A History of Japan: From Stone Age to Superpower (22 page)

The otherworldliness of
n
was paralleled by an escape from the real world by a number of hermit poets and writers. They displayed an even more profound world-weariness than had Saigy
in an earlier age. For example, the Buddhist monk Zekkai (1336–1405) wrote:
⁵⁴

I have locked the gate on a thousand peaks

To live here with clouds and birds.

All day I watch the hills

As clear winds fill the bamboo door.

A supper of pine flowers,

Monk’s robes of chestnut dye –

What dream does the world hold

To lure me from these dark slopes?

One anonymous poem found in a funeral register, written around 1500 during the Sengoku era, is an allegory of the civil strife that characterised the nation:

A bird with

One body but

Two beaks,

Pecking itself

To death.

It was during the particular unrest of the Sengoku era that westerners first appeared in Japan. In September 1543 a Chinese junk, blown off its intended course to Ningpo (Ningbo) in China, landed on the island of Tanegashima off southern Ky
sh
. On board were the Chinese crew and three Portuguese traders.
⁵⁵
They brought with them firearms, more sophisticated than those of the Mongols some centuries earlier, and these were soon to be adopted and manufactured by a number of Japanese warlords. They also brought the first word of Christianity, which was to be more systematically introduced in 1549 by the Jesuit Francis Xavier (1506–52, later declared a saint).

These first Europeans found a land torn apart by civil war, a land of warlords who recognised no effective central government and simply grabbed as many neighbouring fiefs as they could, either by force of arms or treachery.
⁵⁶
It was a land badly in need of reunification.

2.5   Reunifying the Nation: The Azuchi–Momoyama Period (1568–1600)

A divided land is an easily conquered land, but fortunately for Japan the European powers of the day seem to have had no interest in attempting to conquer it. Columbus had set out to pave the way for exploitation of the fabled riches of Marco Polo’s Jippingu ( Japan), true, but had been sidetracked along the way by the discovery of the New World. This new
land had riches of its own. Moreover, it promised to be more easily conquered and exploited than Japan, tiny and peopled with ferocious warriors.

And before long, the country was anyway to be re-unified. This was largely due to the cumulative accomplishments of three successive military leaders, Oda Nobunaga (1534–82), Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1536–98), and Tokugawa Ieyasu (1542–1616). Each had their own method, reflecting their personality. There is a well-known saying in Japan that if a song-bird would not sing, Nobunaga would kill it, Hideyoshi would persuade it to sing, and Ieyasu would simply wait for it to sing.
⁵⁷

Nobunaga was a
daimy
from Owari Province (part of present-day Aichi Prefecture). An astute tactician, he rose from relatively minor status to considerable power through a number of victories over rival
daimy
. One of his most important victories was that over the forces of Imagawa Yoshimoto (1519–60) at the Battle of Okehazama (near Nagoya) in 1560, when his vastly outnumbered troops succeeded in surrounding the Imagawa forces.

In 1568 Nobunaga successfully seized Ky
to in support of Ashikaga Yoshiaki (1537–97), one of the claimants to the position of sh
gun – a position still held, albeit nominally, by members of various branches of the Ashikaga family. Yoshiaki was duly installed as sh
gun. However, it was obvious from the outset that it was Nobunaga who was the real power. He even publicly issued directives and admonishments to Yoshiaki. Then, just five years later in 1573, Nobunaga drove him out of the capital for allying with the Takeda family, traditional enemies of the Oda.

Yoshiaki continued to hold the title of sh
gun till 1588, but in real terms his expulsion brought the by now almost meaningless Ashikaga sh
gunate to an end.