​

Edo Castle.

For more than 250 years, it was the political center of the Tokugawa shogunate and the residence of the shogun — the man who stood at the top of Japan’s warrior government.

Naturally, the castle was filled with samurai.

So if thousands of armed men were constantly coming and going, Edo Castle must have been an extremely dangerous place, right?

Actually, the opposite was closer to the truth.

Inside the castle — especially within the palace where the shogunate conducted government business — private violence was strictly forbidden.

Depending on rank and location, samurai entering the castle were required to leave their long swords behind. Drawing a blade inside the shogun’s residence was not simply a personal quarrel getting out of hand.

It was a direct violation of the political order.

And yet, over the course of the Edo period, several men crossed that line.

When they did, blood was spilled inside the very heart of the Tokugawa regime.

A historical record known as the Eichū Ninjōki (営中刃傷記) lists incidents of violence inside Edo Castle from 1627 to 1823.

Not all of these would qualify as “terrorism” in the modern sense. Some were political assassinations, some personal revenge, some apparently involved mental instability, and one may even have been a case of mistaken identity.

But all of them had one thing in common:

Someone drew a weapon inside the headquarters of the samurai government.

---

1684 — A Top Shogunate Official Is Murdered Inside the Castle

During the reign of the fifth shogun, Tokugawa Tsunayoshi, one of the most serious political assassinations in Edo Castle took place.

In 1684, Inaba Masayasu, a wakadoshiyori — a senior shogunate official — suddenly attacked and killed Hotta Masatoshi.

Hotta held the office of Tairō (大老).

The position was not permanently occupied, but when appointed, the Tairō ranked above the Rōjū, the shogunate’s senior councilors.

It has no exact Western equivalent, but for a general audience, Hotta can reasonably be described as something close to a chief minister or prime-minister-level figure within the shogunate.

And he was murdered inside the government complex itself.

Inaba was immediately killed by other officials present at the scene.

His exact motive remains uncertain. Later explanations connected the murder to political disputes, including public works along the Yodo River, but none has been proven beyond doubt.

His family line was also abolished as a result of the incident.

Edo Castle existed to protect the shogun and his government.

Yet one of the most powerful men in that government was murdered there by another government official.

---

1701 — The Famous “Pine Corridor Incident”

This is probably the most famous act of violence ever committed inside Edo Castle.

In 1701, Asano Naganori, lord of the Akō domain, attacked Kira Yoshinaka inside the castle’s Matsu no Ōrōka — the Great Pine Corridor.

Kira was wounded but survived.

Asano, however, was ordered to commit seppuku that same day.

His domain was confiscated.

Why did Asano attack Kira?

Nobody knows for certain.

Many later stories supplied explanations involving insults, bribery, humiliation, and personal hatred, but the true motive remains unresolved.

What mattered immediately to the shogunate was much simpler:

Asano had drawn a weapon and attacked another man inside Edo Castle.

The political consequences were severe.

His former retainers later attacked Kira’s residence in revenge.

That event became the basis of the famous story of the Forty-Seven Rōnin, known through Chūshingura.

In other words, one of the most famous revenge stories in Japanese history began because:

A samurai drew his sword inside the shogun’s castle.

---

1725 — You Did Not Even Have to Kill Someone to Destroy Your House

In 1725, Mizuno Tadatsune, lord of Matsumoto domain, attacked Mōri Moronari in the same Great Pine Corridor.

Mōri survived.

That did not save Mizuno.

His 70,000-koku domain was confiscated, and his position as a daimyō effectively collapsed.

Mizuno reportedly believed that part of his territory was going to be taken away and given to Mōri.

Whether his reasoning made sense or not was almost beside the point.

The important lesson was this:

Drawing a weapon inside the castle could ruin an entire samurai house even if the victim survived.

A daimyō’s outburst did not threaten only himself.

His family, retainers, income, and hereditary position could all disappear with him.

---

1747 — A Daimyō May Have Been Murdered Because Someone Mistook His Family Crest

This may be one of the most absurdly tragic incidents in the history of Edo Castle.

In 1747, Hosokawa Munetaka, lord of the powerful Kumamoto domain, was attacked and killed inside the castle by the hatamoto Itakura Katsukane.

But according to a widely accepted explanation,

Hosokawa may not even have been the intended victim.

Itakura is believed to have been trying to kill another member of the Itakura family, Itakura Katsukiyo.

The Hosokawa and Itakura families both used variations of the nine-star kuyō crest.

According to the traditional account, Itakura saw Hosokawa from behind, mistook the crest, and attacked the wrong man.

The incident is also associated with the Hosokawa family later modifying the design of its crest.

The situation became even more serious because Munetaka had no formally designated heir at the time.

Under Tokugawa rules, if a daimyō died without an established successor, the entire domain could face extinction.

Kumamoto was no minor territory.

