Conquest of Japan - MANUAL

Impressions Software Inc.
Software Copyright  1992 Edward Grabowski
Communications/Impressions
All rights reserved worldwide
Manual Copyright  1992 Impressions


CONQUEST OF JAPAN

Thank you for buying this game. You are a highly valued
customer and we would love to hear from you with any
comments you may have about this product- good or bad! All
of our titles are the result of huge investments of time,
people and money- we use a dedicated and experienced team of
designers, graphics artists, sound engineers and programmers
on each game, to try to create the best possible product.
But we are not perfect, and would love to know how you think
we can improve! We want to produce the games that you want
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Conquest of Japan
Copyright 1992 Edward Grabowski Communications/Impressions


Game Credits:


Programming     Edward Grabowski
Graphics        Erik Casey
Original Concept    Edward Grabowski
Sound           Chris Denman
Research        Mark Saunders
Manual          Christopher Foster
Cover Art       Creative Advertising and Printing
Additional Support  Chris Bamford, James Hunter, Katharine
Potts
Additional Design
Comments        Chris Foster, Vaughn T. Clark, Scott
Woodrick
                      Table of Contents


  Introduction
  Overview
  Installing and Running Conquest of Japan
  Getting Started
  Main Map (Honshu)
  Game Options
  Entering Combat
  Combat Overview
  The Icon Panel
  Basic Combat -- View, Mode and Movement
  Advanced Combat -- Formation, Statistics and Options
  Battle Options
  Two-Player Games
  Strategy -- Tips and Pointers
  Notes from the Designer -- Edward Grabowski

A History of Japan from Creation to the Present Day
  The Sources of Japanese Culture
  Legend and the Imperial House
  Japanese Religion
  Samurai and Shogun
  Japan at War with Itself
  The First European Arrival
  The Tokugawa Bakufu
  What Happened Next
Introduction

Conquest of Japan is set in 16th century Japan. At this
time, Japan was effectively a group of small states, each
ruled by a lord, or Daimyo. Because these states were
constantly fighting each other, the period became known as
the Sengoku period- meaning "a country at war with itself."

In this case, the war is between two small states on the
large island of Honshu.  To the north lie the five cities of
the Daimyo called Usaka San.  Once, his family controlled
all ten of Honshu's cities; but that was before the southern
seas brought Obinaka's forces to their gates.  Obinaka took
five of the cities by force, stealing them from Usaka's
father.  Usaka has claimed the coming campaign as a matter
of honor, to right the wrongs done against his family.  The
fact that he will double his power from the move may have
something to do with it as well.

To the south lie the lands of Obinaka.  As Daimyo, his
political status is constantly in danger, and he must
continue to expand his empire; the alternative is to appear
weak to the surrounding lords, and be set upon by them.
Obinaka took hold of the south of Honshu in a bid for power
-- Usaka's family be damned.  Obinaka's empire suffered
misfortune when another raider stole each of his original
cities.  These five cities are all he has left; Obinaka
hopes to change that.

Neither Usaka nor Obinaka is content with only half the
island.  And neither side can afford to have the other
nearby, waiting to pounce on them in a moment of weakness.
Each must use their financial resources to hire Samurai and
other warriors for their armies, and attack and hold all
five of their opponent's cities.  Only then can true power
be wielded by the Daimyo of Honshu.  The time for conquest
is now!
Overview

Conquest of Japan is a game of land conquest. Played on a
map of Honshu, Japan's main island, you begin with five
cities or towns, as does your opponent. Each of these towns
carries an entitlement to a set number of koku - the
currency used in Japan to hire warriors. You must use your
koku to raise a band of warriors in each town. Each town
will have a different army. Then direct your men towards
your chosen target city -- or towards one or more enemy
armies if you are seeking an early confrontation!

Whenever two sides meet, a battle will be played out using a
unique miniature-style system. The results of this battle
will be fed back into the strategic level game. The
strategic game is more important than the individual battles
for ultimate success -- remember that you can lose a battle
but win the war.


Player Recognition

There are two players/armies, the En (circle) and the Tsuyoi
(meaning "strong," two vertical lines).  The circles are red
and the lines are blue.

Usaka-San (You!) begin the game as the Blue Lines -- if you
wish to play the other side, you can (see Game Options in
the Getting Started section).


The Ten Great Cities

At the start of the game each side will be given five
cities. The Blue Lines will always be to the north, the Red
Circles to the south.

Each city is capable of sustaining a certain number of men
as warriors. This is measured in koku, which is the currency
of the day; warriors are hired and paid with koku.  For
every year that the city remains intact, it will be able to
create 15 more koku than the year before. The city therefore
'grows' each year up to its maximum size (eight years'
growth). If it is captured by the enemy it will resort back
to its first year size and have to start to grow once again.

You will have to spend koku to hire men for your army.
Warriors cost different amounts of koku, depending on their
type.  When you first spend your koku, the newly hired men
join the Defense Army of the City. This army does not leave
the city but stays behind to defend it.  However, each city
can raise a single mobile army. This is done by transferring
men to it from your City Defense army.

Should a city be lost, its mobile army will crumble and
disappear from play. (The men are too concerned about what's
happening back home to fight!). A key part of your strategy,
therefore, is to decide on the balance between defense (the
city army) and offense (the mobile army).

At the end of each year, each city will grow and extra koku
will become available for you to spend. You get 15 koku for
each city that grows (as long as the city is not older than
8 years), and if you've spent koku on troops and they've
been lost in battle, your cities will get extra koku as they
are able to sustain a greater army than the one you've got.

The 10 cities are placed in new, randomized locations each
time you start to play a new game, in order to maximize
replay value.  Note that the position of the cities can have
a significant effect on how you plan your strategy.
Installing and Running Conquest of Japan

Instructions for installing and starting up Conquest of
Japan can be found on the Technical Supplement enclosed with
this game.


Quick Start

For those of you who want to jump right into the game, we
suggest reading the Introduction and Overview chapters of
this manual, and skimming through the chapter on Combat, to
understand the goals of the game.  You can then refer to the
Technical Supplement/Tutorial booklet to start playing.  You
can always return to the manual for more details on any
aspect of the game.
Getting Started

If you have not already entered information for the
Configure screen, then refer to the Technical Supplement,
packaged with the game, before reading any further.

After configuring Conquest of Japan, you will be presented
with a screen of introductory text, followed by the title
screen.  These are followed by pages from the book of the
Samurai, depicting several stages in the donning of his
battlegear.  To view these pages, press the space bar to
flip the pages of the book, otherwise press <ENTER> to skip
them entirely.

The final page of the book will be a list of game options.
If you have a mouse, you can change these by clicking on
them with the mouse; the program cycles through the choices
for each option.  Otherwise, you can use the cursor keys.
The up- and down-arrows will select the current option,
which will be highlighted with two asterisks.  You can then
use the left- and right-arrow keys to change it.  Clicking
at the bottom of the page, or pressing <ENTER>, accepts all
options and begins the game.

The majority of these options relate to the quality and
capacity of each side's cities and armies; thus there are
two sets of options, one for the Tsuyoi (blue lines), and
one for the En (red circles). These affect the difficulty
faced by each side, and can give one side or the other an
advantage.

     Player Type sets each side as being controlled
     either by a player or the computer.  With it, you
     can play as either the Tsuyoi or the En.  Or, you
     can set both players to be controlled by the
     computer, allowing two-player, real-time
     competition.  The final option allows computer-
     versus-computer autoplay, where you can view every
     facet of the game while the computer controls both
     armies.
     
     The Player Type settings can be changed at almost
     any time during the game, and any time during a
     battle.  This means you can jump into a computer-
     versus-computer game, and take over either side of
     a battle.  Likewise, you can begin a battle, and
     change the setting to computer-versus-computer,
     and watch while the computer moves your armies and
     completes the conflict.
     
     
     City Size determines how large each side's cities
     will be at the beginning of the game.  The size of
     a city limits how much koku it starts with; koku
     is the currency of Honshu, and is used to hire
     your armies.  Therefore, the size of your cities
     controls the size of your armies, and thus affects
     the difficulty of the game.
     
     City Spread controls the variability in size among
     a side's five cities.  With a standard spread,
     some cities will produce levels of koku higher
     than the norm; this will allow you to draw even
     greater numbers of warriors from those cities.  A
     wide spread is similar, but the increase in city
     size will be more pronounced in some cities.  With
     spread set to none, all cities will produce the
     normal, lesser amount.

Under the settings for each side, there is a number that
indicates the Difficulty for that side.  The computer
compares those numbers, and states the expected Advantage
below all of the options.


The final option on the screen is for Hi-Res Graphics during
the battle scenes.  Hi-Resolution graphics will quadruple
the amount of terrain displayed during combat, and offer a
clearer view of the action.  However, the added visuals take
considerable additional computer time to process, and will
slow gameplay to a degree.  This option is a good choice for
gaining an occasional overview of the battle, and as such
can be toggled on and off during the battle.  Users with 386
or 486 machines with local bus graphics capability may wish
to leave the game running in this mode.


Using the Mouse

Nearly every control in this game can be accessed with
either the mouse or the keyboard -- in most cases, the mouse
control is easier to use.  In this manual, "selecting"
something with the mouse means moving the arrow-shaped
pointer over that item or icon on the screen and pressing
the left mouse button.  Note:   When hiring or transfering
troops, holding down the right mouse button can be used to
speed up the process.


Using the Keyboard

For non-mouse owners, all commands are available from the
keyboard.  Some keyboard commands will be described in this
manual; all of them are described in the accompanying
technical supplement.
Main Map (Honshu)

The bulk of the strategic planning occurs on the main map of
Honshu.  This screen displays your cities and armies, as
well as those of your opponents.  Here you will plot your
strategy for holding the opposition's forces at bay and
conquering their cities.  Commands at this level will allow
you to create armies, move them across the island and begin
an attack.

The main features of the screen are:

1.Map of Honshu -- This lays out the important terrain of
  the island, including coastline and lakes, rivers, roads
  and hills.  The coastline and lakes cannot be crossed or
  passed.  The rivers and hills take on strategic
  importance in battle -- so be careful where you decide to
  engage in battle.

2.City Markers -- The small pagodas represent the ten
  cities of Honshu.  Their colors designate which side they
  belong to, either blue or red -- capturing a city changes
  it to your color, and brings it under your control.
  Their locations are set randomly at the start of each
  game, which will have a dramatic effect on your strategy.
  Are two of your cities close enough to be defended by one
  army?  Or should you devote more of your limited
  resources to protect them, and hold off on the offensive
  campaign?

3.Army Markers -- The small symbols represent armies out in
  the field.  Their colors match the color of the city that
  they came from (blue or red).  You create armies using
  the (financial and human) resources of your cities, and
  dedicate them to either defending their city, or striking
  out on offensive or counter-offensive missions.

4.Computer Icon -- Incorporated into the woodcarving
  bordering the screen, the icon shaped like a computer
  brings up the Game Options window, where you can save and
  load game files, exit the game, and change game settings.
  This window is detailed later.

5.Sack of Rice Icon -- Diagonally opposite the computer
  icon, this brings up a statistics screen.  Details later.

6.Control Indicator -- Located at the bottom of the screen,
  this box displays the name of the side who is currently
  moving (En or Tsuyoi).

7.Hire Troops -- Featuring a picture of an arrow pointing
  to a man, this button calls up the Hiring Troops window,
  which allows the purchase of warriors for City Defense
  armies.

8.Transfer Troops -- Shaped like an arrow connecting two
  armies, this button calls up the Transfer Troops window,
  which allows the movement of warriors from a city to an
  army, or from one army to another.  Mobile armies can be
  created and combined with this command.

9.Movement Icon -- When the currently selected army has not
  moved in the current turn, this icon will appear above
  the yellow arrow icon to let you move it.  To move an
  army, click the appropriate direction on this icon.  Only
  the diagonal directions are indicated -- you must click
  between these arrows to move horizontally or vertically.

10.    End Round Icon -- located in the lower right corner
  of the screen, selecting this icon will end the current
  round and allow the other player to move.  You will be
  asked to confirm this command.

