Hattori Hanzō - The Samurai Ninja who Served Tokugawa Ieyasu
The Sengoku Jidai is one of the darkest and most brutal periods in Japanese history, with only the country’s entry into the industrial world coming close. A time of complete chaos and warfare, it was started by the collapse of the Ashikaga Shogunate. Even if they would live on for most of this period, they really had no control whatsoever over anything. Things were kicked off by the Ōnin War , a civil war started over a succession crisis, because of course this is the number one issue when shit hits the fan. The participants in the conflict, the Yamana and Hosokawa clans, fought for influence at the court, and while the latter would prove victorious on the field, in reality, both sides pretty much destroyed each other. What followed was a century of bloodshed, betrayal, and destruction on a scale that made the War of the Five Kings from A Song of Ice and Fire look like a Dr. Seuss storybook. If you know the minimum about Japan’s history, you know this period would end with the rise...