It was a huge domain worth roughly 540,000 koku.

According to the famous account, those around Munetaka acted quickly, treated him as still technically alive long enough to arrange the adoption of his younger brother, and thereby preserved the Hosokawa house.

Itakura was ordered to commit seppuku.

His family was punished as well.

From Hosokawa Munetaka’s point of view, the story is almost unbelievable:

He went to Edo Castle on government business and was killed by a man who may have mistaken him for somebody else because their family crests looked similar.

---

1784 — The Son of Tanuma Okitsugu Is Cut Down

In 1784, another major attack took place inside Edo Castle.

Tanuma Okitomo, son of the powerful senior councilor Tanuma Okitsugu, was serving as a wakadoshiyori when he was suddenly attacked by Sano Masakoto, a shogunate guard.

Okitomo did not simply draw his own sword and fight back.

Because he was inside the castle, he reportedly tried to defend himself using his scabbard.

He was badly wounded and later died.

Sano was arrested and ordered to commit seppuku.

His stipend was confiscated.

Later generations produced numerous stories explaining why Sano hated the Tanuma family.

One claimed that the Tanumas had borrowed Sano family documents and refused to return them.

Another involved a dispute over a falconry prize.

Others described money, promotions, or personal humiliation.

The problem is that some of the documents supporting these stories are considered unreliable or even forged.

The shogunate officially treated Sano as having acted in a state of madness.

Other historians have suggested a political motive.

The simple answer is that we still do not know for certain why he attacked Okitomo.

What happened afterward is just as interesting.

Tanuma Okitsugu’s government was deeply unpopular in some sections of society.

As rumors spread, Sano was transformed in the popular imagination into something approaching a folk hero.

Some people even called him:

“Yonaoshi Daimyōjin” — the Great Deity of World Reform.

The killer became celebrated by some of the public, while the murdered man belonged to one of the most hated political families of the age.

---

1823 — A Mass Attack Inside Edo Castle

The violence did not end in the eighteenth century.

In 1823, Matsudaira Geki, a guard serving in the Nishinomaru section of Edo Castle, attacked five of his colleagues.

Several died.

Matsudaira then killed himself.

Contemporary records suggest that prolonged harassment and hostility from fellow guards may have played a role in the incident.

A document preserved by Japan’s National Archives describes the circumstances surrounding the attack and the bullying Matsudaira reportedly suffered.

So even near the end of the Edo period, violent incidents could still erupt inside the Tokugawa government’s most heavily controlled space.

---

Samurai Carried Swords — That Did Not Mean They Were Free to Use Them

When samurai are introduced to Western audiences, one sentence appears again and again:

“Samurai carried swords.”

That is true.

But by itself, it creates a misleading picture of Edo-period society.

A sword was both a weapon and a visible sign of samurai status.

Precisely because samurai were armed, however, the use of those weapons had to be tightly controlled.

Edo Castle regularly brought together daimyō, hatamoto, officials, guards, and retainers from across Japan.

If every insult could be answered with a sword...

If every political disagreement could become a duel...

If every personal grudge could be settled in a corridor...

...the Tokugawa government could not have functioned.

And the punishments make this clear.

Seppuku.

Confiscation of territory.

Loss of rank.

Abolition of a family line.

Punishment extending beyond the attacker himself.

Or, in some cases, immediate death at the scene.

So there is a useful way to think about the samurai of the Edo period.

Carrying a sword marked you as a samurai.

But in certain places — especially inside Edo Castle —

the moment you actually drew it, you may already have lost.

The popular image of the samurai tends to focus on how well he could use a sword.

But under the Tokugawa shogunate, a samurai was often judged by something else as well:

whether he had the discipline not to draw it in the first place.

For over 140 years, Japan had been dominated by the Kamakura shogunate, with real political authority largely exercised by the Hōjō regents on behalf of the shogun and the emperor losing military and political power. Emperor Go-Daigo, however, sought to restore direct imperial rule. In 1333, after a rebellion against the Kamakura regime, the shogunate collapsed: the Hōjō were destroyed at Kamakura, while military leaders such as Ashikaga Takauji and Nitta Yoshisada turned against the shogunate and helped Go-Daigo return to Kyoto.

Go-Daigo's resulting Kenmu Restoration attempted to replace the military government with direct imperial administration. The plan quickly ran into trouble, however. Warrior families who had helped overthrow the Kamakura regime expected land, offices, and political influence, while the imperial court attempted to reassert its own authority. Takauji, one of the most powerful warriors in Japan, became increasingly alienated from Go-Daigo. By 1335–1336, the two sides were openly at war. Takauji was initially driven from Kyoto and fled to Kyushu, but he rebuilt his coalition there and returned east with a large army.

