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Battles, incidents, and historical events related to Japanese swords
24 events
Late Kamakura to early Nanboku-chō period (first half of the 14th century)
From the late Kamakura period into the early Nanboku-chō period, Shizu Saburō Kaneuji—a Yamato-born disciple of Masamune counted among his "Ten Disciples"—relocated to Shizu in Mino Province, followed by Kanshige, who moved from Tsuruga in Echizen to Seki. Their fusion of Yamato-den and Sōshū-den techniques, oriented toward practical utility, took root in Mino, establishing the last of the Five Traditions (Gokaden): the Mino tradition.
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1350–1352 (Kannō 1–3)
Kannō 1–3 (1350–1352): the internal conflict within the Muromachi shogunate between Ashikaga Takauji and his younger brother Ashikaga Tadayoshi. Takauji's shitsuji, Kō no Moronao, came into violent conflict with Tadayoshi. After Moronao was executed, Takauji and Tadayoshi reconciled but fought again. Tadayoshi, defeated, died suddenly (there is also a theory that he was poisoned), and the conflict ended. It was the greatest internal conflict of the shogunate and further complicated the turmoil of the Nanboku-chō period.
1438–1439 (Eikyō 10–11)
Eikyō 10–11 (1438–1439): a campaign in which Ashikaga Yoshinori, the sixth shōgun of the Muromachi bakufu, subdued Ashikaga Mochiuji, the Kamakura kubō. Yoshinori reacted against Mochiuji, who was increasing his independence, and Kantō kanrei Uesugi Norizane came into conflict with Mochiuji. The Uesugi side, which received support from the bakufu army, won, and Mochiuji took his own life. The post of Kamakura kubō was temporarily vacant.
8th month, Shōchō 1 (1428) – Shōchō 2 (1429)
In the 8th month of Shōchō 1 (1428), beginning with the bashaku uprising in Ōmi, a large-scale tsuchi ikki spread to Kyoto and the Kinai region, the first large-scale tsuchi ikki in Japanese history. Peasants and bashaku (packhorse carriers) demanded tokusei (debt cancellation) and attacked dosō (pawnbrokers) and sakaya. The shogunate sought to suppress it through Akamatsu Mitsusuke, but in Nara Kōfuku-ji came to approve tokusei. A monumental incident in which organized armed action by the common people first appeared in history.
February 4, 1348 (Shōhei 3 / Jōwa 4, 1st month, 5th day)
In Shōhei 3/Jōwa 4 (1348), at Shijōnawate in Kawachi Province, the Southern Court forces of the Kusunoki brothers Masatsura and Masatoki clashed with the Muromachi shogunate army led by Kō no Moronao. Outnumbered, Masatsura was killed in action after fierce fighting, and the Southern Court suffered a crushing blow, losing its base at Yoshino.
August 29, 1359 (Shōhei 14 / Enbun 4, 8th month, 6th day)
A 1359 battle at Ōbaru in Chikugo Province between the Southern Court army of Prince Kanenaga and Kikuchi Takemitsu and the Northern Court army of Shōni Yorihisa and his son Naosuke — the largest engagement of the Nanboku-chō era in Kyushu, often ranked among Japan's three greatest battles.
19 November 1392 (Meitoku 3, intercalary 10th month, day 5)
On 19 November 1392 (Meitoku 3, intercalary 10th month, day 5), Ashikaga Yoshimitsu brokered the transfer of the Three Sacred Treasures from Emperor Go-Kameyama to Emperor Go-Komatsu, ending the 56-year division of the Northern and Southern Courts. In the history of Japanese swords, this marked the end of the era of the ōdachi and mass production during the Nanboku-chō period, and the beginning of an age under Yoshimitsu's cultural patronage in which swords shifted from weapons to works of art and diplomatic gifts.
January 1392 (Meitoku 2, 12th month)
In Meitoku 2 (1391), members of the Yamana clan, including Yamana Ujikiyo and Mitsuyuki, who had grown powerful enough to threaten the Ashikaga shogunate, raised a rebellion against the third-generation Shogun Ashikaga Yoshimitsu. Yoshimitsu defeated the Yamana army in a single day at Uchino in Kyoto and thoroughly reduced the power of the Yamana clan. This victory decisively established Yoshimitsu's supreme authority over the Muromachi shogunate and marked the peak of his patronage of sword culture.
