[Translation] Indiscriminate acquisition and human trafficking in the Warring States Period of Japan
The so-called random taking refers to organized war and plunder. Similar behaviors such as military robbery after conquering a city, which was common in ancient China, and not sealing the sword for three days are all of this type. Everyone knows the specific meaning and will not list it in detail.
During the Warring States Period in Japan, the main body of the military armed forces was composed of farmers, who often had to carry food rations themselves. Only large-scale expeditions would be handled by daimyo.
Moreover, foreign wars will affect farming to a greater or lesser extent, so farmers are often willing to participate in wars with the goal of plundering battlefields.
Human trafficking supplemented the financial resources of famous families after the war. Local people were sold to merchants, and the men, serfs, and women of the big landowners were put into prisons to enrich their military funds and make profits for the countrymen and wealthy families.
During the Warring States Period, random seizures were considered normal, but there were still unspoken rules that needed to be followed. Generally, Warring States daimyo usually carried out random seizures during wars to supplement logistical deficiencies and as subsidies for farmers, while for conquered areas,
Notices would be erected to express the new lord's leniency and similar language, blaming the previous lord for the chaos during the war in order to stabilize the new lord.
Lifting Uesugi Kenshin and sending troops to Kanto
After taking Oda Castle, when Shimazu Yoshihisa sent troops to Bungo, and Oda Nobunaga's human trafficking to Echizen Ikki, the Hojo family's human hunting was an example. These families' random seizures were all during the war, and the population after the war was
The sale is also mainly based on prisoners of war, and does not involve surrendered people, nor is it taken randomly from new collars, and all can be redeemed in exchange for money.
Among the various Warring States daimyo, the four most famous daimyo can be used as examples of different versions of random taking and human trafficking.
1. Oda Nobunaga, general random taking, low human trafficking
2. Uesugi Kenshin, random taking is common, human trafficking is the highest
3. Takeda Shingen, who has the highest level of random acquisition, low level of human trafficking, and the highest profit, but violated the unspoken rules
4. Hojo Ujiyasu, random taking and human trafficking are common
The four families of Oda, Uesugi, Takeda, and Hojo all have their own backgrounds and reasons for the random expropriation and human trafficking. First of all, although Oda Nobunaga adopted strict military discipline in the Kinki battlefield, especially in the Kyoto area, but in Eiroku and Yuan
During the Year of the Turtle
In other wars, because there has not yet been a large-scale separation of soldiers and peasants, peasants and soldiers are still used, so the degree of random expropriation is still very high. However, in terms of human trafficking, Nobunaga's strict public security policy and opposition to slaves did not make it prosperous enough. Secondly, the organization
Most of the time, the prisoners of war captured by Tian Nobunaga were all Echizen Ichiku, and they would continue to fight no matter where they were placed. Asai and Araki were both traitors that Nobunaga hated, so in addition to selling Echizen Ichiko, most of the time he would eradicate them.
Killing is done, so the number of human trafficking is not high.
Uesugi Kenshin is capable of random acquisitions, and human trafficking is the highest. This is related to the fact that he often fights overseas decisive battles. From a general perspective, he sent troops to Kawakawa Island to resist Takeda from overseas, and supported the Kanto nobles in the Kanto strategy. From a strategic perspective, it was not a bad calculation.
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The former prevented the Takeda family from easily invading Echigo, and the latter gained the status of Daiichi and strengthened Uesugi Kenshin's policy of entering and exiting Kanto to occupy the warm plains. Unfortunately, the Hojo family was also a hard player, preventing him from going smoothly.
Therefore, in many cases, Uesugi Kenshin's sending troops could not increase the territory. This was one of the reasons why Takeda Shingen was able to instigate rebellion against Uesugi's retainers.
As for the great masters, Uesugi Kenshin's long-term expeditions also placed a burden on the farmers and his own finances. Although Uesugi Kenshin made a lot of commercial profits, this could not spread to all the people in the territory.
Therefore, in addition to allowing random taking, the above
Kenshin Sugi also hunted a large number of people when he was in Kawanakajima and Kanto. According to the "Osasashi Records", after Kenshin captured Hitachi Oda Castle, he opened a temporary slave market under the castle to expand financial resources to make up for the great famine of Eiroku. suffered from the shortage of annual tribute.
This is also the reason why Uesugi Kenshin was able to make an unusual tax exemption and appease the people of the territory to send troops to Kanto when there was a famine. At that time, there was even a permanent slave market in Naoetsu, Echigo.
In contrast, Takeda Shingen has a reputation for excessive abuse. Human trafficking of ordinary daimyo is normal, often recorded in history books, and ignored because it is an unspoken rule of the Warring States Period.
As for Takeda Shingen, because his family was overly dependent on income from traditional agriculture and mining, his business achievements were limited. In order to increase military funds, he needed to further develop the mines, so he increased profits from the human trade and added them as slaves to the Jinshan Mountains.
Especially in Saku County, after the opponent opened the city, they still carried out random seizures and brought disaster to ordinary civilians.
Moreover, the money in lieu of death was more than the market price. According to "Myohoji Chronicle", the death money for Uesugi and Hojo at the same time was 20 to 30 ken, but the Takeda family offered several times higher prices, as high as 2 to 10 ken, in order to reduce the redemption rate. He worked as a miner in Jinshan, so Takeda Shingen became notorious for human trafficking this time.
