Warring States

In the century after the 1460's, Japan was an armed camp. Peasants in the countryside were forced to take up swords to protect their communities. Temples with large landholdings trained their own armies of warrior-monks to protect their assets. Some estate owners gathered private armies of samurai to guard their lands. Samurai without masters roamed the country offering to fight for pay.

The most powerful samurai became regional lords called daimyo. They exercised control over many armed warriors and governed large areas of farmland. They fought each other for military supremacy during the 1500's, as Japan sank into a long period of civil war.

In 1549, Saint Francis Xavier, a missionary from Portugal, arrived in Japan and introduced a new element into this unstable scene. Xavier and a few other priests had come to convert the Japanese populace to Christian beliefs. The missionaries also intended to help Portuguese traders sell European luxury goods and up-to-date weapons to the Japanese.

The priests had little success in converting the Japanese to Christianity. But the traders found eager customers among the daimyo in southern Japan. The guns they sold were an explosive addition to the civil wars.

One regional lord who made much use of the weapons was Oda Nobunaga. Nobunaga was a ruthless warrior with a keen desire for power. In the 1560's, he gathered a large coalition of forces under his command and led them to Kyoto. He brought order to the capital district. He was beginning to impose control on other areas of Japan when he was killed in 1582.

Nobunaga's successor, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, took up the task of uniting the nation. Hideyoshi carried out several reforms with far-reaching effects. He disarmed the peasantry. He brought many of the unruly samurai under his control. And he surveyed most of the usable farmland in the country. Hideyoshi tried to extend his power to Korea in the 1590's. Twice he tried to conquer Korea, but both times he failed.