Premodern Japan

One of the most fundamental problems confronting a historian is the question of how one should do history, that is to say, how does one proceed to inquire historically, and how does this relate to other forms of inquiry ? There are many issues within this larger question, such as how archaeology and history are related. In this article my particular concern is the relationship of history and literature ; specifically, how historians deal with literary sources, and how history and literature can be integrated. My aim is to present several possibilities of various conceptualizations and methods based on writings by scholars, largely historians, who have involved themselves in this issue through their work. Drawing upon the work of scholars of pre-1600 Japanese studies, I will examine a range of approaches, and the advantages and disadvantages thereof, and attempt to offer my own perspective on the issue. Instead of setting out to essentialize certain scholars or reduce them to just one perspective, I am concerned here with using them to present and discuss some of the various approaches that have been advanced in the field.

The year Tenpyō Shōhō 1 as narrated in the court chronicle Shoku Nihongi was one of the most momentous years in the eighth century, an era teeming with dramatic political intrigue, rebellions and succession disputes. Corresponding roughly to the year 749 in the Julian calendar, it saw the abdication of the Emperor Shōmu and the accession of his daughter Abe no Naishinnō, the first female Crown Princess, as the Empress Kōken.  Shōmu declared himself the slave of the Three Treasures at Tōdaiji, and the mysterious and mighty kami Hachiman entered the Nara capital. The year was the occasion for two changes of nengō, or era name, first from Tenpyō 21 to Tenpyō Kanpō 1, then to Tenpyō Shōhō 1. The following complete translation, the first into English or any other Western language, provides a direct window into the mid-eighth century and highlights crucial events of the Nara period in a way which has not been provided before.

As more scholars enter the field of Japanese food history, we are all becoming aware of how much more there is to learn. Our progress rests on the availability of primary sources which are plentiful for some topics but nonexistent for others, especially for premodern Japan (before1868). This essay explores several “known unknowns,” instances when my own research on sake, recipes, and restaurants faced unanswered questions due to a lack of sources. I also touch briefly on meat eating in premodern Japan, which is another longstanding issue of debate in food history.

This study investigates Yoshida Shinto founded by Yoshida Kanetomo (1435-1511), which reached its peak in the 17th and 18th centuries. Yoshida Shinto is credited as the first religious school that chose "Shinto" (way of the gods) as its denomination and regarded itself intrinsically different from Buddhism. Therefore Yoshida Shinto called itself also the "One-and-Only Way of the Gods." The study analyses the actual religious innovations of Yoshida Kanetomo and their historical and intellectual background. Thereby it addresses the general question to which extent Yoshida Shinto implied a new consciousness of Shinto as an autonomous religion. It is well known among experts of Japanese religion that Yoshida Shinto was heavily influenced by Buddhism and Taoism alike. The author argues, however, that there is a tendency to underestimate the degree, by which these influences were integrated into a comprehensive religious system that also involved indigenous ("Shinto") elements, such as ritual and mythology. The study is the first monograph of Yoshida Shinto in a Western language and includes also translations of three important Yoshida texts. It contributes to the present discussion about the notion of "Shinto," which has become the object of a critical re-evaluation in Japan as well as in the West.

The last Empress of Nara Japan, Kōken/Shōtoku Tennō 孝謙/称徳天皇, was a formidably powerful ruler. Daughter of the great Buddhist Emperor Shōmu 聖武天皇 and his Fujiwara wife Kōmyō 光明皇后, she was an adroit politician who overcame numerous challenges to her rule by male aristocrats. As a devout Buddhist nun, she wrestled with the implications of her faith for the political legitimacy of the imperial house. Her numerous edicts bear witness to the sophistication of the intellectuals at her court who tried to reconcile the Buddhist doctrine of divine protection of the state with the native tradition of godlike sovereignty and with elements of classical Chinese ideas concerning the proper function of the ruler.

