Joshua's Obscure Conflicts of History class

[Shogun 144]

Hello and welcome to Joshua's obscure conflicts of history class. Today I will put up for you see an article I hope to submit to Military History Archive and Samuari Archives. Remember you saw it here first! Now pay attention and no throwing spit wads in class!

The Onin War (Onin no Ran)

By Joshua Gilbert

The Onin War was the catalyst that sparked the century long period of Japanese history known as the Sengoku Jidai, the "Age of the Country at War". What was originally a dispute between a father and his son-in-law became an eleven year war that trashed the once great city of Kyoto and sparked an era of bloodshed that is famous to this day.

The Onin War began because of the weakness of a Shogun. In 1464 Ashikaga Yoshimasa, the 8th member of the Ashikaga clan to hold the title Seii-Taishogun, a man renowned for his focus on tea party and poetry wanted to retire, but had no son. He decided to instead make his younger brother, Yoshimi, his heir. However Yoshimi was a Buddhist monk, so the Shogun had to first drag his brother of the monastery to make him his heir. One year later in 1465 the wife of Yoshimasa, Tomiko, bore him a son at last. Overjoyed the Shogun made his infant son, Yoshihisa, his heir instead. This was the leading cause of the war to come. At the time two powerful men in Kyoto, the capital at the time, were in the midst of a feud. On one side there was Yamana Sozen, a Buddhist monk who was famous for turning red when he got angry, which was often (hence his nickname Red Monk). On the other was his son-in-law Hosokawa Katsumoto, one of the Three Butlers of the Ashikaga clan (the other two were the Shiba and Hatakeyama clans). These two men had been engaged in a feud since the 1450s when they had meddled in the succession disputes of the Hatakeyama and Shiba families. Now they had another dispute in which to outmaneuver each other, this time involving the highest office in Japan. Sozen acted first by declaring his backing for the infant Yoshihisa. Katsumoto then threw his backing behind the Shogun's brother Yoshimi. Both men called for support from family relations and vassals, and before long the entire capital district of Yamashiro was nearly clogged with Yamana and Hosokawa supporters. The armies numbered 80,000 and 85,000 respectively, the largest yet seen in Japanese history. Yet both men were also reluctant to dive into a war. In 1467 Yamana Sozen called in the powerful warlord Ouchi Masahiro with another 20,000 troops. Then in February a Hosokawa mansion "mysteriously" went up in flames. The war was on.

The Onin War, so called because it occurred in the regnal year Onin 1, had begun. The Hosokawa retaliated for the destruction of their mansion in April when some samurai loyal to them attacked a Yamana rice shipment. In May rumors abounded that Yamana Sozen was going to attack the Imperial Palace. Hosokawa Katsumoto decided to act regardless of the truthfulness of the rumors and had Emperor Go-Tsuchimikado, Retired Emperor Go-Hanazono, and the entire Imperial family moved out of the Palace and to the headquarters of the Shogunate in Muromachi District. As it turned out Hosokawa had done right, for Yamana did launch an attack on the Imperial Palace. At the end of the month Hosokawa supporters burned the mansion of Yamana general Isshiki, not to mention the entire block, to the ground. The Yamana counterattack was fierce, and the war, so far just a series of raid and counterraid, intensified into a full-fledged war in the streets. By July the fighting was so devastating that all of northern Kyoto was in ruins and the remainder of the city resembled the battlefields of the First World War. The battle for Shokokuji in October, in which Yamana Sozen himself led an attack on the Hosokawa positions inside a Buddhist monastery, exemplified the carnage (eight carts of enemy heads were filled). By September everyone who could abandon the city did so, even while more reinforcements for the warring factions flowed in. By early 1468 a calm came over Kyoto as both sides rested and glared at each other from across the trenches. Hosokawa resumed hostilities when he brought in trebuchets and used them to fling rocks and exploding bombs into Yamana territory. Sometime later Hosokawa Katsumoto was able to score a major political coup when he convinced both Shogun Ashikaga Yoshimasa and the Emperor to denounce the Yamana as rebels. With the official backing of both Shogun and Emperor the Hosokawa now held the moral high ground in the conflict, any who supported Yamana Sozen did so at the danger of being declared a traitor to the Emperor. At first Yamana Sozen treated his branding with indifference, he had the support of such men as Ouchi Masahiro and several great clans. Plus he could always get the ruling changed later. Carnage and destruction continued for several years without any sign of letting up, even the deaths of Hosokawa Katsumoto and Yamana Sozen had little effect on the war. What had started as a personal spat had spiraled beyond all control. In 1475 Ashikaga Yoshimasa, previously caught up in his little world of poetry and tea, asserted some authority and began to order the various daimyo (feudal lords), on both sides, out of Kyoto. Many daimyo obeyed the Shogun and began to disengage. However the fighting would continue until 1477, as some stubbornly refused to give up. Ouchi Masahiro, the great champion of Ashikaga Yoshihisa's cause, finally brought the war to a close when he too finally agreed to the Shogun's will and left for home in Yamaguchi. As one last act of defiance he burned his section of Kyoto, the last one reasonably intact, to the ground as he left, blaming it on his common soldiers later. With the pull out of the Ouchi and their vassals from the conflict the eleven year long Onin War ended, not because one side achieved victory, but because both sides simply did not have the strength to continue anymore.

In the aftermath of the war much happened. After the last soldiers left Kyoto mobs descended on the city, it would be several years before peace was restored. Ashikaga Yoshimasa did little to help as he slid once more back into his private world. The chaos in Kyoto had a much larger effect then anyone could have expected as the fires of war spread into the countryside. Villages banded together under the Ji-Samurai (lesser samurai with common roots), forming armed bands called Ikki which soon mutated from mobs of peasants into disciplined armies. The rise of the Ikki and the continued chaos in Yamashiro (the Hatakeyama clan tore the province apart in a family feud) would soon prove to be just the beginning of one Japan's bloodiest periods. The century long Sengoku Jidai had begun.

[Paal_101]

Sweet work Joshua I remember somewhere deep in the past that you are a major fan of samurai history and warfare It is a fascinating area of study and one dream of mine is to visit Sekigahara.

[Shogun 144]

Wow thanks alot a Paul. I already submitted it to Samurai Archives and Military History Archives but have yet to receive a reply. You dream to visit Sekigahara too? Oh man that is my dream too, to visit the battlefield where Tokugawa won Japan.... Ah man that would awesome.