The Battle of Sekigahara

Last weekend was the 415th anniversary of the Battle of Sekigahara. This battle was the largest and most decisive samurai battle in Japanese history. To celebrate the event we attended the Sekigahara Matsuri and samurai school! Firstly though, for those of you that don’t know the story, I’ll give you my rendition of it now. For those of you that would prefer a super short summary, you can skip to about half way down the page instead!

The not so super short summary:
Oda Nobunaga was a great samurai who unified most of Japan and became the Shogun back in the 1500's. The Shogun was the country’s Military Commander and he effectively ran the country. Officially the Emperor was the highest rank, but the Emperor rarely had any power so the Shogun tended to run the show. Nobunaga was betrayed by one of his closest comrades who wanted the power for himself, so he committed seppuku, the honourable samurai suicide where they slice their stomach open, so that the betrayer wouldn’t get the glory of killing Nobunaga himself. This left Japan without a leader, until a loyal successor called Toyotomi stepped up and fought to preserve Nobunaga’s name and legacy. Toyotomi managed to maintain power and peace in Japan for 20 years before dying and leaving only a 5 year old son as his heir.

Oda Nobunaga Toyotomi Hideyoshi Tokugawa Ieyasu

A political officer called Ishida, a Toyotomi clan loyalist, decided to act as a figurehead and help rule the clan until the young boy came of age to be able to rule himself. However, one of the highest ranked military lords in the clan, Tokugawa, decided it was his time to shine and saw the opportunity to gain power for himself! He split the clan in half, taking control of all the military generals, and leaving all the loyalists to Toyotomi. Of course, two leaders doesn’t work very well, so this indecisive period resulted in the epic Battle of Sekigahara.

Ishida tried to trick Tokugawa by forming a secret pact with an Eastern Lord who would raise his army against Tokugawa and draw him east into a battle. Tokugawa took half the samurai army in Osaka and marched them east to settle this rebellion. Ishida then took the other half of the army, rallied more lords and their soldiers from the west and marched to try and take Tokugawa by surprise. But Tokugawa was too clever and he discovered the trick. Firstly, he made sure his samurai would support him in battle and not turn on him for loyalty to the Toyotomi clan. They all agreed, but they were still greatly outnumbered. Secondly, Tokugawa was a very clever man and so he managed to convince a few of Ishida’s eastern lords to secretly pledge their allegiance to him instead of Ishida, and they were only to reveal this during the battle.

Ishida thought he had this battle in the bag. He had a much larger army, and he got to the battlefield first so he was able to strategically place his army around the mountains of Sekigahara. He even managed to position part of his army on a mountain to the east and south of the battlefield, so that when Tokugawa’s army came through the eastern valley Ishida’s armies could surround Tokugawa’s in a brutal sandwich! Unfortunately, Ishida didn’t realise how clever a man Tokugawa was.

On the day of the battle, Tokugawa’s army came through the eastern valley and started to fight on the battlegrounds between the east and west mountains as planned. However, when Ishida sent the signal for his eastern mountain army to come down and surround Tokugawa, two of his armies turned on him instead and decimated his side within hours.

After winning the battle, Tokugawa returned to Osaka, where he was declared the next Shogun by the Emperor and began the 265 year reign of the Tokugawa Shogunate This period of time is called the Edo period, and is when Japan shut themselves off from the rest of world. This resulted in the longest period of peace in Japanese history, and enabled the Japanese culture to develop with limited influence from the outside world to become the incredibly unique culture it is today.

The super short summary:
Two great Samurais, Oda Nobunaga, and his successor, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, successfully unified all of Japan. Unfortunately, when Toyotomi died, he left only a young child as his heir, and this threw Japan into disarray. Two men then both decided that they should be the new leader and fought the largest battle Japan had ever seen on the battlefields of Sekigahara (30km west of Gifu city). A man named Tokugawa won after employing some clever and sneaky tactics, and was declared the Shogun of Japan. His family’s reign as Shogun lasted 265 years and is known as the Edo period, which was the period of time where Japan closed itself off from the rest of the world and developed the incredibly unique Japanese culture we see today.

The Matsuri:
While in Sekigahara we checked out the museum which had the actual samurai swords used in the battle (cleaned of course), the battlefields, and the decapitation area! Also, being a Japanese festival, there were many performances, food stalls and adorable festival mascots! Japan loves having cute mascots for everything and anything, and this was no exception. They managed to make the dangerous war lord, Tokugawa, look cute in his soft and oversized samurai costume. There were also a few different cats dressed as samurais roaming around the festival, just in case one mascot wasn’t enough!

Tokugawa mascot

A range of the adorable samurai cats!

The Lord Generals awaiting the next head for inspection at the decapitation area.

Samurai School:
We started the day by getting dressed into basic samurai clothes, which were pretty much just comfortable cotton pajamas and uncomfortable size 6 straw sandles! Once we were dressed appropriately, we had a lesson on how to wield a sword and a spear. Hot tip: if you’re ever in a battle, always choose a spear! A swordsman will rarely get near you if you’re poking at them with a 5m long spear! We then got to try on some samurai battle gear and fought each other again! It was pretty fun, but Tom didn’t follow the instructions and improvised his own moves, so I died a few times. Second hot top: always choose Tom to go into battle with you over me. According to our certificated, in the spirit of the samurai we successfully and honourably learned and used the weapons and armour of the samurai like a pro (minus the like a pro part).