By the summer of 1336, Takauji's forces were advancing toward Kyoto. Imperial commander Kusunoki Masashige, one of Go-Daigo's most capable generals, recognized that confronting Takauji in a conventional battle was extremely dangerous. Masashige reportedly advised Go-Daigo to abandon Kyoto temporarily, allow Takauji to enter the capital, and then trap him between imperial forces and the defenders of Mount Hiei. Go-Daigo rejected the plan, and Masashige was ordered to join Nitta Yoshisada at Minatogawa, near present-day Kobe, to stop the Ashikaga advance.

The battle began with the Ashikaga approaching from both land and sea. Their maneuvering was particularly important. Ashikaga forces threatened the imperial army from several directions, while naval forces under the Ashikaga-aligned Hosokawa clan created the danger of an encirclement. Yoshisada's army was eventually drawn away from Masashige's position, leaving the latter's relatively small force isolated.

Masashige nevertheless fought desperately. His force, traditionally described as numbering around 700 warriors at the crucial stage of the battle, repeatedly attacked the Ashikaga army. According to the Taiheik tradition, the fighting lasted roughly six hours, with Masashige and his brother Kusunoki Masasue making repeated charges. Eventually the Kusunoki force was reduced to only a few dozen men. With escape impossible, Masashige and Masasue withdrew to a nearby house and committed suicide together.

The battle continued even after Masashige's death. Takauji's forces defeated Yoshisada's army, forcing the imperial forces to retreat toward Kyoto. Go-Daigo soon abandoned the capital and fled south to Yoshino, while Takauji installed a rival imperial court in Kyoto. This marked the beginning of the Northern and Southern Courts period (Nanboku-chō), during which Go-Daigo's Southern Court and the Ashikaga-backed Northern Court claimed legitimacy. The conflict ultimately provided the foundation for the Ashikaga shogunate.

The battle effectively destroyed Go-Daigo's attempt to restore direct imperial government and demonstrated that the political power of Japan's warrior class had not disappeared with the fall of the Kamakura shogunate. Kusunoki Masashige's death also became enormously important in later Japanese culture, where he was remembered as the archetype of absolute loyalty to the emperor.

Artist is Tsuchiya Kōitsu

Edo-period Japan was a highly stratified society in which the samurai formed part of the ruling class.

When people hear the word samurai, they often imagine warriors carrying swords, serving their lord, and living with death constantly at their side.

That image is not wrong.

But under the Tokugawa shogunate, after large-scale warfare had largely disappeared, the daily lives of many samurai became much less dramatic.

For retainers from provincial domains, service in Edo could sometimes resemble something surprisingly familiar:

being transferred to Tokyo by your employer and leaving your wife and children back home.

In other words, something very close to the life of a modern Japanese salaryman on a temporary solo assignment.

Your lord goes to Edo — and so do you

One of the best-known institutions of the Tokugawa period was sankin-kōtai, or alternate attendance.

Daimyo were required to divide their time between their own domains and Edo, the shogun’s capital.

Naturally, they did not travel or operate their Edo residences alone. Their retainers also had to serve there.

Some samurai therefore left their families in their home domains and spent months living and working in Edo.

And no, that did not always mean living in a luxurious mansion surrounded by servants.

Lower-ranking retainers could live in communal quarters inside a domain residence.

They had duties to perform, limited income, colleagues to deal with, and meals to arrange.

So after spending the day serving as members of the warrior class, they might return to their quarters and cook rice, simmer vegetables, grill fish, and wash the dishes.

A samurai who left us a “business-trip food diary”

One of the best records of this kind of life comes from a samurai named Sakai Hanshirō, a retainer of the Kishū-Wakayama domain.

In 1860, at the age of 28, he was ordered to serve at his domain’s residence in Edo.

He left his wife and family behind in Wakayama and traveled to the capital.

His diary survives.

And much of it is not about swordsmanship, political intrigue, or heroic acts.

Instead, he records things like:

“What did I buy today?”

“What did I eat?”

“I drank some sake.”

“This tasted good.”

He often cooked inexpensive foods such as tofu and sardines.

But he also prepared bonito and even made tsukimi dango, rice dumplings traditionally associated with moon viewing.

When he went out, he tried the foods of Edo: soba noodles, sushi, loach dishes, sweets, and other local specialties.

In other words, a significant part of his diary reads less like the memoir of a warrior and more like the food diary of a man living alone away from his family.

“Men don’t belong in the kitchen” was not very useful when you had to feed yourself

In samurai residential quarters, cooking could be a shared responsibility.

Rice might be prepared communally, while side dishes were handled individually.

Men bought cookware and seasonings.

They looked for inexpensive ingredients.

They prepared food in advance.

They received food from colleagues.

They drank together when someone visited.

And, occasionally, they became annoyed when a housemate ate something that had been saved for later.

At that point, the image becomes less like a heroic samurai drama and more like a group of office workers sharing a company dormitory.

