The havoc of the Ōnin War was a fitting end to an era. For centuries, Kyōto had been the epitome of
class, the courtly paradise to which the samurai had aspired. Now, after many false starts, they had
destroyed it. Although Kyōto would be rebuilt, and would remain the residence of the emperors for
many centuries to come, it had lost its allure to the samurai. Although the emperors remained
officially in charge, their personal circumstances were straitened beyond all expectations. By 1500,
when the retired 103
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Emperor Go-Tsuchimikado (r.1428—64) passed away, his court could not
afford to bury him, and he lay ‘in state’ (in fact, in a storeroom) for a month. Nor could the court find
the money to pay for his successor’s coronation, which was delayed for twenty years. This was partly
as a result of extremely low finances, and partly as a result of the other priorities for spending in the
rebuilding of Kyōto. But also, one gets a sense that the court itself had given up on protocol in the
sixteenth century, disheartened and heart- broken by the damage wrought by the samurai.
The Ashikaga shōgunate remained at least nominally in charge for another century, although
after 1490 the Muromachi Period gave way to a new name, the Sengoku jidai (Age of the Country at
War), for over a hundred years, up to 1603. The name seems deliberately intended by Japanese
historians to evoke the ‘Warring States’ period in Chinese history, and some English-speaking
historians do follow their lead in calling this the Warring States period of Japan. However, these are
hardly states - local lords might have enjoyed sway over areas the size of European dukedoms, but
the Emperor was still the nominal, distant authority, huddled in genteel poverty amid the blackened
ruins of Kyōto as the capital slowly regained its footing.
There are two keywords for the Country at War period. One is daimyō, literally ‘great names’
the new breed of local lords, each supreme in his own domain, constantly jockeying for position. The
other is gekokujō, ‘the low dominating the high’ a reference by many disinherited members of the
old order to the rapid, brutal social mobility of the time. Japan entered one of its periodic purges of
noble houses: once great names sank with the declining fortunes of their families, and entire clans
were wiped out. The emperor, of course, was powerless to intervene, and the Shōgun unable to fulfil
the conditions of his title. The country would not stabilize again until a single individual could gather
together the fragmented clans and domains and unite them all, thereby allowing for the
proclamation of a new shōgunate. The rise of such an individual would take a century, as the small
clans fought and merged to form bigger clans, until eventually all Japan was split into only a handful
of rival factions, fighting to determine who was the true ruler.
Two rival warlords, Uesugi Kenshin (1530-78) and Takeda Shingen (1521-73), entered in a
dispute so formalized that their ‘war’ became more like an annual event. Their rival armies met at
the river confluence of Kawanakajima in 1553,1554,1555,1556,1557 and 1563, for camp-outs and
lights that would sometimes last for weeks. This was no bloodless sports - meet like some of the
battles of the rival Emperors’ period - every occasion saw multiple deaths. But nor was it the
relentless total war of other periods. Instead, it was a remarkably gentlemanly affair. The two
warlords, both admirers of classical literature, gleefully referred to themselves as the ‘dragon’ and
the ‘tiger’, two traditionally antagonistic martial beasts, and conduct on the battlefield was usually
reminiscent of the most genteel encounters of old. On one occasion, when Takeda’s supply of salt
was cut off by the Hōjō clan, Uesugi sent supplies of his own, with the courteous comment that he
fought with swords, not salt.
Their most famous encounter was at the fourth battle of Kawanakajima in 1556, where
Uesugi’s assault made it all the way to the command post of Takeda himself. Uesugi personally
charged on his horse past the windbreak curtain and into the Takeda inner sanctum, his sword
drawn. The shocked Takeda, not having time to grab a sword, held him off with his metal tessen (a
general’s fan usually used for signalling), until one of his spearmen stabbed Uesugi’s horse. The two
generals were dragged apart, and the battle raged on, but it is remembered today largely for the
moment when the leaders of the two armies came directly to blows.
Such incidents were increasingly rare in the sixteenth century, as changes in military
technology were altering the face of the battlefield once more. Foreign traders in the south of Japan
had introduced the Japanese to the concept of the matchlock gun, and the new weapon had swiftly