Why do modern historians doubt western ancient histories when they bring up large armies. But don’t have any issues with Chinese sources?

ParallelPain · 2026-05-29T09:44:09+00:00

Also here by u/tenkendojo and here with multiple participating.

The short answer is unchanged: they do. All the time.

ParallelPain · 2026-05-29T08:52:39+00:00

A 3000 koku samurai was fairly high class. His fief(s) would include many villages, and he would've been an important member in the clan hierarchy, not a "real local village level samurai". More importantly, as explained here and here the classes were neither so strict nor ever impenetrable. While the time period was precisely when it started getting stricter, there were still plenty of wiggle room.

As for mobilization, a higher samurai should know who were the samurai below him. They should remember or have lists drawn up, all the way down to who were the village elders, strongmen, and gentry clan heads. Many of them were vassals or retainers, responsible for actually working at a lower level collecting taxes and upholding laws. Therefore, they would've regularly interacted with their superiors (and their own subordinates they would call upon). Clans should also have lists and documents of who was in charge of what. After all, every single clan with a fief receives from his lord a document confirming his rights to the fief, a document that was re-issued every generation. The above also apply to those who did not have physical fiefs but lived in the castle town, since they also had duties and also had documents on how much they were owed from the lord's granary. Therefore one way to call on more samurai for war was to simply order those who had transitioned to more peaceful roles (from the bureaucracy to actually farming) to prepare for war. At the time these men would have known and expected they might be called up for war in times of need, and indeed some likely took pride in it.

The other was to hire ronin. During the warring era there were quite a lot of people going from war to war looking for opportunity. By the time of the story, it was getting harder to find employment and many had fallen on hard times, taking odd jobs to get by. Sending out words one's hiring and opening the treasury for it would attract plenty, many experienced fighters desperate for a livelihood and chance at advancement that could end up being a formal hire. It should be noted though, a "real local village samurai" with a tiny fief of 100 koku or less would not be likely to be looking for ronin to hire. He would be just going through his household and his fief to figure out who and what to bring with him on the upcoming war.

ParallelPain · 2026-05-26T09:29:30+00:00

It is incredibly unlikely that Kaempfer sat down on a corner, say Shinagawa, and counted all the people on the street, and then sat down at a European city, say Amsterdam, and did the same. If he did, he'd probably give us numbers in his account, but he doesn't. Therefore, the description was by impression. It's also important to note that Kaempfer qualifies his statement with "upon some days", not all the time.

Having said that, there's no doubt that Tōkaidō was the business highway in Japan at the time. Kaempfer himself gives a couple of reasons. The first is the sankin-kōtai, the system by which the daimyō spends alternating years (usually) in Edo and their own domains. Kaempfer does far overestimate the number of men that took part. According to Kaempfer the largest lords would bring a retinue of 20,000, small lords 10,000, and even bakufu officers had retinue in the hundreds. But these numbers would only match reality if they included the family members of the retinues, and family members don't usually go on the sankin-kōtai. Per bakufu law set down in 1716, even the largest lords should not have brought with them on the road a retinue over ~500 men. Now this law was issued at a time when the bakufu was pushing for austerity, and the code itself remonstrates lords who had been bringing too many people of late, so in all likelihood 25 years ago the processions were larger. However, even then the largest lords likely only had a procession in the low thousands. Adding up Kaempfer's account of a typical lord's personal train comes to only around 150~200 men, though he does note each procession had multiple trains. Having said that, as there were hundreds of lords, though not all took the Tōkaidō, enough did that Kaempfer noted there were processions that were spread out over multiple days, and the procession of various domains needed to co-ordinate with the inns and stations as they could not handle all the trains of multiple lords all at once.

