Honestly, the real number is probably somewhere between the ranges I found in this video and my first upload of it. If we were not counting civilian deaths I estimate that the number of military death would be somewhere between 300,000 on the lowest end and 800,000 on the highest end, but it is really anyone's guess.
Hello! Tour guide from Berlin that enjoys your videos here. Just want to commend you for tackling such a difficult topic, as this is one all warfare scholars struggle with mightily. After all, we still don't have a precise number of overall WWII casualties (the number disturbingly keeps growing), let alone for the vast majority of pre-20th Century conflicts. So even for professors and academia this is a question that is usually never resolved, as it is difficult to publish articles/books based on statistics that are extremely difficult to prove beyond a reasonable doubt. I personally find the overall statistic from the previous video is amazing unto itself, as what we can consider 335k 'guaranteed recorded' battlefield deaths is a MASSIVE number for a pre-1815 AD era. Military command structures prior to Napoleonic times were much more fragile than they are today (whether that is a good/bad thing can be debated), so in many ways it is a miracle anybody on the islands were able to field a cohesive army by the early 1600s, let alone the two very large coalitions that fought at Sekigahara. Interesting research, and thanks for sharing it all with us! 😄
Enjoyed your video, so kudos from 7 months in the future. I will say it's not something that's easy at all and I have one major criticism. The larger estimates in a lot of the battles almost certainly took into account ashigaru and civilian troops. Especially during the Early Years, as you called them, numerous cases of the peasants themselves rising up only to be backed by lords who had an agenda in aiding them. These civilians being counted (or undercounted) among the belligerents most likely caused staggeringly different estimates. Samurai kept ledgers of their troops, of course, but not always fully grasping the number of people who took up arms.
I respect your commitment to accurately address the question of total deaths, I hope you are not taking the criticisms in your previous video to heart, as you are possibly the only person whose attempted to answer the question drawing from many sources and opinions, and I appreciate the time you took to present it to us.
Thanks for the update! There is only on point I still have trouble with... the total percentage of dead amongst the population... When you say that during the Sengoku Jidai period the population was about 12,500,000 people that would be the population of Japan at one point in time, a snapshot. But the war raged on for several generations, so the death toll you calculate is an aggregate over the whole time. With an average timespan for a generation of about 25 years, we would have 6 generations between 1475 and 1625, thus (with people being born and dying during those days) the total accumulated number of people living in Japan (using your estimate) should be roughly 6x 12.5 mio = 75 mio. I would actually reduce that number a bit because it seems that even during that war the population was increasing, and 12.5 mio sounds more like a value from later in the period. But still, you can't compare a snapshot value (12.5 mio inhabitants at any one point in time) with an aggregate over the whole period (1.8 mio casualties added up over roughly 150 years) and simply divide them to get the percentage death toll - that's apples and oranges. When adding up the number of all people that lived and died during that time the death percentage might be around 3-5% which is still terrible enough... Some may say that 3-5% sounds low, but you have to consider that while some areas were devastated by battles and their aftermath, other parts of the country were barely touched directly by that war. From my understanding Japan (very simplified, I know) was a rather rural civilisation where peasants produced for the local population (and daimyo), so a mayor battle 100km away wouldn't have too much influence on them. It is not like eg. with some much more mercantile cultures, where trade routes could be broken, causing immense long range effects. And it is not like eg. the Thirty Years War, where the armies simply "lived of the land" ie. stealing from the peasants, often enough torturing and killing them (and city folk alike) until there was nothing left to eat or plant, thus not only reducing the population immediately but actually destroying the long term capacity of the land to sustain a population. Please correct me when I am wrong, but while many atrocities surely happened, on average the samurai armies were not on a land destruction tour across the country. Otherwise the population numbers between 1450 and 1650 should plummet, but all estimates show them rising.
You are right, it is more of a snapshot! I was just trying to give a probable percentage given the new estimate, but honestly your best guess is as good as mine!
Thank you for the initial and updated videos! Very thought provoking and staggering. We often get pulled in to this period for its characters and stories. Cannot forget that this was a warring period. Brutal and often no quarter given or provided. Gives a humbling perspective.
"Should the samurai be deemed mass murdering tyrants" Why single them out? Almost all of humanity during that period acted in that manner. I would say they were fairly tame and level headed if we were to look at the destruction brought about by the Mongols or even the mercenaries during the 100 years war. The fact that there hasn't been a war that has rocked the world in more than 3 generations has made us forget what a great time we're actually living in.
I highly appreciate your commitment to this. It is extremely difficult to calculate any losses of wars past, as leaders of the times (even present) were not always keen on letting their numbers be known. Here you talked about the entire period of Sengoku, and personally, for some reason i feel the number must have been higher. Also if you compare Europe of the same time period, which is the renaissance era, you can say that the entire continent was rivers of blood, even exceeding the damage done in WW2.
Good job. Death tolls for wars and other events interest me since they allow you to get an idea of how much or little people suffered and to make comparisons.
