Osaka City is located in the coastal area of Osaka Bay in the central part of Osaka Prefecture, on the Osaka Plain, and the terrain is extremely flat. During the Edo period, Osaka was one of the most populous cities in Japan, along with Edo and Kyoto. In 1583, Toyotomi Hideyoshi built Osaka Castle on the land of the former Ishiyama Honganji Temple, with Osaka as the central city of his rule.

Osaka has a long history and was a battleground for soldiers during the Warring States period. One of the largest battles of Japan's Sengoku period, the Battle of Osaka, took place here.

In 1614, Tokugawa Ieyasu launched two battles of Osaka in order to destroy the Toyotomi family, and finally wiped out the Toyotomi family and burned Osaka Castle. After the war, Matsudaira Tadaaki received 100,000 stone from Osaka, and in 1619 it became a shogunate direct domain, and Nobuyasa Naito was appointed acting official. The following year, the shogunate asked the daimyo from Ise to the west of Kaga to rebuild Osaka Castle as a base for the shogunate's domination of the western country.

In order to block the Satsuma Domain, the Tokugawa shogunate gathered more than 100,000 troops and set up a defensive line in the mountains on the border between Settsu and Harima. In addition, a coastal defense line stretching from Settsu and Izumi to Kii was constructed to prevent a naval attack from the Far East. For more than two months, the fortifications on these two lines of defense have been vigorously reinforced every day.

From Tamba to Settsu to Izumi, there are many earthworks and bunkers criss-crossed, layered together. Japan's Warring States period lasted for hundreds of years and accumulated a lot of experience in building cities.

In Korea in 1593, in the face of a swift offensive against Pyongyang by the Ming Dynasty army with a powerful artillery force, the Japanese abandoned the old Korean city wall and built civil fortifications outside the wall. The Ming commanders, who were proud of the Great Wall, contemptuously regarded these fortifications as nothing more than "rabbit holes" dug by barbarians.

It wasn't until they personally felt the rain of bullets from behind those earthen ramparts that they discovered that these "rabbit holes" were very tricky. In order to capture these civil fortifications, great losses were made.

In the face of the powerful Far Eastern Army, the Tokugawa shogunate was also open-minded, and they mobilized almost all the civilians under their rule, and built a large number of small mountain castles in the mountainous defense line between Settsu and Harima, and also established a lot of flat castles in the plain area from Settsu to Izumi. All are in depth.

Trenches were cut out in the flat area between the small flat castles, and the flat castles were communicated through these trenches. There are also dense bunkers around Pingcheng. A large number of earthen ramparts were also built on both sides of the trenches, and the protrusions and turrets were built, and fences and large shields were built around the earthen ramparts to prevent enemy attacks. In the same way, Ichinomaru, Ninomaru, and the cantonment were built.

These mountain castles and peaceful castles are very small, and there are no castle towers, so only simple turrets are built, but they are all made of sturdy earth mounds, and in some places they are built with huge stones. When building an earthen mound. Every six steps, a sturdy wooden post is driven, a bamboo pole is erected in the middle of the pillar, and then bundles of bamboo are tied to the bamboo pole. Finally, a layer of plaster mixed with clay and gravel was applied to the surface of the mound, and firing ports were opened at certain intervals.

The walls have sloping roofs, shingles, and even tiles. In many castles, wooden piles were built on the inner side of the walls to support them. In battle, thick planks can be laid on it. Iron gunners and archers can shoot over the walls by standing on it.

In fact, these two lines of defense were already under intense construction during the fierce war between the Tokugawa shogunate and the Satsuma domain. It's just not that urgent. The main reason was that the offensive of the Kyushu coalition was too fierce at that time, and the Tokugawa family was established in order to prevent the Kyushu coalition army from breaking through the defense line and fighting all the way into Kyoto. But at that time, there were not so many mountain cities and peaceful cities, and the depth was not so deep.

With such two lines of defense, the amount of work is conceivable. The Tokugawa shogunate had done whatever it took to stop the attack of the Satsuma Domain. What's more, there is a powerful Far East behind the Satsuma Domain. So this time, they can be regarded as smashing pots and selling iron, and almost emptied their family funds.

Under the fierce supervision of the Tokugawa shogunate, hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians completed the basic construction of these two defense lines with a total length of nearly several tens of kilometers in just over a few months. The Tokugawa shogunate could not allow the Satsuma clan to capture Kyoto under any circumstances.

Prior to the Sengoku period, Japan was a clan society centered around the emperor. Minister (civil official). The samurai (military attaché) and other nobles were basically members of the emperor's family. At that time, the common surnames in the history books such as orange, source, and ping, traced back to the root were all the sons of a certain emperor, because there were too many brothers, so they were divided into branches.

Originally, only the secretary of state could participate in political power, and the samurai were only the thugs of the minister. The background of Minamoto Yoritomo establishing the shogunate was to stay away from Kyoto, where the minister was influential, and to create a government with samurai power in his home base of Kamakura, and to empty the secretary of Kyoto.

But he still didn't dare to move the old family of the Japanese aristocracy, that is, the emperor, and once he moved the emperor, the samurai of all Japan would immediately turn against them. This was true of Kamakura, Muromachi, and Edo, all three shogunates in Japanese history.

Japan has a long history of dualism, and from the end of the Heian period onwards, the overall real power was biased in favor of the samurai. By the Tokugawa period, the actual political authority of the samurai was greatly magnified in the two gens of the public and military families, resulting in the public family, that is, the emperor, the imperial family, and the ministers, becoming the end of the virtual power.

But the Tokugawa family also needed to obtain political authority from the emperor and the minister, who had no real power but had legal power. Therefore, the Toyotomi clan needs to be surnamed Fujiwara in order to be appointed as Sekihaku, and Tokugawa can only be opened because his distant ancestor is Genji, and all the Sekitomi and shoguns in history are theoretically descendants of the emperor or other mythical families.

This social perception is very stubborn, and it is difficult to reverse it even if your fist is big, so the power comes from the emperor (god descendant) de jure theory, and once this consensus is formed, it cannot be changed.

At the end of the Muromachi Shogunate, the shogunate fell and the world rose together, and Japan entered the Warring States period. One of the characteristics of the Warring States period was that the guns came out of power, and the emerging daimyo in various places were not from famous families.

Although they fought all over the country, regardless of the emperor's life or death, they had to help themselves fabricate a family tree after becoming famous. For example, Oda Nobunaga is known as being born in the Taira clan, and Tokugawa Ieyasu is claimed to be from the Genji family, and they all have to help themselves get a righteous title in power.

However, the Satsuma clan was a special case, because the Shimazu clan was a daimyo from a real genhei. Like Oda Nobunaga, monkeys, and turtles, they have nothing to do with the emperor's bloodline. Once the Satsuma clan occupied Kyoto, the Tokugawa shogunate would find itself in an extremely awkward position.

At this time, the other daimyo lords of Honshu Island did not want the Tokugawa shogunate to fall at this time, after all, behind the Satsuma domain stood the powerful Far East. Once the Shimazu family has the support of the Far East, how can they still live a good life.

Until this time, the Tokugawa shogunate and the Satsuma clan were not aware of the true intentions of the Far East, and they both thought that the Far East was only to support the Satsuma Domain, and the purpose was to control the whole of Japan through the Satsuma Domain. (To be continued......)

PS: Thank you for the monthly ticket support of Qin Feng Han Soul and earthly small shareholders.