The crest, or mon (紋), with the tripe hollyhock is a readily recognized icon in Japan, symbolizing both the Tokugawa clan and the Tokugawa shogunate. It’s a pretty nice design, isn’t it?

I took this shot at Daijuji Temple (大樹寺), a temple made famous by it’s connection with the first of the Tokugawa Shoguns1, Tokugawa Ieyasu. The temple was founded by Ieyasu’s ancestors, the Matsudaras, but more importantly, the temple may have been responsible for saving Ieyasu’s life.

Story Time

During one of the many battles when Ieyasu was attempting to take total control of Mikawa2, he and his men were surrounded at the temple. He was about to give up and wanted to commit sepukku3 (切腹) in front of his ancestors. Just before he could, the head priest, a fellow named Toyo, intervened and convinced him not to give up by reading him a sutra which translates to, “Leave the depraved land. Pursue the peaceful world.” With his confidence restored, Ieyasu and his men fought back and survived the battle.

Today’s Photo

I’ll share more shots from Daijuji in the future. Also, while writing this I realized I should do some photo essays sometime about the various places I shoot. Maybe after publishing a few more daily photos of Daijuji I’ll put together an essay about it.

Anyways, I cropped today’s photo so to prevent you from seeing beyond the gate. Any guesses what’s back there? I used a 1.85 crop, a little thinner than what your HDTV is set to.

The above post was republished from JapanDave.com, home of the most beautiful daily photos of Japan on the Internet. See the original post: Daily Photo: The Shogun's Mark [138/365]

The 3 great uniters of Japan

I won’t keep you in suspense. The men are Oda Nobunaga, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, and Tokugawa Ieyasu.

Oda Nobunaga

Toyotomi Hideyoshi

Tokugawa Ieyasu

There is a famous poem about these three men all schoolchildren learn. It goes:

What if a bird doesn’t want to sing? “Kill, it!”, said Nobunaga. “Make it want to sing”, said Hideyoshi “Wait”, said Ieyasu

I’ll examine each of these men in separate posts. For now, let’s look at the Japan they were born into and what they achieved.

Civil War!

Japan in the 16th century wasn’t a very fun place. The shogun was the ruler of the country in theory, but in reality he had completely lost all control of the land. Local lords, or daimyo, were taking more and more power for themselves and completely ignoring the shogunate government. As the daimyo grew stronger and stronger, they started warring with each other in attempts to conquer more land for themselves. Because this was happening all over the country, this entire century (generally about 1477 to 1603 to be more exact) is known by historians as Sengoku Jidai, or the Warring States period.

Taking control of the country

This is what the three men I mentioned above were born into. Nobunaga was born in Owari providence, which is the western half of modern day Aichi prefecture. He quickly became a force to be reckoned with and conquered most of central Japan. He likely would have done more, but was assassinated by one of his generals.

Hideyoshi, another Owari native who was also one of Nobunaga’s top generals, quickly took over and more or less completed Nobunaga’s conquest of Japan. He then turned his sites to China and invaded Korea as a first step, but nothing much came of that.

After Hideyoshi died, Ieyasu, born in Mikawa, the eastern neighbor of Owari, stepped in and destroyed all remaining rivals to fully and completely conquer Japan and become the next Shogun. His family would go on to rule Japan for over 200 years until the Emperor took back control of the country and started the modern era.

Next time I’ll take a closer look at the first of these three great uniters of Japan. But until then, let me leave you with another common saying in Japan about these men:

Nobunaga made the pie and Hideyoshi baked it, but Ieyasu was the man who ate it.

The above post was republished from JapanDave.com, home of the most beautiful daily photos of Japan on the Internet. See the original post: 3 top military leaders in Japanese history -- all from the same place?!

From 1640 to 1868 Japan was a closed country. No one was allowed in or out; the only open port was Nagasaki and even then only a select few countries were allowed to dock there. Culture really

The above post was republished from JapanDave.com, home of the most beautiful daily photos of Japan on the Internet. See the original post: The times were a-changin'