THE POLITICS OF WARRING-STATES JAPAN, 1467-1600 Nicholas D. Anderson Department of Political Science, Yale University [email protected] ABSTRACT: This article introduces “The Politics of Warring-States Japan, 1467-1600,” a new collection of data sets covering political and military relations between warlords within Japan during its warring-states period from 1467 to 1600. Drawn from the most authoritative chronology of the politics of the Japanese archipelago during the warring-states period, data were collected on seven topics of interest: battles between Japan’s warlords (n=2,889); territorial conquest within the Japanese archipelago (n=1,224); alliances among Japan’s warlords (n=576); gift-giving by Japanese warlords (n=448); surrender by Japanese warlords (n=112); natural disasters occurring within the Japanese archipelago (n=656); and various attributes of Japan’s premodern provinces. Focusing primarily on the battle data, this article introduces the sources of the data, describes the collection procedures and coding rules, presents basic descriptive statistics of key variables of interest, and applies the battle data to an important question in the international relations literature: whether conflict “contagiously” diffuses across time and space. The data introduced here should be of interests to scholars of international relations, civil conflict, Early Modern East Asia, and Japanese history, among many others. 24 March 2021 7,735 Words (5,041 without notes) This is a work in progress, so I gladly welcome questions and/or comments. Nicholas Anderson is a visiting scholar at the Institute for Security and Conflict Studies at the Elliott School of International Affairs at The George Washington University, and a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Political Science at Yale University. He would like to express his gratitude to Jonathon Baron, Mary Elizabeth Berry, Ja Ian Chong, Thomas Conlan, Fabian Drixler, Jonathan Markowitz, Steven Miller, Nuno P. Monteiro, Sebastian Peel, Christopher Price, Philip Streich, Monica Duffy Toft, Remco Zwetsloot, and especially Frances Rosenbluth, for their insightful and constructive comments on earlier drafts of this article. Haruko Nakamura provided crucial guidance and support at Yale’s Sterling Memorial Library. This research would not have been possible without the consistently outstanding research assistance of Makiko Shirado. The project also benefited greatly from presentations at Yale University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Southern California, and annual conferences of the International Studies Association (ISA) in 2017 and the American Political Science Association (APSA) in 2017, 2018, & 2019. This research was generously supported by the Japan Foundation’s Center for Global Partnership and Yale University’s Center for East Asian Studies. Key words: Japan; East Asia; Early-Modern History; Quantitative Data In recent years, research in international relations and international security studies has begun to look backwards, to examine what lessons emerge from relations among earlier forms of social organization. Some, for instance, have examined the warring states of ancient China, or regional relations in early modern East Asia.1 Others have explored the Christian crusades, and conflict and cooperation in medieval Europe.2 Others still have looked to early modern Europe, to see what lessons the relations between actors of this period hold for today.3 And some have even explored the relations between hunter-gatherer bands, the most primitive form of human social organization.4 However, one place and period that seems to have escaped much scholarly scrutiny within international relations is Japan of the late-medieval period.5 Existing research within political science primarily focuses on the Edo period (1603-1868) that followed,6 is more firmly rooted in comparative politics,7 or both.8 This is unfortunate, since the “Warring-States Period” (Sengoku Jidai, 1 Victoria Tin-bor Hui, War and State Formation in Ancient China and Early Modern Europe (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005); David C. Kang, East Asia Before the West: Five Centuries of Trade and Tribute (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2010); Ji-Young Lee, China’s Hegemony: Four Hundred Years of East Asian Dominance (New York: Columbia University Press, 2016). 2 Michael C. Horowitz, “Long Time Going: Religion and the Duration of Crusading,” International Security, Vol. 34, No. 9 (Fall 2009), pp. 162-193. On the medieval period, see: Markus Fischer, “Feudal Europe, 800-1300: Communal Discourse and Conflictual Practices,” International Organization, Vol. 46, No. 2 (Spring 1992), pp. 427-466; John G. Ruggie, “Territoriality and Beyond: Problematizing Modernity in International Relations,” International Organization, Vol. 47, No. 1 (Winter 1993), pp. 139-174. 