began early and rapidly became a huge
melee in the middle of the shallow river. For a time, it appeared to be two huge
melees, as the Tokugawa contingent fought an almost separate battle against the
Asakura clan, while the Oda forces battled the Asai. The battle moved back and forth
across the river, which, according to eyewitnesses, ran red with samurai blood until a
Tokugawa force under Honda Tadakatsu and Sakakibara Yasumasa managed to take
the Asakura in the flank and completely surround the Asakura general, Kagetake.
The Asakura army was forced to withdraw to the northern bank, its retreat covered
by just one (!) man, Makara Jurozaemon Naotaka. He was a giant of a man who
carried
a no-dachi; his shouted challenge for an opponent from the Tokugawa ranks was
almost a traditional diversionary tactic, but it still worked. While he and his son fought
off repeated challengers, the Asakura withdrew from battle and retreated in
reasonable order. Such heroism was bound to be suicidal, however, and eventually
even they were cut down.
Meanwhile, things had gone the other way in the Oda-Asai confrontation. For reasons
best known to himself, Nobunaga did not wear full armour during the battle and was
almost killed by a samurai in Asai service named Endo Kizaemon.
His troops were also being pushed back before the Tokugawa forces, with the
Asakura driven off, fell upon their flank. This turned the tide in favour of Nobunaga’s
forces and even the force sent to besiege Yokoyama came back to attack the Asai!
Unlike Nobunaga’s other battles, it has to be said that Anegawa was a bit of a mess,
tactically. It wasn’t so much an organised fight, more a mass brawl over which a
commander could have very little direct influence once the fighting had started. Here
in Shogun: Total War – Gold Edition the object of this battle is an old-fashioned
victory, pure and simple. You would be well advised, however, not to put too much
faith in the morale of the troops commanded by Toyotomi Hideyoshi, even though
you can’t give them direct orders. Neither will you be able to give direct orders to
forces under Tokugawa Ieyasu. But if you do get into serious trouble, pray that he’s
there to save your neck!
Mt Hiei:
“In battles, when the armies are in confrontation, attack the enemy’s strong
points and, when you see that they are beaten back, quickly separate and attack
yet another strong point on the periphery of his force. The spirit of this is like a
winding mountain path.”
In 1571 Oda Nobunaga decided to put an end to the troublesome monks of the
Tendai sect temples at Mt Hiei. Being close to the capital, they always threatened the
centre of his power structure when he was dealing with more dangerous foes at the
peripheries. He resolved to not only destroy them, but to make such a bold
statement about the consequences of dissent that all Japan would be left in no doubt
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as to the consequences of any future dissent. He ordered that every last man, woman
and child on Mt Hiei should be put to death. Nothing less would have the desired
effect.
inflicted.
The Ikko-ikki are also well-motivated troops, often much better quality soldiers in
many ways than the Oda clan forces standing against them.
Nagashima, 1573
Nagashino, 1575
“Among armies there are those who rush, those who tarry, those who fall, those
who crumble, those who riot and those who get beaten. These are not natural
disasters, but the faults of generals.”
Note: This Battle is accessed through the Historical battles section of the game rather
than the Historical Campaigns.
The Ikko-ikki had long been a thorn in Oda Nobunaga’s side when he decided to deal
with them personally in July 1573. If only because they would never accept his
authority, he was going to have to do
something final about them sooner or later
His army in this campaign had been raised
mostly from Ise province, although the exact
numbers involved aren’t known. What is
known is that Nobunaga sent a force of
arquebusiers along the main roads into
Nagashima, hoping that they would blast a
way through the enemy. These forces were
covered to the west by troops under Sakuma
Nobumori and, once again, his faithful
ashigaru general, Toyotomi Hideyoshi.
Nobunaga’s plans went wrong when the weather turned against him. A sudden
downpour meant that the vast majority of his forces’ arquebuses were soaked through
and completely useless. The fanatical Ikko-ikki lost no time in launching an attack,
driving back Nobunaga’s leading men into the bulk of his army. Then the weather
changed again and, as it cleared, the Ikko-Ikki were able to bring their own
arquebuses to bear on Nobunaga and his men.
Eventually, the Oda clan forces were forced to withdraw from the battle, but not
before Oda Nobunaga had nearly been shot. Indeed, one of his personal retainers was
shot dead, which shows that Nobunaga was in the thick of the fighting, given the short
ranges at which an arquebus was effective. Even the western covering forces were
eventually forced back and, for the second time in two years an Oda army was driven
off a battlefield. Was Nobunaga losing his touch? In this case, almost certainly not, as
his atrocious luck with the rain had to be a major factor in the battle.
No general could expect to do well when his major striking power was disabled in this
fashion. Here, though, you must do much better than Oda Nobunaga to defeat the
warrior monks of the Ikko-ikki. Remember that they are fanatics and the only way to
stop them is to kill large numbers of them — at least 50% casualties will need to be
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“Those generals who face an unprepared enemy with their own preparations in
place are victorious.”
The Battle of Nagashino came about as Oda
Nobunaga lead a force to relieve the siege of
Nagashino Castle. Takeda Katsuyori, whose
forces surrounded the castle, turned away
from the siege to confront the newly arrived
force in open battle, even though his men
were to be outnumbered by some three to
one. The Takeda clan, however, were
renowned as master cavalrymen and almost
certainly felt happier fighting on an open field
than undertaking a prolonged siege.
The weather looked to be in their favour too, as we’ll see in a moment.
Oda Nobunaga’s preparations for the battle did everything to make sure the Takeda clan
would have every chance to attack, and be defeated as they came forward. The position he
had chosen was behind the slow-moving and shallow Rengogawa River that, nevertheless,
had steep banks to impede horses. In addition, he had made sure that his substantial
numbers of arquebusiers were behind a temporary palisade. He planned to make use of
their numbers by keeping up a constant rolling volley as the Takeda approached, rather than
have all his forces fire at once and then be useless while they reloaded.
The Takeda clan planned to carry the battle with their usual tactics — a crushing cavalry
charge followed by a mopping up operation by their foot soldiers. Their plan wasn’t quite as
hare-brained as it eventually turned out to be. The night had seen heavy rains and the day
promised further showers. Takeda Katsuyori had good reasons to hope and believe that
most of the arquebuses carried by Nobunaga’s men were sodden and useless. Once the
arquebusiers had fired, ran his reasoning, they would all be defenceless until they had
reloaded and during that time his own cavalry could easily close with them and kill them.
Unfortunately, this wasn’t quite the case and at the point he chose to attack, there were
three arquebusiers behind defences for every mounted Takeda samurai charging down on
them. They were under orders to fire in sections as a kind of rolling barrage, not as a single
group, so there was never a time when some fire wasn’t coming from their ranks. These
three-to-one odds look bad to a modern observer and it is even worse when it is
remembered that the Takeda clan had to get within a sword’s length of their opponents to
kill them, all the time under a hail of lead shot.
Whatever else can be said about the Takeda clan that day, they definitely tried to win. Their
casualties can only be described as horrendous, as they lost around two-thirds of their
committed forces. Even samurai armies rarely lost that many soldiers in a single engagement
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and no European force at the time could have sustained that level of loss. More than half of
the 97 samurai known by name as being in their service died and eight of the clan’s famed
“Twenty Four Generals” died too. Nobunaga’s triumph was complete.
In the game version of the battle, you will have to
inflict an equivalent defeat on the Takeda clan,
which won’t necessarily be as easy as you might
expect. Remember that the weather can turn at
any moment and render your arquebus-armed
troops useless for a time!
The Battles of Toyotomi
Hideyoshi, 1582-1590
“When opponents are numerous, they cannot be made to fight. So study them to
find out their plans, both successful ones and failures. Incite them into action in
order to find out the patterns of their movement and rest.”
From his humble origins — he was from the ashigaru class rather than a samurai by
birth — Toyotomi Hideyoshi rose to be the first daimyo to rule the whole of Japan. A
loyal ashigaru general for Oda Nobunaga, Hideyoshi served him well, fighting beside
the older man at all his battles.
It fell to Hideyoshi to avenge Nobunaga’s assassination by defeating Akechi Mitsuhide.
This put him in the strongest position to be considered as the “natural” successor to
Nobunaga, but he managed to fall out with many of the Nobunaga’s old supporters
who chose to back Tokugawa Ieyasu in the struggle for control of Japan. The struggle
proved indecisive and once a truce had been declared, Hideyoshi turned to other
pressing matters, such as the destruction of the Hojo clan. He was, however, a little
too ambitious in his invasion plans for Korea and the overseas expedition came to
nothing — he did not manage to create a mainland empire
for Japan. His death in 1598 didn’t end the struggle between his clan and Tokugawa
Ieyasu, but there was no one of Hideyoshi’s stature to head up the clan at the end of
the day.
The battles in Shogun: Total War — Gold
Edition that involve Toyotomi Hideyoshi’s
forces all come from the period
after Oda Nobunaga’s death. Of course,
Toyotomi Hideyoshi appears as
Nobunaga’s ally in some of his overlord’s
battles, but the ones that follow concentrate
on his career as an outstanding commander
in his own right.
At the Battle of Yamazaki in 1582,
Hideyoshi took revenge for the treacherous
assassination of Oda Nobunaga, by decisively defeating the rebellious Oda general
Akechi Mitsuhide, the so-called “Thirteen-day shogun”.
His battle at Shizugatake in 1583 settled scores with one of his rivals to be
Nobunaga’s successor. He then consolidated his position as the inheritor of
Nobunaga’s military and political power by turning on Nobunaga’s son at the battle of
Kanie in 1584! His attack at Negoroji in 1585 was to punish a sect of warrior monks
who had made a poor choice (as far as Hideyoshi was concerned) in who they had
chosen to support. At both Takajo and Sendaigawa in 1597, Hideyoshi turned his
formidable military might against the Shimazu clan.
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Finally, at Odawara in 1590 he succeeded in crushing the Hojo clan once and for all.
