User:Soranin/Sandbox4

Timeline

Siege of Kanegasaki (1570)

In 1570, Nobunaga sends an invitation, sensibly on Yoshiaki's behalf, to local warlords for a reception in Kyoto. And this is almost a way to test who was going to accept his authority and who wasn't. And the daimyo of Ichizen province, Asakura Yoshikage, refuses the summons. So Nobunaga launches a campaign to besiege the Asakura's main castle. But unfortunately for Nobunaga, the Azai, his brother-in-law's family, his brother-in-law being Azai Nagamasa, had a multi-generational alliance relationship with the Asakura. So Nagamasa feels obligated to go to the Asakura's aid, and he launches an attack on Nobunaga's army's rear, forcing Nobunaga to break off the siege and retreat while a rear guard held off the Asai and the Asakura forces. So Nobunaga feels personally betrayed by this man who was a relative by marriage. And the Asai and Asakura are one of the initial threats that he faces.

Battle of Anegawa

The two sides meet in July of 1570 at the Battle of Anegawa, where Nobunaga was joined by his ally Tokugawa Iyasu. And they fight this battle in the shallow Anagawa River, both sides plunging into the water to engage the enemy. So if you picture this dramatic battle in this shallow river, Tokugawa, on Nobunaga's right flank, managed to route the Asakura and then crash into the flank of the Asai while at the same time Nobunaga sent his reserves around the other flank. And it causes the collapse of the enemy to create victory.

But the surviving members of the Asakura and the Asai forces find refuge on Mount Hiei, which is a mountain just to the northeast of the capital. And it's the site of the Enuryakuji Temple, which is the headquarters of the Tendai Sept of Buddhism and a military power in its own right. what that matters is that, you know, this was a Buddhist temple that had essentially an army of its own. And so this prevents Nobunaga from cutting off the Asai and the Asakura forces and completely destroying them. And he has to back off,

Ishiyama Hongan-ji War [1570-1580]

I suppose there's a really good example of siege warfare involving Oda Nobunaga. So in Japan, you have these different Buddhist sects and one of them, Ojoro Shinshu, was particularly powerful and particularly worrying for Oda Nobunaga because the people in this particular sect could be almost pitted out at the last minute to become a kind of pop-up army so that the patriarch, for want of a better word, of this particular sect could issue a statement against Oda Nobunaga as he did, declaring him an enemy and saying that people would be rewarded in the next life if they stand up against him. And the followers of this sect included some fairly wealthy merchants who could effectively equip themselves and feed themselves. So the danger of these pop-up armies appearing almost out of nowhere was extraordinary for Oda Nobunaga and he worried about it and he actually resented it very much. And so he launched a siege against the main compound in Osaka of the Jodo Shinshu sect, which lasted actually for a while. It wasn't entirely successful because Osaka, of course, is on the water and so the patriarch had allies, pirate Daimyo, I suppose you could call them, who for a while would supply the castle by sea. But Oda Nobunaga managed to defeat those pirates at sea and so after a while the Jodo Shinshu sect holed up in this fortified temple complex in Osaka had to give up. They did at the last minute, the sun, I think, of the patriarch, if I've got it right, when he was forced to come out, set fire to the place just before he came out on the basis that if the Jodo Shinshu sect cannot have that fortress anymore, then Oda Nobunaga certainly can't have it either.

Siege of Mount Hiei [1571]

So there were quite remarkable sieges along the way, a company that has to be said, certainly in the case of someone like Nobunaga, with extraordinary slaughter. I think he particularly hated the idea that Buddhist sects would interfere in the running of the country. So there's another Buddhist sect, the Tendai sect, which he attacked on their mountain base called Mount Hiei, sent thousands of troops up there, killed everybody, burned everything, just destroyed the entire sect, including people unrelated to the sect who were living on the mountain. So this gives you an idea of how bloody and uncompromising some of this warfare could be.

But in 1571, he realizes that the only way to solve his problem of encirclement is to break kind of the circle. So he starts with Mount Hiei, the Enuryakuchi temple complex that had given refuge to his enemies. And in the fall, he brings them out and has his troops advance up deliberately. And according to eyewitness accounts from the time that are written down, his troops are killing anything that's alive, whether it be monks, laymen, women, children, reportedly even every animal that's on the mountain. And they burn almost every building of this massive temple complex.

And of course, in addition to the human toll, which is horrific, this is a massive loss of life, but it's also a loss of culture, of history. This was a major religious complex. So it had important documents, texts, artwork that all went up in flames with the exception of one small building that got overlooked.

when Emperor Kamu had the capital built there, one of the things he knew was that there was already in the northwest a mountain called Mount Hiei on which was a huge Buddhist temple. So that therefore counteracted the unluckiness. That was very important. And then more Buddhist temples and more Buddhist temples were built on that same mountain. And in the end, there was something like 3000 Buddhist temples up there, which was all an excellent thing for countering the unluckiness, except it became rather unlucky itself, because those Buddhist priests then came down and started rampaging around the city. And then, unluckily, Nobunaga had to go up and destroy the entire temple compound, which he did. He burnt down the whole lot. But there are temples there again.

Shimabara Rebellion [1637-1638]

in Kyushu where you have what's called the Shimabara rebellion 1637 to 1638 where basically a ragtag bunch of peasants with a little bit of samurai leadership managed to hold themselves up in a castle and fight off wave after wave of samurai who come in to try and pacify them and take the castle and it's extraordinarily embarrassing you know these samurai try everything they send ninjas into the castle they send spies in who get caught they try and dig tunnels under the castle but the people inside the castle fill the tunnels with feces and urine they try all sorts of things and it takes months and months and months and reinforcements to finally get this rebellion under control and the story that the Tokugawa tell after the Shimabara rebellion is that this was a case of foreign interference you know these people these peasants couldn't possibly hold off samurai unless they were somehow being supported and orchestrated by these nefarious foreign christian powers and so probably the last development in this long process of unification is the shutting down almost completely of Japan's borders they'll still deal with China and Korea at particular points within Japan they'll have that trade with Southeast Asia they'll have a limited trade as well but the Portuguese are thrown out the Spanish are thrown out the English aren't terribly interested in the end anyway the Japanese will only deal when we're thinking about European powers with the Dutch and only at this little artificial island called Dejima just a few feet worth of wooden bridge off the coast of Nagasaki