Unification (1568-1600)

The Three Great Unifiers

• Oda Nobunaga (1534-82)
• Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1536-98)
• Tokugawa Ieyasu (1542-1616)





Oda Nobunaga (1534-82)	Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1536-98)

Rise of Oda Nobunaga

1. Origins
1. an astute military commander with, by traditional standards, virtually no claim to higher political authority
2. he was the son of a deputy shugo
2.   Rise to power
1. rise to power begins defensively in 1560
2. defeats Imagawa Yoshimoto who is seeking to reach Kyoto
3. forges alliances with his neighbors (Takeda and Tokugawa) to secure his own rear so he can attack Kyoto
3. March on Kyoto
1. by 1568 Nobunaga is prepared to claim national authority
2. he leads 30,000 men into Kyoto
3. and claims that he has arrived to save Ashikaga Yoshiaki (one of two claimants to the shogunal succession)
4. he installs Yoshiaki as shogun, but he has all the power - in essence he is Yoshiaki's regent
5. he banishes Yoshiaki when they disagree
4. Unification
1. Nobunaga defeats many warrior rivals but his fierces competition comes from religious institutions
2. 1571 defeats priests of Negoro and moves against Ikkō in northeastern Japan: "There are so many corpses that there is no room for more."
3. 1574 he moves against the center of Amida Buddhism -- he encircles Ishiyama honganji (near Osaka) and destroys it
5. Institutions and innovations
   1. military
1. new uses of firearms, esp. at Battle of Nagashino 1575

ii.     new uses of armor

iii.   new uses of labor conscription

2. political
   1.  asserted his nationwide control over trade -- he order the destruction of toll barriers between domains -- and abolished za
   2. allowed the religions sects he had defeated to continue -- provided they built they temples at the foot of his castle -- supreme civil authority over religion
   3. aware of the problems of allowing the warrior class to remain too closely tied to their land t
   4. the Ikko ikki had been so difficult to defeat because of their alliance with local samurai jizamurai
   5. Nobunaga begins a policy of moving his retainers -- he transfers them to equal sized holdings -- but seeks to break their direct ties with their domains -- he is looking forward to central power
   6. also begins disarming the peasantry -- this makes them easier to rule and marks class distinction
   7. he demands land surveys, or has new surveys down, of territories acquired by him
   8. eclectic uses of political symbols