Paperback -- https://www.amazon.com/Edicts-Last-Empress-749-770-Translation/dp/1500896020/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=the+edicts+of+the+last+empress&qid=1560007652&s=books&sr=1-1

Ebook - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06XDQKZXB

THE NARA SYNTHESIS

“In retrospect, we can see that by the close of the eighth century, several key patterns of institutional structure and political thought had been established in Japan. These include (1) the establishment of a major capital city on the Chinese model; (2) an imperial institution at the apex of a ranked bureaucracy; (3) an aristocracy grounded in law and based on wealth in landholding; and (4) an emerging syncretic royal political ideology. This political ideology incorporated elements of Buddhist protection of the emperor, Chinese philosophical and practical ideas about the conduct of an ideal state, and native ideas concerning the divine ancestry of the nation and its leaders.”
p. 119

Creation myths from ancient Greece are compared with their Japanese counterparts from the early 8th Century Kojiki (古事記, Records of Ancient Matters). This fusion essay is a summation of previous book sections by Greek and Japanese scholars on the element of fire, including Prometheus. Interpretation of the symbolism by the author brings out similarities and differences between European and Asian cultures. (The fusion essay on the element of air, including Eros and Psyche, is also available at this site).

While the kami Hachiman is one of the most popular Shinto deities in Japan today, in its historical incarnation as Great Bodhisattva the god has been a combinatory Shinto/Buddhist deity par excellence. The cult, whose history can be traced back to the eighth century AD, comprises a broad multiplicity of theological ideas that has continued to develop over the centuries, characterized by oracular, tutelary and martial themes; today its most famous rite is the Hōjōe, in which birds, fish and insects are released at the shrines, symbolizing the Buddha's compassion. Tōdaiji in Nara houses the most famous sculpture of the deity in the form of a Buddhist priest.

In the “Slaying of the Great Eight-Headed Serpent,”
one of the most iconographic episodes in Japanese
myth, the god Susanoo rescues a maiden from a dragon
and marries her. Comparing the Japanese narrative
with international dragon-slayer tales, this essay draws
attention to the dragon’s close connection to water and
iron. It argues that myths have to be adapted to new
circumstances in order to remain relevant to the group
that transmits them. In the myth of Susanoo’s dragon
fight, as related in the ancient chronicles Kojiki and
Nihon shoki, these repeated adaptations are still visible
as various layers of meaning. The essay illuminates
some of these layers and connects them to cultural
techniques such as wet-rice cultivation or metallurgy.
This approach makes it possible to trace the evolution
of the myth, which found its culmination in the
written versions of the early eighth century

The Tale of Genji (Genji Monogatari) is written during the Heian-period (794-1185) by the court lady Murasaki Shikibu and is considered one of the earliest novels in the world. Originally written in classical Japanese, its first English translation appeared in the late 19th century by Suematsu Kenchō. Ever since, four more English translations appeared on stage: Waley (1921-23), Seidensticker (1976), Tyler (2002) and Washburn (2015). This article makes a comparison between these translations and the Japanese source text, to uncover its hidden message. With the use of quirky popsong titles, this paper introduces Genji as a gentleman, Casanova and a sexual predator. Moreover it is an investigation into the relationship between work and author.

This article analyzes two episodes of the Phoenix series written by Osamu Tezuka (1928-1989), published between 1967 and 1988. The analysis of episodes narrated between Yayoi and Kofun periods allows identifying the documentation chosen by the author and to interpret the work as a historical fiction written according certain line of postwar Japanese historiography that understands history as a construction and is critical with a narrative centered on the emperor worship that configures the imperial ideology that derived in the Second World War.

[1. Abstract] Unlike his later works, Yamaga Sokō's Shidō was the very first attempt in Japanese intellectual history to comprehensively address the identity crisis of the samurai during the pax Tokugawa. As such, its importance is manifold – for one, it was one of the first attempts to transform the Confucian ideal of the noble man (君⼦) into a relevant and compelling moral philosophy, attuned to the complex realities of Tokugawa Japan, moving away from the previous, more scholastic attempts at Confucian interpretation. As such, it is not only offering us a view into the way Confucianism had naturalized during the Tokugawa period and had expanded to a broader audience than ever before, but it also hints at many of the social and political changes happening in 17 th century Japan. In the introductory study, I have detailed Yamaga Sokō's importance in Japanese intellectual history, including the reasons for his temporary demise and his rehabilitation by Yoshida Shōin, as well as his relevance today.