Not Shown:  UNDO Icon -- For a few seconds after moving an
  army, an icon shaped like an "X" will appear where the
  MOVEMENT icon usually is -- select it during that time to
  undo the move.


Creating an Army of the Defense

When the game begins, you have no armies to deploy, no
forces at your command.  Your first actions should therefore
be to organize armies to defend your cities and to attack
the enemy.  This is all done from the Hire Troops and
Transfer Troops windows.

To create an army, select one of your cities with the mouse,
then click on the Hire Troops button.  A window should
appear, with two columns of buttons and listings for each
type of warrior.

The name in the top-left corner of the screen is the name of
the city you selected.  "City" means that you are going to
create an army to defend the city.  Creating a mobile army
uses a similar process, detailed below.

The names down the center of the screen are the five types
of warriors that you can purchase (signalmen and a leader
are automatically assigned to an army before combat, and do
not need to be bought.).  The numbers next to each are the
amount of each type currently in the city defense army.  The
buttons to the left and right of the names are used to
decrease and increase, respectively, the number of each
warrior type.  (Note:  Clicking on these buttons with the
right mouse button will rapidly increase or decrease the
number.)  The amount of available koku your city has is
displayed to the right of the city name.  Click on Exit to
exit the screen.

Note:  Once you have exited this panel, the troops you have
hired will be with you for the rest of their lives.  You
cannot later "sell" them back for koku, so be sure that you
have chosen properly.

Here, your decisions are two-fold.  First, you have to
consider how many of each type of warrior to choose.  Each
has its own strengths and weaknesses, discussed below.
Second, you have to distribute your forces between the
city's defense and the mobile, offensive armies.  If a city
is in the proper location, it may not need to be defended at
all; another city might be located close to two rival
cities, and therefore would need larger defensive forces.


Types of Warriors

There are seven different types of warrior:

     Leader -        There is one leader per army.  Leaders
                     are automatically given to an army,
                     and do not need to be purchased.
     Signalmen -     Pass orders from the Leader to his
                     troops.  If a unit has neither a
                     signalman nor the Leader in its group,
                     you will not be able to control it,
                     and its members will not move.
                     Signalmen are also automatically given
                     to an army.
     Samurai Mounted -    Samurai on horseback move twice
                     as fast as the other forces, and are
                     good in close-quarters attacks.
     Samurai -       Samurai have the best defense, but no
                     long-range firing ability.
     Arquebusiers-   Early riflemen.  Their guns are the
                     most effective long-range weapon.
     Bowman -        Archers, with a good long-range
                     attack.
     Spearman -      The basic foot soldier.

Each Warrior type has a different cost in koku:

     Leader          Free
     Signalman       Free
     Mounted Samurai 5 koku
     Samurai         4 koku
     Arquebusier     4 koku
     Bowman          3 koku
     Spearman        1 koku


Creating a Mobile Army

Having created a defense army, the next step is to turn part
of it into a mobile, offensive force.  To do so, select
Transfer Troops.  The Transfer Troops window will appear,
which is similar to the Hiring Troops window.  In the space
to the right of the screen, there will now be a heading for
an army sharing the name of that city, and a list of numbers
(all zeros the first time around) for each of the warrior
types.  Now, selecting the arrow buttons will move armies
from the city to the army, and vice-versa.  As before, Exit
will exit the screen.

Remember that you can only make 1 mobile army per city. If
that army is later destroyed you will be able to rebuild it
again afterwards.  You can use the name of the army to trace
it to the city that founded it.

This technique of transfer of soldiers can also be used to
transfer men back to a city or into a different army.  Just
move the army into the same square as the city or army, and
press the TRANSFER button.  The Army Transfer screen will
have entries for either the city and the armies, or the two
armies.  Controls all work as they do for creating a mobile
army.

If you are transferring forces from one mobile army to
another, there is the possibility of completely disbanding
one of the two armies in the process.  Note that if you do
so, you will not be able to split the resulting army in half
afterwards; a new second army would have to be created by
the city it first came from.  Therefore, to keep that second
army available and in a strategic location, we suggest
leaving one warrior there, allowing you to transfer forces
to it at a later time.

If you do combine two armies in the field, there is one way
of splitting them again.  Move the army into a city that
does not currently have an army in the field, and transfer
forces into that city's defense army.  Then, move the army
out of the city, and transfer the defense troops into a new
mobile army.  You then have two armies, but this is very
much a time-consuming method.

If you move two armies into a city, or three or more armies
into one space, the computer will make assumptions as to
which armies you want to transfer between.  Therefore, it is
best to keep no more than two armies, either mobile or city-
based, in the same space.  However, when that square is
engaged in battle, all available forces are brought into the
fight.

Note that you can control the hiring and transferring of
warriors at any time, even during your opponent's turn.
This may help you respond to a crisis, if you have the koku
or warriors to spare.


Moving a Mobile Army

The campaign level of the game is turn-based.   You and the
computer take turns moving your armies; you are able to move
all of your forces once in a turn.  The Blue player starts
first.  In any round, you may opt to move only some, or
none, of your armies.

To move an army, select it with the mouse.  If it has not
moved in the current turn, a movement icon will appear in
the bottom-right corner of the screen.  It will be
surrounded by arrows, showing all the possible directions
for it to move.  Click on one of those arrows to move the
army in that direction.

When you select an army that has already moved in the
current turn, it will not display a set of directional
arrows.  This army cannot be moved until the next turn.


Undoing a Move

For a few seconds after moving an army, an Undo icon will
appear where the movement icon was located.  Clicking on
this will undo the previous move; clicking anywhere else
will accept the move and continue the game.  If nothing is
done, the icon disappears on its own.


Terrain Restrictions

Your armies cannot move into the ocean; also, some inland
lakes and inlets are impassable.  You can move over rivers
and mountains without restrictions.  All armies move at the
same speed of 1 square per turn.


Ending the Turn

If you have moved all your armies in a turn, the computer
will automatically end your turn and begin your opponent's.
If you wish to end the turn without moving all your forces,
select the arrow icon in the bottom-right corner of the map
screen.  You will be asked to confirm the action, and if you
do, the other player's turn will begin.

To keep track of whose turn it is, look at the box at the
bottom of the screen.  It displays the name of the side
whose turn it is.  Additionally, the inside of the sack of
rice will be the same color of that side.


End of Year

Besides getting a success point for every city under your
control (see below),
at the end of each year any city under the age of 8 will
grow -- bringing with it a greater capacity for running an
army. You will get more koku to spend on building an even
greater army.


Statistics Screen

Clicking on the sack of rice icon bring up the statistical
display.  This screen gives information for both sides,
including army sizes, city sizes, koku remaining and success
points gained.  The size of each city is represented by the
size of each pagoda icon, and they grow and shrink as the
cities do.  To exit this screen, just click the left mouse
button.
Game Options

The following commands are available from the Computer Icon
on the Main Map screen.

Save Game as GAMEA.SAM
Save Game as GAMEB.SAM -- These allow you to immediately
save your game to either of two predefined locations.  You
will be asked to confirm before this takes effect.

Save Game as... -- This options displays a panel with
several commands, and up to six locations for saved games.
To select a filename to save to, either click on one of the
six names, or enter your choice with the Filename command.
If there are more than six saved locations, click on More to
see the next six of them.  Select Do to save, or Cancel to
exit the panel.  You will be asked to confirm before the
game is saved.

Load Game as GAMEA.SAM
Load Game as GAMEB.SAM
Load Game as... -- These three options work in the same way
as the commands for Saving Games (see above).

Alter Player Types -- Selecting this cycles you through the
four player options: player vs. computer, computer vs.
player (the player commands the En instead of the Tsuyoi),
player vs. player and computer vs. computer.  Computer vs.
computer will mean that a player can choose to watch a game
without having to take part in it; you can then "jump into"
the game at any time, taking control when you wish.  Player
vs. player mode is discussed in a later chapter.  You can
use this option at any time, and change to and from computer-
versus-computer mode at will.

Exit to DOS -- This will end the game and shut down the
program.  You will be asked to confirm this option before it
takes effect.

Restart -- Selecting this option will clear the current
game, and begin a new one with the same start options.  You
will be asked to confirm this option before this takes
effect.

Continue Campaign -- Selecting this returns you to the game.
Entering Combat

When an army enters an enemy city, or meets an enemy army, a
battle will take place. Before the battlefield appears you
should first select your battle formation.  The formations
available are Ganko, Hoshi, Saku, Kakuyoku, Koyaku, Gyorin
and Engetsu (see below).

Use your tactical skill to defeat your enemy. The battle
will last until one side retreats or is wiped out.  However,
there is the option to accelerate to the end of the battle,
and let the computer calculate the results.


Formations

Seven traditional samurai troop formations are represented
in Conquest of Japan.  Not only are these formations
beautiful displays of manpower -- each formation has its own
strategic significance and usefulness:

     1) Ganko / "Birds in Flight" A very flexible formation
                             of troops which are able to
                             adapt easily to any situation.
                             The arquebusiers are situated
                             at the front and the flanks,
                             whilst the general is near the
                             middle; so that communication
                             is not lost.
     
     2) Hoshi / "Arrow Head" Once again, the arquebusiers
                             are used to open the enemy's
                             ranks, allowing the waiting
                             Samurai to charge into them.
                             This is a very aggressive
                             formation that can often be
                             used to attack a larger enemy
                             force.
     
     3) Saku / "Keyhole"     Considered to be the best
                             defense against a Hoshi
                             charge, this grouping is
                             shaped to absorb the initial
                             charge and them close around
                             the breach.
     
     4) Kakuyoku / "Crane's Wing" Looking from ground level
                             very similar to the Hoshi, the
                             use of Kakuyoku fooled many
                             enemy generals into defeat.
                             The shape actually is perfect
                             for an enveloping move, with
                             the wide flanks drawing the
                             opposition into trouble.
     
     5) Koyaku / "Yoke"      This was an extremely
                             effective form of defense as
                             the first wave of an enemy
                             attack could be absorbed until
                             their intentions were clear,
                             and then a secondary formation
                             could react accordingly.
     
     6) Gyorin / "Fish Scales"    When you are badly
                             outnumbered, this formation
                             may prove to be effective.  It
                             uses the same ideas of the
                             Hoshi, but in a more blunted
                             shape, to sustain the force
                             for longer in a potential weak
                             spot.
     
     7) Engetsu / "Half Moon"If the situation looks
                             desperate, implementing this
                             formation may allow your
                             troops to live to fight
                             another day.  It is a very
                             adaptable shape that can be
                             improvised to face anything
                             that the enemy throws at it.


Battle Results

If you capture an enemy city, it will now belong to you and
come under your control. Its army will be disbanded, but
you'll be able to create one in its place. The city will
have been damaged by the fighting, and its level of
production (Koku) will fall back to that of a new city that
is just starting to grow. Once you've captured all 10 cities
the game will end: you will have won!!

If an army has to retreat, it will leave the square and fall
back to
an adjacent but empty square.


Success Points

In addition to the overall goal of holding all ten cities,
Conquest of Japan keeps score for each Daimyo in terms of
success points.  At the end of each battle, success points
will be awarded:

     1 point to the side with the largest remaining army and
     1 point to the side that does not retreat or get wiped
out.

In addition, at the end of each year you will be awarded 1
point for each city which flies your flag.

Success points are a good indicator of how well you are
doing in the overall campaign. You can monitor your success
points by referring to the statistics screen (the bag of
rice icon).
Combat Overview

Having entered a battle (either army vs. army or army vs.
city) and selected a formation, you are moved to the
battlefield.  Here, all of your warriors will enter the
fight, and act under your control; your commands may be as
general or as specific as you like.  The final outcome will
be entered back into the campaign game, and you will return
there immediately after the battle ends.  Note:  If you
attack an empty city, victory will be assumed and the battle
canceled.


Battlefield Terrain

The terrain on which a battle is fought is generated by the
computer, based on the terrain on the main map where two
armies meet.  For example, if you meet on hilly terrain,
more hills will appear on the field.  The same applies for
roads and rivers.