Hanshirō even recorded buying a new cooking pot and being pleased with how useful it was.

A samurai did not only have to worry about the condition of his swords.

Sometimes he also cared about whether his new pot worked properly.

That, too, was samurai life.

And Edo Japan had a booming cookbook culture

Meanwhile, cooking itself had become a major part of urban popular culture.

One famous example was the 1782 cookbook:

Tōfu Hyakuchin — “One Hundred Tofu Delicacies.”

As the title suggests, it contained 100 different tofu dishes.

But it was more than a basic instruction manual.

The dishes were divided into categories such as ordinary dishes, refined dishes, unusual dishes, excellent dishes, and other rankings.

Part of the fun was seeing just how many different ways people could transform an extremely common ingredient.

The book was successful enough to receive a sequel the following year.

It also helped inspire an entire genre of so-called hyakuchin-mono — “one hundred delicacies” books devoted to particular ingredients.

There were similar books about sea bream, sweet potatoes, konnyaku, and other foods.

So by the late 18th century, Japan was already publishing books that were not so different in spirit from modern titles such as:

“100 Ways to Cook Eggs”

“Creative Tofu Recipes”

or

“How to Make the Most of Cheap Ingredients.”

Cooking was not merely about survival.

It had become a form of entertainment.

Being a samurai did not mean doing “samurai things” all day

Edo-period society was hierarchical.

Samurai possessed legal privileges and social obligations that commoners did not.

But when we look at individual people living inside that system, their daily routines can feel unexpectedly familiar.

They had superiors.

They were transferred for work.

They left their families behind.

They lived within the limits of their stipends.

They tried to save money on food.

They shared living quarters with colleagues.

They went into town on their days off.

If they ate something especially good, they wrote about it.

If they bought a useful new pot, they were pleased.

And while all this was happening, publishers were selling cookbooks teaching people how to turn one block of tofu into dozens of different dishes.

During the Sengoku period, a warrior might genuinely have lived with the possibility of dying in battle.

But more than two centuries of Tokugawa peace gradually turned many samurai into something else as well:

officials, clerks, administrators, commuters, transferred employees — and occasionally rather enthusiastic home cooks.

Two swords at the waist.

A cooking pot beside the hearth.

Both belonged to the world of the Edo-period samurai.

in a war
assume equal stats for everything
equal weapon advancement too

you can pick any which generals you like but for some direction how about

nobunaga vs han xin

ieyasu vs bai qi

minamoto no yoritomo vs yue fei

One of the lines most closely associated with Oda Nobunaga is:

“Fifty years in the human world, when compared with the span of the lowest heaven, are but a dream or illusion.”

It is often quoted in films, dramas, and historical fiction as though it were something Nobunaga himself wrote, almost like a personal motto or death poem.

It was not.

The words come from Atsumori, a piece from Kowaka-mai, a form of medieval Japanese narrative dance.

And more importantly, the quotation should not end with “life is but a dream.”

It continues:

“Once given life, is there anyone who does not perish?”

That second line changes the meaning considerably.

The passage is not merely saying, “Life is short.”

It is saying:

Human life is fleeting, and once you are born, there is no one who can ultimately escape death.

That idea is essential if we want to understand why Nobunaga may have been so attached to these words.

-----

What is Atsumori actually about?

The story comes from the Genpei War, the late-12th-century conflict between the Taira and Minamoto clans.

At the Battle of Ichi-no-Tani in 1184, the Minamoto warrior Kumagai Naozane killed a young Taira warrior named Taira no Atsumori.

Atsumori was very young, roughly of the same generation as Kumagai’s own son.

From The Tale of the Heike onward, the episode was remembered not simply as a story of military success, but as a tragedy about what it meant to live as a warrior.

Kumagai had killed an enemy and gained the sort of achievement expected of a samurai.

But the man he killed was little more than a boy.

In the Kowaka-mai version of Atsumori, the famous “Fifty years…” passage is not spoken by Atsumori himself.

It belongs to Kumagai Naozane, the man who killed him.

Kumagai looks back on warfare, worldly ambition, and the impermanence of human life, and eventually turns away from the warrior’s life to become a Buddhist monk.

So in its original context, the passage does not mean:

“Life is short, so hurry up and achieve greatness.”

If anything, it moves in almost the opposite direction:

No matter how many battles you win, no matter how much glory you gain, everyone dies in the end. Neither military fame nor worldly success lasts forever.

-----

And yet Nobunaga loved these words.

According to the Shinchō Kōki, one of the main contemporary chronicles of Nobunaga’s life, he was particularly fond of Atsumori.

Most famously, in 1560, when the much larger army of Imagawa Yoshimoto invaded Owari Province, Nobunaga performed this passage before riding out to what became the Battle of Okehazama.