His position as the “strong man” of Japan was secure, although he could never hope to
be Shogun himself…
With this battle more than many others, you should notice that it really is winner takes
all! The legacy of power that Oda Nobunaga left behind was there for the taking by
whoever won this battle.
Yamazaki, 1582
Shizugatake, 1583
“To be violent at first and wind up fearing one’s own side is the epitome of
ineptitude.”
After the murder of Oda Nobunaga by Akechi Mitsuhide’s troops, Hideyoshi lost
little time in taking revenge. Akechi Mitsuhide had also marched to Nijo Castle in
Kyoto and killed Nobunaga’s son and heir, and
then had himself appointed regent by the
Court. When the news of what had happened
reached Hideyoshi he realised that he had
only days to make a stand against Akechi
Mitsuhide, otherwise power would pass to
the traitor, regardless of how he had arrived
in a position to take it. Mitsuhide had
prudently waited until his potential rivals
were far from the centre of power before
making his bid to be the next shogun.
Ten days after the assassination word came to Mitsuhide that Hideyoshi’s army was
approaching. He decided to meet them on the battlefield rather than be penned inside
his two castles under siege by superior forces. The scene was set for the
confrontation on the road to Kyoto. By meeting Hideyoshi in open battle with the
castles to fall back on, Mitsuhide calculated that he had a good chance of victory.
Hideyoshi had also decided that battle was preferable to a siege. His eye for a good
battleground led him to seize a wooded hill at Tennozan, near the village of Yamazaki.
Mitsuhide’s forces took up positions along the Enmyojigawa, a small river nearby.
That night ninja raiders caused confusion in Mitsuhide’s camp as they set fire to
buildings and generally caused mayhem. It was not a good start for Mitsuhide.
The next morning, the 13th day since Nobunaga had died, Hideyoshi’s army advanced
on the Enmyojigawa River while a fierce battle began at Tennozan. Hideyoshi’s troops
held the hill and then the right flank pushed forward in an encircling movement. It was
successful and, as the left wing of Hideyoshi’s army followed the Akechi forces broke
and ran. The panic even reached as far as Mitsuhide’s own tent and he fled for his life.
It was not to be his day at all, as he was hunted down and slaughtered by bandits, the
type who normally preyed on wounded and dying samurai.
“There are five traits that are dangerous for generals. Those who are ready to
die can be killed; those who are intent on living can be captured; those who are
quick to anger can be shamed; those who are noble can be disgraced; those who
love their people can be troubled. These five things are faults in generals.”
There were other contenders for the role of
“chief successor” to Oda Nobunaga. Among
these was Shibata Katsuie, who opposed
Hideyoshi’s bid for power.
Hideyoshi constructed a line of forts along
the mountains at Lake Biwa’s northern end
to guard against any military action by
Shibata Katsuie. On the highest of the peaks
was Shizugatake, under the command of
Nakagawa Kiyohide. Despite the difficult
nature of the terrain, Shibata Katsuie sent a
force under his nephew, Sakuma Morimasa, to attack. Shizugatake was the second fort
that he attacked. He knew that Hideyoshi was busy besieging Gifu Castle and
calculated that he would have three days to take the fort before Hideyoshi could get
any kind of relief force into position. He ignored his uncle’s order to withdraw.
Hideyoshi, however, obviously wasn’t using the same calculations and managed to get
a cavalry army to the fort in a day. Despite the fact that the garrison commander,
Nakagawa Kiyohide, was killed, the defenders were still holding out, as were a
garrison at nearby Tagami. Sakuma Morimasa was forced to abandon his siege and
take up defensive positions against the coming attack.
The battle did not go well for Sakuma Morimasa and rapidly turned into a bloody
pursuit rather than a fight. Sakuma troops abandoned arms and armour in an effort to
get away through the dense forests. Shibata Katsuie was astounded by the state of his
returning army and committed hara-kiri.
As commander of Hideyoshi’s troops, it is up to you to make sure that the defeat
inflicted on Sakuma Morimasa is just as damaging as the historical result.
Negoroji, 1585
Hideyoshi had managed to dramatically destroy the “Thirteen Day Shogun”. His tactics
at the battle had been assured, his army easily controlled from the vantage point on
Tennozan and even before the battle his forced march approach had been a model of
efficient strategic manoeuvre. Hideyoshi finished the day with his position as
Nobunaga’s avenger fixed in everyone’s mind. It was a political advantage for him indeed.
“Be extremely subtle, even to the point of formlessness. Be extremely mysterious,
even to the point of soundlessness. Thereby you can be the director of the
opponent’s fate…”
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Warrior monks of various sects always
seemed to be a problem for the daimyo
at one time or another. They could be
valuable allies, but they could also — and
more often — be pestilential enemies.
Hideyoshi did have allies among the
warrior monks of Ishiyama and Kyoto,
but he had fought bitter battles against
the Ikko-ikki alongside Nobunaga.
In 1585 there were surviving sects that
did not support Hideyoshi, but unwisely
chose to back Tokugawa Ieyasu. Among these
were the monks of Negoroji and Saiga, who
actively helped Ieyasu in his campaigns in 1584.
Hideyoshi’s reaction took a year, but it was
brutally effective. His armies marched into Kii
province and destroyed four minor outposts,
then advanced towards Negoroji from two
different directions. While the warrior monks were skilled fighters, many chose to
take shelter in the Saiga Ikki’s formidable Ota castle. Those that remained stayed to
fight.
Hideyoshi’s tactics were crude but very effective. He burned the priests out of the
wooden buildings of Negoroji. Those that stayed were burned to death. Those that
fled were cut down.
The victory conditions for this battle are starkly simple: the complete destruction of
the enemy.
enemy’s rear. They set up a dummy army
that appeared to cut off any chance of retreat
for the Shimazu forces. Faced with this threat
to their line of retreat, the Shimazu
conducted a fighting withdrawal and their
army escaped to Satsuma, even though it had
been bigger than the force it was facing!
Sendaigawa, 1587
“Invincibility is in oneself. Vulnerability is in the opponent. Therefore, generals
are able to be invincible, but they cannot make enemies vulnerable.”
After Hidenaga’s success, Hideyoshi joined him and their combined force moved
towards the Sendaigawa River that formed a natural moat to the north of Kagoshima.
It was here that Niiro Tadamoto led a Shimazu army against Hideyoshi’s advancing
army.
Although he was outnumbered some thirty to one (or more) Niiro Tadamoto wasn’t
daunted. He lead the Shimazu forces into a wild charge against the Toyotomi army. It
was a futile gesture, but undeniably brave. As darkness fell, the survivors fell back
towards Kagoshima, which was to be surrounded by the Toyotomi.
In the end, Kagoshima was never assaulted, because the historical outcome of the
campaign was decided by negotiation.
Takajo, 1587
“I have heard of campaigns that were clumsy but swift, but I have never seen one
that was skilful and lasted a long time. It is never good for military operations to
continue for a long time.”
Hideyoshi’s attention eventually turned to the defeat of the Shimazu clan. He had sent
an army to Kyushu under his half-brother, Hashiba Hidenaga, to directly oppose the
Shimazu, but they had withdrawn behind the Takajo Castle in Hyuga province.
Hashiba Hidenaga then took it upon himself to lay siege to Takajo, at which point the
Shimazu about turned and marched to relieve the siege.
Hidenaga turned his army away from the siege to face the Shimazu forces from behind
a rough stockade. Part of the Shimazu army was ordered to demolish the barricades
and then act as a decoy force, allowing the Shimazu cavalry to pour in through the
gap. It was a good plan, and looked like working until the Shimazu were themselves
fooled by a ruse. Hidenaga sent a small detachment of Toyotomi soldiers into the
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Odawara, 1590
“When you cannot see the enemy’s position, indicate that you are about to
attack strongly, to discover his resources. It is easy then to defeat him with a
different method once you see his resources.”
By 1590 the doom of the Hojo was upon them. The third and final siege of Odawara
was the biggest and most impressive of all.
When the Hojo daimyo realised what was about to happen, he used forced labour
from the surrounding villages to strengthen the defences, even though they had been
constantly improved from 1582 onwards.
Hideyoshi’s army was massive. Hideyoshi wrote to his wife that “We have surrounded
Odawara with two or three rings and have constructed a pair of moats and walls, and
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we do not intend to let a single enemy out”. The camp followers outnumbered the
army and the besieging camp came to look like a small city that had been put down
outside the fortress. Entertainment of all kinds
was available to the Toyotomi soldiers and the sounds of riotous enjoyment from this
must have been a powerful psychological weapon against the trapped defenders!
During the long siege, the enormous numbers of troops involved would have
beggared any European state of the time that had tried to put that many men in the
field.
Overall, the Toyotomi force numbered some
200,000 men! While the siege itself was a
slow, patient affair, there were many
skirmishes around the castle walls, and at
least one memorable occasion when
Toyotomi miners from Kai province managed
to bring down enough of the wall to allow the
invaders inside.
After three months of siege the Hojo realised
that there was little chance of victory and
even less chance of escape. They surrendered
the castle to Hideyoshi.
“To unfailingly take what you attack, attack where there is no defence. To
unfailingly secure what you defend, defend where there is no attack. So in the
case of those who are skilled in attack, the enemy will not know where to defend.
With those who are skilled in defence, their opponents do not know where to
attack.”
The Battles of Tokugawa
Ieyasu, 1564-1600
Tokugawa Ieyasu, the eventual victor in the struggle to become shogun of Japan, had a
career remarkable even by the standards of his time. He began his military experience
while still (technically) held hostage by the Imagawa clan to ensure his family’s good
behaviour. However, he took the field for the Imagawa as part of their army and even
fought against the soldiers of Oda Nobunaga! The subsequent death of Imagawa
Yoshimoto freed Ieyasu from any (forced or otherwise) obligations and he became a
loyal follower of Oda Nobunaga. Pragmatically, he had recognised that the older man
couldn’t last forever, and once Oda died, there would be a chance to take power.
