Oda nobunaga- made a historical victory where his musketeers defeat more numbered Horsemen of a proud clan.  He also unified most of Japan when he was betrayed.

Doyotomi hideyoshi- followed Nobunaga and conquers all of Japan.  Follows by a conquest of Korea, which fails.  His death marked the retreat of forces in Korea.

Dokugawa- I know he killed Christians, but not much about him.  He also opened trade with Korea back and tranquilized the anger between the two countries. 

Oda Nobunaga.  I am positive.  I've seen Samurai movies with Nobunaga and so I know.

And he didn't die in a battle.  He died in a place called hondonji, and now in Japan, there is a idiom that goes like "be wary of hondonji", that is said when something wrong has happened to you when it wasn't you who did it.  Historically, Nobunaga was betrayed in hondonji by this guy which Hideyoshi managed to kill.

Oda Nobunaga (1534-1582), Japanese feudal lord, who started the unification of the country, then torn by local wars. Working from a modest family base in the province of Owari, he gradually gained control of the whole region and occupied (1568) the capital city of Kyōto. Five years later he drove out the last Ashikaga shogun. He went on to destroy the temporal power of the Buddhist sects and monasteries and, as a counterbalance to their influence, encouraged Christian missionaries. By 1580 he had extended his authority over all of central Japan. Before he could realize his goal of winning control of the whole country, however, he was assassinated by one of his vassals.

Japan could have been unified by one person, just that he was betrayed.

The differnec is in government structure.  China has the madate of Heaven, a powerful Emperor, and a centralized beauracracy, Japan had a weak figurehead emperor and many almost totally independant feudal warlords.

Tokugawa didn't trust missionaries, especially the Fransicans and Jesuists that were pouring into Japan via Dutch and Portugese frigates that frequented Japan's ports. They were causing strife, disorder and friction with the rest of Japan. They no longer worshipped the emperor, followed the old ways.

What Tokugawa did by expelling the Westerns and killing off the Christian Japanese was justifiable. They were weakening Japan, and killing her soul.

What Tokugawa actually did to Christian was this:

In every town, he would make an assembly.  He placed a figure of jesus on ground, and make one by one to step on it.  Those who didn't were sentenced to death.

      weak point you made there....the "one" person who i was refering to was Qin Shihuangdi, the china he unified over two thousand years ago are pretty much what japan was like during the time of Nobunaga. The Son of Heaven at that time was there purely for ceremonial purposes. there were hundreds of feudal kingdoms during the Spring and Autumn period hurling men agains one another. Big and powerful kingdoms want to expand into smaller ones, whilst smaller and weaker kingdoms want to become big and powerful ones.

   So by the Warring States Periods, only seven major kingdoms were left from the original hundreds, the Yan, Han, Wei, Qi, Zhao, Chu and of course the Qin.

   China at the time were no less turbulent than the Japan of the 14 and the 15 hundreds.

   what i was trying to say was that china was unified for the first time by  one person, Qin Shihuangdi. The Mandate of Heaven, all powerful emperor and a centralised beaurocracy only came after the unification of the Qin.

Hey,

    Actually, may be Gubkjanggoon has a right to be angry, and he's absolutely right that unification means very little.  No one would deny that the Europeans beat everybody in the race of "advancement," -- whether we like that is another story.

    Incidentally, there's a very good geographical explanation for the early unification of China.  Agriculture was considered the most beneficial economic means of production since an early time in China, and much of its agriculture depends on the Yellow River.  But the Yellow River is long, and has periodic drought and floods.  If the lands are divided along the river among different powers, it would be difficult to manage the river, since it takes a unified government to manage the entire river.  It was economically beneficial for China to have a unified government.

    Furthermore, the periodic disunification of China undermines the supposed greatness of its initial unification.

Peace,

Michael

8-20-2004

Countris have souls?

SO? China was lucky, many nations have 1 or 100 unifiers, but by the time of the Sengoku Jidai in Japan you have many more factors coming into play, trade with Europe, introduction of massed firearms, foreign religions, and of course you have no real recent precident of unified power for the last bunches of hundred years.

You know what I mean. I distrust Semitic religions and ideals. What missionaries do when they come to a foreign land is mock it's way of life, traditions, customs, beliefs, ect...Christians are the worst of the lot in doing this. There are reports from the UN that American/Christian missionaries force African villagers who are starving, to beg to be baptized to gain their food.

Like I said, Tokugawa was justified in his actions. And I thank whatever force (non godly) that Japan has not turned to even have a large minority of Christians.

Hey Dari,

    Semitic religions?  Judaism doesn't have missionaries and doesn't actively convert non-Jews.  It might be better that you simply say Christianity and perhaps also Islam, but not Semitic religions.

Peace,

Michael

8-21-2004

Yeah, the real other big powers at Sekigahara were Kobayakawa Hideaki and the indecisive Mori.

Mitsunari may have been the figurehead for the anti-Tokugawa forces but make no mistake, had his side won you would certainly not have seen an Ishida Bakufu... he was not respected by any of the other warlords. You would have seen many other battles taking place after Sekigahara.