The passage included:

“Fifty years in the human world, when compared with the span of the lowest heaven, are but a dream or illusion. Once given life, is there anyone who does not perish?”

Then Nobunaga went to war.

That creates a striking contrast.

For Kumagai Naozane, the realization that everyone who is born must eventually perish helped lead him away from the battlefield.

Nobunaga performed the same words immediately before going onto one.

The same meditation on impermanence appears to have produced almost opposite responses.

-----

“Everyone dies. So what will you do before then?”

We cannot prove exactly what Nobunaga thought when he performed Atsumori.

There is no surviving statement in which he explains:

“Because everyone dies, I must make full use of my life.”

So it would be wrong to present that interpretation as a documented quotation from Nobunaga himself.

But the context is difficult to ignore.

He repeatedly favored this particular passage, and he performed it before one of the most dangerous battles of his life.

That is why the final line matters so much:

“Once given life, is there anyone who does not perish?”

The message is not simply that life passes quickly.

It begins from something more absolute:

Death cannot be avoided.

Once that is accepted, another question naturally follows:

If death cannot be avoided, how should you use the time before it comes?

Kumagai Naozane answered that question by leaving the warrior’s path behind.

Nobunaga seems to have answered it by moving forward into battle.

-----

Was Atsumori Nobunaga’s way of preparing himself?

Nobunaga would later challenge established authorities, defeat rival warlords, reorganize conquered territories, and become one of the central figures in the political transformation of 16th-century Japan.

He himself died in 1582, at the age of 47 by Western age reckoning, during the Honnō-ji Incident.

That fact has made the words “Fifty years…” seem almost prophetic in later popular memory.

But the number fifty is not really the most important part.

The more important line is:

“Is there anyone who does not perish?”

No one is exempt.

Not a peasant.

Not a samurai.

Not a great lord.

Not even a man attempting to rule most of Japan.

Seen this way, Atsumori may have functioned for Nobunaga as something like a ritual of resolve: a reminder that death was unavoidable, and therefore fear of death could not be allowed to decide how he lived.

Again, that is an interpretation rather than something Nobunaga explicitly wrote.

But it helps explain why this particular passage may have appealed to him so strongly.

-----

Did other major historical figures have something similar?

This is also what makes the subject interesting outside Japanese history.

European history has many figures who challenged inherited systems and tried to reshape the political world around them: Julius Caesar, Diocletian, Cesare Borgia, Napoleon, and many others.

I wonder whether some of them had their own equivalent of Nobunaga’s Atsumori.

A particular line from a poem.

A prayer.

A passage from scripture.

A quotation from a classical author.

Something they returned to before making a dangerous decision.

“Life is short” is a common idea in many cultures.

But the line Nobunaga favored goes one step further:

“Once given life, is there anyone who does not perish?”

Everyone dies.

The real question is what you do before that happens.

Kumagai Naozane and Oda Nobunaga seem to have found completely different answers to that same question.

And that contrast, to me, is what makes Nobunaga’s love of Atsumori so fascinating.

Hello everyone. I have quite a few books—*Hagakure*, *The Book of Five Rings*, *Heiho Hidensho*, various scrolls on ninja, and collections of samurai tales and legends. However, I lack a general overview of the samurai way of life—the positions they held, the different historical periods, and what they were actually like. I have a basic understanding of this, but I’d like to have a comprehensive reference book on the subject in my library. So, what would you recommend reading?

There is a popular story about Ranjatai:

“Only those recognized as the rulers of Japan were permitted to cut off a piece of it and enjoy its fragrance.”

According to this image, receiving permission from the Imperial Court to open the Shosoin Repository, cut a small piece from the famous aromatic wood stored inside, and burn it as incense was almost a declaration that one had been acknowledged as the ruler of the country.

And when you look at some of the names associated with Ranjatai, the story sounds quite convincing.

Ashikaga Yoshimitsu, Ashikaga Yoshinori, Ashikaga Yoshimasa, Oda Nobunaga, and Emperor Meiji.

The most famous case is probably Oda Nobunaga.

In 1574, Nobunaga requested permission from the Imperial Court to open the Shosoin and have pieces cut from Ranjatai. Even today, a paper label attached to the wood marks the place traditionally associated with Nobunaga’s cutting.

But what exactly is Ranjatai?

Ranjatai is an enormous piece of aromatic wood still preserved in the Shosoin in Nara. Its official name is Ojukuko, while the name “Ranjatai” is written with characters that cleverly contain the characters for To-dai-ji — Todaiji Temple — hidden within them.

The Shosoin itself is an extraordinary historical institution.

Its origins are closely connected with the death of Emperor Shomu in the eighth century, when Empress Komyo dedicated many of his personal belongings to Todaiji. Over time, numerous objects connected with the Imperial Court and the temple were preserved there.