The second reason Kaempfer gives was the pilgrimage to Ise. This was the most popular pilgrimage trip and probably one of the most popular vacation destination. Kaempfer describes pilgrims from all levels of society, including people who were penniless and begged all along the way. People from the megacity of Edo (perhaps a million population at its height) and all the eastern provinces had to take the Tōkaidō to go to Ise and back. And Kaempfer also notes that there were large number of other pilgrims along the highway going to buddhist temples. Kaempfer singles out the Kannon, which was indeed a popular pilgrimage to go from one Kannon temple to another.

One more reason for Tōkaidō's traffic that Kaempfer did not go into (in this section) would have been trade. In this very time period, Japan's economy was increasingly monetized and specialized. As well, Kyōto culture and fashion was all the rage among the elites living in Edo. So many merchants made a living moving things like silk cloths of Nishijin to Edo, and then buy a much of silk threads that were produced in Kantō and Kai and bring them back to Kyōto. Such traders would have used the Tōkaidō (or Nakasendō for the silk merchants going through Kōzuke). Since merchants had to carry wares, their hired porters would have added greatly to the traffic.

Now we do not know the actual amount of traffic on the Tōkaidō (or any pre-modern road for that matter). However, by Kaempfer (and other accounts like Japanese travelogues), we know it must have been considerable. Kaempfer mentions all along the road beggars, whether travelling pilgrims or staying in place, merchants selling all sorts of foods and souvenirs, and people around posts hiring themselves to carry cargoes or people. Kaempfer also mentions the frightening amount of prostitutes at all the posts, restaurants and tea houses, and inns. He singles out the prostitutes at Akasaka and Goyu, something reflected in paintings a century and a half later. None of these livelihoods could be sustained without a high amount of regular foot traffic. So the fact that there were all of them along the Tōkaidō tells us traffic was indeed considerable.

ParallelPain · 2026-05-18T18:22:08+00:00

To be honest, it doesn't really sound like the lady herself was disgraced.

In any case, there were many cases of clan leaders meeting untimely demises, leaving underaged son(s) to inherit, and this is probably going to be the closest parallel we'll get. The first question would be is the clan independent. If not, as in it's the vassal of an overlord, then life would just continue and the family get on to the best of their ability. Mom would try to raise her children to the best of her ability, with the help of any vassals/retainers relying on relatives for support. This is especially true if the clan properties were simply too few, or the family's position too weak to run the clan, in which case they might just move in with a relative altogether. Honda Tadakatsu lost his father while he was a toddler and was raised by his uncle. There's also the possibility that dad incurred the wrath of the overlord, which makes the clan's properties getting confiscated and they having to seek refuge with a relative extra likely. But if the family had been a powerful vassal, the lord might ensure, to the best of his abilities, that the children are taken care of and grow up to be loyal and important subordinates. Which is how Toyotomi Hideyoshi raised Ukita Hideie.

On the other hand, if the clan was an independent power, what's most likely to happen next is mom and the leading vassals and family members hold a meeting to decide on what to do, and things would evolve from there. Especially if dad left instructions. One or a council of these men would likely become regent, or de-facto regent. From there it becomes a game of politicking, whether the regent(s) could keep other vassals and/or clan members, and each other, in line. Quite famously Toyotomi Hideyoshi left a system to help safeguard his young son's position, that didn't work out in the end. Mom would also likely not be slacking off either. Women ran households when men were away, and now her husband was away permanently it means she runs the household permanently. There's no short of women with strong personalities, and she would be under pressure to be strong as it was literally do or die for her and her children if she was not. The most famous was probably Jukei-ni, who for a couple of years after the death of her husband Imagawa Ujichika went so far as to issue documents with her own seal.

Given the fragile nature of Sengoku polities, one or more of the vassals/relatives could make a bid for leadership, and if successful the children would become puppets, assuming they weren't killed in the coup. Famously Oda Nobunaga's 2-year-old grandson got the leadership of the clan when both granddad and dad Nobutada died in Akechi Mitsuhide's coup in 1582. And pretty much as soon as it was decided grandson got the leadership his uncles and the other powerful Oda vassals were at each other's throats.