One thing I learned in physics is that setting absolute upper bounds can be useful. For civilian deaths, Mongol invasion of Hungary is the greatest catastrophe I can think of, with estimated fall of population from 3 million to 2 (this accounts for direct losses, taking slaves and famines) - this left the country so devastated it recovered... pretty much never, unlike Japan, but we're looking at the upper bounds. Sengoku Jidai Japan with a population of 12 million would loose 4 million, but that is for one set of generations. In 150 years, you'd get a complete replacement of all people at least once, so we need to double our estimate, getting us to 8 million as the upper bound. For military, most battles that don't have extreme weather to account for (e.g. Hattin) and are catastrophic defeats usually loose 1/2 on the loosing side (e.g. Grunwald, Lepanto, Agincourt), and pre-industrial society can devote about 1/20 of its total population to non-productive tasks. So, we take entier population of Japan (24 million, two generation, remember?), we get 1.2 million soldiers and half of that is 600 000 as upper bound - accounting for disease with ration in this video, we get 1.2 million. This assumes that every engagement in the war was a devastating loss for both sides - somehow - but again, it's a useful upper bound to check our numbers against. It's still probably too low because it doesn't account for 1) conscripts (and numbers of those would vary wildly case by case) and 2) people being in more than one battle. So, let's compare it to video numbers. Upper total bound of 8M against just shy of 2M, with the upper bound being based on an actual historical invasion, and military deaths of 800k versus upper bound of 1200k. While the samurai weren't nice by any means, and maybe we should think more about the glorification they get, calling them mass murderers is a bit of a stretch - they seem to have at least kept the killing mostly to the actual soldiers. Because the farmers make the rice you need to not starve. Samurai would need to increase the death they cause by a factor of 4 to get to Subutai's Hungarian level, which they didn't manage to quite get to, even with Joseon population drop from 9M to 8M. Let's be thankful for that.
"Should the samurai be deemed mass murdering tyrants". I think they were products of the culture and time, and it is wrong to bring modern values into play when describing what was very different morals. A lot of "mass murdering tyrants" I feel are unfairly labeled as such by privileged children in first world countries who cannot understand anybody not having the same sense of morality as them.
This is true. Also, for most of human history, the extremely limited access to information further ensures that victorious leaders who did the most terrible deeds also tend to be the most remembered and recorded. A lot of these so-called "historical researchers" who criticize the video can't seem to research facts without the compelling need to pass judgement on them.
Of course, people are going to pass judgement. It is a part of who we are. The difference between someone who values history over their ownself, and themself over history is if they let their values affect their perception of what is historical. For example: I think Samurai are murderous and bloodthirsty because I don't know what else to really call them when attributing traits to them. But I won't let myself believe they are akin to Joseph Stalin or Adolf Hitler because they did what they did for very different reasons. The similarities end at a superficial level. We are all products of our time, and we only know how to pass judgement in the ways we are taught. Let us understand history, don't label them "Hitler of Japan" or anything like that, and enjoy the show. That's my personal standard.
I mean if your leader in a era and place where war and chaos are the norm, of course the ways of stopping it that isn’t going to be easy and sometimes the choices are all going to look bad. Sure there brutal methods shouldn’t be justified too munch, but we have to understand the circumstances(especially giving it pre modern times).
I Just want to point out something else in this regard too: Most of the samurai either born in the era where their had to fight for their own survival or lived when it began but had no say into it. Their literally born in a dogs-eat-dogs situation, where even jsut a moment of hesitation or soft heartedness could be interpreted as weekness (and likely would brought even more death and destruction to their domain or their families). Its easy for us to judge them, we were not the ones who had to live though those times afterall, but i bet 10 out of 10 ppl.would have done the same thing. I would even defend most warlords in this regard too, only just a handful of them went clearly well and beyond reason to either cause suffering or do selfish things. Most of them imo just tried to weather the storm and did what was neccesary to keep their head above water.
@@attilaedem101 Even those who do the worst deeds usually have reasons to behave that way. Violence on that scale is usually an endless spiral of determent, retlaliation and escalation. It breeds bad behaviour, because bad behaviour gets shit done in such an environment.
Question; I am amazed that Japan had such a huge population (as stated at 17:51 ). In contrast, the British Isles had just a few million people at the time in spite of far more farmable land and more advanced technology. How do you think Japan managed to sustain that many people on a relatively infertile and resource-poor island at a feudal-era stage of development?
I suggest you look into the Kaga Rebellion (1487~1488). The number of belligerents (many of them peasants) in that conflict was enormous for the time and would almost certainly drive up the losses during the interim between the Ōnin War and Okehazama.
A worthy attempt. We have to keep in mind, casualties of war are guesses, often wild guesses. Even for "modern" wars we have wildly varying estimates. Also keep in mind, for something as concentrated as the terrorist attacks of 9-11, where actual numbers were so important for insurance and other purposes, the estimates a year after the attack (7,000) were wildly different from estimates much later (3,000). If with all the attention focused on the event, we could get such varying estimates, imagine trying to estimate casualties from 500 years ago. Good luck!
Not to reduce the severity of war and the death that it brings, but the Sengoku Jidai did bring a over 250 year long period of peace. Was it worth all the death? maybe, we'll never know.
What an interesting video. Although in the end, I think we will never have an actual estimated number of deaths in the Sengoku Era. There were 150 years of war history! So, that means the percentage at the end could not actually be that representative, unless the population who live through that century and a half was taken into account. However, the number of deaths you presented seems to be razonable. Almost 2 million of deaths is by no means a small number. While I love Sengoku Era and the epicness it had, I think we tend to romanticize the era too much and forget it was actually a hell. Yes, not all samurai were demons, there were some honorable, but they were not saints either. That's why among other reasons I love Sengoku BASARA anime: although based on sengoku themed game way too exaggerated (which is what I love about that), sometimes, between all that ridiculousness and epicness and emotion, the characters remind us that war is not fun, civilians suffer, some ashigaru probably weren't willing to fight at all, and that there is barely no true hero nor complete villain in war, just people fighting for what they think is correct.
