Japan is no stranger to riots. The Edo shōgunate’s biggest headache was trying to keep the country’s economy stable through numerous challenges, including droughts brought about by earthquakes and volcanoes, and a particular shōgun who prioritised dogs over his own people. When the shōgunate failed to stabilise the economy, farmers would riot. And while these riots tended to die down quickly, the shōgunate realised that…
Japan loves a sword master. Of the many who made a name for themselves during the Muromachi era, the most influential has to be Kamīzumi Nobutsuna, founder of the Shinkage style, which went on to influence countless schools throughout the Edo era. One such school run by the Yagyū clan popularised the Yagyū Shinkage style, created by legendary sword master Yagyū Munemori, whose descendants went…
We reach the final part of our story. Bakumatsu is drawing to an end. Don’t be dismayed though; the final act proves to be far more shocking and bloody than anything we’ve seen so far. A power great enough to rival the shōgunate is beginning to form, and there may be little the shōgunate can do to stop it. Part three of our story begins…
Welcome to part two of this coverage of Bakumatsu, arguably one of the most exciting times in Japanese history, detailing the downfall of the shōgunate and the samurai. In part one, we looked at how the arrival of foreign forces stirred up a panic in Japan, causing a number of social and economic problems that set off the whole chain of events. Satsuma han dominated…
Bakumatsu… The end of the Edo shōgunate… No shōgunate goes down without a fight! The Kamakura shōgunate ended with a two-year war orchestrated by Emperor Go-Daigo. The Muromachi shōgunate slowly faded out as the Sengoku daimyō rose to power until it was eventually finished off by Oda Nobunaga. The end of the Edo shōgunate, however, was significantly more complicated. It involved a series of political…
645 was a big year for Japan. Not only did the Imperial Family regain control of the court, but it also conducted the nation’s first set of political reforms: the Taika reforms. Unfortunately, as is more often than not the case with history this old, the texts detailing the events are difficult to trust. The two texts that document the tale were both written around…
Close to 2,000 years ago, China left Japan with one of the most complicated jigsaw puzzles of all time. Most of the pieces are missing, the visible parts of the picture are ambiguous, and there are no clues whatsoever as to how the pieces fit together. Some of those pieces may even belong to a different puzzle entirely! The puzzle’s name is ‘Yamataikoku’. Japan has…
History is full of people who died in ridiculous manners. The Greek playwright Aeschylus, for example, was supposedly killed by a falling tortoise. Qin Shi Huang, the first Emperor of China, ingested mercury pills in the belief that they would grant him immortality. Ironically(but not surprisingly) they led to his death. More than likely, every country has its own tale of untimely, but humorous, demise….
Welcome to part three of this overview of the life of Oda Nobunaga. I never intended for this to be a trilogy, but I guess I was naïve to think I could condense the life of Japan’s greatest warrior into just two articles. If his life were to be made into a movie trilogy, I have no doubt it’d be one of the most epic…
Welcome to part two of this study of arguably the greatest samurai of all time. In this part, we’ll be looking at some of the reasons why he’s considered the greatest by so many. I hinted at one reason at the end of part one, where Oda Nobunaga dealt a devastating blow to the Imagawa at the battle of Okehazama―one of the three major upsets…