26th day of the 7th month, Bunmei 18 (August 25, 1486)
Bunmei 18 (1486): the assassination of Ōta Dōkan, builder of Edo Castle, who was murdered by his lord Uesugi Sadamasa. The untimely death of this renowned general, accomplished in both arms and letters, threw the political situation of the Kantō into turmoil and became a remote cause of the rise of the Later Hōjō clan and the opening of the Kantō Sengoku period.
10th–12th month of Ōei 6 (1399–1400)
In 1399, the powerful western daimyo Ōuchi Yoshihiro raised a rebellion against Shogun Ashikaga Yoshimitsu at Sakai in Izumi Province. Yoshihiro's death in battle with sword in hand ended the revolt and cemented Yoshimitsu's supreme authority, shaping the cultural flourishing of the Muromachi sword tradition.
6th month, Ōei 26 (1419)
In the 6th month of Ōei 26 (1419), Joseon Korea invaded Tsushima with a large force of 227 warships and 17,285 men. The Tsushima forces under Sō Sadamori, shugo (military governor) of Tsushima, fought well with ambushes that made use of the local terrain and repelled the Korean army. In Kyoto, the invasion was initially feared as a revival of the Mongol invasions, and it brought a major turning point to the Muromachi shogunate and to Japan–Korea relations.
2nd day of the 10th month, Ōei 23 (1416) to 10th day of the 1st month, Ōei 24 (1417)
A civil war in the Kamakura Government: in the tenth month of 1416, former Kantō Deputy Shogun Uesugi Ujinori (Zenshū) rose with Ashikaga Mitsutaka against the Kamakura kubō Ashikaga Mochiuji. Mochiuji fled to Suruga, recovered with shogunate backing, and Zenshū and his allies killed themselves at Yukinoshita, Kamakura, in the first month of 1417.
c. 1368 (Ōan 1)
Nen-ryū, founded by Nen-ami Jion (secular name Sōma Shirō Yoshimoto, born 1350) from the late Nanboku-chō period into the early Muromachi period, is regarded as one of the three great source schools of heihō and the oldest of them. Around 1368, Jion attained the secret essence of the sword while training at Anraku-ji in Tsukushi, Kyushu, and he perfected his swordsmanship through travels across the provinces. Chūjō-ryū, founded by his disciple Chūjō Nagahide, formed a core lineage of Japanese swordsmanship that led on to Ittō-ryū. The orthodox line of Nen-ryū survives today as Maniwa Nen-ryū, which was inherited by Higuchi Sadatsugu in the late Sengoku period.
From Onin 1–Bunmei 9 (1467–1477) onward
Through the devastation of the Ōnin War (1467–1477) and the collapse of the Muromachi shogunate's authority that followed, the Higashiyama Gomotsu, a collection centered on karamono (Chinese art objects), mostly Chinese (Song and Yuan) paintings but also including tea utensils, flower vases, and writing implements, which the Ashikaga shogunal family had collected and kept over generations, flowed out of the Kyoto gosho and storehouses and scattered into the hands of daimyō, merchants, and temples and shrines. Among the dispersed objects, the tea utensils were prized by tea masters of the Azuchi-Momoyama period and also influenced the later view of meibutsu.
Third month (2nd), Kenmu 3 / Engen 1 (April 13, 1336)
In the third month of Kenmu 3 / Engen 1 (1336), Ashikaga Takauji—driven from Kyoto and forced to flee to Kyushu—defeated the large army of Kikuchi Taketoshi, loyal to Emperor Go-Daigo, at Tatarahama in Chikuzen. Barely 2,000 Ashikaga troops broke the Kikuchi army of over 20,000 by inducing mass defections. The victory brought most of Kyushu over to Takauji, allowing him to regroup and march east again toward his victory over Kusunoki Masashige at Minatogawa.
