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Battles, incidents, and historical events related to Japanese swords
296 events
15th day of 7th month, Bunroku 4 (August 20, 1595)
Toyotomi Hidetsugu, nephew of Toyotomi Hideyoshi and Kampaku, was accused of plotting rebellion and ordered to commit seppuku. His wives, concubines, and children, 39 people in all, were executed at Sanjō riverbank. The tragedy symbolized the power struggle that foreshadowed Sekigahara.
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26th day of the 1st month, Bunroku 2 (old calendar; 27 February 1593 in the Gregorian calendar)
A battle fought around Goyang in Korea on the 26th day of the 1st month of Bunroku 2 (1593), in which Japanese forces under Kobayakawa Takakage and Tachibana Muneshige turned back the Ming army led by Li Rusong. The article follows the decision to meet the enemy outside Hanseong, the fighting in a narrow, muddy valley, the Ming withdrawal and the shift to peace talks.
28th day of the 11th month, Bunji 1 (1185)
In 1185, Minamoto no Yoritomo received imperial authorization to appoint military governors (shugo) and estate stewards (jitō) throughout Japan, establishing the effective foundation of the Kamakura Shogunate—Japan's first warrior government. This shift, placing samurai at the apex of political power for the first time, created the cultural conditions in which the Japanese sword became revered as the soul and symbol of the warrior.
17th day of the 10th month, Bunji 1 (1185)
In the 10th month of Bunji 1 (1185), Tosabō Shōshun, acting on Minamoto no Yoritomo's orders, launched a night raid on Minamoto no Yoshitsune's residence at Horikawa in Kyoto, but Yoshitsune personally fought back and repelled the attack. The incident made the rift between the half-brothers irrevocable; Yoshitsune obtained an imperial edict to subjugate Yoritomo but failed to raise an army, fled to Ōshū, and met his tragic end at Koromogawa in 1189.
7th–9th months of Bunji 5 (1189)
In 1189, Minamoto no Yoritomo launched a military campaign against Fujiwara no Yasuhira, the lord of Ōshū (Mutsu and Dewa provinces), crushing the last major independent power in Japan. The campaign ended the brilliant Hiraizumi culture of the Fujiwara northern lords and was nominally triggered by Yasuhira's killing of the fugitive Minamoto no Yoshitsune.
30th day of the intercalary 4th month, Bunji 5 (1189)
On the intercalary 30th day of the 4th month of Bunji 5 (1189), Minamoto no Yoshitsune, cornered by the pursuit forces of his elder brother Minamoto no Yoritomo, killed his wife and children at Koromogawa no Tachi in Hiraizumi, Ōshū, then took his own life. He was thirty-one years old. The tragic end of the hero who destroyed the Heike at Dannoura gave birth to the cultural concept of hōgan-biiki (sympathy for the underdog), and together with the legends of famous swords said to be associated with Yoshitsune, continues to be passed down to the present day.
10th month, Bun'ei 11 (1274)
In the 10th month of Bun'ei 11 (1274), the first Mongol invasion took place: a Yuan–Goryeo allied army of about 30,000 men, dispatched by Kublai Khan, landed in Hakata Bay. Although bewildered by unfamiliar tactics such as massed formations and gunpowder weapons, the Japanese warriors fought back with bows, arrows, and tachi. Some view the experience of this battle as having spurred later changes in swords of the late Kamakura period.
1274 (Bun'ei Invasion) and 1281 (Kōan Invasion)
The Mongol Empire, allied with Goryeo Korea, twice invaded northern Kyushu — in 1274 (Bun'ei Invasion) and 1281 (Kōan Invasion). Both invasions were repelled, the second by a devastating typhoon the Japanese called kamikaze (divine wind). The wars forced a rapid evolution in Japanese swordsmanship and blade design.
6th month, Bunmei 8 (1476) to 24th day of the 6th month, Bunmei 12 (1480)
In 1476 Nagao Kageharu, passed over for the post of chief retainer of the Yamanouchi Uesugi, rebelled and in the first month of 1477 overran the Igako camp. Ōta Dōkan's campaigns destroyed the Toshima and other allies, and in the sixth month of 1480 Kageharu was driven out of Musashi.
1474 (Bunmei 6) – 1580 (Tenshō 8)
The Ikko Uprising that erupted in Kaga Province (present-day Ishikawa) in 1474 (Bunmei 6) continued for approximately 100 years until it was suppressed by Oda Nobunaga in 1580 (Tenshō 8), establishing a unique autonomous self-governance known as 'a nation held by commoners.' This uprising, in which armed Ikko adherents overthrew provincial governors and their deputies, is deeply inscribed in sword history as an emblematic event symbolizing the practical aspects of Japanese swords and the intersection of religion and peasantry.
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.
Night of October 28, 1863 (Bunkyū 3, 9th month, 16th day; some sources say the 18th / October 30)
In the 9th month of Bunkyū 3 (1863), Kondō Isami and Hijikata Toshizō's faction purged Serizawa Kamo, a senior Mito-faction commander, at the Yagi residence in Mibu, Kyoto, in a struggle for control of the Shinsengumi. The incident established Kondō as sole commander and set the Shinsengumi on its path toward stricter internal discipline.
18th day, 8th month, Bunkyū 3 (September 30, 1863)
On September 30, 1863 (Bunkyū 3/8/18), the Satsuma and Aizu domains, acting together, carried out a coup that expelled the radical sonnō-jōi faction centered on the Chōshū domain from Kyoto. Also called the "Bunkyū Coup," it set off the "Flight of the Seven Nobles" (Shichikyō-ochi), in which Sanjō Sanetomi and six other court nobles fled to Chōshū. As a coup that profoundly changed bakumatsu politics, it led on to the Kinmon Incident and the Chōshū expeditions.