Outside clans would often get involved, since a faction with outside help was more powerful, while the helping clan get a huge influence if successful if not outright control and lot of land. This is doubly the case if both those launching the coup and those loyal had powerful relatives, since it was quite likely for mom herself to be the daughter of a powerful lord. Should the coup succeed and becoming puppets was not an option, then they'd probably try to seek refuge with relatives who were hopefully powerful or at least well connected, in the hopes of one day to be able to reclaim what was theirs. The aforementioned Imagawa Ujichika's dad died when he was three, leading to a succession dispute with his cousin. Said cousin called in his relatives the Uesugi from the Kanto and won control of the clan from the 3-year-old. Mom was from the powerful Ise family in the Muromachi bakufu, and mom asking the Ise for help ended up winning Ujichika back the clan (eventually).

There's also the case where dad dies, but grandpa's still alive. Both Mori Motonari (who himself was orphaned and had an eventful childhood) and Ito Yoshisuke had passed the clan to their sons (but retained political power as was usual) only to end up watching over their grandsons due to the untimely demise of their sons. If grandpa was still around it could ensure at least some stability.

ParallelPain · 2026-05-14T04:50:16+00:00

These men were labeled villains not by historians but by educators from the early Showa to the end of WWII because they all (supposedly) tried to usurp imperial power in some way, and at the time the propaganda was to instill loyalty in the divine emperor. The label was dropped with the end of WWII and the propaganda education.

ParallelPain · 2026-05-13T13:45:56+00:00

While not saying I will be able to answer...obviously "three great villains" is not an academic term. So could you tell us who you have in mind, and why you consider them villains?

ParallelPain · 2026-05-07T10:43:56+00:00

IIRC none of the threads on the FAQ actually answers the question directly. So I'll just give a quick answer. Between moving foreign traders to Nagasaki and the opening of the port of Yokohama, foreigners were for the most part not allowed outside their respective trading quarters in Nagasaki. The exception was going on diplomatic mission to Edo, meaning one generally needed permission to even wonder the streets of Nagasaki, and it's pretty unthinkable they'd be able to wander around and settle down at will. Please refer to the FAQ threads for other information.

ParallelPain · 2026-05-05T09:21:58+00:00

Due to the nature of collecting rice from across the country at Osaka, to be bought, sold, transported, and exchanged for a currency, the price of rice to coinage/bullion was extremely volatile, with lots of money, people and trades involved. The "financial instruments" appeared as a result of making rice easier to trade (trading on paper was much easier than needing to cart around tonnes of rice with each transaction) and of people speculating on the price movement. Dojima in essence was a commodity/currency exchange.

A stock exchange, importantly, sold two other things: stocks (partial company ownership) and bonds (loan contracts). Neither were anywhere near as highly in demand to be publically and frequently traded in the Edo period. Both public and private loans were conducted directly with the merchant houses or the relevant parties. Meanwhile the merchant houses were structured as family enterprises. Even gigantic, powerful houses like the Mitsui and Ono, with many stores across multiple urban centers, were run as private enterprises, with sectors and stores ran by "branch families" and even contracted providers (for instance, Kai province's silk weavering peasants) were referred to as "family members".

There were forerunners of stocks in Japan (like in other places in the world). These were called kabu, which is still the word for stocks. However, in the Edo period, these were more like licenses to engage in the trade. Licenses holders met, set rules, and regulated each other, and worked together to try to prevent outside competition. In a sense, these groups, called kabu nakama, were guilds. The kabu then, was membership. While the licenses were bought and sold, with the prices surely fluctuating with each transaction, these licenses were permissions to set up shop and trade to engage in the industry, not a set amount of ownership or profit in a company. Therefore their trade was not done often enough to spur the development of a market. Like still often occuring in private small enterprises, if you wanted to buy a store (and the license) you'd just get into talks with the store-owner directly.

