May 7, 2012 • 22 mins
After the Japanese ruler Toyotomi Hideyoshi died, regents and bureaucrats scrambled for power. The rivals Tokugawa Ieyasu and Ishida Mitsunari rallied supporters to face off in Sekigahara. Tokugawa emerged victorious. But what happened next?
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm fair Dowdy and I'm deleted Chuck reboarding and not
that long ago, listener Brandon sent us a pretty impressive
list of East Asian history topics. I mean it really
(00:23):
covered everything from feudal Japan to twentieth century Chinese history.
But one topic in particular really appealed to me because
in a way, it picks up where we left off
on an earlier episode, the one about Admiral Ye of
Korea and his impressive turtle ships, and if you remember
in that podcast, Admiral Ye's tactical genius and advanced technology.
(00:46):
Those iron clad ships, if you'll remember, helped repel not
one but two Japanese invasions in the fifteen nineties. Not
long after Ye's victory at the Roaring Channel, the Japanese
began a slow retreat, one sped up considerably in when
Toyo told me Hideyoshi, one of Japan's great unifiers and
(01:07):
the mastermind of that invasion, died suddenly, leaving only a
very young son and a bunch of regents. So anybody
who was anybody in Japan wanted to be back home
at that point. They wanted to be ready and in
place for whatever power grab was inevitably about to happen.
But before we get into that moment when they're trying
(01:28):
to figure out who is going to control Japan while
this little boy is coming of age, it might really
help to have a refresher on the work that Hideyoshi
had already done to unify the country before he died
so suddenly, and sixteenth century Japan, as you might remember
from the earlier podcast, was just a mess of civil
wars between these powerful feudal lords called daimios, and Hideyoshi,
(01:54):
who had been born a peasant in fifteen thirty six,
eventually rose to the really powerful position of henchman for
Oda Nobunaga, who was the first of the great Unifiers
and Japan's de facto ruler. So when Nobunaga died, he
d O she succeeded him as ruler. He couldn't take
the title of showgun because of his birth and was
(02:16):
instead called regent. But once in charge Hee O, she
set about trying to unify the country, and Korean invasions
were actually sort of an attempt to do just that.
I guess the logic being if you're fighting someone else,
maybe you're not fighting each other, or at least not
so much. But as we already know, hed O she
died suddenly in the middle of the second invasions, leaving
(02:38):
only a five year old son, toyotolmi Hire. So in
order to keep power in the family until his son
came of age, he set up a regency or hed
O she did rather five warriors who would co rule
and govern the country in the meantime while his son
was growing up. I mean, as we know from lots
(02:58):
of podcasts from all sorts of countries, the regent system
is usually pretty shaky unless the region is somebody's mom
and um, it seemed unlikely that these five powerful men
in the country were gonna be okay, just standing by
while this boy grew up. The lead regent, Toku gala Iyeyasu,
was another one of these self made warrior types, kind
(03:21):
of like Hideyoshi, who, surprisingly enough though had once been
Hideyoshi's enemy. So it's time to get into his story
because he's going to prove to be the main regent
coming out of this myth. So just a little bit
of background on him. Tokagala Ieyasu was born in fifteen
forty three, really in the middle of all those civil
(03:41):
wars that we mentioned. It showed too with his early upbringing.
When he was two years old, his mother permanently separated
from his father after shifting allegiances changed feelings between their
two families, and then when he was four, he was
sent away as hostage to the Immigawa family, and on
his way they or he was kidnapped by their arrivals,
(04:02):
the Oda family. He was kept for two years with
the Oda family before being released to the Imagawa where
he received military training and took up falconry. So being
released from your kidnapping family to do the hostage family exactly.
But he did have a pretty important presence with his
hostage family, at least because by his late teens he
had become a military leader for the head of the family.