Remember also when talking about that population number at that time, it was almost 150 years, so there were many more people living through that time, i'd say double or triple the amount, depending on the average life expectancy in those times (when factoring out high child mortality rate to smallpox and such which lowers the estimates a lot). Not that big of a deal really, but when talking about how many died through those ages in certain manner, then I think it should be taken into an account, it's not that high percentage in single stroke. Or maybe I'm just overthinking it.
When are you going to release the videos on the sieges of Osaka to complete the grand chapter of Sengoku Jidai??? I want to hear you describe the tactics of Sanada Yukimura and his last stand.
Do these numbers also include any disgraced samurai committing seppuku? Would that even be a significant number? Was seppuku even that common in reality? I wish I would have found your channel sooner.... kinda makes me miss my brief year in Iwakuni. (Incidentally, if you have any stories about Iwakuni or Iwakuni Castle, I'd love to hear them!)
Massive respect for going out of your way to get the most accurate number possible. Great work! Also, any plans on a video comparing China's Three Kingdoms period to the Sengoku Jidai? I know it's been done a lot, but I'd like to hear your take on the subject.
Recently found ur channel and im loving it! Have you heard of the anime Drifters? Puts an interesting spin on characters such as Oda Nobunaga and Shimazu Toyohisa.
@@TheShogunate Right off the bat the opening scene is the Battle of Sekigahara. It also has interesting bits of historical information scattered throughout the show.
Hello mr Shogunate! Really appreciate your videos, you probably do one of the best of works in making samurai related themes accessible by the english language. If it is not a bother: have you ever made/or plan to make a video about horse/cavalry warefare? I do know that the local Japanese breeds were around the size of ponies (as are some of the specimens still alive today) but I would like to know if and how it changed when the Portuguese made contact: were Daimyo warlords importing european breeds, did they cross breed them with local breeds? Or perhaps something completely different? If you have a suggestion of a book/other information source on the subject, then I would be glad to search for it myself. Thank you, and keep the good work!
@@TheShogunate i appreciate that! I am writing a GoT-like novel based on the Sengoku period, and your channel is pretty much one of my first go to sources, together with some Facebook pages I'm subscribed to
I almost wonder if sheer exhaustion is what helped to keep the Tokugawa clan in power following the war. When you consider how just about every family would have been effected by this I don’t blame anyone for not wanting to upset the apple cart. Also, I think this explains why there was such a mass conversion to Christianity after the arrival of the Portuguese. Given the mass disruptions, deaths, and chaos in the country can you blame people looking for a different message and a different way out.
That 12 million aren't actually 12 million unless the Japanese over the period were extremely long lived. An almost one to one military to civilian death rate is what we more often see in modern times where disease is much less of an issue. In premodern times the death rate to disease was more than we can quite fathom even in peace time. A disruption to the food supply could weaken immune systems to the point of causing mass deaths and any movement of troops would precipitate a movement of disease. The Japanese of this period didn't help matters by having a horrible diet.
Tbh i feel your origional number was more realistic and accurate this new number is def way to high. The biggest battle in early years between the oda and imagawaa only saw what, 12k roughly fielded of which most werent even killed. If tgat number is 12k and most clans werent fighting mych at that point, then your number of 60k plus for early years alone is insanely high. Thats about the same number of samurai youd have if you added up all the great clans. Its just not a believeable number. I think you took the criticism to hard tbh. You make great content, and i think you should be proud of the work you do. :)
@@TheShogunate it does but its all good, you already do an amazing job and your work has been outstanding throughout the entirety of your episodes! Keep up the great work. I've loved every episode and am a proud supporter!
Regardless of combat, he didn’t mention famine or disease in the past one, which as for most wars is often a prime reason for killing civilians and soldiers.
@@kaijuslayer3334 true but when you look at the numbers clans were feilding and then look at the numbers in the predictikns the first one most certainly seemed more believable. Were also assuming the reported historical numbers arent already including those deaths in them.
It amazes me that Japan had a population of roughly ten million at that time in history. To put it in context, The British Isles had a population of just a few million in spite of having far more farmable land and more advanced technology.
i love this channel , my favorite always love your videos i hope i can donate in patron but now im still student but one day when i can earn my own money i will defenitely join thanks for always detailed videos
I think these numbers for more than 100 years war is correct but what about the governmental toll that Iranian legate in Siam said, he press on years that are near to him and he was from 1632, he said about battle of Sekigahara and Osaka but just those plus Christian revolts, so 500,000 that Mohammad Tofangchi (rifleman) say is 1600-1630 and since we do know about Christian revolts, we can say 400,000 death from a wide perspective was from Tokugawa war against Toyotomi clan.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but even though there are many battles during this period wouldn't large numbers of men and resources be lost through attrition? It is common military logic not to engage in a battle unless sure of victory, and while this is obviously not always possible there is still large reason to think that skirmishes and light engagements would be the order of the day here. However because we have issues determining casualties in wars as recent as in Ukraine, I don't see how you would be able to get a accurate measurement of the amount of people lost to small military actions, such as foraging or scouting actions, perhaps even a skirmish in prelude to a battle that, for whatever reason, never took place? Not to mention that the period of time that separates the 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries from our present day making it nearly impossible to differentiate well hidden and written propaganda and truth. Doing some research and comparison between china's spring and autumn period and japans Sengoku Jidai would be beneficial in seeing population trends in eastern feudal empires that break into their separate polities, along with what happens as they merge. Though the difference in era may affect that. P.S Sorry if that's word vomit but it was a great video and had me thinking!
