10 MAJOR DEVELOPMENTS: Japanese warfare in the Sengoku Period (1467-1615)


1.


The Shogun (military ruler) became as weak as the Emperor (ceremonial head of state)


2. Warfare between rival feudal barons (daimyo) became endemic


3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.


Armies increased in size from thousands to tens of thousands


Samurai changed from being always mounted to oſt en fi ghting on foot


The sword replaced the longbow as the main samurai weapon


Samurai cavalry changed from being mainly skirmishers to being shock troops charging with lance and sword


Gunpowder and the hand-gun (or arquebus) was introduced


As well as samurai, armies now included well-drilled commoner infantry (ashigaru), armed with spears to form defensive phalanxes, and longbows and arquebuses to provide harassing fi re


9.


Fortifi cations became numerous and strong across the countryside, and siege warfare techniques developed


10. Strategy and tactics evolved to allow complex combined-arms operations by large armies


taking Beijing, but Korea is as far as it got. The Japanese lines of communication were severed on the sea by the turtle ships of Korea’s famous Admiral Yi, while on land the Chinese crossed the border to deliver a massive counter-attack. After a few years of defensive warfare from coastal fortresses, the Japanese occupiers final pulled out in 1598; a decision that was partly prompted by the death of Toyotomi Hideyoshi, who died in a manner that all dictators dread. His son and heir Toyotomi Hideyori was only five years old, and the resulting squabble between the members of his board of regents threatened to plunge Japan into chaos once again. Two rival factions had emerged: a coalition of generals loyal to Hideyoshi’s memory, and Hideyoshi’s former ally Tokugawa Ieyasu, who controlled much of eastern Japan. Ieyasu marched west to confront the hostile alliance, and defeated them in battle in the narrow valley of Sekigahara.


Konishi Yukinaga, one of the leaders of the invasion of Korea, sits contemplating a pile of severed Chinese heads.


This engagement in 1600 proved to be one of the most decisive battles in Japanese history and established the Tokugawa family in a position of power as Shoguns for the next two and a half centuries until the dawn of modern Japan. Apart from the need to eliminate Toyotomi Hideyori (an operation successfully concluded at Osaka castle in 1615), the Age of War was over. Two centuries of peace under strict martial law followed, and it is testament to the control exerted by the Tokugawa that the famous incident of the revenge raid of the Forty-Seven Ronin became a cause celebre – it was just so unusual in the Age of Peace.


www.military-times.co.uk


This member of the famous Forty-Seven Ronin wields his sword in classic samurai style


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