What Did Warlords Do When They Were Not Fighting? Love, entertainment, horsemanship… What did famous generals do when they weren’t fighting?

They actually fought for only a few years in their lives!

He won victories with his valor in defeating large armies with a small number of men, or with his cunning in playing tricks to outsmart his opponents…. For the warlords who lived through the age of battles, the battlefield was a stage of “Hare”. But the “ke” – their daily work and life away from the battlefield – is not so easily revealed.

What about family life and hobbies?　What was the life of a real warlord like?

The book “What Did the Warlords of the Warring States Do When They Were Not Fighting? The book was published by Atsushi Kawai, an author, visiting professor at Tama University and part-time lecturer at Waseda University, who is known for his historical novels and historical supervision. We interviewed him about the daily lives of the warlords.

First of all, the time that warlords actually spent fighting in battle, including expeditions, was probably only a few years at most in their lifetime. By far, he spent more time not fighting than fighting.

However, even in the Warring States period, they did not neglect their daily training. Oda Nobunaga, for example, trained all day long in archery and horsemanship. Training for fighting was essential from an early age. There is no doubt that most of our lives are spent preparing for things other than actually fighting,” said Kawai.

This is not just a matter of “samurai etiquette,” which had been de rigueur in the peaceful days of the Edo period. It is a matter of course, since one has to live or die in an emergency.

To win over other generals, it is not only military prowess that is necessary. He also put a great deal of effort into recruiting and drawing out talented people, or in modern parlance, headhunting.

The warlords had to win the battles or else their houses would fall into ruin. For this reason, the warlords took up more and more talented people. There are not so many examples like Nobunaga appointing Toyotomi Hideyoshi as a lord of a castle from among the common people, but there was a tendency to select people who could be useful, whether they were farmers or merchants.

Unlike in the Edo period, it was not unethical for a samurai who served another family to “change jobs” to another family. It was quite common for a samurai to move to a lord who appreciated him and paid him well, and a samurai such as Takatora Todo changed his lord many times.

In particular, Hideyoshi, who was from a commoner’s background and had no vassals to begin with, made his move to vassals of other families. The ability of a warlord to seize the hearts of capable men and gather them into his own house is another skill.

Polygamy was the norm.

So what about family relationships? It is right in the middle of the private life, and it is also important in terms of producing an heir to the throne. What were the views on love and family life of the warlords?

In general, I think they were polygamous, with one wife for each of their wives. Not only warriors, but also people of power and position since the time of the Heian aristocrats. However, Mori Motonaga did not have a common-law wife while he was still alive. He grew up with his father’s stepdaughter, Sugi-no-Ohkata, who took care of him after his parents died when he was a child, and he must have had a strong sense of respect and esteem for her. I believe this is a rare example.”

In addition to the regular and side wives, it was also popular for warlords to enter the path of boy love.

In those days, before the introduction of Christian morality, people were more open-minded about sexual matters, and warlords sometimes loved the boys in their retainers’ families. This was not limited to the battlefield, but in everyday life. This is true of Takeda Shingen and other examples. After all, the spiritual bond between them became so strong that they would say, “I am willing to die for my lord! ‘ I guess that’s what it comes down to.”

The book describes an episode in which Takeda Shingen wrote a letter to a young man six years younger than himself at the age of 22. Shingen excuses his affair, and it is interesting to note that the young man is Toratsuna Kosaka Danjo, who wrote most of the Koyo Gunkan, a military treatise on the tactics and strategies of the Takeda clan. It is clear that there was more than just a physical connection between the two men.

For a warlord, the children of his successors must have been very important. What was the relationship between parents and children like?

Hideyoshi is the most obvious example of a man who felt that his children were cute. For him, Hideyori, who was born after his 50th birthday, must have been cute and cuddly. I want to go over there and kiss him right away! He wrote with such affection that we can’t help but laugh. However, this is probably a special feeling unique to Hideyoshi, who was born a commoner.

Parents and children of ordinary warlords are a bit different. They took their children as hostages for political maneuvering when they were young, or left them to be raised elsewhere, and had little contact with them on a daily basis. It was not unusual for parents and children to become enemies.

It was not just a matter of “my child is cute. Warlords sometimes had to use their children as a tool for political maneuvering.

The tea ceremony is also a political tool.

But having seen all this, one wonders if there is such a thing as an element away from warfare. Is there such a thing as a simple pastime?

Hawking, sumo, Go and shogi, tea ceremony, and renga were popular. I think that Go and Shogi were also tactical pastimes. Falconry was also a practice for warfare by riding around on a horse, and probably had an element of patrolling in the territory. Tokugawa Ieyasu, for example, gave instructions to his vassals based on what he noticed during his falconry trips.

Sumo is naturally a physical discipline, and the enjoyment of competing with strong wrestlers in the service of the shoguns is also a characteristic of the warlords who loved to fight.

What about the tea ceremony? It seems that it was Nobunaga who popularized the tea ceremony among warlords, which had exploded in popularity among court nobles and wealthy merchants at the time.

When Nobunaga went to Kyoto with a large army, he was presented with excellent tea utensils by court nobles and wealthy merchants, and he became amused. He called it “Meimono Hunt,” and forced them to give him their best tea utensils.

I think they realized the value of the masterpieces. They began to give them as rewards instead of swords. They also made the tea ceremony a political tool by giving the right to hold tea ceremonies to their vassals. Later, Sen no Rikyu established it, and Hideyoshi also used Rikyu’s small tea room as a place for one-on-one negotiations with his opponents.

Renga is a game in which several people read the upper part of a poem (5, 7, 5) and the lower part (7, 7) to each other. However, even this seems to be politically motivated.

It was very popular among the nobility, but Nobunaga did not play it very much. However, Akechi Mitsuhide was actively engaged in renga, and used it as a tool to communicate with the imperial court, court nobles, and monks. It is thought that because of this, Mitsuhide was heavily favored by Nobunaga.”

History changes depending on “how old you live to be.”

However, even if you spend your daily life trying to win battles, you will not be able to overcome the passing of the years. In the end, Kawai reveals that the generals who survived the war had one thing in common: they lived long.

He says, “Being healthy and long-lived was an important factor in the prosperity of a family, and the secret of victory. Generals who were so-called clan founders of powerful clans in the Edo period usually lived long lives. Although statistics are not available, I believe they lived longer than the common people who could not afford to take care of their health.

Mori Motonari said that his grandfather, father, and elder brother died young because of alcohol, and he himself did not drink. Ieyasu is also known to have been a “medicine maniac” who took great care of his health, even mixing his own medicines.

If Ieyasu had died at the same age of 62 as Hideyoshi, the Edo shogunate would have just been established and it is doubtful that the Tokugawa dynasty would have lasted for 260 years. Conversely, if Hideyoshi had lived to be 75, the same age as Ieyasu, Hideyori would have come of age. In this light, it is possible that history would have changed. Longevity was that important to the warlords.

The more we hear about the daily lives of the warlords, the more we realize that their main goal was to “win battles. Warlords spent most of their daily lives preparing for battle. In other words, they were not interested in anything that did not involve fighting,” says Kawai.

The warlords of the Warring States period were not the “ever-present battlefield” framed by today’s politicians, and this is exactly what they were like.

What Did the Warlords of the Warring States Do When They Were Not Fighting?