(04:25):
But he hadn't completely forgotten his own people either, because
in fifteen sixty, when the head of the Immagawa family
was killed in battle, i Yasu took the chance to
leave them, get out of there, make sure his wife
and his son could get out too, and returned to
his own castle and take up the duties as head
of his clan, because by this point that was his position,
(04:48):
and he really worked with a lot of He worked
in a lot of ways to re establish himself with
his family. He not only fortified his own domains building
at the army's but he also reformed laws and tax
codes and expanded his domains too, so that by the
early fifteen eighties he was one of the country's most
(05:10):
important daimyo. So it's probably not too surprising then that
when Hideyoshi took up his old patron Nobunaga's power, i
Yasu was kind of his main rival, the other most
powerful guy in the land right. Finally, though, the two
came to an agreement Ieyasu's fealty in exchange for maintaining
control of his own lands. Still, though, Eyas who kept
(05:31):
his distance from Hueyoshi, he shifted his base to the
fishing village of edo Net which is now Tokyo, which,
according to Encyclopedia Britannica, was a whole month's trip away
from Hideyoshi's headquarters in Kyoto, So he didn't want to
be anywhere near Hideyoshi, but he also kept his nose
out of all this Korean expedition, saying pretty busy at home,
(05:52):
so that when Hideyoshi died in I, Yasu was basically
the most powerful guy in Japan, with these huge armies
and an excellent infrastructure and excellent organizational system too in
his land. So he doesn't seem exactly like the type
who would be cool just hanging out as regent and
(06:13):
um not trying to get a little more power. So
Yeyasu began pretty quickly doing things that didn't look that
appropriate for a regent. He married off like his nine
sons and daughters to all these other powerful lords in
the land to create very strong alliances. But he met
with a challenger to he wasn't the only the only
(06:35):
person who had his his eye on getting some more
power out of the situation exactly, And that person who
challenged him was Lord Ishida Mitsunati, twenty years younger than
Yasu and more of an official than a warrior. Mitsunati
had been Dyoshi's inspector general. He was a stiff bureaucrat,
good with numbers, but he hadn't made a great impression
(06:56):
on quite a few Damio. Though. Mitsunati wasn't himself on
the regency council. He quickly started stirring up trouble among
the lords in an attempt to better his position. His
interference angered some of the Yasus, and then though angered
them enough actually that they wanted to have him executed,
but Yasu spared him. He did, but by the next year,
Mitsunari was really kind of right back at it, and
(07:19):
he had teamed up with one of the other regents,
Usugi Kaka Katsu. And of all of the alliances Mitsunari
could have made, this was a really, really dangerous one
for Ieyasu because his lands abutted those of Kaka Katsu,
and that meant that Ato, his home base where he
put in so much of his effort, was at serious risk.
(07:41):
I Yasu, though, of course, was not going to make
this power grab without allies of his own, and he
had a pretty good one on his side, dat Massumane,
who was called the one Eyed Dragon. He had lost
an eye to smallpox as a child, and Massamane helped
check Kaka Katsu and seized his castle. During this period
when both of the armies were just picking off castles
(08:03):
and fortresses in an attempt to try to control two
main roads on Japan's main island. So one road that
was in the east between Kyoto and Ato, and the
other in the west that went through the mountains. I mean,
it is compared sometimes to a game of chest this period,
and you can really get that fence, you know, picking
off the castles in a game. Some of these battles
(08:25):
along the way were really big ones. Thousands were killed,
for instance in the August sixteen hundred siege of Fushimi Castle,
but that was really nothing compared to the main attraction,
which was a final showdown between a Yasu and Mitsunati
at Segakihara, a tiny but strategically located crossroads village. On
October seventh, six hundred, Eyasi left Edo with thirty thousand men.
(08:49):
By the twenty his men had taken Ogaki Castle, but
got word that Mitsunati was moving towards Segakihara, a narrow
pass and an important crossroads. Then at two am, Yeyasu,
now with seventy five thousand men, went out to meet Mittunati,
who had combined who had a combined force, I should say,
of about eighty thousand men. So according to an article
(09:11):
on the battle by John Murphy Jr. In Military history.
The two armies, Ayasu's Eastern Army and mit scenaris Western Army,
met at about four am, and mit Scenari was ready
to go then ready for an all out night battle,
but he had the idea of veto by his strategist,
who thought that night battles were just for undergodogs. And
(09:32):
you know, mit Scenari did have more troops and the
Western army really was thought to have the advantage here,
So instead mit Scenari withdrew to a mountain outside the
village and eeyasu Is set up camp on another mountain.
But Yas's position was really a lot better because he
could see the whole valley, and as his men started coming,
he bunched them really closely together. I thought it was interesting.
(09:55):
Murphy described the formations as being quote much like a
modern army um, instead of being spread out across the
whole valley, which is how Mitsunari's men were. But Mitsunati
also had some loyalty issues to be concerned with, pretty
major one. Yeah. I mean, remember how we said that
he hadn't been popular with the Daimio warriors back in
his bureaucrat days. We mentioned that a little bit earlier
(10:17):
of particular concern was kobe Ya Kawahidiaki, a powerful daimiyo
and mits Nati supposed ally so. Mits and I had
suspected that Heidiaki might be up to no good. Back
in the Korean Wars, mits Andati had criticized Heidiaki's leadership,
and the result was a major drop in land revenues
for Heidiyaki. He basically got a big pay cut. He
(10:38):
had a good reason to have a grudge against Mitcenari
basically right, but Mitsunati couldn't come out and accuse him
of anything treacherous. Because Hideaki had sixteen thousand men, one
of the largest forces in the Western Army, his suspicions
were on target, though mitsinati suspicions were. Hideaki had secretly
promised Iasu that he desert and changed sides, something that
(11:00):
was especially meaningful for ea Sus since Heidiaki was the
guardian of the boy that everybody was pretending to fight
for in the first place when they were supposed to
be reagents for exactly, and his name would add legitimacy
to Ea SU's win. Also, another of Mitsnati's allies was
planning on ditching him, and that was Kawa hero Ea,
(11:21):
and he was planning on leaving with his three thousand men,
something that Mittinati never knew about or suspected he was.