In ancient Japan various religious rituals were one of the means to enhance the central position of the emperor and to legitimize the imperial court. Ritual was thus a tool in the process of establishing power. This paper examines how the practices of the Rokujō and Mikohidari poetic schools also served as media to gain power in the early medieval poetic world. It turns out that various rituals, e.g. Hitomaro eigu (a ceremony worshiping the portrait and poetry of a Man’yōshū poet Kakinomoto Hitomaro [late 600’s]) practiced by the Rokujō school, and certain practices cultivated by both the Rokujō and Mikohidari schools, e.g. transmission of texts and literary knowledge orally and in a form of karon (poetry criticism), participation in uta’awase (poetry contests) as contestants and poetic arbiters, were means to establish their position in the early medieval era.
Ritualistic character of the Rokujō and Mikohidari schools’ practices enabled them not only to demonstrate that they possessed traditions, lineages of scholarship and knowledge about literature, but it above all allowed them to advertize their poetic activity to potential patrons. I believe both schools attempted to legitimize their position as specialists about certain literary texts. Ultimately, they attempted to ensure sponsorship of their poetic activity in the future. The history of Japanese poetry demonstrates that the Mikohidari poets “won the battle” for the poetic patronage and position of leaders of the medieval poetic world.

Rice, Agriculture, and the Food Supply in Premodern Japan demonstrates that rice’s significance as a foodstuff and as a cultural symbol has been vastly overestimated in the history of premodern Japan. Due to its presumed importance to Japanese civilization, rice and the irrigated agriculture that produced it dominated the attention of historians and archaeologists up to the 1990s.  Scholars since the 1990s have looked to linguistic, archaeological, textual and ethnographic evidence, and Rice, Agriculture, and the Food Supply in Premodern Japan refers to these sources and the secondary literature based on them to contextualize rice in the larger subsistence economy.

A common refrain in criticism of the eleventh-century work The Pillow Book is that Sei Shōnagon had nothing but disaparaging words to say about the lower classes.  This study re-examines this idea through an in-depth review of the passages in The Pillow Book that mention commoners, and it finds that the situation is somewhat more complex.  This paper begins by looking at the language that identifies people of the lower classes, specifically the noun "gesu," the adjective "waroki," and the prefix "-ese." Next the paper examines the scenes in which commoners make appearances.  While some passages contain negative portrayals, others express curiosity and interest in the world of the commoners, compelling us to revise the notion that Sei Shōnagon merely disdained the working classes.  Embedded within each of these passages, however, are a number of mechanisms that reinforce differences between the social class of the narrator and those of the objects of scrutiny.  This paper examines why the narrator uses this combination of images and concludes that they serve as elaborate performances that ultimately reinforce the illusion of the narrator's superior social and aesthetic acuity.

This two-day international symposium is the first of its kind in the UK to refocus on the varied sources for uncovering early modern Japan such as prints, books and ephemera. Bringing together perspectives from various fields of the human and social sciences, this symposium will provide an interdisciplinary space for discussing the role of sources as media and as research materials.

This piece considers the role of cultural capital in the early medieval
Japanese court through a case study of the Saionji family. As a prominent courtier family, the Saionji family deployed a variety of strategies aimed at securing and expanding their wealth and influence. These included investing substantial effort in two specific arenas of cultural endeavor. The first of these was waka (classical Japanese poetry). Many Saionji family members cultivated a reputation as talented poets, but they could also make use of their influence to ensure inclusion in the major poetry anthologies of the day. They also enthusiastically patronized other families connected to poetry, as another avenue of influence. The second arena in which they invested was that of the biwa (Japanese lute). In addition to developing their own performance skills and acquiring for their family the epithet “house of the biwa,” members of the Saionji family also gained prominence by served as instructors to sovereigns. The family’s efforts at building cultural capital were a vital component of its continued prominence.

This article focuses on the cultural valence of the human-fish (ningyo), a hybrid aquatic creature with a human face and a fish body, in premodern Japan from the eighth to the nineteenth century. Located at the intersection of religious, political, and scientific discourses, the ningyo becomes an exclusive observation point for better understanding the mechanisms of interweaving and mutual fertilization between apparently unrelated semantic fields such as those concerning deities, humans, and animals. Although heteromorphic bodies, here symbolized by the uncanny physicality of the ningyo, are usually dismissed as marginal elements within the broad panorama of relevant intellectual productions, this study problematizes this assumption and argues that hegemonic stances are constantly validated, or invalidated, according to their relationships with those on the fringes. Being an interstitial entity, that is, something that lives in the pleats of discourse, the ningyo is characterized by a continuous inclusion within networks of meaning and, at the same time, is doomed to perennial exclusion. This article sheds light on the hermeneutical dynamics that generate the exceptionality of the ningyo, and its never-ending role as a haunting mediator of reality.

