Samurai Warfare And The State In Early Medieval Japan

Karl Friday, an internationally recognised authority on Japanese warriors, provides the first comprehensive study of the topic to be published in English. This work incorporates nearly twenty years of on-going research and draws on both new readings of primary sources and the most recent secondary scholarship. It overturns many of the stereotypes that have dominated views of the period. Friday analyzes Heian -, Kamakura- and Nambokucho-period warfare from five thematic angles. He examines the principles that justified armed conflict, the mechanisms used to raise and deploy armed forces, the weapons available to early medieval warriors, the means by which they obtained them, and the techniques and customs of battle. A thorough, accessible and informative review, this study highlights the complex casual relationships among the structures and sources of early medieval political power, technology, and the conduct of war.

A study of the institution of war in Japan over seven centuries.

Karl Friday, an internationally recognised authority on Japanese warriors, provides the first comprehensive study of the topic to be published in English. This work incorporates nearly twenty years of on-going research and draws on both new readings of primary sources and the most recent secondary scholarship. It overturns many of the stereotypes that have dominated views of the period. Friday analyzes Heian -, Kamakura- and Nambokucho-period warfare from five thematic angles. He examines the principles that justified armed conflict, the mechanisms used to raise and deploy armed forces, the weapons available to early medieval warriors, the means by which they obtained them, and the techniques and customs of battle. A thorough, accessible and informative review, this study highlights the complex casual relationships among the structures and sources of early medieval political power, technology, and the conduct of war.

The nation state as we know it is a mere four or five hundred years old. Remarkably, a central government with vast territorial control emerged in Japan at around the same time as it did in Europe, through the process of mobilizing fiscal resources and manpower for bloody wars between the 16th and 17th centuries. This book, which brings Japan's case into conversation with the history of state building in Europe, points to similar factors that were present in both places: population growth eroded clientelistic relationships between farmers and estate holders, creating conditions for intense competition over territory; and in the ensuing instability and violence, farmers were driven to make Hobbesian bargains of taxes in exchange for physical security.

This volume offers the first in-depth analysis in English of an understudied phenomenon in medieval Japanese history: the so-called akutō (literally, “evil bands”). Employing chronicles, laws, and legal documents from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, as well as recent Japanese scholarship, Morten Oxenboell examines the significance of akutō in legal proceedings to provide a nuanced understanding of how rural communities organized for and engaged in violent conflicts. He deconstructs the image of akutō as instigators of violence by underlining the significance of the term as a rhetorical device used by litigants to voice their grievances in Kamakura legal proceedings. The many instances in which akutō appear offer a clear example of the ways in which the new legal vocabulary concealed realities behind rhetorical flourishes and narratives of violence and predation. Violence was certainly a part of the negotiation for rights and privileges in the estate system, and Oxenboell demonstrates how conflicts developed and were untangled by local actors, who were rarely given a voice in sources from this period. By peeling away the rhetoric, he presents us a unique view of rural populations organizing their communities in the face of violence, whether as victims of outside aggression or as aggressors themselves against landlords or neighbors. The book therefore goes beyond the usual focus on elites in medieval Japanese history by concentrating on local mobilization schemes and strategies, which were often framed and defamed by central elites. Rural residents, who could not rely on the authorities for protection, handled their own security concerns via complex social mechanisms that tied together locals and absentee landlords in an uneasy relationship of mutual dependency. By examining the fissures in this relationship—in the form of akutō complaints—Oxenboell shows that violent activism was part of the daily management of estates and that such conflicts do not indicate an absence of order but rather a system of checks and balances that helped create a vibrant society.

A path-breaking study of the transformative power of war and its profound influence on 14th-century Japan

Samurai tells the story of the courageous and highly disciplined fighting men of this time, showing how they evolved from the primitive fighters of the seventh century into an invincible military caste with a fearsome reputation. In the early seventh century, the samurai rose to prominence during the struggles between the emperor and the military leaders (shogun). They took part in the invasion of Korea, as well as helping to keep Japan free from foreign influence. From the Heian period through to the Onin wars, the history of the samurai is replete with tales of heroism and bloodshed. Although the samurai is most famous for his use of the sword, he also used a wide variety of other weapons, such as the crossbow, the dagger and the spear. Samurai armour and costume were constantly evolving, and by the twelfth century most samurai were wearing the box-like yoroi armour. Samurai examines samurai fighting tactics, as well as acts such as ritual suicide (hari-kiri) and the taking of enemy heads as trophies.