That he didn't know to be worried about him. Fighting
started pretty early in the morning and after they had
delayed the night battle. But there was really heavy fog
and it produced a tense atmosphere before battle actually began
because both sides could hear each other getting ready, you know,
(11:42):
drying out their clothes, getting their armor on, but they
couldn't actually see them. Eas's ally in Almafa led the
charge though with his red armored Red Devil cavalry. I
mean they were you can look look at pictures of
them and they're pretty scary, but they're sudden. Charge was
actually not cool with the guys on the same side,
(12:03):
on the Eastern Army side, because leading the charge was
considered a very honorable thing to do. Is the other
daimio in the front just set off too. They started charging,
and soon enough twenty thousand men were rushing at the
enemy shouting served the nation for seven lives and um,
I guess to us it sounds really chaotic, kind of
(12:24):
like not following instructions, not being an orderly army. But
according to Murphy, it was quote one of the last
great cavalry charges in the age of the Samurai, and
it certainly had an effect. It certainly shook up the
Western army. Yeah, one of the survivors of the charge
remembered quote ally and foe pushed against each other. The
musket fire and the shouts echoed from the heavens and
(12:47):
shook the earth. The black smoke rose, making the day
as night. But that dramatic charge plus five cannons on
Iasu side didn't actually determine the battle. Two hours later,
at ten a m. It was still anyone's guess as
to who was gonna win. Yeah, you'd think with Red
Devils the battle would end quickly, but it just seemed
to be going on and on, and fighting carried on
(13:10):
for another hour and a half after that, and finally
started to shift to the Western Army's favor. But the
West really needed a strong final push in order to win,
especially because certain Western leaders were not really obeying mit
Scenari's orders and and not in the way we were
talking about with the Red Devils, like starting a charge
just flat out not going to fight at all. For instance,
(13:34):
hero Ea, who had of course secretly switched sides, didn't
give the signal he was supposed to to call another
clan into battle for the west, and when trying to
mobilize the armies of some clans that really hadn't seen
much action yet, mit Scenari got this response from one
of his leaders, quote, in this battle, each clan must
look to its own affairs and fight its own battles
(13:57):
with all its might. There is no time to be
concer earned with the affairs of others in front, behind,
or on either flank. That's not really something you want
to hear from a guy who's supposed to be fighting
for your cause. So Missonari decided it was time to
call his supposed ally Hideyaki into battle, and so he
lit a bonfire to send him the signal. But Hidiaki
(14:18):
didn't budge with his enormous army. He just sat on
his mountaintop, not answering Mitsunari's command, but not changing sides either. Finally, Ieyasu,
who was wondering if Heidiaki had changed his mind about deserting,
sent one of his guys to have it out with him.
The chieftain messenger held a short sword to Hideaki's gut
(14:39):
and told him, quote, the battle has already begun. Now
is the time for either victory or defeat. There's some
doubt about your intent to change sides. If you have lied,
I'll run this through you right here. So that makes
um Ieyasu's intentions pretty clear. But that threat was made
even clearer when Eeyasu ordered his troops to open fire
(15:02):
on Hidiaki. I mean, after all, if they weren't going
to dessert, they would just be considered enemies again. And
knowing that this was really his last chance to keep
his promise to i Yasu, Hidiaki finally, after forty five
minutes of sitting on this mountain with pretty much everybody
trying to see what he was going to do waiting
to see what he was gonna do, rallied his men
(15:23):
and cried, our target is Otani Yochugu, who was one
of the major commanders of the Western Army. And that target,
though Sugu was really sickly and almost blind, he was
actually directing his troops from a leader during the battle.
But he must have suspected that Hideaki was going to
turn tail because half of his men were already facing
(15:46):
towards their supposed ally, you know, waiting for him to
come down that hill. They fought off the charge as
best as they could, but they were pretty tired, you know.
They've been fighting for hours by this point, and they
were eventually enveloped by enemies. And when Sugu realized that
he was done for, he ordered his aid to cut
off his head and keep it out of e SU's hands.
