#The Name of an Era — Sengoku

Contents

Sengoku (戰國). Two kanji. Unpacked: "nations at war with one another."

It is rare for a period to be named so roughly. The Edo period took its name from "Edo," the Heian period from "Heian," the Nara period from "Nara" — all named after the capital. The Sengoku era alone is different. There was a capital, but that capital could not represent the era. Kyoto (京都) was still there. It was simply that the meaning of being a capital had gone hollow.

#When Was It

Historians draw the line: from the Onin War (応仁の乱) of 1467 to the founding of the Edo shogunate in 1603, roughly one hundred and thirty years.

But for the people who lived through it, those beginnings and endings would have been anything but clear. To them, the Sengoku was what their fathers had endured, what they were enduring, what their children would endure too. War from birth, and war at death.

"My grandfather died in battle, and my father died in battle — so I will die in battle too. The fortunate thing is that my son will as well." — A passage attributed to the words of a nameless ashigaru

#Why It Began

The textbooks say it plainly: the center weakened. The regional warlords each seized power. They fought one another.

Behind that simple statement lie three things.

#First — The Shogun's Bones Broke

The Ashikaga (足利) shogun line of the Muromachi shogunate (室町幕府) was once strong. But in the middle of the 15th century, a succession struggle erupted within the Ashikaga clan. That struggle was called the Onin War. Kyoto burned. It burned for 11 years. Samurai in their prime cut one another down in the streets of the capital.

By the time Kyoto had turned to ash, the shogun line was already an empty shell that kept only its name.

#Second — The Provincial Shugo Daimyo (守護大名) Became Kings of Their Own Lands

Below the shogun, the lords who governed each province were called shugo daimyo. Originally they were the shogun's deputies. When the shogun weakened, they made themselves kings. They collected taxes from their own farmers, raised their own samurai, and fought their neighboring shugo daimyo.

These were the first generation of Sengoku daimyo (戰國大名).

#Third — Those Who Rose from Below Seized the Seats Above

Another name for the Sengoku era is gekokujo (下剋上) — the age of the low overturning the high.

Retainers betrayed their lords. A military officer cut down his superior and took his place. A minor castle lord destroyed the great castle next to his. A peasant became the concubine's attendant in a daimyo household and in a single generation rose to become a lord — that is the legend of Toyotomi Hideyoshi. He had been an ashigaru.

The reason gekokujo was possible is simple: it was an age in which the rules had broken down. Lineage was no guarantee. A blade, a mind, and luck were the guarantee.

#Things That Came from Outside

Into the chaos of the Sengoku, objects and ideas from across the sea arrived.

1543 — Portuguese sailors drifted ashore on the island of Tanegashima (種子島). The weapon they brought with them was the teppo (鉄砲, matchlock arquebus). Within a few years, Japanese craftsmen began copying it. The rules of the battlefield changed. The age of the sword and bow was setting, and the age of fire and lead had begun.

1549 — Jesuit missionary Francisco Xavier landed at Kagoshima. Kirishitan (切支丹) — the Japanese name for the Catholic faith — had arrived. A handful of daimyo in Kyushu converted. Churches were built even in Kyoto. This strange faith would be brutally suppressed half a century later, but in the meantime it changed a great many things — the Nanban trade routes, sugar, clocks, glass, new medicine and astronomy.

These two events meant that the Sengoku era could no longer be kept as "a war within Japan alone." The world was knocking on Japan's door.

#What the Air Was Like

The air of this era, distilled to a single phrase: "tomorrow is not guaranteed."

Today's lord could become tomorrow's enemy.
Today's friend could betray you tomorrow.
Today's castle could be burning tomorrow.
Today's wife and children could be killed tomorrow.

So people ate today's rice, drank today's sake, held today's woman, and polished today's blade. In the face of uncertainty, human beings become, paradoxically, concrete. When there is no abstract future, a single grain of rice in front of you comes into sharp focus.

This concreteness is the aesthetic of the Sengoku era. The reason the Way of Tea (茶道) deepened most profoundly in this era, the reason waka (和歌) were written as soldiers' last wills, the reason flower arranging (生け花) became a castle lord's code of conduct — all of it grew from this feeling: "because there may be no tomorrow, today is precious."

#Three Names

There are three names that must always come up when speaking of this era. One after another, near the end of a century, they moved toward unifying Japan.

Oda Nobunaga (織田信長, 1534–1582) — the one who broke the rules. In 1571 he is remembered as the man who crushed the vast temple power base with the burning of Mt. Hiei (比叡山), and in 1575 at the Battle of Nagashino as the symbol who ended the era of the mounted samurai alongside the conventional account of the "teppo 3-rank volley firing." He stamped his seal: Tenka Fubu (天下布武) — "spread the martial across the realm." At the age of 48 (49 by East Asian reckoning), he was betrayed by his retainer Akechi Mitsuhide and died by his own hand at Honnoji (本能寺) in Kyoto.
Toyotomi Hideyoshi (豊臣秀吉, 1537–1598) — the one who rose from low menial labor, through ashigaru, to lord of the realm. He inherited Nobunaga's work and nearly unified Japan. In 1592 and 1597 he launched the invasion of Joseon (the Imjin War and the Jeongyu War), drenching East Asia in blood. In old age, worry over his young son clouded his judgment.
Tokugawa Ieyasu (徳川家康, 1543–1616) — the master of patience. He waited half a century. After Hideyoshi's death, he won the Battle of Sekigahara (1600) and in 1603 established his shogunate in Edo. The full stop at the end of the Sengoku era.

There is a Japanese proverb about these three.

"Nobunaga pounded the rice, Hideyoshi kneaded the mochi, and Ieyasu ate it."

#But in This Era

But — in the Japan of this era, there is one thing more. Something that does not appear in the history textbooks.

The gates of the Spirit Realm had opened. Oni came down from the mountains, tengu began watching people from the tops of pine trees, and the grudges of the dead took shape and wandered the battlefield. Samurai had to face not only enemy commanders but also yoma, and lords had to hire onmyoji.

For the people of this era, "the Sengoku era" carries one more meaning — an age in which humans fight one another, and an age in which humans and other things walk together.

From the next chapter onward, the texture of that world is traced, one thread at a time.

"To fight for one hundred and thirty years means that a single person's entire lifetime is war." — The lament of a certain Confucian scholar