The Battle of Sekigahara: The Greatest, Bloodiest, Most Decisive Samurai Battle
This month we are looking at Japanese history making this weeks book The Battle of Sekigahara: The Greatest, Bloodiest, Most Decisive Samurai Battle by Chris Glenn. So let’s do this!
Sekigahara was the culmination of nearly 200 years of civil war in Japan and was such a massacre that at the end of it, the Shogunate, which had been a dormant concept for a time, was reinstated in the hands of the Tokugawa family, initially under patriarch and leader of the eastern force Tokugawa Ieyasu, and then inherited in the Tokugawa family for the next 260 years, a period of time known as the Edo period, for the city that Ieyasu made his capital, modern day Tokyo.
While the American civil war is well known for being North vs South, in Japan it was West vs East. In the West, the forces were led by Ishida Mitsunari and had approximately 83,000 soldiers. The cause of this most violent of civil wars at the turn of the 17th century is the death of Toyotomi Hideyoshi, who on his passing left a council of five Samurai in charge of his five year old heir, Toyotomi Hideyori. As one might guess...five people in charge is four people too many, and the groundwork was laid Sekigahara, with Ishida Mitsunari on one side, and Takagawa Ieyasu leading the approximately 80,000 troops of the Eastern army.
Both sides were more or less evenly matched by way of arms and armor, both sides had matchlock rifles and archery squadrons, both sides had plenty of samurai and foot soldiers. There’s some argument to be made that Ieyasu had an advantage in the form of one William Adams, who was a British pilot on the Dutch trading vessel Liefde, which carried on it 18 cannon, 500 matchlocks, 300 chain shot, approximately 5,000 pounds of gunpowder and 5,000 cannonballs. Adams would be the real life inspiration behind James Clavell’s book Shogun and main character John Blackthorn and is a loose telling of Japanese history from this time period which culminates in Sekigahra, with Toranaga (obviously the fictional version of Tokugawa) winning.
It’s been awhile since I read Shogun, but Glenn says “Adams, who was then to spend the rest of his life in Japan, was fortunate enough to find a patron in the man who would become shogun and was treated as personal advisor to Ieyasu in a number of matters. Adams would later be awarded a new name, Miura Anjin, and along with it the two swords of a samurai, being made a Hatamoto, literally a bannerman, a highly ranked and trusted vassal allowed direct access to the shogun himself.”
Just a quick aside, the Hulu series based on Clavell’s book is outstanding, I highly recommend it and I really hope they finish part two soon. Although according to the interwebs, the book is kind of looked down on in Japan as being too English presenting. But...well...it is written by an Englishman. And is based on arguably one of the more interesting English persons to come out of the 16th and 17th century. Not a whole lot of English were a.) willing to travel around the globe to see the sights only to b.) go completely native on a wholly alien culture.
Anyways, back to this book.
All roads at the time more or less led to Sekigahara, an almost dead center point in Japan. While no one knew exactly when, both sides were well aware that a massive conflict was coming. And it started butt early in the morning of October 21, 1600, when at 1:30am, Ishida Mitsunari left Ogaki Castle, where he had been stationed, gathering his troops and intelligence, and began moving towards Sekigahara.
Around 2am, Tokugawa Ieyasu received word that Mitsunari was on the move. And believe it or not, this news was late in coming. Yes, Mitsunari was finally on the move, but his army had been moving into position for the previous seven hours, which put Eastern forces at a disadvantage, because Western forces were able to take the high ground.
Turns out, that only counts in Jedi battles.
Both armies used matchlock, long spear, bow and arrow, polearms including short spears and naginata, and then the sword. Glenn lists them in that order because that was the order of importance. Matchlocks were coming into popularity but were still a pain to use, requiring several minutes to reload and lacking in reliability and accuracy, as rifling had not yet been invented. Long spear and archery were next in importance because hey….while the enemy is reloading their matchlocks, you can stab them up close OR from far away. The short spears, naginata, and swords were least important, largely because ever since man discovered archery, they realized they could kill from a distance with much less risk of being killed themselves. And archery would be very important in the coming battle since it had rained the night before, the ground was all foggy, soggy, and mist covered, and water had a heavy impact on whether or not a matchlock would even spark.
Quick primer on matchlocks: it starts with a cord that’s been treated with saltpeter and just sits there smoldering. When you pull the trigger, the cord drops into the flash pan, which is where the priming powder sits. This flash ignites the priming powder, which sends the bit of fire through the touchhole, which detonates the main powder charge in the barrel, sending your projectile down range. Too much water in the air can impact...well any or all of these steps. The self-contained cartridge known as the modern bullet would not exist for another 200 plus years.
So, 6am, 4.5 hours after Mitsunari headed out, 4 hours after Ieyasu played catch up on the move, Mitsunari’s people are lighting fires to warm themselves up in the misting rain. This causes the smart villagers of Sekigahara to flee for the even higher ground of the mountains, and Ieyasu warns his men not to get freaked out by the fires. And that the valley is pretty small, which will make the numbers look even larger then they are.
As the mists start to lift with the rising sun around 7:30am, both armies realize just how close they are, and battle begins. Almost immediately, a betting man would have bet on the West as eastern forces were pushed back 600 meters, nearly 2000 feet, or 3 football fields...since Americans love our zany units of measurement.