(16:09):
He didn't want to be a battle trophy. Essentially, As
news of Hidiaki's treachery spread through the Western army, morale
just kind of skydived. Guys started fighting just to get out,
and soon Mitt Naughty himself led the field. The battle
was over by two pm, with Ea Su victorious. He
reviewed the heads that were taken in battle, and a
(16:32):
party soon hunted down Mit Naughty and he was executed
along with several other commanders and Mit Scenari really did
prove to be e SU's last major threat to power,
because after the battle, Eau banished or seized the lands
of a lot of the other so called rebellious damio
and redistributed the land to people who he trusted more.
(16:52):
You know, really trusted allies and adjusted the administration of
his government too. He would place his best, most trusted
ends in central Japan, you know, so he felt particularly secure,
and he'd create new regulations to to keep daimio and
nobles and clerics all in check. He even pulled a
versai and kind of had everyone pitching on building and
(17:13):
expanding the castle at Edo. Daimio would live in the
mansions that surrounded that. In sixteen o three, the Imperial
Court appointed him show gun, and after two years he retired,
leaving his title to his son, hed Tata. Yasu had
earned his power and demonstrated it decisively in battle. But
if his son was going to continue in his position
and establish a Tokagawa Shogunate, the family needed to be
(17:37):
one percent free of rival. And there was still one
hanging around, wasn't there? Yes, there was, but the one
who started this first, the one who all of this
fighting was about. So by this point, Toya told me
Hideyoshi's son, Toyo told me Hidori was all grown up,
and many of the old lords, even though they were
outwardly loyal to Yasu and his him, we're still secretly
(18:02):
loyal to the memory of Hedyoshi and by extension, the
memory and the future rule of his son and as
long as they lived. Easu really played it pretty cool.
He allowed Heidore to stay in his defensive castle to
govern his own lands, you know, to have some measure
of freedom and responsibility. Yasu even married his granddaughter off
(18:23):
to Hedor, hoping that that would smooth things over, you know,
let everybody know that he was not going to mess
with this kid. But when the last of Hedoshi's loyal
daimo died in sixteen eleven, I Yasu started to make
plans to eliminate his son, and in sixteen fourteen he
finally made his move, claiming that he Diori had tried
(18:44):
to jinx him with this inscription on a bronze bell,
you know, really just an excuse. He raised ninety thousand
ronan and attacked Osaka Castle to try to kill the
twenty two year old Diori, just so his family would
be one in the there, but Asaka Castle was super
strong and it withheld the siege. Eventually, though, Yasu tricked
(19:07):
Titiori into a truce where he filled his outer moats
and tore down the outer fortifications. Only months after this
had been done, Eeyasu attacked him again. Hitiori ended up
committing suicide and his young son was killed in the battle.
Iyasu's own family continued to rule a unified Japan until
(19:27):
eighteen sixty eight, so he certainly succeeded in establishing his
family line. And just kind of a fun fact before
we leave this story, because I know, I mean, people
love ninja, right, Ninja's were really important to warfare during
this period, and I mean you kind of think of
them now as assassin's clad in black. But according to
(19:47):
an article in military history by John Bertrand, part of
Ieyasu's success came from the fact that he controlled most
of the ninja provinces, so he had a lot of
potential spies on his hands. And and I didn't even
know that there were ninja provinces. I mean, there were
special ninja villages that looked normal to the naked eye,
(20:09):
but we're really filled with these secret booby traps and
things like rice patties that could be flooded as moats,
and lots of young boys and men training to become ninjas.
It really doesn't surprised me that he went out now
knowing that he had ninjas on his side, So yeah,
I mean he had all of this reconnaissance and that
really supposedly helped him a lot leading up to Sekigahara.
(20:32):
So now we know a little bit about Eosu's secret
weapon and how he managed to went out. It was
because he had some ninja spies on his side, And
we also had a little bit of secret ninja like
help with putting together this podcast because of course, as
you've noticed, we are not the best at Japanese pronunciations,
so we got some help from our coworker, fellow podcaster
(20:56):
Tyler Klang and Um he is also a Japanese speaker
in addition to as many other myriad talents. Yeah, well,
and it's it's really great to have some pronunciation help
so that we can cover really awesome Japanese history stories.
And just to be clear, any mistakes we made are
not a reflection upon him. We did our best. So
(21:17):
if you have any other Japanese history you want to
suggest anything you want to say about Um, I don't
know ninja strategy. It was interesting to learn that there
are a lot of modern sort of spy reconnaissance techniques
that are maybe partly inspired by Ninja technique, So if
you have anything you want to say about that, feel
(21:37):
free to email us that History podcast at Discovery dot com.
We're also on Twitter at Misston History, and we're on Facebook.
And if you want to learn a little bit more
about some of the things that we discussed in this podcast,
Ninja in particular, we do have an article called how
Ninja's Work and you can look that at by visiting
our homepage at www dot how Stuff Work dot com.
