■Question
"Which SENGOKU SAMURAI do you like?"
Please answer this question on the contact form!!*SENGOKU SAMURAI means leader of SAMURAI during 15th to 17th century and who often had special tactics for the battle.
As you know, we sell the SAMURA HELMET on our website.
Please check here!
Each time when we discuss SENGOKU history , someone asks a question like this
"Which SENGOKU SAMURAI do you like?"
However, my answer is not stable, so...I reply.
"Umn... I like Toyotomi Hideyoshi"
"Why?"
"He was born as a son of farmer and finally became KAMPAKU, emperor's chief advisor. I like this success story."
"Got it."
"But, I prefer Date Masamune, because his helmet of crescent moon is so cool!".
"What?"
In the point of view of aesthetic sense, Toyotomi Hideyoshi and Date Masamunr are completely different.
Hideyoshi loved gorgeous and luxury design, but Masamune loved cool and sharp design.
I am not specialist of SENGOKU SAMURAI but it is not so bad to talk about SENGOKU history with someone.
However, I feel mysterious about Japanese people who always talk about "SENGOKU SAMURAI" and "SENGOKU history".
I have never seen the person who talk about more ancient history for example "Asuka eara"(6th to 7th century).
Japanese history should be so long but many people prefer to talk only about "SENGOKU history".
■SENGOKU SAMURAI is like cherry blossoms ?
SENGOKU era (1467-1603) is chaos era, because of the Muromachi government was corrupted and became unstable.
For a long time, Kyoto was the center of Japanese politics, but after Muromachi government lost their power,
a lot of small rural Samurai started a conflict to expand their territory.
It become chaos!
But, if we think about that positively, ALL PEOPLE GET A CHANCE!
This is why, we can discover unique and so talented Samurai in the SENGOKU era.
During SENGOKU era, there ware always battle, and the battle should have been daily life.
As you know, you have to win for the battle, but that is not all.
And, the important thing is "philosophy" and "virtue" for the battle.
Even though you lose, if your philosophy and virtue are excellent, Japanese people would accept your potential power and talent.
The process is so important, because this is real story.
For example, please imagine cherry blossoms flowers.
Japanese people love so much cherry blossoms flowers, so, they enjoy not only full bloom but also small bloom and after full bloom.
Especially, after full bloom flowers, petals fall down. Full bloom of cherry blossoms are quick passing, but this transience is one of the Japanese virtue and it is like a life of some SENGOKU SAMURAI.
When I see the Cherry blossoms flowers begin to bloom at dusk I think about some short lived SAMURAI..
Am I an authentic Japanese woman?
Tactics of SENGOKU SAMURAI
The daily life of SENGOKU SAMURAI is battles.
So, their tactics seems so interesting and so unique.
I would like to introduce about TACTICS of SENGOKU SAMURAI twice over.
Today, I introduce about the tactics of Oda Nobunaga and Toyotomi Hideyoshi.
■Oda Nobunaga "Flexible tactics"
Oda Nobunaga was a specialist to control the information.
He accumulated a lot of information and analyzed promptly, he choosed the most effective tactics.
You can see his representative tactics on the Okehazama battle.
For the Okehazama battle, the number of soldiers are as follows;
Oda Nobunaga : 4000soldiers
Imagawa Yosshimoto : 25,000 soldiers
How did Oda Nobynaga win
this battle??
1)Oda Nobunaga wrote false letters by imitating handwriting of Samurais who betrayed him and became ally of Imagawa.
These contents are written about the detail of Oda's movement and tactics.
2) Imagawa felt happy when he received these letters, but he began to doubt; why Samurais who betrayed Oda know well about the detail of Oda after theis betray.
Imagawa ordered them "Seppuku" (form of ritual suicide performed by cutting open the abdomen)
However, it was not them who wrote these false letters. Finally, Oda was pleased with these news because all Samurais who betrayed Oda ware passed away.
4) At the date of the Okehazama battle, Oda used spies who bring information from Imagawa. So, based on these information, Oda built up the big fort. Almost all soldiers of Imagawa attacked it, so there ware a few soldiers who can defense their leader Imagawa Yoshimoto. Oda Nobunaga finally succeeded to attack Imagawa Yoshimoto easily and he won this battle.
■Toyotomi Hideyoshi "Large sierge tactics"
This tactics is to encircle the castle of his enemy completely by building up his temoprary fortress.
Generally it is called as a "Hyoro zeme" which means attack the foods of enemy.
It takes a time to build upthe fortress,but it avoids losing soldiers of his allies.
For example, at the battle of Tottori castle which is known as the "The worst Hyorozeme in in the Japanese history" Toyotomi Hideyohi built up long and large fortress with the form of tri circle to shut in all enemies. Enemies can not go out and completely put into their castle, they can not gain their foods from exterior.
Furthermore, some soldiers of Hideyoshi built up the other fortress at the hill, and they started to cook and eat.
The smell of cooking made the soldiers of Tottori castle shock, and lost their fighting spirits,
This is also the psychological tactics to win.
Which tactics do you like? that of Oda or Tototomi?
For the details of character of these SAMURAI, please click here.
Next time, I will introduce the tactics of Sanada Yukimura, Date Masamune and Tokugawa Ieyasu.