← Dan Snow's History Hit
Dan Snow's History Hit
Mount Hiei: Home of Japan's Warrior Monks
00:38:04
What a powerful army of warrior monks can tell us about Japanese religious beliefs during the late Sengoku period.
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- [00:00]
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- [02:03]
Dan Snow
Hey folks, welcome down Snow's HistoryIt. We're gonna run an episode today from our sister podcast Echoes of History. It's our collaboration with Ubisoft and it delves in to the real places, people, events behind the Assassin's Creed games. It's well worth checking out. It's very good fun. This episode is about Mount hi, the mystical mountain home of an army of warrior monks. Enjoy.
- [02:29]
Matt Lewis
Welcome to Echoes of History, the place to explore the rich stories of the past that bring the world of Assassin's Creed to life. I'm Matt Lewis. Over the past few episodes, we've returned to the heart of Sengoku era Japan, the tumultuous setting for the eagerly awaited Assassin's Creed Shadows. With the release of the game just weeks away, we'll be delving into the period's intricate landscapes of power and ambition, preparing you as a player to experience it all for yourself in Assassin's Creed Shadows. Later this week, I'll continue my special series of episodes that take a close look at samurai and shinobi, the weapons they wielded, the battle tactics they used, their politics and culture. No stone will remain unturned as we discover just what separated and united the two iconic warrior classes of Japan. But today, we're headed to a mountain lying just northeast of Japan's imperial capital of Kyoto, Mount Hiei. We'll be reuniting with some familiar characters, notably the fearsome Oda Nobunaga. But before we do that, let's climb the mountainside path as it winds through the dense forest and past shrines and temples to the top of this sacred mountain. Returning to the podcast is Dr. Chris Harding, Senior Lecturer in Asian History from the University of Edinburgh, who will help us understand what life was like on Mount Hiei during the late Sengoku period, its role in the story of Japanese unification, and what all of this can tell us about Japanese religious beliefs at the time. Welcome back to Echoes of History. Chris, it's fantastic to have you back with us.
- [04:16]
Dr. Chris Harding
Thank you for having me.
- [04:17]
Matt Lewis
It's a pleasure. It was such good fun. The other two times you came on, we had to find another reason to drag you back to talk to us again. And we thought this time we would talk about a place, and it's a place that I've not heard of before. So I'm really interested to find out more about this, and I wonder if I could check with you before we start how I pronounce the name of this mountain that we're going to talk about.
- [04:35]
Dr. Chris Harding
Yes. So this is Mount Hiei.
- [04:38]
Matt Lewis
Hiei, right. Lovely Mount Hiei. And Mount Hiei is going to be a place in Assassin's Creed Shadows that players can visit and walk around and tour the settlements of. So whereabouts in Japan is Mount Hiei, and what would people expect to see if they visited it during this period?
- [04:56]
Dr. Chris Harding
Mount Hiei lies just outside Kyoto. It's just to the northeast of Kyoto, and it's this lovely location, Kyoto to one side and this beautiful lake, Lake Biwa to the other. And I think one of the reasons it becomes so well known is that around 795, Japan's capital, the imperial capital moved to what we now know as Kyoto. They called it Heiankyo, City of Peace and Tranquility at the time, which is rather lovely. And because Mount Hiei was to the northeast of the city, this was a direction in which, according to various ideas from Chinese geomancy, was an unlucky direction. This was a direction from which all sorts of evil spirits might make their way into the city. Mount Hiei becomes associated with protecting Kyoto and protecting the emperor and protecting all these aristocrats who were building lovely homes there. And so Mount Hiei is important for that reason, but also, if you went there, by the time we're in the period that we're thinking about, so what, the 14th, 15th centuries, it was also home to an enormous Buddhist complex. So you'd have monasteries, lecture halls, meditation halls, also ordinary people, little communities living around the mountain, serving all the monks who lived on the mountain.
- [06:11]
Matt Lewis
So we're not talking about an isolated place where people might go for whatever reason. This is an inhabited mountain that serves a political and a religious function and is covered in people.
