Watching a Netflix Docudrama on the Sengoku Period reminded me Koei Tecmo’s Samuarai Warriors series whitewashes one iconic character

I refer to Hideyoshi, the second of the three Great Unifiers from Japan’s Sengoku Period.

If you were not familiar with the true history of that time period, you would’ve thought the real Hideyoshi was the same as the wisecracking, chivalrous and seemingly peace-loving samurai he’s portrayed as in the Samurai Warriors games. I recently watched Netflix’s Docudrama series Age of Samurai: Battle for Japan. I knew the real Hideyoshi outlawed Christianity early in his reign and it would be state policy until the end of the Shogunate almost 300 years later. One of the things I didn’t know and is a HUGE omission from the Samurai Warriors games–with fairly good reason–is after he ended the over 100 years of internal conflict in Japan, Hideyoshi turned his attention to invading Korea and China.

The campaign was a massive failure and resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of samurai on the Korean penninsula. Hideyoshi thought the Koreans would have been easy to take out ahead of invading China but the brutality of his forces on the Korean Penninsula galvanized the Koreans who fought back and ultimately made victory impossible for the Japanese invasion force. China’s Ming Dynasty eventually joined the war and helped the Koreans drive Japan off the mainland. Even worse than that was in missives sent to Kyoto the generals lied and said things were going well. It wasn’t until emissaries from China paid him a visit that Hideyoshi learned he’d been made a fool of: He thought they had traveled to Japan to surrender to him when they actually came to make Japan a vassal state of China. Whoops!

The Mainland Campaign was a cataustrophic failure for Hideyoshi and he had been humiliated internationally. It’s no wonder Koei Techmo would want to completely omit all references to it from the Samurai Warriors series. Even worse was since Hideyoshi’s wife Nene was barren, there were real concerns about the hard fought for peace Hideyoshi achieved dying with him. He was able to have a son via a surrogate but the child died in infancy from illness. When he was nearing the end of his life, in desperation he named his nephew Hideyori Toyotomi–who was still a child–his successor. He made Toshiie Maeda Hideyori’s guardian and would raise him until he was of age to assume power. He also named Ieyasu Tokugawa as Regent and would be in charge of affairs of state.

Unfortunately for Hideyoshi, Toshiie died of illness not long after he died. With Toshiie dead, Ieyasu was wary of feudal lords and ronin who might seek to manipulate Hideyori and use him to spark another conflict. That’s what ultimately happened when Mitsunari Ishida raised an army to challenge Tokugawa. The two didn’t like each other much already and that exaserbated things. Ishida was involved in the Mainland Campaign while Tokugawa was a buerocrat. The tipping point was when Hideyori publicly denounced Ieyasu as a tyrant.

Fast forward to the shortest but most important battle in Japanese history: The Battle of Sekigahara.

It lasted only six hours. It should have been a route for Ishida and more so given he had arranged to have key reinforcements for Tokugawa delayed to ensure his victory. The problem is he had unruly officers, some of whom refused to join the battle. The deciding factor was of course the betrayal of Kikkawa Kobayakawa during the battle’s climax. Kobayakawa secretly cut a deal with Tokugawa promising to defect at the critical moment. According to accounts, the reason he delayed joining the battle was because he was waiting to see how things played out before making his decision. Although Ishida’s forces were much bigger than what Tokugawa had present AND Ishida held the high ground, due to some officers refusing to join the battle both forces were about even.

Ishida yelled at Kobayakawa to attack and so he did. He attacked Ishida’s right flank and blew the battle wide open. The Battle of Sekigahara began at 2PM and by 8PM it was over. A general consensus on Kobayakawa’s battlefield defection is basically Ishida called him an idiot and berated him during the Mainland Campaign and he never forgot that. That aside, he defected to ensure his survival. Ishida fled the battlefield but was later found and executed a few days later. A few years later during the Siege of Osaka Castle, Hideyori committed Seppuku. With his death and the death of Yukimora Sanada after the siege, the Sengoku Period was officially over and Tokugawa stood alone.

I’ll stop the Japanese history lesson there before I get too carried away. All that said, Koei Techmo intentionally omits or distorts a lot of historical details about the figures and events in not just the Samurai Warriors/Sengoku games but the Dynasty Warriors/Three Kingdoms games. To use another example. The character Kunoichi is not based on a specific person. She is a 100% fictionalized character who is there to represent female ninja who were referred to as Kunoichi. On a related note. Hideyoshi’s wife Nene is a portrayed as a ninja but historically, she wasn’t a ninja or a warrrior. Also, Nobunaga did what other Daimyo had not been able to do and utterly annihilated the Iga clan in a single night. None were spared including women and children.

The only Iga who survived what was basically the extermination of the entire clan were those who happened to be away on business or were living elsewhere. It was a hatred-fueled extermination campaign as even though there were obviously other ninja clans in Japan, the Iga killing his troops in ambushes and assassinating his officers really pissed off Nobunaga. He brought his entire army down on Iga Village–which was long regarded an unsiegable natural fortress because of its location on top of a mountain–and burned it to the ground. The only people who survived the siege were those who were not inside. There are of course those rumors and legends that endured for centuries that some survived and escaped the siege after it started but conflicts with written accounts the Iga fought to the death and were wiped out in a single night. Nobunaga had the village surrounded on all sides, bombarded it with cannon fire and ordered his troops not to enter but cut down anyone who tried to flee. They made sure none survived.