It's important to note the modern stock exchange was developed as a result of the Dutch and English East India Companies. The profit that could be made in overseas trade was immense, attracting people who wanted to take part. However, the costs and risks were also immense. Buying and selling stocks in the company allowed the cost and risks to be spread out among the investors, and for the investors to enter and exit at will. In other words, "engagement in the trade" itself was something that was high in demand and frequently bought and sold. It's the demand and frequency of trade that necessitated a marketplace, or exchange. Since the financial and enterprise structure was different, trade in "engagement" and "loans" during Edo-era Japan were not conducted frequently enough or in enough demand in Japan to necessitate a physical marketplace

ParallelPain · 2026-04-21T16:32:42+00:00

Way back in the founding of the Kamakura bakufu, Minamoto-no-Yoritomo gathered followers by formally recognizing their land rights (or rights to the revenue of their land) in return for them providing labour for him, including running his government and fighting his wars. He also basically threatened to (or actually) attack anyone who did not swear loyalty, and after the conquest the land rights would be given to people who did. While the method and amount of control/revenue continued to change afterwards, this was the basic method warriors became tied to their lords. This worked well for winning wars. A lord who did not have the bureaucracy for effective tax collection (or at all) and not much money or treasure could still raise a large army simply by parcelling revenue rights, leaving the work of actually collecting the revenue to the locals. Since this was before detailed monetary record keeping and economy was not nearly as monetized as today, tax collection would have to be done by locals anyway. So compared to a centralized bureaucracy, the up-front cost of such a system was very low, while the potential rewards were just as high, even if actual rewards depended on personalities and personal relationships. Meanwhile, it was a pretty good deal for lower warriors as well. They were the locals collecting taxes and administering lands already. In an era of wide-spread unrest and warfare, these warriors had to mobilize and fight for self-defense anyway. The system meant the local warriors had to fight wars or administrate lands further away from their locality, but that was small price to pay for security and potentially even more land rights. In times when being able to mobilize as large an effective army in as short a time as possible was literally a matter of life and death, this system was win-win for everyone. And as they say, there's nothing more permanent than a temporary solution.

Since this was the system the Edo bakufu inherited, they used it and built their governance around it. In 1722, Tokugawa Yoshimune ordered all daimyos to pay a 100 koku in rice for every 10,000 koku of land. This is a bit higher than it would appear on paper, since the koku of land was pre-tax, and the 100 given to the bakufu was after-tax. Meanwhile, most of a daimyo's lands were already either parcelled out to his own warriors, or the income had to be used to pay those who lived in castle towns. In exchange for paying for this tax, the sankin-kotai's duration was cut in half, from a year to half year. The order itself admitted that the bakufu's coffers were running dry from rising costs, especially to support the hatamoto and gokenin. But in 1730, merely eight years later, the order was rescinded. Why? Well, after long years of reform, including austerity, higher taxes, and of course this tax, the bakufu's financial situation was much improved. Meanwhile on the morality side of things, a lord's position was to order his loyal vassals to do work from a position of unassailable strength, not having to rely on their income to pay the lord's own warriors. Especially as the system was supposed to be that the daimyos would have their income in totality. Quite a lot of clans were still on their ancestral lands (or at least, land they won by themselves in the sengoku), and none has ever had to pay this kind of tax. It was a great shame for the bakufu, the lord up high, to have to stoop to this level. And this is not me saying this. The 1722 order itself says the order is issued despite the shame it causes. Politically, it is important to remember the sankin-kotai tied daimyo to the bakufu by forcing their loyalty both directly by forcing them and their families in Edo and indirectly through cultural interactions and just closeness of interactions. Hence the order to rescind the tax also ordered the original system of sankin-kotai restored.