- [06:24]
Dr. Chris Harding
Yes, that's right. You can find sort of remote parts of it. So you'll find some of the aristocrats living down in Kyoto might go on a pilgrimage or on a retreat to the mountains. So it does have its wild, remote parts, but also there are literally thousands of Buddhist buildings dotted all around the mountain. And at the absolute summit, the most important building is the Enryaku Ji temple complex, which is sort of the beating heart of the particular Buddhist sect in charge of the mountain, and they're called the Tendai sect.
- [06:54]
Matt Lewis
And what do we know about the emergence of the mountain is an important place. And of the Tendai sect, Are there any sort of milestones that we can point to in the emergence of the Buddhist presence there?
- [07:06]
Dr. Chris Harding
Yeah, I think probably an important name is Saicho, who's a Japanese monk, Japanese Buddhist monk who traveled to China in the early 9th century. A lot of Japan's Buddhist ideas would come in waves through China and Korea. He went to China, he learned some new teachings in China called the Tiantai teachings from which Tendai comes, and he basically brought those back to Japan, set himself up on Mount Hiei, and managed, bit by bit, to persuade the rulers of Kyoto, the imperial family, these big aristocratic families, that what he was offering was, as it were, the latest update. And not just the latest update, but the way he talked about Tendai was it included all the other Buddhist teachings. So although Buddhism was divided into various sects, if you were a Tendai Buddhist, you had everything included under that umbrella. So he was quite a strong advocate for it as a religion, but also as a force in Japan's national life generally. And it's really Saicho that helps to get Tendai going and Mount Hiei going.
- [08:11]
Matt Lewis
So Tendai kind of positions itself as a catch all form of Buddhism, so you can get the best bits of all of the Buddhist cults, all the Buddhist sects out there and bring all together in Tendai. So, you know, you don't ever need another form of Buddhism really.
- [08:25]
Dr. Chris Harding
I think, I think that's his plan. It's also part of a trend in Buddhism towards offering something to everybody. So Saicho talked about Buddhahood for all, whereas in an earlier generation or many, many generations before in Japan it might have been primarily monastics, monks and nuns who were working every day, day in and day out for their salvation. For Saicho, what he's offering in Tendai is the idea that everybody has the Buddha nature. And if you perform the right rituals, if you have faith, if you learn, if you meditate, you can realize that Buddha nature and it really is for everybody. And he's particularly interested in this idea within Buddhism, which is the Bodhisattva, which is someone who has developed themselves to the point of enlightenment, but decides to hang back and work for the enlightenment of everybody else before they, as it were, cross over into Nirvana themselves. So he's really throwing the doors of Buddhism wide open to everybody, which I think really helps to build up Tendai as he does.
- [09:24]
Matt Lewis
And how then does Tendai sort of sit with something like Shinto, you know, a traditional religion of Japan? Do we see tension between the two of those, or do they find a way to bring Shinto into Tendai as well?
- [09:36]
Dr. Chris Harding
Good question. There was considerable tension when Buddhism first came into Japan, maybe around the 6th and 7th centuries, people tried to bring in statues and sutras from Korea. And then when there was famine or a plague, someone, often someone who was deeply invested in Shinto, would say that's because the Japanese gods, the native gods, are angry at these basic migrant deities who should be kicked out of the country. And so they might throw the statue in the river to see if it improved things. But over time, Buddhism gets a foothold. And the attitude that the Japanese take, especially the imperial family and the aristocrats in Kyoto, is that when it comes to cosmic protection, there's no such thing as having too much. So if you've got the native gods looking out for you, if you've also got people on Hiei praying to various Buddhist deities for you, then you are doubly protected. So I think that's how they begin to see Buddhism. The only difficulty, I think, in practice this gets us on later on to when Hiei finds itself in trouble is there's only so much money and political influence to go around. So in practice, different Buddhist sects and Buddhist sects versus Shinto sects do find themselves scrapping for political favor and for cold hard cash. But at least in theory, the two can work together.
- [10:53]
Matt Lewis
I quite like the idea of spiritual double glazing.
- [10:56]
Dr. Chris Harding
That's a good way of putting it. Yeah, absolutely.
- [10:58]
Matt Lewis
If one layer is not enough, we'll just get another layer of protection over us as well. Presumably the connection of Hiei as the location in which Tendai develops and its connection to Kyoto and the imperial family means that there is significant prestige already associated with here, which helps Hendaye to grow.
