Key figures of feudal Japan

What feudal Japan means, and its periods

In 1185 the Minamoto clan defeated the Taira at the sea battle of Dan-no-ura, and soon after its leader, Minamoto no Yoritomo, set up a military government at Kamakura. From then until 1868 real power lay with warriors: the shogun (a title meaning roughly “general”), regional lords called daimyo, and their samurai retainers, while the emperor in Kyoto kept religious and ceremonial status. Western historians called this “feudal” because land was held in return for military service, as in medieval Europe. Many now use the word with care, since Japan's system differed in important ways and changed a great deal over seven centuries.

Yuga has recreations of three figures from this long age, Murasaki Shikibu, Tokugawa Ieyasu and Miyamoto Musashi, so this guide gives each a full portrait and names the other people you should know along the way.

Before the samurai: Murasaki Shikibu and the Heian court

Murasaki Shikibu (about 973 to about 1014 or later) was a noblewoman of a minor branch of the Fujiwara family. Her real name is not recorded: Murasaki is the name of a character in her book, and Shikibu refers to an office her father held. She says in her diary that she learned Chinese classics by listening to her brother's lessons, picked them up faster than he did, and heard her father say it was a pity she was not a boy. Around 1005 or 1006 she joined the household of Empress Shōshi, daughter of the all-powerful regent Fujiwara no Michinaga.

Her Tale of Genji, in 54 chapters, follows the life and loves of a brilliant imperial son, Genji, and then the next generation after his death. It was written in kana, the Japanese syllabic script mostly used by women, while men wrote official documents in Chinese, which is one reason Heian women dominate the literature of the age. It is often called the world's first novel. Her diary shows the book was already being read at court in 1008, when a courtier asked whether “our young Murasaki” was present. She also confessed that she hid her learning at court, pretending she could not read even the Chinese character for “one”, and she wrote sharply about her rival, Sei Shōnagon, author of The Pillow Book, calling her conceited.

The age of warriors and the three unifiers

Between Murasaki and the next two figures lie four centuries of warrior government. A few names to know: Minamoto no Yoritomo, first Kamakura shogun; Hōjō Masako, his widow, who held real power after his death; the Ashikaga shoguns, who paid for Zen temples such as the Golden Pavilion; the Noh playwright Zeami; and the tea master Sen no Rikyū. From the Ōnin War of 1467 Japan broke into the Sengoku (Warring States) period, when daimyo fought for land. In 1543 Portuguese traders landed on Tanegashima with firearms, and in 1549 the Jesuit Francis Xavier arrived.

Three men then reunited the country. Oda Nobunaga (1534 to 1582) used massed guns and ruthlessness, burning the great temple complex of Mount Hiei in 1571, until a general betrayed him at Honnō-ji in 1582. Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1537 to 1598), a foot soldier's son who rose to rule all Japan by 1590, ordered a sword hunt to disarm the peasants and twice invaded Korea (1592 and 1597), with great loss of life. A Japanese saying sums them up: Nobunaga mixed the rice cake, Hideyoshi kneaded it, and Ieyasu ate it.

Tokugawa Ieyasu (1543 to 1616) spent part of his childhood as a political hostage of more powerful clans. He became Nobunaga's ally and, later, the most powerful of Hideyoshi's lords. In 1579, under pressure from Nobunaga, he had his wife killed and ordered his eldest son to commit suicide, an episode the official chronicles handled carefully. In 1590 Hideyoshi moved him to the Kanto plain, where he built up the small castle town of Edo, now Tokyo. After Hideyoshi died, Ieyasu won the Battle of Sekigahara in October 1600, became shogun in 1603, handed the title to his son in 1605 while keeping control, and destroyed the last Toyotomi forces at Osaka in 1614 and 1615. In 1614 he banned Christianity and expelled the missionaries, and in 1615 his government issued laws regulating the daimyo and the imperial court. He also took advice on ships and trade from the English pilot William Adams, who had arrived on a Dutch ship in 1600 and was made a samurai. The shogunate he founded lasted until 1867.

Later sayings credit Ieyasu with patience: a well-known verse says that if the cuckoo will not sing, he would wait until it does. That verse, and his supposed “testament” about life being like carrying a heavy load, were written down long after his death and should not be quoted as his words.