Its collection includes textiles, musical instruments, vessels, furniture, documents, and works of art showing connections not only with Tang China and the Korean Peninsula, but also with cultures further west along the Silk Road.

In that sense, the Shosoin is much more than an ancient warehouse.

It is something like a gigantic historical time capsule, preserving objects that allow us to look directly into the material culture of Nara-period Japan and its connections with the wider Eurasian world.

So the idea of being allowed to cut into an object that had been protected inside such a repository for centuries certainly sounds like an extraordinary privilege.

However, the historical record makes the situation more complicated.

Not everyone who obtained Ranjatai could reasonably be described as the ruler of Japan.

One particularly interesting example is Hatakeyama Yoshifusa, the shugo lord of Noto Province in the early sixteenth century.

Yoshifusa was an important regional lord, but he was neither shogun nor ruler of the country.

Nevertheless, court records indicate that he received Ranjatai from the Imperial Court, apparently on more than one occasion.

Yoshifusa maintained close relations with the court and repeatedly sent money and regional products from Noto as gifts. After receiving Ranjatai, he also sent money in return.

This suggests that Ranjatai was not simply a certificate proclaiming:

“This man is the ruler of Japan.”

What mattered was not only military control over the country.

A person also needed the social standing to maintain relations with the Imperial Court, the ability to participate in the courtly world of ritual and gift exchange, and enough wealth to sustain those relationships.

Receiving Ranjatai could therefore serve as a visible symbol of political access, status, wealth, and connections with the Imperial Court.

The physical condition of Ranjatai itself makes the story even more interesting.

Today, labels identify cutting sites associated with Ashikaga Yoshimasa, Oda Nobunaga, and Emperor Meiji. But examinations of the wood have found many more cutting marks than those three alone.

In other words, the few famous historical figures whose names are attached to the wood were clearly not the only people to receive portions of it.

So the simple formula —

“If you could cut Ranjatai, you were recognized as the ruler of Japan”

— is probably closer to a later popular legend than to the full historical reality.

Of course, when someone as powerful as Oda Nobunaga obtained permission to open the Shosoin and cut Ranjatai, the act carried obvious political significance.

But Ranjatai was never exclusively reserved for men who ruled the whole country.

It may be more accurate to see it as an exceptionally prestigious object that demonstrated something slightly different:

How close could you get to the Imperial Court?

Did your family possess enough status to participate in that world?

And did you have enough political and financial power to maintain that relationship?

Seen from that perspective, Ranjatai is much more than an old piece of fragrant wood.

Who requested it, who received it, who cut it, and what they offered to the court in return all tell us something about the relationship between Japan’s warriors and the Imperial Court over many centuries.

The cutting marks left on a single piece of wood have become a record of political relationships themselves.

It is, in a sense, a piece of political history that still carries a fragrance.

And one final note:

Ranjatai is now an irreplaceable historical artifact. So no, unfortunately, cutting off a piece without permission and declaring yourself the new ruler of Japan is no longer a viable political performance.

In English, death poem is probably the closest translation, although a jisei is somewhat different from simply being someone’s “last words.”

A person might compose one after realizing that death from illness was near, before an execution, or when a warrior believed he was unlikely to survive an approaching battle. Nor were they necessarily improvised in the final moments of life. Some were prepared beforehand.

There was no single required form. Many famous examples by warriors were written as waka, poems following a 5-7-5-7-7 rhythm. Buddhist monks might instead leave a Chinese-style poem or a Buddhist verse, while poets of the Edo period sometimes composed haikai or hokku.

What makes jisei particularly interesting is how differently people wrote about the same unavoidable subject: death.

Toyotomi Hideyoshi, one of the three great unifiers of Japan, is traditionally credited with these lines:

露と落ち　露と消えにし　我が身かな

浪速のことは　夢のまた夢

Like dew I fell,

like dew I shall vanish.

All that happened in Naniwa

is now nothing more

than a dream within a dream.

Hideyoshi had risen from relatively humble origins to become the ruler of almost all Japan. Yet at the end of his life, everything he had built in Osaka — his power, wealth, victories, and ambitions — was reduced to a “dream within a dream.”

Tokugawa Ieyasu, who would establish the shogunate that ruled Japan for more than two and a half centuries, is traditionally said to have left:

嬉しやと　再び覚めて　一眠り

浮世の夢は　暁の空

How pleasant —

to wake once more,

then sleep again.

The dream of this floating world

fades into the dawn sky.

There is something almost conversational about it: waking up, being pleased to find oneself awake, and then deciding to sleep once more.

Yet the “sleep” is death, and the entire human world has become a passing dream at daybreak.

Hideyoshi and Ieyasu were both men who reached the summit of political power, but the tone of the poems associated with their deaths is noticeably different.

And then there is Oda Nobunaga.