When Oda did die, he and Hideyoshi manoeuvred against each other and both had
their moments of triumph as detailed in the history section of the Way of the
Daimyo. It was Ieyasu, however, who was to take the title of shogun and it was his
descendants who ruled Japan for another 250 years.
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“To become the enemy’ means to think yourself into the enemy’s position. In the
world people tend to think of a robber trapped in a house as a fortified enemy.
However, if we think of ‘becoming the enemy’, we feel that the whole world is
against us and there is no escape.”
The battles covered in Shogun: Total War
— Gold Edition for Tokugawa
Ieyasu are a measure of how many
different opponents he fought against, and
show the reappearance of some familiar
foes.
At Azukizaka in 1564 he took on Oda
Nobunaga’s old enemies, the Ikko-Ikki and
acquitted himself bravely. In 1569 he
faced some of his erstwhile allies, the
Imagawa clan, at Kakegawa. At Mikata ga
hara in 1572 he faced the powerful Takeda clan and their paths cross again at
Yoshida (1575) and Temmokuzan in 1582. The last of Ieyasu’s battles is the defining
moment in the struggle for control of Japan after Hideyoshi’s death, the Battle of
Sekigahara in 1600 — the day that assured Ieyasu would be shogun.
Azukizaka, 1564
“The rule of war is not to count on opponents not coming, but to rely on having
ways of dealing with them; not to count on opponents not attacking, but to rely
on having what cannot be attacked.”
Tokugawa Ieyasu’s battle against the Ikko-ikki was at Azukizaka in Mikawa province. As a
loyal lieutenant of Oda Nobunaga he had little sympathy with the fanatical monks who
opposed him.
The fighting must have been fierce and Ieyasu took part in the close personal combat.
Several bullets actually hit him although (fortunately for him) none of them did any lasting
damage. His armour didn’t actually stop the shots but the bullets were slowed sufficiently
that they were caught in his undergarments! Given the wounds caused by badly made
bullets, Ieyasu certainly had a lucky escape. Air bubbles that were often formed inside
bullets during casting had a tendency to make bullets expand or split apart when they hit a
target or once they had penetrated. The effect on a fleshy target could often be similar to a
modern explosive bullet or dum-dum hitting home.
As always when fighting Ikko-Ikki, in this battle you would do well to remember that
the warrior monks are fanatics. This makes them dangerous in combat because of
their high morale and a hard force to break and force from the field. Inflicting heavy
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casualties is often the only way to defeat them.
This battle, by the way, is usually referred to as the Second Battle of Azukizaka, the
First Battle having been in 1542 between the Oda and Imagawa clans. Many Japanese
battlefields were “reused” in this fashion over the years, if only because of the
constant warfare and the fact that suitable sites for a good fight were hard to find!
Kakegawa, 1569
“Do not follow a feigned retreat. Do not attack elite warriors. Do not eat food
left by enemy soldiers. Do not stop an army on its way home. Leave a surrounded
army a way out. Do not press a desperate enemy. These are the rules of military
operations.”
In what must have seemed like a settling of
old scores for his years of living on Imagawa
sufferance, Tokugawa Ieyasu laid siege to
Imagawa Ujizane in the castle at Kakegawa.
Ujizane was the son of the Imagawa
Yoshimoto who had held Ieyasu hostage
years earlier.Despite this personal stake in
the battle, Ieyasu knew that control of the
castle was more important than simply killing
his enemies. Negotiations began and a deal
was eventually struck.
The Imagawa abandoned the castle without a further struggle in return for Ieyasu’s
support in another matter: the return of Ujizane’s lost territory’s in Suraga. By this
time, however, Ujizane’s power and influence were very much on the decline and he
was forced into retirement a year later by a defeat at the hands of the Takeda clan.
Ieyasu almost certainly got the better end of the deal by gaining control of the castle!
When fighting this battle, it’s important to remember that occupation and control of
the castle is all that matters. The battle in Shogun: Total War – Gold Edition follows
Ieyasu’s original design to take the castle by force of arms rather than talking. It’s
definitely worth bearing in mind that taking the castle is almost pointless if too many of
your men die in the process.
Mikata ga hara, 1572
“Any military operation involves deception. Even though you are competent,
appear incompetent. Though effective, appear to be ineffective.”
Almost inevitably, a confrontation with the Takeda clan involved lots of cavalry.
The Battle of Mitaka ga Hara was a direct consequence of Takeda Shingen moving in
force against the fortress at Hamamatsu, which was controlled by Tokugawa Ieyasu.
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The Takeda clan formed up to the north of the fortress on high ground at Mitaka ga
Hara in what is reported in the Koyo Gunkan as gyorin, or fish scales, formation.
This layout is supposed to induce the enemy
to attack. Outnumbered by around three to
one, Tokugawa Ieyasu drew his forces into a
line and waited. On his left were three fine
Mikawa generals: Matsudaira Ietada, Honda
Tadakatsu and Ishikawa Kazumasa; on his
right were troops supplied to him by Oda
Nobunaga.
Despite the fact that he was outnumbered,
it was the Tokugawa troops who began the battle, but very late in the day as the light
was failing and the snow falling. By firing on the Takeda samurai, the Tokugawa soldiers
stung them into action. On the Tokugawa left, the Takeda troops got the upper hand,
at which point Takeda Shingen calmly withdrew his tired troops and sent in fresh men
to continue the fight! With night coming on and the Tokugawa troops being forced
back, Shingen then ordered a general attack by the main body of his army. Soon the
Tokugawa army was in retreat all along the battle line. It was at this point that
Tokugawa Ieyasu ordered that his personal gold fan standard should be set up to act as
a rallying point for his forces. This was done where the high ground dropped away
towards Hamamatsu. For his own part, he was quite ready to charge into the mass of
Takeda warriors and kill as many as he could to reach his surrounded comrade,
Mizuno Tadashige.
He was prevented from doing so and hustled into the castle by his retainers. Defeat
looked total as Ieyasu arrived at the castle with only five men.
However, he was cunning enough to hold on to the castle. He ordered that the gates
be left open for any more of his army who might make it back and for braziers to be
lit as signal fires. A huge drum was also beaten. When the advanced guard of the
Takeda army reached the castle they were confused by the apparently confident air of
its garrison and suspected some kind of trick. One was being played, but not the one
that they thought. The Takeda army didn’t attack but camped for the night at
Saigadake. They must have assumed that they were safe now that the battle was over
but the ground at Mikata ga Hara has a narrow canyon or gorge at this point. Two
Tokugawa retainers lead a raid on the Takeda camp and managed to drive many of the
Takeda samurai and their horses into the gorge. There they were easy targets. The
Takeda army withdrew the next morning, leaving Hamamatsu to Ieyasu — but only
just.
In Shogun: Total War – Gold Edition, this battle has the potential to turn into a
bloodbath. Defeating the Takeda clan is almost impossible as there are simply too
many of them to fight all at once. It is, however, a prudent strategy to hang on for as
long as possible with some of the army and make an orderly withdrawal towards the
castle with the rest. A fighting retreat is never easy, but if the castle is lost, the battle is
lost.
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hand was just as dead as he would have been by any other method.
Yoshida, 1575
“A good leader does not mobilise when there is no advantage, does not act when
there is no gain and does not fight when there is no danger.”
The victory conditions for this battle are quite simple: crush the Takeda clan and drive
them from the battlefield. It would be even better to kill Takeda Katsuyori before he
has a chance to kill himself! It isn’t possible to give orders to units under Nobunaga’s
command, although these troops will fight bravely alongside your own men.
Sekigahara, 1600
In 1575 Tokugawa Ieyasu was still fighting against the Takeda clan, although his old
enemy Takeda Shingen was dead. Shingen had been the chief architect of much of his
clan’s success, so his passing was undoubtedly a relief for his many enemies!
Shingen’s son, Takeda Katsuyori, however, was still an aggressive foe at times, even if
he lacked his father’s skills and drive. In 1575 Katsuyori raided Mikawa province and
besieged the castle at Yoshida, which looked (when his attack had been planned) to
have a weak garrison. But Tokugawa Ieyasu had anticipated the attack and heavily
reinforced the Yoshida garrison. Rather than facing a small force, the Takeda clan ran
straight into a tough and professional
Tokugawa army. The hand-to-hand fighting outside the walls of the castle didn’t help
the Takeda clan take the upper hand and the Tokugawa garrison were too wily to
leave the walls for a full pitched battle. Eventually, frustrated by his inability to take the
castle or have a “proper” battle, Takeda Katsuyori broke camp and moved north
towards Nagashino.
This Shogun: Total War — Gold Edition battle needs you to delay the Takeda forces for
as long as possible and inflict as many “niggling” casualties on them as possible. The
Takeda clan can be driven off by a combination of outlasting their patience and killing a
few of them! Of course, to do this successfully, you must preserve your own army
from destruction at the hands of a superior force.
Temmokuzan, 1582
“When an army moves swiftly it is like the wind, when it goes slowly it is like a
forest; it is terrible as fire, immovable as a mountain. It is as hard to know as the
dark; its movement is like peals of thunder.”
For Ieyasu, full victory may have taken a little time to come but eventually he got to see his Takeda
opponents humbled and destroyed.
As the combined forces of Oda Nobunaga and Tokugawa Ieyasu closed in on the Takeda clan,
Katsuyori realised that the game was up.
He had burned his castle at Shinpujo to keep it from falling to his enemies and fled into the
mountains. He had hoped to find some measure of security and sanctuary at Iwadono castle,
which was held by his old retainer Oyamada Nobushige. Instead, the gates were locked against
Katsuyori. His remaining loyal retainers turned and held off the Oda and Tokugawa armies for long
enough to allow Katsuyori to kill himself. Although Nobunaga and Ieyasu didn’t have the
pleasure of killing their opponent, it is unlikely that the two of them, being practical
men, would have been that bothered. An enemy who destroyed himself by his own
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Sekigahara was the decisive battle of over a hundred years of warfare. The day’s
fighting made sure that it would be Tokugawa Ieyasu who became shogun, bringing to
an end the Sengoku period of “The Country at War”. It was also a day of fog, mud,
confusion and treachery.