But, battlefields, especially as artillery was just being introduced, were more a push me pull you sort of endeavor and so it went back and forth for a bit and by 8:15am are in place to being a direct assault on Ishida’s front line defenses. By 9am, Todo and Kyogoku troops from the east have crossed the battlefield to directly engage Otani in the west. Furuta and Oda armies from the east start running down Konishi troops in the west. And at 10:30, Honda Tadakatsu crosses the battlefield ahead of Ieyasu’s relocation on the field, clearing the way for the war leader of the Eastern troops.
And gradually, throughout the day, what seemed in the first 15 minutes to a route of eastern forces by the west, turns into wholesale slaughter of the western forces by the East.
At 12:30pm, the tide becomes confirmed in favor of Tokugawa Ieyasu in what the author called “The Great Defection.” Ieyasu had arranged, prior to the beginning of battle, to have forces headed by Kobayakawa Hideaki, who were supposed to be allied to Ishida in the West, turn on their western allies and start fighting on behalf of the east. While Kobayakawa troops were slow to actually start this defection, when they did so, it led to more defections by other western troops.
By 1pm, leaders of the Western forces are beginning to commit seppuku as it becomes clear their chances for success are dwindling. By 1:30 the remaining western loyalists were in flight and the battle was effectively over by 2pm.
Now, all of that is a very short summation. Because this is a book review, not a detailed retelling of history. Where specific details of a specific engagement are known, Glenn includes them. And Japan has amazing resources for all of this, primary accounts Glenn was able to pull from for reporting. Much like Civil War battles are analyzed and details well known here in America, Sekigahara is that for Japan.
At 2:30pm they had the head viewing ceremony. This I will go into because I was morbidly fascinated when I say the section heading. It is exactly what it sounds like. All the heads collected during the battle are presented to the war lord, Tokugawa Ieyasu, for viewing and commendation. And omen reading. The look on the heads face was used for prognostication, and if a head was known to have a particularly bad foretelling, it would not even be presented during the ceremony, but rather taken to a temple for purification and curse removal.
Rewards were handed out to Ieyasu’s supporters, and punishments issued to those who survived from the Western forces. And when the dust had completely settled three years later, Tokugawa Ieyasu was named Shogun. It really was remarkable. Because the western forces were the loyalists, the ones who stayed true to Toyotomi’s vision. Historically, they were the good guys. And they had every advantage when the battle started. Eastern forces were outnumbered, they were surrounded, they were the usurpers, and they didn’t have the high ground...morally or physically. And yet they won. Part of this is that Tokugawa was the better general. He was better able to marshall his forces and get them all pulling in the same direction, unlike Ishida Mitsunari, who did not get along with people and was unable to lead effectively. “The western forces were handicapped by discord and in-coherency, while the Eastern forces remained unified, disciplined, and focused.”
The Tokugawa shogunate was unquestionably a rousing success for Japan as nearly 260 years of stability followed. They became wholly isolationist, leaving or entering Japan was a death sentence, they did not want nor need foreigners coming to their shores. And inside Japan, culture flowered, giving rise to several distinctly Japanese traditions like Kabuki, Noh and Bunraku performing arts, tea ceremony and bonsai cultivation were refined into their own art forms, and the cultural code of Bushido rose up. Which was interesting to read about, given last weeks book I think I assumed the Bushido code of chivalry came from the middle ages, approximately 1200, because that’s more or less when chivalric codes were created in the Occident/Europe. But Bushido was a creation of the Edo period, aka the Tokugawa shogunate.
The book opens with information about Oda Nobunaga and Toyotomi Hideyoshi because these two men laid the foundations for a later peace, which was built upon by the efforts of Tokugawa Ieyasu. I know the popular saying goes that history is written by the winners. And there is some truth to that. But it’s also true that Ieyasu saw beyond the fragile peace that was left on the shoulders of a 7 year old buy under a joint protectorate of five different, traditionally warring and powerful clans, and realized that if this wasn’t halted now, Japan was in for another 200 years of brutal civil war. I think he was a man who saw into the future, and chose to make the necessary changes to secure a longer peace.
Peace isn’t built by the hippies and free love people singing Give Peace a Chance and Kumbaya. It’s built by hard men who are willing to do violence, so that others may live peacefully. 30,000 men died at Sekigahara. Enourmous pits were dug as mass graves, which were still being excavated as recently as June 2024.
The absolute only fault I found with Glenn’s storytelling was when he was giving comparative body counts. And I’m not even sure I CAN fault him for this, because he’s Australian. And outside of America, arguably the most famous American Civil War battle is Gettysburg. So he used the body count at Gettysburg as a comparison, which was 7,863 killed over the three day battle. A more accurate comparison would have been Antietem. Which saw almost 23,000 killed in a single day in fighting. Which is still dwarfed by the 30,000 body count at Sekigahara. And both are dwarfed by Waterloo, with a body count of 47,000, which was also included in the book.
This book was riveting. Glenn does include a quick and dirty pre-history to explain how we get to Sekigahara, but if you want a run down of the players up to Toyotomi Hideyoshi, Netflix has a decent documentary series called Age of Samurai: Battle for Japan.