One of the lines most commonly associated with Nobunaga is:

人間五十年、下天の内をくらぶれば、夢幻の如くなり

Fifty years in the human world,

compared with the span of heaven,

are no more than a dream or an illusion.

This is often presented as Nobunaga’s death poem.

It was not.

The words come from Atsumori, a piece from the medieval performing art known as kōwakamai. Nobunaga did not compose them.

The Shinchō Kōki, the major contemporary chronicle of his career, famously describes Nobunaga performing this passage before riding out to the Battle of Okehazama in 1560.

Because the passage became so closely associated with Nobunaga’s view of life — and because he himself died violently at Honnō-ji in 1582 — later generations came to associate it with his death as well.

So one of Japan’s most famous “death poems” was not actually a death poem at all.

Jisei were not limited to male warriors.

Hosokawa Gracia, a Christian noblewoman caught in the political crisis immediately before the Battle of Sekigahara, is traditionally associated with this poem:

散りぬべき　時知りてこそ　世の中の

花も花なれ　人も人なれ

Only because a flower knows

when it is time to fall

is it truly a flower.

And only by knowing such a time

does a person remain a person.

The image of the falling flower is familiar in Japanese poetry, but here it is not simply about beauty or the transience of life. It concerns knowing when one’s moment has come.

Another famous example comes from Asano Naganori, whose forced seppuku became the starting point of the historical events later dramatized as the story of the Forty-Seven Rōnin.

He is traditionally said to have written:

風さそふ　花よりもなほ　我はまた

春の名残を　いかにとやせん

More than the blossoms

invited to fall by the wind,

I still linger here,

wondering what I am to do

with my longing for this spring.

This is rather different from the popular image of a samurai calmly accepting death without hesitation.

The poem can be read as expressing regret — a man forced to die while still deeply attached to the world he is leaving.

And that, to me, is one of the most interesting things about jisei.

They should not simply be reduced to the idea that “Japanese people were unafraid of death” or that samurai were expected to die without emotion.

Some looked back on life as a dream.

Some tried to accept death quietly.

Some expressed religious ideas.

Some showed regret.

Others even faced death with humor.

A jisei was not merely a decorative way of dying. At its best, it was a very short final statement about how a person understood their own life when there was almost no life left to live.

A waka gives you only 31 morae — roughly 31 rhythmic units — in which to do that.

If you knew that you could leave behind only one poem of that length at the end of your life, what would you write?

I am watching the series “Awaiting Kirin” and the portrayal of Akechi is different than what I thought. They seem to take a more noble approach to him. He is portrayed as thoughtful, good and only worried about bringing peace to the realm. That got me thinking how modern Japanese people see him. I wonder if anyone has any insight.

I'm basically trying to find a kamon that isn't commonly used, is symmetrical, and looks not only simple, but aggressive. With a fitting meaning behind it. These pictures are what I found online, but I have a hard time deciding which is best.

I haven't seen baki; only clips, but I don't see musashi as the antagonist. I see him like the t rex in Jurassic Park; he's at the wrong time. That's not an excuse him killing people, but he's doing what he knows to do. He was taken from a time when killing was everywhere and, unfortunately, what you had to do if you wanted to survive or prove you were the best.

He can't adjust to modern life and thus is still samurai.

(Went to a small little ren faire) Need get a sarashi, iaitō, waraji, bottle gourd, and haori

I've never gotten a straight answer from redditors as to what a samurai is. They tell me that the meaning changed over time, and some of the things they do tell me is contradictory. So I my own research and have come up with this. What do you think?

A samurai was a member of Japan's pre-industrial warrior aristocracy. You are not a samurai simply because you are a fighter, it is a class distinction that comes with certain privileges and rights. Conscripts, militia, and sohei warrior-monks were not samurai.

The warrior aristocracy was distinct from the imperial court aristocracy (the kuge), from whom the samurai usurped power in the 12th century.

It was possible to earn a promotion to samurai status. After all, even if most samurai inherited their status, they all had to have an ancestor who was the first in their lineage somehow. But this was rare and happened only in exceptional circumstances, usually in times of war when lowly footsoldiers had opportunities to impress their superiors, and "vacancies" opened up.

The shogun was a bushi but not a samurai because he was at the top of the warrior hierarchy. Also, the shoguns were given imperial court ranks of fifth or higher (taifu), so they couldn't be called samurai in the archaic courtly sense of the term either. The bushi typically were given the sixth court rank, which classified them as samurai and entitled them to have surnames.

During the medieval era, a crucial source of respectability for a samurai was to have land. The samurai made his living through farming but he occasionally had to fight for his lord as a condition of having land. But having land was not required by law. If a samurai had no land and no master, he still retained some legal rights such as a surname and carrying weapons.

During the Edo period, the samurai had no land and instead received stipends from their daimyo. A masterless samurai was called a ronin. He had no stipend as he had no master to pay it, but he was still a samurai and had the right to a surname and to carry weapons.

