Sanada Maru - a family of strategists

Sakai Masato in the leading role as Sanada Nobushige (i.e. Yukimura)

The beginning of every year sees  a new year long historical drama series starting on the state sponsored TV channel NHK.

Although these annual series, collectively known as Taiga drama, are of variable quality, and tend not to be strictly historically accurate, they can offer interesting interpretations of the period they deal with, putting some imaginative flesh on the historical bones of the situation.   

This year, with Sanada Maru,  it is the turn of the Sanada family, whose best known member, Sanada Nobushige (more commonly known by his fictional name, Yukimura) is the star of this series. The title, Sanada Maru is the name of the defensive position or fort constructed by Sanada Nobushige for the defense of Osaka castle during the Winter campaign of 1614-15

Setting

The Sanada clan was a fairly small clan in the scheme of things, but is famous for its pivotal role in the Siege of Osaka (1615) which, despite the eventual Tokugawa victory, was a close run thing. Unlike some of the larger, more famous families, the Sanada, by and large, were content to look after their own affairs and attempt to maintain their own territory. They successfully defied the Tokugawa on several occasions and managed to thrive despite the difficult situation they found themselves in after the deaths of Takeda Katsuyori and Oda Nobunaga. All of this required some nifty footwork, and Sanada Masayuki (Nobushige’s father)’s ability to manipulate and respond to the changing political landscape is central to these early episodes.

The Sanada Family

The interaction between the two Sanada brothers, Nobushige and his older brother Nobuyuki, is one point of interest. Although it was Nobuyuki who would ultimately thrive, he is usually little mentioned in accounts of the Sanada family until after the pre-Sekigahara split (engineered by his father to ensure that one branch of the family would survive no matter who won the confrontation between Tokugawa Ieyasu and The Toyotomi loyalists.

Nobushige and Nobuyuki (Oizumi Yo)

Sanada Maru depicts them as being close, but of differing temperaments – the intuitive Nobushige and the careful, thoughtful Nobuyuki. ‘Put you two together and you’d make a complete person’, says their father.  Of course, it is Nobushige who will later go on to win fame as the successful defender of Osaka castle (in the winter campaign) against the forces of the Tokugawa coalition, and only narrowly missing taking Tokugawa Ieyasu’s life and changing the course of history.

Kusakari Masao as Sanada Masayuki

And what of Sanada Masayuki? Both in reality and as depicted in this drama, he was an unusual man. Overshadowed in the public mind by the deeds of his son, Nobushige, he seems to have possessed an unusual degree of strategic acumen, some of which appears to have been passed down to him and which he, in turn, passed on to his sons. (Although Nobuyuki is not famous for his military record, he proved a very effective administrator, being promoted into a higher level fief as a result of his efforts).

Why this is so fascinating is that the great tacticians and strategists of history are usually brilliant individuals, not the result of a process designed to teach them strategy. In Japan, as well, the majority of outstanding leaders did not succeed in passing their abilities on to their children, and those that rose to power often did so largely by their own efforts. Sengoku Japan shows us a whole host of leaders that emerged unexpectedly to become powerful players in the conflicts of the time, Oda Nobunaga, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, Tokugawa Ieyasu, Takeda Shingen, Uesugi Kenshin…but the Sanadas were, from the start, a different proposition.

Both China and Japan boasted schools of strategy, (or generalship, which might be a more accurate description – from what we can tell, much of their content involved lower levels of organisation of troop movements and logistics, rather than what we think of as battlefield tactics) but we have very little knowledge of how this was taught and how it was meant to be learned (not necessarily the same thing). A look into this process, fictional and impressionistic as it may be, gives us a chance to muse on how such knowledge was passed down – the apprenticeship of generalship.

Sanada Masayuki (National Diet Library)

As he appears on the small screen, Masayuki is shown as keeping his focus on aims while disregarding appearances.  Thick-skinned, he has an appreciation for the realities of war, and the lengths that are necessary to keep his family and followers safe, while maneuvering to establish a degree of independence. The drama shows rather well the dark arts of manipulation and treachery  that he is not afraid to use. He makes it clear that both reasoning and intuition are necessary for war. But despite his cold calculation, his warmth of character makes him very different from Kuroda Kanbei, the subject of the Taiga drama of 2014, and another of the premier gunshi of the era, and whose son, Kuroda Nagamasa, although a powerful and capable general, did not have his father’s gift for strategy.

Interestingly, it is Kanbei’s sometime ward and vassal, Goto Motosugu, (who by some accounts bore an antipathy towards Kuroda Jnr.) who would be Sanada Nobushige’s staunchest ally in the defense of Osaka Castle. The Sanada family was also closely connected with that other famous gunshi, Yamamoto Kansuke, and Sanada Masayuki served alongside him as fellow members of Takeda Shingen’s general staff (Masayuki was the youngest of the three Sanada brothers serving Shingen). Kansuke himself, although a well-known figure to later generations, left so little concrete evidence of his life that many historians considered him a fictitious character greated by later chroniclers of the exploits of Shingen. It was only relatively recently that documents were discovered corroborating his existence.

With Sanada Maru, NHK has now based a Taiga drama on the lives of each of these three strategists; I'm hoping this will be the best.

For more on Sanada Nobushige: Wisdom from Samurai High School

For more on Kuroda Kanbei: see here for a little on what he was up to around the time of the Battle of Sekigahara plus the Musashi connection and here for a not very serious look at his management style

Sekigahara - the question of Musashi's role in the decisive battle

Musashi and Matahachi stagger off the field of Sekigahara
– as the movies saw it.