To put it in a different perspective, if calculated by using the Population in the USA today losing 14% would be some 46.13 million people..... I'm amazed that the population and the economy of Japan at the time was able to still function with such Devastation from the prolonged conflicts.
In the war against terrorism the usa lost less then 500 soldiers, in other words. That numbers way to high, which is why Japan was still able to function.
@@Dragondan1987, I agree with this. This wouldn't be evenly distributed across all regions and periods, but instead, we might expect large spikes concentrated in contested areas. Feudalism is also highly decentralized by its very nature, so we should expect individual counties/regions to be much more self-sufficient than what we might be used to in a modern world. This means that economic development is limited but individual provinces are more likely to be more insulated from financial disasters outside of their borders.
I would like to suggest to use taxes as a estimate for all unrecorded deaths in the Sengoku Jidai. Why? Taxes were paid by the common people. The most collateral deaths, which are not recorded must have occured in the common population. A decline in commoners equals in lower tax revenue. Even putting one or two villages to the torch might put a significant dent in the tax revenue of a single area. So, if one estimates the tax a household was required to pay, given a average of people in an household, the decline of tax revenue could be a indicator of decline of population. The sources to study are, unfortunately, rather uncool. One might need to study old tax records or scientific papers regarding economic fluctuations in that time period. Taxes should be a indicator too for the reason that, in Japan the percentage of members of the aristocracy (including lower samurai) at times reached almost 20% of the total polulation This was a huge number of non-tax-paying, non-working people. In Europe, the percentage of aristocracy of the total population never reached 10%. So every fluctuation in taxes must have been a matter of interest to the ruling class. That gives me hope that there should be some records of tax revenue regarding this period.
As always it is impossible to determine the deaths direct and indirect in any battle or military action. There was no independent group to verify numbers and record them for posterity. Then definitions of cause attributable to military actions are highly subjective. As they are even are today. So estimations and guess's are inevitably necessary. I'd have tapped out just at the math, and you found a way to make a basic mathematical exercise interesting and informative.
Were all samurai mass murdering tyrants? Certainly Nobunaga, who massacred villages, and certainly the samurai who butchered the Korean peasants during the Imjin War.
A couple of comments... Even if the population averaged lets say 10 miillion, the average person probably lived 40 years... So if you say the sengoku period was 120 years (quicky estimate) the total killable population was 30 million. So the death rate from the war was less than 10% That said the samurai were in a certain sesne....The mob (mafia/yakuza) they used their access/military training to take the fruits of everybody else`s labor. The leaders lived well. Remember many daimyo had their own 大奥（harems)... A European example will be shown next (though with an American twist) that should explain things easily (1 minute videos) ruclips.net/video/StJS51d1Fzg/видео.html ruclips.net/video/V2DaDziImgY/видео.html
I don't think you can compare the number of deaths from disease with European deaths in war. Because European medical knowledge and cleanliness was much less than in Japan around the same time.
A lot of terrible things were products of their culture and time. People, even privileged children, can pass judgment on them as they wish as long as it doesn't eschew their objectivity when looking to understand history. Are they mass murdering tyrants? Yes. Must we understand the broader historical context of these crimes and see that our judgment on these actions is based on a modern mentality that is not even close to theirs? Also yes. War is a terrible crime, and those who use war to further themselves cause the deaths of hundreds or even thousands. The Sengoku Jidai is a hotbed of opportunistic warlords who wished to grasp the opportunity of taking the shogunate or extending their territories, causing the deaths of hundreds of thousands over half a century of warfare, but that is not the whole story for all of them. Some were warmongers who relished to increase their wealth and power, others did it for religious reasons, others due to a sense of duty to lord and Emperor, others for a pure belief in bettering the lives of the people. Still, each march, siege and campaign they overtook ensured the deaths of many through battle, looting, famine, disease... Judging the dead is a moot point anyhow, it's only a matter of personal opinion. Looking objectively at their actions and how they led to the future, never applying glorification or undermining them based on personal bias, is true understanding of history.
Honestly, the real number is probably somewhere between the ranges I found in this video and my first upload of it. If we were not counting civilian deaths I estimate that the number of military death would be somewhere between 300,000 on the lowest end and 800,000 on the highest end, but it is really anyone's guess.
Excellent job! Appreciate the edit!
Hello! Tour guide from Berlin that enjoys your videos here. Just want to commend you for tackling such a difficult topic, as this is one all warfare scholars struggle with mightily. After all, we still don't have a precise number of overall WWII casualties (the number disturbingly keeps growing), let alone for the vast majority of pre-20th Century conflicts. So even for professors and academia this is a question that is usually never resolved, as it is difficult to publish articles/books based on statistics that are extremely difficult to prove beyond a reasonable doubt.
I personally find the overall statistic from the previous video is amazing unto itself, as what we can consider 335k 'guaranteed recorded' battlefield deaths is a MASSIVE number for a pre-1815 AD era. Military command structures prior to Napoleonic times were much more fragile than they are today (whether that is a good/bad thing can be debated), so in many ways it is a miracle anybody on the islands were able to field a cohesive army by the early 1600s, let alone the two very large coalitions that fought at Sekigahara. Interesting research, and thanks for sharing it all with us! 😄
Very good video! Enjoyed it immensely
Enjoyed your video, so kudos from 7 months in the future. I will say it's not something that's easy at all and I have one major criticism. The larger estimates in a lot of the battles almost certainly took into account ashigaru and civilian troops. Especially during the Early Years, as you called them, numerous cases of the peasants themselves rising up only to be backed by lords who had an agenda in aiding them. These civilians being counted (or undercounted) among the belligerents most likely caused staggeringly different estimates. Samurai kept ledgers of their troops, of course, but not always fully grasping the number of people who took up arms.
