I'm interested in japanese siege warfare during the age of gunpowder - so the 1500s and 1600s. Can you tell me how it functioned, what the most common tactics were, which weapons were utilized and how the fortresses were constructed/layed out?
Japanese siege warfare during the 1500s & 1600s
And a quite specific question: did the Japanese utalize tunnel and mining warfare like the european powers and Ottomans did?
Siege warfare was a method of diplomacy, most of the time. Japanese lacked siege engines and widespread use of cannons, so sieges relied on ladders or climbing/storming gates and walls. So a lot of sieges devolved into sitting and waiting matches with skirmishes. In certain sieges, like the Siege of Osaka Castle, the defending army would dig out their moats (seen as a hostile act by the Tokugawa Shogunate). Filling in the enemy moat was a common attacking siege tactic, but also a way of a surrendering power to show they submit fully.
Oda Nobunada's siege of Mt. Hiei was notoriously difficult because the the mountainous terrain and Oda's inability to surround the vast mountain complex completely. This leads to the diplomatic aspect of sieges. Because warlords regularly betrayed and raided each other, having a prolonged siege was not in the aggressors best, long-term interests since it would leave them exposed to raids/invasions from other warlords. Oda couldn't bring his vast numbers to bear, since doing so would leave him exposed to all of his other enemies, especially the Azai/Asakura and Takeda.
Castles in sengoku jidai often incorporated the landscape, and were designed internally to have unique mazes so those unfamiliar with the layout would get lost. Almost always they were built on mountains with a nearby spring, with a commanding view of the countryside. Either that or by the ocean. A lot of castles were actually bare, since they were expensive to maintain. Thus temporary fortifications, like watch towers or wooden barricades and stakes, would only be built and set up if there was an immediate danger of attack/raids.
Sieges, more or less, would begin with a fast and unannounced raid on a territory. Because it would be sudden, often castles would not have time to stockpile supplies.Once the enemy army arrives, starvation tactics would be used and negotiations would occur until one side folds or the attacker leaves.
Why could the Euros afford to build castles everywhere when the Japanese couldn't?
Japan's tons of earthquakes discouraged massive stone fortifications like what you'd find in Europe. Also, Japan was very peaceful internally by comparison, so there wasn't frequent warfare between different warlords on their islands like there was between different warlords across Europe. Less warfare meant less castles.
Japanese castles during the sengoku jidai could be as large as elaborate as Osaka or Edo castle, or as simple as a wall with a keep around it on top of a mountain.
As for why there are so few Japanese castles today, it's due to the Tokugawa Shogunate.
During the sengoku jidai, it was common for small 'castles' to be built very rapidly and then "de-commissioned" with the wood/stone being used for other parts when the castle owner's killed/left or the castle was no longer important. For the vast majority of these smaller castles, the Japanese didn't care much for them.
After the Tokugawa Shogunate took over, they introduced the 'Han' or Domain System. Basically, outside of some major exceptions, every Daiymo was allowed only one castle. Because there were ~300 Domains, and thus Daiymo, this limited how many castles there were in Japan. Any extra castles had to be destroyed, moats filled in, and no soldiers can be stationed there. Most daiymo, realizing the age of war was over, chose to place their castles near urban cities (like Sendai Castle) and treat them more as government office buildings than military installations.
The major exceptions to the 1 castle per domain rule were the Tokugawa themselves and the Shimazu in Satsuma, who were allowed smaller garrisons.
A lot of the modern day examples of Japanese castles weren't how the vast majority of them looked like during Sengoku Jidai. The surviving examples are more akin to wealthy mansions than the wooden stakes, stockades, and watchtower castles of the warring states era.
Very informative. Thanks for making IQfy worth visiting
Would either of you have any good book recommendations surrounding this period, and perhaps something on archaeology in Japan?
Not really. I read Cambridge's History of Japan but it's very dry, matter-of-fact reading. A lot of what I know is from wikipedia, documentaries, both on YouTube and Japanese re-enactments, Japanese castle tours (I fricking know, but the old Japs men are proud and love their heritage), and real life Jap friends who learned it in their history classes.
And yes, Japanese history lessons basically stop after the Meiji Restoration. I fricking wonder why.
Wait, so are you Japanese or Davido-kun?
I'm a burger, so a Davido-kun.
Japanese castles aren't like European castles or Chinese walled cities, at least the smaller ones in the sengoku jidai. They were mostly wooden barricades/palisades with stakes like a fence. Catapults and such were pointless. Catapults were pointless because why the frick would you use catapults on a fence? Heavy siege engines also contrasted with the lightning, raider warfare the daiymos practiced where it was mostly to secure land, raid for food, or secure castles and the local farm holdings.
Offensive siege tactics, as in all out charges to storm a castle gate, were rare in Japan because of its obviously suicidal nature. Castle sieges were mostly waiting around and archers/gunners shooting at each other from behind cover/shields. Flaming arrows and torches were common to try to burn down parts of the wall but there are ways to counter that via just dumping water on wood. It's actually very hard to burn wet wood with flaming arrows shot from afar, and arrows were pretty expensive.
Daiymos tended to carry very small amounts of food and supply, since foot soldiers had to carry everything on their person. Usually they prepped maybe 2-weeks max of food from their nearest stronghold and try to take castles by surprise and force surrenders. Most sieges end with either the main daiymo force comes to relieve the castle, or an allied daiymo comes to the rescue (mostly as a chance for daiymo to weaken a neighbor and take some looted armor). So spending time building siege engines wasn't possible since neighboring warlords could respond in a matter of days.
