50 Fun Facts About Feudal Japan

Which word did Japan give the typhoons that wrecked two Mongol invasion fleets in 1274 and 1281?

Kamikaze means 'divine wind', and the name was revived in the Second World War for pilots sent to sweep an enemy from the seas once more.

Which modern city was known as Edo when the Tokugawa shoguns ruled Japan from its castle?

Tokyo means 'eastern capital', a name Edo received in 1868 when the shogunate fell and the emperor moved his residence there.

Which long, curved sword did samurai of feudal Japan wear thrust through the belt with its edge facing upward?

Katana were worn edge-up so that a samurai could draw and strike in a single motion, unlike the older tachi, which hung edge-down.

The forty-seven warriors who avenged Lord Asano in 1703 are known by which word for a samurai without a master?

Ronin is written with the characters for 'wave' and 'person', a warrior adrift, and the forty-seven lie buried in front of their lord's tomb at Sengaku-ji.

Which samurai code of honour did Nitobe Inazo introduce to Western readers in his book subtitled The Soul of Japan?

Bushido means 'the way of the warrior', and the word only came into common use around the world after Nitobe's book appeared.

Which covert agents, trained in Iga and Koga, did warlords of feudal Japan hire as spies and mercenaries?

Ninja were known in their own day as shinobi, and the families of Iga and Koga sold their skills to rival daimyo for almost a century.

Which animals form the famous see-no-evil trio carved at the Nikko shrine where Tokugawa Ieyasu is enshrined?

Monkeys covering eyes, ears and mouth sit over the door of the shrine's stable, a 17th-century carving that made the image famous worldwide.

Which animals did the Tokugawa shogun Tsunayoshi protect with laws so strict that they earned him a nickname?

Dogs mattered to Tsunayoshi because he was born in the Year of the Dog, and his kennels at Nakano housed tens of thousands of strays.

Which Japanese entertainers, now famously women, were all men when the profession first appeared in the Edo period?

Geisha were at first male entertainers; the first woman known to use the title, a Fukagawa dancer called Kikuya, appeared around 1750 and was an immediate success.

Which English navigator reached Japan in 1600, became a samurai and inspired the hero of the novel Shogun?

William Adams was the first Englishman to reach Japan, where Tokugawa Ieyasu made him a direct retainer under the name Miura Anjin.

Which city stayed the emperors' home for eleven centuries while shoguns ruled Japan from Kamakura and Edo?

Kyoto was chosen as the seat of the imperial court in 794, and its name simply means 'capital city'.

Which American commodore sailed his Black Ships into Edo Bay in 1853 to force Japan to open its ports?

Matthew Perry came on the orders of President Millard Fillmore, and the shogunate that had kept Japan closed fell just fifteen years after his arrival.

In feudal Japan a daimyo's wealth and a samurai's pay were both reckoned in koku, a measure of which crop?

Rice was counted in koku because one koku was thought enough to feed one person for a year, so a domain's rating showed how many mouths it could fill.

Which school of Buddhism, brought from China by the monk Eisai, won the patronage of Japan's new samurai rulers?

Zen appealed to warriors through its discipline, and a Japanese saying held that its Rinzai branch was for the shogun while its Soto branch was for the peasants.

Which theatre form, begun by the shrine dancer Izumo no Okuni, has been all-male since women were banned in 1629?

Kabuki began in 1603 on a dry riverbed, where Okuni's troupe of young women danced; men known as onnagata took over the female roles after the ban.

Matsuo Basho, the wandering poet of Edo-period Japan, is remembered as the greatest master of which short verse form?

Haiku was known as hokku in Basho's day, the opening verse of a longer group poem, and only centuries later stood alone under its modern name.

Which Edo-period artist included The Great Wave off Kanagawa in his woodblock series Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji?

Hokusai made the series in answer to a boom in domestic travel, and it secured his fame both in Japan and overseas.

The squeaking corridor floors of Nijo Castle, long said to warn of intruders, are named after which songbird?

Nightingale floors chirp as their nails rub against metal clamps, though a sign at the castle says the sound comes from wear rather than design.

Which religion did the Tokugawa shogunate outlaw, making suspects trample sacred images to prove their innocence?

Christianity was tested with fumi-e, likenesses of Jesus or Mary that suspects had to step on; those who refused faced torture or death.

Travellers from which European country landed on Tanegashima in 1543 and introduced the matchlock gun to Japan?

Portugal was home to the two adventurers whose matchlocks the island's lord bought and had his smiths copy, and the guns took the island's name.

Which European traders alone were allowed in Japan during its long seclusion, confined to the island of Dejima?

The Dutch were moved in 1641 to the fan-shaped artificial island off Nagasaki, where they were kept apart from Japanese society.

Which neighbouring kingdom did Japan's armies invade in 1592 and again in 1597, in the conflict known as the Imjin War?

Korea was overrun quickly at first, but reinforcements from Ming China and naval attacks on Japan's supply fleets forced the invaders back.

The word samurai is thought to come from an old Japanese verb, saburau, with which meaning?

To serve is the root sense, so a samurai was first of all a retainer in attendance on a lord rather than simply a fighter.

Which upheaval of 1868 ended the Tokugawa shogunate and returned power to the throne under a teenage emperor?

The Meiji Restoration takes its name from the emperor's reign, and his new government set about Westernising Japan.

Which warlord, the first of Japan's three great unifiers, died in 1582 when a general turned on him at Honno-ji temple?

Oda Nobunaga was mocked in his youth as the Fool of Owari, yet he was on the verge of ruling all Japan when his own vassal attacked.