The table below details the effects of various battlefield
terrain on movement and combat abilities:

                   Movement          Combat
        Hills   No effect       Doubles
                                Attack/Defense
        Rivers  Slow speed      Halved
                                Attack/Defense
        Roads   No effect       No effect
        Tree    No effect       No effect


Of "Man" and "Men"

If you have assembled an army with more than a hundred men,
one "man" on the battle screen will actually represent two
or more warriors.  All of your forces will not be
represented on the display, but they are still reflected in
the simulation.  In such cases, any statistics you call up
on a man will reflect the increased abilities "they" have.


Combat Interface

Your forces can be controlled entirely with the mouse, using
the panel of icons in the bottom-right corner of the screen.
At the start of battle, the game will be immediately paused,
to allow you to enter commands before the game actually
begins.

When the icon panel is activated, the game is paused to
allow you to enter commands.
All battle activity will stop, though you will still be able
to use keyboard scrolling to view the battlefield (see
below).  After you are through entering commands, click on
the Battle Mode (yellow arrow) icon to unpause the game --
your commands will then take effect.

When you want to give new orders to your troops, just press
the spacebar or hold the mouse button down for a moment, so
that the computer can process the warriors' last moves
before pausing the game.  This displays the icon panel and
awaits your commands.

Your warriors will first appear in the formation you have
chosen for them (see Formations, above).  However, you will
need to give them their first movement command to send them
across the battlefield.  Basic movement commands are covered
in the chapter on Basic Combat commands, below.


Selecting a Warrior

You can select one of your warriors to control (or to base
general orders relative to) by pointing to his head on the
battlefield and clicking.  Any commands you give will center
on either that particular warrior, his group, or the entire
army relative to him.  When selected, an arrowhead will
appear above him, which holds his unit number (used when
creating a group); and an "X" will mark his current
destination, if he has one.

If you want a clearer view of that particular man, press the
M key to center the screen on him.
The Icon Panel

There are two rows of icons in the icon panel.  For your
easy reference, they are listed here:
          Top Row                       Bottom Row
Overall Statistics (sack of     Attack Strength (sword)
rice)                           Defensive Strength (armor)
Battle Options (floppy          Firepower (bow and arrow)
disk)                           Morale (smiling man)
Retreat/Surrender (white        Number of Men Left in Unit
flag)                           (man w/headband)
Formation (black dots)          Group Number (signal-flag)
Move-To (direction arrows)      Battle Mode (yellow arrow)
Show Map (blue and red
circles)
Mode Selection Icon
 (leader, men or man)

Note:  Some of these icons have three functions, depending
on which mode is currently selected.  The multiple meanings
are detailed in each icon's description.
Basic Combat -- View, Mode and Movement

This chapter will show you how to watch the progress of your
battle, alter the level of control you have over your
warriors, and command them to move.

Viewing the Battlefield

You are generally limited to seeing only a small portion of
the entire battlefield -- namely, that which fits the
screen.  (However, if Hi-Res graphics are enabled, that
portion is much larger.  See Game Options, above.)  This
could be very inconvenient, as your army will march right
out of view!  There are two ways to see the rest of the
terrain.

Show Map -- This icon (depicting red and blue circles)
relocates your view to any point on the battlefield.  Upon
selecting this icon a map appears, showing trees, hills
(brown), rivers (blue), marshes (blue circles), roads
(yellow) and either a blue or red dot for each piece.  A
white rectangle indicates what part of the map is currently
shown in the window.  Click on any point on the map, and
your view will immediately change to that position.

Keyboard Scrolling -- At any time during the game, you can
use a number of keys to move your small window on the
battlefield to another location, either to track your own
army's progress, or to check on your opponents.  The keys
are arranged as a keypad, centered on the letter S.

                  Q -     W - north      E -
               northwest              northeast
                A - west               D - east
                  Z -     X - south      C -
               southwest              southeast


Screen Coordinates -- The numbers at the top left corner of
the battle screen give you the screen's x and y coordinates.
These change when you move your viewpoint on the screen.


Mode Selection

Your warriors can be controlled in three modes: General,
Group and Single mode.  The commands you choose work
differently depending on the mode you have selected, so pay
attention to the Mode Selection icon in the top right corner
of the set of icons.  Its appearance changes to reflect the
current mode: General is a leader with elaborate headgear,
Group is two men, and Single is one man.  Clicking on the
icon will select the next mode.  The three modes are
detailed below:

General - All commands made apply to all warriors in your
army.  This is the easiest way to move all of your troops,
in formation, into battle.

Group - Commands apply to the group of warriors that the
currently selected warrior belongs to.  Upon selecting a
formation at the beginning of battle, men are divided into
smaller groups; these then form the different parts of the
formation.  Some groups will actually be split between two
"lines" of the formation, as some formations contain more
lines than there are groups.  An example of group control
would be sending your mounted Samurai ahead of the main
forces, to rout the enemy's long-range capability.

Single - Commands apply to the currently selected warrior.


Movement Commands

The key to moving your armies is the Move-To icon, which has
a drawing of direction arrows.  This icon sets or changes
the destination of one, some or all of your forces.  When
selected, the "X" marking the currently-selected warrior's
current destination will be reset to just under his feet.
Clicking the mouse button while pointing anywhere on the
battlefield (note -- including the icons) will select that
location as his new destination.  To increase the range of
possible locations, use the keyboard controls to scroll the
view (see above) before selecting a destination.

This command reacts differently depending on what mode is
currently selected.  If in single mode, only the currently
selected player will move.  In group mode, all of the pieces
in that group will move in that direction, but will maintain
their positions relative to each other.  In other words.  A
group formed in a line will march in a line, obstacles
notwithstanding.  Finally, in general mode, moving one piece
will move the entire army, while all pieces stay in
formation.  This is the way to move all of your forces into
battle.

Warriors will not move until the game is unpaused.  Also,
only the latest command given to a warrior is remembered; a
warrior sent to cross a river alone will ignore this order
if a general command to fall back is given afterwards.

Note:  Though warriors move smoothly across the battlefield,
their destinations are represented by a grid of discrete
locations.  Therefore, when choosing a destination for a
warrior, the mouse pointer will "jump" between these grid
points.


Remember, to make you warriors enact your commands, click on
the Battle Mode (yellow arrow) icon to unpause the game.
Advanced Combat -- Formation, Statistics and Options


This chapter covers the commands for altering army
formation, viewing battle statistics and other features you
will need to use as your skills increase.


Changing Formation

After you get the hang of moving your army around the map,
you should learn how to change their formation on the
battlefield.  This is done with the Set Formation (formation
picture) icon.  This command has three uses, one each for
General, Group and Single mode.  To switch between them, use
the mode selection icon (see above).  Each use is detailed
below:
       
General Mode - This command allows you to order your army to
retreat and regroup.  This essentially allows you to start
the battle over with your surviving warriors, grouped back
into their original formation.  However, this deducts from
your score in success points, as Samurai never retreat.

Group Mode -  Upon selecting it, a window with twenty-four
formation types appears.  Select one, and after the game is
unpaused the currently-selected group will march into that
formation.  (Remember, this order would be countermanded by
a move-to or other formation order.)

Single Mode - opens the Assign Man to Groups screen. This
allows you to control which men are in which group.  The
main components of the screen are a row of arrowheads titled
"0" to "9", and pictures of all the warriors in that group.
The arrowheads represent the ten groups you can create and
control.  If a group has no men in it, the majority of the
screen will be blank.
       
       About Single Mode:  The computer predefines a set of
       groups to create the formation you chose before
       entering battle; however, these groups can be
       changed as you wish, to switch people from one group
       to another, to split a large group in half or to
       form two small groups into one larger one.
       
       To do any of these things, select the arrowhead of
       the group you wish to move a warrior from.  Then
       select the man you wish the move, and click on the
       arrowhead of the group you wish to move him to, and
       the transfer is complete.  Repeat this until every
       man is where you want him.
       
       Remember that without a signalman (or the leader) in
       a group, its warriors will not take orders.  (Extra
       signalmen are kept in group nine, and are useful for
       creating new groups or replacing signalmen killed in
       battle.)  Regroupings take hold immediately upon
       exiting the screen, so a group with a new signalman
       will have no delay in reacting to your commands.


Viewing Statistics

There are two main ways to see the statistics for the
current battle.  The first is to use the Statistics (Sack of
Rice) icon, in the upper-left of the icon box -- the screen
clears, and a full display shows how the battle is
progressing. The army which has the most number of men will
have their flag displayed on the left. On the right you are
given a breakdown of the composition of the two armies
(Active) and the number of men lost (Losses). If your losses
are becoming too high and you are heavily outnumbered, it
might be the time to consider retreat!

Note:  This Statistics screen also appears at the end of
every battle, with a final tally of surviving men and
warriors lost.  The flag of the winning side will be flown.

The second way to view statistics is by selecting any of the
icons from the bottom row of the icon box (except the Battle
Mode icon).  From left to right, they are:  Attack Strength,
Defense Strength, Firepower, Morale, Number of Men Left in
Unit, and Group Number.  Selecting one of these icons
displays the appropriate numbers floating above the heads of
every warrior on the battlefield.  Each icon is described
below.

Attack Strength (sword) - Displays the offensive rating of a
warrior or warriors.

Defense Strength (armor) - Displays the defensive rating of
a warrior or warriors.

Firepower (bow and arrow) - Displays the long-range firing
rating of a bowman (bowmen) or arquebusier(s).

Morale (smiling man) - Displays the will to fight of a
warrior or warriors.  Victories and defeats (even by nearby
armies on the main map) will raise and lower the unit's
morale, respectively.  Warriors whose morale drops too low
will not engage the enemy; similarly, men with low morale
have a lower chance of success in battle.

Men Left in Unit (man w/headband) - Displays the number of
actual warriors that "man" actually represents.

Group Number (signal-flag) - Displays the number of the
group that the warrior belongs to.
       
(Note:  If either side has more than 100 men, then each
number for attack, defense and firepower equals the unit's
rating  times the number of men that piece represents. You
are therefore told the FULL worth of that piece.  For
comparison, see the table of Standard Battle Values below.)
                   Standard Battle Values
                          Atta   Defen  Firepow
                           ck      se      er
            Leader          4      6       0
            Samurai         4      4       0
            Mounted         6      2       0
            Samurai
            Spearmen        2      2       0
            Signalmen       1      2       0
            Bowmen          1      1       2
            Arquebusiers    1      1       4


Retreating / Surrendering

Retreat may at times be your only sensible option, in order
to preserve what's left of your army. You may do so by
selecting the Retreat/Surrender (white flag) icon -- you
will be asked to confirm your action.  If you retreat from
defending a city, that city and all your men will be lost.

Additionally, when asked to confirm the order to retreat,
you may click on the Overview icon to see the main map of
Honshu, to help decide the merit of a retreat in your
present situation.
Battle Options

A variety of game features can be controlled from the Battle
Options (floppy disk) icon.  Two menu panels appear when
this icon is selected -- click on any option to use it.

Save Game as GAMEA.SAM
Save Game as GAMEB.SAM
Save Game as... -- These commands work in the same way as
the Save Game commands on the Game Options Panel (see Game
Options, above).

Alter Player Types -- Selecting this command cycles through
the four options for Player Types: player vs. player, player
vs. computer, computer vs. player, computer vs. computer.

Exit to DOS -- Use this command to quit the game early and
exit the program.  You will be asked to confirm this option.

Continue Campaign -- Use this to turn off the Battle Option
menus and return to the main icon panel.

Adjust Game Speed -- This option cycles through five game
speeds: Turbo (the preset speed), Fast, Medium, Slow and
Snail.  486 users can use this to slow down the action, and
novices can use this to gain time to assess an ongoing
battle.

Adjust Resolution -- The Hi-Res option, while slowing down
the speed of combat, is a good way of gaining a strategic
view of the battle.  Four times the battle area is displayed
in this mode, and all commands work as they do in lo-res
mode.  Select this command to toggle Hi-Res on and off.
Users with 386 or 486 machines with local bus graphics
capability may wish to leave the game running in Hi-Res
mode.