(22:04):
Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff
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today on iTunes.
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm fair Dowdy and I'm deleted Chuck reboarding and not
that long ago, listener Brandon sent us a pretty impressive
list of East Asian history topics. I mean it really
(00:23):
covered everything from feudal Japan to twentieth century Chinese history.
But one topic in particular really appealed to me because
in a way, it picks up where we left off
on an earlier episode, the one about Admiral Ye of
Korea and his impressive turtle ships, and if you remember
in that podcast, Admiral Ye's tactical genius and advanced technology.
(00:46):
Those iron clad ships, if you'll remember, helped repel not
one but two Japanese invasions in the fifteen nineties. Not
long after Ye's victory at the Roaring Channel, the Japanese
began a slow retreat, one sped up considerably in when
Toyo told me Hideyoshi, one of Japan's great unifiers and
(01:07):
the mastermind of that invasion, died suddenly, leaving only a
very young son and a bunch of regents. So anybody
who was anybody in Japan wanted to be back home
at that point. They wanted to be ready and in
place for whatever power grab was inevitably about to happen.
But before we get into that moment when they're trying
(01:28):
to figure out who is going to control Japan while
this little boy is coming of age, it might really
help to have a refresher on the work that Hideyoshi
had already done to unify the country before he died
so suddenly, and sixteenth century Japan, as you might remember
from the earlier podcast, was just a mess of civil
wars between these powerful feudal lords called daimios, and Hideyoshi,
(01:54):
who had been born a peasant in fifteen thirty six,
eventually rose to the really powerful position of henchman for
Oda Nobunaga, who was the first of the great Unifiers
and Japan's de facto ruler. So when Nobunaga died, he
d O she succeeded him as ruler. He couldn't take
the title of showgun because of his birth and was
(02:16):
instead called regent. But once in charge Hee O, she
set about trying to unify the country, and Korean invasions
were actually sort of an attempt to do just that.
I guess the logic being if you're fighting someone else,
maybe you're not fighting each other, or at least not
so much. But as we already know, hed O she
died suddenly in the middle of the second invasions, leaving
(02:38):
only a five year old son, toyotolmi Hire. So in
order to keep power in the family until his son
came of age, he set up a regency or hed
O she did rather five warriors who would co rule
and govern the country in the meantime while his son
was growing up. I mean, as we know from lots
(02:58):
of podcasts from all sorts of countries, the regent system
is usually pretty shaky unless the region is somebody's mom
and um, it seemed unlikely that these five powerful men
in the country were gonna be okay, just standing by
while this boy grew up. The lead regent, Toku gala Iyeyasu,
was another one of these self made warrior types, kind
(03:21):
of like Hideyoshi, who, surprisingly enough though had once been
Hideyoshi's enemy. So it's time to get into his story
because he's going to prove to be the main regent
coming out of this myth. So just a little bit
of background on him. Tokagala Ieyasu was born in fifteen
forty three, really in the middle of all those civil
(03:41):
wars that we mentioned. It showed too with his early upbringing.
When he was two years old, his mother permanently separated
from his father after shifting allegiances changed feelings between their
two families, and then when he was four, he was
sent away as hostage to the Immigawa family, and on
his way they or he was kidnapped by their arrivals,
(04:02):
the Oda family. He was kept for two years with
the Oda family before being released to the Imagawa where
he received military training and took up falconry. So being
released from your kidnapping family to do the hostage family exactly.
But he did have a pretty important presence with his
hostage family, at least because by his late teens he
had become a military leader for the head of the family.