Europeans were absolutely autistic about armor, castles, and shock warfare, to the point of warping out modern view of the subjects. The European profusion of castles is actually really abnormal.
>Siege warfare was a method of diplomacy
>until one side folds or the attacker leaves.
Could a garrison really surrender and then leave in peace? What happend to a surrendered garrison?
If negotiations fail and an attack is successful, then the attacker will usually butcher/loot everyone in the castle and order the castle samurai to commit suicide, mostly due to how much trouble they caused by defying the attackers.
It's a lot more complicated if a negotiation is successful.
Generally speaking, if a castle is surrendered then the milita conscripts (aka the rando farmers with spears) will be spared. Maybe their weapons/armor get confiscated and they sent back to the fields, or they accompany their samurai/lords back to another castle.
Usually, negotiations can go a lot of different ways. If it's an outlying castle, then a castle is surrendered and the garrison packs up and leaves - giving the castle to the enemy without a fight in exchange for public declarations (from both sides) that the surrendered will not be harmed on their way back to another castle. This is important, because if the defenders know the attackers have a reputation of no-mercy-kill-everyone, they will fight to the death and be harder to dislodge. Better to take a castle without a fight and secure the local farm land for more income than waste lives and blood fighting for it.
In some cases, like the Siege of Odawara, the Hojo Clan were effectively extinguished, but the lower ranking samurai and peasants were spared, but had to proclaim loyalty to their new lord, Hideyoshi (and later Tokugawa). So if a castle is under control by a low ranking samurai, they could swap lords, but of course, nobody would trust a traitor for long. It's a bit different if we're talking about samurai who surrendered after their lord and their clan is wiped out, since there's no one left to serve. Ideally though, the attacking power wants to install their own samurai in a castle and collect the local farm income.
Sometimes, like Oda's invasion of Ise, you could force the lord to adopt a relative (and that relative gets a different last name but is now de facto heir to the enemy clan).
I would just point out that negotiated surrenders were extremely common in Europe for medieval and renaissance era sieges as well. In fact, the expense of setting up siege works over and over again for every podunk little fortification was prohibitively expensive even if the attacking army had the expertise, organization, supplies, etc., to invest, reduce, and assault the fortifications they were up against. The overall level of scattered tiny garrisons, whether they'd resist even for a few weeks or just surrender to the first halfway decent offer they got, made or broke a bunch of campaigns.
Thank you for the explanations.
Yes, surrendering was the most common outcome during a siege in europe but it depended of course on the location & the supplies that the defenders would have at hand. Nobody would bat an eye when the garrison of a small castle, that hadn't been modernized since the 1400s, would just surrender when the siege ring was closed. On the other hand: the defenders of well fortified places were expected to hold out for a long time - but not necessarily so long that said place must have been conquered by storm; in those cases the attacker would set his troops free to plunder, rape and kill everyone in the city. And this scenario would have been avoided by most.
I have to admit that I don't know what happend exactly to the noble commanders of a surrendered garrison. I think that the common soldiers would either be disbanded or employed by the victor and the nobles would probably be held for ransom or just to deny the other party the resources of said person.
Probably because it is also a very mountainous and thus very encumbering to lug around heavy cannons. And trebuchets were built on site but that takes also time.
>Siege warfare was a method of diplomacy, most of the time
Reminds me about the biggest siege in Japanese History: the Siege of Odawara. There was very little fighting and much of it was Toyotomi just flexing his power over the Hojo (mfer summoned lords from one tip of Japan to another just to besiege the Hojo Castle) and while the Hojo starved in their walls, the massive siege camp held regular parties, feasts & circus performances.
Japanese sengoku politics are really interesting. Clan rivalries were often used to suppress and counterbalance each other.
After Odawara, Hideyoshi offered to Ieyasu to trade 8 Kanto Provinces for his current 5, including his ancestral home of Mikawa province. Toyotomi figured that Ieyasu would have struggle commanding recently conquered Hojo samurai and no longer be a threat (despite, on paper, getting way more land), but Ieyasu figured that the Kanto plains were extremely fertile and with proper improvements, could produce enormous income. On top of that, Ieyasu got a guarantee that Toyotomi would not call on Ieyasu for 10 years for military service, allowing Tokugawa to sit out the Korean invasions and conserve/build up his forces and lands. The geographic position of Edo also meant Ieyasu would probably encounter the hostile, northern lords of Mutsu but Ieyasu made pretty good diplomatic overtures to them - most importantly Data Masamune whom he promised a 1-million koku feif which he never (sort of?) got. So when the battle of Sekigahara happened, Edo was safe from the east and could focus on concentrating their forces west against Ishida and the anti-Tokugawa forces.
After Sekigahara, Ieyasu negotiated the surrender of Osaka Castle from Mori Terumoto and Ieyasu, being a suspicious frick, downgrades the Mori domain from 1.2 million koku to sub-400,000 koku and on top of that kicks them out of their ancestral home in Aki province to Choshu (the neighboring province).
So yeah, a lot of flexing and broken promises and a lot of "you and what army?" going around.
Japan only started to get guns and use the en massed in the late 16th century, then was abandoned all together. I studied Japanese history profusely and they only started to gain favor with Nobunaga forces very late. In fact Tokugawa only defeated Hideyoshi because the first party used guns and defended.
After this period they were kept under strict control just like all other weapons.
>Literally just nearby China with its siege assault tactics and Japs don't know how to make assault engines & artillery.
The absolute state of Japan.