I respect your commitment to accurately address the question of total deaths, I hope you are not taking the criticisms in your previous video to heart, as you are possibly the only person whose attempted to answer the question drawing from many sources and opinions, and I appreciate the time you took to present it to us.
Thanks for the update! There is only on point I still have trouble with... the total percentage of dead amongst the population...
When you say that during the Sengoku Jidai period the population was about 12,500,000 people that would be the population of Japan at one point in time, a snapshot. But the war raged on for several generations, so the death toll you calculate is an aggregate over the whole time. With an average timespan for a generation of about 25 years, we would have 6 generations between 1475 and 1625, thus (with people being born and dying during those days) the total accumulated number of people living in Japan (using your estimate) should be roughly 6x 12.5 mio = 75 mio. I would actually reduce that number a bit because it seems that even during that war the population was increasing, and 12.5 mio sounds more like a value from later in the period.
But still, you can't compare a snapshot value (12.5 mio inhabitants at any one point in time) with an aggregate over the whole period (1.8 mio casualties added up over roughly 150 years) and simply divide them to get the percentage death toll - that's apples and oranges. When adding up the number of all people that lived and died during that time the death percentage might be around 3-5% which is still terrible enough...
Some may say that 3-5% sounds low, but you have to consider that while some areas were devastated by battles and their aftermath, other parts of the country were barely touched directly by that war. From my understanding Japan (very simplified, I know) was a rather rural civilisation where peasants produced for the local population (and daimyo), so a mayor battle 100km away wouldn't have too much influence on them. It is not like eg. with some much more mercantile cultures, where trade routes could be broken, causing immense long range effects. And it is not like eg. the Thirty Years War, where the armies simply "lived of the land" ie. stealing from the peasants, often enough torturing and killing them (and city folk alike) until there was nothing left to eat or plant, thus not only reducing the population immediately but actually destroying the long term capacity of the land to sustain a population. Please correct me when I am wrong, but while many atrocities surely happened, on average the samurai armies were not on a land destruction tour across the country. Otherwise the population numbers between 1450 and 1650 should plummet, but all estimates show them rising.
You are right, it is more of a snapshot! I was just trying to give a probable percentage given the new estimate, but honestly your best guess is as good as mine!
So much respect for making an updated video like this! Not many creators would do something like this, but you have great integrity
Very thought provoking especially in regards to how we frame our perspective of both Sengoku Jidai and modern wars.
Modern Wars are moreso full on holocausts tbh
Thank you for the initial and updated videos! Very thought provoking and staggering. We often get pulled in to this period for its characters and stories. Cannot forget that this was a warring period. Brutal and often no quarter given or provided. Gives a humbling perspective.
"Should the samurai be deemed mass murdering tyrants"
Why single them out? Almost all of humanity during that period acted in that manner. I would say they were fairly tame and level headed if we were to look at the destruction brought about by the Mongols or even the mercenaries during the 100 years war. The fact that there hasn't been a war that has rocked the world in more than 3 generations has made us forget what a great time we're actually living in.
It certainly is an interesting question
I don't think we have right to pass any judgement at all on the 16th century warriors. Not after what happened in the 20th!
@@ljiljanasrebrenovic9500 No, we do.
I highly appreciate your commitment to this. It is extremely difficult to calculate any losses of wars past, as leaders of the times (even present) were not always keen on letting their numbers be known. Here you talked about the entire period of Sengoku, and personally, for some reason i feel the number must have been higher. Also if you compare Europe of the same time period, which is the renaissance era, you can say that the entire continent was rivers of blood, even exceeding the damage done in WW2.
I believe the exact death toll number accounting for per capita trade was over 9000!
Good job. Death tolls for wars and other events interest me since they allow you to get an idea of how much or little people suffered and to make comparisons.
Love that you made an updated video and took our comments to heart!
Love your content keep up the good work I definitely like this concept
I just found your channel.
I could completely hear your voice as a narrator on NHK.
Fantastic work!
War morality is complicated and I think we shouldn't judge them by are standers
I'm glad the video was updated. It's still an interesting thought exercise and is likely a very difficult one.
That was amazing of u to go back and take another look u are a great youtuber keep it up 💯
One thing I learned in physics is that setting absolute upper bounds can be useful.
For civilian deaths, Mongol invasion of Hungary is the greatest catastrophe I can think of, with estimated fall of population from 3 million to 2 (this accounts for direct losses, taking slaves and famines) - this left the country so devastated it recovered... pretty much never, unlike Japan, but we're looking at the upper bounds. Sengoku Jidai Japan with a population of 12 million would loose 4 million, but that is for one set of generations. In 150 years, you'd get a complete replacement of all people at least once, so we need to double our estimate, getting us to 8 million as the upper bound.
For military, most battles that don't have extreme weather to account for (e.g. Hattin) and are catastrophic defeats usually loose 1/2 on the loosing side (e.g. Grunwald, Lepanto, Agincourt), and pre-industrial society can devote about 1/20 of its total population to non-productive tasks. So, we take entier population of Japan (24 million, two generation, remember?), we get 1.2 million soldiers and half of that is 600 000 as upper bound - accounting for disease with ration in this video, we get 1.2 million. This assumes that every engagement in the war was a devastating loss for both sides - somehow - but again, it's a useful upper bound to check our numbers against. It's still probably too low because it doesn't account for 1) conscripts (and numbers of those would vary wildly case by case) and 2) people being in more than one battle.
