There’s no greater Hell
Than having a friendship bottom out
For the simple reason that you didn’t measure up
To its recalibrated terms
Saturday, September 17, 2011
Saturday, September 10, 2011
Shogun: The Life of Ieyasu Tokugawa
Shogun: The Life of Ieyasu Tokugawa by A.L. Sadler.
Having just read Hideyoshi, a fairly recent scholarly work by Mary Elizabeth Berry, I delved into this 1937 biography, nay hagiography, of Ieyasu Togugawa. Though this book was written while Japanese troops were running roughshod in China and threatening Western interests all around, Sadler, an Australian. makes no effort to conceal his admiration for the first Tokugawa shogun.
In this book, Ieyasu is by turns strong and humble, but always behaving in the manner appropriate to the moment. For instance, on the eve of his famous meeting with Hideyoshi in 1585, a nervous Hideyoshi visited Ieyasu to enjoin him to be most submissive the next day, so that Hidyoshi might not lose face with his men. Ieyasu duly complied. Even Ieyasu's later upending of Hideyori, son of the late Hideyoshi, comes across as a matter of necessity, as Hideyori had taken to assembling men and ample arms in his redoubt at Osaka. It took two campaigns to eliminate Hideyori, the second made necessary because of Ieyasu's leniency toward Hideyori after the first.
Meanwhile, Ieyasu appears to possess a talent for speaking in pithy aphorisms in the middle of battle. Did he actually say what Sadler asserts, or is Sadler engaging in a bit of hero worship? I have always regarded battle as a messy, chaotic affair which offers scant occasion for recording what is said. I was reminded of a recent On Point episode about famous quotations when one the guests mentioned that Custer supposedly said "We have caught them napping." at Little Big Horn. How could we know that he said that, and what survivor reported it later? I suspect that if what Ieyasu said during battle were to come to light, we might learn a great deal about sixteenth-century Japanese expletives.
Since it was written in 1937, this book labors under many of the assumptions of the day (with the notable exception of the Japanese). To wit, Sadler writes about a Japanese shipwreck on Formosa in 1616: "their (the Japanese) crews were attacked and most of them killed by these sturdy aboriginals (Taiwanese), who have been a thorn in the side of Japan ever since, for they are animals who defend themselves very decidedly when attacked." Oh, the 1930s! And women? Don't get me started. More maps would have helped as well. There a many detailed maps of the terrain of certain battle sites, but Sadler assumes an expert's knowledge of the geographical map of Japan.
Shogun is nevertheless worth reading for the wealth of details about sixteenth-century Japanese life, from ceremonial protocol to military tactics, and for the insight into the events of a crucial period in Japanese history, when the centralization of the state ran oddly parallel to similar developments in Europe. It is one of a very few works in English on Ieyasu Tokugawa.
Having just read Hideyoshi, a fairly recent scholarly work by Mary Elizabeth Berry, I delved into this 1937 biography, nay hagiography, of Ieyasu Togugawa. Though this book was written while Japanese troops were running roughshod in China and threatening Western interests all around, Sadler, an Australian. makes no effort to conceal his admiration for the first Tokugawa shogun.
In this book, Ieyasu is by turns strong and humble, but always behaving in the manner appropriate to the moment. For instance, on the eve of his famous meeting with Hideyoshi in 1585, a nervous Hideyoshi visited Ieyasu to enjoin him to be most submissive the next day, so that Hidyoshi might not lose face with his men. Ieyasu duly complied. Even Ieyasu's later upending of Hideyori, son of the late Hideyoshi, comes across as a matter of necessity, as Hideyori had taken to assembling men and ample arms in his redoubt at Osaka. It took two campaigns to eliminate Hideyori, the second made necessary because of Ieyasu's leniency toward Hideyori after the first.
Meanwhile, Ieyasu appears to possess a talent for speaking in pithy aphorisms in the middle of battle. Did he actually say what Sadler asserts, or is Sadler engaging in a bit of hero worship? I have always regarded battle as a messy, chaotic affair which offers scant occasion for recording what is said. I was reminded of a recent On Point episode about famous quotations when one the guests mentioned that Custer supposedly said "We have caught them napping." at Little Big Horn. How could we know that he said that, and what survivor reported it later? I suspect that if what Ieyasu said during battle were to come to light, we might learn a great deal about sixteenth-century Japanese expletives.
Since it was written in 1937, this book labors under many of the assumptions of the day (with the notable exception of the Japanese). To wit, Sadler writes about a Japanese shipwreck on Formosa in 1616: "their (the Japanese) crews were attacked and most of them killed by these sturdy aboriginals (Taiwanese), who have been a thorn in the side of Japan ever since, for they are animals who defend themselves very decidedly when attacked." Oh, the 1930s! And women? Don't get me started. More maps would have helped as well. There a many detailed maps of the terrain of certain battle sites, but Sadler assumes an expert's knowledge of the geographical map of Japan.
Shogun is nevertheless worth reading for the wealth of details about sixteenth-century Japanese life, from ceremonial protocol to military tactics, and for the insight into the events of a crucial period in Japanese history, when the centralization of the state ran oddly parallel to similar developments in Europe. It is one of a very few works in English on Ieyasu Tokugawa.
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