The swordsman: Miyamoto Musashi

Miyamoto Musashi (about 1584 to 1645) was a rōnin, a samurai without a lord, through much of his life. In the preface to The Book of Five Rings he says he fought his first duel at thirteen and won more than sixty, and that only at about fifty did he truly understand the way of strategy. His most famous fight, against Sasaki Kojirō on the island of Ganryūjima in 1612, is first described in a memorial stone set up by his adopted son in 1654, and most of the colourful details (the oar carved into a sword, arriving late on purpose) come from accounts written in the 1700s. Much of his modern image comes from Yoshikawa Eiji's popular novel Musashi, serialised from 1935 to 1939.

He founded a school that trains with two swords at once, Niten Ichi-ryū, and was a fine ink painter and calligrapher. From 1640 he lived under the protection of the Hosokawa lords in Kumamoto, and in 1643 to 1645, in a cave called Reigandō, he wrote Gorin no sho (The Book of Five Rings), organised into Earth, Water, Fire, Wind and Void books. It argues against relying on a single weapon or fixed technique, and says a warrior should study other crafts too. A week before his death he wrote, or is said to have written, the twenty-one short precepts of The Way of Walking Alone (Dokkōdō).

Feudal Japan timeline

Big themes and debates

• Was Japan feudal? The comparison with medieval Europe helps students start, but Japanese lords, the emperor's role and the Edo bureaucracy differ from the European model. Ask what the word explains and what it hides.
• The samurai myth. Bushidō as a single code of honour was largely written up much later, especially by Nitobe Inazō's Bushido: The Soul of Japan (1899), written in English for Western readers. Real samurai switched sides, bargained and, in the Edo peace, mostly worked as administrators.
• Women's voices. Heian women such as Murasaki Shikibu and Sei Shōnagon wrote the classics of their age. Later warrior society narrowed women's legal rights, though some, such as Hōjō Masako, held great power.
• Peace at a price. The Tokugawa peace lasted over 250 years, but it rested on a fixed social order, surveillance, the suppression of Christianity (thousands of Japanese Christians were executed) and controls on travel.
• Was Japan closed? The phrase sakoku, “closed country”, came into use in the 1800s. In fact Japan traded with the Dutch at Dejima in Nagasaki, with China, with Korea through Tsushima and with the Ryukyu kingdom. Historians now speak of controlled rather than closed contact.

Primary sources to read

• Murasaki Shikibu, The Tale of Genji, chapter 1 (Kiritsubo) and chapter 25 (Fireflies), where Genji argues that stories tell more truth than official histories.
• The diary of Murasaki Shikibu, her passages on learning Chinese and on Sei Shōnagon, in Diaries of Court Ladies of Old Japan (1920).
• Sei Shōnagon, The Pillow Book: her lists of “hateful things” and “things that make the heart beat faster”.
• The Tale of the Heike: the war of 1180 to 1185, opening with the bell of Gion Shōja and the impermanence of all things.
• Laws for the Military Houses (Buke shohatto), 1615: short rules for daimyo on learning, castles and marriages.
• The letters of William Adams from Japan (1611 to 1617): an Englishman's view of Ieyasu's court.
• Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Rings, the Earth and Water books.
• Nitobe Inazō, Bushido: The Soul of Japan (1899), read as a source about the 1890s, not about the samurai.

How to study feudal Japan: projects

• A Heian list. Write your own Pillow Book style lists (“things that are annoying”, “things that are elegant”) and compare them with Sei Shōnagon's, then discuss what hers reveal about court life.
• Legend audit. List five things everyone “knows” about Musashi or samurai and find the date of the earliest source for each. Many will turn out to come from the 1700s or the 1930s.
• Map the unification. Mark the domains held by Nobunaga in 1582, Hideyoshi in 1590 and the Tokugawa in 1615, with the key battles.
• Ieyasu's rulebook. Read the 1615 Laws for the Military Houses and explain how each rule was meant to stop another civil war.
• Interview a writer. Write questions for Murasaki Shikibu about writing, court life and learning, and practise them by voice with Murasaki Shikibu on Yuga. The recreation is built from her diary, her tale and the record, but it is not her and can be wrong, so cite the diary and the Genji in your work. For a strategist's view, compare Sun Tzu vs Machiavelli with Musashi's book.