3 Hendrik Spruyt, The Sovereign State and its Competitors: An Analysis of Systems Change (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994); Daniel H. Nexon, The Struggle for Power in Early Modern Europe: Religious Conflict, Dynastic Empires, and International Change (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009); John M. Owen, The Clash of Ideas in World Politics: Transnational Networks, States, and Regime Change, 1510-2010 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011). 4 Jack Donnelly, “The Elements of Structures of International Systems,” International Organization, Vol. 66, No. 4 (October 2012), pp. 609-643. 5 Important exceptions are: Philip A. Streich, “The Failure of the Balance of Power: Warring States Japan, 1467-1590,” (Ph.D. Dissertation, Rutgers University, 2010); Philip Streich, “The Balance of Power in Japan’s Warring States Period,” Asia Pacific World, Vol. 3, No. 2 (Autumn 2012), pp. 17-36; Ji-Young Lee, “Hegemonic Authority and Domestic Legitimation: Japan and Korea under Chinese Hegemonic Order in Early Modern East Asia,” Security Studies, Vol. 25, No. 2 (June 2016), pp. 320-52; Lee, China’s Hegemony. 6 Erik Ringmar, “Performing International Systems: Two East Asian Alternatives to the Westphalian Order,” International Organization, Vol. 66, No. 1 (2012), pp. 1-25; Abbey Steele, Christopher Paik, and Seiki Tanaka, “Constraining the Samurai: Rebellion and Taxation in Early Modern Japan,” International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 61, No. 2 (June 2017), pp. 352-370. 7 John A. Ferejohn and Frances McCall Rosenbluth, eds., War and State Building in Medieval Japan (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010). 8 Mark Ravina, “State-Building and Political Economy in Early-Modern Japan,” The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 54, No. 4 (November 1995), pp. 997-1022. 1 1467-1600) was one of great social and political fragmentation, followed by relentless warfare, political consolidation, and eventual unification. In this period, the Japanese archipelago descended into a state of anarchy, not unlike the international system itself. And the units that emerged, their various forms of interaction, and the eventual unification of the country by the late 16th century, may hold important lessons for our understanding of the central problem of international relations— conflict and cooperation in the absence of centralized authority. In this article, I present new data that will help scholars of international relations and international security studies grapple some fundamental questions in new and important ways. The “Politics of Warring-States Japan, 1467-1600” data cover political relations between warlords within the Japanese archipelago during the 15th and 16th centuries. Using the most comprehensive, authoritative chronology of Japanese history during the warring-states period, I compiled data on a variety of political phenomena, including battles (n=2,889), territorial expansion (n=1,224), alliances (n=576), gift-giving (n=448); surrender (n=112), natural disasters (n=656), and various attributes of Japan’s premodern provinces. In this article, I focus primarily on the battle data, and only briefly on the other data. No quantitative data of this breadth and detail currently exists. Much of the existing research on Japan’s warring-states period is within the field of history, consisting of either narrowly-focused but richly-detailed studies,9 or broadly-focused but more sparsely-detailed studies.10 The existing 9 See, for example: Peter Judd Arnesen, The Medieval Japanese Daimyo: The Ouchi Family’s Rule of Suo and Nagato (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1979); Mary Elizabeth Berry, Hideyoshi (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982); Carol Richmond Tsang, War and Faith: Ikko Ikki in Late Muromachi Japan (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007); Peter D. Shapinsky, Lords of the Sea: Pirates, Violence, and Commerce in Late Medieval Japan. (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2014). 10 For broad historical overviews, see: George Sansom, A History of Japan, 1334-1615 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1961); John Whitney Hall, Nagahara Keiji, and Kozo Yamamura, eds., Japan Before Tokugawa: Political Consolidation and Economic Growth, 1500-1650 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981); Kozo Yamamura, ed., The Cambridge History of Japan: Volume 3, Medieval Japan (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990); John Whitney Hall, ed., The Cambridge History of Japan: Volume 4, Early Modern Japan (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991); William Farris, Japan to 1600: A Social and Economic History (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2009); Karl F. Friday, ed., Japan Emerging: Premodern History