August 15–16, 1863 (Bunkyū 3, 7th month, 2nd–3rd day)
A war fought between the Satsuma domain and the British fleet in Kinko Bay on August 15–16, 1863 (Bunkyū 3/7/2–3). In response to seven British warships that arrived demanding reparations for the Namamugi Incident, the Satsuma artillery batteries opened fire. The British vessels burned Satsuma's steamships and bombarded the city, but Satsuma fiercely resisted and severely damaged the British warships. Through this conflict, Satsuma came to understand the futility of the expel-the-barbarians movement, improved relations with Britain, and shifted toward overthrowing the shogunate and pursuing modernization.
May 30, 1863 (Bunkyū 3, 4th month, 13th day)
On May 30, 1863 (Bunkyū 3/4/13), Kiyokawa Hachirō, a sonnō jōi advocate of the late Bakumatsu period, was ambushed near Azabu Ichinohashi in Edo by shogunate assassins led by Sasaki Tadasaburō and was killed. Age at death: 34. The incident came after he led the Rōshigumi to Kyoto, declared sonnō jōi there, and returned to Edo. The rōshi who objected to this declaration and remained in Kyoto became the foundation of the Shinsengumi. An incident that symbolizes the political assassinations of the late Bakumatsu and the actual combat use of Japanese swords.
the 12th day of the 10th month of Bunkyū 3 (November 22, 1863)
An uprising in the 10th month of Bunkyū 3 (1863) at Ikuno in Tajima Province in which sonnō jōi activists led by Hirano Kuniomi, backing the court noble Sawa Nobuyoshi, rose in arms in response to the Tenchūgumi rebellion in Yamato. The revolt collapsed within two days under attack from allied domain forces and internal division, marking it as one of the earliest grassroots uprisings of the bakumatsu era.
17th day of the 8th month, Bunkyū 3 (1863)
In the 8th month of Bunkyū 3 (1863), the noble Nakayama Tadamitsu and rōnin Yoshimura Toratarō led an armed uprising in Gojō, Yamato Province, attacking the shogunate's magistrate office. Branded rebels after the August 18 coup in Kyoto canceled the planned imperial procession, the group was destroyed within about forty days.
Bunkyū 3 (1863) to Genji 1 (1864) (the period when Kondō's letters record his possession of a Kotetsu)
Kondō Isami, chief of the Shinsengumi, is said to have favored a sword by Nagasone Kotetsu, a master rated as saijō ō-wazamono. However, authentic Kotetsu works were already rare at the time and false signatures were rampant. The current accepted view is that the sword Kondō possessed was also a fake rather than an authentic work by Nagasone Okisato.
Bunkyū 3 (1863)
Formed in the 3rd year of Bunkyū (1863) from the rōshi band that the bakufu had recruited, the Shinsengumi stayed in Kyoto and was placed under the protection of the Aizu Domain, which held the post of Kyoto Shugoshoku (Kyoto Military Governor). It was a band of swordsmen that suppressed sonnō jōi shishi in Kyoto during the bakumatsu period. Under its kyokuchō (commander) Kondō Isami and fukuchō (deputy commander) Hijikata Toshizō, its members were feared for their unmatched elite swordsmanship and strict rules. As the period when the Japanese sword was last used in real combat, it holds a special place in the history of bakumatsu swordsmanship.
September 14, 1862 (Bunkyū 2, 8th month, 21st day)
The incident in which Charles Lennox Richardson, a British merchant who rode his horse into the procession of Shimazu Hisamitsu, father of the Satsuma domain lord, was slain by Satsuma samurai on the 21st day of the 8th month of Bunkyū 2 (1862). Known as a representative case of foreigners being killed with Japanese swords, it was the direct cause of the Anglo-Satsuma War the following year. It was one of the greatest diplomatic crises of the late Edo period, in which the blade of jōi provoked an international problem.
May 21, 1862 (Bunkyū 2/4/23)
In the 4th month of Bunkyū 2 (1862), the Satsuma domain carried out a sword fight between its own samurai at the Teradaya inn in Fushimi, Kyoto. Shimazu Hisamitsu, the kokufu (the lord's father), sent his own samurai to suppress and purge the radical samurai of the sonnō jōi faction. This was a separate incident from the Teradaya Incident of 1866 (Keiō 2), in which Sakamoto Ryōma was attacked.
15th day, 1st month, Bunkyū 2 (February 13, 1862)
On February 13, 1862 (Bunkyū 2/1/15), six Mito rōnin attacked Andō Nobumasa, a senior councilor (rōjū), outside the Sakashitamon Gate of Edo Castle. Though Nobumasa survived with minor wounds, the incident demonstrated the rising power of the sonnō-jōi faction and the weakening of bakufu authority, becoming a major political upheaval. The direct motivation is attributed to opposition to the kōbu gattai policy brought about by the imperial princess Kazunomiya's marriage to Shogun Tokugawa Iemochi.
935–941 CE (Jōhei 5 – Tengyō 4)
Two simultaneous uprisings between 935 and 941 — Taira no Masakado's revolt in the Kantō and Fujiwara no Sumitomo's maritime rebellion in the Seto Inland Sea — marking the collapse of the ritsuryō state and the rise of the warrior class.
935–940 (Jōhei 5 – Tengyō 3)
An armed rebellion in the Kantō region during the Jōhei and Tengyō eras (935–940). Taira no Masakado seized the eight provinces of Bandō, proclaimed himself "New Emperor" (Shinnō) and defied the imperial court. The allied forces of Fujiwara no Hidesato and Taira no Sadamori killed Masakado and suppressed the rebellion, but the uprising became a historic turning point heralding the dawn of the age of the warriors.