As a serious martial artist, I spend my time with people who dedicate a large part of their lives to martial arts. Many of these people have been immersed in the profound and transformative journey that is progress toward mastery. Many of these same people are also deeply interested in the history and exciting legends surrounding the lives of the great martial artists of the past. I am quite familiar with the many derring-do tales of characters like Miyamoto Musashi, Yagyu Muneyoshi, and Hattori Hanzo, to name a few. Stories like his have inspired generations of budding martial artists to continue and pursue mastery of their chosen art. These tales serve an important purpose and give the modern martial artist a link to the rich history of martial arts.
Another thing I hear quite often is the phrase, “I wish I lived in feudal Japan.” Of course, I quite well understand where the person saying this comes from: the golden sengoku jidai (Warring States period, ~ 1450-1603) that is kept alive in legends is a place of adventure and honorable combat, a place where legends life and freedom is won with the blade of a dexterous sword.
However, as someone with a good working knowledge of sengoku jidai conditions, I steer clear of these statements of wishful thinking. There are a number of simple facts that are easily overlooked or quickly forgotten that put the kybosh in these dreams very quickly. The answer to the question: “Would you like to live in feudal Japan?” it should almost certainly be, “NO WAY!”
Let’s take a look at why:
For one thing, the name sengoku jidai really says what it means: States at War. This time it was tumultuous and chaotic, with a life expectancy just as low in Japan as it was in Europe during the same period. In Europe, low levels of cleanliness introduced by the years after the plague, coupled with poor diet and a lack of working drugs, reduced life expectancy to less than fifty years. In Japan, despite a healthy diet and practical knowledge of natural medicine, life expectancy was worse or equal to that of the average contemporary European. This was almost exclusively due to the rampant warfare that ensued between the many feudal states that divided Japan. The chances of participating in a battle were high, for everyone, not just for the warrior class. The peasants and artisans, commoners and intermediaries, were all equally threatened by the advance and the constant tide of war.
An important note about war: war requires weapons and weapons require steel. Constant warfare also requires large groups of people, most of whom are poorly trained conscripts. It would be a bad decision to equip large groups of recruits with expensive, high-quality weapons. These people were often provided low-quality second-hand equipment, often collected from the dead after the battle. Battles, marches, and general army activities resulted in above-average exposure to the elements. The result was a nasty equation: poorly trained recruits, combined with cheap steel weapons and exposure to the elements, produce rusty and worn weapons in the hands of large numbers of people on the front lines of an encounter.
This puts the feudal Japanese literally at the center of the tetanus crossover. Convenient modern-age tetanus shots are taken for granted by most people, but for the feudal Japanese samurai, recruit, or anyone else, even a scratch could spell death through the agonizing onset of lockjaw. This is not to mention the health risks of being present on a large battlefield strewn with corpses of men and horses stretched out in the open, strewn with discarded weapons, many of which are rusted.
Even if one won the fight and defeated his opponent, the risk of tetanus or other infection from small wounds sustained was high. The Daimyo (lord) Ii Naomasa, a vassal of the famous Tokugawa Ieyasu, suffered a gunshot wound at the Battle of Sekigahara in 1600, and spent the next year and a half lingering before dying from complications from the same wound. And remember, as lord under the victor of the battle and soon to be ruler of all Japan, Naomasa had access to the best possible medical treatment available. It is interesting to note that a tactic used by some ninjas (special agents) in sengoku jidai, was to allow their swords and throwing picks, swords, and other cutting weapons to rust. This allowed them to present terrifying and visibly extra dangerous weapons in battle, striking fear into the hearts of those who opposed them and giving the ninja the upper hand.
In addition to the general state of warfare and the dangers of disease posed by the battle, the fact remains that even the poorly trained recruits so despised by samurai were skilled warriors compared to most humans today. For most, even their grandparents had been born during a time when war was always present. The idea of fighting to preserve home and home came naturally to almost everyone. It would be difficult to find a person at that time who was not intimately familiar with the conflict, even among the clergy. The level of familiarity with combat meant that a large part of the population was at least used to the use of some weapon or another, even if the standard ones were not allowed, as in the case of non-samurai, who were legally prohibited from owning swords. after the late 1580s. The feudal Japanese would be nothing if they weren’t a people painfully familiar with war. From children who go into battle at ages that would not allow them to earn a high school diploma in modern society to young housewives who wield naginata (halberds) against marauding home invaders, there were few, even among the lower classes. They did not seem more dead and conflict than most of the people living today.
In short, feudal Japan was a war-torn place, exposing people to a high risk of battle-related illnesses, and had a population that was almost ubiquitously familiar with war and war. One of the reasons people like Miyamoto Musashi and Hattori Hanzo were and are so admired is that succeeded and flourished in feudal Japan, despite rampant warfare, battle illnesses, and the general warlike attitude of his Japanese comrades. The great level of knowledge and skill that these people learned through their life experience must have been amazing! Beyond the three big topics I’ve covered here, there are many other factors that made life for feudal Japanese difficult and dangerous, even in peacetime. So when you build your time machine and ask me if I want to go back and live in feudal Japan, I’ll say no. Good luck out there!