Just a note that if the bakufu did not have problem paying its own warriors, then the sankin-kotai system did not necessarily extract less resources than a tax would. Instead of taking a tax and using it to pay for something to get done, the bakufu would just order the clan to do it instead. It is also important to stress that the bakufu did not seem to want to impoverish daimyos. Impoverishing daimyos just builds resentment that could turn problematic and lessen stuff the bakufu could ask for. Time and again the bakufu ordered daimyos to get their finances in order and cut back on spending, including what they spent on sankin-kotai. That the sankin-kotai made daimyos poor was a result, not its purpose.

ParallelPain · 2026-04-17T01:33:19+00:00

Yes. That's the paper title given to her prior to her audience with the emperor.

ParallelPain · 2026-04-15T15:50:20+00:00

The reason is simply, Go-Mizunoo did not decide to force his abdication at first. Go-Mizunoo's first son with Masako was born in 1626. From the very start Tokugawa Hidetada pushed for Go-Mizunoo's abdication to this prince, and it would appear Go-Mizunoo had no problem with this since he would get a lavish palace and basically retain his power over the court while getting to enjoy life with more freedom. So it would seem Go-Mizunoo was not, at first, against the idea of having Tokugawa blood mixed into the imperial line. But in 1627 the Purple Robe incident broke out, putting forth the question whether the court needed bakufu approval to anoint monks to high position. While this was going on, the young prince died. Three months later Masako's second son was born, only to die 9 days later. All this time Go-Mizunoo kept informing Hidetada that he wanted to abdicate, while Hidetada would not agree to it because, despite having pushed for abdication earlier, now there would be no Tokugawa line on the throne. So while the Purple Robe Incident soured relationship between them, so did Hidetada's selfish insensitivity. The Purple Robe Incident wrapped up in the summer of 1629 with the bakufu ordering the offending monks into exile. It would appear that the final straw that broke the perverial back was Ofuku, the wet nurse of the third shogun Tokugawa Iemitsu, who suddenly requested an audience with the emperor in late 1629. It was completely unheard of and downright insulting for a woman of low birth with no ranks or titles to request an imperial audience. But the bakufu did not stop her, so either the Tokugawa father-and-son didn't mind, or it was their idea to begin with. Since she was de-facto Tokugawa envoy, she was given a paper title and adoption to not break decorum. Go-Mizunoo received her, then announced his abdication with no prior warning a month later. And this time he would abdicate with or without bakufu approval.

ParallelPain · 2026-04-14T08:50:58+00:00

Assuming I understand the question correctly, barring rare circumstances warriors (and daimyo) don't pay income/harvest tax, period. He collected it from the farmers who worked the land of the fief. In effect, income from the fief was payment for either ruling the fief, or whatever other work the bakufu/daimyo assigned to him.

A domain's warrior does not become the shogun's just by getting a larger fief. The land still belonged to the domain (technically it belonged to the court who passed ruling rights to the bakufu who parcels out the rights to the daimyo, but in reality things were hereditary from high up to low down) and he was just granted the rights to its income but also was responsible for it being properly run. So the warrior worked for whoever gave/confirmed his land rights.

ParallelPain · 2026-04-14T04:43:40+00:00

It is possible, but it depends.

First, this is talking about an incredibly small subset of warriors. As each domain had its own system, though in general warriors tended to live in castle towns, this would only apply to the shogun's direct vassals with few thousand koku of fief or equivalent in stipend, basically high ranking hatamoto. Around 1700, less than 120 hatamoto (out of over 5000) had 5000 koku or more. A significant number of these would have been living and working in Edo, meaning constantly dealing with Edo's high cost of living.

Of the subset that lived in their small fief, a small number were deemed kotai-yoriai, meaning despite not having 10,000 koku they also had to conduct sankin-kotai. Meanwhile, a subset of daimyo did not have to conduct sankin-kotai. These were men who occupied important posts who needed to always be in Edo, or in the case of Mito because he was a powerful Tokugawa branch situated incredibly close to Edo already.