Tokugawa Ieyasu was the commander of the Eastern Army, an alliance of former
Toyotomi
and Oda loyalists and allies who preferred to have one of their own as ruler of Japan,
rather than an Imperial courtier. The Western Army under Ishida Mitsunari, the
Imperial courtier in question, was made up of clans just as sure that they didn’t want
to see Tokugawa Ieyasu as the ultimate power in the land.
By late October 1600, the preliminary sparring of the armies was over; there had
been a series of marches and counter-marches, along with some bitterly contested
sieges. The Tokugawa (Eastern) garrison at Fushimi Castle distinguished themselves by
their superb defence, for example. When the last two hundred defenders realised that
they couldn’t hold out much longer, they left the castle and charged the besiegers time
after time.
At the other extreme, at Tanabe Castle the revered scholar Hosokawa Yusai Fujitaka
was besieged along with his Eastern garrison. The attackers were a little half-hearted
in their efforts to take the place with such a respected man inside and at risk. Several
of the Western generals reputedly “forgot” to load cannon balls before firing at the
castle, which did nothing to help the siege or make sure that they were available to
fight a pitched battle when needed!
Eventually, however, the main bodies of the two armies met at the narrow pass of
Sekigahara in Mino province. By early in the morning of 21 October 1600, the two
armies were on a collision course, as Ishida Mitsunari made a forced night march to
reach the spot. Ishida Mitsunari had chosen the ground as a good place to meet
Tokugawa Ieyasu, as the Eastern army could be controlled and met before it would
have a chance to deploy properly. He drew up his forces in position to attack anyone
coming through the narrow pass.
The weather was appalling; both armies were damp and cold in the fog and visibility
was very bad. The fighting started at around breakfast time, with a volley being fired
into the centre of the Eastern army.
The Easterners were slowly driven back but then managed to rally and the fighting
settled into a mud-soaked slugging match. The Easterners then began to push towards
Ishida Mitsunari.
With nearly all his Western Army now fighting, Ishida Mitsunari lit a signal fire to call
his reinforcements under Kobayakawa Hideaka into the fight.
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The Kobayakawa troops were stationed on the high ground to the Western Army’s
right and should have moved to swiftly crush the left flank of the Tokugawa/Eastern
forces. Instead, Kobayakawa Hideaka did nothing.
Tokugawa Ieyasu had heard reports that the Kobayakawa forces were prepared to
defect but simply not moving wasn’t the same as changing allegiance. He sent a small
force to “sting” the Kobayakawa into action by firing
on them. With a decision of some kind now needed, Kobayakawa Hideaka changed
sides and attacked, falling on the flank of his former Otani allies. Otani Yoshitsugu
seems to have expected some sort of treachery, as his men turned and managed to
fight off the traitors without being surprised. It was at this point that Tokugawa Ieyasu
ordered a renewed attack and two more factions in the Western army, the Kuchiki
and the Wakizaka, changed sides as well. The Otani were soon being attacked from
three sides and Otani Yoshitsugu ordered one of his retainers to kill him; he couldn’t
do it himself, as he was crippled by leprosy.
The Western army was now in disarray, except for the Shimazu who managed to cut
their way clear and retreat towards Ishida Mitsunari’s reserves. These Western
reserves were already wavering or coming out in support of Tokugawa Ieyasu and,
with the battle lost, the very reinforcements that could have won the fight for Ishida
Mitsunari marched away from Sekigahara. It had been an epic battle and it sealed the
fate of Japan.
By the afternoon, Tokugawa Ieyasu was counting the heads of his slain enemies.
Nearly everyone capable of mounting a credible challenge to his authority was gone,
his power broken. Ishida Mitsunari’s challenge was over. The daimyo that survived
prospered in direct relationship to their allegiances at the battle. It would take another
three years before Ieyasu was declared shogun but there was no doubt as to who was
the master of Japan.
5: The Mongols
“The horde of the Tartars is numberless. When one is killed, another ten spring
from the hell whence he came. Each of them has the head of a dog, and carries
with him sufficient weapons for three or four warriors.”
— Benedict the Pole, writing in 1240
Benedict the Pole, like other Europeans of
his day, may have made a technical mistake
when he lumped all steppe barbarians into
the category of “Tartar” but he had good
reason to be afraid of what was heading his
way. Threatened people from as far apart as
Poland and China gave the same excuses for
their fears: the Mongols weren’t like the rest
of humanity.
The Mongols were savages, hardly human,
fiends from hell. But above all, the Mongols
couldn’t be stopped.
The Mongols have been described as the Khmer Rouge of their day — willing to kill
anyone and everyone who opposed them and reduce all urban civilisation (which in
practice means all civilisation, full stop) back to the level of the peasant toiling in the
field.
That the Mongols could be cruel, uncompromising and brutal is beyond dispute. It
needs to be remembered that the Mongols did not create most of the existing
accounts of their exploits, but it is difficult to feel that history has treated them too
badly. Their victims left the historical records but, even allowing for some
exaggeration, the Mongols’ reputation seems deserved. Being conquered by the
Mongols was very traumatic indeed, always assuming that there were any survivors to
be traumatised…
Who were the Mongols?
Like the Huns centuries before, the Mongols were one of many steppe peoples —
tribal nomads who roamed the Asian plains and periodically overran their more
settled, civilised neighbours. This pattern had repeated itself for generations, with
occasional aberrant times when a leader could hold his tribe together beyond the first
looting spree and the nomads stayed to become the new nobility. The Chin kingdom
in Northern China had come about precisely in this fashion, for exampleAnd again like
the Huns, who produced a terrible, feared leader in Attila, the Mongols produced
their own great conqueror in Genghis Khan.
The two men had the vision and unstoppable drive to create empires, but where the
two differed was in what happened after their respective deaths.
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Attila’s steppe empire collapsed almost before the funeral feast was digested. In the
case of Genghis Khan, his children and grandchildren kept the empire intact and its
successor sub-states dangerous and expansionist.
Temujin
At the start of his career, however, Genghis
Khan was far from being a world conqueror,
or even a leader of his people.He was born
Temujin sometime in the period 1155-67
and named after a Tatar (no middle “r”)
chieftain his father had killed. The Mongol
tribes — the Naiman, Kerait, Uirat, Merkit
and Jalair — had a way of life that was hard,
but no worse than many other nomadic
people.
They were, however, the hereditary foes of the Tatars who had the support of the
Northern Chinese kingdom of Chin.
He took charge of his family at the age of 12 or 13 when the Tatars killed his father.
His father’s men would not follow a child and he was forced into a grim struggle for
survival alongside his brothers. Early tales tell of him losing the family’s entire wealth
of nine horses, for example, but managing to steal them back again. Just how grim
Temujin could be is illustrated by the fact that he and his younger brother Qasar
ambushed and killed their half-brother Bektar. Bektar’s only crime had been to steal a
fish and a bird from Temujin’s traps. An unforgiving nature was part of the Mongol
tradition…
Eventually, Temujin did manage to gather a force of loyal warriors by his skill as a
leader and a raider and by the loyalty and generosity he returned in more than full
measure. He would give a man the coat from his own back, it was said. His early
campaigns were as an ally of Togrul, the khan of the Kerait tribe and against the
enemies of his blood, the Tatars. (The name Tatars was corrupted in translation to
“Tartars” in Europe and applied — wrongly — to the Mongols. Perhaps the Europeans
had the suspicion that the steppe barbarians were really from Tartarus, an abyssal hell
written about by Homer, rather than of the true Earth!)
Temujin and Togrul eventually broke the Tatars with the support of the Chin kingdom.
The Tatars were all but wiped out, with only a few being spared the sword and
absorbed into the Mongol tribes. It was around this time that Temujin adopted the
title of Genghis (“Oceanic”) Khan of the purely Mongol tribes. A break with the Kerait
under Togrul was not long in coming and Genghis Khan and his most loyal followers
were forced to retreat into Siberia and wait for the Kerait alliance to fall to pieces.
This happened when Togrul was killed by accident when he wasn’t recognised as he crossed
into Naiman territory, and the Kerait people accepted Genghis Khan as their leader.
He, on the other hand, was not so accepting of their loyalty and went to
great pains to split up the tribe. Genghis now turned on the Naiman, the only tribe that
might have been able to stand against his rise to power. After a bloody campaign, they
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submitted and in 1206 Genghis Khan was proclaimed supreme Khan of all Turkish and
Mongol tribes in eastern Asia, complete with divine approval thanks to the useful
intervention of a shaman. The problem was now what to do next. Genghis Khan had a
fine war machine at his command, but it had to be used and used now before the
tribes started fighting amongst themselves as was their wont.
On one level, the decision to keep on conquering new lands — or possibly even the
whole world — was a practical solution to this problem. At first, those to be
conquered were the other nomadic peoples of central Asia, such as the Kirghiz tribe.
Some, like the Uighur, saw the way the wind was blowing and submitted voluntarily. In
doing so, the largely literate and cultured Uighur flourished within the Mongol empire.
Into China
China was far from being a monolithic state at this time. The Mongols took full
advantage and raided into the Kingdoms of Chin (centred around Peking) and Hsi-Hsia
in Western China. These first attacks on Chinese territory did force Hsi-Hsia to
recognise Genghis Khan as overlord but the campaigns were not an unmitigated
success. The usual Mongol tactic of massacring defeated enemies was highly effective
against steppe nomads, where people were virtually the only “wealth” and walking
resources of a tribe, but faced with the millions in China, what was the point? Nor
was their much point in recruiting Chinese peasants into the army because they were
simply too unwarlike. The Chin rulers were still warlike however (being nomad
conquerors themselves!), and backed by Chinese science and war-making skills. Even
the sacking of Peking in 1215 didn’t break the Chin; resistance continued against
Genghis Khan and his successors.
