Sowing Ghosts: Author's Note

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AUTHOR'S NOTE

For more than a century, between 1467 and 1580 CE, Japan was convulsed by a chaotic period of civil war as the governing Ashikaga shogunate fell apart. This sengoku jidai (best translated as “period of the country at war”) is a tremendous source of stories. But it is also a risky period for writers and readers, because much of what we think we know about medieval Japan is not true for the sengoku.


The Samurai
We think of samurai as cultured, loyal-unto-death warriors. That’s not the case for people like Hiroki, Tetsuo and Shiro... nor for the vast majority of warriors during this period. In fact the “way of the warrior,” bushido, wasn’t codified until the eighteenth century. Warriors during the period of this book were to a great extent devoted to their own interests, rather than to those of any superior. In much of Japan this self-interest took the form of vassals overthrowing their leaders, in much the way the fictional Lord Tanuma is seeking to take over the (real) province of Kozuke for himself.

Even the warrior’s weaponry shows subtle differences between this period and the later, more famous “Edo” period. For example, while some warriors had taken to wearing the two swords (daisho, “great and small”) that we think of as the signs of a samurai, many more carried just a single long-sword backed up with a long dagger. And not all used the famous katana. Tetsuo, who is more of a traditionalist, wears his long-sword in tachi style (a katana was worn thrust into the sash, with the bladed edge facing up; the tachi was worn suspended, by cords, from the sash and with the bladed edge facing down). What’s more, the primary battlefield weapon of the warrior wasn’t the sword at all: it was a slender lance called a yari.

The factionalism and fighting between warrior groups was a major part of life in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The powerful Hosokawa clan was as faction-ridden as portrayed here, and the two competing shogunates had such a limited conception of their own power and goals that they more or less abandoned the idea of governing the country. Or even the capital.

Tomorrow: Society

Next    Characters    Chapter 1    Chapter 2    Chapter 3    Chapter 4    Chapter 5    Chapter 6
Chapter 7    Chapter 8    Chapter 9    Chapter 10    Chapter 11    Chapter 12    Chapter 13    Chapter 14
Chapter 15    Chapter 16    Chapter 17    Chapter 18