- [11:19]
Dr. Chris Harding
Yes, I think absolutely. So in the period where Tendai grows and Hiei develops, we're talking really about the 9th and 10th centuries in Japan. Some of your listeners might know it from the Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu. Some people call it, you know, the world's first novel, or the world's first psychological novel, perhaps published around the year 1000. And at this point, you've got the imperial family in Kyoto. But real power is starting to pass to these great aristocratic clans, notably the Fujiwara. They do things like marrying their daughters to imperial princes so they can have a Fujiwara bit of Fujiwara blood added to the imperial line. And Fujiwara, the Fujiwara clan is very good at trying to do business with Tende on Mount Hiei. So after a while, some of the most important priests and leaders on Hiei are from the Fujiwara clan. So they really fit together, I think, quite neatly. Also, if people read something like the Tale of Genji, they might be struck by. By the extent to which Japanese people really were every day bothered by various supernatural forces. Fear of what happens after death. If you have, for example, the birth of an important person, an imperial or an aristocratic child in Kyoto, you will hire shamans for the occasion. You will have Buddhist monks chanting, all sorts of other rituals being done. And what Tendai is really good at is ceremonial. They can say, whatever the problem is, birth of a child, pregnancy, can't get pregnant, worried about death, whatever it might be, we have something for you. And I think by supplying that to the elite, they become, I would say, almost the sort of a kind of Japan's answer to the Church of England. You know, the country's elite at prayer is really what Tendai becomes, I think, in its heyday.
- [13:10]
Matt Lewis
And would it have appealed and been as important to ordinary Japanese people too? Was this something that was the preserve of the elite or was this something that everybody could engage with?
- [13:20]
Dr. Chris Harding
It's an interesting one. In theory it was for everybody. So you've got 10 day temples around the country at various stages of every person's life. There will be rituals, particularly funeral rituals and memorial rituals, which Tendai would be heavily involved in. But funnily enough, what happens in the late 12th century, 13th century, the advantage of Tendai is kind of turned on its head. So its advantage is that it encompasses all these different Buddhist traditions within it. So you've got Zen style meditation, you've got all these other elements, including the worship of a Buddha called Amida Buddha, the Buddha of infinite light and compassion. So it includes everything. As you say, you get Tendai, you get everything you possibly need. But the flip side is that when some monks on Mount Hiei find that life's a bit tough, all the ceremonies they have to do, one of them for example, involves for 90 days non stop walking around a statue of Amida Buddha, reciting Amida Buddha's name. And for some people this just becomes too much. And a handful of monks, one after the other, leave Hieiye, start to preach their own version of Buddhism and start to attract quite large followings around them. So to offer you another European parallel, people talk about it as a kind of reformation in Buddhism, becomes a populist reformation. So some of these people, a leader like Shinran in the 13th century, he tells his followers, you don't need ritual, you don't need to pay priests for things, you don't need to read loads of sutras, you don't need to do lots of, you know, back breaking meditation. All you need to do literally is call on the name of Amina Buddha, a very short prayer, call on his name, and when you die, he will come and rescue you and take you away to the pure land. You get these lovely paintings called Raigo, which show someone at the bottom on their deathbed and Amida coming down with his bodhisattvas, riding on clouds to take them away. So these populist forms of Buddhism start to eat Tendai's lunch, I think. So a lot of ordinary Japanese are drawn to these, you could say easier, more straightforward sects which appeal to their level of education and also to the spare time they have. You know, if you're an aristocrat you've got a bit of time, you can go for a two or three day retreat. If you're, you know, if you're working in the fields, you can't realistically take time off from that. So these easier forms of Buddhism really start to take over in Japan.
- [15:44]
Matt Lewis
It's amazing how often some of those things that are meant for everybody aren't in practice actually. For everybody.
- [15:49]
Dr. Chris Harding
Yes, very much so.
- [15:50]
Matt Lewis
And when we get to the period in which Assassin's Creed Shadows is set, so in the later 16th century, we're talking about the time of Oda Nobunaga and the beginning of the unification of Japan. Yeah. Given Mount Hiei's importance in Japanese religion, does it also have a political role to play in that period of turbulence?