To the West, the Kara Khitai fell and Genghis Khan’s generals were shrewd enough to
use religious tensions to their own advantage. Muslims in the region had been
persecuted, but all that stopped under the Mongols. They were welcomed as
liberators by a substantial part of the population. Beyond the Pamir mountains lay
more Muslim lands: Transoxania and Persia.
The First Assault on Islam
“…To cut my enemies to pieces, drive them before me, seize their possessions, witness
the tears of those who are dear to them and to embrace their wives and daughters.”
— Genghis Khan’s greatest pleasures in life, according
to the Muslim historian Rashid al Din
Beyond the mountains, Genghis Khan found himself facing a man just as warlike as himself,
the Khwarazmshah Ala al Din Mohammed. Having beaten both the Khitai and his own rivals
in Afghanistan, Ala al Din was in no mood to submit and become a vassal of the Great Khan.
Whatever his reasons, his strategic assessment seems to have been flawed, as he only
seems to have expected a prolonged raid by the Mongols in 1219 (perhaps believing that
the Mongols would attack China instead). Although the Khwarazmian army outnumbered
the Mongols, it was tied down in defensive garrison duties.
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All that happened was the garrison cities were destroyed one after another. Bukhara
fell and the garrison was slaughtered to the last man. The pattern was repeated time
and again, and even where a city surrendered, the military, civic and religious leaders
were put to the sword. If a town resisted virtually everyone was put to death,
regardless of age, sex or status. The only people to be spared were artisans and
craftsmen with useful skills who were immediately pressed into service for the next
siege. The cities themselves were burned, either accidentally during the looting that
took place or as the result of a deliberate policy of arson. This deliberate application
of terror was a strategy that succeeded in destroying the morale of the Khwarazmian
people and army.
Eventually, even Ala al Din Mohammed fled and died in 1220 of exhaustion, a broken
spirit or sheer despair at what was happening. Even then, the Mongols’ depredations
continued. Genghis Khan even had the tombs of his enemies’ forefathers destroyed. It
seemed as if nothing was to be left untouched. It fell to Jalal al Din, the son of Ala al
Din, to carry on the fight. He managed to inflict one defeat on a Mongol column, but
was eventually trapped against the Indus River. Genghis Khan, strangely enough,
allowed Jalal al Din to escape, explaining that the man was a hero worthy of being
emulated by his own sons. The Mongols ravaged Muslim India before returning north.
It was at this point that the city of Herat revolted, hoping that Jalal had turned the
tide. He hadn’t. As unforgiving as ever, the returning Mongols besieged the city for six
months before the citizens, after a desperate defence, could no longer keep them out.
It is claimed that 1,600,000 people were killed when the city fell.
In 1223 Genghis Khan returned to the steppes of Mongolia with thousands of
prisoners in tow. Without any means for the Mongols to feed so many mouths, they
were methodically slaughtered: skilled craftsmen and scholars who had been of use to
the Mongols were simply killed now there was no need to keep them around.
Slaughter was a tool of statecraft for Genghis Khan.
His armies, however, rode on. A force that had earlier been despatched to hunt down
Ala al Din Mohammed simply kept going, plundering Western Iran and going on into
Christian Georgia. It marched up the Caspian Sea coast and into what is now southern
Russia. Here, there were steppe nomads, the Turkish Kipchaks, who tried to ally
themselves with the Mongols. It didn’t work and the Kipchaks were forced to appeal
to the Russian Princes for help. The Prince of Kiev was captured and, after being
treated with due deference, was smothered to death beneath a vast pile of carpets. It
was a honourable execution as far as the Mongols were concerned, as the Prince’s
blood was (carefully) not spilled. The Mongol columns moved on, crushing anyone and
anything that stood in their way until they rejoined the Khan.
The Death of Genghis Khan
By 1226, Genghis Khan was an old man, but he still had the strength of purpose to
once more turn against China. This time the Hsi-Hsia kingdom was overrun, using the
same methods that had worked so well against the Muslims. But before he could go
any further, Genghis Khan died, apparently from complications after a fall from his
horse. His death was kept completely secret until the Hsi-Hsia campaign was finished.
It is reported that, as his funeral cortège made its way towards the Kentei Mountains,
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they killed everyone that crossed their path so that the Great Khan would not be
short of servants in the afterlife. Forty beautiful girls from leading Mongol families also
accompanied him into the afterlife when they were sacrificed. Along with the
handmaidens, horses and everything else the Great Khan would need were also
buried. The final slaughter of the Hsi-Hsia was announced over the grave, which has
never been found.
Leadership of the Mongol empire remained with Genghis Khan’s relatives, the Golden
Family. His son Ogadai and grandsons Kuyuk and Mongke would rule before his most
famous grandson, Kublai Khan, would take control.
The Mongols, however, did not stop their aggressive expansion in all this time. They
marched into the Middle East and also came west across the steppes, towards
Europe.
The West Spared
On 9 April 1241, a force of Germans, Poles and Teutonic Knights marched out of the
Liegnitz to attack a Mongol army that had been advancing rapidly westward. Initially,
the heavily armed and armoured Christian knights appeared to break the Mongols,
who fled. Then they made the mistake of pursuing and were sucked into a perfect
ambush.
The knights died, almost to the last man.
One day later, and hundreds of miles away, King Béla of Hungary and his army were
surrounded by another Mongol force. They had been lured on to their doom by the
Mongols appearing to retreat and the Hungarians were now trapped in a fortress or
laager of wagons. Another disaster was in the making. The Mongols surrounded the
Hungarians but seemed to leave a gap in their lines. The Hungarians made a break for
it and, as it looked as if some were actually escaping, a panicked retreat destroyed any
semblance of order in the Hungarian position. The Mongols then closed in on the
confused mob that the Hungarians had become and another European army was
destroyed. A lucky few did escape: King Béla didn’t stop running until he reached an
island in the Adriatic. With sea between him and his Mongol enemies, he finally felt
safe!
With Hungary under their control, the Mongols stopped to rest and fatten their
horses. It seemed as if all of Europe was about to fall to the barbarians once more.
Vienna and the Danube lay ahead, and beyond them the rich lands of Germany, France
and Low Countries. With little prospect that any European monarch was capable of
raising an army to stand against them, things looked very black indeed.
For the Europeans, waiting for the inevitable onslaught, it looked as if the scourge of
God was about to fall upon them. The Mongols would not stop until they reached the
Atlantic.
But the Mongols turned away at the last instant. Although they controlled an empire
that stretched from the Danube to China, they were still a nomadic people. A single
chance event took them home: Ogadai, the third son of Genghis Khan was dead. This
brilliant, but drunken, successor had managed to not only hold onto his father’s
territory, but also keep the momentum of conquest going into the Middle East and to
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the borders of Europe.
Eventually he had drunk himself to death. His passing showed the fundamental
weakness in the Mongol political system. They were nomads still, bound by a personal
loyalty to the person of the Khan and not by any modern notion of loyalty to the state
or nation. With the Khan dead, the Mongols returned to their homelands to elect a
new leader from the Golden Family.
At the very moment when Europe could have been overrun, the Mongols went home
and did not return. The Poles, by the way, still see Liegnitz as a day of defeat that
saved Europe.
Instead, the efforts of the Mongols were to be concentrated against China and the
East…
Kublai Khan
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure dome decree Where Alph, the
sacred river ranThrough caverns measureless to manDown to a sunless sea
Ancestral voices prophesying war
— Samuel Taylor Coleridge
At the height of his power, Kublai Khan was the richest, most powerful man in the
world. He was wealthy beyond any mundane measure and did indeed have a “stately
pleasure dome” in Xanadu. Kublai Khan’s actual summer palace at his
capital city of Shang-tu, surrounded by a huge and well-stocked hunting preserve, was
all the more magnificent because of its reality. Marco Polo was stunned by this and so
much else that he saw at the Khan’s court. Kublai Khan ruled a domain that stretched
from the Danube in the West to the Pacific coast of China, and from Siberia to the
Indian Ocean. He was the acknowledged overlord of all the Mongol Khanates. He was
also a true grandson of Genghis Khan and just as efficient as a conqueror. Unlike his
grandfather, however, he concentrated on taking control of China and then on
extending Chinese influence (under Mongol leadership) into new possessions. He was
also to unify China under a single emperor and found a new dynasty.
The Conquest of China
Resistance to the Mongols had stiffened immediately after Genghis Khan’s death. It had
taken hard campaigning by virtually the entire Mongol forces to destroy the last Chin
province in the North in 1234. The ruling Chin, after all, were still steppe nomads at
heart. The Kingdom of the Sung, south of the Hwai River, was a Chinese nation:
ancient, civilised and not a pushover. It would take more than 40 years to defeat the
Sung.But with Ogadai’s death in 1241 (his excessive drinking finally killed him), the
Mongol Empire looked like dissolving into a set of warring tribal groups. Mongke, one
of Genghis Khan’s grandsons, eventually seized power and was proclaimed the Great
Khan. A grim warrior, Mongke immediately set the Mongols back on the path of
conquest.
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He also gave his brother Kublai a free choice of conquered territory in China.
A third brother, Hülegü, was given command of the Mongols in the Middle East,
although this was never a primary concern for the Great Khan and the invasion of
Europe was never to be repeated.
Mongke and Kublai set about a joint campaign of conquest against Sung China. It was
to prove a tough, long and hard-fought war. Southern China was populous, rich and
had a large number of strong-walled cities. The terrain was not best suited to the
strategy and tactics of a fast-moving army based primarily on horse archers. Even the
climate meant that there were strange (to the Mongols) diseases waiting to strike
them down. They would have to adopt Chinese methods of warfare, and this they did
in a remarkably adept way. They had already been exposed to Chinese ideas through
the Uighur people, but now they recruited Chinese infantry, engineers and other
specialists.