July 4, 1336 (25th day, 5th month, Kemmu 3 / Engen 1)
In the 5th month of Kemmu 3 / Engen 1 (1336), Kusunoki Masashige and Nitta Yoshisada faced Ashikaga Takauji's overwhelming forces in the first decisive battle of the Nanbokuchō period. Masashige, knowing victory was impossible, fought with desperate courage before taking his own life. His loyalty unto death became the defining image of Japanese martial virtue.
August–September 1335 (Kenmu 2, 7th–8th month)
A rebellion in which, in the 7th month of Kenmu 2 (1335), Hōjō Tokiyuki, a son of Hōjō Takatoki, raised troops in Shinano Province and briefly occupied Kamakura. Ashikaga Takauji's unauthorized march to Kamakura, undertaken without Emperor Go-Daigo's permission to defeat Tokiyuki, triggered the break between Takauji and the Kenmu government, a historic event that heralded the opening of the Nanboku-chō period.
The 2nd day of the intercalary 7th month of Engen 3 / Ryakuo 1 (August 17, 1338)
On the 2nd day of the intercalary 7th month of Engen 3 / Ryakuo 1 (August 17, 1338), Nitta Yoshisada of the Southern Court was killed in a chance battle against forces of Shiba Takatsune of the Ashikaga side at Tomyoji Nawate in Fujishima, Echizen Province. With their supreme commander dead, the Nitta forces collapsed, and soon afterward Ashikaga Takauji was appointed Sei-i Taishogun, marking a turning point toward the establishment of the Muromachi shogunate.
July 12, 1441 (Kakitsu 1, 6th month, 24th day)
In the 6th month of Kakitsu 1 (1441), Akamatsu Mitsusuke, daimyo of Harima, Bizen, and Mimasaka provinces, assassinated Shogun Ashikaga Yoshinori by inviting him to his residence—a political coup. It arose from backlash against Yoshinori's reign of terror, which was called "Terror of All Men." Mitsusuke was defeated by the shogunate army shortly after, and both the power of the daimyo and the authority of the shogun were greatly shaken.
June 19, 1333 (Genkō 3, 5th month, 7th day)
On the 7th day of the 5th month of Genkō 3 (June 19, 1333), Ashikaga Takauji raised his banner against the shogunate and seized the Rokuhara Tandai in Kyoto. The collapse of this administrative center—the shogunate's 'eyes in the west,' which had dominated Kyoto for over 110 years since the Jōkyū Rebellion (1221)—became the decisive prelude to the Kamakura shogunate's fall on the 22nd day of the same month. This marked the end of the golden age of sword-craft in the late Kamakura period when Masamune flourished, and heralded the transition to the age of the ōdachi of the Northern and Southern Courts era.
1333–1336 CE (Genkō 3 – Kenmu 3)
Emperor Go-Daigo's brief imperial restoration (1333–1336) following the fall of the Kamakura shogunate. The conflict between loyalists like Kusunoki Masashige and Ashikaga Takauji's revolt led to the Nanbokuchō split and the rise of the Ashikaga shogunate.
January 15, 1455 (Kyōtoku 3, 12th month, 27th day) – Bunmei 14, 11th month (1483)
The Kyōtoku War (1455–1483) was a 28-year conflict in the Kantō region triggered when Ashikaga Shigeuji, the fifth Kamakura kubō, killed Kantō Kanrei Uesugi Noritada. The resulting war between the Koga kubō and the Uesugi/shogunate forces ushered in the Sengoku period in eastern Japan and profoundly disrupted the sword-making traditions of the Kantō region.
1467–1477 (Ōnin 1 – Bunmei 9)
The Ōnin War (1467–1477) erupted over a shogunal succession dispute, pitting the eastern Hosokawa faction against the western Yamana faction across the ruins of Kyoto for eleven years. The conflict effectively ended the Muromachi order and opened Japan's century of civil war.
1338 (Ryakuo 1 / Engen 3)
In 1338 (Ryakuo 1 / Engen 3) Ashikaga Takauji was appointed seii taishogun. The Muromachi shogunate, which had set out its policy in the 1336 Kenmu Shikimoku, was thereby formally established as a warrior government.