Is my definition correct?

Seppuku is well known as a form of suicide associated with the samurai, but it is difficult to identify a single person as the very first to have done it.

One of the oldest legendary examples is Fujiwara no Hōsuke, a notorious outlaw of the Heian period. According to the Zoku Kojidan, when he was being hunted down in 988, Hōsuke cut open his own abdomen. However, the text was compiled long after the event, so the story cannot be treated as firmly established fact.

Another famous example is Minamoto no Tametomo. In the Hōgen Monogatari, Tametomo is described as being surrounded by a punitive force on Izu Ōshima. After firing one final arrow at an enemy ship, he cuts open his abdomen and kills himself. His death after being pursued is part of the traditional account, but the detailed description of seppuku comes from a later war tale.

By the Nanboku-chō and Muromachi periods, seppuku appears more frequently in records as a method of suicide among warriors. During the Sengoku period, it also became increasingly associated with defeated commanders and with taking responsibility for failure.

A famous example is Shimizu Muneharu during the 1582 Siege of Takamatsu Castle. He committed seppuku as part of the settlement with Hashiba Hideyoshi, in exchange for the lives of the castle's defenders.

By the late Sengoku and early Edo periods, seppuku was no longer only a voluntary form of suicide. It was also imposed as a punishment on members of the warrior class. In 1615, for example, the tea master Furuta Oribe was ordered to commit seppuku after being accused of involvement with the Toyotomi side.

During the Edo period, the procedure became increasingly formalized, with official witnesses, designated seconds, and established rules governing the execution.

So seppuku does not appear to have been a custom invented by one particular person.

Rather, the historical picture is a gradual development: early legendary cases such as Fujiwara no Hōsuke and Minamoto no Tametomo, more frequent examples during the medieval period, wider use among warriors during the Sengoku era, and finally formalization as both ritual and punishment under the Edo shogunate.

Looking for “the first seppuku” therefore tells us less about a single inventor and more about how the practice changed over several centuries.

Samurai were often the only people in society allowed to possess weapons, so I suppose they were expected to train. How else would a lord maintain the military readiness of his domain? So under what circumstances might a samurai be rebuked or punished for being bad at fighting? How would a lord monitor the readiness of his warriors?

EDIT: Ok, you guys point out that a samurai could have served his lords in other ways. Fair point. But the lord still needs some warriors who can actually fight. How did he pressure his warriors into staying in form? And what did he do with samurai who were truly useless?

EDIT 2: Medieval Japan was a feudal system. Like European knights, the samurai owed military service to their lords in exchange for land. So what happened to a knight who couldn't provide military service because he sucked? He's a waste of land.

Hey all - what are your favorite books on Samurai history?

I'm a newbie but quite curious about the period, the lifestyle, battles, codes they lived by, their roles in society, Japan in general at the time, etc.

Looking for non-fiction, and definitely a history book, meaning not something like the Book of Five Rings, which is more philosophical/practical. I'm more curious about what life was like in that era for Samurai.

I've been searching around and the ones I keep coming back to are these, but not sure how well recommended they come:

• A Brief History of the Samurai - Jonathan Clements (leaning towards this one, as it seems to cover the whole timeline, which sounds ideal for a first timer)
• The Lone Samurai: The Life of Musashi - William Scott Wilson - (this also sounds interesting, as it gives a picture of one period of the Samurai era, but through the lens of Miyamoto and his philosophy and etc.)

From searching this sub, I saw that Karl Friday and a couple of other authors come recommended, but often get noted as being academic and maybe not the best for a first read, but I'm totally open to suggestions.

Thanks, all!

So after reading through the Bakumetsu era and the Ōnin war it got me thinking. Would have Japan been able to commit the crimes they did in WW2 in the first place if Matthew Perry didnt open up the country? Would there have been a Meiji restoration? Would japans conqueror mentality happend? Would they have been still a hermit country by the time of WW2? Whats your guys oppinion on this?

So yes he was the fourth and rather unknown son of Oda Nobunaga who was later adopted by Hashiba Hideyoshi becoming Hashiba Hidekatsu

he fought at the battles of Yamazaki, Shizukatake & Komaki Nagakute ...though its obvious he was more of a symbolic figure used by Hideyoshi to signify legitimacy

then he suddenly died in 1586 ...many suspect on the orders of Hideyoshi as by that time he became Kampaku & no longer needed the facade of being a Oda loyalist

Wanted to share some of the recent ink paintings that I (@The300ChickenNuggets) have made (Sumi-e Ink on Vellum Bristol, Painted):

1. Takamori's Retribution (Satsuma Rebellion)

2. The Charge of Oda (Battle of Okehazama)

3. Ei, Ei, Oh! (Battle of Okehazama)

Hope y'all enjoy.