Before moving directly against the Sung, however, Mongke struck at the kingdom of
Nanchow, in the hope of outflanking the Sung and cutting their trade routes to India
and Burma. Kublai was given overall command and made sure that the campaign was
well planned and carefully prepared — something that would become a trademark of
his later wars on the mainland. While the Mongols moved swiftly to reach Ta-li, the
capital of Nanchow, they did not follow the usual practice of putting everyone to the
sword. On the contrary, Kublai, supposedly influenced by a tale told to him by his
Chinese teacher of a general who had taken a city without killing a single inhabitant,
declared he could do the same. His troops marched into Ta-li behind banners that
read: “On pain of death do not kill.” The Hangchow commanders killed the Mongol
envoys that had come to demand the city’s surrender and were executed in turn
when the Mongols rode into the city, unopposed. These were the only people to die
when Ta-li fell. Perhaps the Mongols fearsome reputation as to what happened when
they were opposed or thwarted helped Kublai’s stratagem, but he was clever enough
to see that mercy was as potent a weapon as massacre.
By 1257 the Mongols were in position to attack the Sung. They were briefly and, it
could be argued, foolishly, diverted into attacking Annam in northern Vietnam. The
Mongol experience of Vietnam should have served as a lesson to all Great Powers that
ever involved themselves in that country. The Mongols managed to win several
battles, including against a force of Annamese elephants!
But of the 100,000 men who started the campaign less than 20,000 survived the
jungle, disease and constant guerrilla attacks. Vietnam has been the graveyard for
many armies in history. This wasn’t to be the last time that the Mongols tried to
conquer Vietnam, but none of the attempts were to be any more successful.
Kublai Khan had also been investing considerable time in ruling his northern Chinese
possessions, which included building a new capital, some ten days from Peking at
Shang-tu (the Xanadu of Coleridge’s poem). Kublai also gave increasing authority to
his Chinese advisors and servants while keeping full control of the military. This policy
of allowing greater power to the Chinese did not make him popular among other,
traditionally-minded Mongols, and eventually Mongke had his brother’s government
investigated; many of the prominent Chinese administrators were executed. Kublai
and Mongke looked as if they were heading for civil war but good sense prevailed:
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they agreed to attack the Sung instead.
Their planned strategy was interesting.
They didn’t simply plan to ride over the Sung territory, destroying everything in their
path in the usual nomad fashion. Instead, they planned to isolate the Sung heartland in
eastern China and force their surrender.
This was not the kind of strategy that the Mongols would have once pursued and
shows that they were far from being the simple barbarians that they had once been.
With the campaign going well, Kublai was besieging Wuchang when news came that
Mongke was dead, killed during the conquest of Ho-chou by dysentery or by a Sung
crossbowman (there are conflicting accounts).
It looked as though the Sung had been saved, because the Mongols would now be
militarily paralysed while a new leader was chosen from among the Golden Family or
the Empire went into a civil war. It was not to be. Despite a call to return to a grand
quriltai, or meeting of all Mongols, to choose a new leader, Kublai pressed on against
the Sung. He had realised that a significant military success would ensure his election
as Khan. He managed to cross the Yangtse against stiff opposition despite the
summons to the quriltai, knowing that it could hardly start without him. There were
other claimants to the Khanate but only Kublai and his brother Arik-Böke had armies
close to the site of the meeting. Kublai, however, was not the automatic choice as
Khan: he was too fond (in the eyes of the Mongols) of China and things Chinese and
Arik-Böke was equally determined to be the Great Khan.
In the end, Kublai had his army declare him to be the Great Khan at Shang-tu in 1260.
Arik-Böke persuaded the more traditional tribal leaders in Mongolia that he was the
Great Khan. A civil war flared up, which Kublai rapidly won, but he refused to hunt
down his younger brother who eventually surrendered in 1264 and was then kept as a
privileged captive until he died two years later.
In the meantime, Kublai Khan also had himself crowned as the “Son of Heaven”, the
traditional title for a Chinese Emperor in the Chinese, not Mongol, fashion. He also issued a
declaration that, although Mongols were better warriors, they needed Chinese skills for
government. With both these actions, the future of the Mongols was clearly identified as
lying in China and the East; Mongol affairs and campaigns in the Middle East and Europe
were now clearly secondary. The Golden Horde would remain a threat in the West but
Muslims and Christians would not have to face the full fury of the Mongols.
The Conquest of the Sung
Kublai Khan returned to his attack on the Sung in 1264. He was meticulous in his
planning, as he wanted to take southern China intact and not as a depopulated
wasteland. The campaign was long, hard and very unpleasant. The climate hardly
helped the Mongols as they fell prey to every local infection and parasite in the
humid terrain. There was almost no grazing for their horses and few open
battlefields for cavalry anyway. Chinese infantry were needed in huge numbers, and
proved to be exactly what was needed in the climate and siege conditions.
The Mongols also had to recruit a huge number of specialist siege troops from across
the Empire (from as far away as Iraq!) as almost every Sung city had to be individually
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surrounded and then taken. The siege of Hsiang-yang was historically epic: the
Mongols encircled it for five years before it fell. It was the turning point of the
campaign, although it took until 1276 before the Sung Dowager Empress surrendered
her seals and the city of Hangchow.
The final defeat of the Sung took another three years, when the last Sung emperor, a
boy of only nine years old, was finally cornered with the remnants of his fleet in 1279.
The leading Sung admiral jumped overboard with the child in his arms rather than be
captured by the Mongols. With the final defeat of the Sung, China was reunited for the
first time since the T’ang dynasty had fallen in the tenth century and, despite a
chequered history, it has remained one nation ever since.
At the same time, of course, the Mongols under Kublai Khan had been expanding in
other areas as well. The Koreans had begun by fighting hard against the Mongols after
trying to bribe them to stay away. This resistance had worked for a while but Korea
had become a part of the Mongol Empire (although a Korean royal family was left in
charge, ruling in the name of the Great Khan). The previous Ch’oe dynasty in Korea
had been so unpopular that its own people had seen the Mongols as liberators!
The Invasion of Japan
It was Korea that was to make Kublai Khan look at the possibility of conquering Japan. Japanese
pirates had always raided Korean shipping and the coast, but these raids had stopped when the
Mongols took control — no one was foolish enough to provoke the Great Khan. This wasn’t
enough for Kublai Khan and he sent embassies to Japan in 1266 and 1268 demanding that the
Japanese recognise him as their overlord. The reaction in Japan was one of surprise; after all,
they had their own divine Emperor and didn’t need a foreign one.
Japan in the Age of the Mongols
At the time of the Mongol invasions, Japan was still a nation geared for war, even
though the struggle for power was confined to the Imperial Court. The samurai,
however, ran the country on a day-to-day basis, even though their skills as warriors
hadn’t been needed for many years.
At the top, the power structure was one where the appearance of power concealed
the true state of affairs.
The Emperor, while retaining his divine status, was a figurehead for the shoguns who
were supposed to be in charge.
By the time Kublai Khan’s emissaries arrived, however, the shogun was another
figurehead and real power lay elsewhere.
The actual ruler of the country was the shikken, or regent. The Hojo family actually
controlled the country, having disposed of the Minamoto shoguns in a
campaign of conspiracies and outright murder. They were not in any mood to give up
power to anyone, even someone as mighty as Kublai Khan.
In 1274 the first attempt to invade Japan was organised in Korea, but the country was
in no condition to support such an operation, recovering as it was from the Mongol
conquest. A relatively small fleet was sent to Japan, carrying Mongols and some
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Koreans. It has to be said that the Koreans were far from enthusiastic about fighting
for Kublai Khan or against the Japanese. The expedition landed at Hakata Bay after
some successes on the small islands of Tsushima and Iki and drove off the Japanese
force that came to push them back into the sea. The Mongols, however, were unable
to expand this small bridgehead.
When the weather began to change, and a massive storm was obviously brewing, the
Mongols were persuaded by their Korean naval officers that the best course of action
was to re-embark and ride out the storm at sea. The advice proved disastrous, and
13,000 men are estimated to have drowned. When the storm passed, the survivors
sailed back to Korea and the Japanese celebrated.
The weather had been to blame for the Mongol setback, not the Japanese. The
samurai were out of practice in large-scale warfare because they simply hadn’t needed
to fight any battles for decades!
The Japanese and Mongol ways of fighting were also too different for the Japanese to
really counter a Mongol army. The Mongols were a disciplined professional force
where individual honour meant nothing. This was a shock to the samurai. It simply
wasn’t the way that a decent war was fought. War was a matter of honour between,
for want of a better term, gentleman warriors, as samurai on the battlefield made a
point of announcing their heritage, exploits and worthiness. They were seeking out an
equally worthy opponent to fight as an individual; the concept of fighting in an
organised army was understood, but not really important. The other shock to the
samurai had come in realising that their opponents had better weaponry. The
Mongols’ compound bow was superior in many ways to the Japanese longbow, added
to which the Mongols brought gunpowder weapons.
All that said, the first invasion had not been a success. When the Mongols came again,
they would do so in greater numbers and with more determination.
The Kamikaze
The second invasion had to wait until the Sung had been defeated, and for a while it
did look as if the Japanese were going to repay the compliment and assault Korea.
Instead, in 1281 Kublai Khan organised his second invasion.
This was a much larger expeditionary force, although the preparations seem to have
been uncharacteristically rushed. Two fleets were organised from southern and
northern China, which were to converge on the island of Iki before attacking the main
Japanese islands. The commanders of the two fleets quarrelled and the invasion forces
never really coordinated their actions. The two fleets landed at each end of Hakata
Bay where the Japanese had built a 20-kilometre-long wall.
