Hello, and welcome to the History of Japan podcast.

Episode 8, The Three Unifiers.

Before we get started, a quick note.

In order to get this podcast recorded before I left for New York, I had to record it

while I was suffering from a rather bad cold.

I did my best to mitigate that with lots of drugs and some water, but you can still

definitely hear it.

I hope it doesn't make this too hard to listen to.

Please let me know if it does, so in the future, if this happens, I can just not record anything

and save the material for when my voice is doing better.

Again, apologies for the inconvenience, and I hope you enjoy the show.

Let's get started.

This week, I want to talk about the end of the Sengoku period. More specifically, I want to talk about the three men who are

generally considered to be responsible for ending over 100 years of constant fighting. What really

intrigues me about the whole story and what I want to talk about today is what kind of person you have to be in order to end this kind of a war.

Put another way, what kind of person does it take to end this kind of historical chaos?

Let's have a look at these men, and we'll try and figure it out.

The first of them was named Odan

Nobunaga, who was the lord of a small domain called Oari, which is roughly where modern

Nagoya is today. Nobunaga was born in 1534 and was something of a wild child during the early

years of his life. He gained a reputation for impropriety,

and spent a lot of his time playing with other children in the street, something hardly befitting

...