With their military heritage, most of the Daimyo were intent upon developing the military strength of their domains. Some of the more powerful Daimyo, who ruled over several provinces, built up efficient fighting machines, with the peasantry as the backbone of the economic life of the realm and as the reservoir for military manpower, with the feudal aristocracy furnishing administrators and officers for the army, and with the merchants providing a transport corps in time of war.
The natural tendency was for the larger and stronger realms to swallow up or win dominance over weaker neighbors. In the second half of the sixteenth century, this process resulted in the creation of a single paramount power in Japan. The first great figure in the reunification of the country was Oda Nobunaga, a Daimyo who ruled over three provinces around the modern city of Nagoya east of Kyoto. By seizing the capital in 1568, he became the virtual dictator of central Japan, and he proceeded to consolidate his power by breaking the military might of the powerful central monasteries and by capturing the great temple-castle of the True Pure Land Sect in Osaka after a ten-year siege. But Nobunaga never achieved his goal of winning hegemony over all Japan. His career was cut short when a treacherous vassal murdered him in 1582.
Nobunaga’s place as undisputed ruler of central Japan was soon assumed by his ablest general, Hideyoshi, a man of lowly birth who had risen to power by sheer ability. Within a few years of Nobunaga’s death, Hideyoshi had eliminated the remnants of the Oda family and had established his supremacy over the re-