A History of Japan: From Stone Age to Superpower (25 page)

From his deathbed Hideyoshi implored the Five Great Elders to look after his infant heir Hideyori (1593–1615), and they promised to do so. However, upon his death the promise was not kept by Ieyasu and a dispute arose over who was to be Hideyoshi’s successor. Ieyasu prevailed. In the Battle of Sekigahara (near Nagoya) in October 1600 he triumphed over those who fought in the cause of Hideyori.

Was this to be the final civil war? Was the national unity so hard won by Nobunaga and Hideyoshi now to be lost, or would Ieyasu be able to maintain control and stability? Time would tell.

Review of Part Two

Part Two has, over a period of almost a thousand years, followed the fortunes of the court on the one hand and warriors on the other. The centralised, Chinese-style
ritsury
state was at its strongest during the first half of the Nara period, but signs of decay were evident from an early stage. During the succeeding Heian period, despite court culture and artistic accomplishment reaching a peak, central power continued to decline, as did the importance of things Chinese as they were gradually ‘Japanised’. Factors in this decline of central power included constant intrigues (mostly involving the Fujiwara family), loss of revenue caused by dwindling tax returns from increasingly privately owned land, and loss of personal power by the emperor as a result of regencies and ‘cloister government’ by retired emperors.

By contrast, the power of provincial warriors steadily increased. After clashes between the two most powerful warrior families in the land, the Taira and the Minamoto, in the late twelfth century Minamoto (no) Yoritomo emerged as the effective supreme power in the land – though he still felt a need for formal legitimisation from the court. He established the sh
gunate, or military government, and ushered in the feudal age. However, the sh
gunate too, like the court before it, was soon to be weakened by intrigues and regencies. After surviving threatened invasions and attempts at the restoration of imperial power the sh
gunate eventually lapsed, in many ways not unlike the imperial institution, into a condition of largely nominal meaning only. Powerful warlords vied with each other to establish dominance, and the country was in an almost constant state of civil warfare.

Somewhat ironically, it was during this age of the warrior that some of Japan’s most noted cultural elements and practices, such as
n
drama, austere aesthetics, and Zen Buddhism, became established. Agricultural productivity increased, certainly relative to the inefficiency of the Heian period, though the life of the peasant seems to have made little advance.

Eventually, partly benefiting from firearms introduced by Europeans in the middle of the sixteenth century, one particularly determined war-lord, Oda Nobunaga, was able to establish dominance. He started a process of national unification which was to be carried on by his immediate successors Toyotomi Hideyoshi and Tokugawa Ieyasu.

The key developments, greatly simplified, are summarised in
Table 2.1
.

Values and practices that continue to have relevance today are summarised in
Table 2.2
.

The behaviour of the typical medieval samurai, the degree of self-interest, and the weakness of family bonding all run counter to modern perceptions. These modern perceptions were to result in large part from later idealisation and propaganda.

Table 2.1
   Key developments in early/medieval Japan

Table 2.2
   Key values and practices in early/medieval Japan