AutoCalc Battle Result -- In some cases, you may find it
preferable to speed through a battle scenario -- for
example, if you highly outmatch the competition, and just
want to get the fight over with.  In those cases, you can
select the AutoCalc option.  When on AutoCalc, the computer
controls both sides of the action, and simulates the entire
battle without displaying them.  You can stop the AutoCalc
routine at any point, and resume control.  The warriors will
be paused in the middle of the last actions ordered by the
computer.
Two-Player Games

Two players can play Conquest of Japan at the same time. To
do so, the first step is to set the game to player vs.
player mode; this can be done from the Start Options screen,
or the Main Map screen, or from the Battle Options window
under the Battle Options icon in Combat Mode. All that's
left to do is decide which army each player will control.

While at the main map, control of the game alternates
between the two players.  Each player can move his armies,
as well as hire and transfer troops, only during his own
turn.  Ending the turn (by clicking on the yellow arrow)
switches control to the other player.

While in combat, the battle begins with the Tsuyoi in
control.  When the En wish to move, press the number '1' --
the En become the 'player' and can issue all of their
commands.  Pressing '1' again gives control back to the
Tsuyoi.  When both players have set their orders, select the
yellow arrow to unpause the game and begin the fray.

Pressing the number '1' key only works in player vs. player
mode.  Additionally, the Mode Selection icon for General
mode will change to reflect who is currently in control: a
red warrior for the Tsuyoi, a gray warrior for En, black
(with yellow headgear) for computer vs. computer games.
Strategy - Tips and Pointers

The following information is presented so that you may
better conquer Japan.

Difficulty Levels - Setting the difficulty levels on the
Start Options screen before beginning the game is the best
way to handicap either yourself or the computer; use those
options if you (or a human opponent) are new to the game,
and want an advantage.

The difficulty options all affect the amount of koku
produced in your cities; this determines the numbers of
warriors you can hire, and therefore also affects you
chances in battle.  Larger cities produce more koku than
small ones, and a wide city spread produces more chances for
increased koku production than a narrow one.

Basic Strategy Tactics
  City location is key.  If a city is far away from the
  enemy, or blocked by other cities or natural
  obstructions, then it may need few or no troops for
  defense -- and send its mobile troops to defend closer
  cities.
  There is no "perfect" composition for an army --
  experimentation is the key to finding your optimum "mix"
  of warriors.
  Move your armies carefully -- it is possible to move an
  army too far forward, where it is unable to catch up to
  an enemy force attacking its home city.

Winning battles -  Factors used in determining the outcome
of a fight include:
  Attack strength and number of men used in attack.
  Defense strength and number of men used to ward off
  attack.
  How many friendly units are around the defending unit
  compared to the number of attacking units immediately
  next to it.
  What terrain the units are standing on (hills are good,
  and rivers bad).
  Morale (low morale increases chances of defeat).

Morale - watch a unit's morale level carefully.  If an army
loses too many battles (or any nearby armies do), it will
become a less useful fighting force.  In such a case, one
should look for an easy battle for them to win, to boost
their morale.

Movement Speed - Remember that in battles, all cavalry moves
at twice the speed of foot soldiers. If you march your
entire army in formation, your mounted Samurai will quickly
break formation and charge ahead in half the time.

Also, remember that rivers slow down the speed of all units.
Warriors wading through the water are easy targets for
Bowmen and Arquebusiers.

Signalmen - Members of your army not responding to commands?
Make sure that they have either the Leader or at least one
signalman in their group.  Otherwise, they will not follow
orders.  This can be checked at the Assign Men to Groups
screen (formation icon, single mode).

Basic Battle Tactics
   Advance slowly, a small step at a time.
   If there is a river between you and the enemy, be
   careful -- you may wish to wait on your side and attack
   the enemy with archers.
   Archers can be used in two ways -- either in front of
   your forces, to hold off the enemy; or behind them, to
   support your Spearmen and Samurai in the fray.
   Mounted Samurai's greater speed make them good for being
   controlled as a group, to root out trouble spots in the
   enemy's formation.
   After joined in battle, use group and single mode
   commands to reform parts of the formation to defend
   against or attack specific enemy groups.
   Remember the tactical possibilities of retreating and
   regrouping.
Notes From the Designer -- Edward Grabowski

Most of the games I've done have come out of experiences
gained in childhood -- either through playing games or
through the rare but greatly enjoyed trips to the cinema.
Conquest of Japan, however, is different:  the inspiration
came much later in life, through the great films of Akira
Kurosawa and the not-so-well put-together British television
series "Monkey."  The costume and splendor of the great
armies on the march must have been truly breathtaking to
watch.  The design and intricate use of detail have a
richness and variety which any culture would find hard to
match.

This richness and variety also extended into the ornate and
varied fighting formations developed; formations which are
given names from and also depict nature.  Crane's Wing, or
Kakuyoku, are typical examples: they consist not only of
regimented line and column but also of sweeping curves of
Samurai warriors.  In producing Conquest of Japan, my eyes
have been opened to a great beauty, and I hope this is
reflected in the visual splendor of the great armies on the
move, reenacted in this game.


Observations on Play

In Conquest of Japan you have two distinct phases: a high-
level strategic phase, where you allocate limited resources
to your armies, deciding whether to hold back or go all out
for your opponent; and a low-level, more tactical phase
where you fight out the battles.  On the higher level, a key
decision is how to spend your koku (money for hiring
warriors).  In particular, you need to decide how to split
your koku between the men that remain behind to protect your
city and the mobile "offensive" army.  For, if all your men
join the mobile army and go off on some "glory trail," your
city will be undefended and opposing force will take the
city.  This loses you not only success points, but also
wipes out a powerful mobile army which may have been crucial
to your battleplan.  When deciding the split, look at the
location of the city.  Is it close to a vastly superior
enemy stronghold?  If so, I would advise caution and keep
your men for city defense.  I would also arrange for mobile
armies to come from my other cities to support my exposed
position.  The only thing more important than capturing an
enemy city is defending one of your own!

Concerning the composition of the army, each soldier has his
own merits, and to be successful a mixture is required.
With a limited budget, I would favor greater numbers (more
spearmen and archers) rather than quality, and attempt to
surround and smother the enemy.  If up against a large foe
(greater than 100 men), arquebusiers start to show why their
worth the extra point over bowmen.  I would never enter
battle without some archers or arquebusiers.  Against an
army with many missile firing soldiers, the fast-moving
cavalry charge is the ideal response.

When on the offensive I would try to meet the opposition on
clear terrain.  Rivers are a menace to formations.
Therefore, when defending, I would actively seek to engage
the foe from the opposite river bank, and use my missile-
firing troops to eliminate most enemies in or before the
river, while clearing up any early river-crossers with my
other foot soldiers.

Regarding hand-to-hand combat, the more men you have near
each other the better.  This not only reduces the number of
foe that can surround any one of your men, but also
encourages your troops to support each other.  Cavalry are
only really effective when charging into the opposition --
especially from the side or rear.  If you let your cavalry
stand and fight you will get poor returns from them.
Remember that they move at twice the speed of foot soldiers,
so use them for side or rear attacks.  Guard your general;
without him your troops are more likely to give up and
retreat.  Also important, the signals are no good at
fighting, so don't use them for that.  Their purpose is to
allow you to pass orders quickly to the group of troops they
each are assigned to.  So without signals, communication is
a major problem.  (That's why you are given a few extra
signalmen at the start.)

When beginning a battle I usually move my men forward --
slowly -- a stage at a time.  Sometimes, I switch to
computer-versus-computer mode and watch how the battle
develops.  If I'm in trouble or have some clever ideas, I'll
switch back to player versus computer and carry out my
plans.

It is very rare, in any confrontation, that two sides are
evenly matched.  In Conquest of Japan there are difficulty
settings which you can adjust to make the game more
challenging as your skills grow.

I hope these notes are of use and provide a basis for some
challenging gameplay.
A HISTORY OF JAPAN FROM CREATION TO THE PRESENT DAY

On the face of it, Japanese culture is absurd.  An early
Jesuit missionary decided that the Japanese "have rites and
ceremonies so different from those of all other nations that
it seems they deliberately try to be unlike any other
people."  Four hundred years later the Japanese economy
dominates the world and our homes are full of Japanese
products; and yet we have little more idea about the
workings of our capitalist comrades than the 16th Century
Jesuits did.

We admire and value Japanese art and craft without nearly
appreciating the culture that produced it; just as we do
with native art from other parts of the world.  We are
enormously impressed with the vibrancy of the Japanese
economy but have absolutely no idea how to emulate it.  Deep
down, perhaps we reckon that we couldn't possibly work that
hard.  Maybe we wouldn't want to.  While we have always been
told that worker and capitalist are inevitably in conflict,
the Japanese worker has a fierce commitment to his job, his
factory and his employer.  It just doesn't seem fair,
really.

Japanese culture is mesmerizing largely because it is
impossible to understand.  We can't help feeling that
someone has missed the point somewhere, but we are not quite
sure whether it is them or us.  How many times have we sat
in front of a television documentary on Japan, or Sumo
wrestling, or one of those extraordinary sadistic game shows
and gone to bed a hour later none the wiser about anything?
Could anyone look less like an athlete and sex symbol than a
Sumo wrestler?  And why do they wear that enormous leather
jockstrap and walk up and down cocking their legs and
throwing salt?  Even when its explained, we don't
understand.

Our grasp on Japanese culture is so loose that understand it
mostly as a handful of clich‚s.  Why on earth do they have
to train for ten years before they can make tea?  Why are
their walls made out of paper?  Why do they regard ritually
sticking a sword into their stomach a great privilege?  Who
thought up the notion of employing men in white gloves to
push commuters onto trains and why did everyone else think
it was a good idea?  Why do they enjoy Karaoke machines so
much?  Why do they keep gravel pits raked for thousands of
years to look like the waves of the sea?  It's all very
impressive, but why do it at all?  It's absurd.

Nevertheless, when we look at someone and think that they
are absurd, we are usually looking at a mirror.  Someone who
seems ridiculous is often just someone we don't understand.
That Jesuit missionary was trying just as hard to be
different as the Japanese were.  We each view the world and
the other people in it through the filter of our own
culture; and we are quick to spot the absurdities in others.
If we think the Japanese are odd, what must they think of
us?  A Kalahari bushman probably thinks that we are both
ridiculous.  In the end, who's to say who's right?
THE SOURCES OF JAPANESE CULTURE

The Island Fortress

Japanese culture developed very largely in isolation from
the rest of the world, contributing in no small measure to
its unfathomable depths.  Japan is much more of an island
fortress than Britain, another island of similar size which
has at one time in its history dominated the world.

Indeed, Japan has never been invaded by sea.  Kublai Khan
tried a couple of times in the thirteenth century but was
beaten back by the weather and in particular by a typhoon
which has become known as 'The Wind of the Gods', or
'Kamikaze'.  The only time that Japan has been ruled by a
foreign power was 1945-52 by the Allies, an 'invasion'
brought about by dropping the atom bombs and forcing a
surrender.  Moreover, before the current century Japan had
only invaded a neighbor on one occasion, when the warlord
Hideyoshi spent a couple of years at the end of the 16th
Century trying to invade Ming China through Korea.


The Cultural Sponge

On the other hand, Japanese culture has borrowed extensively
from China and Korea in the seventh, eighth and ninth
centuries and then from the European and American culture
during the last hundred years.  In both cases, it then
adjusted what it had absorbed into something uniquely
Japanese.  This of course only adds to the outside world's
confusion as something familiar is 'distorted' into
something alien.  It is probably fair to say that Japanese
culture has been formed by absorption and adaptation rather
than by creation or invention.  There are no great
intellectual or religious figures in Japanese history and
very few political innovators.

Nevertheless, it would be wrong to imply that the Japanese
have simply swung behind the prevailing wind.  They have a
very strong national identity and have always decided for
themselves what it is they want to absorb.  Buddhism and
Confucianism were both happily imported, but Christianity
was excluded and persecuted because it was seen as a threat
to Japanese identity.  Furthermore, on two separate
occasions Japan cut herself off from outside influence for
two hundred years or more.  Thus, despite appearances to the
contrary, Japanese culture is very definitely not simply a
mixture of Chinese and American cultures.