(04:25):
But he hadn't completely forgotten his own people either, because
in fifteen sixty, when the head of the Immagawa family
was killed in battle, i Yasu took the chance to
leave them, get out of there, make sure his wife
and his son could get out too, and returned to
his own castle and take up the duties as head
of his clan, because by this point that was his position,
(04:48):
and he really worked with a lot of He worked
in a lot of ways to re establish himself with
his family. He not only fortified his own domains building
at the army's but he also reformed laws and tax
codes and expanded his domains too, so that by the
early fifteen eighties he was one of the country's most
(05:10):
important daimyo. So it's probably not too surprising then that
when Hideyoshi took up his old patron Nobunaga's power, i
Yasu was kind of his main rival, the other most
powerful guy in the land right. Finally, though, the two
came to an agreement Ieyasu's fealty in exchange for maintaining
control of his own lands. Still, though, Eyas who kept
(05:31):
his distance from Hueyoshi, he shifted his base to the
fishing village of edo Net which is now Tokyo, which,
according to Encyclopedia Britannica, was a whole month's trip away
from Hideyoshi's headquarters in Kyoto, So he didn't want to
be anywhere near Hideyoshi, but he also kept his nose
out of all this Korean expedition, saying pretty busy at home,
(05:52):
so that when Hideyoshi died in I, Yasu was basically
the most powerful guy in Japan, with these huge armies
and an excellent infrastructure and excellent organizational system too in
his land. So he doesn't seem exactly like the type
who would be cool just hanging out as regent and
(06:13):
um not trying to get a little more power. So
Yeyasu began pretty quickly doing things that didn't look that
appropriate for a regent. He married off like his nine
sons and daughters to all these other powerful lords in
the land to create very strong alliances. But he met
with a challenger to he wasn't the only the only
(06:35):
person who had his his eye on getting some more
power out of the situation exactly, And that person who
challenged him was Lord Ishida Mitsunati, twenty years younger than
Yasu and more of an official than a warrior. Mitsunati
had been Dyoshi's inspector general. He was a stiff bureaucrat,
good with numbers, but he hadn't made a great impression
(06:56):
on quite a few Damio. Though. Mitsunati wasn't himself on
the regency council. He quickly started stirring up trouble among
the lords in an attempt to better his position. His
interference angered some of the Yasus, and then though angered
them enough actually that they wanted to have him executed,
but Yasu spared him. He did, but by the next year,
Mitsunari was really kind of right back at it, and
(07:19):
he had teamed up with one of the other regents,
Usugi Kaka Katsu. And of all of the alliances Mitsunari
could have made, this was a really, really dangerous one
for Ieyasu because his lands abutted those of Kaka Katsu,
and that meant that Ato, his home base where he
put in so much of his effort, was at serious risk.
(07:41):
I Yasu, though, of course, was not going to make
this power grab without allies of his own, and he
had a pretty good one on his side, dat Massumane,
who was called the one Eyed Dragon. He had lost
an eye to smallpox as a child, and Massamane helped
check Kaka Katsu and seized his castle. During this period
when both of the armies were just picking off castles
(08:03):
and fortresses in an attempt to try to control two
main roads on Japan's main island. So one road that
was in the east between Kyoto and Ato, and the
other in the west that went through the mountains. I mean,
it is compared sometimes to a game of chest this period,
and you can really get that fence, you know, picking
off the castles in a game. Some of these battles
(08:25):
along the way were really big ones. Thousands were killed,
for instance in the August sixteen hundred siege of Fushimi Castle,
but that was really nothing compared to the main attraction,
which was a final showdown between a Yasu and Mitsunati
at Segakihara, a tiny but strategically located crossroads village. On
October seventh, six hundred, Eyasi left Edo with thirty thousand men.
(08:49):
By the twenty his men had taken Ogaki Castle, but
got word that Mitsunati was moving towards Segakihara, a narrow
pass and an important crossroads. Then at two am, Yeyasu,
now with seventy five thousand men, went out to meet Mittunati,
who had combined who had a combined force, I should say,
of about eighty thousand men. So according to an article
(09:11):
on the battle by John Murphy Jr. In Military history.
The two armies, Ayasu's Eastern Army and mit scenaris Western Army,
met at about four am, and mit Scenari was ready
to go then ready for an all out night battle,
but he had the idea of veto by his strategist,
who thought that night battles were just for undergodogs. And
(09:32):
you know, mit Scenari did have more troops and the
Western army really was thought to have the advantage here,
So instead mit Scenari withdrew to a mountain outside the
village and eeyasu Is set up camp on another mountain.
But Yas's position was really a lot better because he
could see the whole valley, and as his men started coming,
he bunched them really closely together. I thought it was interesting.
(09:55):
Murphy described the formations as being quote much like a
modern army um, instead of being spread out across the
whole valley, which is how Mitsunari's men were. But Mitsunati
also had some loyalty issues to be concerned with, pretty
major one. Yeah. I mean, remember how we said that
he hadn't been popular with the Daimio warriors back in
his bureaucrat days. We mentioned that a little bit earlier
(10:17):
of particular concern was kobe Ya Kawahidiaki, a powerful daimiyo
and mits Nati supposed ally so. Mits and I had
suspected that Heidiaki might be up to no good. Back
in the Korean Wars, mits Andati had criticized Heidiaki's leadership,
and the result was a major drop in land revenues
for Heidiyaki. He basically got a big pay cut. He
(10:38):
had a good reason to have a grudge against Mitcenari
basically right, but Mitsunati couldn't come out and accuse him
of anything treacherous. Because Hideaki had sixteen thousand men, one
of the largest forces in the Western Army, his suspicions
were on target, though mitsinati suspicions were. Hideaki had secretly
promised Iasu that he desert and changed sides, something that
(11:00):
was especially meaningful for ea Sus since Heidiaki was the
guardian of the boy that everybody was pretending to fight
for in the first place when they were supposed to
be reagents for exactly, and his name would add legitimacy
to Ea SU's win. Also, another of Mitsnati's allies was
planning on ditching him, and that was Kawa hero Ea,
(11:21):
and he was planning on leaving with his three thousand men,
something that Mittinati never knew about or suspected he was.