Table of Contents
Nakamaro’s Revolt and the Exile of Junnin
Imperial Restoration
The Rise of Dōkyō
Syncretic Political Theology and the Imperial Institution
Appendix: Kanji Reference List and Glossary

Book:
https://www.amazon.com/Nara-Japan-764-Translation-Nihongi/dp/1530349095/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1537532888&sr=1-2
Kindle Edition:
https://www.amazon.com/Nara-Japan-764-Translation-Nihongi-ebook/dp/B07HBWXLTX/ref=sr_1_2?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1537532888&sr=1-2&keywords=nara+japan+ross+bender

Mark Jarzombek, “The Rise of the so-called Premodern,” 2000+The Urgencies of Architectural Theory,  GSAPP Transcripts, Columbia University (2015).

This article takes objection to the institutionalization of a new faux-discipline, The Premodern. It is a symptom of silent and uncritiqued changes in architectural pedagogy.

This is the first translation into a Western language of this segment of Shoku Nihongi, the official court chronicle of Japan’s eighth century. It includes Emperor Shōmu’s declaration before Rushana Buddha at Tōdaiji, Shōmu’s abdication and the accession of Empress Kōken, Hachiman’s entry into Nara, the death of Emperor Shōmu, and the suppression of the Tachibana Naramaro conspiracy.

Book available at:

http://www.amazon.com/Nara-Japan-749-757-Translation-Nihongi/dp/1517638429/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1444576606&sr=1-1&keywords=Nara+Japan%2C+749-757

Kindle edition:

https://www.amazon.com/Nara-Japan-749-757-Translation-Nihongi-ebook/dp/B07HC1STJ3/ref=sr_1_4?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1537532125&sr=1-4&keywords=nara+japan+ross+bender

The Era of Female Sovereigns
From 592 when the first female sovereign, Suiko, took the throne, until the death of Shōtoku in 770, six women reigned as supreme rulers of Japan, interspersed among male rulers. In the official histories they were all named “tennō.” Although this term, which literally means “heavenly sovereign,” is usually translated as “emperor,” the Japanese word does not make a distinction between male or female. One of the difficulties in writing about ancient Japanese history in English is the ambiguity of the term “empress,” which is used for both reigning female monarchs and the consorts of reigning monarchs.  We speak, for example, of the “Empress Jitō,” who was both the spouse of the Emperor Tenmu but also tennō in her own right after his death. But the female tennō Genmei, Genshō, and Kōken were never the consorts of male rulers, and the latter two never married. One solution would be to simply call the female tennō “emperor,” but at present the convention is either to term them all “Empress” or to use some circumlocution such as “female sovereign.”

Association for Asian Studies Annual Conference, Philadelphia
Sun Mar 30 2014, 8:00 to 10:00am 

Approaching Ancient Japan: New Methods and Sources for an Interdisciplinary Study of the Nara Period (710-784)

Session Organizer: Bryan Lowe (Vanderbilt University) 

Political Theology in the Reign of Nara’s Last Empress: Edicts and Memorials in the Shoku Nihongi

*Ross Bender (Independent Scholar)

Spell, Song, or Salutation? The Naniwazu Poem on Inscribed Objects

*Joshua Frydman (Yale University)

Upholding the Buddha with a Century of Study: The Pedestal of Yakushiji’s Main Icon

*Cynthea Bogel (Kyushu University)

Networks of Practice: Early Japanese Buddhism through the Lens of the Shosoin Corpus

*Bryan Lowe (Vanderbilt University)

Chair: Bryan Lowe (Vanderbilt University) 
Discussant: Samuel Morse (Amherst College) 