The Iga had intel on every Daimyo or feudal lord in Japan and it’s been long rumored they even had intel on the Koreans, the Chinese and even some European nations Japan was trading with (Japan closed diplomatic relations with everyone except the Dutch for almost 300 years). Needless to say, Nobunaga did a lot of people a huge favor in wiping them all out. It’s why none of the other Daimyo got involved or retaliated even though the Iga were routinely hired by Daimyo to get intel on other Daimyo or clans.  The only way you could counter this is if you happened to have your own ninja running counterintelligence which some Daimyo like the Hojo (The Fuma clan) and the Tokugawa (Hanzo Hattori) did. Hattori was from Iga himself but his loyalty to the Tokugawa is why he and his family were spared.

A popular “What if” that is often theorycrafted to this day involves Shingen Takeda and Kenshin Uesugi. The rival Daimyo sought to destroy each other but they mutually respected each other. Although they both knew together they could easily overpower Nobunaga, they stubbornly put their rivalry first. When Shingen died suddenly of Tuberculosis (based on the sympthoms, that’s what it’s believed his died from), Kenshin drank himself to death when he learned his rival died of illness almost a year later. Both clans later separately clashed with Nobunaga but were routed, all but vanishing from history after that.

This brings me back to what I said earlier about Shingen and Kenshin respecting each other. What if they put their rivalry aside and teamed up? That’s theorycrafted by Japanese historians to this day because of how different Japanese history could have gone if that happened. More so if they acted early on. Nobunaga was able to take over central Japan largely because the Takeda and Uesugi clans were fighting each other. When the Tokugawa allied with Nobunaga, the Hojo were the only real threat in central Japan but they waited until it was almost too late to get involved. If the Takeda and Uesugi attacked the Oda early on, they would have crushed him. They would still have had a solid chance after that up until after the Oda’s battles with the Asakura-Azai alliance to route them. After the Oda put the Asakurai-Azai Alliance down, they were too strong for a single clan to take head-on.

Initially, Nagamasa Azai entered an alliance with the Oda clan via marriage. The Asakurai opposed the Oda and when they fought, Nagamasa was honor-bound to side with the Asakurai over his dangerous new step brother. Nobunaga foresaw that outcome and didn’t take it personal but he still crushed the Asakura-Azai Alliance in an epic clash. One historical inaccuracy from Samurai Warriors 3 and 4 indicates Nagamasa sent his wife and daughters back to Nobunaga before their battle. In truth she committed Seppuku after killing her daughters as Azai’s castle was besieged. She knew her brother would not be merciful to her because she chose to stand by her husband.

One historical truth that was rare for the time period was the Oda’s alliance with the Tokugawa. While clans entering alliances of convenience was nothing new, what made their alliance such a rarity was it was never broken. When feuding clans brokered peace, they would typically exchange family members as hostages. If one side broke the peace even indirectly, the other side was free to kill their hostages if they wanted to. Nobunaga killing Tokugawa’s Daimyo in a lop-sided battle he should have lost shocked Japan. Everyone assumed Tokugawa would avenge his slain master but instead, he entered an alliance with the Oda. Ieyasu would act as a buffer in the east while Nobunaga focused on securing central Japan.

After Hideyoshi avenged Nobunaga by forcing Mitsuhide to commit Seppuku, many thought Hideyoshi should have stepped aside for Tokugawa but Ieyasu recognized him as Oda’s successor. Ieyasu felt since Hideyoshi avenged their liege, he had the right to assume Nobunaga’s legacy. Both men wanted Oda’s dream of a united Japan to happen and they both knew fighting each other could undo everything Nobunaga worked for. Tokugawa worked under Hideyoshi to help conquer the rest of Japan with the Hojo being one of the last major clans to fall. Hideyoshi was sometimes hard to deal with as well as a bit ecccentric as Shogun. Many found Tokugawa to be a stabilizing force within the Toyotomi Shogunate. After Hideyoshi died, most were cool with Ieyasu taking over. Most of those who objected simply objected to the fact his ascension was unopposed and unchallenged. Nobunaga and Hideyoshi both had to fight for their positions in comparison.

…Whew.

By now, we’ve gotten used to creative liberties being undertaken with period dramas and movies. It’s important to be mindful of when creative liberties are taken with video games based events from history too. Koei Techmo is a Japanese video game company so most outside of Japan likely do not know–and being honest likely does not care–about the true history of the Sengoku Era or Warring States Period which lasted almost 130 years. As much as that era is romanticized in video games, movies and period dramas, it was easily the second-darkest period in Japan’s history. Second only to the end of War War II.

On that last note. I started writing this on May 30.

Coincidentally,  today is now August 6: The anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing at the end of World War II.

About a week later, the U.S. dropped a second atomic bomb on Nagasaki. A third bomb designated for Tokyo likely would have been dropped if Japan did not accept the U.S.’ surrender terms. Between the two bombings,  nearly 100,000 people died instantly and many more died in the years that followed due to cancer, radiation sickness and injuries sustained in the aftermath. This is to say nothing of hundreds of thousands of people being horribly scarred from the intense heat and children born deformed as a result of radiation exposure during pregnancy.

The reason I bring this up is because of the ongoing conflict in Ukraine. Russia’s Vladomyr Putin has threatened to use nuclear weapons since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine began early last year. Is he aware of the chain reaction such a decision would set off? Of course. It’s a question of if, when and where. Oppenheimer made the fateful decision to push for Japan to be nuked with the hope that it would be the ultimate deterrent to ever willingly using such a weapon again. It literally wiped two major cities–since rebuilt obviously–off the map. Ten years later, the U.S. successfully tested the Hydrogen Bomb in the Marshall Islands. The H-Bomb is 1,000 times more powerful than the bombs used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

We may very well see the first nuclear strike in almost 80 years any time now and it would be far more devastating that what was used on Japan. The reason is because of the chain reaction that would immediately follow. Russia nukes a place, a western country retaliates. It’s called Mutual Destruction. For decades, that assurance kept the threat of a nuclear strike at bay. Clearly times have changed.

 

 

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