4 
The two armies had "bronze guns and also used arquebuses, but tne fight at 
the range of these did not last long. The true struggle, hand to hand, soon 
began; after several hours victory seemed still uncertain when there was a de¬ 
fection in the coalised forces. Yeyas then, understanding that the moment had 
come when lie might compensate his numerical inferiority, advanced his reserve 
drums beating and musical shells resounding, Yeyas himself leading the charge. 
Nothing could resist him, the armies of the south were broken and the butchery 
commenced. It was horrible ; none of the wounded would consent to fall alive 
into the enemy’s hands, and as in nearly all Japanese battles they died, each by 
his own hand, and those not strong enough to do it implored passing fugitives to 
despatch them. 
When according to custom the review of his victorious troops commenced, 
Yeyas who had been fighting all day wearing an atsimaki , a sort of handkerchief 
knotted over the forehead and with a metal plate in front, called for his helmet, 
and fixing it firmly on his head said: “ It is not till after the victory that a general 
should assume this head-dress.” 
A monument is still shewn which commemorates this event, in which have 
been deposited the 40,000 heads which the soldiers triumphantly paraded on the 
plain. 
After his victory and the crushing of the Daimios of the south, Yeyas proved 
himself to be a legislator and organizer of the highest order. He succeeded in 
establishing a state of affairs which gave to Japan two and a half centuries of in¬ 
ternal calm and tranquillity, from the commencement of the 17th century until 
the period when the European powers forced an entry into their ports forty years 
ago. It would take too long to explain by means of what complicated and 
minute machinery Yeyas and his immediate successors succeeded in holding in 
check that military feudality which had up to their time been so turbulent. 
Let however the following measures be cited. He obtained the Emperor’s 
sanction to the position of Shogun being made hereditary in three great families, 
instead of devolving in principle on the most worthy, that is to say, in fact, to 
the most active or to the most intriguing. He thus diminished the chances of 
those fierce competitive struggles which had so often shed the country’s blood. 
All the Daimios were obliged to reside 6 months at Yedo ; and during the other 
6 months when they returned to their estates they had to leave at Yedo a part of 
their families, in trust as hostages. 1 
Another equally important measure of Yeyas was the closing of Japan. 
Every Japanese was forbidden under pain of death, to travel abroad, and in 
addition any European who should attempt to land on the coast of Japan was to 
be condemned to death. He well understood the character of his countrymen 
who have a passionate love for new ideas, but he did not foresee the advent of 
steamships which should one day force an entry into his country. 
Finally, with the same idea of stifling the germs of independence and of dan¬ 
gerous innovations, the Shoguns massacred the 40,000 Christians, born of the 
missionary zeal of St. Eranqois-Xavier. 
A curious circumstance nevertheless is that this terrible persecution did not 
succeed in destroying the seeds of Christianity in Japan, for in 1874 the Catholic 
Bishop of Nagasaki declared that he had found in the south of Japan, and par¬ 
ticularly in the Island of Firado where St. Fran(;ois-Xavier landed in the 16th 
century, 10,000 families who had secretly preserved the Christian traditions, al- 
» It is curious to compare this measure with the action of Louis XIY who, haunted by the 
memory of the troubles of the Fronde, attracted all his nobility to Court, to make them less 
turbulent and to deprive them of the independence they enjoyed on their estates. 
