[Intro Music]
Sengoku Jidai: The Warring States Period
The time we think of when we think of samurai
A time of self sacrifice, bravery, treachery and betrayal
A time when the fate of great clans could turn in a day
and peasants could rise up to become regent of all Japan
A time filled with personalities like Miyamoto Musashi,
Oda Nobunaga,
Hattori Hanzo and of course,
Tokugawa Ieyasu
Names that live on in our culture even today
It's one of the most seminal periods in Japanese history
and it'll be the topic of our next few videos.
In 1467, a few decades before Colombus stumbled upon the shores of the Bahamas,
and fifteen years after the light of Rome was extinguished for the last time
at the fall of Constantinople,
Japan erupted into a great civil war
This war, the Onin War, rocked all of Japan.
It started as a dynastic dispute between two great clans,
the Hosokawa and the Imana
but it soon spiralled out of their control, devastating both of these clans
and shattering any semblance of unity within Japan
As central authority collapsed, regional warlords called damiyo fought to assert their power
over whatever portion of the country they could grab
fracturing Japan into a hundred feuding fiefdoms
and plunging the whole country into chaos and a hundred years of ceaseless war
But we're going to pick up the story in the province of Mikawa
the home of the Matsudaira in 1548
This province and this whole region is central to our story
because Kyoto, the capital of Japan at the time and traditionally the home of the emperor
and the shogun, is just a short distance away
and whoever controls the shogun, at least in theory, controls Japan
But in Mikawa, the Matsudaira are surrounded by two larger, much more powerful clans
The Oda to the west and the Imigawa to the east
It was just a matter of time until one of these larger clans attacked the Matsudaira
looking to claim their territories in this age of 'might makes right'
1548 is that year
The Oda forces start marching into Matsudaira territory,
Their defences collapse
Without help, the Matsudaira are clearly lost
so the head of the Matsudaira clan turns to the Imigawa.
He asks them for an alliance, for help to defend his lands,
but an alliance won't come without a price
The Imigawa clan offer to help on the condition that he send them his eldest son as a hostage
Having little other choice, the head of the Matsudaira family agrees
But, as his retuines are taking his son to the Imigawa territory,
they're ambushed
Somebody tipped off the Oda
The boy is kidnapped and spirited away to Oda lands
The Oda write to the Matsudaira and tell them that, if they don't turn traitor
and end their alliance with the Imigawa, they'll kill the boy
And here's where the head of the Matsudaira pulls one of the most brilliant manoeuvres
of the Sengoku Jidai
Now I don't know if he did it as a brilliant stratagem or
if he was doing it out of stoic samurai bravado
but still...brilliant
He writes back and says to them something roughly like:
'Kill my son.'
'In doing so, you will show the Imigawa just how committed to our alliance I am'
What a Catch-22!
Don't kill my son, I win
Kill my son, I win more
And, boy, does it work!
The Oda don't kill the boy.
In fact they have no idea what to do with him now
So he just sits around in a local temple for several years
Thus in a world where hostages are slaughtered left and right, this boy is left unharmed
until, at last, an opportunity comes for the Oda to get
what little use out of him they can
The old head of the Oda has died and the Oda forces are in a bit of disarray
The Imigawa see their opportunity and put to seige the castle that houses the new head of the Oda clan
while he's relatively undefended
Then they offer the Oda a deal:
'We'll let you live as long if you hand over the castle we're sieging
and give us back the Matsudaira boy you stolen from us years ago'
The Oda jump at the deal because, hey, good riddance!
The head of the Matsudaira clan has also just recently died,
making this boy, in name at least, the new head of the clan
The Imigawa see having him as a hostage as a good way of assuring that
the Matsudaira will remain on their side
And, with any luck, they can raise him to be a staunch ally of the Imigawa
by the time he returns home at the age of 15
In 1556, the boy is now officially a man by the standards of the time
and he returns to Mikawa to rule the province in his own right
The alliance with the Imigawa is going well
The Oda are feeling the pressure of the combined forces of the Matsudaira and the Imigawa
And now it is time for this teenage damiyo to take up the sword himself
and lead the Matsudaira forces
His capacity for war is quickly confirmed as he storms through Oda lands
reducing the hill forts along the border.
