The Bird That Wouldn't Sing: Japan's Three Unifiers | Big Leaders Ep. 6

If a bird won't sing, what do you do? Kill it, make it sing, or wait? A riddle people in Japan have told for two hundred years, about three real warlords who ended a hundred years of war. The story of Oda Nobunaga, the "great fool" who smashed every old rule; Toyotomi Hideyoshi, a poor farm kid with no family name who talked his way to the top; and Tokugawa Ieyasu, a four-year-old hostage who learned to wait. A rainstorm attack, a wall of guns behind a fence, a sword hunt that turned swords into nails, and morning fog at Sekigahara. Then the fork: keep a promise to protect a little boy, or make a move for all of Japan? And the other side, told honestly: a mountain of temples burned, an invasion of Korea, a promise broken, and a country frozen in place, in exchange for 250 years of peace. Big Leaders is an animated series for curious kids and their parents about how great leaders thought, the choices they made, and what worked and what didn't. Chapters 0:00 The bird that won't sing 0:52 A country at war with itself 1:45 The great fool 2:53 Smash what's in the way 4:07 Dawn at Honnō-ji 4:38 The farm boy with no name 6:01 Swords into nails 6:51 The boy who learned to wait 8:15 Make it sing... in Korea 9:09 The fork in the road 10:01 Fog at Sekigahara 10:53 The other side 11:52 The relay Talk about it at dinner: kill it, make it sing, or wait. Which one is closest to how you solve problems? Is one of them always right? Sources The three men 1. John Whitney Hall (ed.), The Cambridge History of Japan, vol. 4 (1991): ch. 2 Asao Naohiro on unification (the free markets, the sword hunt, the 1591 status order); ch. 7 Jurgis Elisonas on the Korea invasions (the captives, the mound in Kyoto); chronology. https://archive.org/details/the-cambridge-... 2. Encyclopaedia Britannica, "Oda Nobunaga". https://www.britannica.com/biography/Oda-N... 3. Encyclopaedia Britannica, "Toyotomi Hideyoshi". https://www.britannica.com/biography/Toyot... 4. Conrad Totman, "Tokugawa Ieyasu", Encyclopaedia Britannica: the hostage years, Mikatagahara, Edo, Sekigahara, the peace. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Tokug... 5. Ōta Gyūichi, The Chronicle of Lord Nobunaga (Shinchō kōki), trans. J.S.A. Elisonas and J.P. Lamers (Brill, 2011): "Man's fifty years", Okehazama, Nagashino, Mount Hiei. 6. Mary Elizabeth Berry, Hideyoshi (Harvard, 1982). https://archive.org/details/hideyoshi0000berr Was Nobunaga a tyrant? Historians disagree 7. Suzanne Gay, review of Jeroen Lamers, Japonius Tyrannus (H-Net, 2001): "pragmatic and ruthless" vs. "cruel tyrant". https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?... Battles and numbers (later accounts; some may be inflated) 8. Stephen Turnbull, Battles of the Samurai (1987); Samuel Hawley, The Imjin War (2005): Okehazama, the 158,800 men sent to Korea. 9. Japanese Wiki Corpus, "Rakuichi-rakuza" (free markets; the Rokkaku clan was first, 1549). https://www.japanesewiki.com/history/Rakui... Nicknames and the "bald rat" letter 10. Osaka Castle Museum, Hideyoshi's nicknames. https://osaka-castle.jp/toyotomihideyoshi/... 11. NEWS Post Seven (2017), Nobunaga's letter to Nene. https://www.news-postseven.com/archives/20... The cuckoo poem (written about 1821, not their words) 12. Kotobank, citing Matsura Seizan's Kasshi yawa. https://kotobank.jp/word/鳴くまで待とう時鳥-588405 13. Japaaan magazine. https://mag.japaaan.com/archives/75629/2 The "closed country" 14. Ronald P. Toby, State and Diplomacy in Early Modern Japan (Stanford, 1991): Japan still traded with China, Korea, the Ryukyus and the Dutch. 15. Wikipedia (as a pointer to sources): Siege of Mount Hiei (the death toll estimates); Battle of Okehazama; Battle of Sekigahara; Mimizuka; Imjin War; Sakoku. Real quotes only where the sources give them, in English translation; Nobunaga's one line is read by a designed voice. Legends left out on purpose: the warmed sandals, Nobunaga calling him "Monkey", the overnight castle, the three rows of guns, the frowning portrait. Japanese characters drawn from KanjiVG stroke data (Ulrich Apel, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://kanjivg.tagaini.net). Animation drawn in code. Voices by ElevenLabs. #History #KidsHistory #Japan #Samurai