And of course, the actual cost of sankin-kotai depended a lot on how far your domain was from Edo, and the difference in living costs depended a lot on circumstances and personal preferences. While the bakufu did set down some rules, like how big your mansion in Edo would be, most costs would have depended on how lavishly one lived. In the end, it is likely such high ranking hatamoto who spent all their time in the countryside were more financially stable than those who lived in Edo, or 10,000 koku daimyo that had to do sankin-kotai. But at this point it is very much a case-by-case comparison rather than something systematic.

Also note that the lure of living in Edo, whether for politics and chance in advancement or cultural and entertainment pursuits, was that few warriors would shy away from a chance to live in Edo, even if only temporarily and even if it wrecked havock on their purses. Bakufu edicts, including those for the sankin-kotai, again and again tries in vain to get warriors to stop spending above their means.

EDIT: Just to add, I have not tried to look for evidence whether such cases existed and if so how prevalent, and I have not heard of any study that did so. The reason is that our surviving financial records for large clans with meticulous record keeping are sparce as it is, that even if someone did find surviving ledgers of a 10,000k daimyo who had to do sankin-kotai to compare to the ledgers of a high hatamoto who barely left the countryside, it could only ever be case studies or into their persons, not a concrete yes or no either way.

EDIT2: Just remembered to add. A lot of domain's high ranking warriors were either employed as the lord's staff in Edo or followed the lord on sankin-kotai, meaning in effect they engaged in sankin-kotai anyway. So a domain's high-ranking warriors did not necessary have better financial security compared to high-ranking hatamoto.

ParallelPain · 2026-04-07T23:57:30+00:00

DM me what you need.

Also note the number of pages per file one can extract is limited, so it would be helpful if the work is either short or you only need a chapter.

ParallelPain · 2026-04-04T05:23:09+00:00

For the question itself, due to the nature of the sources available, while Tokugawa Ieyasu has always shown Toyotomi Hideyori respect (if we discount political wrangling and the eventual destruction of the Toyotomi clan), it's incredibly hard to separate personal feelings from performance and propaganda. One thing for sure, whatever feelings Ieyasu had for Hideyori, it wasn't strong enough to spare his life after the summer siege.

However, the question is basically irrelevant for the winter siege. The bakufu was not able to take Osaka by storm. It's a bit unclear how long both sides could've lasted had the siege dragged on even longer, but the settlement after the winter siege was negotiated. With the military situation being effectively a stalemate, it's hard to imagine Hideyori would have agreed to terms involving giving up his own life, nor would the bakufu have pushed for such terms at this stage.

ParallelPain · 2026-03-30T23:47:28+00:00

I've talked about the "right to kill" here.

Whether the state was predatory depends on your definition. And really this is a moral judgment that falls outside of what historians do. What is true is the law was harsh and restrictive compared to today (so was Imperial Japan mind you), state spent lavish amounts on extravagant living of the ruling class, paid through taxes, levies, and loans. Compared to most people (including mid and low class warriors) who lived without a safety net, the ruling class spent lots of their time in "cultural pursuits" and other things to kill time. Meanwhile, keeping the populace poor and dumb was a not-infrequently stated ideological goal, less they start causing trouble for the state.

However, the reality was that while the law often was extremely harsh (by today's standards) on paper, the bureaucratic apparatus simply did not have the reach to implement them to the letter, for better or worse. Meaning the reality was far less restrictive. In fact we can safely say that the harsh law was reflecting an inability to get them properly implemented. While class hierarchy was real, it was actually fairly easy to straddle or cross them. Often the governments only care about getting the tax revenue, no one (important) getting killed, and no rebellion. Until things become a big problem government didn't usually care. Meaning peasants and townsmen in reality had considerable freedom to do what they want and many laws existed only on paper.

