Timeline

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

The first warrior to become Chancellor of the Realm, who built the Taira ascendancy and laid the ground for warrior government

Founder of the Hōjō, father-in-law of Yoritomo who supported the founding of the Kamakura shogunate and became the first shikken

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

The 'Rising-Sun Shogun' who broke the Taira at Kurikara Pass and reached Kyoto first

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

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

The Genji general who destroyed the Taira at Dannoura, then was killed by his own brother Yoritomo

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

The second shikken of the Kamakura shogunate, who defeated the imperial court in the Jōkyū War and decided the supremacy of warrior government

The fifth shikken of the Kamakura shogunate, who established tokusō politics and planted Zen in Kamakura

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 third son who inherited his father Kusunoki Masashige's ideal and staked his life on the Nanboku-chō reconciliation

The third Muromachi shōgun who unified the Northern and Southern Courts, built the Golden Pavilion, and was called 'King of Japan' by the Ming emperor

The female lord who kept the Ii house alive at Ii-no-ya and raised the young Naomasa

The semi-legendary figure whose attempted assassination of Hideyoshi and cauldron-boiling execution shaped the ninja-thief image of Japanese popular culture

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 Tōkai daimyō called 'the finest bowman of the coastal road,' who ruled Suruga, Tōtōmi, and Mikawa and fell at Okehazama

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 Satsuma general feared by the Ming army as the 'Devil Shimazu' in Korea, who broke through the enemy center at Sekigahara in the 'Sutegamari' retreat

The peasant who rose to rule all Japan

The Iga master who guarded the founder of the Tokugawa peace

The supreme leader of the Hongan-ji organization who fought Nobunaga for ten years at Ishiyama

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

Sister of Oda Nobunaga, wife of Azai Nagamasa, then of Shibata Katsuie — the emblem of tragedy for women of the Sengoku period

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 foremost of the 'Seven Spears of Shizugatake,' vanguard of the Eastern Army at Sekigahara, and the Hideyoshi-raised general who was stripped of his fief for repairing a castle without permission

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 Sengoku-era female lord who inherited the Tachibana house at seven; wife of Tachibana Muneshige

The twenty-year-old female warrior who held out against Hideyoshi's water attack at Oshi Castle; later Hideyoshi's consort

The renowned early-Heian general who pacified the Emishi and embodied the title 'Sei-i Taishōgun' that later warrior governments took as their model

The first samurai-style rebel in Japanese history, who declared himself 'New Emperor' and aimed at Kantō independence

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 English navigator who became Tokugawa Ieyasu's foreign policy adviser — the first foreign samurai in Japanese history

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 young Christian who at sixteen became the commander-in-chief of the Shimabara Rebellion and the direct trigger for the completion of national seclusion

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 rangaku (Dutch learning) scholar who trained Fukuzawa Yukichi and Ōmura Masujirō at Tekijuku, and built the foundation of modern Japanese medicine and Western learning

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 shishi who led the Tosa Loyalist Party and directed the Bakumatsu 'tenchū' politics, and took his own life under Yamauchi Yōdō's suppression

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

The twenty-one-year-old female warrior who led a naginata women's corps at the Aizu Boshin War and fell in battle