The Japanese Identity

There is much that is uniquely Japanese and which therefore
has a strong unifying effect.  This is perhaps an odd claim
when one considers that most of Japanese history is a story
of civil war and the ebb and flow of a medieval feudal
society.  Successively unified and divided again over the
centuries, in relation to the outside world there has been
little doubt who and what constitute Japan.  Of course, part
of this is derived from being an island (or cluster of
islands).  However, while Britain, for example, contains a
Welsh and a Scottish border and is still fighting a war over
Ireland, Japanese civil wars have always been more about
which particular warlord could dominate the others rather
than about sub-national identity.

In addition however, Japan effectively has a unique and
uniform language, race and religion.  Although there are a
few local dialects, Japanese is spoken all over Japan and
nowhere else in the world (except in a few multinational
board rooms).  It is also very difficult to learn.  Indeed,
the Basque Jesuit, Francis Xavier considered the Japanese
language to be an instrument of the devil devised to hinder
his missionary activities.  Moreover, the Shinto religion is
only practiced in Japan and is not an evangelizing faith.
Apart from a few small sects, there are no religious
minorities and such religious wars as there have been were
over temporal power rather than spiritual belief.

There is no ethnic minority problem simply because the only
ethnic groups are too small to be a problem.  The only two
significant ones are the Ainu and the migrant Koreans, the
latter of which in particular are kept firmly as second
class citizens.  The Ainu were the original occupants of
Japan, a Caucasoid race who were pushed into the far north
by the migrations of the Mongoloid modern Japanese about
10,000 years ago.  Bigger, fairer and more hairy than the
Japanese, the Ainu are regarded as a beautiful race;
especially the women, who are in great demand as models in
modern Japan.  Nevertheless, the Ainu were defeated long ago
and only a few thousand remain in the villages of the
northern island of Hokkaido.


Capitalism out of Feudalism

Japanese history before the mid-nineteenth century is very
largely a seamless garment.  Feudal lords jostled for power
and influence over each other; sometimes peaceably,
sometimes not.  On occasion, one particular lord and his
family would gain control over most if not all of the
territory of Japan and a degree of centralization took place
while his dynasty remained strong.  That period would
probably come to be known by the family name or the capital
from which it ruled.  When the dynasty weakened, it was
toppled and a period of chaos and local rule would follow
until another warlord could dominate.  There were no great
revolutions, no conquests, no far reaching social reforms,
no political or institutional development.

The fact that the last great dynasty to centralize Japan,
the Tokugawa, provided the spring board from which modern
Japan leapt into being does not in itself mean that it was
so very different from the rest.  Because the last hundred
years of Japanese history is so extraordinary, a large
number of the history books are really trying to explain how
modern Japan came out of the Tokugawa rule.  It is
nevertheless not inconceivable that the country could once
again have splintered into local feudal factions.  In fact,
the problem that the historians have is that, if history is
anything to go by, it was far more likely that Japan would
have decentralized than have developed as quickly as it did
into greatest capitalist power in the world.

LEGEND AND THE IMPERIAL HOUSE

A Mythical Beginning

One of the many ironies of Japanese history is that the
enormously long feudal period was at least partially caused
by the absence of a powerful monarchy against which to
evolve, while at the same time Japan can claim to have the
longest surviving monarchical dynasty in the world.  Indeed,
if Shinto legend is believed, the present Emperor of Japan
can trace his lineage back to the twin gods who created the
world.  In the beginning, the world was divided into a pure
upper Heaven and an impure lower Earth.  The god Izanagi and
the goddess Izanimi stood on the bridge between the two.
Izanagi bent down and stirred up the formless Earth with a
spear thereby creating the islands of Japan, which are thus
called 'Shinkoku', or 'The Land of the Gods'.

In the fullness of time, Izanimi died and began to rot away
in the land of the dead.  Rather tactlessly, Izanagi
followed her and she was so upset that he had seen her in
her semi-decayed state that she divorced him.  In disgust,
Izanagi washed himself in the sea and out of his right eye
came the Moon goddess, out of his left eye the Sun goddess
Amaterasu and (rather appropriately) out of his nose came
the storm god, Susanoo.  Amaterasu, also known as 'the Great
Sky Shiner', got upset because Susanoo had destroyed her
rice fields and sulked in the cave of heaven until she was
enticed out by some of the other gods.  Thus day and night
were created.

One of the more important contributions that Amaterasu made
to Japanese history was that she sent her grandson, Ninigi-
No-Mikoto, to rule Japan and his grandson, Jinmu, became the
first Emperor.  Thus, since the Emperor was born from the
very apex of the Shinto pantheon, he was divine himself and
could therefore act as an intermediary between men and the
gods.  In time of drought, he could bring rain; in time of
war, he could bring victory.  In legend, Jinmu came to the
throne on February 11th, 660 BC but a date in the second or
third century is more likely.


An Historical Root

Before the fourth century, Japan had been a collection of
relatively diffuse and independent states held together by
alliances between the ruling families.  The imperial family
was the first to gain overall control of the country
sometime during that century.  However, over the years the
emperor lost his political power and was reduced to a kind
of high priest, above mundane temporal matters.  Moreover,
although there have been ten female emperors, it is very
much a male institution.  Of the ten, eight were
concentrated in the seventh and eighth centuries and the
remaining two neither married nor bore children.

During the seventh and eighth centuries Japan was greatly
influenced by the Chinese T'ang dynasty (618-907) and the
Japanese imperial institution made something of a come-back
on the political scene.  Since the Chinese Emperor was both
divine and the ruler of his country, the mid seventh to the
early ninth century saw the greatest time of temporal power
for the Japanese emperor.  It is all too easy for Europeans
to forget quite how powerful and culturally splendid the
Chinese Empire was.  At the time of Christ, the Han Empire
rivaled Rome in size and power.  In the seventh century, the
T'ang ruled an enormous territory that stretched as far as
Persia.  They even won battles against the Turks.  From the
tenth century however, the Sung were more inward looking and
thus had less of an impact on their neighbors.

Under the influence of the T'ang, the Japanese imperial
dynasty commissioned two great family histories, called the
'Kojiki' (The Record of Old Things) and the 'Nihon-Shoki'
(The Chronicle of Japan).  By putting down in writing
exactly how it was the emperor was related to the gods, they
legitimized his position of authority.  Furthermore, in 701
the 'Taiho Ritsu' (Penal Code) and the 'Taiho Ryo' (Civil
Code) were produced.  These laid out the laws of the land in
great detail and placed the responsibility for their
application firmly with the emperor.  During this period,
called the Ritsu-Ryo, power was centralized on the imperial
court in their capital of Kyoto.


A Constitutional Figurehead

That this centralization did not last is typical of the
tension between centrifugal and centripetal forces in
Japanese history.  Once central power is established the
forces gather to restore regional control, which is in turn
superseded by eventual reunification.  Through it all, and
by virtue of his divine position, the emperor remains the
nominal ruler though he very seldom actually holds power.
Strangely enough, there does seem to be a Japanese tendency
for power to rest behind a figurehead, usually the emperor.
Moreover, it is fairly common for a leader to struggle to
gain power only to abdicate fairly quickly in favor of a
chosen successor.

This has contributed to the remarkable resilience of not
only the imperial institution but the imperial dynasty as
well.  The Chinese emperor held his mandate to rule
partially because of his perceived virtue; thus a Chinese
imperial dynasty could be ended if an emperor was rendered
unfit to rule by losing his virtue.  The Japanese
institution, on the other hand, was entirely hereditary.
Moreover, any son could inherit and if the emperor was
infertile a successor was chosen from the wider family.  A
plentiful supply of concubines maintained a good choice.
Thus secular powers could have a direct and decisive
influence on the choice of emperor.

In this way, the position and lineage of the emperor could
be kept inviolate while secular powers retained control of
who sat on the throne.  Thus there was no need for secular
rulers to threaten the emperor, they simply ignored him.
Indeed, if a secular ruler had replaced the emperor, his
influence would probably have diminished very quickly.  As a
consequence, the legitimacy of the emperor remained
extremely strong while his actual power (and at times even
his wealth) was negligible.  This meant that no other family
claimed to be the 'rightful heirs to the throne' (the cause
of many a European war) and power simply rested with
whomever could prove the strongest.


A Source of Power

That is not to say that warlords did not attempt to
establish dynastic rule, they simply did so outside of the
imperial institution.  In the ninth century Fujiwara
Mototsune took control of the country and invented the title
of 'kanpaku', or 'chief councilor', with which to rule; a
title which could only be held by the Fujiwara family.  The
Fujiwara then placed lots of their women in the imperial
harem with the result that three quarters of the subsequent
emperors were born of Fujiwara women.  In 1192, Minamoto
Yoritomo took power and revived the ancient title of
'shogun', which again became an hereditary title for the
Minamoto family.

These titles were then used to legitimate the position of
whoever actually held power, especially when that power was
seen to be weakening.  A lineage was fabricated and the
emperor forced to appoint the effective ruler to some
prestigious post thereby, of course, adding the new ruler's
family to the hereditary pool for future appointments to
that title.  For example, at the turn of the seventeenth
century, the warlord Nobunaga declared himself neither
kanpaku nor shogun because he did not have the correct
ancestry.  His successor, Hideyoshi, fraudulently claimed to
be of the Fujiwara family and got the emperor to make him
kanpaku.  His successor, Ieyasu, claimed Minamoto descent
and assumed the title of shogun.

Thus Japan possessed the trappings of a dynastic monarchy
without actually recognizing its authority.  Emperors were
simply wheeled out to confer impressive titles on those who
already held power.  Nevertheless, it is significant that
the position of the emperor and the respect which he enjoyed
were maintained throughout centuries of humiliation.  When
in the middle of the nineteenth century the emperor himself
made a successful bid to take political control, he had an
enormous legitimacy which probably did more than anything to
keep the modern Japanese bandwagon on the rails.

JAPANESE RELIGION

Religion in Japan is a relatively straight forward topic
despite being made up of a mixture of three distinct faiths.
Shinto, Buddhism and Confucianism are all flexible and
tolerant and are able to co-exist without any real problem.
They are each focused on a different aspect of human
existence and, while in a pure form they would disagree on
what is important in life, in the hands of the ever-
adaptable Japanese they survive in forms which are
apparently consistent and even complementary.  While Shinto
is regarded as the official religion, this has only been so
since the nineteenth century when it was used, as much as
anything, as the symbol of a unique Japanese identity.


The Divine World

Shinto, meaning 'the Way of the Gods', is a very ancient
religion with no great founding figure equivalent to Moses,
Jesus or Mohammed.  Indeed, it is really a systemized tribal
religion in the sense that it consists largely of a series
of rituals and beliefs that explain and temper the world
around the Japanese and places Japan itself at the center of
creation.  It was only when Buddhism and Confucianism
arrived in the sixth century that it was even given a name
in order to distinguish it as the indigenous faith.  In this
way, a mixture of local and regional cults were organized
into a national religion.

Because Shinto has been concentrated for so long within a
dynamic and self-contained culture, it has acquired a more
sophisticated form than most tribal beliefs.  It is regarded
as a 'world religion' mainly because there are 35 million
adherents, but they are all Japanese and there is no sense
in which Shinto is a religion for the rest of the world.  In
this, it is similar to Hinduism, which means 'belonging to
the Indus'.  Certainly neither could be described as
evangelizing, which is not surprising since it would not
make sense for an African, for example, to worship a
Japanese mountain and the Japanese emperor.

According to Shinto, the gods, man and nature are all part
of the 'kami', or life force, of which there is an unlimited
number of manifestations.  Thus, spirits of fertility and
productivity are kami along with natural phenomena such as
wind, rain and thunder, natural objects such as mountains
and rivers, animals such as dogs and foxes and ancestral
spirits.  Indeed, since man is as much a kami as anything
else, a mirror is often used as a symbol of the divine.
Evil and death are both illusions because we are all lost in
a pool of divinity anyway.  Men simply have to realize and
appreciate that life is good, the gods are noble and Japan
is beautiful.   Their duty is simply to be pure and
virtuous.