- [16:10]
Dr. Chris Harding
Yes, it has that religious influence in Japan. It has that psychological hold on the ruling elite, you know, to whose various needs and anxieties it's managed to tend quite effectively. It also has what are called soshi warrior monks. So these army of trained monks who now and again will descend the mountain, intimidate rivals in Kyoto. Occasionally they'll actually burn down the temples of rival Buddhist sects. So they can still, you know, project their power in these various different ways. Nevertheless, at the same time, some of these newer sects that came about in this period of reformation have also become very powerful. I think the one worth briefly mentioning when we're talking about Nobunaga is Shinran sect, called the True Pure Land sect of Buddhism, Jodo Shinshu. This is the sect where if you but call on the name of Amida Buddha, you know you will be saved. That very simple pure kind of faith which it emphasizes, and it is incredibly well armed. So it has a fortified complex at what is now Osaka in Japan, with these fortified outposts, very hard to get at. It also has quite wealthy and well equipped for followers across Japan, to whom the leader from Osaka can send out a message saying rise up and people will equip themselves, feed themselves and go off and fight whoever they're told to fight. So religious sects like these, Tendai and Joro Shinshu, are really dangerous for someone like Oda Nobunaga. You know, he's got enough to worry about with these secular warlords who he's trying to fight. But what he finds is as his power grows in the final third of the 16th century, both Tendai and Jodo Shinshu, their leaders, come out against him and denounce him. What that means for Jodo Shinshu is people are told around the country to take up arms against Oda Nobunaga and that if they don't, they won't be considered members of the sect anymore. And there's a certain amount of evidence that the kind of faith involved in Joro Shinsu Buddhism can be really effective on the battlefield. People will sometimes carry into battle pieces of paper with this short prayer written on them, and it would give them this extra kind of boost, this extra kind of strength. And so Oda Nobunaga comes to detest these independent Buddhist sects who wield all this money and all this armed support. And that's why he turns his gaze on Hiei.
- [18:38]
Matt Lewis
I was going to ask about warrior monks, but, you know, I wonder whether that was going to be a real thing or is that a myth? We think about Buddhist monks having this warrior element to what they do. And I guess while you were talking then, I was thinking about European parallels again. And I'm thinking that they sound something like maybe the Templars a few centuries earlier in that they are a political powerhouse, but they're also a financial one and a religious one and a military one too. They kind of bring all of that together to mean that you've got this really significant thing perched on this mountain that really nobody can ignore.
- [19:13]
Dr. Chris Harding
Yes, I think that's a really good parallel. You can imagine the psychological impact of having an imposing mountain on which, you know, is living hundreds and hundreds of well trained warrior monks. Also within Buddhism, you know, it used to be thought years ago that Buddhism is a quintessentially peaceful religion and that it demands it, you know, at its very core.
- [19:33]
Matt Lewis
And that's why I was wondering about the warrior monk thing, because, you know, you think of peaceful religions and you also think of warrior monks and you think, how do you reconcile those two? But, but I mean, religions have always been quite good at reconciling violence with the idea that you shouldn't be violent, I think.
- [19:45]
Dr. Chris Harding
So there was a lot of work done on this after the Second World War because Buddhist organizations in Japan had given a lot of support to the Imperial Japanese army during World War II, including holding meditation retreats for them. One of the things they used to use to justify this was there are stories of past lives of the Buddha where he would kill someone to avoid them accumulating bad karma. If they live much longer, their karma would get worse, their subsequent rebirth would be worse. And so, as it were, the best thing for them is to take them out early on. So all sorts of ways in which you could justify this if you, if you wanted to and what's striking about Oda Nobunaga is he's quite friendly to European Christians in this period. You know, we know the Portuguese are in Japan by this point, partly because both Oda Nobunaga and the Portuguese, particularly the Christian missionaries, detest Buddhism. They have them up there as one of their principal enemies.
- [20:42]
Matt Lewis
Interesting. So yeah, the the enemy of my enemy becomes my friend.
- [20:45]
Dr. Chris Harding
Yeah.