Bakufu, the Japanese name for a shogun's government, literally describes rule from which kind of field headquarters?

A tent stood for the shogun's role as commander in the field, and it also implied that his office was only meant to be temporary.

The title shogun shortens sei-i taishogun, a commander-in-chief appointed to lead expeditions against which enemies?

Barbarians here meant the Emishi of northern Japan, who resisted the imperial court, and the title was first granted only for the length of a campaign.

Which Japanese castle, a World Heritage Site since 1993, is nicknamed the White Heron for its brilliant white walls?

Himeji came through the bombing of 1945 intact: one firebomb landed on the castle's top floor and failed to explode.

Which ritual did the master Sen no Rikyu refine in tiny thatched huts before his warlord patron ordered his death?

The tea ceremony took its love of rough bowls and bare rooms from Rikyu, who taught that beauty lies in the very simple.

Which duellist, said to have won all of his 62 fights, set down his strategy in The Book of Five Rings?

Miyamoto Musashi was famed for fighting with a blade in each hand, and he wrote the book in his final years.

Which warrior, exiled as a boy, founded Japan's first shogunate at Kamakura and became its first shogun in 1192?

Minamoto no Yoritomo made warriors rather than courtiers the masters of Japan, though after his death his wife's family took control of the regime he built.

Which clan lost the Genpei War at the sea battle of Dan-no-ura, where its child emperor Antoku was drowned?

The Taira clan was destroyed in the battle, and the boy's grandmother Taira no Tokiko plunged into the straits with him rather than let him be captured.

Which battle of 1600, won by Tokugawa Ieyasu after rival commanders switched sides, opened the way to his shogunate?

Sekigahara began in dense fog, with the two armies stumbling into each other at dawn, and it left Ieyasu's heirs to rule Japan until 1868.

Which female samurai of medieval epic is said to have fought beside the general Yoshinaka at the Battle of Awazu?

Tomoe Gozen appears in no account written at the time of the fighting, so historians doubt whether she existed at all.

Which African man reached Japan with an Italian Jesuit and became a retainer of its most powerful warlord in 1581?

Yasuke was granted a house and a stipend and carried his lord's weapons, and he is the first known African in Japanese historical records.

Which Jesuit co-founder went ashore at Kagoshima in 1549 and led the first Catholic mission to Japan?

Francis Xavier was guided by Anjiro, a man from Kagoshima who had earlier travelled to Malacca to meet him.

Japan's Sengoku period of civil strife takes its name from which era of ancient Chinese history?

Warring States is a Chinese term the Japanese borrowed, though some scholars argue it fits poorly, since emperor and shogun stayed nominally in command.

Which temple began as shogun Ashikaga Yoshimitsu's retirement villa and was burned down by a novice monk in 1950?

The Golden Pavilion standing today was rebuilt in 1955, and the arson became the heart of a novel by Yukio Mishima.

Which retainer of Tokugawa Ieyasu, credited with saving his lord's life, lends his name to the swordsmith in Kill Bill?

Hattori Hanzo was a general who led a unit of men from Iga, and Quentin Tarantino's film added to his legend as a master swordsmith.

Which Satsuma leader, often called the last true samurai, died leading a rebellion against the new government in 1877?

Saigo Takamori had helped to overthrow the shogunate in 1868, and his rising inspired the 2003 film The Last Samurai.

Under which Tokugawa system did daimyo spend alternate years in Edo, leaving wives and children there as hostages?

Sankin-kotai kept the lords too poor to rebel: lavish mansions in two places and grand processions to and from the capital drained their finances.

Which epic of the Genpei War was spread for centuries by lute-playing bards known as biwa hoshi?

The Tale of the Heike is prose rather than verse, and it grew out of many differing versions handed down by word of mouth.

Which domain gave its name to the 1637 uprising of Catholic peasants led by the teenager Amakusa Shiro?

Shimabara rose against crushing taxes and persecution, and the shogunate needed more than 125,000 troops and a long siege of Hara Castle to end it.

Which conflict of 1467 to 1477 left Japan's capital in ruins and ushered in the Sengoku age of rival warlords?

The Onin War began as a quarrel over who should succeed the shogun Ashikaga Yoshimasa, after a son was born to him once he had already named his brother heir.

Which family, the in-laws of Japan's first shogun, ruled the Kamakura shogunate as hereditary regents until 1333?

Hojo regents held the real power while the shoguns became figureheads, and one of them led Japan's defence against the Mongol invasions.

At which battle of 1575 did arquebusiers firing from behind a stockade shatter the cavalry charges of the Takeda clan?

Nagashino is often called Japan's first modern battle, a turning point at which matchlock guns broke an army famed for its horsemen.

Which daimyo, nicknamed the One-Eyed Dragon, founded the city of Sendai and sent an embassy to the Pope in Rome?

Date Masamune was blinded in his right eye by smallpox as a child, and his helmet with its huge crescent moon won him a fearsome reputation.

Which warlord, born a peasant, avenged his murdered lord and went on to complete the unification of Japan by 1591?

Toyotomi Hideyoshi ruled as imperial regent rather than shogun, and his sword hunt of 1588 took weapons out of commoners' hands.

Which emperor toppled the Kamakura shogunate in 1333, only to be driven out by Ashikaga Takauji three years later?

Go-Daigo fled to the mountains of Yoshino and set up a rival court there, splitting the imperial line in two until 1392.

Which bronze statue at Kamakura has sat in the open air since a tsunami swept away its hall in the 1490s?

The Great Buddha had already seen earlier halls wrecked or damaged by storms in 1334 and 1369, and after the last was washed away it was left unroofed.