There is no great creed or requirement to hold specific
beliefs, no holy struggle, just a joyful acceptance of what
is already all about us.  There is no need for salvation or
to satisfy certain criteria in order to enter heaven because
we are all part of it anyway.  On the contrary, the point is
to perform ceremonies and rituals in order to bring heaven
into this world.  These rituals and the object of their
performance will vary from place to place and from family to
family and are concerned with both community and individual
life.  In the more ancient folk Shinto there are also
rituals designed to placate hostile kami, a fairly typical
feature of tribal religion.


The Individual Path

Buddhism arrived in Japan in the sixth century via Korea and
is again a tolerant and co-operative faith.  Since it does
not really address the divine, mainly because God is
unknowable, it does not need threaten another religion's
divine teaching.  In Buddhism, this life is really only an
entrance examination to a state of blissful Nirvana which is
beyond desire, suffering, life and death.  The aim of the
Buddhist is therefore to live as pure and disciplined a life
as possible so as to maximize the chances of being able to
realize Nirvana in this life or the next.  This of course
ties in very well with Shinto were the aim is again simply
to be pure and virtuous.  Indeed, since Shinto is strong on
the benefits of this life and Buddhism on the rewards in the
next, most Japanese families have shrines to both religions
in their homes.

In 552 the King of Korea gave a huge golden statue of the
Buddha to the Japanese emperor as a gift.  It was placed in
the home of the chief minister, but very soon afterwards
there was an outbreak of small pox.  It was assumed that the
gods of Shinto had been offended by the reverence given to
the Buddha and it was dumped into a canal.  However, when a
bolt of lightening struck the Imperial palace, it appeared
that the gods of Buddhism had also been upset.  The statue
was fished out and placed in its own temple.  The two faiths
have happily co-existed ever since, each sitting in their
own temple.


The Ordered Society

Confucianism is more of a moral philosophy than a religion.
Again it does not really concern itself with the divine and
its emphasis is much more upon the organization of society
than the spiritual condition of the individual.  As such it
fits quite easily alongside the other two and has had more
of an impact on the day to day structures of Japanese
political and social organization.  Confucius' real name was
K'ung-Fu-Tzu, the one being a Europeanized version of the
other, and he lived in China from 551 to 479 BC.  Although
he did not write any books himself, his saying were recorded
by his disciples in The Analects.  His thinking was later
developed by Mencius (Meng-Tzu) who lived from 371 to 289
BC.

Apparently, Confucius himself was tall and slender with a
reddish beard and a twinkle in his eye.  He was basically a
philosopher and an idealist, though with a highly developed
sense of the practical.  He combined religion, philosophy
and law into a series of practical truths that were designed
to build towards a more harmonious society.  He considered
man to be inherently good and therefore saw no reason for
there to be suffering, if only things could be organized
correctly.  He aimed to restore harmony out of the chaos and
anarchy that he saw all about him.  Conflict could not be
constructive and was therefore to be avoided as a first
step.

Society was to be ordered by a construction of hierarchical
relationships that built up from the individual through his
family to his sovereign.  Everyone was to know and accept
his place within this structure.  The harmony of the whole
was dependent upon the virtue of the individual, and this
included the sovereign.  As we have seen, the Chinese
emperor could lose his mandate to rule if he ceased being
virtuous.  Thus the superior in any relationship had a
responsibility to virtue, benevolence and the setting of a
good example.  The inferior party was to know his place and
be loyal to his superior.  Calamity is caused by society not
being harmonious or by a ruler not being virtuous.


The Union

Thus, since these three religions focused on different areas
of human existence, they could be incorporated into one
whole.  Of course, there were differences and as such there
were separate temples, philosophers and priesthoods.  No
doubt, there was great debate between loyal members of
particular sects but for the nation as a whole there was no
need for religious conflict.  In stark contrast, when
Christianity came along, it demanded the rejection of other
faiths and other loyalties.  Purity and virtue were not
enough and a specific salvation was required to avoid
everlasting torment.  Moreover, both its origins and its
leadership were located on the other side of the world.  It
was intolerant and alien and treated by the Japanese as
such.

SAMURAI AND SHOGUN

The Emperor

The period from the eighth to the twelfth century is known
as the Heian period and marks the second rise and fall of
the Imperial house.  As has already been said, the early
part of this period, under the influence of extensive
trading links with the T'ang Chinese, was one of great power
for the emperor and his court at Kyoto.  After the tenth
century, however, the links with China were severed and
power drifted away from Kyoto and into the hands of the
regional military lords, or 'daimyo'.  Allegiance shifted
from the emperor to the daimyo and a typical feudal society
emerged.  The daimyo bolstered their position by employing
professional personal armies and there emerged the Japanese
equivalent of the European 'knight', the 'samurai'.

The second half of the Heian period can be seen in terms of
the 'buke', or military families, challenging the 'kuge', or
civilian nobility, for control of Japan.  The buke were
mostly successful and held sway right up until the
nineteenth century.  Interestingly enough, although power
was in the hands of the buke, a good deal of prestige
remained with the kuge.  The Heian was a flourishing
cultural time and the kuge acquired a reputation as paragons
of civilization and sophistication.  Even as life in Kyoto
became increasingly decadent and many of the buke became
very learned, the feeling stuck that the crude and rustic
buke were doing well if they could secure a kuge girl in
marriage.


The Samurai

'Bu' means 'military' or 'arms' so that 'bushi' means
'warrior' and 'bushido' means 'the way of the warrior'.
'Samurai', which is another word for bushi, means 'one who
serves', thus a samurai was both a man of arms and a
retainer.  He followed the bushido and owed total allegiance
to his daimyo.  Purity and loyalty were qualities that the
samurai were esteemed for just as much as their prowess in
battle.  Thus while the intellectual position of the kuge
was admired, the moral code was bushido.  Bushido was in
fact the product of a martial society and Confucianism,
reinforced by the arrival of Zen-Shu Buddhism from China
which was a form much more attuned to martial values.  Manly
virtues were admired and women were relegated to a very
subservient role.

There were three basic grades of samurai depending on who
they served.  There were those of the shogun, or dominant
daimyo, those of other daimyo and those who had lost their
masters for some reason.  These latter ones, called 'ronin',
roamed the countryside as mercenaries or criminals and were
popular characters in plays and stories.  Originally, a
samurai battle was effectively a series of individual
combats.  A warrior would announce his pedigree, his
motivation for fighting and his intentions if we won and
then be challenged to a sword fight.  By the fourteenth
century, the greater use of horses in battle had led to more
coordinated cavalry charges.  The samurai was then a mounted
archer and, indeed, the way of the samurai was referred to
as the way of the horse and bow.

By the end of the Heian period, the kuge and the imperial
court were living it up in Kyoto while the buke fought their
battles for them.  Apart from fighting amongst themselves
there were still significant numbers of Ainu to suppress in
the north of Honshu.  In reward for their service, the buke
were given private estates with an income which could then
be divided up and parts given to samurai vassals.  In this
way, land that theoretically belonged to the emperor was
actually being divided up between the daimyo and their
vassals.  Thus, the emperor was losing both his political
power and his land.


The Shogun

A number of insurrections, notably the Hogen in 1156 and the
Heiji in 1159-60, confirmed that power had moved from the
noble courts to the military chiefs.  The Genpei wars of
1180-85 between the buke families of Taira and Minamoto
proved to be decisive.  The Taira were eventually routed at
the battle of Dan-No-Ura in 1185, the largest naval battle
that the Far East had yet seen.  Previously, the epic poetry
such as the Genji Monogatari had been about the glories of
the Heian court.  Now the Heike Monogatari told the story of
the rise and fall of the house of Taira on the battle field.
Minamoto Yoritomo, based in his capital of Kamakura on the
east coast, restored order and in 1192 forced Emperor Go-
Toba to appoint him 'Sei-I-Tai-Shogun', 'Commander-in-Chief
of suppressing the Barbarians'.

This title actually dated back to a much earlier period when
there was a need for the Japanese to conquer more territory
from the Ainu in which to live.  The Europeans were also
later to be regarded as barbarians, a designation inherited
from the Chinese.  Indeed, even in the nineteenth century
when the shogun had become the chief administrator, there
were some who felt that he ought to do his duty and expel a
few barbarians.  In ancient times, the office was an ad hoc
arrangement and thus the shogun had set up his headquarters
in a tent.  Minamoto Yoritomo revived this notion as well
and called his rule 'bakufu', or 'tent government'.  From
then on, even when the shogun ruled from a well fortified
and permanent castle, it was called a 'bakufu'.

The establishment of the Minamoto shogunate out of the
feudal soup was a pattern repeated with the Ashikaga dynasty
in 1338 and the Tokugawa in 1603.  The shogun was very much
a first among equals, with Japan divided into rival fiefs
and the secular power of the emperor quietly ignored.  In
fact, power quickly fell to the Hojo family who created the
title of 'shikken' or regent to the shogun, with which to
rule.  Thus had arisen the extraordinary situation that the
theoretical rule of the emperor had been ignored to
establish the shogun's power in Kamakura, while power
actually resided elsewhere with the shikken.  The prestige
of the Kamakura bakufu and the Hojo dynasty was seriously
undermined by the lucky escape from the attempted Mongol
invasions of 1274 and 1281 and both were overthrown in 1333.


The Wako

The next three years are known as the Kenmu Restoration as
the kuge and Emperor Go-Daigo sought to re-establish the
rule of Kyoto.  Their failure and the founding of the
Ashikaga shogunate sent the imperial household into serious
decline from which it only recovered in the seventeenth
century.  The Ashikaga shogunate is notable for its control
of Japanese pirates, or 'wako'.  From the mid fourteenth
century, piracy had become a lucrative business the daimyo
along the western coast of Japan.  They raided all along the
coast of China and Korea and throughout South East Asia,
eventually invading in force and raiding up the Yangtse.

The Chinese and Koreans both sent embassies to the Ashikaga
shoguns to try and get the raids stopped.  This was finally
achieved by Yoshimitsu, who was declared King of Japan by
the Ming Emperor Chu Ti, a rather patronizing gesture that
was not really welcomed by Yoshimitsu.  As the Ashikaga
dynasty weakened, piracy returned and the Chinese eventually
broke off diplomatic relations.  It is interesting to note
that at this point, Japan was an expansionist commercial
nation with colonies all over the Far East maintained by
pirate fleets who were not exactly under the control of the
Japanese ruler.  In this she was not dissimilar to
Elizabethan England.

By the second half of the fifteenth century, the Ashikaga
shogunate was in trouble.  During the Onin Civil Wars of
1467-77, the central power of the shogun ceased to exist and
the feudal system all but collapsed.  The last Ashikaga
shogun, Yoshimasa, like the Roman Emperor Nero, fiddled
while Japan burned, sparking off a power struggle on his
death.  The local fiefs formed themselves into larger
groupings under powerful military lords and total anarchy
reigned as samurai armies and armed bandits roamed the
countryside looting and pillaging, burning and raping.

JAPAN AT WAR WITH ITSELF

Chaos

The hundred years from 1467 to 1568 are referred to as the
'sengoku period', 'a country at war with itself' or the
'warring states period'.  This was full-blooded and
aggressive feudalism.  Central and even regional authority
broke down, and power rested with local lords who dominated
small feudal states with their bands of samurai.  Power and
influence were entirely based on military strength, which
meant that the allegiance of the samurai was needed more
than ever.  They were rewarded with fiefs, titles and
privileges of all kinds in a desperate attempt to retain
their support.

Continual warfare meant that boundaries were constantly
changing and if a lord weakened in the defense of his
territory, there was no shortage of neighbors or vassals
willing to challenge his rule.  Everyone was suspicious of
everyone else, and the lords were obsessed with conquest of
their neighbors as the only way of avoiding their own
overthrow.  Because treachery and betrayal were so common,
loyalty increasingly became the highest virtue.
Nevertheless, the feudal idea of the lord-vassal
relationship threatened to be submerged in a sea of self-
seeking individualism as many of the samurai saw the
opportunity to better themselves by the betrayal of their
lord.