- [20:51]
Dan Snow
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- [23:04]
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- [24:38]
Matt Lewis
Everything that I've learned about Odanoba Nuggets throughout doing these podcasts has taught me that he's not someone you want to be on the wrong side of. So I'm feeling like Tendai might have made a mistake by getting on the wrong side of Oda Nobunaga. How does he go about tackling this force who are encouraging people to fight against him?
- [24:55]
Dr. Chris Harding
So I think absolutely right. He isn't someone. He's not only someone you don't want to get on the wrong side of. He's also someone who doesn't seem to have strong what we would think of as being strong religious convictions. So he didn't believe there was anything after death. What he believed in was power and security in this life. There's even a story that when he was about 17, his father died. He had the Buddhist monks who had prayed for his father locked into a temple, locked inside a temple. Then he surrounded the temple with soldiers holding muskets and shot them to death for having failed basically to keep his father alive. So that's the kind of person that they are up against. I think there was A hope. This is the early 1570s. So Oda Nobunaga is doing well, but he's not yet this invincible force in Japanese politics. And I think Tendai hoped that they would manage to be part of a coalition that would do away with him because he was, you know, he was such a menace. But he obviously takes it rather badly having Tendai come out against him. And so he sends roughly 30,000 men to encircle the base of Mount Hiei. These are men who've been through awfully bloody battles already, properly battle hardened. And as soon as they appear around the base of Mount Hieh, some of the people, ordinary men, women and children who live towards the base of the mountain, think, well, we can't get out. Can't get out by going downwards, so we have to go upwards. And they make their way up the mountain because as we said earlier on, the most important building or the most important complex on Mount Hiei is Enryaku Ji, the original temple that Saicho built back in the 9th century. So they make their way up there, they try and buy Nobunaga's men off. They offer him lots of cash, basically. But Nobunaga has as much cash as he really needs. He's not bothered by that. And he sends. This is September 1571. He sends his men up the mountain and from what we know, they murder people completely indiscriminately. So we have quite vivid records from this period of these men making their way up the mountain. People are sort of fleeing in front of them and they are shooting them dead, they're hacking them to death. You have arquebus wielding snipers in holes, taking people out as they come past. Some people are begging for the lives of their wives and children, but Nobunaga orders them basically all to be executed. And there's an amazing picture in words that gets drawn from us by the end. So you've got, we think, somewhere in the region of 3,000 Buddhist buildings on this mountain. There they're looted and then they're burned to the ground. So Mount Hiei becomes this basic sort of whirlwind of fire. These are all, of course, wooden buildings which very often in Japan have burned down when people go to war, but it's completely engulfed in flames. And then afterwards, someone remembers Mount Hiei as this place that was associated with wealth, erudition, political influence, great art as well, of course, within these temples. And now it's said to be a barren landscape, carpeted in ash, across which only badgers and foxes can now move. So just this picture of utter devastation when Oda Nobunaga's done his business.
- [28:13]
Matt Lewis
He's a pretty terrifying bloke, isn't he?
- [28:16]
Dr. Chris Harding
He is. And he's equally awful with the true Pure Land sect in Osaka when he lays siege to their fortress not terribly far away from Kyoto. Actually, the only good thing in the case of the. The siege of this other sect in Osaka is that the. The patriarch of that. This is in the early 1580s. So about 10 years later, the patriarch surrenders Toronobunaga, because how merciless he is, and he leaves the temple to go and surrender in person. But his son, just before he leaves and all his men leave with him, sets fire to the entire temple compound in Osaka. So Nobunaga, Oda Nobunaga had hoped to be able to stroll in and survey his great prize, but instead, this person burns it to the ground. So, you know, if his sect can't have it, Nobunaga can't have it either. It's a very, very small victory given the scale of what Oda Nobunaga has done. But I think very effectively, he wipes out the power of the political power of Buddhism in Japan, and it never really recovers the level of power that it had back in the heyday of Mount Hiei.
- [29:19]
Matt Lewis
Yeah, yeah. I was going to ask how significant Oda Nobunaga's victory there was on in the grand scheme of the unification of Japan.
- [29:29]
Dr. Chris Harding
Is it.
- [29:30]
Matt Lewis
Is it a major moment that he breaks this power of Buddhism? Or, you know, is that applying hindsight to see it as something bigger than it probably was at the time?