So, let's compare it to video numbers. Upper total bound of 8M against just shy of 2M, with the upper bound being based on an actual historical invasion, and military deaths of 800k versus upper bound of 1200k. While the samurai weren't nice by any means, and maybe we should think more about the glorification they get, calling them mass murderers is a bit of a stretch - they seem to have at least kept the killing mostly to the actual soldiers. Because the farmers make the rice you need to not starve.
Samurai would need to increase the death they cause by a factor of 4 to get to Subutai's Hungarian level, which they didn't manage to quite get to, even with Joseon population drop from 9M to 8M. Let's be thankful for that.
"Should the samurai be deemed mass murdering tyrants". I think they were products of the culture and time, and it is wrong to bring modern values into play when describing what was very different morals. A lot of "mass murdering tyrants" I feel are unfairly labeled as such by privileged children in first world countries who cannot understand anybody not having the same sense of morality as them.
This is true. Also, for most of human history, the extremely limited access to information further ensures that victorious leaders who did the most terrible deeds also tend to be the most remembered and recorded. A lot of these so-called "historical researchers" who criticize the video can't seem to research facts without the compelling need to pass judgement on them.
Of course, people are going to pass judgement. It is a part of who we are. The difference between someone who values history over their ownself, and themself over history is if they let their values affect their perception of what is historical. For example: I think Samurai are murderous and bloodthirsty because I don't know what else to really call them when attributing traits to them. But I won't let myself believe they are akin to Joseph Stalin or Adolf Hitler because they did what they did for very different reasons. The similarities end at a superficial level. We are all products of our time, and we only know how to pass judgement in the ways we are taught. Let us understand history, don't label them "Hitler of Japan" or anything like that, and enjoy the show. That's my personal standard.
I mean if your leader in a era and place where war and chaos are the norm, of course the ways of stopping it that isn’t going to be easy and sometimes the choices are all going to look bad. Sure there brutal methods shouldn’t be justified too munch, but we have to understand the circumstances(especially giving it pre modern times).
I Just want to point out something else in this regard too:
Most of the samurai either born in the era where their had to fight for their own survival or lived when it began but had no say into it. Their literally born in a dogs-eat-dogs situation, where even jsut a moment of hesitation or soft heartedness could be interpreted as weekness (and likely would brought even more death and destruction to their domain or their families).
Its easy for us to judge them, we were not the ones who had to live though those times afterall, but i bet 10 out of 10 ppl.would have done the same thing. I would even defend most warlords in this regard too, only just a handful of them went clearly well and beyond reason to either cause suffering or do selfish things. Most of them imo just tried to weather the storm and did what was neccesary to keep their head above water.
@@attilaedem101 Even those who do the worst deeds usually have reasons to behave that way. Violence on that scale is usually an endless spiral of determent, retlaliation and escalation. It breeds bad behaviour, because bad behaviour gets shit done in such an environment.
That's good that other people on the comments who are also knowledgeable in this part of Sengoku Jidai were able to help you out.
Question; I am amazed that Japan had such a huge population (as stated at 17:51 ).
In contrast, the British Isles had just a few million people at the time in spite of far more farmable land and more advanced technology.
How do you think Japan managed to sustain that many people on a relatively infertile and resource-poor island at a feudal-era stage of development?
Thank you for the information & keep up the great work
We have no real way of knowing the true number of deaths.
We never will unless we were the kami of Death present in each and every battle in those times.🤷🏻♂️
You'd have to measure economic output for each daimyo pre and post edo period.
I suggest you look into the Kaga Rebellion (1487~1488). The number of belligerents (many of them peasants) in that conflict was enormous for the time and would almost certainly drive up the losses during the interim between the Ōnin War and Okehazama.
Feel free to ignore this comment, you do seem to have videos in your backlog that references it. Good day.
A worthy attempt. We have to keep in mind, casualties of war are guesses, often wild guesses. Even for "modern" wars we have wildly varying estimates. Also keep in mind, for something as concentrated as the terrorist attacks of 9-11, where actual numbers were so important for insurance and other purposes, the estimates a year after the attack (7,000) were wildly different from estimates much later (3,000). If with all the attention focused on the event, we could get such varying estimates, imagine trying to estimate casualties from 500 years ago. Good luck!
Thank you 💕 for the information.. love your channel ❤️🇯🇵❤️
Not to reduce the severity of war and the death that it brings, but the Sengoku Jidai did bring a over 250 year long period of peace. Was it worth all the death? maybe, we'll never know.
What an interesting video. Although in the end, I think we will never have an actual estimated number of deaths in the Sengoku Era. There were 150 years of war history! So, that means the percentage at the end could not actually be that representative, unless the population who live through that century and a half was taken into account. However, the number of deaths you presented seems to be razonable.
Almost 2 million of deaths is by no means a small number. While I love Sengoku Era and the epicness it had, I think we tend to romanticize the era too much and forget it was actually a hell. Yes, not all samurai were demons, there were some honorable, but they were not saints either. That's why among other reasons I love Sengoku BASARA anime: although based on sengoku themed game way too exaggerated (which is what I love about that), sometimes, between all that ridiculousness and epicness and emotion, the characters remind us that war is not fun, civilians suffer, some ashigaru probably weren't willing to fight at all, and that there is barely no true hero nor complete villain in war, just people fighting for what they think is correct.