But even as his armies are raising the Matsudaira flag over these fortified hills,
the Imigawa forces are doing even better,
cutting deep swathes into the Oda lands
The end is near
The Imigawa forces are going to march onto the final great Oda castle,
destroy their last major rival and sweep on to take Kyoto
with the loyal Matsudaira at their side
The Imigawa forces are resting in a gorge, partying, celebrating
and regathering their strength for the final siege of this castle.
The Matsudaira forces are camped a bit further off at one of the border forts they've recently taken
Meanwhile, the last of the Oda forces are in their castle
They are preparing for one last desperate defence,
but their leader, the twenty-six year old Oda Nobunaga has other plans
His advisers counsel him to hide in the castle or perhaps surrender without a fight,
but he turns to them and he says
'Do you really want to spend your entire lives praying for longevity?
We were born in order to die!'
Whoever's with me, come to the battlefield tomorrow morning.
Whoever's not, just stay wherever you are and watch me win it!'
He knows that all defending the the castle will do is buy him maybe a few more days,
but he has no interest in losing more slowly.
He'd rather take the thousand to one shot at victory
So he gathers up the few hundred men he has in his castle
and begins riding towards the Imigawa force,
an army that numbers in the tens of thousands
He rallies men to his banner as he winds through the countryside
mustering a force of about twenty five hundred souls
not afraid to die on this suicide charge he's proposing
But his information network is still good and he knows that the Inigawa forces are resting in a gorge
What's more, it's a gorge he knows well from when he was a boy
He has a plan
It may be a desperate one, perhaps even a foolhardy one
but it is a plan
He has no intention of charging onto the spears of his enemies just to die with glory
When they near the gorge where his enemies are resting,
Oda Nobunaga does something that seems like madness
with his force of 2500 facing up against an army of 25,000
He splits up his men
But he's playing to win here and he knows that he's only got one shot
so he sends a division of 500 men up to a fortified temple on a nearby hill
These 500 men are not there to fight, but rather, to create a decoy army
They take flags and banners and litter them atop the hill
so that the men in the gorge think Nobunaga's entire force has taken up a defensive position there
Hardly a threat for them to worry about
After all, it's just one more hill fort to take
But Oda Nobunaga has another plan
He knows how to sneak around the gorge and enter it from a place
the Imigawa will never suspect
As he begins to lead his forces around their stealthy path,
a storm rolls in
The rain begins to pour
The clouds and the water whipping through the wind mask his approach
No one in the gorge sees them until it's too late
The men in the gorge have been drinking
Some are in tents, many have dispered to find shelter from the rain
And then just as the clouds part and the rain stops,
Oda Nobunaga's men come charging into the valley
It's mayhem. It's a slaughter
The unprepared and drunken men scatter or fall where they stand
The attack is so sudden that the lord of the Imigawa doesn't even realise it's an attack.
He thinks it's just a ruckus caused by the peasants in his army
so he doesn't move from the play he's watching until a soldier bursts in his tent
At first he thinks it's one of his men but the soldier thrusts his spear at him
He whips out his katana at the last moment and slice the spear in two, but too late!
Another man rushes in and lops off his head.
With that, with such surprise and such panic,
with the complete loss of their leadership,
the Imigawa army evaporates.
Thousands are cut as they flee,
thousands more just quietly return to their farms back in the Imigawa lands
But this force was everything!
The Imigawa thought they were going to go all the way to Kyoto with this army
so they brought everything they had
The weakened Imigawa are now just carrion for their hungry neighbours
All of those clans around them descend on their land and carve it up between them.
even one of their former allies
The young leader of the Matsudaira understood which way the wind was blowing
As he watched the routing Imigawa forces stream past his captured hill fort,
he decided it was time to meet the young lord of the Oda.
Oda Nobunaga, perhaps due to his own lack of forces,
or perhaps due to the Matsudaira boy's nearly mythical ability to dodge death,
agreed to work with him rather than slaughter his forces outright
as was often done to the losing side during the Sengoku Jidai.
The young Matsudaira leader agreed to be, not perhaps a vassal,
but more of a junior partner in wherever Nobunaga's adventures may lead him
This young man who will one day be known far and wide:
Tokugawa Ieyasu
Join us for the next episode as Oda Nobunaga begins to formulate his own plans to march on Kyoto
and this young man transforms the Matsudaira into the formidable Tokugawa clan!
Ooh, and if you want more cool samurai facts,
check out this video from our friends at AllTimeNumbers
See you next time!