From Ashikaga to Azuchi: Japan’s Road to the Sengoku Period
How a succession quarrel in Kyoto, a decade of urban warfare, and a century of provincial bloodshed created the fractured Japan that the Portuguese walked into.
Topic
Military
Arquebuses, sieges, and the great battles of the Sengoku and early Edo period, and the European weapons and warriors that helped decide them.
Early Contact (1543–1568)(3)
From Reconquista to Tanegashima: How a Crusade on the Iberian Frontier Led to a Beach in Japan
The five-century chain of holy wars, navigational gambles, spice monopolies, and strategic overreach that put Portuguese merchants on the shores of an island they didn’t know existed.
Tanegashima, 1543: First Contact and the Gun that Changed Japan
When Portuguese merchants introduced the matchlock arquebus in 1543, they unknowingly handed the warring daimyō a tool that would reshape Japanese warfare. Within decades, Japan possessed more firearms than any European nation.
Azuchi–Momoyama (1568–1600)(6)
Lord Fool to Demon King: The Life and Personality of Oda Nobunaga
He threw incense at his father’s funeral, dressed like a vagrant, and befriended a Jesuit. From provincial fool to the man who nearly unified Japan, the life of the warlord who embraced Portuguese firearms, patronized the Jesuits, and declared himself a living god.
The Demon King and the Monks: Oda Nobunaga’s War on Buddhist Power
From the burning of Mount Hiei to the decade-long siege of the Ishiyama Honganji, how Nobunaga systematically dismantled the most powerful religious institutions in Japan, and why the Jesuits cheered him on.
Takayama Ukon: The Samurai Who Chose God Over Japan
One of the finest generals of the Sengoku age, a master of the tea ceremony, and Japan’s most powerful Christian lord, Takayama Ukon chose faith over everything, and lost everything.
The Monkey Who Became God: The Life and Personality of Toyotomi Hideyoshi
Born a nameless peasant, he talked, fought, and schemed his way to the summit of Japanese power, the most improbable biography in pre-modern Japan and one of the most extraordinary tales of social mobility in the early modern world.
The Warlord Descends: Hideyoshi’s 1587 Kyūshū Campaign
When Toyotomi Hideyoshi marched a quarter of a million men onto the island of Kyūshū, he came to crush a Japanese clan. What he found instead was a fortified Jesuit port city, an armed Portuguese galley, and a priest who thought he could broker a deal. The consequences would reshape the Nanban encounter.
The Imjin War: Hideyoshi’s Invasion of Korea and the War That Broke an Empire
In 1592, the most powerful man in Japan sent a quarter of a million soldiers to conquer China. Korea was in the way. The seven-year catastrophe involved Christian crusaders, a genius admiral, and Portuguese arms dealers.
Early Tokugawa (1600–1614)(5)
The Battle of Sekigahara: Six Hours That Made the Shogunate
On a fog-choked morning in October 1600, Japan’s feudal warlords staked everything on a single engagement. When the smoke cleared, one man controlled the archipelago, and the fate of every Christian, Portuguese merchant, and Jesuit priest hung on his next move.
The Patient Conqueror: The Life of Tokugawa Ieyasu
Born a hostage and forged into the most patient political mind in Japanese history, the man who ended a century of civil war, shut the door on the Christian mission, and built a state that lasted 250 years.
The Company: How the VOC Conquered an Ocean and Inherited an Island
The world’s first multinational corporation was built to destroy an empire, monopolize a spice, and wage a private war across three oceans. That it ended up confined to a three-acre artificial island in Nagasaki harbor was not part of the original plan.
Prize of War: The Dutch Captures of the Santo António
Three Portuguese ships, all named for the patron of lost things, fell to Dutch privateers between 1605 and 1618. The capture off Meshima in 1615 forced Tokugawa Ieyasu to arbitrate the first international legal case in Japanese history.
The Madre de Deus Affair: The Ship That Blew Up a Century
A brawl in Macau, a siege in Nagasaki harbor, and a captain who chose to detonate his own carrack rather than surrender, the destruction of Portugal’s richest ship set off a chain of events that ended the Christian Century in Japan.
Persecution (1614–1635)(1)
The Siege of Osaka: The Last Battle and the Banners of the Cross
In 1615, the largest battle in Japanese history destroyed the Toyotomi clan, and the Christian banners flying over the battlefield sealed the fate of the faith in Japan.
Sakoku (1635–1650)(2)
The Shimabara Rebellion: The Siege That Sealed Japan
In the winter of 1637, 37,000 starving peasants, many of them crypto-Christians led by a teenage prophet, fortified a ruined castle and defied the largest army the Tokugawa shogunate had ever assembled. Their annihilation ended a century of European contact.
The Restoration: How Portugal Broke Free from Spain and Fought to Survive
A bloodless coup in Lisbon, a twenty-eight-year war, and the desperate alliances that saved a kingdom, at the cost of its empire.