Moreover, it was not just the samurai who were given the
chance to improve their social standing.  The constant
battle, with its destruction and the need for arms and
supplies, meant that artisans and merchants enjoyed a good
deal of social mobility.  The ever larger armies needed to
be fed and provided for by their lords and foreign trade
increased significantly.  Leather was a vital commodity in
feudal warfare, but it was only produced and worked by the
'eta', a despised outcast group who had previously been kept
to the Kansai region.  Now, of course, the eta were very
popular and lords took great pains to attract them to their
region.  Moreover, a number of towns developed as autonomous
commercial centers, including Sakai, Yamaguchi and Osaka.


Less Chaos

In the second half of the sixteenth century, things began to
settle down a little and local power consolidated in the
hands of daimyo who enjoyed a greater control over their
fighting men and resources.  The thousands of small fiefs
became hundreds as local lords allied themselves to
prominent families and the political map of Japan
simplified.  Independent local power bases were reduced, and
the samurai were obliged to live closer to their daimyo were
they could be controlled more easily.  There was a more
methodical system of ranking among them so as to heighten
the sense of subordination.  Moreover, local lords would
have their position protected and guaranteed by more
powerful regional daimyo.

The alliances became ever larger and eventually, at the end
of the sixteenth century, a succession of three daimyo from
central Honshu built a strong enough coalition to force the
submission of the other regional clusters and unify Japan.
The first of these, Oda Nobunaga, who had originally come
from fairly humble stock, defeated his chief rival, Imagawa,
and became ruler of most of the central part of Japan.  The
strategic location of his power base had given him control
of the main food plain as well as the imperial capital of
Kyoto.  He allowed the last of the Ashikaga shoguns,
Yoshiaki, to retain the title since Nobunaga himself was not
of the Minamoto family, but he took the title of 'shikken'
(regent) instead.

Nevertheless, Nobunaga did not have complete control over
the north or of the island of Kyushu in the west.  On his
death in 1582, murdered by one of his generals while
performing in a play, he was succeeded by Toyotami
Hideyoshi, one of his vassals.  Hideyoshi continued and
refined his predecessor's methods, combining brilliant
military strategy with a strict control of land and
peasants.  In 1587, he inflicted a decisive defeat on the
Shimazu and took control of Kyushu.  Not having the same
qualms as Nobunaga about inventing lineages, he claimed
Fujiwara descent and forced the emperor to make him kanpaku.
This marked the beginning of a process of restoring the
imperial prestige in order to bolster that of the ruling
shoguns.


New Battle Formations

By now, samurai battles had evolved a long way from the
formal series of individual duels described in the ancient
epics.  This was partly due to the introduction of firearms,
which tended to render obsolete individual sword-fighting
skills.  The most highly tuned swordsman is no match for a
speeding bullet; a fact graphically illustrated by Indiana
Jones in a famous scene from 'Raiders of the Lost Ark'.
Furthermore, since one did not need to undergo years of
training to use a firearm, it was possible to recruit large
armies and deploy them relatively quickly.  As the armies
grew larger and formed ever bigger alliances, it became
necessary to develop strict battle formations and tactics so
as to control them.  In typical Japanese fashion, they were
highly formalized and given poetic names.  A few of them are
reproduced in the game.

1. 'Ganko', or 'birds in flight', is a flexible formation
   that can easily respond to a changing battle situation.
   Protection is provided primarily front and rear by
   arquebusiers and archers, although there are enough on
   the flanks to form a new screen if required.
2. 'Hoshi', or 'arrowhead', is designed for an all-out
   charge with the leading samurai poised to sweep through
   the arquebusiers at gaps created in the enemy ranks.
   Since it is a highly mobile and penetrative formation,
   the flanks do not need excessive protection.
3. 'Saku', or 'keyhole', is the deployment to defend
   against the 'arrowhead'.  The archers and arquebusiers
   are angled to produce a crossfire to the incoming
   attack, while the samurai are braced to withstand the
   shock or a charge.
4. 'Kakuyoku', or 'crane's wing', which can be mistaken by
   the enemy for an 'arrowhead', is actually designed to
   surround an opposing force.  The archers and
   arquebusiers, together with the leading samurai group,
   engage and distract the enemy while the rest of the
   formation spreads round to engulf them.
5. 'Koyaku', or 'yoke' (as in oxen rather than eggs), is a
   defense against either 'arrowhead' or 'crane's wing'.
   The leading section meets the attack in its arms giving
   the rest time to gauge enemy intentions and deploy
   accordingly.
6. 'Gyorin', or 'fish scales', is an adaptation of the
   arrowhead and is adopted by a force which is
   outnumbered.  Unable to risk all out assault, such a
   formation allows the smaller force to exert pressure on
   a particular point of the enemy ranks.
7. 'Engetsu', or 'half moon', is designed for when things
   are going really badly and an enemy surroundment is on
   the cards.  The samurai ranks are spread and ready to
   respond to a worsening situation.


Relative Calm

By 1590, Hideyoshi had subdued all the remaining outposts of
independence, and ruled a unified Japan.  He considered
foreign contact to be a weakening force on the Japanese
nation, and gradually introduced laws to reduce outside
influence and strengthen traditional patterns.  He also took
a firm grip on those patterns.  The daimyo were subjugated
and their estates reduced, shuffled around or even removed
altogether.  A strict land survey was performed in order to
get a proper idea of land value so as to be able to allocate
it more effectively, rewarding friends and penalizing
enemies.   The people were forbidden from moving village or
occupation and the samurai from changing their masters.
This was designed to stop social mobility and thereby
produce societal stability.

Moreover, Hideyoshi recognized the need to recreate a moral
order to restrict the licentiousness and savagery that had
grown up during the warring period.  A rigid form of
Confucianism was imposed with a strong hierarchical
structure.  However, there was an important difference
between Hideyoshi's system and the Chinese model.  In China,
the highest level was occupied by an intelligentsia who
attained their status by passing difficult civil service
exams.  In Japan, the samurai were at the top thereby
creating an hereditary aristocracy.  To reinforce this, in
1588, the Katana-Gari, or Sword Hunt, forbade non-samurai
from carrying weapons.   Furthermore, the samurai were moved
from the land and into the towns.

All of this brought peace and stability, but since Hideyoshi
was really a warlord, it is perhaps not surprising that he
decided to invade Korea in May 1592, as much as anything as
an outlet for his megalomania and Japan's warlike energies.
His real target was Ming China and then perhaps the riches
of India, but although he took Korea comfortably enough, a
stalemate soon set in and the Japanese eventually withdrew
at Hideyoshi's dying request.  His death came in 1598 and
was followed by a two year power struggle which ended at the
battle of Sekigahara in October 1600 and the victory of the
third great daimyo, Tokugawa Ieyasu.

Hideyoshi had actually left a son and heir in the person of
Toyotami Hideyori who remained a threat to Ieyasu mainly
because of the courageous and almost legendary figure of his
mother, Yodogimi.  The Toyotami family was finally destroyed
in 1615 with the siege and destruction of Osaka Castle and
the suicide of Hideyori and his mother.  By this time,
however, Ieyasu had taken the title of shogun, moved his
headquarters from Kyoto to En (the modern Tokyo) and
established the absolute monarchy of the Tokugawa dynasty
which was to rule Japan for the next 264 years.

THE FIRST EUROPEAN ARRIVAL

Before describing the strongly anti-European Tokugawa
bakufu, it is, of course, necessary to back-track seventy
years or so to the first European landing on Japan and to
examine the impact that European culture had in the brief
period before it was banished.  The sixteenth century was a
time of European colonial expansion with the Portuguese,
Spanish, Dutch, English and eventually the French sweeping
around the globe in search of trade and conquest.  In fact,
it was Portuguese traders who first reached Japan, landing
on Tanegashima off the south coast of Kyushu in 1542.


Christianity

Following the usual pattern of European colonization,
Christian missionaries arrived hard on the heels of the
traders.  A Papal Bull of 1502 had given Portugal the
exclusive right to proselytize the Far East and accordingly
in 1549 Francis Xavier and two other Jesuits landed under
the auspices of the Portuguese crown.  There was very
quickly a substantial Jesuit missionary presence and a good
number of Japanese converts.  Some of these 'converts' no
doubt embraced the new faith so as to benefit from the
commercial opportunities that Europe presented but many were
committed enough to endure martyrdom during later
persecutions.

At first the new religion was tolerated and under Nobunaga
almost became fashionable.  Japanese Christians even went on
two pioneering visits to Europe and were received with great
ceremony in Lisbon, Madrid and Rome.  However, the situation
changed dramatically with the accession of Hideyoshi.  The
water had already been muddied by squabbling among the
increasing number of rival missionary groups, including the
Franciscans, Dominicans and Augustinians.  Hideyoshi, and
Ieyasu after him, saw Christianity as a dangerous foreign
ideology rather than simply a new religion and a series of
increasingly harsh persecutions began.

In 1614, Christianity was banned and the missionaries
expelled.  Finally, following the Christian Shimabara
rebellion of 1637-38 a policy of 'sakoku', or 'closed
country', was introduced.  All foreign influence, and
especially that of Christianity, was ruthlessly driven from
Japan which remained effectively free of the religion until
the mid nineteenth century.  It is remarkable to note
however that small pockets of Christianity did survive the
two and a half centuries of isolation and persecution.
These loyalists, known as 'kukure Kirishitan', or 'crypto-
Christians', emerged from out of the woodwork when the
country eventually re-established relations with Europe.


Firearms

Of course, religion was not the only thing that the
Europeans brought with them to Japan.  The Portuguese
introduced bread (and the word for it, 'pan'), tobacco
('tabako'!) and the idea of frying fish in batter, which
became a national dish called 'tenpura'.  However, perhaps
more dramatically, the visitors brought firearms; a very
popular arrival for a country engaged in spectacular, all-
out civil war.  The eagerness with which firearms were
embraced is indicated by the fact that within two years the
Japanese were manufacturing their own at Sakai and
Yokkaichi.

By the end of the sixteenth century, firearms and cannons
had revolutionized the techniques of Japanese warfare.  Huge
fortifications and castles were built for the first time,
close combat sword fights were replaced by long range
shooting matches and cavalry were replaced by infantry.  The
armor changed, the armies became larger and more
professional and were placed under central command.  All of
which makes it even more extraordinary to note that, just as
the Chinese had invented gunpowder and then forgotten about
it, by the 1630s Japan was at peace and the firearm had
fallen into disuse.  The mark of the samurai was still the
sword.  Even in the Second World War, Japanese army and navy
officers fought a modern war with swords in their hands.


Less Than you Think

Thus the influence of the Europeans' first visit to Japan
can be exaggerated.  They made quite a splash initially but
then sank with hardly a trace.  They brought new knowledge,
in particular with regard to naval construction and
navigation, silver mining and refining and medicine, but the
scientific gap between east and west was not as great in the
sixteenth century as it had become by the nineteenth.  The
Catholic church still kept a firm grip on European
scientific thought and the Japanese were a long way from
being crude aboriginal natives with bronze age technology.
Furthermore, the sakoku policy that the Tokugawa bakufu
imposed ensured that most of what was new about European
science was not spread very far.

Nevertheless, sakoku was not all that it was cracked up to
be either.  Theoretically, all contact with the outside
world was severed.  Foreigners were not allowed in and the
Japanese were not allowed out.  However, the real targets of
sakoku were the Catholic Portuguese and Spanish who
threatened the Japanese identity with their missions and the
Japanese economy with the monopoly they held on trade.  By
the end of the sixteenth century they could maintain profit
rates of 70%-80% (even 100% on occasion) which was obviously
not good for Japan.  The Protestant Dutch, and occasionally
the English, were happy to leave religion out of it and were
thus able to take over the trade.  Though restricted to city
of Nagasaki on the west coast, they were not excluded all
together.