October 21st 1600 saw one of the most decisive battles of Japan's history – Sekigahara.

This was where Tokugawa Ieyasu and his combined forces faced the so-called Western Alliance under Ishida Mitsunari. It was touch and go at first, but some well-timed treachery on th epart of one of Mitsunari's allies handed Ieyasu the victory, allowinghim to consolidate and extend his control across the whole country and ushering in the Tokugawa era, which was to last for more than 260 years.

This battle forms an important part of the story of Miyamoto Musashi as told in numerous novels, films, TV series and serious accounts of his life, telling how, as a young man, he fought at Sekigahara, survived the hunting down of the defeated forces (it is always assumed he was fighting on the side of Ishida Mitsunari) and went on to fame and fortune.

However, there is some doubt as to how accurate this version of events might be. As more of the sources for the story of Musashi become available in English (and the story is researched more thoroughly in Japanese), there is serious cause for questioning the veracity of this story. Although Musashi did, indeed, fight during the time of the Sekigahara campaign, it seems most likely that it was in the fighting that occurred in Kyushu at the same time.

The Kokura Hibun

The evidence is, at the very least, contradictory. Although the story is so familiar, it is hard to know where it comes from. The Kokura Hibun (1654), the monument raised by Musashi's adopted son, Iori, does not specifically mention either location, merely stating that that 'During the plot of Toyotomi's treacherous vassal, Ishida Jibu-no-sho..... (Musashi) was renowned for his valour and skill with the sword.' – in fact, the lack of specificity in this instance has caused assumption that he fought on the side of the rebels, though there is no evidence to support this supposition.

The Honcho Bugei Shoden (1716) does mention he fought at Sekigahara, but there is no mention of the source for this information. (Hinatsu Shigetaka, who compiled this fascinating collection of tales of bugeisha, seemed to have collected and collated everything he could find about his subjects, but where this information comes from is unclear. He quotes the Kokura Hibun, and it is possible that he made the assumption that Musashi fought at Sekigahara based on this. It seems likely that the Sekigahara Campaign, being much more important than the one in Kyushu, was the first one that anyone would think of in this regard; it may also be that the Kokura Hibun purposely allows the reader to think of Sekigahara, as that would confer greater esteem on Musashi (as if he needed it).  Of the other main sources, the Bukoden (1755) and the Bushu Denraiki (1727), the Bukoden mentions the battle, but does not specifically place Musashi at the battle, whereas the Bushu Denraiki gives specific details of the Musashi's involvement, but places him firmly in the Kyushu campaign. The Nitenki, which was written a few years after the Bukoden (1776 in fact) and largely based on it, does place him at Sekigahara, but once again, there seems to have been no hard evidence for this. It was the version in the Nitenki that Yoshikawa Eiji relied on in writing his epic work, and the majority of subsequent versions follow him to a lesser or greater degree.

Map showing Kyushu c.1600

It also includes a couple of small vignettes about his actions during the battle, both of which paint a picture of a boastful, daring youth convinced of his own indestructability. Given he was only 16 at the time, but had already proven himself in duels with adults, this is not too surprising. In one of these stories he jumps off a small cliff into a clump of bamboo stakes but emerges unscathed; while in the other, he is injured in the thigh as he storms a wall, but calmly waits till the offending spear is poked through the arrow slit, grabs it behind the head, and putting his leg to it, breaks it in two.

So, who to believe? Interestingly, the Kyushu story was drawn from Kuroda Clan documents, and William de Lange mentions the discovery of recent documents which corroborate it. As is well known, Musashi's own writings make little specific mention of any of his battles, but it seems far more likely that the experience of a short but successful campaign like that in Kyushu, especially under the comand of the noted strategist Kuroda Josui, would have influenced him in the direction he was to take - of seeing the fundamental similarities in large and small scale combat - than the slaughter at Sekigahara would have done.

Kuroda Josui (from a portrait in the Fukuoka City
Museum)

It is interesting to note that Josui gathered together a somewhat irregular force, consisting of any volunteers he could get his hands on - the main body of Kuroda troops having been already despatched to fight on Tokugawa's side - (his son would be praised by Tokugawa Ieyasu for his role at Sekigahara - Josui's reaction was characteristic, - I mentioned it here) - and thus the 16 year old Musashi would have been warmly welcomed into such a force.

Josui took a series of castles in Buzen, moving up to Chikuzen Province, where he joined forces with Kato Kiyomasa to lay siege to Yanagawa in Chikugo. Ieyasu rightly suspected signs of ambition in this, and respecting Josui's abilities, sought to deter any further action. Josui, realising the cards were stacked against him, declined the offers of position offered by Ieyasu, and retired, leaving his newly promoted son as head of the clan.

 In the Hyôdôkyô, written five years later, when he was still only 21, Musashi writes of how to storm a gate and take prisoners. While it doesn't preclude this reference being to the Sekigahara campaign (during which Musashi is claimed to have participated in two sieges - attacking and defending Fushimi and Gifu castles respectively, although once again, the evidence for him taking part in these sieges is slim) - he would certainly have been able to garner more experience in Josui's army, particularly due to its small size and irregular composition.

I think the Kyushu campaign sounds more likely, but the weight of tradition leans heavily the other way – perhaps new evidence will come to light. Certainly, Josui will be in the limelight over the next year or so – the 2014 NHK year-long Taiga drama is based around his life. It might give extra impetus for proving the Musashi connection.