Remember also when talking about that population number at that time, it was almost 150 years, so there were many more people living through that time, i'd say double or triple the amount, depending on the average life expectancy in those times (when factoring out high child mortality rate to smallpox and such which lowers the estimates a lot). Not that big of a deal really, but when talking about how many died through those ages in certain manner, then I think it should be taken into an account, it's not that high percentage in single stroke. Or maybe I'm just overthinking it.
You at least tried, I love your channel.
When are you going to release the videos on the sieges of Osaka to complete the grand chapter of Sengoku Jidai??? I want to hear you describe the tactics of Sanada Yukimura and his last stand.
Do these numbers also include any disgraced samurai committing seppuku? Would that even be a significant number?
Was seppuku even that common in reality?
I wish I would have found your channel sooner.... kinda makes me miss my brief year in Iwakuni. (Incidentally, if you have any stories about Iwakuni or Iwakuni Castle, I'd love to hear them!)
Massive respect for going out of your way to get the most accurate number possible. Great work!
Also, any plans on a video comparing China's Three Kingdoms period to the Sengoku Jidai? I know it's been done a lot, but I'd like to hear your take on the subject.
That would be a very cool idea!!
@@TheShogunate I guess it is an okay comparison. TheChinese 战国时代 was hell of a lot longer and far more bloody.
It’s been centuries and the death toll is still rising god damn
Tough topic to find a definitive number on. Good job taking a stab at it.
Recently found ur channel and im loving it! Have you heard of the anime Drifters? Puts an interesting spin on characters such as Oda Nobunaga and Shimazu Toyohisa.
I have not but I will look into it
@@TheShogunate Right off the bat the opening scene is the Battle of Sekigahara. It also has interesting bits of historical information scattered throughout the show.
Love from India❤️❤️
Bro your videos are cool.
Are there any sources for Japanese deaths at sea or sea battles during the Imjin wars?
Hello mr Shogunate! Really appreciate your videos, you probably do one of the best of works in making samurai related themes accessible by the english language. If it is not a bother: have you ever made/or plan to make a video about horse/cavalry warefare? I do know that the local Japanese breeds were around the size of ponies (as are some of the specimens still alive today) but I would like to know if and how it changed when the Portuguese made contact: were Daimyo warlords importing european breeds, did they cross breed them with local breeds? Or perhaps something completely different? If you have a suggestion of a book/other information source on the subject, then I would be glad to search for it myself. Thank you, and keep the good work!
I would love to make a video on japanese cavalry at some point!
@@TheShogunate i appreciate that! I am writing a GoT-like novel based on the Sengoku period, and your channel is pretty much one of my first go to sources, together with some Facebook pages I'm subscribed to
I almost wonder if sheer exhaustion is what helped to keep the Tokugawa clan in power following the war. When you consider how just about every family would have been effected by this I don’t blame anyone for not wanting to upset the apple cart.
Also, I think this explains why there was such a mass conversion to Christianity after the arrival of the Portuguese. Given the mass disruptions, deaths, and chaos in the country can you blame people looking for a different message and a different way out.
That 12 million aren't actually 12 million unless the Japanese over the period were extremely long lived. An almost one to one military to civilian death rate is what we more often see in modern times where disease is much less of an issue. In premodern times the death rate to disease was more than we can quite fathom even in peace time. A disruption to the food supply could weaken immune systems to the point of causing mass deaths and any movement of troops would precipitate a movement of disease. The Japanese of this period didn't help matters by having a horrible diet.
You have taught me a great deal about the history that the country I love ❤️🇯🇵❤️
Tbh i feel your origional number was more realistic and accurate this new number is def way to high. The biggest battle in early years between the oda and imagawaa only saw what, 12k roughly fielded of which most werent even killed. If tgat number is 12k and most clans werent fighting mych at that point, then your number of 60k plus for early years alone is insanely high. Thats about the same number of samurai youd have if you added up all the great clans. Its just not a believeable number. I think you took the criticism to hard tbh. You make great content, and i think you should be proud of the work you do. :)
Thanks man, that really means a lot. The number definitely does seem like it would be on the higher end.
@@TheShogunate it does but its all good, you already do an amazing job and your work has been outstanding throughout the entirety of your episodes! Keep up the great work. I've loved every episode and am a proud supporter!
Regardless of combat, he didn’t mention famine or disease in the past one, which as for most wars is often a prime reason for killing civilians and soldiers.
@@kaijuslayer3334 true but when you look at the numbers clans were feilding and then look at the numbers in the predictikns the first one most certainly seemed more believable. Were also assuming the reported historical numbers arent already including those deaths in them.
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It amazes me that Japan had a population of roughly ten million at that time in history.
To put it in context, The British Isles had a population of just a few million in spite of having far more farmable land and more advanced technology.
“Should the samurai be deemed as mass murdering tyrants?”
Yes, how is that a question?
So much death. What can man do against such reckless hate?
i love this channel , my favorite always love your videos i hope i can donate in patron but now im still student but one day when i can earn my own money i will defenitely join thanks for always detailed videos
I think these numbers for more than 100 years war is correct but what about the governmental toll that Iranian legate in Siam said, he press on years that are near to him and he was from 1632, he said about battle of Sekigahara and Osaka but just those plus Christian revolts, so 500,000 that Mohammad Tofangchi (rifleman) say is 1600-1630 and since we do know about Christian revolts, we can say 400,000 death from a wide perspective was from Tokugawa war against Toyotomi clan.