- [29:40]
Dr. Chris Harding
No, I think at the time it was recognized how big it was. And what's interesting is Oda Nobunaga's successor, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, has a similar problem with Christians in Japan. So, as it were, Oda Nobunaga's taking care of the Buddhists. Hideyoshi finds that Christians have influence not because they're armed in the way the Buddhists were, but because they have links with Portuguese traders and with the wider European world in general. And so Hideyoshi has to deal with the Christians in a similar way. Of course, after Hideyoshi comes Tokugawa Ieyasu, who creates a Tokugawa shogunate. And he's very successful at keeping Japanese Buddhism under his boot. Basically, some of the larger sects he divides into two. He uses Buddhist, some of the Buddhist temples as a way of registering the local population. You have to go and register your name at the temple. If they suspect you of being a Christian, you've got to go to the Buddhist temple and stand on an image of Jesus on the cross or perhaps the Virgin Mary to prove that you've renounced your Christianity. So you see the state making use of Buddhism as opposed to being pushed around by it.
- [30:46]
Matt Lewis
Yeah. It's an interesting reversal of fortunes, I guess, isn't it, from. From Mount his heyday, sort of having all of this influence over Kyoto and the. The elite there to now being just a tool of the state afterwards?
- [31:01]
Dr. Chris Harding
I think that's right. The other thing I might sort of add on that is, once you get into the 1600s, the real ideological basis of the way Japan is ruled and the values that people are expected to accept comes much more from Confucianism. So Buddhism and Shinto are still part of the mix, but the kind of moral core of Japan is Confucianism, and it doesn't have that dangerous institutional presence in Japan that Buddhism had once had. So in yet another sense, I suppose Buddhism has been tamed.
- [31:31]
Matt Lewis
Yeah. And I don't know whether this is possible with the nature of Japanese buildings of this period, but does any sort of archaeology survive from this destruction of Mount Hiei to give us an idea of how. How true it is, you know, there are accounts of it being destroyed and burned and as you said, thousands of people potentially being killed. Yeah. Is there any evidence that survives to back that up?
- [31:55]
Dr. Chris Harding
I think most of the evidence is in terms of accounts of the time, so it's quite well evidenced. The problem with these Japanese buildings is obviously in this case, they were deliberately put to the torch, but in fact, in what, the middle of the 10th century, a lot of it was being. Had been rebuilt anyway because it burned down. So periodically these buildings have to be renewed, but a lot of them do get rebuilt. And so Mount Hiei now is still a tourist attraction. You can get there up a cable car from Kyoto. You get a lovely view over Kyoto. Also lovely view over Lake Biwa. For anybody who's in Kyoto during the hot. The very hot and muggy summer months, a trip up Mount Hiei is well worth a look.
- [32:35]
Matt Lewis
Yeah.
- [32:36]
Dr. Chris Harding
Does.
- [32:37]
Matt Lewis
Does Mount Hiei ever see a revival after this? Do Buddhists return to the mountain? Does it regain any of its previous significance? Or is it. Is it permanently broken?
- [32:48]
Dr. Chris Harding
No, it does survive. Tendai does survive. It never gets back to the level of influence I think it had almost unchallenged. There were other Buddhist sects, but Tendai was so far out at the front in terms of size and wealth and political influence in 10th, 11th centuries. That it really was, as I sort of suggested, you know, the kind of national church of Japan in the centuries afterwards. It's really these other sects which are much larger. So Joro Shinshu, true Pure Land sect, of course, Zen sects become really big in Japan, so it takes its place amongst other Japanese Buddhist sects. One of its most famous representatives, a nun called Setoichi Jakucho, she passed away, I think, a few years ago. But I interviewed her early in her 90s, and she was defending Tendai because I was saying, what do you think about sex, like Jodo Shinshu, where all you have to do is have faith and declare your faith in Amida. And she said, no, no, no, that's easy. Buddhism, if you want the real thing, you know, you've got to work for it. And she was this great celebrity presence in Japan, a kind of agony aunt, actually. Big presence on TV advice columns. She wrote lots of books. She was even a novelist, actually, in an earlier life. So I think she helped to put Tendai on the map. And now there are plenty of Japanese who like to go on meditation retreats, you know, getting away from everyday rat race for a bit. So I think it's succeeding on that basis. And its location still, as ever, is formidable, so it's always going to be attracting people. But I would surprise. I'd be surprised if it ever goes back to the kind of influence it once had.