Abstract

Objects and texts produced in the Nara period (710-784) played a foundational role in shaping the political, literary, artistic, and religious history of Japan. In the eighth century, individuals from diverse social backgrounds cooperated to build bureaucratic institutions centered on a sovereign claiming divine descent, develop novel ritual and artistic technologies that altered pre-existing practices and beliefs, and rapidly disseminate writing through economic and poetic exchanges. Despite the centrality of this period to the emergence of Japan as a cultural and political entity, Western research remains limited, a shortcoming that has precluded conversations across disciplines and with researchers working on later eras. This panel, composed of scholars at various stages in their careers, reassesses early Japan by introducing a range of materials that demonstrate the benefits of interdisciplinary research. First, a historian examines imperial edicts and memorials to the throne to highlight the diverse ideological resources employed in the court of Nara’s last female sovereign. Next, a scholar of literature turns to excavated tablets inscribed with poems to evaluate their ritual, political, and material meanings. Third, an art historian considers the motivations that led artists to deploy a unique configuration of trans-cultural motifs on a pedestal under a Buddhist statue. Lastly, a Buddhologist uses ledgers and memos from a state sanctioned scriptorium to explore the religious lives of mid-level administrators and laborers otherwise absent from the historical record. Taken together, these papers show the necessity of an interdisciplinary approach to a period in which the sources transcend modern departmental divisions.

While researching the tactical facts surrounding the Battle of Nagashino, three historiographic issues became apparent.  First, most secondary authors were not concerned with how the actual battle itself was conducted, but rather the political results it influenced. Second, authors who did concern themselves with how the battle was actually fought failed to critically evaluate their sources, primary or secondary, and privileged one of two competing primary source texts over a comprehensive analytical comparison. This despite the existence of at least nine primary sources accounts, each containing the contradictions, biases, and flaws to be expected from historical documents. Third, despite the suggestion of a few historians that archaeology and terrain analysis might be useful to clear up some of the controversies surrounding Nagashino, no such analysis had been completed in detail. Accordingly, historians arguing the assorted controversies surrounding Nagashino, such as numbers and emplacement of guns by the Oda or the reasons for Takeda Katsuyori’s ill-fated assault on Oda positions, are basing their positions on flawed historical interpretations. Therefore, this paper focuses on tracing the historiography of the battle, outlining the interpretive flaws, and explaining how alternative analytical approaches to Nagashino are necessary to resolve outstanding controversies. This sets up a subsequent analysis of Nagashino using military doctrinal concepts to suggest possible solutions and further avenues of research.

This article examines the nature of the phenomenon of switch-reference (SR) in Late Old Japanese (LOJ). SR has traditionally been described as a system whereby certain particles or affixes attached to the verb of one clause indicate coor disjoint subject reference with the verb of the following clause. Recent work (Stirling 1993) has suggested, however, that SR may function to indicate a range of semantic discontinuities between clauses, including, but not limited to coand disjoint subject reference. Following a survey of the extant literature, SR in LOJ is examined through the analysis of a corpus of text from the Sakaki chapter of the Genji Monogatari. The results suggest that SR in LOJ is of the latter type.

CHAPTER THREE The Changing Use of Honorifics in Japanese Literary Texts Thomas McAuley \. Introduction It is probably not going too far to state that it has always been almost impos-sible for speakers of Japanese to say anything without including some form of politeness ...

This is the final number in a five-volume series of translations of Shoku Nihongi for the years 749-770, the reign of the Last Empress of Nara Japan. It covers the years of Dōkyō's supremacy, the Hachiman oracle, the death of Empress Shōtoku and the accession of Emperor Kōnin.

Table of Contents


The Dōkyō Supremacy
Imperial Legitimacy and the Hachiman Oracle
Death of the Empress and Kōnin’s Accession
Appendix: Kanji Reference List and Glossary


Book:

https://www.amazon.com/Nara-Japan-767-770-Translation-Nihongi/dp/153462029X/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1537533168&sr=1-1

Kindle edition:

https://www.amazon.com/Nara-Japan-767-770-Translation-Nihongi-ebook/dp/B07HBLRZ32/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1537533168&sr=1-1

The Battle of Nagashino (Japan, 1575) is often simplistically described as a victory of one force armed with technologically advanced firearms (the Oda and Tokugawa) against a more “traditional” force (the Takeda). This attention on firearms as the focal point of the battle has made Nagashino an academic “battleground” between proponents and detractors of technological military revolution. Unfortunately, this debate has shifted focus from all other factors that contributed to Oda & Tokugawa victory over the Takeda. This paper asserts that an Oda/Tokugawa victory at Nagashino occurred as the result of a sophisticated and complex tactical plan, and that of central and critical importance to this plan was the control of information.
Oda Nobunaga’s information dominance over Takeda Katsuyori set the conditions for a decisive tactical victory. Nobunaga was able to gain an accurate picture of his enemy and the terrain through reconnaissance, forces familiar with the local area, and messages from the besieged Nagashino Castle which detailed Katsuyori’s force and actions. Nobunaga then denied Katsuyori the same information by camouflaging his army’s movements and deploy counter reconnaissance forces to eliminate the Takeda’s ability to gather tactical intelligence. Lastly, Nobunaga actively provided disinformation to Katsuyori in a grand deception effort that led Katsuyori to do exactly what his enemy wanted.
Rather than a technological victory, Nagashino should be viewed as an intelligence victory, and evidence of sophisticated integration of intelligence, deception, and tactics to achieve decisive effect.

