Act XVII
Realm Divide
Ever since the fall of the Ashikaga shogunate in 1573 and even before, a delicate balance had existed between the Daimyos of Japan. Daimyos and coalition of daimyos would often fight for land, familiar disputes, religion, and economic reasons and in larger alliances in favor of more powerful daimyo. And even since the end of the times of Oda Nobunaga, Toyotomi Hideyoshi and Tokugawa Ieyasu, the rivalry and disputes between the feudal lords continued, well into the times of the Date Shogunate.
The period that followed the war of 1613-1616 and the end of the Tokugawa Bakufu was characterized by a centralization of power in the hands of certain daimyos and clans, and thus, while the Date reigned at Edo, the North and the East, Sanada Yukimura and the Sanada clan were given a de facto leadership over the western daimyos, even the ones as powerful as the Mori clan. The Shimazu family was meanwhile given a de facto control over Kyushu and the surrounding areas, although Shikoku was never under the formal sphere of influence of the Satsuma daimyos.
Although the balance between the Three Great families lasted for decades, continued rivalry and inner fighting combined with internal and external factors lead to a concentration of power at Edo, Kagoshima and Osaka and an increased sense of mistrust and animosity between daimyos and coalition of daimyos, with the Catholic Church, the Buddhist sects and the foreign powers intervening as they saw fit.
By the late 17th century, the Sanada clan had lost a great deal of influence in the west, which became increasingly dominated by the Mori of Chosu, the Shimazu of Satsuma and the Chosokabe of Shikoku, while at the west the Date remained as powerful as ever, although sharing their power with the church and the local daimyo, such as the Maeda and the Uesugi.
The centralization of commercial, religious and political power at Kagoshima and Edo soon surpassed the levels of power of Osaka, Kyoto and Sendai, leading to a polarization of Japan, which combined with the internal political and economical crises that followed the Six Year war and the Wars of Religion lead to the Satsuma war in early 1720.
The Satsuma War
The internal divisions between East and West that had existed in Japan since the war of 1613 finally lead to a new Civil war on the fall of 1720, starting with a small conflict at the Castle of Hiroshima, home of the Asano daimyo, loyal to the Shimazu.
On early September of that year, several retainers of the Asano clan had begun a series of crackdowns on perceived threats from underground catholic elements at the Hiroshima land, thus unavertedly sparkling a Christian uprising in the lands of the Asano family that was joined by non-Christian peasants as well. Of course, an uprising like that would normally have to be dealt by the local lord, as it was, but in this case things soon spiraled out of control, and soon several missionaries under government protection were killed in the ensuing rebellion. The real problem took place when Asano Yoshinaga, the daimyo of Hiroshima, refused to apologize and pay economic retribution to Edo or to the Archdiocese of Sendai.
The opportunity was thus seized by Shimazu Munenobu, lord of Satsuma and leader of the western daimyos, to once and for all cement his control over the West, and to a larger extent, all of Japan as the dominant Lord of the Empire.
A fleet from Kagoshima with 20,000 men sailed from the capital of the Satsuma Han and seized Hiroshima from the Sea during the month of October, while an army marched from Kyushu through the Chubu region, where the Mori clan had somewhat declared themselves allied to the Shimazu.
Before the Shogun could respond, the Satsuma fleet set sailed once more, this time with 30,000 men, and entered the Gulf of Osaka, taking the castle with the help of some loyal retainers from the Sanada family, while the lord himself was away at Kyoto. Matters at Osaka were further complicated when the second son of the Sanada daimyo of Osaka was declared lord of Osaka castle by the invader forces.
The winter of 1720 was continued with further victories on the behalf of the Shimazu-led coalition, which was joined by several daimyos of the western provinces and Kyushu, under nominal control of the Shimazu since the mid-17th century in any case.
And to complicate matters even more, several daimyos of the East and West, as well as the Chosokabe clan of Shikoku, declared neutrality in the new civil war, leaving the Date clan isolated in the initial stages of the war.
Date Yoshimura
The 5th Shogun of the Date clan was unlike his predecessor, a true descendant of Date Masamune, to the point in which he was thought to be an actual reincarnation of the great daimyo.
Having grown up amongst warriors, soldiers, samurai and imperial guards while hearing of stories of the Japan of the Sengoku period and heroes such as Date Masamune, Miyamoto Mushashi, Sanada Yukimura and Oda Nobunaga, thus he became increasingly interested in war and fighting, and turned up as an incredibly skilled warrior and an excellent strategist, first leading forces at India personally in the name of Date Tsunamura and then at Mindanao and Siam.
After 10 years as Shogun, the Satsuma rebellion was seen by Yoshimura as an unforgivable offense to his person, and began to rally his forces to meet with this threat. Upon gathering a medium force at Edo, he set for Sendai, to rally the daimyos of the North under his cause. This is how the Ōuetsu Reppan Dōmei or ‘Northern Alliance’ was created by the daimyos of Tohoku, Edo and Ezo, forging a military and political coalition to fight the forces of the West. Months later, the Northern Coalition would be joined by lords such as the Maeda clan of Kaga and the Uesugi joined forces with the Date-led alliance, bolstering the numbers of the Shogunal army.
Nevertheless, the initial campaigns around Osaka proved to be particularly futile and bloody in their nature, with the fortifications that had been rebuilt over the decades and in the last occasion with the help of French Military engineers, being unable to be defeated by the forces besieging it. The winter campaign saw a massive use of infantry and dragoons, not to mention entrenchment and bayonet charges, to an incredible deadly effect.
By the spring of 1721, the Army of the North under Date Yoshimura himself arrived at Osaka, where the bulge of the Western Army was fighting in a campaign to bleed the Shogunal forces dry, hopefully with the final result being their retreat and the fall of Kyoto and eventually Edo. History is of course, full of surprises, and the Osaka campaign of 1721-1722 would not prove otherwise.