- [34:28]
Matt Lewis
Yeah, and presumably it loses a degree of its importance, too, when the capital moves from Kyoto to Edo, you know, because it's no longer in that position, protecting the imperial capital, with that proximity to the imperial capital and all of those connections that that had allowed it to thrive. Presumably when the capital moves from Kyoto, a lot of that is gone too.
- [34:52]
Dr. Chris Harding
I think that's right. Yeah, that's a good point. So the capital moves and also power has shifted to the Tokugawa clan, which historically doesn't have as much to do with Tendai as the Fujiwara clan did, which we were talking about a little bit early on, a little bit earlier on. I think it retains something in that although the capital moves to Edo, and in later centuries, Edo's both a political capital, becomes a great production industrial capital as well. Kyoto remains the cultural capital of Japan. I think Kyotoites would probably, if you ask them, tell you Kyoto's the real capital, so it maintains a connection with what is still considered to be this really important area of Japan. But certainly, yeah, the movers and shakers of Japan politically after the war, I suppose, as well, the Second World War, this is. It's probably Tokyo, maybe Osaka as a big second city where a lot of the jobs are, the media is. So Kyoto maybe becomes thought of as being traditional, yes, but maybe slightly quaint and perhaps not at the real cutting edge of things anymore. So, yeah, I think I'd agree. Mount Hie probably suffers to some extent with that association.
- [36:08]
Matt Lewis
What I'm taking away from this is a religious element to this. This whole Sengoku period and this unification of Japan that I hadn't really picked up on before, that this is often about Buddhist sect versus different Buddhist sects versus Christianity and the influence that's coming over with that versus other religious influences. And also someone like Nobunaga, who's probably a bit of an atheist or agnostic, but willing to use these religions where they work for him and destroy them where they don't. Is it fair to think that religion is a. A fairly significant part of what goes on in Japan in this period?
- [36:43]
Dr. Chris Harding
I think it is certainly in the time of Oda Nobunaga, the fact that he was worried enough about tendai to send 30,000 monks up there and finish them off, I think tells you something. There's a bit of an irony to it because the founder of Tendai, Saicho, was one of Japan's earliest, I suppose you could say, proto nationalists. So he talked about dying upon Teikoku, you know, the Great Japan or the Great Japanese Empire. And he wanted people to consider Tendai as part of the buttress for Japan, you know, as a political force in the world. So the fact that his sect ended up, as it were, on the wrong end of this war in the Sengoku period, I think he'd have regarded it as an irony. He might even perhaps, who knows, have sensed something about Oda Nobunaga and would have said, either let's throw in our lot with him or. Or, as a lot of inglorious participants tend to do in these wars, is hang back and see who looks like getting the upper hand and then throw in your lot with them. Perhaps that's what it have done. But very sadly for Tendai and Hiei, the decision was made to go against Nobunaga and they really paid the price.
- [37:49]
Matt Lewis
Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's fascinating because you can see a world in which Tendai and Nobunaga could have complemented each other. So if Saicho and Nobunaga had sat down, it sounds like they might have had a lot in common and a lot of similar ideas and could have worked together. Whereas you say instead you end up in a situation where Tendai is. Is very much the opponent of Nobunaga.
- [38:11]
Dr. Chris Harding
Yeah, it's a real shame. I think Sideshow, his idea. I think I said Dai Nippon Taekok a minute ago. Dai Nippon Koku. Great Japan wasn't the sense of an empire just yet. Great Japan. It means he had a really strong sense of both Japan's history and its purpose in the world. This is Saicho. So he talked about Prince Shotoku, this legendary, semi legendary figure from the Japanese past, sometimes credited with coming up with the name of Nihon in Land of the Rising sun or Root of the sun for Japan. He talked about that Prince Shotoku as being his own spiritual grandfather. So I think he had a really astute sense of how religion and politics would go together, linked, as you said, with this kind of spiritual double glazing. I think Oda Nobunaga would not have wanted to share power with anybody. And I think you get a sense of that by the way that he treats the Shogun in Kyoto. When he finally reaches Kyoto, tries to work with the Shogun for a while, builds him a nice castle which is supposed to double as a kind of cage for him. But the minute the Shogun appears to want to develop his own policies and make his own alliances, Nobunaga has him shut down. Basically destroys him, sends him off, and I think the Shogun ends him, ends his life as a kind of wandering beggar. So there's no sense in which Nobunaga would have shared power. And I suspect he would have thought that Tendai would be difficult people to deal with, because there would always be a sense of a parallel order going on there. And I don't think he could tolerate that.