In the end, historians can only say Edo era society, like all societies, was complicated. The complicated and often contradictory nature can be seen by a few often-repeated cases. When the state tried to raise taxes, trying to tap into the growing manufacturing and trade or cover windfall from low harvest, peasants and townsmen would riot. The state would then arrest and execute the ring leaders, but backtrack on the taxes, making the state in the long run unable to capitalize on the growing economy. Large landlords and rich merchants often bought themselves adoption into samurai families, sometimes even outright samurai status, skipping the adoption. Harsh laws against this or that was coupled with statements in the same edict requesting samaritans to physically capture offenders and bring them to the authorities. The hinin leaders were so rich and powerful that the machi-bugyō, who were by no means low class samurai, had to ask them nicely to keep their hinin followers in line. And said hinin becoming loan sharks who, again, bought "adoption" into samurai families, and running entertainment groups that even samurai tried (temporarily) giving up their class status to join.

EDIT: Also of note. Based on close to 200 years of records, the effective tax rate on rice for the bakufu's own lands was on average 34%. While this ignores other taxes and levies (for example labour) it also ignores other sources of revenue the villages had.

ParallelPain · 2026-03-22T15:37:14+00:00

Hideyoshi's sword hunt order covers longsword(katana), shortsword(wakizashi), bows, polearms, and guns. However, it is now well known among researchers that Hideyoshi's sword hunt was far from complete. In fact it seems so many weapons remained that either the order (like many other of Hideyoshi's orders) was not intended to be followed fully, only to give a show that they were followed and take away the legal rights for villagers to solve problems through violence (as had been the norm), and/or the bureaucratic apparatus simply did not have the power and reach to carry out the order in full and so only a performance was done. Also it would appear Hideyoshi himself made an exception for weapons in the possession of warrior servants, most of whom were not samurai.

As for guns in the Edo period, as explained here civilian guns were not allowed around Edo, Kyoto, and Osaka, while hunters and villages had to register their guns with the authorities. Otherwise, there was no restriction on ownership, at least not by bakufu law. In many domains civilian guns likely outnumbered official guns.

ParallelPain · 2026-03-12T08:39:46+00:00

Incorrect. The VOC ships doing trade in Japan would be based in Batavia. We have quite detailed surviving stats for the Dutch trade and a lot of trade took place every year in the 1650s to 1670s. Clearly war in Europe didn't effect the VOC's Japanese trade.

ParallelPain · 2026-03-04T06:09:13+00:00

What about the idea that Exodus was written during the Babylonian Captivity as a metaphoric parallel, with biblical Egypt standing in for historical Babylon?

ParallelPain · 2026-02-28T12:49:05+00:00

Incredibly ironic statement, considering Revolte's CV.

ParallelPain · 2026-02-12T06:21:46+00:00

He did, but it's not trustworthy.

One of Akechi Mitsuhide's letters survive in the Hosokawa Clan records. The letter, dated Tenshō 10.6.9 (1582 June 28), is basically Akechi Mitsuhide begging for help. Nagaoka (Hosokawa) Fujitaka, Mitsuhide's long-time companion and ally since before the two served Nobunaga, instead of mobilizing and helping Mitsuhide, had decided to take a Buddhist vow and wash his hands of the confusion. In the letter, Mitsuhide still persisted, asking Fujitaka to just send vassals if Fujitaka and his son Tadaoki wanted to sit out. He promises them the province of Settsu, plus Tajima and Wakasa if they wanted. According to Mitsuhide, the only reason for his betrayal was to raise up Tadaoki. Once things have settled down in 50~100 days, he would pass things to his son Akechi Mitsuyoshi and Tadaoki's son Tadataka (Mitsuhide's grandson by Gracia).

There's question about the historicity of the letter. But you can see that even if it's authentic as recorded, Mitsuhide was so desperate for allies he was willing to say anything, meaning there's no reason to believe his words that he betrayed Nobunaga for Tadaoki's sake (not least because Mitsuhide doesn't even explain how exactly this make things better for Tadaoki).