That he didn't know to be worried about him. Fighting
started pretty early in the morning and after they had
delayed the night battle. But there was really heavy fog
and it produced a tense atmosphere before battle actually began
because both sides could hear each other getting ready, you know,
(11:42):
drying out their clothes, getting their armor on, but they
couldn't actually see them. Eas's ally in Almafa led the
charge though with his red armored Red Devil cavalry. I
mean they were you can look look at pictures of
them and they're pretty scary, but they're sudden. Charge was
actually not cool with the guys on the same side,
(12:03):
on the Eastern Army side, because leading the charge was
considered a very honorable thing to do. Is the other
daimio in the front just set off too. They started charging,
and soon enough twenty thousand men were rushing at the
enemy shouting served the nation for seven lives and um,
I guess to us it sounds really chaotic, kind of
(12:24):
like not following instructions, not being an orderly army. But
according to Murphy, it was quote one of the last
great cavalry charges in the age of the Samurai, and
it certainly had an effect. It certainly shook up the
Western army. Yeah, one of the survivors of the charge
remembered quote ally and foe pushed against each other. The
musket fire and the shouts echoed from the heavens and
(12:47):
shook the earth. The black smoke rose, making the day
as night. But that dramatic charge plus five cannons on
Iasu side didn't actually determine the battle. Two hours later,
at ten a m. It was still anyone's guess as
to who was gonna win. Yeah, you'd think with Red
Devils the battle would end quickly, but it just seemed
to be going on and on, and fighting carried on
(13:10):
for another hour and a half after that, and finally
started to shift to the Western Army's favor. But the
West really needed a strong final push in order to win,
especially because certain Western leaders were not really obeying mit
Scenari's orders and and not in the way we were
talking about with the Red Devils, like starting a charge
just flat out not going to fight at all. For instance,
(13:34):
hero Ea, who had of course secretly switched sides, didn't
give the signal he was supposed to to call another
clan into battle for the west, and when trying to
mobilize the armies of some clans that really hadn't seen
much action yet, mit Scenari got this response from one
of his leaders, quote, in this battle, each clan must
look to its own affairs and fight its own battles
(13:57):
with all its might. There is no time to be
concer earned with the affairs of others in front, behind,
or on either flank. That's not really something you want
to hear from a guy who's supposed to be fighting
for your cause. So Missonari decided it was time to
call his supposed ally Hideyaki into battle, and so he
lit a bonfire to send him the signal. But Hidiaki
(14:18):
didn't budge with his enormous army. He just sat on
his mountaintop, not answering Mitsunari's command, but not changing sides either. Finally, Ieyasu,
who was wondering if Heidiaki had changed his mind about deserting,
sent one of his guys to have it out with him.
The chieftain messenger held a short sword to Hideaki's gut
(14:39):
and told him, quote, the battle has already begun. Now
is the time for either victory or defeat. There's some
doubt about your intent to change sides. If you have lied,
I'll run this through you right here. So that makes
um Ieyasu's intentions pretty clear. But that threat was made
even clearer when Eeyasu ordered his troops to open fire
(15:02):
on Hidiaki. I mean, after all, if they weren't going
to dessert, they would just be considered enemies again. And
knowing that this was really his last chance to keep
his promise to i Yasu, Hidiaki finally, after forty five
minutes of sitting on this mountain with pretty much everybody
trying to see what he was going to do waiting
to see what he was gonna do, rallied his men
(15:23):
and cried, our target is Otani Yochugu, who was one
of the major commanders of the Western Army. And that target,
though Sugu was really sickly and almost blind, he was
actually directing his troops from a leader during the battle.
But he must have suspected that Hideaki was going to
turn tail because half of his men were already facing
(15:46):
towards their supposed ally, you know, waiting for him to
come down that hill. They fought off the charge as
best as they could, but they were pretty tired, you know.
They've been fighting for hours by this point, and they
were eventually enveloped by enemies. And when Sugu realized that
he was done for, he ordered his aid to cut
off his head and keep it out of e SU's hands.
(16:09):
He didn't want to be a battle trophy. Essentially, As
news of Hidiaki's treachery spread through the Western army, morale
just kind of skydived. Guys started fighting just to get out,
and soon Mitt Naughty himself led the field. The battle
was over by two pm, with Ea Su victorious. He
reviewed the heads that were taken in battle, and a
(16:32):
party soon hunted down Mit Naughty and he was executed
along with several other commanders and Mit Scenari really did
prove to be e SU's last major threat to power,
because after the battle, Eau banished or seized the lands
of a lot of the other so called rebellious damio
and redistributed the land to people who he trusted more.