- [39:41]
Matt Lewis
Yeah, yeah. Maybe I'm wrong there. Maybe he would have always found an excuse to fall out with Tendai eventually.
- [39:47]
Dr. Chris Harding
Potentially, yeah. Unless Saito was extremely clever and realized what kind of a person Oda Nobunaga was and would have to be making his obeisances. That could have worked. Be a bit humiliating for him, but it might have worked.
- [39:59]
Matt Lewis
And just to end on, I'm asking everybody that I speak to about this. Assassin's Creed puts players back into this world. You can walk through Japan during this period, during its reunification and witness some of the events and visit some of these key places. If I could put you into an Animus Machine and I could send you back to feudal Japan in this period, when and where would you like to go? What would you like to see.
- [40:29]
Dr. Chris Harding
That's an interesting one. I think I would like to be sat next to Oda Nobunaga with his men on the day when they'd just vanquished one of their great enemies. And they had had sake cups made from their skulls, from the tops of their skulls. They lacquered them, I think, in silver or gold, perhaps both. They drank out of those cups and told stories and sang songs. I think I would have wanted to be there and sit in the aura of a man like Oda Nobunaga. Not that I admire him or perhaps respect his attitude to the taking of human life, but he must have had something about him. And I think to be there with him and soak it up and find out what it was would be really something.
- [41:21]
Matt Lewis
Yeah, that's terrifying. Again, he's an increasingly terrifying man. The more I learn about him, the more terrified I am of him. Even though he can't get me. He can't get me. He can't get me. And I mean, talking to you about Mount Hiei has just made me think that must have been an incredible place to visit. The mountain itself when it was at its height. When it's this bustling center of politics and religion, lots of money flowing up and down the mountain, and a military force, too. It must have been an incredible sight and an incredible feeling to be on that mountain when it was at its peak, I bet.
- [41:56]
Dr. Chris Harding
Absolutely. And to have all the great and good of Kyoto coming up the mountain for a chance to sit at the feet of these monks and. And learn something. There's, as you say, there's just a sense of the sheer clout that you have at your peak with these people. That must have been quite something. And also these beautiful cavernous temples with the artwork, the gilded statues of the Buddha, the incense wafting around, the chanting of the monks. I think that have been.
- [42:25]
Matt Lewis
Yeah, that would have.
- [42:25]
Dr. Chris Harding
Maybe that'd be number two on my list after the sake drinking from skulls. In terms of what I might.
- [42:31]
Matt Lewis
I actually think you'd want to unwind after the sake drinking from schools experience. You might need a little bit of a mountain retreat to get over that.
- [42:38]
Dr. Chris Harding
Perfect. The combination. Sounds fabulous. Yeah, wonderful.
- [42:42]
Matt Lewis
Well, thank you so much for joining us again, Chris. It's been an absolute pleasure. It's been fascinating to find out more about Hiei and the influence of Tendai and the power that that mountain had for a brief while, and also how Oda Nobunaga broke and crushed that power too. So thank you so much for joining us.
- [43:00]
Dr. Chris Harding
Thank you for having me.
- [43:04]
Matt Lewis
I hope you've enjoyed this episode of Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hit. In the next episode, I'll continue my special series by examining the politics of samurai and Shinobi with Professor Eric Rath. Then next week we're returning to the history of the Sengoku era as we relive the epic events of the Battle of Nagashino, when traditional medieval Japanese warfare clashed with modern firearms. Don't forget to subscribe and follow Echoes of History wherever you get your podcasts, and if you're enjoying it, you can leave us a review too. I'll see you next time. Among the Echoes of history.
- [43:51]
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- [44:21]
Paige Desorbo
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