Although both invasion forces made it ashore, the Japanese were able to contain
them. The Chinese and Korean troops among the invaders did not fight overly hard
and the Japanese managed to get their small ships into the Mongols’ anchorage. The
fighting continued from 23 June to 14 August 1281 and then, during 15 and 16 August,
another typhoon struck the Mongol invasion fleets. Around half the southern fleet was
destroyed, along with a third of the northern fleet. Those who were trapped or
washed ashore were either killed out of hand or enslaved by the Japanese. There was
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no way the Mongol invasion could recover from this kind of disaster and Japan had
been saved by the “divine wind” of heavenly favour, the kamikaze (hence the use of
the name for the suicide pilots of the Second World War, who were supposed to be
equally destructive of Japan’s enemies).
Despite his horrendous losses in the second campaign, Kublai Khan was all for making
a third attempt. Only the stubbornness of his underlings in opposing the idea and then
his death stopped the third invasion from taking place. With all his other
achievements, Kublai Khan should not have felt too badly about Japan slipping away
from his grasp. The myth of Mongol invincibility had, though, been severely damaged
throughout Asia.
“What if?” The Mongol Invasion in
Shogun: Total War – Gold Edition
The Mongol Invasion in Shogun: Total War — Gold Edition makes one simple, but
crucial change to history.
What if the storm of 15 and 16 August 1281 had never happened? From this change
comes: what if the Mongols had managed to stay ashore in Japan? Would they have
won? Would Japan have become another province of the Mongol Empire?
With better weather, the chances are that the Mongols would have been able to
reinforce their invasion force at will from the Chinese mainland. They should also have
been able to break out from their initial landing areas and carry the fighting deeper
into Japan. Faced with an army that was professional, highly disciplined and adept at
using terror as a strategy, would the Japanese have been able to stop them?
Forty years before, the Mongols had destroyed an army of elite Christian knights at
Liegnitz in Poland. The knights were almost exactly the same kind of men as the
samurai of Japan in the time of Kublai Khan — warriors who were unwilling to
sacrifice their personal honour and status to any notion of abstract, military discipline.
The samurai “system” produced talented, deadly individual warriors. It could not
easily produce armies that were capable of opposing the Mongols. Individual samurai
would have undoubtedly fought on until killed, as their martial code would have called
for that kind of resistance. It would have been exactly the kind of behaviour to
provoke a general massacre by the Mongols…
Admittedly, Kublai Khan’s Mongol army was not the same force as had been available
to his grandfather. It was ethnically far more diverse, for a start. But it was just as
disciplined and probably more tactically flexible than the “old” Mongol horde had ever
been. But it was still a strikingly modern-looking force, as we’ll see in a moment.
The Impact of the Mongols
The effects of a Mongol invasion can’t be overestimated in the lands they conquered,
plundered and destroyed. Where they passed, the locals felt as if everything had been
destroyed, that life was pretty much over. They were seen as being a plague upon the
world.
The Mongols were quite capable of methodically slaughtering just a part of a
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conquered people, taking some into captivity and leaving the rest to manage as best
they could in a shattered land. This calculated brutality of only killing the majority of a
people seems to be crueller even than slaughtering everyone. The Russian suspicion of
foreigners, for example, can probably be traced back to their treatment at the hands
of the Mongols. Cities were destroyed and huge tracts of countryside systematically
depopulated.
When the Mongols under Hülegü (Kublai Khan’s brother) eventually took Baghdad, it
ceased to be the centre of Islamic culture.
The Caliph was tied in a leather sack and trampled to death by Mongol horsemen,
breaking centuries of religious tradition.
It was symbolically respectful as far as the Mongols were concerned since it technically
avoided his blood being shed. Perhaps the same fate might have awaited the Emperor
of Japan or the Pope if the Mongols had reached Edo and Rome respectively. In the
Middle East, the Mongols also destroyed the know-how to keep the water flowing
through the qanats (canals) beneath the desert. They had already burned crops and
storehouses to create famines and kill their enemies, but without water a persistent
pattern of deprivation was established. Without organised irrigation, agriculture could
not restart, as there were no reliable rains to help. Some Islamic scholars argue that
the region has never really recovered from what was done by the Mongols all those
centuries ago.
China’s population is estimated to have declined by some 30 percent during the
Mongol conquest and, given the size of the Chinese population, this is a huge number
of people. This decline includes those who were simply killed out of hand, but also
must include the people who starved to death and the “missing generations” who
were never born at all. The short-term and localised destruction caused by the
Mongols undoubtedly helped this process but it was accelerated by a variety of
diseases that came hand-in-hand with unrestricted warfare.
Had the Japanese failed to contain the Mongol invasions and the weather not been so
kind, the chances are that they would have suffered similarly. While paddy fields are
harder to destroy than qanats, the chances are that most Japanese would have died in
the invasion or as a result of the Mongols’ proven ruthlessness. Few survived where
resistance was prolonged, regardless of their complicity in that resistance, and the
chances are that the samurai would have fought on to the bitter end.
They wouldn’t have understood any other course of action.
The Mongol Army
“The sentry who is inattentive will be killed. The arrow messenger who gets
drunk will be killed. Anyone who harbours a fugitive will be killed. The warrior
who unlawfully appropriates booty for himself will be killed. The leader who is
incompetent will be killed.”
— the Yasak, Genghis Khan’s code of law
When Genghis Khan died in 1227, various estimates put the size of his field army at
around 130,000 men plus supporting troops (guarding communications) adding
another 60,000. This 130,000 has to be treated with some caution because medieval
army numbers are notoriously inaccurate. This didn’t stop the Mongols’ enemies
claiming that they were “numberless” or “beyond counting” but then no one likes to
think they were beaten by warriors who were simply better.
The “numberless horde” was a careful ploy by successive Khans. Genghis Khan simply
told visitors that his armies were numberless and was apparently believed. (On the
other hand, anyone looking doubtful at his claim was probably risking death.) The
word “horde”, by the way, comes from the Turkish word “ordu”, which simply means
tented encampment without any connotations of size.
There were a variety of reasons why observers did have difficulties in judging the size
of the Mongol army. The Mongols’ collective speed on the march didn’t help, of
course, because most people just didn’t believe that they cover ground as quickly as
they did — the Mongols managed to travel 270 miles in just three days in the middle of
winter when they invaded Hungary, for example. A modern army would find it difficult
to match such a move and be ready to fight, even with mechanised transport. It was
quite easy to believe that there were far more Mongols around than was actually the
case when they could be seen hundreds of miles apart in the space of a few days. This
wasn’t how other armies operated at the time. This isn’t how armies operate now!
The Mongols also used techniques of “strategic misinformation” to help conceal their
numbers. Each Mongol had four or five ponies with him at any one time as remounts,
and this too created the impression of a much larger force in the minds of opponents.
The Mongols regularly tied brushwood to their horses’ tails to raise huge columns of
dust and also used straw dummies tied to the backs of spare mounts to increase their
apparent numbers. These simple tricks apparently worked, as did other ruses.
In 1204, for example, before the battle of Chakirma’ut, each Mongol Warrior was told
to light five fires where the enemy could see them. The creation of doubt and fear in
an enemy’s mind always helped in the Mongol way of warfare.
Because of the way the nomadic Mongols were organised as a society, the percentage
of adults who could be considered as active warriors was extremely high — some
60% of the total. A nomadic people are easier to mobilise for war than those who are
settled and tied to a piece of land. It was also thanks to the active part women played
in society, freeing men to be fighters. Some women even fought alongside their men
and formed units of their own. Finally, all Mongol men were warriors simply by
virtue of having grown up as Mongols. They learned to ride and hunt almost as soon
as they could walk — skills that would stand them in good stead as warriors.
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Later, under Kublai Khan, this training would be formalised, but it always guaranteed a
supply of outstanding soldiers for the Khans.
The Mongols were organised from the start as a highly disciplined army in units of 10,
00, 1000 and 10,000 men. At all levels command was given only to men of proven
ability. Being a member of the nobility was no guarantee of gaining a command
position (unlike virtually all other armies of the period) and even members of the
Golden Family had to prove their worth. Once given command, a Mongol leader
could expect complete obedience from his troops. Again, this is not something that
was ever really the case in other armies of the time. Battlefield discipline was one of
the great advantages that the Mongols had over their more settled, civilised
opponents!
As the Mongol Empire grew, the nature of the Great Khan’s army inevitably changed.
It had to become more ethnically diverse as, firstly, other tribes of steppe nomads
were incorporated into it, and then as Chinese and other nationalities were recruited
for specialist roles. By the time of Kublai Khan, the “Mongol” army included not only
traditional nomadic Mongols but Mongols from settled colonies, Chinese infantry and
other levies, Muslim engineers and artillerists, Kirpaks from the steppes of Russia,
Christian and Iranian Alans in Kublai’s own bodyguard, Koreans and many others.
Supplying all these troops was a logistical nightmare, and that it was done at all has to
be counted as a success for Kublai Khan. That it was done well, as is shown by his
campaigns against the Sung, is a triumph. Horses always remained an obsession and a
problem, particularly in China. Raising large herds of horses was never a Chinese
strength (much Chinese land just isn’t suitable), but their Mongolian overlords needed
horses all the same. One in every hundred horses had to be sold to the Mongol
government at a (low) fixed price. At some times and places, horses were simply
confiscated. There were severe penalties for concealing horses and for smuggling
them out of China. Still, even with these problems there are records of 10,000 horses
at a time being shipped off to field armies.
Strategy, Tactics and Weapons
Like other nomadic peoples, the Mongols relied on horse archers and superb cavalry
skills in war. The bulk of their forces fought as light cavalry archers, with little or no
armour, armed with a compound bow. This was the way warfare had always been on
the open steppes — Attila the Hun would have had little difficulty in commanding a
Mongol army. That said the Mongols were, in many ways, a strikingly modern army in
a medieval world.
Their strategy and tactics were based around their highly mobile troops. As we’ve
already seen, they were capable of marching immense distances (even by modern
standards) in days rather than weeks. To modern eyes, the Mongols didn’t carry much
war gear at all and each man always had extra horses at his disposal. The standards of
horsemanship among the Mongols were such that a man could — and was expected
to — change horses at the gallop. This immense strategic speed would have been
pointless but for the Mongol mastery of what is now termed C3I — Command,
Control, Communications and Intelligence. Command always went to the ablest men.
