Timeline

The woman warrior of the Genpei War whose existence historians cannot quite confirm or deny

The founding shogun who built warrior government as a system that lasted six and a half centuries

The warrior monk whose loyalty became Japan's most quoted legend

The widow who became the first real ruler of the Kamakura Bakufu

The strategist who held off the Kamakura shogunate with rocks and trickery

The young regent who held off the Mongols twice — and broke the Kamakura Bakufu doing it

The founding shogun who left Japan with two emperors and a sixty-year civil war

The Sengoku sword saint who is said to have never lost a serious match

The minor lord who became, in a single generation, the master of ten provinces — the supreme strategist of the Sengoku

Founder of the Shinkage-ryū and teacher of the Sengoku 'sword-saint shogun'

The Tiger of Kai whose cavalry shook the realm

The general whose betrayal at Honnō-ji rerouted Japanese history

The Dragon of Echigo, sword-saint of the north

The revolutionary who paved the path to a unified Japan

The peasant who rose to rule all Japan

The Iga master who guarded the founder of the Tokugawa peace

The strategist Hideyoshi feared more than any enemy

The last lord of Takeda — and the man who lost the cavalry at Nagashino

The mountain strategist who defeated the Tokugawa twice from a single small castle

The spear master of the Tokugawa Four Heavenly Kings, said to have come through fifty-seven battles without a wound

The administrator who fought Tokugawa for the Toyotomi succession — and lost

The youngest of the Tokugawa Four Heavenly Kings, commander of the 'Ii Red Devils' and founder of the Hikone domain

The seven-spears warrior who built the castle that survived four hundred years

The Christian noblewoman whose death preserved her husband's place in the new order

The strategist who joined his friend Mitsunari at Sekigahara knowing they would probably lose

The patient warlord whose dynasty ruled Japan for 250 years

The Uesugi strategist who wore the character for 'love' on his helmet

The Ōsaka rōnin who died at Dōmyōji one day before Yukimura died at Tennōji

The eastern brother who outlived Yukimura by forty-three years and built a domain that lasted to Meiji

The One-Eyed Dragon who built Sendai

The greatest warrior of the Sengoku, dying a legend at Osaka

The Western Invincible — a daimyō who lost everything and won it back

The Yagyū Shinkage-ryū inheritor who turned the sword into the state's official way

The young defector at Matsuo Mountain whose decision ended the Sengoku era

The undefeated swordsman who wrote The Book of Five Rings

The chief retainer of the Forty-Seven Rōnin — Japan's archetype of loyalty

The young lord who saved a bankrupt domain through thirty years of austere reform

The Tairō who signed the unequal treaties — and was assassinated for it at the gates of Edo Castle

The last navy minister of the shogunate who delivered the bloodless surrender of Edo and was Sakamoto Ryōma's master

The architect of the Meiji Restoration who died fighting against the Meiji government he had built

The architect of the Meiji state who outmaneuvered Saigō and was assassinated nine months later

The Shōka Sonjuku teacher whose two-and-a-half-year school drove the Meiji Restoration

The Chōshū statesman behind the Satsuma-Chōshū Alliance and the Five Charter Oath

Vice-commander of the Shinsengumi who fought the shogunate's losing war to its very last day

The low-rank samurai who engineered the fall of the shogunate

One of the 'Three Boats' of the Bakumatsu who opened the road to the bloodless surrender of Edo and founded the Mutō-ryū

The last shogun who chose to surrender power rather than fight a civil war he believed Japan could not afford

The Shōka Sonjuku graduate whose Kiheitai militia and Kōzanji coup drove Chōshū to topple the bakufu

The first prime minister of Japan and chief drafter of the Meiji Constitution — Shōin's last and youngest student

First-captain of the Shinsengumi — and the tubercular swordsman who never fought the Boshin War