Those could very well be true.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but even though there are many battles during this period wouldn't large numbers of men and resources be lost through attrition? It is common military logic not to engage in a battle unless sure of victory, and while this is obviously not always possible there is still large reason to think that skirmishes and light engagements would be the order of the day here. However because we have issues determining casualties in wars as recent as in Ukraine, I don't see how you would be able to get a accurate measurement of the amount of people lost to small military actions, such as foraging or scouting actions, perhaps even a skirmish in prelude to a battle that, for whatever reason, never took place? Not to mention that the period of time that separates the 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries from our present day making it nearly impossible to differentiate well hidden and written propaganda and truth. Doing some research and comparison between china's spring and autumn period and japans Sengoku Jidai would be beneficial in seeing population trends in eastern feudal empires that break into their separate polities, along with what happens as they merge. Though the difference in era may affect that. P.S Sorry if that's word vomit but it was a great video and had me thinking!
You omitted Siege of Odawara Castle (1590)
To put it in a different perspective, if calculated by using the Population in the USA today losing 14% would be some 46.13 million people..... I'm amazed that the population and the economy of Japan at the time was able to still function with such Devastation from the prolonged conflicts.
In the war against terrorism the usa lost less then 500 soldiers, in other words. That numbers way to high, which is why Japan was still able to function.
It was over 100 years, so your perspective is kind of flawed putting it that way.,
@@Dragondan1987, I agree with this. This wouldn't be evenly distributed across all regions and periods, but instead, we might expect large spikes concentrated in contested areas. Feudalism is also highly decentralized by its very nature, so we should expect individual counties/regions to be much more self-sufficient than what we might be used to in a modern world. This means that economic development is limited but individual provinces are more likely to be more insulated from financial disasters outside of their borders.
I would like to suggest to use taxes as a estimate for all unrecorded deaths in the Sengoku Jidai. Why? Taxes were paid by the common people. The most collateral deaths, which are not recorded must have occured in the common population. A decline in commoners equals in lower tax revenue. Even putting one or two villages to the torch might put a significant dent in the tax revenue of a single area. So, if one estimates the tax a household was required to pay, given a average of people in an household, the decline of tax revenue could be a indicator of decline of population. The sources to study are, unfortunately, rather uncool. One might need to study old tax records or scientific papers regarding economic fluctuations in that time period. Taxes should be a indicator too for the reason that, in Japan the percentage of members of the aristocracy (including lower samurai) at times reached almost 20% of the total polulation This was a huge number of non-tax-paying, non-working people. In Europe, the percentage of aristocracy of the total population never reached 10%. So every fluctuation in taxes must have been a matter of interest to the ruling class. That gives me hope that there should be some records of tax revenue regarding this period.
As always it is impossible to determine the deaths direct and indirect in any battle or military action. There was no independent group to verify numbers and record them for posterity. Then definitions of cause attributable to military actions are highly subjective. As they are even are today. So estimations and guess's are inevitably necessary. I'd have tapped out just at the math, and you found a way to make a basic mathematical exercise interesting and informative.
I would have just gone with a million dead to estimate the actual amount of dead.
That could very well be accurate
Were all samurai mass murdering tyrants? Certainly Nobunaga, who massacred villages, and certainly the samurai who butchered the Korean peasants during the Imjin War.
I definitely would not consider all samurai as such
@@TheShogunate for sure, I'm just saying out of all samurai in the Sengoku Jidai, those examples I listed definitely were
A couple of comments... Even if the population averaged lets say 10 miillion, the average person probably lived 40 years... So if you say the sengoku period was 120 years (quicky estimate) the total killable population was 30 million. So the death rate from the war was less than 10%
That said the samurai were in a certain sesne....The mob (mafia/yakuza) they used their access/military training to take the fruits of everybody else`s labor. The leaders lived well. Remember many daimyo had their own 大奥（harems)... A European example will be shown next (though with an American twist) that should explain things easily (1 minute videos)
ruclips.net/video/StJS51d1Fzg/видео.html
ruclips.net/video/V2DaDziImgY/видео.html
completely agree with your first point. the rest is good to, i just wanted to say i had same thought in regards to the first paragraph.
Rewatched Reliked
At some point the assumptions outweigh the known facts.
Chasing your tail....
I don't think you can compare the number of deaths from disease with European deaths in war.
Because European medical knowledge and cleanliness was much less than in Japan around the same time.
I totally agree. This estimation was likely accounting for the worst case scenario
Not really, especially for Renaissance era Europe. I feel it was a good reference point to use.
“a single death is a tragedy, a million deaths are a statistic” - Josef Stalin
Not as many as died in korea
Trust you
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I estimated it was more than 12 death and i think all will agree it is correct.
Interesting
A lot of terrible things were products of their culture and time. People, even privileged children, can pass judgment on them as they wish as long as it doesn't eschew their objectivity when looking to understand history. Are they mass murdering tyrants? Yes. Must we understand the broader historical context of these crimes and see that our judgment on these actions is based on a modern mentality that is not even close to theirs? Also yes.
War is a terrible crime, and those who use war to further themselves cause the deaths of hundreds or even thousands. The Sengoku Jidai is a hotbed of opportunistic warlords who wished to grasp the opportunity of taking the shogunate or extending their territories, causing the deaths of hundreds of thousands over half a century of warfare, but that is not the whole story for all of them. Some were warmongers who relished to increase their wealth and power, others did it for religious reasons, others due to a sense of duty to lord and Emperor, others for a pure belief in bettering the lives of the people. Still, each march, siege and campaign they overtook ensured the deaths of many through battle, looting, famine, disease...
Judging the dead is a moot point anyhow, it's only a matter of personal opinion. Looking objectively at their actions and how they led to the future, never applying glorification or undermining them based on personal bias, is true understanding of history.