San'ei-cho and Meat-eating in Buddhist Edo UCHIYAMAjunzO 内山純藏 There have been a number of recent reports about the excavation of large amounts of animal bones from sites within and just outside the city of Edo. These finds prove that animal meat was eaten in the Edo period, although there is no mention of this in historical records. Land mammals are most prominently represented among the bones discovered. Since the eating of animal meat was considered unclean dur ing premodern times in Japan, the common assumption has been that meat consumption was severely restricted, and avoided if at all possible, until after the Meiji Restoration in 1868. However, the Edo-period ani mal remains-including those of large numbers of wild boar, shika deer, and bear, along with dogs, monkeys, and horses-show that despite the assumed social taboo, mammal meat was being quite widely eaten dur ing this period (K a n e k o 1992). One site in which such remains were found is San'ei-cho 三栄町， excavated in 1985 and 1986 by the Shinjuku Board of Education. The report concerning the faunal remains of the site was published in 1991 (K a n e k o 8 c N a g a s h i m a 1991). The Faunal Remains at the San， ei-chd Site The remains at the San'ei-chO site (Tokyo-to Shinjuku-ku San'ei-cho 22) date to the second half of the eighteenth and the first half of the nine teenth centuries. The site was located a little to the west of the city of Edo, close to the Koshu highway which led west from the city and into present-day Yamanasm Prefecture. This location is significant, in that it would have made San'ei-cho an excellent place from which to redistrib ute meat into the city itself from animals brought from the mountains west of Edo. Details of the structural remains on the site have not yet been puba c k n o w le d g e m e n t s : We would like to thank Y o s h i d a Tadashi and M a t s u i Akira for their comments and advice on an earlier draft of this paper.

Most people familiar with Japanese military history know of the Battle of Nagashino (1575). The greater political ramifications of Oda Nobunaga’s elimination of Takeda Katsuyori as a significant threat have been explored in great detail; the differences in force composition and employment, primarily Nobunaga’s use of firearms, have been used to both support and attack the deterministic concept of a “Military Revolution” theory based upon technological change; and the dramatic image of the Takeda cavalry charging into the guns of the Oda has made for entertaining literary, movie, and television drama. We know, however, that most of our perception of Nagashino comes from inherently flawed laudatory biographies of Oda Nobunaga or histories approved by the ruling Tokugawa Bakufu decades after the battle took place. More recent research looks at the battlefield terrain and archaeological traces to fill in the missing blanks in the official accounts and artistic representations.  My analysis applies current military doctrinal processes to the decisions and actions of the primary combatants at Nagashino in an effort to rationally answer some of the outstanding discrepancies unresolved by textual research. Taking care to recognize that the Sixteenth-century samurai was not a professional soldier in the same sense as current military officers, and also remaining cognizant of the biases of a doctrinal system descended from a Western line of military thinking, I attempt, as a current member of the military profession, to recreate the decision making processes of both sides of the engagement, identify the critical factors that led to the definitive result, and suggest answers for the informational gaps left by the historical record. The desired analytical result is to twofold: first, provide an additional perspective on Nagashino to the specialized historian that contributes to the collective understanding of how the  Sixteenth-century Japanese engaged in the planning, command, and execution of warfare; secondly, to include the Battle of Nagashino in the discussion of historical lessons learned applicable to current students of military theory.

between the Minamoto (Genji) and Taira (Heishi or Heike) clans fought from 1180 to 1185. The chronicle itself emerged a century later, and was diffused throughout the country by biwa hōshi (biwa-playing monks, often blind), giving birth to a range of variants which were then written down. To avoid confusion, the text will consistently be referred to as the Heike Monogatari, while the Heike family will be referred to as the Taira.