The Osaka campaign
The castle of Osaka, at the time one of the biggest and most important fortresses in Japan, became the scenery of one of the bloodiest and most important wars in the history of the Empire of the Sun between the winter of 1720 and the early autumn of 1721.
Rebuilt and redesigned using the knowledge learnt from French and European military engineers like the famous Vauban, Osaka was the most imposing and impregnable fortress in Japan and solely by the fact of being in the hands of the enemy a great moral victory had been won by the Satsuma.
Nevertheless, Date Yoshimura was not the kind of man to give up easily, and thus he took his army directly against Osaka, where the best troops of the Satsuma domain waited with their arms ready.
The trenches around Osaka thus became a place known as No-man’s land, where the infantry soldiers and the dragoons engaged in constant charges and the artillery pieces on both sides roared endlessly as the snow from the sky covered the battlefield covered in dead bodies. The widespread use of modern artillery, entrenchment, bayonets and bayonet charges amongst other things lead to a massive casualty rate that did not stop until the end of the winter neared, when both sides were too exhausted to keep fighting.
Yet an important part of the problem was not on the land but on the seas, as the Satsuma forces could be easily reinforced and supplied from the seas thanks to their navy. Therefore, naval engagements between the Satsuma and the Loyalist fleets began in the winter of 1720-1721, in which ironclads and fire-ships were used on large scale once more, henceforth adding more dead to the casualty count.
Furthermore, the Dutch and the English were supporting the Satsuma war effort with European technology, engineers, advisors and even money on some occasions, as their trading interests in the East had been threatened by the Japanese and their French allies.
The fate of the Osaka campaign did not change until the summer of 1721, more precisely on July 19th of 1721, when the battle of the Gulf of Osaka took place. The battle itself did not take place until the night of that day, but despite its duration, it resulted in one of the most vital battles in the History of 18th Century Japan.
At first, Japanese forces landed at the two sides of the entrance to the Gulf of Osaka, attacking and disabling the coastal defenses and capturing several artillery pieces that would later be turned against the Satsuma fleet.
Admiral Otomo Tadamichi then led a smaller fleet of European and Japanese style ships, as well as a reduced number of Japanese ironclad ships and entered the Gulf of Osaka in the early night of July 19th, taking the Satsuma fleet by surprise and managing to wreck havoc by destroying the enemy flag ship while setting several of the bigger ships on fire thanks to the use of the surprise element and small Explosion-ships, forcing the enemy fleet to break formation and to lose any sign of organization. Upon spreading panic, the loyalist naval artillery opened fire upon the Satsuma fleet at Osaka and the smaller port of Kobe, destroying it in detail and regaining the lost naval superiority over the rebellious daimyo of the west.
The seas responded to the Shogun once more, and now things on the land would have to change as well.
The Tiger of Malaysia
While the ultimate result of the Osaka campaign was due to a combination of superior leadership as well as good luck, there is still one particular man that would deserve a large part of the credit, and that man was Tanaka Shosuke.
Allegedly a descendant of the early 17th century adventurer of the same name, Tanaka Shosuke’s life remains a mystery even to this day; the first known fact about him is that he started his brilliant military career as a foot soldier at Temasek at the age of 16, fighting the forces of Johor and the Dutch India Company. After several years, the young soldier rose through the ranks thanks to his skill and leadership abilities, as well as his heroism, and by the time he was 30, he was leading the forces besieging Malacca, where the joint power of Aceh, Johor and the Dutch India company was broken. This is when he gained the nom de Guerre that would accompany him for the rest of his life: “The Tiger of Malaysia”, although the Malay Peninsula would not be known officially as Malaysia for another generation. European and Japanese literature did much to further his fame, even if more fiction than fact reached the many readers of his literary adventures.
‘Tiger’ Tanaka was recalled by the Shogun in the middle of the Siege of Osaka, not only due to his expertise and ability, but also due to the psychological effect his presence in the battlefield alone would cause in the enemy lines.
At the very moment of his arrival, dramatic changes were undertaken in the loyalist armies: several officers were replaced either due to incompetence or lack of ‘courage’, new battle formations and techniques used at Malaya were introduced to the insular forces, as well as new codes, flags and standards; strict discipline became the general rule in the Northern army, to the point in which several soldiers were hanged for laziness and incompetence upon the arrival of Tanaka. Most importantly, the military leadership of the army became more dynamic, fluid and aggressive, although without the levels of recklessness and impulsivity of Date Yoshimura.
A widespread use of special agents such as ninjas and spies, as well as camouflage in the torn battlefields allowed the Shogunal armies to achieve several victories in the spring of 1721, forcing the Western armies to fall back to their second line of defenses, while the destruction of the Satsuma fleet at the Gulf forced them to retreat to their third and final defensive line.
The final battle of the Osaka campaign before the fall of the Castle itself was the Battle of Shigeno, which was as well one of the finest examples of Tanaka’s leadership and tactical ability.
By giving the impression that his flanks were weaker and the centre too strong, he tricked the enemy into attacking the right flank, where artillery pieces and a third line of musketeers was camouflaged. Once the charging force was trapped, Tanaka sent his reserve cavalry to pursuit them right to the centre of the field, taking the bulk of the enemy force by surprise and forcing them to break formation, and the third line of Satsuma soldiers to leave their trenches in panic. Osaka castle fell the next day, Tanaka Shosuke leading the marching cavalry that paraded through the streets of the city that day.
at first maybe, but once you've got the french supporing the protestants, you notice that religion is but an excuse...and that's what I needed. You see, without the authoritarian government of the Tokugawa, the Date are unable to keep the rivalring Daimyos from fighting each other endlessly, religion is but one major cause.