(16:52):
You know, really trusted allies and adjusted the administration of
his government too. He would place his best, most trusted
ends in central Japan, you know, so he felt particularly secure,
and he'd create new regulations to to keep daimio and
nobles and clerics all in check. He even pulled a
versai and kind of had everyone pitching on building and
(17:13):
expanding the castle at Edo. Daimio would live in the
mansions that surrounded that. In sixteen o three, the Imperial
Court appointed him show gun, and after two years he retired,
leaving his title to his son, hed Tata. Yasu had
earned his power and demonstrated it decisively in battle. But
if his son was going to continue in his position
and establish a Tokagawa Shogunate, the family needed to be
(17:37):
one percent free of rival. And there was still one
hanging around, wasn't there? Yes, there was, but the one
who started this first, the one who all of this
fighting was about. So by this point, Toya told me
Hideyoshi's son, Toyo told me Hidori was all grown up,
and many of the old lords, even though they were
outwardly loyal to Yasu and his him, we're still secretly
(18:02):
loyal to the memory of Hedyoshi and by extension, the
memory and the future rule of his son and as
long as they lived. Easu really played it pretty cool.
He allowed Heidore to stay in his defensive castle to
govern his own lands, you know, to have some measure
of freedom and responsibility. Yasu even married his granddaughter off
(18:23):
to Hedor, hoping that that would smooth things over, you know,
let everybody know that he was not going to mess
with this kid. But when the last of Hedoshi's loyal
daimo died in sixteen eleven, I Yasu started to make
plans to eliminate his son, and in sixteen fourteen he
finally made his move, claiming that he Diori had tried
(18:44):
to jinx him with this inscription on a bronze bell,
you know, really just an excuse. He raised ninety thousand
ronan and attacked Osaka Castle to try to kill the
twenty two year old Diori, just so his family would
be one in the there, but Asaka Castle was super
strong and it withheld the siege. Eventually, though, Yasu tricked
(19:07):
Titiori into a truce where he filled his outer moats
and tore down the outer fortifications. Only months after this
had been done, Eeyasu attacked him again. Hitiori ended up
committing suicide and his young son was killed in the battle.
Iyasu's own family continued to rule a unified Japan until
(19:27):
eighteen sixty eight, so he certainly succeeded in establishing his
family line. And just kind of a fun fact before
we leave this story, because I know, I mean, people
love ninja, right, Ninja's were really important to warfare during
this period, and I mean you kind of think of
them now as assassin's clad in black. But according to
(19:47):
an article in military history by John Bertrand, part of
Ieyasu's success came from the fact that he controlled most
of the ninja provinces, so he had a lot of
potential spies on his hands. And and I didn't even
know that there were ninja provinces. I mean, there were
special ninja villages that looked normal to the naked eye,
(20:09):
but we're really filled with these secret booby traps and
things like rice patties that could be flooded as moats,
and lots of young boys and men training to become ninjas.
It really doesn't surprised me that he went out now
knowing that he had ninjas on his side, So yeah,
I mean he had all of this reconnaissance and that
really supposedly helped him a lot leading up to Sekigahara.
(20:32):
So now we know a little bit about Eosu's secret
weapon and how he managed to went out. It was
because he had some ninja spies on his side, And
we also had a little bit of secret ninja like
help with putting together this podcast because of course, as
you've noticed, we are not the best at Japanese pronunciations,
so we got some help from our coworker, fellow podcaster
(20:56):
Tyler Klang and Um he is also a Japanese speaker
in addition to as many other myriad talents. Yeah, well,
and it's it's really great to have some pronunciation help
so that we can cover really awesome Japanese history stories.
And just to be clear, any mistakes we made are
not a reflection upon him. We did our best. So
(21:17):
if you have any other Japanese history you want to
suggest anything you want to say about Um, I don't
know ninja strategy. It was interesting to learn that there
are a lot of modern sort of spy reconnaissance techniques
that are maybe partly inspired by Ninja technique, So if
you have anything you want to say about that, feel
(21:37):
free to email us that History podcast at Discovery dot com.
We're also on Twitter at Misston History, and we're on Facebook.
And if you want to learn a little bit more
about some of the things that we discussed in this podcast,
Ninja in particular, we do have an article called how
Ninja's Work and you can look that at by visiting
our homepage at www dot how Stuff Work dot com.
(22:04):
Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff
from the Future. Join House to Work staff as we
explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. The
House top Works iPhone app has a rise. Download it
today on iTunes.
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