How would you tame barbarians?
The Emishi were people who the Japanese called barbarians, which means people who worshipped
Babar the Elephant--
The Emishi were people who the Japanese called barbarians.
They lived in northeastern Honshu.
Way back in ancient times, there had been a lot of contact between the Emishi and the
Yamato people.
The Yamato were the ancestors of the modern Japanese.
They didn’t think much of these barbarians.
They even compared the Emishi to animals like birds and wolves.
In the 600s, the Yamato state began the long and hard task of convincing the Emishi to
bend the knee to Yamato rule.
This grand persuasion strategy consisted of three approaches:
claim them, colonize them, and convert them.
Coincidentally, this is also my strategy to take over all other history channels on YouTube.
That’s right, Overly Sarcastic Productions, I claim your channel.
So “Claim them” meant this.
The Yamato Japanese claimed that Emishi land was theirs.
That’s it.
They just declared it so one day, and eventually made two new provinces over these lands,
Dewa and Mutsu.
It’s like the schoolyard bully declaring out of nowhere that the jungle gym you were
playing in was his.
What the hell Peter?
Find your own jungle gym, and a better home life.
The Japanese didn’t consult the Emishi or anything, they just said this is ours now,
and the Emishi were like “bruh.”
At first, nothing really changed.
The Emishi lived like they always had.
If the Japanese wanted to think they theoretically owned the land, whatever.
But of course, the Japanese court didn’t stop there.
The second approach in their charitable mission to teach civilization to the barbarians was
“Colonize them.”
The court sprinkled some colonies, or outposts, in Emishi lands.
Just a dash of outposts at first.
Then gradually it became more and more dashes.
The Japanese government settled citizens in Emishi territory.
These outposts became bases where the court could massage its influence over the barbarians.
They built stockades defended by government soldiers that settlers could flee to in case
of attacks.
And there were attacks.
People don’t usually like you building homes on their land.
At this early stage, the Japanese didn’t do a full scale military invasion.
They just kept building stockades and settlements further into Emishi territory.
They defended themselves, but didn’t seek out Emishi leaders and villages to attack.
In fact, they treated Emishi leaders pretty well.
Now don’t be fooled, it was an invasion nonetheless.
The Japanese saw northeastern Honshu as their land.
The court appointed a chinjufu shogun (鎮守府将軍), or a pacification general, charged with overseeing
military operations in the frontier provinces.
So the third part of the grand plan was “Convert them.”
The Japanese court welcomed Emishi leaders and wined and dined them.
They pulled Emishi chieftains into the court’s bureaucracy.
They often invited Emishi chieftains to court and gave them gifts and court ranks.
They succeeded in convincing a lot of Emishi people to join the state, and even had a program
to settle Emishi people into Japanese provinces.
Emishi migrants moved to almost every province in Japan.
Okay so as the settlements moved further and further into the frontier, it became harder
for the Emishi to stay independent.
The Japanese intrusion caused the Emishi to become more aggressive.
They began polishing their war spears, quietly, like their parents were in the next room.
They particularly hated the Japanese strategy of pulling Emishi leaders into the court’s
bureaucracy, as if their leaders were under the court’s rule.
A resistance network formed.
So the Emishi lived in separate tribes, each with their own lands.
Tribes were independent and even fought against each other.
Each tribe had a leader for times of peace and a different leader for times of war.
These leader positions were chosen based on their skill rather than passed down from father
to son like civilized people.
In dire times, tribes would form temporary federations, uniting their power against a
threat.
This time, the threat was these Japanese invaders.
The Emishi went around raiding settlements.
They even killed provincial government officials.
It forced the court to respond with military troops and hashtag campaigns.
ProvincialGovernmentOfficialLivesMatter.
In the 700s, the Japanese engaged in some small scale attacks against the Emishi.
The documentation about these operations are light on details, but here’s one with specific
numbers.
Let’s see what happens.
The governor of Mutsu province, who was also the pacification general, requested some troops
to build a road connecting the provincial headquarters of Mutsu and Dewa.
The court sent 1000 horsemen from multiple different provinces to his doorstep,
free shipping.
He split most of them between a few different stockades, but kept some for a special mission:
to conquer an Emishi village and build a new stockade there.
His forces included 196 horsemen, 5499 infantry, and 249 Emishi allies.
This is pretty interesting because it tells us the ratio of horsemen to infantry.
Wars around this time still had a lot of foot soldiers.
That would change later when Japan shifted to armies of mainly mounted archers.
It also tells us that the Japanese had Emishi allies who were willing to fight against other
Emishi.
The general’s force marched 74 km towards the doomed village, building a road as they
went...and then retreated back to base.
Apparently, they reached bad weather.
The snow was deep and they couldn’t feed the horses.
They milled about scratching their asses for a month until the snow melted, and prepared
for another trek.
But they suddenly got the news that the 3 Emishi chieftains from the village would bend
the knee if they didn’t attack,
so the general called off the attack.
This suggests that the Japanese wasn’t itching for war at this early stage, they were content
with building more outposts and didn’t want to provoke the Emishi more than needed.
But like my dad’s love, that sentiment would not last forever.
In 774, the court launched an actual military campaign to destroy the Emishi resistance
fighters.
But we’ll talk about that in another episode.
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Alright, much love, and spread the knowledge.