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

Wisdom from Samurai High School

Sanada Yukimura gives advice to the young hero

This is a lighthearted but fun drama series from 2009. (Broadcast by NTV).  It stars Miura Haruma, who does a very good job, both as a goofy high school kid and as the samurai whose spirit possesses his body. It may not be to everybody's taste, of course, but if you like light comedy and bear in mind that it's aimed at teenagers, it's actually pretty good.

Every episode, the hero is taken over by the spirit of his ancestor at a critical point and goes into action. We get to see an idealized young samurai in modern times –  his disciplined outlook on life is contrasted strongly with his lackadaisical but likable modern descendant... of course everything works out happily in the end.

By putting a samurai into a modern day setting, it provides an interesting example of the way 'samurai' are seen in the present day. Not surprisingly, it is more nuanced than the typical view we are used to in the west. It is also, of course, idealized.

It also raised more serious points: one which I will discuss below is something often missed in western treatment of samurai and bugei, and one that has quite important ramifications to serious students of martial arts.

Perhaps this quote is typical of the way in which samurai are viewed (in a non-academic context, of course):

The fighter is to be always single-minded with one object in view: to fight, looking neither backward nor sidewise. To go straight forward in order to crush the enemy is all that is necessary for him.
(D.T. Suzuki, Zen and Culture, p. 62)

Although he was talking generally about the attraction of Zen for the warrior class, the limitations of this point of view were raised nicely by a flashback scene in Episode 2, where the samurai youth is talking to his lord, Sanada Yukimura.

The conversation runs something like this...

'Are you ready for your first battle?'

'Yes! I plan to cut through the outer defenses and go directly for the enemy general to take his head.'

'Well said. It is a fine plan for someone 17 years old.'

This is the crux of it – this attitude of rushing straight in and carrying the day with your determination is vital, but it is not everything.

The bugei do vary in their treatment of the psychology of combat, but there is a tendency to treat them monolithically.  Even within a single style, there are differences in stages of teaching during which different approaches are appropriate. Although much writing (especially, but not limited to, that which is connected to Zen) tends to emphasize the power of determination, this is not necessarily equally stressed at all points of training.

In the late Edo period, there seems to have been a consistent effort to stress the development of this aspect of swordsmanship. For various reasons not wholly related to combat, this aspect was further emphasised during the Meiji and Taisho periods, and aspects of this are still visible in modern day kendo.

The older bugei were not so simplistic. This is especially evident in the teachings (and writings) that are closer to the warring states period. Not only were different attitudes emphasised at different stages of training, but the aims of training differed within and between ryu-ha. Those destined to be leaders would be taught tactics and strategy at a greater level of detail than simple warriors, with much of the higher level material being based on the physical skills that had been mastered in training with weapons. Some ryu-ha, such as the Shinkage ryu, seem to have had quite a strong strategic component, and were patronised by higher ranking warriors. There were also ryu-ha of strategy, which dealt specifically with managing troops. I suspect that, beyond this, there were family teachings and traditions, probably mainly oral, that were passed from generation to generation. There is some evidence of this in the Tokugawa family, with the instructions Tokugawa Ieyasu passed on to his successors; the Sanada family is also an example in which a high level of tactical ability was evident in several generations of the family (with two successive generations bringing the Tokugawa war machine to a halt).

Different writings may be seemingly contradictory, but this is not always the case. The courage and dynamism expressed in sentiments such as those expressed in the Suzuki quote may be very attractive, and certainly are impressive as isolated quotes. However the real strength of the bugei, in my opinion, is that they contain but are not limited to this approach. They are able to harness and build on this fierce attacking energy, but not be controlled by it.

To return to Samurai High School, Sanada Yukimura continues to advise his young vassal:

'In war, things do not always go as expected... a warrior who is certain of victory is arrogant. He only sees what is straight ahead. We must look to the left... to the right... and above us.'

Still, it is hard not to admire the teenage samurai's admonishment to his enemies before he ploughs into school bullies and local hoods:

'I cannot help but pity your miserable existence!'