Land Battles & Naval Battles

What did Toyotomi Hideyoshi (here I sometimes use the surname even when I mention him before he was awarded the surname the Imperial Court in the 14th year of Tensho, 1586) think of the pirates society which even influence the movements of the war lords in Western Japan? He was born in Owari (a part of today’s Aichi Prefecture), and experienced only the societies in Eastern Japan. That must have limited his ability to organize pirates in the Inland Sea. They fought land battles in Eastern Japan essentially, while navies were indispensable in Western Japan. In the West, castles used to be located by rivers, lakes, or the sea. Even when he managed to capture a castle in a day battle, he lost the castle to his enemy pirates’ night attack in some cases. I pay attention to Buke Mandai Santo Kaizoku-ke Ikusa Nikki (The Diary of Militant Generations of Pirate Families in Three Islands), which was written by Mishina Heiemon, a vassal of Ogasawara Tadasane, the lord of Kokura Domain in Buzen in the third year of Kanbun, 1663. The book describes the navy, Kawanouchi People, who were led by Kodama Narikata, a vassal of Mori Clan, from the Age of Provincial Wars till Shoku-Ho Period (the abbreviation of Oda and Toyotomi Period). The book has as many as 50 articles of Kawachi Keigo Oboegaki (Kawanouchi’s Memoranda of Guarding), one of the articles is a rule in marching: 1. When Mori Army marches on land, Kawauchi People should sail on the sea. We divide a fleet of 250 into 5 groups. Following the schedule, and adapting our progress to that of the army, we sail for 12-20km. According to the order, we have contacts with the army. As army progresses 20km a day while navy progresses 60km a day, we have three days of time. When the nave and the army have contacts, the army use fire on a hill which faces the sea. And then we send a boat to get information. This is a detailed rule in Mori Army/Navy that the army and the navy should progress simultaneously. The simultaneous progress of the army and the navy could be dated back to the Age of Provincial Wars, and that seems unique in the Inland Sea Area. Not to mention Hideyoshi, even his lord Oda Nobunaga didn’t have his own naval organization, which could be called Owari Navy. Nobunaga forced Kuki Clan, a pirate war lord in Shima, to obey him, but Hideyoshi had no authority to command them to fight in the Inland Sea. He had to maneuver pirates in the Inland Sea by his own.