Military history of Japan

reading at the end of the sixteen-century, which marks the start of the Edo period. Japan had just ended their long tumultuous battles when Tokugawa Ieyasu won the Summer Battle of Osaka in 1615 with a decisive victory. (151) This victory affirmed the military preeminence of the Tokugawa forces and they subsequently inaugurate themselves as the “Great Public Authority” (O kogi), sealing its sovereignty over Japan. (Ikegami 151) It was essential for the Shogunate to legitimate its power in order…

The History of Warring Women Though samurai in the traditional sense where not formed until the late-Heian period. High ranking women engaged in combat and took military command. Instances of onna-bugeisha date from before Japan’s first occurrences of written history all the way to the mid-nineteenth. The warrior women’s roles in war transformed several times throughout the expansive timeline in which they existed. Some of the first evidence of combative women dates from the mid Kofun Period…

Lasting a little longer than a century (c. 1467 – c. 1573), the Sengoku period was a very important and well-known stage in the history of Medieval Japan, as it marked the beginning of when Japan became reunified. Also known as the Warring States period, this time period was marked by conspiracy involving the political system, conflict inside the Japanese military and commotion within the Japanese society. During the Sengoku period, a number of battles, wars, invasions and other disastrous…

Plenty of archaeological evidences are suggesting a strong connection between Korean peninsula and Japan in early Yamato state period. Then comes the interesting question, why and how the connection was build. Different explanations were forged and debates are fierce given limited information during that period. One very influential one called Horserider theory argues that Korean people invaded Japanese islands where no state is presented and bring them advanced political, cultural, material and…

Unifying Japan The United States implies unity, as a positive aspect of people’s lives, however in history the act of unifying individuals and places was not always done or perceived as positive. Japan exhibited a very suitable example of this. From the 1500s to the 1800s, Japan started to develop a central government. After years of civil war and instability through its territory, the shogun, a military general, began to enforce various edicts in an attempt to ensure unity and growth. These…

samurai is a class of highly skilled warriors, constantly developed in Japan after Taika reform of 646 CE. The reforms included land redistribution and heavy new taxes, meant to support and elaborate Chinese-style empire. Samurai is usually assigned in Japanese as bush or buke, were the military nobility of medieval and early-modern Japan. HISTORY The samurai is a class of highly expertise warriors, deliberately developed in Japan after the Taika reforms of 646 CE. The reforms included…

Medieval Europe from 500-1500CE and Shogunate Japan from 710-to the late 15th century were two very similar places in history. They both had unfair punishments and used the feudal system, which was not a very fair system, especially if you were at the bottom of the pyramid. They both had rulers who were important in their countries. The King was at the top of the medieval pyramid and the Emperor was the ruler of the Japanese. However, being a king in Europe was more respected because he had so…

retainers for Daimyos and other government bodies within the domains of Japan. The Tokugawa period was a time of harsh punishment and fear. Much of the Tokugawa’s judicial and punishment implementations was to be as ruthless as possible. This notion is due to the governments want to control crime and burakumin through fear and example. To do such a thing they used various methods of torture and execution through…

Rise through Force: European Hegemony and the Military Revolution With the dawn of the second millennium (C.E.), the bulk of Europe existed as a relative backwater and there was little foreseeable evidence that this fragmented conglomerate of fiefdoms would eventually surge forth to control a better part of the known and unknown world. But surge forth it did, and by the twentieth-century the West , for better or worse, had come to dominate and influence societies around the globe. As the…

Nation The Japan of today is often seen as a cohesive, homogenous nation with a strong sense of national pride and identity. However, this was not always the case; the image of Japan as a nation, as a group of people with a common identity, did not exist in the pre-Tokugawa period. Instead, it was through the centralizing forces of the Meiji Revolution, on both political and social levels, that ultimately resulted in the creation of Japan, the nation state. The political structure of Japan in…