1. I'm talking about the events leading up to Sekigahara. As far as Sengoku-jidai is concerned, no, Hideaki & Mitsunari weren't major players.

2. Well, if Mistunari's force won on the day, and IF (a mighty big if) Mitsunari was still able to maintain a leadership role after the battle he may have looked at setting up something like the bakufu. He might not have had the lineage, but then neither did Ieyasu until he had some documents created. Mitsunari may have had himself adopted by a family who had Minamoto blood, or just falsified some papers to show that his great-great-great uncle was an adopted son of Yoritomo's half-brother…

Or maybe he wouldn't have set up a bakufu and instead just established his own martial regime, like Hideyoshi & Nobunaga had both worked for. It's not like the bakufu had a very successful history - the Tokugawa really perfected it in ways that the Minamoto and Ashikaga could have only dreamed of.

I thought you didn't know anything about the sengoku jidai, nagaeyari

--

In general, there was absolutely no way Mitsunari would have been able to establish a Shogunate - he lacked the personal charisma to be able to unite the families behind him. Ieyasu's side had quite a large number of lords who were with him not because they favoured the Tokugawa, but because they couldn't stand Ishida.

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> Oda Nobunaga, ToyoTomi and Tokugawa Ieyasu are the three giants in warring state period of Japan.

Hmm...Takeda Shingen, Uesugi Kenshin, Hojo Ujiyasu, Date Masamune....

The Tokugawa were right to do what they did. Christianity is a scourge that only causes trouble. Look what it did in China - eventually it stirred up the Taiping Rebellion in which between 20 million and 50 million died. Even if the scale of such a religious war was ten times less in Japan than China that still means 2 million to 5 million dead. So in that light the detahs of 200,000 or so Christians seems quite justifiable. Christianity and Islam just bring hatred and war wherever they go. Japan always maintained its cultural unity and cohesion because it resisted the Abrahamic incursions that brought China to its knees.

As for the three unifiers... I don't think Uesugi Kenshin, Takeda Shingen, Hojo Ujiyasu or Date Masamune really compare in significance to Oda Nobunaga, Toyotomi Hideyoshi or Tokugawa Ieyasu. Certainly they were significant players, but each of them failed to unify all or a significant portion of Japan. Nobunaga claimed much of Honshu, Hideyoshi claimed all of Japan and for a time most of Korea and Ieyasu finally created a new Shogunate to replace the fallen Ashikaga and thus issued in almost 300 years of peaceful unity in Japan. Takeda Shingen and Uesugi Kenshin, as well as the others, were skilled generals, certainly, but they don't have the same significance that the Big Three have.

As for the role of Ishida Mitsunari... he was hardly leadership material in the long term. He was the only man that could hold together the Western alliance, but after a successful fight at Sekigahara I seriously doubt he would have played a significant role.

With regards to the Mori... well Mori Terumoto and his 100,000 men were absent from Sekigahara - they chose to guard Toyotomi Hideyori in Osaka Castle after Terumoto was slighted by Mitsunari in the lead-up to the battle. Terumoto's massive army would have made an enormous difference at Sekigahara, for it would have given the West a two-to-one advantage. If anyone in the West could have become Shogun after a victory at Sekigahara, I would say Terumoto would be the one.

Anyway... I think I've covered all the various topics mentioned.

Toyotomi Hideyoshi has never been definitively established as being mentally ill - although he did exhibit some psycopathic tendencies and was clearly a megalomaniac. His grand vision was to united India, China, Japan, Korea, the Ryukyus, the Philipines, Taiwan and much of Southeast Asia under the rule of the the Japanese emperors (with himself as Imperial Regent). Despite the fact that he wished the Japanese emperors to preside over this empire, he wanted the imperial court to be based in Beijing as he saw China as the heart of human civilisation. Basically he was the first to conceive the idea that would eventually become known in the Twentieth Century as the 'Great East Asian Co-Propsperity Sphere'. Hideyoshi was, no doubt, a brilliant general, but his megalomania led him to have an exagerated view of what was accomplishable and this led to the disasters in Korea. In total he sent 300,000 troops to Korea and never advanced beyond the Yalu River, let alone take Beijing. Hideyoshi himself never set foot in Korea and the disunity of Japanese command, compared to Chinese command, was a key problem. Hideyoshi's death brought an end to the entire enterprise.

What followed was a quick descent into renewed internecine warfare in Japan. The Inspector-General of the Imperial Armies of Korea, Ishida Mitsunari, who was also a member of the Council of Regents sworn to protect Hideyori, led the resistance to Tokugawa Ieyasu, the most powerful daimyo in Japan. At Sekigahara on 21 October 1600 the armies of the East and West met and the East, under Ieyasu, emerged victorious. Three years later, in 1603, Ieyasu was granted the title of shogun by the Emperor Go-Yozei. Ieyasu only held the title until 1605, but continued to be effective ruler of Japan until his death in 1616, when he died, age 73. Tokugawa Hidetada was shogun after Ieyasu's abdication, although it wasn't until 1615 that nominal supreme power moved from the Taiko's heir, Toyotomi Hideyori, to the Tokugawa shoguns.