State of War: The Violent Order of Fourteenth-Century Japan (Volume 46)

Michigan Monograph Series in Japanese Studies #46

by Thomas D. Conlan

State of War represents a fundamental revision of Japanese history. By illuminating Japan through the lens of war, Thomas Conlan provides insight into how state and society functioned, as opposed to how they were portrayed in ideal. Conlan recreates the experience of war from the perspective of one warrior and then reconstructs how war was fought through statistical analysis of surviving casualty records. State of War also shows that tThe battles of the 14th century mark a watershed in Japanese history. The fiscal exigencies of waging war led to a devolution of political power to the provinces. Furthermore, the outbreak of war caused social status to become performative, based upon the ability to fight autonomously, rather than being prescriptive, or determined by edicts of investiture.

TBridging the intellectual gulf between the 14th and 20th centuries, Conlan also explores how the seemingly contradictory categories of “religion” and “war” were integrally related. The 14th-century belief that the outcome of battle was determined by the gods meant that religious institutions warred both ritually and physically, and that religious attitudes frequently underpinned warrior behavior.

Based on diverse sources, including documents, picture scrolls, medical and religious texts, and chronicles, State of War rehabilitates warfare as a focal point of historical inquiry and provides a fascinating new overview of premodern Japanese history.

Genres: Japan, History, Nonfiction

316 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2003

About the author

Thomas Conlan, Professor of East Asian Studies and History, is interested in the political, social and intellectual transformations of Japan from the eleventh through the sixteenth centuries.

Majoring in Japanese and History at the University of Michigan, he attended graduate school at Stanford University. Professor Conlan’s first published work, In Little Need of Divine Intervention: Scrolls of the Mongol Invasions of Japan, introduced an important picture scroll depicting the Mongol invasions of Japan.

His next monograph, State of War: The Violent Order of Fourteenth Century Japan, based on his Ph.D. dissertation, revealed how warfare transformed the social, political, and intellectual matrix of fourteenth-century Japan. He then wrote a general history of the samurai, entitled Weapons and Fighting Techniques of the Samurai Warrior, 1200-1877 .

In his most recent book, From Sovereign to Symbol: An Age of Ritual Determinism in Fourteenth Century Japan, Professor Conlan analyzed the nature of political thought in medieval Japan.

Currently Professor Conlan is researching Japan’s fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, and argues that the Ouchi, a daimyo of western Japan, were the central figures of their age.

Reviews

[Jonathan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Everything you've wanted to know about warfare in medieval Japan: tactics, leadership, weapons, supply, the economic basis of war, how loyalty was won and expressed, the religious aspect of war, etc. All written in nitpicking detail and using previously unknown primary sources, the text will leave you longing for the end of the book. Professor Conlan certainly knows his stuff but, like many Japanese historians, takes one of the most exciting and dynamic periods of Japanese history and grinds it into a boring slog. I learned a lot here, but it wasn't what you'd call a ripping great read.

[Brendan Coster · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was really into this for the first half of the book. Between him pouring over direct source material and using Nomoto Tomoyuki has a historical figure to 'tell the tale of the times', bringing in the art of the era to back up his writing, and then using all known sources to date to come up with war statistics, I was really digging what was being done here. Then we get a full analytical dissertation of tactics and military organization for the time period, followed up by how the armies supplied (or, really didn't, as the case usually was) weapons used, how they were used, and how battles changed during the era (or, how they became less deadly, pas the initial conflicts of 1333-6).

Then he goes off and gets lost in status changes during the era. I'm not saying it wasn't bad, but I 1) felt he was getting very touch and go with his sources, he started referencing "samples long the lines of" which started stinking of him trying to railroad data. 2) In his building argument of "violent order" it really all sounded pretty horrifically un-organized 3) I feel like he just goes off the rails himself a little, the information very quickly becomes scattered and in an about face from the beginning of the works he started going pulling more and more data from outside the 14th century making for a more disjointed argument. In the same vein, he also starts jumping years, forward and backward, barely referencing his temporal jumps. Now I don't understand a theme doesn't need to be developed in time order, sometimes it's easier to arrange it by subject, but Conlan's writing style leaves much to be desired thereby muddling the subject matter.

I'm not sure the Author makes a very convincing argument in trying to down play the transitive quality of the era and in trying to revise the assumption of the 14th century being a turbulent and chaotic era. If the argument is that because personal authority to take, or hold lands and maintain laws was more effective then the centralized bakufu's law and order - and as such the constant civil war was really an efficient method of law for the time, I'm not buying it. It's all a long way of saying he's kind of missing the forest for the tree's. From Masakado (940) to Ieyasu (1603) Japan shudders in near constant Civil War, with times of peace being more about personalities then about changes in the people and the country itself. Bringing evidence to bear showing that people had found ways to normalize within this doesn't prove order, it proves adaptability and survival.

All that being said, it was a fine read and, really, there's not all that much material available that focuses on the 14th century or provides readily available source material, so it's a must read if you're running the gambit of Medieval Japanese history.

[AskHistorians]

This is an in depth study of warfare in the fourteenth century conflicts between the Northern and Southern Courts. It covers topics like weapons and tactics, alliances, and the politics and religion involved in warfare.

[Rebecca Anjali · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hard to get through, but informational