After conquering Shinano, Takeda Shingen also immediately reduced his behavior of buying and selling people. However, as the output of the mines declined, when the Imagawa clan retreated to Kakegawa Castle when they attacked Suruga Castle, the Takeda army still chose to take excessive measures when entering the city. In terms of strategy, the so-called horse farm letter room stopped after admonishing is actually just a lie.
That's why Anayayama Nobu-kun and Tokugawa Ieyasu had to work hard to rebuild Suruga later on. It was just this random seizure that caused too much damage to the entire Suruga.
Because the Takeda family has been mobilizing a large number of people in wars for a long time, and the Koyo Military Journal states that Shingen wins six points, from another perspective, it can be found that although Takeda Shingen often wins the war, the Takeda family also mobilizes a lot for no reason, such as against The wars in Echichu and Hida did not substantially increase the Takeda family's territorial gains. The Oku Mikawa and Shinano clans also clearly surrendered, but in fact they were independent military commanders.
The Takeda family also implemented such a plan due to large-scale military mobilization.
An Jiaxin's ability to seize the people's support at random caused public resentment in the newly occupied areas during the attack on Mikawa and Toga. Therefore, the Takeda army had weak control over the newly occupied areas in the area and lost most of them as soon as they retreated.
When Takeda Katsuyori arrived, it was another scene. Katsuyori imitated the Hojo family and wanted to recover taxes from retainers. He also wanted to centralize power and suppress the power of retainers like the Oda family. At the same time, he also wanted to send troops to occupy territory like his father Shingen. Using offense as defense to suppress the development of Oda and Tokugawa, and taking away their territory, it was necessary to send troops for many years.
Therefore, when sending out troops, the wealthy families who had not sent out troops were required to provide rice and money. In addition, in order to surprise them, the troops were sent out during the busy autumn season. Although some taxes were exempted and arbitrary withdrawals were allowed, it still resulted in the disadvantage of being unable to make ends meet. Three years ago in Tianzheng due to the Successfully captured Akechi Castle in Higashi Mino and Gaotian Castle in Higashihara River, which were buffered by the local annual tribute. However, they were on the defensive after the Battle of Nagashino. The ineffective defensive battle not only failed to gain territory, but the Chinese people behind them The public was forced to contribute money and effort, and Katsuyori wanted to take back their power, which eventually caused a backlash, and Oda Nobunaga was able to instigate General Takeda to attack Koshin.
In addition, although Hojo Ujiyasu has the reputation of being the best in civil affairs during the War, with the four public and six citizens, the reduction of house fees, the tax exemption in bad years and the direct collection of taxes by daimyo families reduced the situation of the people being exploited. However, such a reputation for loving the people, the daimyo family
Therefore, it is a fact that the income is limited, but the Hojo family's war effort is definitely not less than that of Takeda and Uesugi, so they also rely heavily on this kind of extra-system income to supplement the household income and appease the residents.
During the Ueno and Shimono conquests, the Hojo family carried out a large number of human hunts and took random possessions of the castle. Therefore, they and Takeda had always been criticized by the surrounding wealthy families. However, the Hojo family paid more attention to their reputation among the people in the territory.
There are also other loose laws in place, so it’s relatively easy to deal with illegal taking and human trafficking.
Enough is enough.
At the end of the Warring States Period, the annexation of various places intensified, which obviously became the stage for the major forces of all parties. After a long period of chaos, there was also a tendency to enter Changzhi.
In particular, due to the expansion of Oda Nobunaga's financial base and the expansion of his territory, he issued a slave prohibition order and a prohibition order on human trafficking, reduced the number of military mobilization, and strengthened the policy of separation of soldiers and peasants to increase the popular cohesion of the Oda family, not so much the organization.
Tian Nobunaga loves the people and governs the country. It is better to say that Nobunaga has deep understanding and cannot kill the goose to lay eggs. Moreover, due to the development of territory and commerce, the resources of only one legion are enough to compete with a daimyo, so there is no need to excessively extract civilian power for use.
For this reason, Uesugi Kenshin also successively issued prohibition orders on human trafficking to end the human trafficking market in Naoetsu, as did the Hojo clan.
However, since Tohoku and Kyushu are still divided among themselves, Shimadzu, Otomo, and Date all still engage in such behavior.
Human trafficking and indiscriminate extortion could never be effectively stopped. It was not until Hideyoshi sent troops to Kyushu that the human trafficking was gradually and effectively put to an end, but only within Japan.
Subsequently, the dispatch of troops to North Korea caused a great loss of national power to the daimyo in Zhenxi. In addition, the Japanese navy was destroyed by Yi Sun-shin, and there were logistical problems. Therefore, the Japanese army carried out a large number of random seizures and hunting in North Korea to enrich the finances.
Among them, generals such as Shimazu Yoshihiro, Kato Kiyomasa, Konishi Yukinaga, Kuroda Nagamasa, Kobayakawa Hideaki and other generals all behaved this way. Ishida Mitsunari was quite dissatisfied with such behavior and once reported it to Hideyoshi. However, due to logistical problems, Toyoshi
After all, Toyotomi's army failed to deal with such a situation, causing a large-scale civil uprising in Korea, and even resorted to scorched-earth tactics to fight, causing Toyotomi's army to suffer heavy losses in the end.
After Hideyoshi's death, the world was still in turmoil. It took more than ten years for the bad habits of indiscriminate taking and human trafficking to truly end. Even during the Summer Battle of Osaka, Tokugawa Ieyasu still had "It is legal to take enemy territory from enemy territory, and war is legal"
The order of "Offsite recognition" was not temporarily resolved until the Edo shogunate stabilized the country.