The real point of sakoku was for Japan to regain control of
its own destiny.  Understandably, trade with China and Korea
was interrupted by Hideyoshi's invasion but it had always
been a part of the Japanese economy and soon started up
again.  However, by theoretically excluding all foreigners,
any outside contact with Japan was now negotiated on
Japanese terms.  The central government gradually took
control and established state monopolies.  Previously, the
basis of trade had been the export of Japanese silver in
return for foreign silk, a process that was bound to work
against Japan in the long term since silver is not a
replenishable commodity.  Now Japan began to develop its own
silk industry, which by the nineteenth century was able to
pay for rapid industrialization.
THE TOKUGAWA BAKUFU

For two hundred and fifty years, Japanese society was left
to marinade in its own juices.  Thus, while the structures
emerged unchanged at the end of that time, the flavor and
the forces within Japan were radically changed.  On the
surface, Japan was still a feudal society in the mid
nineteenth century but the warlords had become aristocrats
and the samurai had become bureaucrats.  The economy was
richer and stronger than before and yet the wealth lay not
with the government but with the lowest strata of society,
the merchants.  Feudalism depends on at least the threat of
war but the period of the Tokugawa bakufu was characterized
more than anything else by widespread peace.

During the warring states period, the Tokugawa family
themselves had gained control of a quarter of the total land
area of Japan.  Perhaps even more significantly, their
territory was central and contained most of the important
economic sites, including mines, food plains and ports as
well as the ancient capital of Kyoto and the emperor.  The
Tokugawa capital of En (modern Tokyo) was little more than a
fishing village before 1550.  By 1720 it had a population of
one million, making it larger than either Paris or London at
the time.  Moreover, the combination of Osaka, Sakai and
Kyoto also contained one million people and these two areas
and the links between them dominated the national economy.


The Daimyo Fettered

In order to bring stability and control, the first Tokugawa
shoguns set about clipping the wings of those who might
challenge them.  While some daimyo enjoyed wealth and some
of them power, very few were allowed both.  They were
divided into three grades.  The 'shimpan' (related) were the
23 daimyo who were part of the Tokugawa family and from
among whom the next shogun could thus be chosen if the
present one died without issue.  The 'fudai' (hereditary)
were also regarded as being loyal because they had pledged
allegiance to Ieyasu before the battle of Sekigahara in
1600.  Both groups were therefore allowed to hold senior
administrative posts.  The 'tozama' (outer) had not pledged
before Sekigahara and were therefore regarded as a potential
threat.  Although some were extremely powerful, notably the
Satsuma and the Chosho, they were excluded from
administrative power.

Tokugawa government was a huge self-regulating bureaucracy
and a very effective police state.  The daimyo were weakened
and closely monitored.  There were strict controls on the
number of armed men they could retain, the size of their
castle fortifications and the social contacts they could
maintain.  Rights to land were only granted in exchange for
oaths of allegiance which, if broken, resulted in exile to
remote areas.  Domains were broken up and rearranged so as
to push trouble-makers away from strategic locations or
surround them with loyal daimyo.  The daimyo were also kept
from cumulating too much wealth by compulsory public works.
If they misbehaved in any way they might be ordered to
rebuild a bridge, a shrine or even a castle.

However, by far the most effective control came from the
'sankin-kotai', or 'law of alternate residence'.  Under this
measure, the daimyo were obliged to live in En for one year
out of two and required to leave their wives and children
behind in En, effectively as hostages, for the year that
they lived in their own domain.  Apart from being under the
beady eyes of the shogun and having the links with their own
regions weakened, the economic drain was crippling.  Not
only did the daimyo have to maintain at least two residences
and travel between the two each year, in order to maintain
their status, they had to do so in some style.  The costs of
sankin-kotai probably accounted for half of the average
daimyo's annual income and this figure rose as high as 70%
or 80% by the end of the Tokugawa era.


The Samurai Controlled

In a similar way, the samurai were tamed by their daimyo.
Previously, the samurai had been scattered all over the
countryside and drew their income from the small fiefs which
they had been granted.  As such they enjoyed a good deal of
independence.  Now they were moved into the towns to reside
in and around the castle of their daimyo, supported by a
fixed stipend from him, thus losing any private economic or
political power.  Moreover, a rigid and hereditary ranking
structure was enforced within the samurai class itself.
Marriage between members of the upper 'joshi' and the lower
'kashi' was forbidden.  All samurai were locked into strata
that dictated whether they were to be top officials, local
bureaucrats or clerks and 'ashigaru' (low ranking foot
soldiers).

The main problem for the samurai was that there was nothing
much for them to do in peacetime.  Japan was left with a
class of two million people committed to following 'the way
of the warrior', while everybody else was doing what they
could to remove the possibility of warfare.  Instead of
being warriors the samurai became bureaucrats and controlled
their masters domains administratively rather than by force
of arms.  This was not an easy transition, for the instincts
and strengths of a fighting man are not the same as those of
a civil servant.  Confucian scholars urged them to value
book learning as much as military training and many of them
became quite learned.  They also brought the fighting arts
to a high point of skill and ceremonial but the capacity for
actual battle fighting and tactics diminished through
disuse.

The samurai certainly enjoyed an impressive array of rather
quaint privileges but the economic position of many steadily
declined.  The pursuit of money was regarded as dishonorable
for samurai so their living was entirely dependent upon the
stipend from their daimyo.  However, since the daimyo had
less and less need of his private army he felt less and less
of an obligation to pay them well.  Furthermore, while the
samurai were expected to set an example of austerity and
sexual reserve, many fell far short of the required
standard.  The divergence of reality and ideal further
weakened the daimyo-samurai relationship.  If they were not
even setting a good example, really what was the point of
them?  In time, the samurai class as a whole became rather
an expensive luxury for Japanese society, a burden which was
increasingly shouldered by the farmers.


The Castle Town Created

With the daimyo and their samurai vassals controlled, the
specter of civil war gradually faded and economic
development proceeded unhindered.  The single most important
socio-economic development had actually started during the
last years of the warring states period.  In a very short
space of time and especially between 1580 and 1610, the
daimyo built themselves impressive castles, in part
stimulated by the introduction to Japan of firearms.  Much
larger than previous fortifications, it was possible to
build them on the lowland plains rather than perched on
mountain tops.  They dominated the territory and, partially
because there was room to build around them, became a focus
for settlement.  Initially, the samurai were assembled and
housed around their daimyo but they were soon followed by
the many artisans and tradesmen needed to service them.

In this way, castle towns sprang up all over the country and
formed the network of administrative headquarters through
which the Tokugawa ruled the nation.  Before 1550, nearly
everyone had lived in farming and fishing villages.  There
were only a couple of cities and a half dozen towns.  Almost
overnight the basis of the cities of modern Japan had been
formed.  The castle towns provided the central source from
which produce could be purchased that allowed a shift from
self-sufficient agriculture to a market economy.  Farmers
could grow the crops best suited to their land in the
knowledge that they could buy from the castle towns what
they did not grow themselves.  Moreover, the growth of urban
culture provided the stimulus for a marked improvement in
the road and communications network.


The Society Inverted

The castle towns also gradually turned the social structure
of Japan on its head.  The Tokugawa had emphasized and
enforced an existing four tier social hierarchy by passing
laws designed to exclude social mobility and thus freeze
society as it was.  The ruling samurai class were followed
in status by the farmers, the craftsmen and finally the
merchants.  However, as we have seen, the samurai gradually
lost their political and economic power and were simply left
with residual privileges.  The farmers, although enjoying a
relatively high status, were hard pressed to supply
everyone, and in particular the samurai, with the food they
needed.  In fact, the farmers were often the most exploited
and impoverished of all.

On the other hand, the craftsmen found themselves in great
demand in this developing market economy and often lived
under the jealous protection of the local daimyo.
Ironically, the group that benefited most from the Tokugawa
system was the one that the social legislation should have
kept at the lowest level, the merchants.  The opportunities
for urban entrepreneurs were many and some of the merchant
class achieved such wealth that they were almost
indistinguishable from the samurai.  A few were even able to
purchase the right to wear swords and gained other
privileges which they were not supposed to enjoy.


The Samurai Undermined

By the late eighteenth century, the Tokugawa system was
breaking down.  The samurai class as a whole, which of
course included the Tokugawa shoguns, had been emasculated
by the lack of battle.  They were just as interested in the
tea ceremony and calligraphy as fighting.  The control that
samurai had had of old was no longer credible.  As the
economy had grown and agricultural productivity risen, taxes
had not really kept up.  Thus, the government was slowly
losing money to the merchants and became increasingly unable
to pay for the samurai.  The daimyo no longer needed private
armies to maintain their position and the traditional daimyo-
samurai relationship became very one-sided.

On the other hand, the samurai often found themselves
serving daimyo who were not up to the standard of their
great-great grandfathers who had won their position in
battle.  Thus the loyalty of the samurai increasingly
shifted from the daimyo to his home area.  Perhaps most
humiliating of all for the samurai was the rise all about
them of a wealth of which they had no share.  They found
themselves seeking marriage to the daughters of merchants,
committing infanticide in order to keep household costs
down, setting up cottage industries making sandals and even
giving up their samurai status altogether in order to enjoy
a more prosperous life as a commoner.

The irony of the samurai warrior is that, in the end, he was
so successful in achieving his goals that he himself became
redundant.  He was an instrument of control and stood
proudly at the top of an hierarchy of honor.  In the end,
the control which he established over Japan brought such
peace and prosperity that his sword was no longer needed.
The control he inflicted on the social and economic
structures insured that he missed out on the benefits his
discipline had produced.  He kept his status but had locked
himself out of the party.  Had he simply been war-like and
unscrupulous, he might have stirred up trouble to keep
himself useful; but he was too honorable.

One can talk of the samurai playing an important part in the
recent creation of modern Japan but one can also argue
against it.  In any case, one is really talking of the
residual class rather than of the warrior.  The samurai of
today still holds true to the abstract ideals of bushido and
still proudly possesses his ceremonial swords.  However, the
battles of today are fought with computer terminals rather
than swords.  The true samurai was a rough and ready
fighting man who held to a strict code of chivalry; a
warrior who served.

WHAT HAPPENED NEXT

Although the temptation is strong to end the history of
Japan with the end of the samurai, it is probably a good
idea to sketch out the last hundred years as well.  Having
come this far, it would be churlish indeed to not mention
the rise to world dominance of the land of the rising sun
simply because every other history seems to be concerned
with little else.

Historically, it is true to say that the last major samurai
battles were fought at the beginning of the seventeenth
century.  The control and reform of the Tokugawa bakufu
finished them off as an active part of Japanese culture and
turned them into a ceremonial legacy of an honorable past.
Nevertheless, it was not beyond the realms of possibility
that, as the Tokugawa weakened, rival daimyo could have
squabbled for power and the samurai could have made a
comeback.  However much one can trace the seeds of modern
Japan back into the Tokugawa regime (since one grew from the
other, this is not surprising), the seeds were also there
for Japan today to be just another war-torn third world
nation.

In 1853, the Americans decided to force Japan's hand and
sent a squadron of ships to try to re-establish some trading
and diplomatic links.  This provided the stimulus that
finally toppled the inward looking Tokugawa bakufu.  In
1867, the young Emperor Meiji put himself forward as the
political leader of Japan and by the following year had
achieved full control.  He put into action the process known
as the Meiji Restoration.  As well as re-establishing
imperial power, over the next forty years Japan was changed
from an isolated, agricultural feudal society into a
powerful nation with a modern army and navy, good railways,
an industrial base and a parliament.

By the turn of the century, Japan was winning wars against
both China and Russia and gained worldwide prestige fighting
on the Allied side during the Great War of 1914-18.  Between
the wars and under Emperor Hirohito, the country found
herself in need of overseas markets and raw materials and
there was a marked rise in nationalist feeling.  By the
Second World War, although without a fascist political
ideology, Japan had more in common with the European
dictators than the Allies and joined the war on the losing
side.  The first national defeat in Japanese history,
brought about by the horror of the atom bomb, left a country
economically and spiritually broken.

There was a serious reassessment of national values and
expansion became a purely economic objective.  The
combination of mutual responsibility, competitiveness,
loyalty and honesty soon produced spectacular growth.  The
Japanese factory workers showed an extraordinary acceptance
of long working hours and a great enthusiasm for their jobs.
Having let the world get along without them for thousands of
years, the Japanese were now showing the rest of us how it
was done.  The rest, as they say, is history.

---------------------------------------------------------------

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