Control over underlings was absolute and rigidly enforced.
Communications were the province of the “arrow-riders” who regularly rode 120
miles per day (Marco Polo claims that these messengers could manage to cover 300
miles a day, but this is probably an exaggeration). They maintained contact between
widely separated columns of riders and allowed them to operate as a single force —
something that other armies of the time just couldn’t manage. Within the Empire, the
same riders acted as a postal service or pony express, dashing between remount
stations on all the major roads. In most armies, command, control and
communications was directly related to how loudly the nobleman in charge could
shout!
Intelligence was a natural Mongol skill — one picked up during the hunts that were a
constant pursuit of all men.
Even when, under Kublai Khan, Mongol armies included a large proportion of Chinese
infantry, they still managed to travel “fast and light” by the standards of others. The
Mongols had grasped the important military dictum of “getting there fastest with the
mostest…”
On the battlefield, Mongol cavalry tactics were inevitably based on their light horse
archers. These disciplined troops could be relied on to perform quite complex
manoeuvres, and not to act on their own spurious “initiative” (as, say, the samurai of
Japan and knights of Europe were known to do, ignoring orders and battle plans in the
hope of getting to grips with an honourable foe). The Mongols would try to surround
the foe or, where that didn’t work, they would attack with a barrage of arrows, wheel
away and be replaced by fresh units. They also made extensive use of feints,
pretended retreats and misdirection to draw the enemy out where they could be
ambushed and destroyed in detail. This method of fighting always led to disparities in
casualties between the Mongols and their defeated enemies. Mongol forces were
never expected to get into serious hand-to-hand fighting; their killing was done at long
range.
114
115
This way of fighting still needed close combat troops, and the Mongols always had an
elite force of heavy cavalry. Their job was the same as any other shock force: to ride
down enemies already on the edge of defeat and kill them.
All of these tactics required the right weapons and equipment, and in this the Mongols
were well served by their sturdy ponies and compound bows. Steppe horses have
always had a reputation for being tough animals, and the Mongols were fine stockmen
as well as cavalrymen.
The compound bow of the steppes was a truly superb weapon, easily more effective
than the English longbow and the asymmetric bow of the samurai. Rather than being a
single piece of carefully shaped wood, it was built up of layers of horn, sinew and
wood that gave it tremendous power. It was short, and so could be used from
horseback, and yet it had very impressive range: a good bowman could easily send an
arrow 300 yards. The compound bow relied on the speed an arrow was released for
its killing power — not on the weight of the arrow. This speed, along with the smooth
release of power inherent in the compound shape, made it an accurate weapon in the
hands of an expert. And the Mongols were, almost without exception, experts.
Either way, on a thirteenth century battlefield the huo-p’ao grenades were dangerous
weapons, and quite understandably gave the samurai a nasty surprise when they first
encountered them. There are also sources that mention something called the hui-hui
p’ao, and this seems to have been some sort of grenade launcher that threw iron
powder-filled grenades, although whether it was a crossbow- or gunpowder-based
launcher isn’t clear.
Oddly, when it came to fortifications, Kublai Khan didn’t appear to pay much attention
to the need to defend against explosives,cannon fire or other artillery.
The Mongols certainly used stone-throwing artillery against the Sung cities, but only an
earth rampart and two inner walls, for example, defended Peking, rather than more
substantial fortifications. The efficient use of even quite primitive artillery could have
smashed a hole for an assault force to enter, assuming that an enemy ever reached the
city, of course. This may be an indication that gunpowder itself was a Chinese
invention, but that its use as a propellant for missile weapons can be traced back to
the Middle East and the Muslims. Or it could be that the Mongols were simply secure
enough in their Empire not to worry about any attackers reaching their cities.
Under the Khans all of these tactics and skills were retained and new ones added to
the Mongol repertoire. They rapidly learned new tricks and techniques from the
people they conquered and adapted well to, say, the need for siege warfare and the
uses of massed infantry. Their use of these techniques, however, was copied from the
Muslims and above all the Chinese.
Gunpowder
It’s worth considering gunpowder as a separate subject, if only because of the awful
shock it gave to the samurai and the sheer indiscriminate danger of using the stuff!
The origins of gunpowder as a weapon are largely unknown, but by 1000CE Chinese
warriors were certainly using a kind of flamethrower on the battlefield — probably
something like the “Greek fire” used by the Byzantine Empire. Just over 100 years
later, Chinese soldiers were using bamboo tubes filled with an incendiary powder.
These couldn’t have been that safe for the users! It’s another hundred years or so
before something that is recognisably a firearm appears, still based on the bamboo
tube but with small bullets fired at the enemy. These were decidedly handguns, but
rather primitive and probably just as dangerous to the user as the earlier weapons!
At the same time, a kind of firecracker was also in use, but not as a simple
noisemaker. This type of firecracker explosively spread lime into a chemical fog on the
battlefield and in sieges, making it one of the earliest chemical weapons in the world.
The caustic effects on any human or animal target would have been extremely
unpleasant, not to mention difficult to treat.
By the time of the Mongol invasion of Japan, these chemical firecrackers had
developed to the point where they did explode properly with a loud bang and lots of
smoke. These were true grenades called huo-p’ao. It isn’t known whether or not they
included pieces of iron or stone to give a fragmentation effect or just relied on the
concussive effects of the explosion.
116
117
Mongol Military Units in
Shogun: Total War - Gold Edition
Mongol units are not built in the same fashion as Japanese units. They are created offmap and shipped in by convoys from the mainland. The number and type of units that
can be created depends on the map areas controlled by the Mongols. But remember
that the pool of available warriors in China and Mongolia is not bottomless.
Mongol Light Cavalry
These are the archetypical nomad warriors. They are all skilled
archers and excellent horsemen. They are intended to harass and
ambush enemies and are ideally suited to the hit-and-run tactics
favoured on the battlefield by the Mongols. Their superior
manoeuvrability gives them the ability to mass swiftly, attack,
withdraw and repeat this cycle as often as needed. They are neither
heavily armed nor armoured and cannot fight at all well in a melee.
Mongol Spearmen
Mongol spearmen are, like Japanese spearmen, a good defensive
force against cavalry. In terms of quality, they are not as good as
samurai spearmen but can be relied on to give a good account of
themselves in most circumstances.
Mongol Guardsmen
(Chinese) Guardsmen are the assault infantry units available to the
Mongols. Although relatively slow moving, they are better armed
and equipped than the Spearmen and are armed with a large
glaive-like pole arm. This is a broad-bladed cutting weapon on a
pole anything up to 2.5 metres in length, but it isn’t quite as
effective as the samurai naginata. These troops are well able if
deployed in a melee, but will take casualties closing with missile
troops of any kind.
Thunder-bombers
Mongol Heavy Cavalry
Mongol Heavy Cavalry have the traditional role of “nobility” on the
battlefield: the breaking of lesser troops through shock and impact.
All superb horsemen, these heavy cavalry are heavily armed with
spears and well protected by armour and shields. They are best
used to attack infantry formations and to ride down units that are
already on the point of breaking.
Mongol Skirmishers
Skirmishers are heavily armoured troops who carry javelins, shields
and a sword, although they are not really intended to fight in hand
to hand combat. The best use for skirmishers is to attack units with
a hail of javelins, while their armour allows them to survive (in
theory) any returned missile fire. Their javelins can be devastating
weapons, but the skirmishers can only carry three “rounds” apiece.
Once that’s spent, they generally pull back.
Strictly speaking, the skirmishers are unlikely to be ethnic Mongols, but are most
probably Chinese levies, as they made up a substantial proportion of Kublai Khan’s
armies.
118
The grenades carried by the Thunder-bombers need nerve and
skill to use properly — or a complete lack of fear and common
sense! These grenadiers can be devastating, but their explosive
weapons have a very short range. Grenades can also be a bit
wayward (to put it kindly) in use, and there’s no guarantee that
only the enemy targets will be blown to bits! The Thunderbombers could easily blow themselves or nearby friendly units to
pieces as well. They are also very vulnerable in melee and will be
rapidly overwhelmed by any enemy unit that manages to close
with them.
Japanese Units in the Mongol
Campaigns
Ashigaru Crossbowmen
The crossbow was a Chinese weapon that the Japanese copied
and used from time to time. As with other peoples, they found
that it was a weapon with its own particular set of advantages and
drawbacks. Unlike a bow, a crossbow doesn’t require long training
for the user, or continual practice to maintain skill and strength.
Virtually anyone can be taught to use a crossbow, providing he’s
strong enough to cock it; and there are numerous levers, stirrups
and clever chain mechanisms to make this process really easy. Unlike a bow, however,
it can be slow and clumsy to fire. The laborious process of cocking and loading a
crossbow makes sure of that.
119
Ashigaru Crossbowmen are cheap to produce but they can only be raised where
there is a Bow Dojo. They are fairly deadly missile troops (even if their rate of fire is a
little slow), but far from effective in melee. If other troops manage to close with them,
the Ashigaru Crossbowmen will perish in large numbers!
“Missing” Units: Ashigaru Arquebusiers, Musketeers
and Others
The Mongols’ grenadiers came as a nasty surprise to the samurai, who had previously
never seen any kind of practical gunpowder weaponry. The obvious implication of this
is that the samurai don’t have gunpowder weapons of their own.
The Mongol campaigns and battles take place some 300 years before the Sengoku
period of Japanese history and the arrival of European firearms in Japan. As a result,
Japanese armies don’t include any Arquebusier or Musketeer units. The Japanese can’t
build these units or the buildings that produce them in this period.
There are also other unit types available in Shogun: Total War - Gold Edition that are
unavailable to the samurai when facing the Mongols. In addition to gunpowderequipped troops, the samurai can’t build Warrior Monks, Ninja and Ashigaru
Spearmen.
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total war™ and the official expansion pack

Transcription

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