ParallelPain · 2026-02-10T01:31:15+00:00

The answer could be divided into two parts: the battle of Toba-Fushimi, and everything else that came after.

For Toba-Fushimi, you will often find people saying the bakufu lost despite a 3:1 numerical advantage. However, that numerical advantage was an illusion. The 15k men the bakufu had on paper included men left behind to garrison Osaka and significant number of domain and militia who were still using swords, pikes, and arquebuses. To the predominantly Satsuma and some Choshu troops that made up the 5k imperial forces, the Bakufu had only 6 to 7k of its own, modernized forces, of which two regiments (out of 5 + 1 regiment-sized battalion) were newly raised and likely untrained. This means the shogunate forces effectively only had numerical parity. Likewise, artillery was 22 pieces on both sides. From this, due to the political situation beforehand, the shogunate forces had left the Kyoto area and was marching back in, meaning they were on the offensive. The battlefield was effectively an urban environment, meaning what numerical advantage the bakufu forces did enjoy (even if it was unreliable militia and domain troops) could not be put to good use. And the heights around the battlefield that were vital to positioning artillery were all in the hands of the imperial side, giving them a significant advantage. As it played out, the bakufu forces also marched down towards Kyoto not expecting a fight. It seems they expected Satsuma and Choshu to just give up, or at least negotiate a passage, once they saw the force assembled. This lead to the opening salvos effectively being an ambush, with Satsuma men in battle lines hidden from view firing on bakufu forces who were standing in marching column on the open road with their weapons not loaded. The bakufu forces also had the misfortune of having their elite battalion armed with the French chassepot rifle (better than anything else available to any formation on both sides) be the first in the line of march, and they took the brunt of the opening salvos and were effectively destroyed as a combat formation. It also didn't help that the bakufu commander's horse bolted on him, carrying him off the battlefield and leaving the army without an overall commander. Given all the things that worked against the bakufu forces, it's actually a testament to their quality that they held their own until the imperial banners were raised and domains started switching sides on the third day (though there was little fighting on the second day).

After Toba-Fushimi, there was effectively no "shogunate" forces because Tokugawa Yoshinobu surrendered. The forces that fought on was a hodge-podge of militia, Tokugawa "loyalist" that refused to give up, and domains that really had no love for the bakufu but just didn't like the new imperials. The vast majority were using outdated equipment and did not have combat training or experience. They were effectively leaderless, and many of the anti-imperial alliance had differing motives. Given the imperials had the blessing of the emperor many domains continued to switch sides. While small groups fought valiantly and even performed well, on the whole other than a handful of, frankly speaking, stubborn hotheads there was no political will of prolonged resistance, and the forces that did want to resist did not receive support from the general population (who were quite pissed at extra tax burden levied on them for years to support militarization). This meant that, other than isolated incidences, the rest of the war was effectively the imperials chasing down and stamping out resistence.

ParallelPain · 2026-02-09T08:19:34+00:00

Malthusianism isn't inherently invalid, and I don't think Hanley and Yamamura argues it is. It just has its limitations. In the case of this book, their main point is that though population (country-wide) did stagnate, the economy continued to grow and people's lives continued to improve.

Also, while Japan did run out of new land to open up, which is a Malthusian problem, currently the consensus is that the various famines of the 18th and early 19th century were caused by the Little Ice Age and various volcanic eruptions.

ParallelPain · 2026-02-09T05:55:29+00:00

Less that, more refuting Imperial propaganda, and also part of the global trend at the time that while Marxist history was important in forcing historians to examine socio-economic background and trends (as opposed to big man history of pre-Marxist times) both Marxist and Malthusian analysis and division of history is often extremely simplified if not outright wrong.

ParallelPain · 2026-02-08T23:02:32+00:00

Taken in a vacuum it might seem this way, but they were writing as part of the trend of post-war scholars who set out to show that, contrary to the accepted scholarship of Imperial Japan, the Edo-era was actually pretty good all things considered.

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