Sengoku period

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The Sengoku period, also known as Sengoku Jidai (Japanese: 戦国時代, Hepburn: Sengoku Jidai, lit. 'Warring States period'), is the period in Japanese history in which civil wars and social upheavals took place almost continuously in the 15th and 16th centuries. The Kyōtoku incident (1454), Ōnin War (1467), or Meiō incident (1493) is generally chosen as the period's start date, but there are many competing historiographies for its end date, ranging from 1568, the date of Oda Nobunaga's march on Kyoto, to the suppression of the Shimabara Rebellion in 1638, deep into what is traditionally considered the Edo period.^[1][2] Regardless of the dates chosen, the Sengoku period overlaps substantially with the Muromachi period (1336–1573).

This period was characterized by the overthrow of a superior power by a subordinate one. The Ashikaga shogunate, the de facto central government, declined and the sengoku daimyo (戦国大名, feudal lord of sengoku period), a local power, rose to power. The people rebelled against the feudal lords in revolts known as Ikkō-ikki (一向一揆, Ikkō-shū uprising).^[2]

The period saw a breakdown in the traditional master-servant relationship between a lord and his vassals, with many instances of vassals rebelling against their lords, internal dynastic conflict over lordships within noble families (in which vassals would take sides), and the installation of figurehead lords by cadet branches of noble familes.^[3] The period was also marked by the loosening of samurai culture, with people born into other social strata sometimes making a name for themselves as warriors and thus becoming samurai. In turn, events sometimes allowed common samurai to rise to the rank of sengoku daimyo; these included Hōjō Sōun (the first to do so), and Uesugi Kenshin, a Shugodai (守護代, deputy Shugo) who attained power by weakening and eventually replacing his lord.^[4][5] The most spectacular example of a sengoku-era rise is often considered to be that of Toyotomi Hideyoshi, who rose from a peasant background to successively become a samurai, sengoku daimyo, and kampaku (Imperial Regent).^[6]

Modern Japan recognizes Oda Nobunaga, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, and Tokugawa Ieyasu as the three "Great Unifiers" (三英傑／さんえいけつ) for their restoration of Japan's central government.^[7]